A black Brazilian man arrested for stabbing a woman to death calmly confessed to murdering another 41 people - putting him among history's most prolific serial killers

Sailson Jose das Gracas, 26, told police in Rio de Janeiro that he would go out on the hunt for white women after studying each victim for up to a month. In a reign of terror spanning nine years, Gracas claims to have murdered 37 women, two men and one two-year-old child in the outlying area of Rio de Janeiro known as Baixada Fluminense. Garcas said that he found pleasure in seeing the life drain out of the women he murdered. Marcelo Machado, the Rio police chief investigating the supposed serial killer, said that Sailson found pleasure in strangulating his victims, and masturbated after his murders. Police chief Pedro Henrique Medina, from the Baixada Fluminense Homicide Division, said that Gracas voluntarily confessed to the murders have being caught in the act of murdering his latest victim.