Has a serial killer ever been released from prison?

I'm gonna share a golden case from italy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Brusca

This man who himself declared committed between 100 and 200 murders (he lost track) got released after 25 years and walks free.

I asume you mean "in the USA"? I mean, there are many countries in which life sentence isn't a thing.

Quite a few eventually get released, Wikipedia has a long list of serial killers, just search that list for the word "released":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_serial_killers_by_country

The only one I could find was Franz Schmidt who killed three people between 1957 and 1983. Was released in 2003 and died in 2017.

Not a "known" serial killer, but it wouldn't surprise me if this guy killed more than the one woman he ate and raped (her corpse):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issei_Sagawa

Robert Durst killed at least 3 people and completely avoided justice because he was rich, at least until he outed himself on camera. There's a documentary on Hulu called The Jinx

Durst was convicted of one murder and died in prison in 2020

Only two convicted murders but one of them was her own sister, Karla Homolka served 12 years and got out in 2005.

Damm she looks so out of it. Thats what killing does to a MFer
- I don't think that's necessarily a safe conclusion to leap to
- Her and her husband were sick af. It's good they got caught (relatively) early into their thing, they almost certainly would've continued on with that shit indefinitely if they could've.

I asume you mean "in the USA"? I mean, there are many countries in which life sentence isn't a thing.

I know in counties like Colombia, Brazil and Norway. I did some research and I found out about the cases of Arnfinn Nesset in Norway who killed at least 22 people in the early 80s and was released in 2004. Abel Mikaelsen Klemmensen in Greenland who killed 7 people at a party in 1989 and was released in 2015 and Australian criminal Berwyn Rees who was paroled in 2019 after serving 39 years in prison for killing three people including a police officer between 1977-1981. British Child killer Simon Smith who murdered three of his infant children between 1993-and-1997 who despite being sentence to a whole life term later applied against this sentence and it was reduced to 24 years-to-life and was released in 2020. Teenage serial killer Warren Harris in America who killed four people in the 1970s and given parole in 2024.

Probably more than will ever be known.

One of the creepiest kinds of murders that I've read about or watched on TV shows was the random murder. A murder where a killer just randomly kills someone in a random part of the country for no reason. The murderer just goes into a town or city they've never been to before, commits a murder, leaves and never returns. The murderer can leave traces and clues but none if would be connected to anyone or anything in the area .... no motive, no reason, no connection, no witnesses, no nothing .... just a murderer who kills someone for no reason and disappears ... and is capable of doing it again and again without ever being discovered.

Fascinating and frightening.

Israel Keyes admitted to at least one of these but probably did tens if not hundreds. Had caches across the country of supplies and weapons. He was only eventually caught cause he got sloppy and I think had a body or something on his property at some point. Didn't admit a lot to the police cause he didn't want media attention and for his daughter to find out, a lot of information is gleaned from missing persons that coincided with where he happened to be at the time (phone pings, plane tickets, etc), and he traveled a lot.

There's a long-running podcast detailing what is known about him, called True Crime Bullshit.
I don't mean killers who haven't been caught yet I mean people who were convinced of there crimes and later released.
- This is exactly what I mean ..... just because someone committed one murder and got caught, it doesn't mean that they didn't commit multiple other murders that will never be known about.

As far as I know, Garth Brooks has never been arrested.

The singer?
- Yes. He's never disclosed where the bodies are, so there's never been enough physical evidence for an arrest.

I would add an addendum that they’re 3 separate murders cases and not a single event.

I see we got the killing expert over here
- I don’t immediately know what in particular transitions someone from killer to “serial” killer.
  
  But I could see if it was someone who wiped out a van of people or a husband coming back home to his wife cheating with a couple and murdering them being potentially released after a long sentence.

https://time.com/7176342/pete-hegseth-donald-trump-pardon-war-crimes-military/

at least two of these dudes fit the bill