PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: crime
king of England
Richard III was the last Plantagenet and Yorkist king of England. He usurped the throne of his nephew Edward V in 1483 and perished in defeat to Henry Tudor (thereafter Henry VII) at the Battle of Bosworth...
American criminal and cult leader
Charles Manson was an American criminal and cult leader whose followers carried out several notorious murders. Their most famous victim was actress Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, who...
Indian revolutionary
Udham Singh was an Indian political activist who fought against the British raj in India and sought revenge for the 1919 massacre of civilians by the British army at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in the...
French serial killer
Charles Sobhraj is a French serial killer, smuggler, con artist, and thief whose career of disguises, passport theft, and murders along the Asian hippie trail (an overland route between Europe and Southeast...
English criminal
Moll Cutpurse was the most notorious female member of 17th-century England’s underworld. She was a thief, an entertainer, a receiver (fence) and broker of stolen goods, and a celebrated cross-dresser....
His downfall—from the scion of a legal dynasty to convicted murderer and embezzler—inspired Hulu’s Murdaugh: Death in the Family.
Alex Murdaugh is a former lawyer from one of South Carolina’s most powerful families. In 2021 his wife, Margaret (“Maggie”) Murdaugh, and youngest son, Paul Murdaugh, were murdered on the family’s estate....
dictator of Guatemala
Efraín Ríos Montt was a Guatemalan army general and politician who ruled Guatemala as the leader of a military junta and as dictator (1982–83). In 2013 he was tried by a Guatemalan court on charges of...
American outlaw biker
Sonny Barger was an American outlaw biker credited with turning the Hells Angels motorcycle club into a global brand. Barger, who came to the fore as a founding member of the Oakland, California, chapter...
American laborer
Steven Avery is an American labourer who served 18 years in prison (1985–2003) for rape and attempted murder before his conviction was overturned because of DNA evidence. In 2005 he was charged with murder...
American boxer
Mike Tyson is an American boxer who, at age 20, became the youngest heavyweight champion in history. His achievements in the ring, however, were often overshadowed by his turbulent personal life. (Read...
American confidence man
Gaston Means was an American confidence man notable for attaining close proximity to the highest echelons of government and leveraging the information afforded him by his position. Means was born into...
Venezuelan terrorist
Carlos the Jackal is a Venezuelan militant who orchestrated some of the highest-profile terrorist attacks of the 1970s and ’80s. Ramírez was born into an upper-class Venezuelan family; his father operated...
American serial killer
Rodney Alcala was an American serial killer known as the “Dating Game Killer” because of his 1978 appearance on the popular TV show, whose producers were not aware of his multiple gruesome murders. His...
American football player
O.J. Simpson was an American collegiate and professional football player who was a premier running back, known for his speed and elusiveness. His success on the field led to a career in film and television....
Discover the true story of the serial killer who inspired the Peacock series Devil in Disguise.
John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer whose murders of 33 boys and young men in the 1970s received international media attention and shocked his suburban Chicago community, where he was known for...
American real-estate heir
Robert Durst was an American real-estate heir who was a suspect in the 1982 disappearance of his first wife and who was convicted in 2021 of the 2000 murder of a friend; he was acquitted of killing a neighbor...
Discover the true story of the man who assassinated Pres. James A. Garfield.
Charles J. Guiteau was a lawyer and aspiring politician who assassinated Pres. James A. Garfield. Guiteau, who experienced mental instability, believed that he had helped Garfield win the 1880 election...
American gangster
Al Capone was an American Prohibition-era gangster who dominated organized crime in Chicago from 1925 to 1931 and became perhaps the most famous gangster in the United States. Capone’s parents immigrated...
American factory superintendent
Leo Frank was an American factory superintendent whose conviction in 1913 for the murder of Mary Phagan resulted in his lynching. His trial and death shaped the nascent Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and...
American murderer
Gary Gilmore was an American murderer whose execution by the state of Utah in 1977 ended a de facto nationwide moratorium on capital punishment that had lasted nearly 10 years. His case also attracted...
American serial killer
Aileen Wuornos was an American serial killer who murdered at least seven men in 1989–90 while working as a sex worker along Florida highways. She was arrested in 1991 and pleaded self-defense. Wuornos...
Mexican criminal
Joaquín Guzmán was the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Mexico from the late 20th century. Guzmán was born and raised in Badiraguato municipality, an...
A nightclub owner in Dallas, Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin of John F. Kennedy, on live TV.
Jack Ruby was an American nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin of Pres. John F. Kennedy, on November 24, 1963, as Oswald was being transferred to a county jail. Despite...
British serial killer
Mary Ann Cotton was a British nurse and housekeeper who was believed to be Britain’s most prolific female serial killer. She allegedly poisoned up to 21 people. Mary Ann grew up in Durham county, northeastern...
American hedge-fund investor
Bernie Madoff was an American hedge-fund investment manager and former chairman of the NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) stock market. He was best known for operating...
American serial killer
Dennis Rader is an American serial killer who murdered 10 people over a span of three decades before his arrest and confession in 2005. He called himself BTK because he bound, tortured, and killed his...
Colombian cocaine trafficker
Griselda Blanco was a Colombian cocaine trafficker who amassed a vast empire and was a central figure in the violent drug wars in Miami in the 1970s and ’80s. Although there is some confusion about her...
Discover the true story of the serial killer and grave robber who inspired Netflix’s Monster.
Ed Gein was an American murderer whose gruesome crimes gained worldwide notoriety in the 1950s, when it was discovered that he robbed graves and used body parts to make household items and other objects....
American assassin
Charles Whitman was an American mass murderer responsible for the deadly Texas Tower shooting of 1966. On August 1 of that year, having earlier in the day killed his wife and mother, Whitman fired down...
Colombian criminal
Pablo Escobar was a Colombian drug lord who rose to infamy as the leader of the Medellín cartel, overseeing a period marked by extreme violence, corruption, and wealth. Escobar was arguably the world’s...
American actor and assassin
John Wilkes Booth was a member of one of the United States’ most distinguished acting families of the 19th century and the assassin who killed U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln. Booth was the 9th of 10 children...
American accused assassin
Lee Harvey Oswald was the accused assassin of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He himself was fatally shot two days later by Jack Ruby (1911–67) in the Dallas County Jail. A special...
American record producer
Phil Spector was an American record producer of the 1960s, described by the writer Tom Wolfe as the “First Tycoon of Teen.” There had been producers since the beginning of the record industry, but none...
Colombian drug dealer
Carlos Lehder is a Colombian-German drug smuggler, a leader in the powerful Medellín drug cartel, who was credited with revolutionizing the transportation network for delivering cocaine to the United States...
American murderer
Richard Speck was an American mass murderer who killed eight female nursing students in a Chicago town house in 1966. The following year Speck was sentenced to life in prison. However, after capital punishment...
American organized-crime boss
Paul Castellano was an American organized crime figure, the reputed successor to Carlo Gambino as the “boss of bosses” of the Five Families of La Cosa Nostra, sometimes referred to as the Mafia, in New...
president of Argentina
Jorge Rafael Videla was a career military officer who was president of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. His government was responsible for human rights abuses during Argentina’s “Dirty War,” which began as...
American vigilante
Bernhard Goetz is an American vigilante who rose to national fame when he shot four African American males on a New York City subway train on December 22, 1984. The event was notable for triggering widespread...
American criminal
Ted Kaczynski was an American criminal who conducted a 17-year (1978–95) bombing campaign that killed 3 and wounded 23 in an attempt to bring about “a revolution against the industrial system.” Kaczynski...
American philanthropist
John du Pont was an American philanthropist who supported amateur freestyle wrestling. On January 26, 1996, he shot and killed freestyle wrestler Dave Schultz, an Olympic gold medalist who lived and trained...
American criminal
Richard Kuklinski was an American serial killer who was convicted of four murders in 1988 and of a fifth in 2003, though in a series of media interviews he later confessed to having killed at least 100...
Turkish businessman and politician
Cem Uzan is a Turkish businessman and politician known for launching the first private television channel in Turkey and for his subsequent foray into politics. Uzan’s father had made his fortune in the...
American serial killer
Gary Ridgway is an American criminal who was the country’s deadliest convicted serial killer. He claimed to have killed as many as 80 women—many of whom were prostitutes—in Washington during the 1980s...
American investor
Raj Rajaratnam is an American investor who was convicted in 2011 of securities fraud and conspiracy in one of the largest prosecutions of insider trading (trading on information not available to the public)...
Bosnian Serb military leader
Ratko Mladić is a Bosnian Serb military leader who commanded the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian conflict (1992–95) and who was widely believed to have masterminded the Srebrenica massacre, the worst...
Soviet serial killer
Andrei Chikatilo was a Soviet serial killer who murdered at least 50 people between 1978 and 1990. His case is noteworthy not only because of the large number of his victims but because efforts by Soviet...
American crime boss
Lucky Luciano was the most powerful chief of American organized crime in the early 1930s and a major influence even from prison in 1936–45 and after deportation to Italy in 1946. Luciano emigrated with...
United States general
LaFayette Curry Baker was the chief of the U.S. Federal Detective Police during the American Civil War and director of Union intelligence and counterintelligence operations. In 1848 Baker left his home...
Roman politician
Marcus Junius Brutus was a Roman politician, one of the leaders in the conspiracy that assassinated Julius Caesar in 44 bce. Brutus was the son of Marcus Junius Brutus (who was treacherously killed by...
British physician and serial killer
Harold Shipman was a British doctor and serial killer who murdered about 250 of his patients, according to an official inquiry into his crimes. Shipman’s murders raised troubling questions about the powers...
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