List of assassins
The following is a
list of assassins with short comments on the
assassination(s) that made them famous. It also contains some individuals who were famously suspected, but then acquitted, of particular assassinations.
See also:*
List of assassinated persons*
Conspiracy theory*
Terrorism*(name?) - assassin of
Alejandro Gonzalez Malave*(name?) - assassin of
Carthaginian general
Hasdrubal the Fair*("three black Africans and an Arab") – assassins of
Zanzibar's leader
Sheik Abeid Karume*(a tank corps major) - assassin of
Ngo Dinh Diem*(name?) - assassin of
Waclaw III king of
Bohemia,
Poland and
Hungary*(name?) - assassin of
Vlad Ţepeş*(name?) - assassin of
Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino*(name?) - assassin of
Vlad II Dracul, father of
Vlad Ţepeş*(an anonymous
Hashshashin) - assassin of
Conrad of Montferrat*(a Persian slave) - assassin of
Umar ibn al-Khattab*
Frank Abbandando -
Mafia hitman
*
Saad Akbar - assassin of
Liaquat Ali Khan,
Prime Minister of Pakistan*
Mehmet Ali Ağca - failed assassin of
Pope John Paul II*
Yigal Amir - assassin of the
Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin*
Benjamín Mendoza y Amor Flores, a
Bolivian Surrealist painter, would-be assassin of
Pope Paul VI, during the latter's visit at the
Manila International Airport in the
Philippines.
*
Jacob Johan Anckarström - assassin of King
Gustav III of Sweden *
Avelino Arredondo - assassin of
Juan Idiarte Borda,
President of Uruguay (
August 25,
1897)
*
Vladimir Arutinian - attempted assassin of
US President George W. Bush and
President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili (
May 10,
2005)
*
Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry - attempted assassin of
President of France Charles de Gaulle*
Byron De La Beckwith - assassin of
US civil rights figure
Medgar Evers*
John Bellingham - assassin of
British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval (
May 11,
1812)
*
Philipp von Boeselager - last surviving member of the conspiracy to assassinate
Adolf Hitler*
John Wilkes Booth - assassin of the
American President Abraham Lincoln*
Gustave Bouvet - attempted assassin of
President of France Alexandre Millerand*
Mohammed Bouyeri - assassin of the
Dutch film director Theo van Gogh (
November 2,
2004)
*
Arthur Herman Bremer - would-be assassin of
George Wallace,
governor of
Alabama*
Marcus Junius Brutus,
Gaius Cassius Longinus, and their associates - assassins of
Julius Caesar*
Aaron Burr - won the duel leading to the death of
Alexander Hamilton*
Samuel Byck - would-be assassin of
American President Richard Nixon*
Carlos (the Jackal) - terrorist, would-be assassin of
Joseph Sieff*
Sante Jeronimo Caserio - assassin of the
French President Marie François Sadi Carnot*
Cassius Chaerea, and associates - assassins of the Roman emperor
Caligula*
Mark David Chapman - assassin of
John Lennon*
Jacques Clément - assassin of
King Henri III of France*
Charlotte Corday - assassin of
Jean-Paul Marat*
Andrew Cunanan - assassin of
Gianni Versace*
Izola Curry - stabbed
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in
1958*
Leon Czolgosz - assassin of the
American President William McKinley*
Namba Daisuke attempted assassin of Prince Regent
Hirohito of Japan on December 27, 1923
*
André Dallaire, attempted assassin of
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on November 5, 1995
*
Dingaan and
Mhlangana - assassins of
Shaka, the king of
Zulus*
Reginald Dunne and
Joseph O'Sullivan -
IRA assassins of Sir
Henry Hughes Wilson,
British field marshal, in
1922*
Lydia Echevarría - alleged assassin of
Luis Vigoreaux*
George Elser - lone assassin who attempted to assassinate
Adolf Hitler through a time bomb at Bürgerbräukeller Hall on November 8, 1939
*
John Felton - assassin of
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckhingham*
Giuseppe Fieschi - would-be assassin of
King Louis Philippe in July
1835*
Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme - would-be assassin of
Gerald Ford*
Balthazar Gérards - assassin of
William I of Orange*
Nathuram Godse - assassin of
Mahatma Gandhi*
Volkert van der Graaf - assassin of
Pim Fortuyn*
Bryan "The Man" Gaviola - assassin of
Alfonso Wickowski*
Charles J. Guiteau - assassin of the
American President James Garfield*
Khioniya Kozmishna Guseva - attempted to assassinate
Grigori Rasputin in
1914*
Charles Harrelson - assassin of Judge
John H. Wood, Jr.*
Hashshashin - the original
Afghan assassins
*
Talmadge Hayer (confessed and convicted),
Norman 3X Butler &
Thomas 15X Johnson (convicted) - the three assassins of
Malcolm X*
John Hinckley, Jr. - would-be assassin of
Ronald Reagan*
Hitokiri - Japanese assassins during the
Bakumatsu* The
Invincibles - assassins of
Lord Frederick Cavendish and
Thomas Henry Burke 1882*
Jing Ke - failed assassin of a Qin king, later
Qin Shi Huang, the first Chinese emperor
*
John Parricida of
Habsburg -- Killed his uncle King
Albert I of Germany in
1308*
Fanya Kaplan - attempted assassin of
Vladimir Lenin*
Khalid Sheik Mohammed - conspired with a plot to kill
Pope John Paul II as part of the
Operation Bojinka terrorist attack plot. The plot was discovered after an apartment fire in
Manila,
Philippines on
January 6,
1995*
Jan Kubiš - assassin of top Nazi
Reinhard Heydrich 1942 in
Prague. See
Operation AnthropoidHitokiri Kawakami Gensai - Japanese assassin during the
Bakumatsu.
*
Richard Lawrence - attempted assassin of
Andrew Jackson*
Luigi Lucheni - assassin of
Elisabeth of Austria*
Byron Looper - assassin of political opponent
Tommy Burks*
Marcia (a
concubine) and
Narcissus (an
athlete) - assassins of Roman emperor
Commodus. Narcissus strangled the emperor in his bath after Marcia's poison failed to work. The chief plot architect was praetorian prefect Quintus Aecilius Laetus
*
Rolando Masferrer Rojas killer in Spanish Civil War and in Cuba, blown up in Miami, in 1975
*
Ramón Mercader - assassin of
Leon Trotsky*
Mijailo Mijailovic - assassin of
Anna Lindh*
Sara Jane Moore - would-be assassin of
Gerald Ford*
Måns Bengtsson Natt och Dag - assassin of
Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson*
Phuong Ngo, and associates - assassins of
John Paul Newman*
Abu Nidal, attempted assassin of
Shlomo Argov, Israeli ambassador to Britain. Actual assassin of dozens of
PLO officers
*
Eligiusz Niewiadomski - assassin of
Gabriel Narutowicz, the first president of Poland
*
Ninja - assassins of medieval Japan
*
El Sayyid Nosair - assassin of
Meir Kahane*
Felice Orsini - Italian nationalist who failed in his attempt to assassinate
Napoleon III on
January 14,
1858*
Lee Harvey Oswald - found by the
Warren Commission to be the
assassin of
US President John F. Kennedy*
Pietro Pacciani - condemned as
The monster of Florence*
John Patler - assassin of
George Lincoln Rockwell*
Richard Paul Pavlick - would-be assassin of
John F. Kennedy*
Christer Pettersson -
acquitted on the murder of the
Prime Minister of Sweden Olof Palme*
Otto Planetta and others - assassin of Austrian Chancellor
Engelbert Dollfuss*
Lewis Powell or Lewis Paine - would-be assassin of
United States Secretary of State William Seward in 1865
*
Gavrilo Princip - the
Serbian nationalist who killed
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and hence triggered
World War I*
Puniša Račić -
assassination of
Stjepan Radić*
Thenmuli Rajaratnam - assassin of the
Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi*
François Ravaillac - assassin of
Henry IV of France*
James Earl Ray - assassin of
Martin Luther King Jr (pleaded guilty but later asserted his innocence)
*
Otto Rothstock - assassin of
Hugo Bettauer (1925)
*
Gennaro Rubino - would-be assassin of King
Léopold II of Belgium (1902)
*
Jack Ruby - assassinator of
Lee Harvey Oswald*
Yolanda Saldívar - convicted for the murder of
Selena Quintanilla*
Eugen Schauman - assassin of
Nikolai Ivanovich Bobrikov*
Yuan Shikai - alleged mastermind behind assassination of
Sung Chiao-jen*
Sholom Schwartzbard - Jewish anarchist and political assassin of
Symon Petliura, the head of the government-in-exile of the
Ukrainian People's Republic in Paris
*
Miles Sindercombe - leader of would-be assassins of
Oliver Cromwell*
Beant Singh and
Satwant Singh - assassins of the
Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi*
Thenmuli Rajaratnam -
Tamil Tigers member and mastermind of assassination of
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi*
Sirhan B. Sirhan - assassin of
Robert F. Kennedy*
Valerie Solanas - failed assassin of
Andy Warhol*
Somarama Thero - assassin of Ceylonese prime minister Solomon Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike.
*
Claus von Stauffenberg - colonel of the Wehrmacht who led the abortive July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler through a bomb at Wolfsschanze and lead an insurrection in Berlin and Paris
*
Harry Strauss -
Mafia hitman
*
Soghomon Tehlirian - assassin of
Talaat Pasha*
Jaime Terran - assassin of
Che Guevara*
Henning von Tresckow - key conspirator in the German anti-Nazi Resistance who initiated several assassination attempts on Hitler (all unsuccessful), the most famous of which was the plan to destroy Hitler's plane at Smolensk in 1943
*
Ernst Tandefelt - assassin of
Heikki Ritavuori*
Dimitri Tsafendas - second assassin to make an attempt (successfully) on
Hendrik Verwoerd's life
*
Raoul Vilain - assassin of
Jean Jaurès*
Vittorio Vidali (aka comandante Contreras) communist assassin in Civil War Spain and Mexico, became Senator in Italy
*
Donald Eugene Webb, alleged
cop killer*
Patrick J. Whelan - convicted assassin of
Thomas D'Arcy McGee*
Carl Weiss - assassin of
Huey Long*
Dan White - assassin of mayor of
San Francisco George Moscone and councilman
Harvey Milk in 1978
*
Craig Williamson - assassin by letter bomb of
Ruth First in 1982; assassin by letter bomb of Jeanette and Katrina Schoon in 1984; alleged mastermind of the
Olof Palme (1986) and
Dulcie September (1988) assassinations
*
Yarankash - assassin of
Zengi*
Ramzi Yousef:
**masterminded a failed attempt to kill then-president of
Pakistan,
Benazir Bhutto**conspired in the assassination attempt on
Pope John Paul II on the Pope's
Philippines visit, as part of
Manila-based
Al-Qaida plot
Operation Bojinka Two weeks before the assassination and the first part of the Project was to go off, Manila police would discover and foil his plot on
January 6,
1995, including the assassination attempt
**considered assassinating
United States President Bill Clinton, but decided against it
*
Yakov Yurovsky - chief assassin of
Nicholas II of Russia*
Felix Yusupov - hard working assassin of
Grigori Rasputin*
Giuseppe Zangara - assassin of
Anton Cermak, mayor of
Chicago, Illinois and would-be assassin of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
