List of assassins

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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

A

• Mario Aburto - supposed assassin of Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio
• 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.
• An Jung-geun, assassin of Itō Hirobumi, resident-general of Korea.
• Jacob Johan Anckarström - assassin of King Gustav III of Sweden
• Michele Angiolillo - assassin of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, Prime Minister of Spain
• 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)
• Ay - minister and for a time thought to be the assassin of the pharaoh Tutankhamun who is now believed to have died from a compound fracture.

B

• 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)
• 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
• Gaetano Bresci - assassin of Italian King Humbert I
• Maxime Brunerie - would-be assassin of Jacques Chirac, President of France
• Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and their associates - assassins of Julius Caesar
• Frederick Russell Burnham - assassin of Mlimo, the Ndebele religious leader who planned and lead the Second Matabele War (1896)
• Samuel Byck - would-be assassin of American President Richard Nixon

C

• Carlos the Jackal - terrorist, would-be assassin of Joseph Sieff
• Sante Geronimo 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 ex-Beatle John Lennon
• Jacques Clément - assassin of King Henri III of France
• Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola - would-be assassins of American President Harry S Truman in 1950
• Charlotte Corday - assassin of Jean-Paul Marat
• Izola Curry - stabbed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1958
• Leon Czolgosz - assassin of the American President William McKinley

D

• 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
• Robert Damiens, attempted assassin of Louis XV of France, 1757
• Eugene de Kock, head of a South African government unit known as "Vlakplaas" that assassinated opponents of Apartheid in the 1980s.
• 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
• Fritz Joubert Duquesne - a Boer and German Spy who killed Lord Kitchener, British Field Marshal and Secretary of State for War, by sinking the HMS Hampshire while on route to Russia. June 5, 1916.

E

• 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

F

• John Felton - assassin of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckhingham
• Giuseppe Fieschi - would-be assassin of King Louis Philippe in July 1835
• Robert Ford (outlaw) - assassin of Jesse James
• Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme - would-be assassin of Gerald Ford

G

• Nathan Gale - assassin of American heavy metal musician Dimebag Darrell
• Rolando Galman - supposed assassin of Benigno Aquino, Jr.
• Balthazar Gérards - assassin of William I of Orange
• Nathuram Godse - assassin of Mahatma Gandhi
• Volkert van der Graaf - assassin of Pim Fortuyn
• Charles J. Guiteau - assassin of the American President James Garfield
• Khioniya Kozmishna Guseva - attempted to assassinate Grigori Rasputin in 1914
• Violet Gibson - would-be assassin of Benito Mussolini in 1926

H

• James Hadfield - would-be assassin of King George III (1800)
• Charles Harrelson - assassin of Judge John H. Wood, Jr.
• Hashshashin - the original Iranian 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 American president Ronald Reagan
• Hitokiri - Japanese assassins during the Bakumatsu
• Tom Horn, Old West lawman, gunman, and killer for hire
• Ignacy Hryniewiecki - Belarusian assassin of the Russian Emperor Alexander II

I

• The Invincibles - assassins of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke 1882
• Khalid Islambouli - chief assassin of Anwar Al Sadat

J

• 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

K

• 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 in 1942 in Prague. See Operation Anthropoid
• Hitokiri Kawakami Gensai - Japanese assassin during the Bakumatsu.
• Jakub Kaszuba - assassin of Przemysl II, king of Poland

L

• Richard Lawrence - attempted assassin of American president Andrew Jackson
• José de León Toral - assassin of Mexican general and president-elect Álvaro Obregón
• Luigi Lucheni - assassin of Elisabeth of Austria
• Byron Looper - assassin of political opponent Tommy Burks

M

• 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
• Roderick McLean - would-be assassin of Queen Victoria (1882)
• Thomas McMahon - assassin of Louis Mountbatten
• Daniel M'Naughton - would-be assassin of British Prime Minister Robert Peel (1843)
• Ramón Mercader - assassin of Leon Trotsky
• Mijailo Mijailović - assassin of Anna Lindh
• Jim Miller, Old West outlaw and killer for hire
• Sara Jane Moore - would-be assassin of Gerald Ford

N

• Måns Bengtsson Natt och Dag - assassin of Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson
• 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

O

• Felice Orsini - Italian nationalist who failed in his attempt to assassinate Napoleon III on January 14, 1858
• Lee Harvey Oswald - accussed for assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. Assasinated himself soon after.

P

• Pietro Pacciani - condemned as The monster of Florence
• Richard Paul Pavlick - attempted assassin of John F. Kennedy
• Christer Pettersson - acquitted of 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 H. Seward in 1865
• David Pratt - would-be assassin of South African Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd
• Patrick Eugene Joseph Prendergast - assassinated Carter Henry Harrison, Sr., Mayor of Chicago, on October 28, 1893
• Gavrilo Princip - the Serbian nationalist who killed Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and hence triggered World War I
• pl:Michał Piekarski - would be assassin of Polish king Zygmunt III

R

• Puniša Račić - assassin 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 - assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald
• Juan Roa Sierra - assassin of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan - Leader of Colombia's Liberal Party in 1948 - triggering one of South America's most violent episodes

S

• Yolanda Saldivar - convicted for the murder of Selena Quintanilla
• Eugen Schauman - assassin of Nikolai Ivanovich Bobrikov
• Alexandros Schinas - assassin of King George I of Greece
• John Schrank - would-be assassin of Theodore Roosevelt
• 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
• Sirhan 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

T

• Ernst Tandefelt - assassin of Heikki Ritavuori
• Soghomon Tehlirian - assassin of Talaat Pasha
• 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
• Dimitri Tsafendas - second assassin to make an attempt (successfully) on Hendrik Verwoerd's life

V

• Vittorio Vidali (aka comandante Contreras) communist assassin in Civil War Spain and Mexico, became Senator in Italy
• Raoul Villain - assassin of Jean Jaurès
• Van Owen - blew off Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner's head.

W

• Janusz Walus - convicted assassin of South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani just before the first Democratic Elections of
• 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

Y

• 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 - assassin of Grigori Rasputin

Z

• Giuseppe Zangara - assassin of Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago, Illinois and would-be assassin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt