20th-century American criminals

Tupac Amaru Shakur was an American rapper and actor. He was one of the most influential musical artists of the 20th century, and a prominent political activist for Black America. He is among the best-selling music artists, having sold more than 75 million records worldwide. Some of Shakur's music addressed social injustice, political issues, and the marginalization of African Americans, but he was also synonymous with gangsta rap and violent lyrics.

Michael Gerard Tyson is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1985 to 2005, and again in 2024. Nicknamed "Iron Mike" and "Kid Dynamite" in his early career, and later known as "the Baddest Man on the Planet", Tyson is widely regarded as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, and one of the most intimidating men in boxing history. He reigned as the undisputed world heavyweight champion from 1987 to 1990.

American gangster (1899–1947)

Charles Milles Manson was an American criminal, cult leader, and musician who was the founder of the Manson Family. He gained notoriety for ordering the Tate–LaBianca murders, where his followers murdered nine people around Los Angeles in 1969.

American singer, songwriter, and record producer

Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was an American mathematician and domestic terrorist. A mathematics prodigy, he abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a reclusive primitive lifestyle and lone wolf terrorism campaign.

American actor (born 1962)

American writer and Scientology founder (1911–1986)

American hacker (1963–2023)

American nightclub operator who killed American presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald

Frank William Abagnale Jr. is an American-French security consultant, author, and convicted felon whose documented crimes consist primarily of check fraud and petty theft targeting individuals and small businesses. Beginning in the late 1970s, Abagnale claimed a far more dramatic criminal past involving long-term impersonations of a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia hospital physician, and a Louisiana assistant attorney general, among other roles. These claims formed the basis of his 1980 autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, co-written with Stan Redding. The book inspired the film of the same name, directed by Steven Spielberg in 2002, in which Abagnale was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio.

American cult leader (1931–1978)

Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., also known by his initials RFK Jr., is an American politician, environmental lawyer, author, conspiracy theorist, and anti-vaccine activist serving as the 26th United States secretary of health and human services since 2025. A member of the prominent Kennedy family, he is a son of Senator and US attorney general Robert F. Kennedy and a nephew of US president John F. Kennedy and US senator Ted Kennedy.

unidentified man who hijacked an airplane in 1971

American pathologist, euthanasia activist (1928-2011)

American crime boss (1940–2002)

Aileen Carol Wuornos was an American serial killer. Between 1989 and 1990, while engaging in street prostitution along highways in Florida, Wuornos shot, killed, and robbed seven of her male clients. She initially claimed that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her, and that the homicides were committed in self-defense, but later abandoned this defense. Wuornos was sentenced to death for six of the murders and was executed in 2002 after spending more than ten years on Florida's death row.

Jordan Ross Belfort is an American former stockbroker, financial criminal, and businessman who pleaded guilty to fraud and related crimes in connection with stock-market manipulation and running a boiler room as part of a penny-stock scam in 1999. Belfort spent 22 months in prison as part of an agreement under which, becoming an informant for the FBI and wearing a covert listening device ("wire"), he gave testimony against numerous partners and subordinates in his fraud scheme. He published the memoir The Wolf of Wall Street in 2007, which was adapted into Martin Scorsese's film of the same name released in 2013, in which he was played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Tonya Maxene Price is an American former figure skater and boxer, and reality television personality.

American actor

American labor union leader (1913 – disappeared 1975)

John Arthur Johnson, nicknamed the "Galveston Giant", was an American boxer who, at the height of the Jim Crow era, became the first black world heavyweight boxing champion (1908–1915). His 1910 fight against James J. Jeffries was dubbed the "fight of the century". Johnson defeated Jeffries, who was white, triggering dozens of race riots across the U.S. According to filmmaker Ken Burns, "for more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African American on Earth". He is widely regarded as one of the most influential boxers in history.

American folk and blues musician (1888–1949)

Edmund Emil Kemper III is an American serial killer convicted of murdering seven women, including his own mother, and one girl between May 1972 and April 1973. Years earlier, at the age of 15, Kemper had murdered his paternal grandparents. Kemper was nicknamed the "Co-ed Killer", as most of his non-familial victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California. Most of his murders included necrophilia, decapitation, dismemberment and possibly cannibalism.

CIA analyst and Soviet spy (1941–2026)

American mobster y brujo de hechicería oscura

American Old West outlaw (1866–1908)

American blues singer and guitarist (1902–1988)

American serial killer

FBI agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services (1944–2023)

Rabbi, writer and far right American-Israeli politician (1932–1990)

Dennis Lynn Rader, better known by his pseudonym BTK, is an American serial killer and mass murderer who killed at least ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. Although he occasionally killed or attempted to kill men and children, Rader typically targeted women. His victims were often attacked in their homes and then bound, sometimes with objects from their homes, and either suffocated with a plastic bag or manually strangled with a ligature.

Marion Hugh "Suge" Knight Jr. is an American former record executive who is the co-founder and former CEO of Death Row Records. Knight was a central figure in gangsta rap's commercial success in the 1990s. This feat is attributed to the record label's first two album releases: Dr. Dre's The Chronic in 1992 and Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle in 1993. Knight is currently serving a 28-year sentence in prison for a fatal hit-and-run in 2015.

American punk rock musician (1956-1993)

American mobster (1943–2012)

American cardinal (1930–2025)

American inmate and ornithologist (1890-1963)

U.S. civilian intelligence analyst turned Israeli spy

American murderer (1953–2005)

American criminal (1935–2006)

American serial killer (1943–2021)

American convicted murderer and claimed serial killer (1936–2001)

Sicilian-born American mafioso who became the boss of the Bonanno crime family

American pornographic actress, journalist and writer

American serial killer (1939–2014)

American commodities trader (1934–2013)

American serial killer (1950-2013)

American computer programmer and former phone phreak

American serial killer

American serial killer (1947–2022)

American mobster (1930-2019)

American crime boss (1915–1985)

American Republican lobbyist (born 1959)

French-American singer and recording artist

American boxer, mobster (1928-2005)

American drug smuggler (1939–1986)

American criminal (1913–1975)

Boss of the Colombo Crime Family (1923–1978)

Italian-American criminal (1910-1993)

Chicago Outfit boss (1906-1992)