The concept of assassins has existed in different media throughout history. From books, movies, to gaming, assassins have set a foothold on every form of entertainment there is.

But behind these fanciful tales of these shadowy individuals lies more than a glimmer of truth.

Throughout the centuries there have been a multitude of assassins that changed history and set us on the path we have now as a society. In this list we will list the most notorious and prominent of these killers. These are the top 10 assassins from ancient to modern times.

10. Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll

The mugshot of a cold blooded murderer

The prohibition-era in 1920’s to 1930’s America didn't just bring about a temporary ban on liquor but also a multitude of gangsters.

These gangsters often had trained hitmen specialized to take out their enemies or anyone that got in their path. One of the most notorious hitmen was Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll.

Widely considered as the criminal who invented the drive-by shooting. He was an Irish born criminal that operated in the Bronx after being kicked out of catholic school. To earn extra money he would kidnap other gangsters and hold them for ransom.

In one of these kidnappings, a nearby playing child was caught in the crossfire when there was a shootout between the two rival gangs. The child later died in the hospital and Vincent Coll was called a “Mad Dog” by the mayor of New York City because of this.

Mad Dog was eventually killed by a rival gang after his call was traced to a phone booth where he was trying to extort $50,000 off of another criminal. He met his end by a hail of machine gun bullets.

9. Tommy “Karate” Pitera

He is widely regarded more as a serial killer than an assassin. And i’ll tell you why

Serving as the personal hitman of the Bonanno Crime Family, Tommy Pitera is suspected to have over 60 kills under his name. 60. 

Having learned martial arts at a young age, he often used his hand to hand combat skills in the numerous scraps he's had over the years working for the Bonanno’s.

This earned him the nickname of “Tommy Karate” or “The Karate Guy”. As of writing he is still alive at 68 years old and serving a life sentence at USP McCreary in Kentucky, USA.

Pitera had clear signs of a serial killer with the way he disposed of the bodies of his killed targets.

He studied books on dissection and even carried a special tool kit to cut up bodies. He put the chopped pieces into plastic bags or suitcases and buried them deep underground so that police dogs can't smell them. He decapitated heads and buried them separately from the bodies.

He even keeps jewelry and other souvenirs from his victims as he “enjoyed” keeping them.

8. Bugsy Siegel

Devilish good looks and charm, Bugsy had everyone from celebrities to dictators at his fingertips

One of the more famous personalities on this list is Bugsy Siegel. An assassin and hitman that worked under Murder Inc. - which was a professional business that was employed by the mob to organize hits on their enemies - was well known throughout high society in the 40’s.

He moved from New York, which was where he built his reputation, to Los Angeles to where he was seen regularly mingling with famous celebrities like Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and even Frank Sinatra.

He is well known to have tried selling atomite, which was a new kind of explosive that produced neither sound nor flash, to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

In terms of the assassinations that he did, he was the one of four other gunmen to have killed Joe Masseria, the boss of the Genovese crime family and ended a gang war because of this.

He was also credited as one of the assassins who killed Salvatore Maranzano which sparked the beginning of modern American organized crime.

7. The Werwolves

Covert and ruthless, this secret Nazi guerilla force had allied troops on their toes at the tail end of World War II

Nazis are one of history's most infamous and despised groups to have ever existed.

Their ideals and actions are despicable enough, but apart from the Waffen SS and the Gestapo there is another, not well known organization in the Nazi regime and that was the Werwolves.

An organization of around 5000 soldiers handpicked from the Nazi Youth or the Waffen SS themselves, they were trained to perform sabotage and silent assassinations, and were also trained to stay behind enemy lines and wait to be found by allied forces to get in close and take out a base of operations from within.

In 1945, there was a multitude of covert assassination done to high ranking military officials and town mayors appointed by the Allies to take back German control over high priority military outposts.

One of the more famous assassinations done by the Werwolves was a hit on Aachen mayor Franz Oppenhoff called “Project Carnival”.

The Werwolves disguised themselves as wounded german pilots and waited to be taken into custody into the town of Aachen so that they can get in close to the Allied forces appointed mayor to kill him

6. Gavrilo Princip

Gavrilo on the left and his arrest on the right. He is the man responsible for the start of World War 1

As stated in the opening of this article, Assassins throughout history have been instrumental to the seismic shifts in the course of our history. No other assassin in history has been responsible for the spark to ignite a planet spanning war other than Gavrilo Princip.

Princip was a Bosnian Serb student who in 1914 killed the Archduke of Austria and his wife, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, Duchess of Hohenburg, as their car stopped 5 feet from him and shot them both, killing them instantly.

This was the spark that Austria-Hungary was looking for for them to open hostilities on Serbia which then led to World War 1.

In Yugoslavia- the south slav state that he envisioned- regards him as a national hero. Princip was trained by “The Black Hand” which focused on terrorism.

Their goal was to destroy Austro-Hungarian rule in the Balkans and to unite the south Slavic nations into one federal government.

Princip believed that for this to happen he had to assassinate one high ranking official of the government, within which he had his mission fulfilled with the murder of Archduke Ferdinand.

5. Marcus Junius Brutus

History’s second most famous betrayal. The first being Judas of course

Adopted at an early age by a relative after the death of his father caused by the Roman Emperor, Pompey, Marcus Junius Brutus or more famously known as Brutus was a Roman politician and orator that assassinated Julius Caesar on the Ides of March.

Before he assassinated Caesar, he was rather close to him and even considered him a friend.

However over time, he came to slowly oppose Caesar as he evaded accountability in the courts of law which put him at odds against the roman elite and the senate.

After “Caesar’s Civil War” in 49-45 BC, he became more monarchical and autocratic in his behavior.

Within which, several senators who called themselves “liberators” plotted to assassinate Caesar which was successfully carried out on March 15 of 44 BC called The Ides of March.

What Caesar said during his final moments of life is highly contested but it is through William Shakespeare that it is envisioned that his last words when he saw Brutus quite literally stabbing him in the back were “You too, Brutus?”

4. Lee Harvey Oswald

The man who changed a whole country in one afternoon

The US presidency is statistically more dangerous than law enforcement, construction, space exploration, and mining. 20% of US Presidents have died in office. 20% of presidents have died due to assassinations since George Washington became the first president in office. 

John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the USA and he was assassinated on November 22, 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald as he took position and sniped the president on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository when the president's motorcade was driving through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.

Oswald was a troublemaker since his childhood where he was placed in juvenile detention due to truancy during which he was assessed by a mental health professional as “emotionally disturbed” due to him not having a normal family life.

He was a former marine who after getting court martialed lived in Minsk, Byelorussia with his russian wife. He returned to the USA with his wife in 1962 and within only 29 months since his return to the states, successfully carried out his plan to murder the president.

Althugh detained after his assassination of the president, no answers were ever gotten out of him since he himself was assassinated on live television by a local nightclub owner named Jack Ruby.

Was he working with the Russians to kill the president, was he a “patsy” as he himself called it, or was he working alone? We might never know the answers to these questions.

3. John Wilkes Booth

From stage actor to assassin

As stated in the previous entry, the US presidency is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Another reason for this statistic being proved true comes by the hands of John Wilkes Booth

Booth was a stage actor that was performing in Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. on April 14, 1865. He was a Lincoln detractor who strongly opposed the recent abolition of slavery in the US with which he was also a Confederate sympathizer.

He had originally planned to kidnap Lincoln along with Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward but the plan changed with him murdering Lincoln instead.

He believed the civil war was still raging even though the last confederate army surrendered four days earlier before the assassination.

As President Lincoln was watching the play, Booth sneaked up on top of the upper box where Lincoln was watching from and shot him in the back of the head.

Lincoln died the morning after he was shot in the head. He also severely wounded Seward but he made a full recovery whilst VP Johnson was left unharmed.

He was caught 12 days later on a farm in Northern Virginia with his partner David Herrold. Herrold surrendered to the police but Booth held a standoff with the authorities.

He was eventually flushed out when the barn he was hiding in was set on fire.He was shot in the neck by Union Soldier, Boston Corbett, as he was trying to escape.

2. Julio Santana

Santana’s victims with Maria Lucia Petit on the left and militant Jose Genoino on the right and the book chronicling his life from his first kill to his last

History’s deadliest assassin with over 492 documented murders under his belt is the secretive Julio Santana.

Santana refuses to get any video or photo taken of him as none of his neighbors in the Brazilian interior know about his past. He has stated that being an assassin for hire and living that life he had he has already left behind.

He committed his first assassination at the age of 17 and continued to commit murders up until he was 52 years old when his wife gave him an ultimatum.

Santana is a firm believer in God and has held that belief throughout his life as a contact assassin. Santana kept a log of all the people he killed and how much he was paid for each.

He stopped writing after 492nd victim

His murders included that of Maria Lucia Petit who was a guerilla fighter under the Communist Party of Brazil, Nativo da Natividade who was a trade unionist during Brazil’s military regime and militant Jose Genoino.

Now Santana lives in anonymity in a small quiet town which he refuses to give the location of and is living with his wife and owns a farm where he grows vegetables

1. Hassan-i-Sabbah

The father of Assassins

Regarded as the father of assassins and the inspiration of what an assassin looks like in pop culture, Hassan-i-Sabbah though has mostly been forgotten by history.

He built around a sect of believers in Fort Alamut which was the heart of the assassins guild for a century and a half.

Hassan-i-Sabbah was known as the “Old Man of the Mountain”. He was also a philosopher and a preacher where he taught that leaders who live a life of luxury have nothing honorable about who they were while their subjects were living in poverty and hunger.

His most devoted followers were trained in the art of assassinations to remove those who abused their power and corrupted the people's money.

The first recorded assassination by Hassan-i-Sabbah was in 1092 which then targeted anyone that was unjust and those who fought in the Crusades.

Him and his assassins viewed themselves as judges who carried out true justice rather than murderers.

Eventually his assassin followers grew large enough that they eventually operated in 70 different locations within which they created their own language to communicate with. 

His legend has mostly been forgotten by history but with how assassins are being these shadow forces that tip the balance of power, his foregoing in the annals of history is proof of his proficiency and status as the father of all assassins.

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