Kind of crime

Assassination

Political killings of presidents, archdukes and archbishops, and the trials that followed.

7 cases7 solved0 unsolved1170–1917

1170–1174 · United Kingdom

Thomas Becket

Four of Henry II's knights cut down the Archbishop of Canterbury in his own cathedral in 1170. Within three years he was a saint and the king did penance.

Executed

1605–1606 · United Kingdom

Gunpowder Plot

Thirty-six barrels of powder under the House of Lords, an anonymous letter, and a man called 'John Johnson' with a lantern: the plot behind Bonfire Night.

Executed

1865 · D.C.

Lincoln Assassination

Good Friday, 1865: an actor shoots the president at Ford's Theatre, a manhunt crosses two states, and a military court hangs four conspirators.

Executed

1881–1882 · D.C.

Garfield Assassination

A disappointed office-seeker shoots President Garfield in a Washington railway station in 1881. The doctors' probing may have done the rest.

Executed

1901 · New York

McKinley Assassination

Buffalo, 1901: a young anarchist hides a revolver under a handkerchief in the president's receiving line. Eight days later McKinley is dead.

Convicted

1914–1915 · Bosnia and Herzegovina

Franz Ferdinand Assassination

A wrong turn, a stalled engine and a nineteen-year-old with a pistol: how Franz Ferdinand and Sophie were killed in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914.

Never caught

1916–1917 · Russia

Rasputin

Poisoned cakes, a man who would not die, a body under the ice: the famous story comes from one of Rasputin's killers. The autopsy tells a plainer one.