List of assassinations
This is a list of assassinations, sorted by location.
For the purposes of this article, an assassination is defined as the deliberate, premeditated murder of a prominent figure, often for religious, political or monetary reasons.
Africa
Algeria
Angola
Benin
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cameroon
Central African Republic
Chad
Comoros
Congo (Brazzaville)
Congo (Kinshasa)
Côte d'Ivoire
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Ethiopia
The Gambia
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Kenya
Liberia
Libya
Madagascar
Malawi
Mauritania
Mauritius
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Niger
Nigeria
Rwanda
Senegal
Somalia
South Africa
Sudan
Swaziland
Tanzania
Togo
Tunisia
Uganda
Western Sahara
Zambia
Zimbabwe
The Americas
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Bermuda
Bolivia
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Colombia
Cuba
Curaçao
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
El Salvador
Grenada
Guatemala
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Suriname
United States
| Date | Victim | Assassin | Notes |
| Joseph Smith, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and presidential candidate in 1844 | Masked mob | Was shot while in jail at Carthage, Illinois under state protection, awaiting trial for treason. See Death of Joseph Smith. | |
| Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States | John Wilkes Booth | Was shot while watching the play Our American Cousin in the presidential box at Ford's Theater in Washington D.C. Lincoln died the next morning on April 15 across the street in a boarding house. Booth and accomplice David Herold hid in a barn in Virginia. Herold surrendered while Booth, refusing to go out, the troops set the barn, where he was hiding, on fire and the troops assassinated Booth. | |
| Cornelius S. Hamilton, U.S. Congressman from Ohio | Thomas Hamilton | ||
| James M. Hinds, U.S. Congressman from Arkansas | George Clark | Killed by a Ku Klux Klan member as part of intimidation of Republican carpetbaggers | |
| James A. Garfield, President of the United States | Charles J. Guiteau | Shot by Guiteau while waiting for a train at a Washington train station. Garfield did not die until September 19, 1881. | |
| Jesse James, outlaw | Robert Ford | Ford assassinated James at his home along with his brother Charles Ford. Both were sentenced to death by hanging however they were later pardoned in the same day by Missouri governor Thomas T. Crittenden. Charles committed suicide in 1884 and Robert Ford himself was assassinated in 1892. | |
| David Hennessy, Police Chief of New Orleans | |||
| Carter Harrison Sr., Mayor of Chicago | Patrick Eugene Prendergast | Killed after assailant was rejected for appointment to a patronage position. | |
| William Goebel, Governor of Kentucky | Unknown political opponents | Uncertain, but killed in the context of a disputed, fraudulent election | |
| William McKinley, President of the United States | Leon Czolgosz | Czolgosz shot McKinley while he was shaking hands at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Didn't die until September 14. | |
| Frank Steunenberg, Governor of Idaho | Harry Orchard | Killed by a mining company informant in an attempt to cast blame on a labor union | |
| Don Mellett, newspaper editor and campaigner against organized crime | |||
| Anton Cermak, Mayor of Chicago | Giuseppe Zangara | Disputed; suspected of striking Cermak instead of intended target President-elect Franklin Roosevelt | |
| Huey Long, U.S Senator from Louisiana | Carl Weiss | Long attended the State Capital building to help pass "House Bill Number One". Long was able to help get the bill to pass. After the meeting, Carl Weiss, the son-in-law of Long's long-time opponent, Judge Benjamin Henry Pavy, confronted Long, pulled out a handgun and shot Long in the abdomen. Weiss was shot and killed by Long's bodyguards. Long died two days later. An alternative version of events, not generally accepted by historians, is that Long was hit by one of his own bodyguard's bullets as they fired at Weiss. | |
| Walter Liggett, Minnesota newspaper editor | |||
| Carlo Tresca, anarchist organizer | |||
| 1947 | Bugsy Siegel | ||
| Curtis Chillingworth, a Florida judge | |||
| Medgar Evers, U.S. civil rights activist. | Byron De La Beckwith | Evers, an African American activist and NAACP leader, was shot by De La Beckwith, a Ku Klux Klan member, who was convicted in 1994. | |
| John F. Kennedy, President of the United States | Lee Harvey Oswald | Shot in the back and head by Lee Harvey Oswald via sniper while travelling in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, 3 shots rang out when the car was in front of the Texas School Book Depository. Kennedy dodged the first shot, while the second shot hit him in the back. The third shot hit Kennedy in the head, killing him instantly. Texas governor John Connally was also wounded. Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby 2 days later. Kennedy is the most recent President of the United States to be assassinated. | |
| Lee Harvey Oswald | Jack Ruby | Shot and killed in basement garage of Dallas Police Headquarters. First murder seen live on US television. | |
| Sam Cooke, American singer, songwriter and entrepreneur | Bertha Franklin | Shot and killed at the age of 33 in Los Angeles, California, US. | |
| Malcolm X, black Muslim leader | Norman 3X Butler, Thomas 15X Johnson, Talmadge Hayer | Killed in a Manhattan banquet room as he began a speech. | |
| George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party | John Patler, a former aide | Shot in the chest as he was leaving a laundromat. | |
| Martin Luther King, Jr., U.S. civil rights activist. | James Earl Ray | Ray pleaded guilty but later recanted, while a 1999 civil trial convicted Jowers and 'unknown others', while also noting that 'governmental agencies were parties' to the plot. See Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. | |
| Robert F. Kennedy, American politician, who served as a United States Senator for New York and leading Democratic presidential candidate in 1968. | Sirhan Sirhan | Shot after giving a speech after winning the California primary. Died 26 hours later on June 6. Sirhan was convicted on April 17, 1969, and less than a week later was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1972 after the California Supreme Court, in its decision in California v. Anderson, invalidated all pending death sentences imposed in California prior to 1972. | |
| Fred Hampton, Deputy Chair of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party | Shot and killed by Chicago police with alleged FBI involvement. Tensions with the Police and American Government. | ||
| Dan Mitrione, US adviser in Latin America | Kidnapped and murdered by members of the Tupamaros guerilla group. | ||
| Marcus Foster, School District Superintendent in Oakland, CA | Killed by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army | ||
| Alberta Williams King, mother of Martin Luther King Jr. | Marcus Chenault | Killed while her husband was preaching. | |
| 1975 | Karen Silkwood | Allegedly killed for whistleblowing on a nuclear power plant. | |
| 1975 | Sam Giancana, mobster | ||
| Anna Mae Aquash, a Mi'kmaq activist from Nova Scotia, Canada who became the highest-ranking woman in the American Indian Movement | Arlo Looking Cloud, John Graham | Killed by members of the American Indian Movement | |
| Don Bolles, investigative reporter for Arizona Republic | Killed by car bomb, Max Dunlap and James Robison convicted, alleged Mafia ties. | ||
| Orlando Letelier, Chilean ambassador to the United States for the administration of Chile's democratically elected President Salvador Allende | Michael Townley | Killed along with his American assistant, Ronni Moffitt, by a car bomb placed by Chilean DINA agents. | |
| Leo Ryan, U.S. Congressman from California | Members of the Peoples Temple | See Jonestown massacre | |
| Harvey Milk, San Francisco Supervisor, first openly gay elected official in the US, and gay rights activist, and George Moscone, mayor of San Francisco | Dan White, former San Francisco Supervisor who opposed Milk's advocacy | See Moscone–Milk assassinations | |
| John Lennon, British musician, member of The Beatles | Mark David Chapman | Shot and killed by Mark David Chapman multiple times. Chapman was a former fan of Lennon's band, until when Lennon said that they were more famous than Jesus. See Assassination of John Lennon. | |
| Alan Berg, radio talk-show host | Killed by members of the white nationalist group The Order. | ||
| Henry Liu, Taiwanese-American writer | Allegedly killed by Kuomintang agents | ||
| Alex Odeh, Arab anti-discrimination group leader | Killed when bomb exploded in his Santa Ana, California office | ||
| Alejandro González Malavé, undercover policeman | Killed in Bayamón | ||
| Huey Newton, founder of Black Panther Party | Killed by member of Black Guerrilla Army. | ||
| Meir David Kahane, Member of the Israeli Knesset, Founder of the JDL and the Kach Party, Zionist | El Said Nosair | Killed by an Arab gunman in a Manhattan hotel, El Said Nosair who was found guilty of conspiracy charges linking him to Sheik Abdul Rahman, "the blind sheik", Al Qaeda's point man in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Kahane's assassination was Al Qaeda's first act of terror on US soil. | |
| Ioan P. Culianu, Romanian historian of religion, culture, and ideas | Killed at the University of Chicago where he taught at the Divinity School Swift Hall, allegedly because of opposition to his writings. | ||
| David Gunn, abortion provider | Michael F. Griffin | Shot outside his clinic. See Murder of David Gunn. | |
| John Britton, physician, abortion provider | Paul Jennings Hill | Shot at his clinic. | |
| Selena, American singer-songwriter | Yolanda Saldivar | Shot during an argument. See: Murder of Selena | |
| Tupac Shakur, American rapper, actor | Shot at an intersection in Las Vegas in a drive-by shooting on September 7. See: Murder of Tupac Shakur | ||
| Barnett Slepian, physician, abortion provider | James Charles Kopp | Shot in his kitchen. | |
| The Notorious B.I.G., American rapper | Shot at an intersection in Los Angeles in a drive-by shooting. See: Murder of The Notorious B.I.G. | ||
| Gianni Versace | Andrew Cunanan | Shot on his home's front steps in Miami | |
| December 8, 2004 | Darrel Lance Abbott, American musician | Nathan Gale | Shot multiple times while performing at a nightclub in Ohio. Writings discovered in the aftermath of Abbott's murder revealed that Gale suffered from schizophrenic delusions. Gale claimed that Abbott's band, Pantera, was reading his mind and "stealing his identity." |
| Chauncey Bailey, Oakland Tribune journalist | Devaughndre Broussard | Shot on the street in Oakland. | |
| February 7, 2008 | Mike Swoboda, mayor of Kirkwood, Missouri | Charles "Cookie" Thornton | Kirkwood City Council shooting |
| George Tiller, physician | Scott Roeder | Shot as he ushered at his church. |