This ranking is based on an algorithm that combines various factors, including the votes of our users and search trends on the internet.
Elizabeth Holmes is a former businesswoman who is credited with founding the now-defunct health technology company Theranos . It was later revealed that Elizabeth Holmes had deceived her investors with false claims. The rise and fall of her company inspired a book titled Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.
One of America’s most notorious serial killers, Robert Hansen was called ‘The Butcher Baker’ as he owned a bakery. He is said to have killed seventeen women and raped many others in and around Anchorage, Alaska, during the 1970s and 1980s. Most of his victims were strippers and sex workers. He was sentenced to 461 years in prison in 1984.
American teacher Mary Kay Letourneau was pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child. She began a sexual relationship with her sixth-grade student Vili Fualaau and had two children with him. Letourneau served two prison sentences as their relationship was forbidden by law. The two got married in 2005 and got separated in 2019.
Entrepreneur and former stock broker Daniel Mark Porush, better known as Danny Porush, was convicted of fraud and money laundering at Stratton Oakmont, a brokerage house. Following his 39-month prison sentence, he began working with Med-Care. He inspired the character Donnie Azoff in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Frank Costello was an Italian-American kingpin of the famous Luciano crime family. After serving as a trusted consigliere for the Luciano crime family under Lucky Luciano, Costello became acting boss in 1937 when underboss Genovese fled to Italy, while Luciano was imprisoned. However, he retired in 1957 to avoid an altercation with Genovese, who wanted to rule the crime family.
Lee Boyd Malvo was involved in the Beltway sniper attacks of 2002, which killed 10 people and injured three in the Washington Metropolitan Area. He had befriended his accomplice in the act, John Allen Muhammad, as a juvenile. Malvo is currently serving multiple life sentences at a supermax prison.
Charles Taylor is a former Liberian politician who served as the 22nd President of Liberia. As a young man, he was the head of a Libyan-backed rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, and played a key role in initiating the First Liberian Civil War. He was elected the president after the war in 1997. He resigned in 2003.
John Franzese was a mobster who served as the underboss of the infamous Colombo crime family from 1963 to 1967. In 2005, he once again became the underboss of the crime family until he was convicted in 2011. Franzese was 100 years old at the time of his release; he was the only centenarian in federal custody at that time.
Pretty Boy Floyd was the nickname of Charles Arthur Floyd, a bank robber who operated in the West and Central states of America. While the law enforcement officials considered him a criminal, the public had a positive opinion of him as he burned mortgage documents during the robberies, freeing many people from their debts. The FBI killed him in 1934.
Frank Nitti was an Italian born-American mobster and one of Al Capone's main henchmen. Renowned for his leadership skills, Nitti succeeded Al Capone to become the boss of the Chicago Outfit. His life and work inspired the 1988 biopic Nitti: The Enforcer.
Jerry Brudos was an American necrophile and serial killer who killed at least four women between 1968 and 1969 in Oregon, USA. Brudos, who had a fetish for women's shoes, started killing women for their shoes. His life and style of crime inspired a song from the 2003 album Murder Metal, which was recorded by extreme metal band Macabre.
Henry Morgan was a Welsh privateer who later served as lieutenant governor of Jamaica. He is best remembered for raiding settlements on the Spanish Main. From the wealth acquired through his raids, Morgan became a plantation owner, buying three large sugar plantations in the Caribbean. His life and career inspired several films, such as Captain Blood and Morgan, the Pirate.
Ramón Mercader was a Spanish NKVD agent and communist who killed Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky with an ice axe in August 1940. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and was honored with the title of Hero of the Soviet Union post his release in 1961. Over the years, Ramón Mercader has been the subject of many documentaries.
Not many suspected physician John Bodkin Adams of being a serial killer till it was revealed that his name had appeared in the wills of at least 132 of his patients who had died, while 163 died in coma. Though never convicted of the killings, he faced punishment for forgery.
Friedrich Jeckeln was a German military officer and SS commander. He played a major role during World War II, serving as a Higher SS and Police Leader in the Soviet Union. He was personally responsible for organizing the murders of more than 100,000 people. After the end of the war, Jeckeln was convicted of war crimes and executed in 1946.
Born into a poverty-stricken family of farmers, Fanny Kaplan was home-schooled. Later, while working as a milliner, she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party and thus became part of radical politics. She developed anti-Bolshevik sentiments and attempted to assassinate Lenin. Though Lenin recovered, Kaplan was later executed.
