The Most Famous

EXTREMISTS from United States

This page contains a list of the greatest American Extremists. The pantheon dataset contains 283 Extremists, 91 of which were born in United States. This makes United States the birth place of the most number of Extremists.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary American Extremists of all time. This list of famous American Extremists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of American Extremists.

1. John Wilkes Booth (1838 - 1865)

With an HPI of 83.65, John Wilkes Booth is the most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 57 different languages on wikipedia.

John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated United States president Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth theatrical family from Maryland, he was a noted actor who was also a Confederate sympathizer; denouncing Lincoln, he lamented the then-recent abolition of slavery in the United States. Originally, Booth and his small group of conspirators had plotted to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederate cause. They later decided to murder him, as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. Although the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, had surrendered to the Union Army four days earlier, Booth believed that the American Civil War remained unresolved because the Army of Tennessee of General Joseph E. Johnston continued fighting. Booth shot Lincoln once in the back of the head. Lincoln's death the next morning completed Booth's piece of the plot. Seward, severely wounded, recovered, whereas Vice President Johnson was never attacked. Booth fled on horseback to Southern Maryland; twelve days later, at a farm in rural Northern Virginia, he was tracked down sheltered in a barn. Booth's companion David Herold surrendered, but Booth maintained a standoff. After the authorities set the barn ablaze, Union soldier Boston Corbett fatally shot him in the neck. Paralyzed, he died a few hours later. Of the eight conspirators later convicted, four were soon hanged.

2. Charles Manson (1934 - 2017)

With an HPI of 80.31, Charles Manson is the 2nd most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 84 different languages.

Charles Milles Manson (né Maddox; November 12, 1934 – November 19, 2017) was an American criminal, cult leader, and musician who led the Manson Family, a cult based in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some cult members committed a series of at least nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. In 1971, Manson was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, including the film actress Sharon Tate. The prosecution contended that, while Manson never directly ordered the murders, his ideology constituted an overt act of conspiracy. Before the murders, Manson had spent more than half of his life in correctional institutions. While gathering his cult following, he was a singer-songwriter on the fringe of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly through a chance association with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, who introduced Manson to record producer Terry Melcher. In 1968, the Beach Boys recorded Manson's song "Cease to Exist", renamed "Never Learn Not to Love" as a single B-side, but Manson was uncredited. Afterward, he attempted to secure a record contract through Melcher, but was unsuccessful. Manson would often talk about the Beatles, including their eponymous 1968 album. According to Los Angeles County District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi, Manson felt guided by his interpretation of the Beatles' lyrics and adopted the term "Helter Skelter" to describe an impending apocalyptic race war. During his trial, Bugliosi argued that Manson had intended to start a race war, although Manson and others disputed this. Contemporary interviews and trial witness testimony insisted that the Tate–LaBianca murders were copycat crimes intended to exonerate Manson's friend Bobby Beausoleil. Manson himself denied having ordered any murders. Nevertheless, he served his time in prison and died from complications from colon cancer in 2017.

3. Zodiac Killer (b. 1940)

With an HPI of 79.05, Zodiac Killer is the 3rd most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 55 different languages.

The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969. The case has been described as "arguably the most famous unsolved murder case in American history," and has become both a fixture of popular culture and a focus for efforts by amateur detectives. The Zodiac's known attacks took place in Benicia, Vallejo, unincorporated Napa County, and the City and County of San Francisco proper. He attacked three young couples and a lone male cab driver. Two of these victims survived. The Zodiac coined his name in a series of taunting messages that he mailed to regional newspapers, in which he threatened killing sprees and bombings if they were not printed. He also said that he was collecting his victims as slaves for the afterlife. He included four cryptograms or ciphers in his correspondence; two were decrypted in 1969 and 2020, and two are generally considered to be unsolved. In 1974, the Zodiac claimed 37 victims in his last confirmed letter. This tally included victims in Southern California such as Cheri Jo Bates, who was murdered in Riverside in 1966. Despite many theories about the Zodiac's identity, the only suspect authorities ever named was Arthur Leigh Allen, a former elementary school teacher and convicted sex offender who died in 1992. The unusual nature of the case led to international interest that has been sustained throughout the years. The San Francisco Police Department marked the case "inactive" in 2004 but re-opened it prior to 2007. The case also remains open in the California Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the city of Vallejo, as well as in Napa and Solano counties.

4. Ted Bundy (1946 - 1989)

With an HPI of 79.00, Ted Bundy is the 4th most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 70 different languages.

Theodore Robert Bundy (né Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of young women and girls between 1974 and 1978. His modus operandi typically consisted of convincing his target that he was in need of assistance or duping them into believing he was an authority figure. He would then lure his victim to his vehicle, at which point he would bludgeon them unconscious, then restrain them with handcuffs before driving them to a remote location to be sexually assaulted and killed. Bundy killed his first known victim in February 1974 in Washington, and his later crimes stretched to Oregon, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. He frequently revisited the bodies of his victims, grooming and performing sex acts on the corpses until decomposition and destruction by wild animals made further interactions impossible. Along with the murders, Bundy was also a prolific burglar, and on a few occasions he broke into homes at night and bludgeoned, maimed, strangled and sexually assaulted his victims in their sleep. In 1975, Bundy was arrested and jailed in Utah for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He then became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in several states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, Bundy engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults in Florida, including three murders, before being recaptured in 1978. For the Florida homicides, he received three death sentences in two trials and was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989. Biographer Ann Rule characterized Bundy as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death and even after." He once described himself as "the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet," a statement with which attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, agreed. She wrote that "Ted was the very definition of heartless evil."

5. Lee Harvey Oswald (1939 - 1963)

With an HPI of 76.93, Lee Harvey Oswald is the 5th most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 69 different languages.

Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963. Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at age 12 for truancy, during which he was assessed by a psychiatrist as "emotionally disturbed" due to a lack of normal family life. He attended 12 schools in his youth, quitting repeatedly, and at age 17 he joined the Marines, where he was court-martialed twice and jailed. In 1959, he was discharged from active duty into the Marine Corps Reserve, then flew to Europe and defected to the Soviet Union. He lived in Minsk, married a Russian woman named Marina, and had a daughter. In June 1962, he returned to the United States with his wife, and eventually settled in Dallas, Texas, where their second daughter was born. Oswald shot and killed Kennedy on November 22, 1963, from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository as Kennedy traveled by motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. About 45 minutes after assassinating Kennedy, Oswald murdered Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit on a local street. He then slipped into a movie theater, where he was arrested for Tippit's murder. Oswald was charged with the assassination of Kennedy, but he denied responsibility for the killing, claiming that he was a "patsy" (a fall guy). Two days later, Oswald himself was murdered by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live television in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters. In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that both Oswald and Ruby had acted alone. This conclusion, though controversial, was supported by investigations from the Dallas Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the United States Secret Service, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Despite forensic, ballistic, and eyewitness accounts supporting the official findings, public opinion polls have shown that most Americans still do not believe that the official version tells the whole truth of the events, and the assassination has spawned numerous conspiracy theories.

6. Leon Czolgosz (1873 - 1901)

With an HPI of 76.01, Leon Czolgosz is the 6th most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

Leon Frank Czolgosz ( CHOL-gosh; Polish: [ˈlɛɔn ˈt͡ʂɔwɡɔʂ]; May 5, 1873 – October 29, 1901) was an American wireworker and anarchist who shot United States president William McKinley on September 6, 1901, in Buffalo, New York. McKinley died on September 14 after his wound became infected. Caught in the act, Czolgosz was tried, convicted, and executed by the State of New York seven weeks later on October 29, 1901.

7. Golden State Killer (b. 1945)

With an HPI of 75.44, Golden State Killer is the 7th most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 27 different languages.

Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. (born November 8, 1945) is an American serial killer, serial rapist and former police officer known as the Golden State Killer, the Original Night Stalker, the East Area Rapist and the Visalia Ransacker, who committed at least 13 murders and numerous rapes and burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986. The crimes began in northern California where DeAngelo committed a minimum of 120 burglaries and one murder in the San Joaquin Valley before moving to Sacramento County, where he committed at least 51 rapes and two more murders from 1976 to 1979. In southern California, DeAngelo murdered at least ten people from 1979 until 1986 before going dormant. After committing a series of highly publicized burglaries in and around Visalia, DeAngelo escalated to raping victims in east Sacramento and was additionally linked to attacks in Stockton, Modesto, and Contra Costa County. DeAngelo committed serial murders in Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Orange counties from 1979 to 1986. He is believed to have taunted and threatened both victims and police via obscene phone calls and possibly written communications. During the decades-long investigation, several suspects were cleared through DNA evidence, alibis or other investigative methods. In 2001, DNA testing indicated that the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker were the same person. The case was a factor in the establishment of California's DNA database, which collects DNA from all accused and convicted felons in California and has been called second only to Virginia's in effectiveness in solving cold cases. In an attempt to increase awareness, crime writer Michelle McNamara coined the name "Golden State Killer". In 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and local law enforcement agencies held a news conference to announce a renewed nationwide effort, offering a $50,000 reward for the Golden State Killer's capture. On April 24, 2018, California authorities charged 72-year-old DeAngelo with eight counts of first-degree murder, based upon DNA evidence; investigators had identified members of DeAngelo's family through forensic genetic genealogy. This was also the first announcement connecting the Visalia Ransacker crimes to DeAngelo. Owing to California's statute of limitations on pre-2017 rape cases, DeAngelo could not be charged with the rapes he had committed in the 1970s; but he was charged in August 2018 with thirteen related kidnapping and abduction attempts. On June 29, 2020, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to multiple counts of murder and kidnapping. As part of a plea bargain that spared him the death penalty, DeAngelo also admitted to numerous crimes with which he had not been formally charged, including rapes. On August 21, 2020, DeAngelo was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

8. Jeffrey Dahmer (1960 - 1994)

With an HPI of 74.39, Jeffrey Dahmer is the 8th most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 63 different languages.

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (; May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismembered seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton. Although he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial. He was convicted of fifteen of the sixteen homicides he had committed in Wisconsin and was sentenced to fifteen terms of life imprisonment on February 17, 1992. Dahmer was later sentenced to a sixteenth term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.

9. Ted Kaczynski (1942 - 2023)

With an HPI of 73.35, Ted Kaczynski is the 9th most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 60 different languages.

Theodore John Kaczynski ( kə-ZIN-skee; May 22, 1942 – June 10, 2023), also known as the Unabomber ( YOO-nə-bom-ər), 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. Kaczynski murdered three people and injured 23 others between 1978 and 1995 in a nationwide mail bombing campaign against people he believed to be advancing modern technology and the destruction of the natural environment. He authored a roughly 35,000-word manifesto and social critique called Industrial Society and Its Future which opposes all forms of technology, rejects leftism and fascism, advocates cultural primitivism, and ultimately suggests violent revolution. In 1971, Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills to become self-sufficient. After witnessing the destruction of the wilderness surrounding his cabin, he concluded that living in nature was becoming impossible and resolved to fight industrialization and its destruction of nature through terrorism. In 1979, Kaczynski became the subject of what was, by the time of his arrest in 1996, the longest and most expensive investigation in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI used the case identifier UNABOM (University and Airline Bomber) before his identity was known, resulting in the media naming him the "Unabomber". In 1995, Kaczynski sent a letter to The New York Times promising to "desist from terrorism" if the Times or The Washington Post published his manifesto, in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary in attracting attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies. The FBI and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno pushed for the publication of the essay, which appeared in The Washington Post in September 1995. Upon reading it, Kaczynski's brother, David, recognized the prose style and reported his suspicions to the FBI. After his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski—maintaining that he was sane—tried and failed to dismiss his court-appointed lawyers because they wished him to plead insanity to avoid the death penalty. He pleaded guilty to all charges in 1998 and was sentenced to several consecutive life terms in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2021, he received a cancer diagnosis and stopped treatment in March 2023. Kaczynski hanged himself in prison in June 2023.

10. John Wayne Gacy (1942 - 1994)

With an HPI of 73.09, John Wayne Gacy is the 10th most famous American Extremist. His biography has been translated into 43 different languages.

John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender who raped, tortured and murdered at least thirty-three young men and boys between 1972 and 1978 in Norwood Park Township, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He became known as the "Killer Clown" due to his public performances as a clown prior to the discovery of his crimes. Gacy committed all of his known murders inside his ranch-style house. Typically, he would lure a victim to his home and dupe them into donning handcuffs on the pretext of demonstrating a magic trick. He would then rape and torture his captive before killing his victim by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a garrote. Twenty-six victims were buried in the crawl space of his home, and three were buried elsewhere on his property; four were discarded in the Des Plaines River. Gacy had previously been convicted in 1968 of the sodomy of a teenage boy in Waterloo, Iowa, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, but served eighteen months. He murdered his first victim in 1972, had murdered twice more by the end of 1975, and murdered at least thirty victims after his divorce from his second wife in 1976. The investigation into the disappearance of Des Plaines teenager Robert Piest led to Gacy's arrest on December 21, 1978. Gacy's conviction for thirty-three murders (by one individual) then covered the most homicides in United States legal history. Gacy was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980. He was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994.

People

Pantheon has 92 people classified as American extremists born between 1787 and 2003. Of these 92, 22 (23.91%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living American extremists include Zodiac Killer, Golden State Killer, and John Hinckley Jr.. The most famous deceased American extremists include John Wilkes Booth, Charles Manson, and Ted Bundy. As of April 2024, 1 new American extremists have been added to Pantheon including Thomas Matthew Crooks.