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(#5) Mistress Marcia Helped Murder A Roman Emperor
Marcia was not solely responsible for the death of Emperor Commodus, an inept leader of ancient Rome, on New Years Day in 193 CE, but her actions as part of a murder plot proved important nonetheless. Commodus, believing himself to be the reincarnation of Hercules, planned to fight in the arena despite his advisors' urgings. He threatened to accuse them – including his mistress, Marcia – and add them to a list of people he wanted executed for subversion.
Their response was to launch an orchestrated assassination attempt. Marcia slipped him poison in his wine, which failed to kill him as he vomited it up, but, in his weakened state, he was strangled by his fitness coach.
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(#7) Violet Gibson
- Dec. at 80 (1876-1956)
Unlike many assassins, Anglo-Irish aristocrat Violet Gibson's motivations remain something of a mystery. Gibson attempted to shoot Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy, after he finished a speech he'd made on modern medicine in Rome, Italy, in 1926. She fired twice, but the first shot only grazed him, and the second misfired.
Some people believe that she was insane at the time of the shooting and that she had no clear motive, especially because she lived the remainder of her life in a mental asylum after her deportation for the attempted assassination. Mussolini himself requested that she be released without charge.
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(#15) Valerie Solanas
- Dec. at 52 (1936-1988)
Valier Solanas, a radical feminist writer of the late 1960s, became involved with artist Andy Warhol after she pitched a play to him. He rejected it but did not return the copy, paying her $25 to appear in one of his films as compensation. Later, Solanas entered into a bad contract with the owner of Olympia Press that she believed foreced her to sign over all of her rights, leading her to believe that the owner of the press and Warhol were conspiring to steal her work.
The day of the assassination attempt, Solanas visited several people to talk about her play, even telling one that she would shoot Warhol to make herself famous in order to get her play produced. When she finally got in contact with Warhol, she fired three shots at him, one of which hit. She was found to be mentally unstable and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, shortening her sentence to three years, of which she served only one before release.
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(#4) Idoia Lopez Riano's Reputation Earned Her A Fearsome Nickname
Though Idoia Lopez Riano has since renounced violence, that doesn't erase the 23 people she's accused of assassinating in the 1980s in her quest for Basque independence from Spain. Lopez was given the nickname La Tigresa – the tigress – because of her rumored sexual prowess, as she was known to seduce policemen prior to attacks.
Her numerous killings led to a 1,500-year prison sentence in 2003 (when she was finally apprehended in France and tried for her crimes). ETA, the organization to which Lopez belonged, has since disbanded.
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(#1) Charlotte Corday
- Dec. at 25 (1768-1793)
Charlotte Corday, a French revolutionary, was known as the Angel of Assassination for killing her target, the Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat on July 13, 1793. Marat had been in power during the Reign of Terror, and specifically the September Massacres, in which some 1,300 people were executed as potential enemies of the state.
Corday entered Marat's apartment by claiming she had information of an uprising elsewhere in France and stabbed him with a kitchen knife in revenge for the massacres, knowing she'd be put to death for it. She was executed just four days after the assassination, with her actions consolidating a new era in gender relations in France.
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(#9) Brigitte Mohnhaupt
- 69
Brigette Mohnhaupt, a German woman associated with organizations like the Socialist Patients' Collective and the Red Army Faction, was accused of the assassinations and assassination attempts of at least four high-ranking people, including a banker, a US general, and a chief federal prosecutor. The Red Army Faction believed in rampant corruption in the German government and moved from anti-capitalist-based arson and other activities to kidnapping and murder, such as those in which Mohnhaupt participated.
One assassination – that of Juergen Ponto, the chief executive of a major bank, which took place on July 30, 1977 – involved Mohnhaupt, along with two co-conspirators, ringing the target's doorstep and offering a bouquet of roses and an invitation to tea.Upon being invited in, the three shot the target and fled. Mohnhaupt has expressed no remorse and never applied for clemency, but she was released from prison in 2007 after 24 years.
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Recently, Killing Eve, a thrilling spy movie produced by the British BBC, has aroused heated discussion. One of the heroines is a beautiful female killer. People have lingering fears about the beautiful assassin. Cruel and wise female assassins may not be common in real life, however, some female figures in history were no less inferior to men, and with their beauty, it may be easier to succeed.
The random tool counts the 15 most ruthless and fascinating female assassins in history, including a Chinese woman who avenged her father. The stories of some of these historical figures have even become the best topics in Hollywood movies.
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