As the popularity of gossip magazines and their online counterparts shows, people have an insatiable appetite for celebrity scandals. They also have a strong need to speculate and air their suspicions about those involved. Most of the time, these are things like love affairs. Rarely are they criminal, and rarer still do they involve the most shocking and scandalous act of all—murder.
However, there have actually been a number of famous figures throughout history who were suspected, but never convicted, of murder. Some were the innocent victims of outlandish theories that had no basis in fact, while others certainly killed someone, but their intentions were unclear. There is also a final group of famous names who were never found guilty but whom history has judged most likely to have done the deed. Here are ten surprising cases of such famous murder suspects.
Related: 10 Scurrilous Royals and Nobles Who Were Involved in Juicy Scandals
10 Benjamin Franklin
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Benjamin Franklin—scientist, statesman, and serial killer? Well, no. Fortunately, the rumor that the Founding Father and American hero Franklin was a serial killer is false. But this still leaves the question of how it got started and who believed it. Surprisingly, the rumor started in 1998, more than two centuries after Franklin’s death.
A building where Franklin used to live in central London before the Revolution was having some work done to try and conserve it. The workers inside the building discovered a pit of bones on the site, and inside were the skeletons of an estimated 15 people. Scientific analysis indicated that they were over 200 years old. While this roughly aligns with Franklin’s residency at the Georgian townhouse between 1757 and 1775, he was not the only occupant.
A distinguished anatomist called William Hewson used part of the building as an anatomy school. Hewson probably was not a serial killer, either. Franklin had many kind words to say about him, and there was a thriving black market in cadavers at that time for when he needed bodies for his classes.[1]
9 Senator Ted Cruz
Texas Senator Ted Cruz has also been suspected of being a secret serial killer, although few take this seriously. This resulted from a joke started by a Twitter account back in 2013, which, like so many things on the internet, suddenly took on a life of its own. Cruz was giving a speech at a conference when the Twitter account joked that he was going to confess to the notorious Zodiac killings, which took place in northern California in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
The Zodiac was an enigmatic killer who murdered at least five people but was suspected of more and claimed to have killed as many as 37 people. They sent coded messages to the authorities and the media, yet somehow never had their identity discovered. After the original tweet, the theory persisted online for several years.
Cruz himself even referenced it in a 2018 Halloween tweet where he shared a coded message signed off with the Zodiac killer’s symbol. However, the rumor is just that—a rumor. Cruz is too young to have been the Zodiac and is originally from Canada, not California.[2]
8 Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright should have been remembered as a central figure of English romanticism. He associated with famous figures such as William Blake, Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, John Keats, and Thomas de Quincey. From a young age, he found success writing for the London Magazine, and by 26, his paintings were being exhibited at the Royal Academy. But eventually, his friends disowned him, his wife left him, and he spent his last decade in Australia.
So, how did such a promising career come tumbling down? Wainewright, a dandy and man-about-town type who lived beyond his means, turned to crime to finance his lifestyle. He forged documents to access money his grandfather held in a trust, and it was forgery that he was later convicted of and shipped down under. But he was also suspected of more sinister crimes.
His uncle died suspiciously in 1828, leaving Wainewright to inherit the family home. Two years later, his mother-in-law also died, followed shortly by his young, healthy sister-in-law, for whom Wainewright had just set up a life insurance policy. Though never proven, it is widely believed that they were poisoned by the young artist.[3]
7 Prince Albert Victor
Later in the 19th century, another series of cold-blooded murders would scandalize London and become one of history’s most unforgettable killing sprees. These were, of course, the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888. They stand among the most famous unsolved crimes of all time, and historians, the police, and armchair investigators have come up with many suspects over the years. Among these is an actual serial killer, H.H. Holmes, but a more surprising figure who makes the list is Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor.
The prince, who was second in line to the throne after his father, was never suspected during his own lifetime. It was a 1962 book that first proposed that the young prince was the Ripper. As a motive, some have posited that a prostitute from his past had given birth to his child, and the prince killed her and others who knew about it. Another theory is that the prince, who was rumored to have had learning disabilities, was actually being driven crazy by syphilis. However, evidence is scant for either theory, and the prince was not even in London at the time of the murders.[4]
6 The Royal Family
While Prince Albert Victor was suspected of actually being the Ripper himself, more recent British royals have been accused of ordering murders behind the scenes. The most famous example of this was businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed’s accusation that senior royals had conspired to have Princess Diana and her lover, Dodi Fayed, killed. He claimed that the security services, acting on the royal family’s orders, caused the tragic car crash that killed the Princess, Fayed, and their driver in 1997.
At a 2008 inquest into the deaths, the billionaire did not mince his words. He called the royal family a “Dracula family” who murdered Diana so that her ex-husband Charles could “get on” and marry Camilla. Both the British and French police had said that the crash was a tragic accident which was caused by drunk driving. Still, Al-Fayed accused them of helping to cover up the “slaughter,” along with former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Diana’s sister, and the French paramedics and embalmers.
Unfortunately, Diana’s death has been the subject of many other conspiracy theories. They often involve the royal family or the British state, but some have blamed arms dealers, secret societies, and even Satanists.[5]
5 King Juan Carlos I of Spain
In the histories of royal families worldwide, there is no shortage of fratricides. Perhaps it was no surprise then that when 14-year-old Prince Alfonso of Spain was shot at home in 1956, people suspected that his brother, the future King Juan Carlos I, was to blame. Juan Carlos himself was just 18, and being the elder brother meant that he was already higher in the order of succession. But Alfonso was the favorite son, and different insiders have put forward differing versions of events.
No inquiry was ever held to get to the bottom of it, and altogether, this set the stage for decades of speculation. Most of those who actually knew the boys posit that Juan Carlos pulled the trigger. Some say he did not realize that the gun was loaded, while others say something knocked into his arm or that he fired through a closet door, unable to see his brother on the other side.
However, even the boy’s father reportedly had his suspicions, at least in the immediate aftermath. Upon discovering his favorite son fatally wounded, he asked Juan Carlos to “swear to me it wasn’t on purpose.”[6]
4 Colonel Tom Parker
Another 20th-century king linked to a killing was the King of Rock and Roll, through his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. Despite managing Elvis Presley at the height of his fame, the Colonel managed to keep his past a secret. He had taken great care to do so. The name “Tom Parker” was a pseudonym. His alleged birthplace of Huntingdon, West Virginia, was a lie. He also was not a colonel, but he had served in the army.
However, that career ended when he had a psychotic breakdown and was diagnosed as a psychopath, which provides an important clue about his past. Another clue was discovered when a Dutch woman saw a picture of him in 1960 and recognized him as her brother, who had suddenly vanished in 1929. His disappearance came immediately after the murder of a woman just yards from the family home in Parker’s actual birthplace of Breda, in the Netherlands.
Somehow, Parker avoided suspicion at the time, and there was never any hard evidence linking him to the crime. But some in his circle later attested to his violent temper, and even members of his family thought he was probably the killer.[7]
3 Fatty Arbuckle
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was one of the most successful silent movie stars of the 1910s. However, the public at that time had the same appetite for celebrity scandals that they do today. Then, in September 1921, Arbuckle gave them everything they dreamed of. During a three-day party at a San Francisco hotel, a young woman was found in a terrible state inside his room. Onlookers reported that she was tearing her clothes, and he said that she was vomiting. Others claimed she was bleeding.
Most of those present put her condition down to drinking until she died a few days later from a ruptured bladder. Arbuckle was arrested and charged with her murder, the story instantly hitting the front pages. Movie theaters pulled his films, and he was blacklisted by Hollywood. It seemed so obvious; Arbuckle had forced himself on the girl and crushed her.
Yet three separate juries never found him guilty. The third acquitted him entirely. There was little to dispute his version of events that he had gone to his room to change, found the unwell girl in his bathroom, and moved her to his bed to rest. But the damage to his career was done.[8]
2 Sid Vicious
Another controversial death of a young woman in a hotel that the world will probably never know the truth about is that of 20-year-old Nancy Spungen, the girlfriend of Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious. In 1978, she bled out on the bathroom floor of their shared room in New York’s Chelsea Hotel, having been stabbed in the stomach. Vicious was the police’s prime suspect, but many people close to the couple do not believe he killed her. One reason why is that he was probably comatose.
People that night saw him take an enormous dose of barbiturates, which would likely have knocked him out cold for hours. There was also money missing from the room. The couple were into hard drugs and associated with many shady characters. Rockets Redglare was one. The dealer and occasional bodyguard for Vicious had been around that night and apparently later admitted to the murder in a nightclub.
Some think Spungen caught him stealing. Vicious died of a heroin overdose before his trial, ending any hope of finding out the truth. Friends of the couple have criticized the police for not properly investigating the murder.[9]
1 John McAfee
John McAfee went from being a 1990s software pioneer to leading one of the most troubled but fascinating lives of almost anyone who reached his level of success. He made and lost fortunes, and along the way, he found himself suspected of numerous crimes. These included dodgy crypto deals, manufacturing methamphetamine, and murder.
The latter happened after he moved to Belize, where he lived in a compound surrounded by armed security guards and aggressive dogs. One of his neighbors had become annoyed by having to walk past the scary animals every day and had apparently mentioned that he wanted to poison them. Obviously, he was the prime suspect when three of the dogs suddenly died a while later. A day later, the neighbor was himself dead. He had been shot.
The authorities suspected a revenge killing, and McAfee went on the run. Not, he claimed, because he was guilty, but because his neighbor had been accidentally murdered by someone trying to get him. He never faced trial in Belize, although the neighbor’s daughter successfully sued him for “wrongful death.”
McAfee’s own death has its own conspiracy twist. He was arrested in Spain in 2020 and was well on his way to extradition to the U.S. for tax evasion. However, he was found dead in his prison cell in 2021 before he could be returned to the U.S.[10]