Jacob Shelton

When a political or religious figure suddenly passes, conspiracy theories seem to fall from the trees. We know that not every demise of a person with ties to politics has to do with shadowy government figures and encoded messages. Yet, the unsolved offenses on this list are sketchy enough to make us doubt even the most open and shut case. It’s entirely plausible that cases on this list have a simple explanation, but after reading up on each of them, we’re not so sure. The only thing that we are sure about is that you’ll be as intrigued as we are after you read this list of mysterious political demises.

Some of these unsolved mysteries are cases that have long gone cold, the perps either deceased or so well connected that they can’t be touched. Some of the other cases are still open, but little hope is held for resolution. And the biggest mysteries that we’ve collected were, in some cases, possibly committed by the US government. We tried to shy away from the circumstances surrounding JFK’s passing (don’t worry, he’s on here), but there were a lot of deceased people involved in that case. These conspiracies tend to go deep, so get ready to put your detective hat on and spend a lot of sleepless nights cutting out newspaper articles.

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• John F. Kennedy

Photo: Hank Walker/Contributor / The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

Probably the most famous and debated political demise of all time, JFK was struck down while visiting Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Despite apprehending Lee Harvey Oswald as the trigger man, JFK’s targeted passing has spawned an exhausting number of conspiracy theories.

In 2013, a poll showed that 61% of Americans believe that a group of conspirators — and not a single man — were responsible.

• • Napoleon Bonaparte

Photo: Antoine-Jean Gros / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Prior to 1815, Napoleon had conquered most of Europe and was on his way to being the King of the Eastern Hemisphere, but he was ultimately defeated. Afterward, Napoleon was sent to a private prison island, Saint Helena, where it’s still debated as to what ended him.

Some say stomach cancer, while others insist he perished from unknowingly ingesting arsenic.

• • Alexander Litvinenko

Photo: STRINGER/Stringer / AFP/Getty Images

Alexander Litvinenko was a Russian defector from the Federal Security Service (FSB). In 1998, he and several other FSB officers publicly accused their superiors of ordering the hit of a Russian Mafia leader. Afterward, he fled to London where he lived with his family in exile.

In 2006, after naming Vladimir Putin as the culprit behind the passing of a Russian journalist, he mysteriously fell ill with a sickness related to radioactive polonium-210. Most theories point to someone in the Russian government as his assailant, although some believe there was British involvement in his demise.

• • Uwe Barschel

Photo: Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F065018-0020/Reineke, Engelbert / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

Uwe Barschel was a West German politician, and from 1982 to 1987, he was the minister-president of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. He was charged with ordering his media advisor to spy on the Social Democratic Party of Germany’s top candidate for the upcoming state elections, in order to bring about false claims of evading tax payments.

Barschel resigned on October 2, 1987, and on October 11, he was found in his room, fully dressed and lying in a bathtub filled with water. His passing is still considered a mystery, with multiple parties under suspicion.

• • John Middleton Clayton

Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Clayton was a Republican Congressman-elect in Arkansas when he met his untimely demise. After one of the most hotly contested elections in Arkansas history, which saw stolen ballot boxes and voter bullying run rampant, Clayton lost by a narrow margin of 846 out of over 34,000 votes cast.

Clayton contested and traveled to Plumerville, Arkanasa, to investigate. Upon his arrival, an unknown assailant shot through the window of the local boarding house room in which he was staying.

He perished instantly.

• • Jack Ruby

Photo: Ira Jefferson “Jack” Beers Jr. (1923-1975) for The Dallas Morning News / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Jack Ruby was a Dallas nightclub owner who became famous for publicly shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, who was in police custody at the time. Ruby was found guilty and sentenced to receive capital punishment. He appealed the decision, but while waiting for a new court date, he succumbed to lung cancer, despite never having been a smoker.

There’s a rabbit hole of theories to venture down, but the main theory is that the CIA injected him with cancer cells.

• • Pope John Paul I

Photo: Keystone/Stringer / Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Pope John Paul I passed only a month after his election, triggering various conspiracy theories. Despite the church dispelling the myriad inconsistencies surrounding the handling of the pope’s passing, such as who found the body and why, there was no official autopsy.

However, this dismissal of information has only fueled speculation of foul play.

• • John Roselli

Photo: ACME / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

John Roselli was a swingin’ mafioso who went back and forth from Las Vegas to LA before he was recruited by the CIA in a plot to terminate Fidel Castro. In 1976, his decomposing corpse was found in a 55-gallon drum floating near Miami, Florida.

It’s widely believed that his involvement with the CIA directly led to his demise.

• • Jimmy Hoffa

Photo: New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Bottega, John, photographer. / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Jimmy Hoffa was the leader of the Teamsters Union and a man with multiple mafia ties. After being released from federal prison in 1971 (having served less than 5 years of a 13-year sentence), he received $1.7 million and, in 1975, disappeared from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant.

Multiple mob guys have admitted to offing Hoffa, but the remains of his body have never been found.

• • Clarence 13X

Clarence 13X was the founder of the Five Percent Nation, a group that split from the Nation of Islam. In 1969, Clarence was gunned down by unknown assailants believed to be connected to an extortion crew. Followers of Clarence 13X believe that the police used the extortion crew as a scapegoat to take care of their dirty work.

• Leon Jordan

Leon Jordan was a civil rights leader from Kansas City, Missouri, who advocated political awareness among the Black community and organized a massive voter registration drive. He served three terms in the Missouri House of Representatives. In 1970, while campaigning for his fourth election, a shotgun blast ended his life. Authorities charged three perps, one of which was believed to be connected with a group called the “Black Mafia.”

Charges were quickly dropped and the case went unsolved until 2011, when new information surfaced in which there was enough evidence to pinpoint the three men identified earlier as the culprits. Still, many people have their doubts.

• • Betty Van Patter

Betty Van Patter was a bookkeeper for the Black Panther party. After discovering discrepancies in their books, Van Patter went missing on December 13, 1974. Approximately five weeks later, her severely beaten corpse was found by a boater in the San Francisco Bay. There was insufficient evidence for police to charge anyone with Van Patter’s passing.

However, according to investigators, the Black Panther Party was “almost universally believed to be responsible.”

• • Hank Killam

Hank Killam didn’t hold a political seat. He was a part-time painter who sometimes worked with a man named John Carter. Carter just happened to be staying in a boarding house in Dallas with another vagabond named Lee Harvey Oswald. On the night of JFK’s passing, Killam, along with his wife Wanda, fled to Florida.

Three years later, his corpse appeared to have been thrown through a department store’s plate glass window. His throat had been slashed, and examiners ruled his passing as self-inflicted.

• • Jim Leslie

Leslie was an advertising executive who, in 1976, had become involved with legislation that kept labor unions from forcing employees to pay dues. On his way to a celebration of the legislation, an unknown assailant fired a 12-gauge shotgun into his chest.

Speculation persisted that George D’Artois, the Public Safety Commissioner for whom Leslie worked, hired the hit on Leslie.

• • Óscar Romero

Photo: Arzobispado de San Salvador; Congregatio de Causis Sanctorum / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Óscar Romero was an archbishop in the Catholic church of El Salvador who spoke out against poverty, social injustice, and other prominent issues of the time. Immediately after giving a sermon in 1980, he was shot at the altar.

In 2010, Alvaro Saravia (a former military captain) named Roberto D’Aubuisson (an extreme-right Salvadoran politician) as giving the hit order.

• • King Ananda Mahidol

Photo: Unknown author / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

On June 9, 1946, 20-year-old King Ananda Mahidol was found with a single bullet wound in his head, and an hour later, his brother was proclaimed king. Initial reports label the passing as an accident, but a month later, a report was released that labeled the occurrence “absolutely [a slaying].”

Louis Mountbatten, Earl of Burma, wrote to King George VI that Mahidol’s brother, King Bhumibol, took him out to take the crown, but Mahidol’s brother was never charged.

• • Olof Palme

Photo: Ministry of the Presidency. Government of Spain / Wikimedia Commons / Attribution
Olof Palme was a Swedish politician who was vocal in his support of developing countries. On an evening out with his family, he was shot in the back by an unknown assailant. There are multiple theories on his hit, ranging from the Yugoslavian Secret Service to right-wing extremist police officers.

• • Martin Cahill

Cahill was a prominent Irish gangster who rose to prominence in the ’80s. After a kidnapping/bank holdup attempt, Cahill was returning to a movie where he was repeatedly shot in the face and upper torso. He passed almost instantly. Multiple theories abound as to who ordered the hit.

Some believe it was the IRA, while some believe that it was members of his own gang.

• • Johan Heyns

Heyns was the former head of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. He was deliberately struck down while playing cards with his grandchildren on a Saturday evening. Many people speculated that extremists had targeted him.

• • Father Alfred Kunz

Alfred Kunz was a Catholic priest who was investigating the abuse scandals in the diocese before he was found with his throat slit in his church in Dane, Wisconsin. His close associate, Malachi Martin (a novelist and exorcist), alleged that the priest had been taken out by “Luciferians.”

The Dane County Sheriff’s Department said that “the motives are all over the place, anything from jealousy, power and control to betrayal and fear of exposure […] take your pick. We just don’t know which one yet.”

• Tom Wales

Photo: FBI / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Assistant US Attorney Tom Wales was a gun control advocate who was struck down in his basement home office by an unknown assailant. It’s believed that the culprit resented his activism.

• • Sakine Cansiz

Sakine Cansiz was one of the co-founders of the Kurdistan Workers Party and an organizer of an all-female squad of the PKK. In January 2013, she was found deceased, along with two other Kurdish female activists, in Paris.

Investigators determined that the three women were taken out execution style.

• • Aman Andom

Aman Andom was the first post-imperial acting Head of State of Ethiopia. From the first day of his presidency, he found himself at odds with the rest of his government, and he began to eliminate his political opponents. He stirred the pot enough that soldiers went to his residence to apprehend him.

An arms standoff ensued, and it’s unclear if he was struck down or took his own life.

• • Eduardo Frei Montalva

Photo: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 CL

Eduardo Frei Montalva was a long-standing Chilean political leader who supported a coup against the so-called “communist tyranny” of Salvador Allende. Montalva passed days after minor surgery, but researchers found biological remnants of mustard gas in Montalva’s remains.

• • Enrique Salinas

Enrique Salinas was the youngest brother of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas. In 2004, his body was found in a vehicle about two hours west of Mexico City. He had been beaten and a plastic bag was over his head.

It’s unclear whether his termination was based on an extortion plot or a political shakedown.

• • Albert Patterson

Albert Patterson was an attorney who was targeted outside his office after winning the Democratic nomination for Alabama Attorney General on a platform of reforming the rife corruption and vice in Phenix City. He was shot in the mouth three times, with one cartridge wedged in an opening where two or three front teeth had been knocked out.

No one was ever officially charged, but the city was put into martial law following his demise. Approximately 734 indictments were handed down to local law enforcers, business owners, and elected officials, among others.

• • José Francisco Chaves

Photo: Mathew Brady / Wikimedia Commons / No Known Copyright Restrictions

Chaves was a 19th-century military leader and politician who served in the then-New Mexico territory. Chaves served as a delegate in the US for the territory and supported New Mexico’s statehood. An unknown culprit terminated him, and the investigation was short-lived.

Authorities reportedly ignored the enemies Chaves had created through his attempt at proto-gerrymandering, and instead, they pursued the idea that he was take out by a “desperate band of stock thieves.”

• • Jim Koethe

Jim Koethe was a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald who visited with Jack Ruby (the guy who struck down Lee Harvey Oswald) before his passing. Less than a year later, while he was working on a book about the JFK assassination, an unknown man broke into his home and ended him with a karate chop to the throat.

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