The following is a list of assassins with short comments on the assassination(s) that made them famous. It also contains some individuals who were famously suspected, but then acquitted, of particular assassinations.

See also:

• List of assassinated persons
• Conspiracy theory
• Terrorism

Anonymous Assassins

• (name?) - assassin of Alejandro Gonzalez Malave
• (name?) - assassin of Carthaginian general Hasdrubal
• ("three black Africans and an Arab") – assassins of Zanzibar's leader sheik Abeid Karume
• (a tank corps major) - assassin of Ngo Dinh Diem
• (name?) - assassin of Waclaw III king of Bohemia, Poland and Hungary.
• (name?) - assassin of Vlad Tepes
• (name?) - assassin of Vlad II Dracul, father of Vlad Tepes
• (a Christian slave) - assassin of Zengi
• (an anonymous Hashshashin) - assassin of Conrad of Montferrat
• (a Persian slave) - assassin of Umar ibn al-Khattab

A

• Mehmet Ali Agca - failed assassin of Pope John Paul II
• Frank Abbandando - Mafia hitman
• Saad Akbar - assassin of Liaquat Ali Khan, Prime Minister of Pakistan
• Jacob Johan Anckarström - assassin of King Gustav III of Sweden
• Yigal Amir - assassin of the Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin

B

• Pierre Basile - assassin of Richard I of England
• Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry - attempted assassin of President of France Charles de Gaulle
• Byron De La Beckwith - assassin of US civil rights figure Medgar Evers
• John Bellingham - assassin of British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval (May 11, 1812)
• Philipp von Boeselager - last surviving member of the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
• John Wilkes Booth - assassin of the American President Abraham Lincoln
• Mohammed Bouyeri - assassin of the Dutch film director Theo van Gogh (November 2, 2004)
• Arthur Herman Bremer - would-be assassin of George Wallace, governor of Alabama
• Brutus, Cassius, and associates - assassins of Julius Caesar
• Aaron Burr - won the duel leading to the death of Alexander Hamilton
• Samuel Byck - would-be assassin of Richard Nixon

C

• Carlos the Jackal - terrorist, would-be assassin of Joseph Sieff
• Sante Jeronimo Caserio - assassin of the French President Marie François Sadi Carnot
• Cassius Chaerea, and associates - assassins of the Roman emperor Caligula
• Mark David Chapman - assassin of John Lennon
• Jacques Clément - assassin of King Henri III of France
• Charlotte Corday - assassin of Jean-Paul Marat
• Andrew Cunanan - assassin of Gianni Versace
• Izola Curry - stabbed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1958
• Leon Czolgosz - assassin of the American President William McKinley

D

• Dingaan and Mhlangana - assassins of Shaka, the king of Zulus.
• Ivan Dragomiloff, fictional assassin who was the chairman of The Assassination Bureau in the early 1900's
• Reginald Dunne and Joseph O'Sullivan - IRA assassins of Sir Henry Hughes Wilson British field marshal 1922

E

• Lydia Echevarria - alleged intellectual assassin of Luis Vigoreaux
• George Elser - lone assassin who attempted to assassinate Hitler through a time bomb at Bürgerbräukeller Hall on November 8, 1939

F

• John Felton - assassin of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckhingham
• Giuseppe Fieschi - would be assassin of King Louis Philippe in July 1835
• Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme - apparent would-be assassin of Gerald Ford

G

• Balthazar Gérards - assassin of William I of Orange
• Nathuram Godse - assassin of Mahatma Gandhi
• Volkert van der Graaf - assassin of Pim Fortuyn
• Charles J. Guiteau - assassin of the American President James Garfield

H

• Hashshashin - the original Afghan assassins.
• Talmadge Hayer (confessed and convicted), Norman 3X Butler & Thomas 15X Johnson (convicted) - the three assassins of Malcolm X
• John Hinckley, Jr. - would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan.

I

• the Invincibles - assassins of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke 1882
• Ivan Dragomiloff, fictional assassin who was the chairman of The Assassination Bureau in the early 1900's

J

• Jing Ke - failed assassin of the first Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang
• John Parricida of Habsburg -- Killed his uncle King Albert I of Germany in 1308.

K

• Fanya Kaplan - attempted assassin of Vladimir Lenin
• Khalid Sheik Mohammed - conspired with a plot to kill Pope John Paul II as part of the Operation Bojinka terrorist attack plot. The plot was discovered after an apartment fire in Manila, Philippines on January 6, 1995

L

• Richard Lawrence - attempted assassin of Andrew Jackson
• Luigi Lucheni - assassin of Elisabeth of Austria
• Byron Looper - assassin of political opponent Tommy Burks

M

• Marcia (a concubine) and Narcissus (an athlete) - assassins of Roman emperor Commodus. Narcissus strangled the emperor in his bath after Marcia's poison failed to work. The chief plot architect was praetorian prefect Quintus Aecilius Laetus.
• Ramón Mercader - assassin of Leon Trotsky
• Mijailo Mijailovic - assassin of Anna Lindh
• Sara Jane Moore - would-be assassin of Gerald Ford

N

• Måns Bengtsson Natt och Dag - assassin of Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson
• Phuong Ngo, and associates - assassins of John Paul Newman
• Abu Nidal, attempted assassin of Shlomo Argov, Isreali ambassador to Britain.
• Eligiusz Niewiadomski - assassin of Gabriel Narutowicz, the first president of Poland
• Ninja - assassins of medieval Japan
• El Sayyid Nosair - assassin of Meir Kahane

O

• Lee Harvey Oswald - found by the Warren Commission to be the assassin of US President John F. Kennedy.

P

• Christer Pettersson - acquitted on the murder of the Prime Minister of Sweden Olof Palme
• Otto Planetta and others - assassin of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss
• Lewis Powell or Lewis Paine - would-be assassin of United States Secretary of State William Seward in 1865
• Gavrilo Princip - the Serbian nationalist who killed Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and hence triggered World War I

R

• Puniša Račić - assassin of Stjepan Radić
• Thenmuli Rajaratnam - assassin of the Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi
• François Ravaillac - assassin of Henry IV of France
• James Earl Ray - assassin Martin Luther King Jr (pleaded guilty but later asserted his innocence)
• Otto Rothstock - assassin of Hugo Bettauer (1925)
• Gennaro Rubino - would-be assassin of King Leopold II of Belgium (1902)
• Jack Ruby - assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald

S

• Yolanda Saldivar - convicted for the murder of Selena Quintanilla
• Eugen Schauman - assassin of Nikolai Ivanovich Bobrikov
• Yuan Shikai - alleged mastermind behind assassination of Sung Chiao-jen
• Sholom Schwartzbard - Jewish anarchist and political assassin of Symon Petlura, the head of government-in-exile of Ukrainian Peoples Republic in Paris.
• Miles Sindercombe - leader of would-be assassins of Oliver Cromwell.
• Beant Singh and Sukhwant Singh - assassins of the Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi
• Sivarasan - Tamil Tigers member and mastermind of assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
• Sirhan B. Sirhan - assassin of Robert F. Kennedy
• Valerie Solanas - failed assassin of Andy Warhol
• Claus von Stauffenberg - colonel of the Wehrmacht who led the abortive July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler through a bomb at Wolfsschanze and lead an insurrection in Berlin and Paris
• Harry Strauss - Mafia hitman
• Per-Olof Svensson - cleared of the murder of Anna Lindh

T

• Soghomon Tehlirian - assassin of Talaat Pasha
• Jaime Terran - assassin of Che Guevara
• Henning von Tresckow - key conspirator in the German anti-Nazi Resistance who initiated several assassination attempts on Hitler (all unsuccessful), the most famous of which was the plan to destroy Hitler's plane at Smolensk in 1943
• Dimitri Tsafendas - second assassin to make an attempt (successfully) on Hendrik Verwoerd's life

V

• Raoul Vilain - assassin of Jean Jaurès

W

• Donald Eugene Webb, alleged cop killer .
• Patrick J. Whelan - convicted assassin of Thomas D'Arcy McGee
• Carl Weiss - assassin of Huey Long
• Dan White - assassin of mayor of San Francisco George Moscone and councilman Harvey Milk in 1978

Y

• Ramzi Yousef:
  • masterminded a failed attempt to kill then-president of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto.
  • conspired in the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II on the Pope's Philippines visit, as part of Manila-based Al-Qaida plot Operation Bojinka. Two weeks before the assassination and the first part of the Project was to go off, Manila police would discover and foil his plot on January 6, 1995, including the assassination attempt
  • considered assassinating United States President Bill Clinton, but decided against it
• Yakov Yurovsky - chief assassin of Nicholas II of Russia
• Felix Yusupov - hard working assassin of Grigori Rasputin

Z

• Giuseppe Zangara - assassin of Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago and would-be assassin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.