When a political or religious figure suddenly dies, conspiracy theories seem to fall from the trees, like apples ripe with the juice of murder. Being fairly normal human beings, we know that not every political death has to do with shadowy government figures and encoded messages, but the unsolved crimes on this list are sketchy enough to make us doubt even the most open and shut case. It’s entirely plausible that each of the political deaths on this list has a simple answer, 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 deaths.
Some of the unsolved murders and mysteries on this list are cases that have long gone cold, the perpetrators either dead or so well connected that they can’t be touched. Some of the other mysteries are still open, but little hope is held for solving the crime. And the biggest mysteries that we’ve collected were, in some case, possibly committed by the US government. We tried to shy away from the JFK assassination (don’t worry, he’s on here), but HOLY TOLEDO there were a lot of dead people involved in that case. The conspiracies that you’ll be reading about tend to go deep, so get ready to put your detective hat on and spend a lot of sleepless nights cutting out newspaper articles. This list of mysterious political deaths is only the beginning…
Leave us a comment and let us know which story seems plausible, and which seems like it’s just the ramblings of a nut in a tinfoil hat.
Also Ranked
#5 on The Greatest U.S. Presidents of All Time
#5 on People We Wish Were Still Alive
#32 on The Most Enlightened Leaders in World History
#41 on The Most Influential People of All Time
see more on John F. Kennedy
Also Ranked
#23 on The Most Enlightened Leaders in World History
#24 on The Most Influential People of All Time
#6 on The Most Important Leaders in World History
#2 on The Most Important Military Leaders in World History
see more on Napoleon Bonaparte
Litvinenko was a Russian defector from the FSB. In 1998, he and several other FSB officers publicly accused their superiors of ordering the assassination 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 murderer of a Russian journalist, he mysteriously fell ill with with a sickness related to radioactive polonium 210. Most theories point to someone in the Russian government as his killer, although some believe in British involvement in his murder. see more on Alexander LitvinenkoUwe Barschel
