Page 50 - All About History - Issue 38-16
P. 50
15 Mad Murder Plots
Giovanni Falcone
METHOD: BOMB HIDDEN IN MOTORWAY CULVERT
WHEN: 23 MAY 1992
When Italian magistrate and
10 prosecutor Giovanni Falcone set
his sights on bringing high-ranking
Mafia bosses to justice, his quarry
struck back with breathtaking
ferocity. As police officers accompanied Falcone
and his wife on a drive along the A29 motorway in
Sicily, assassins triggered an explosion so strong
that it registered on earthquake monitors. As half a
ton of explosives blew a crater in the road, Mafia
boss Salvatore Riina threw a party to celebrate the
murders. The outraged Sicilian public called for
justice and Riina was sentenced to spend his life Five people were killed in the
explosion – Falcone, his wife
behind bars for plotting the murders on the A29. and three police officers
Abd al-Karim
Qasim
METHOD: HANDKERCHIEF INFECTED WITH BRUCELLOSIS
WHEN: FEBRUARY 1960
Determined to end Iraqi Prime
11 Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim’s
time in office, the CIA came up
with an audacious plan. They
posted a personally monogrammed
Assassination handkerchief liberally seasoned with brucellosis – a
bacteria that can cause a long-lasting infection with
awards flu-like symptoms – to the prime minister,
reasoning that he would not be able to resist the
When it comes to assassins and gift. Even if the bacteria didn’t kill Qasim, it would
certainly put him out of action for months and
their would-be targets, some just ensure someone else took his place. Whether
stand out from the crowd. Here Qasim ever received the handkerchief is unknown,
are a few choice examples Although the CIA failed to assassinate but he remained in power until 1963 when a firing
him, Abd al-Karim Qasim was
eventually executed by firing squad squad succeeded where the CIA had failed.
Craziest reaction to an assassination
attempt: Theodore Roosevelt
When Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest during
a visit to Milwaukee, he put o hospital treatment Empress Elisabeth
in favour of delivering his 90-minute speech to an
astonished crowd. His life was saved when the bullet
was slowed by a spectacles case and thick wad of of Austria, aka Sisi
speech papers in his pocket, preventing it from
reaching his heart.
METHOD: STABBED WITH A NEEDLE FILE
Most persistent assassin: French OAS WHEN: 10 SEPTEMBER 1898
In Paris on 22 August 1962, the OAS (Secret Army Famed for her tiny 19-inch waist,
Organisation) made an attempt on the life of Charles Empress Elisabeth of Austria had
De Gaulle and his wife. A dozen gunmen blasted his
Citroen DS with 140 bullets, killing two outriders and 12 become known to the world as Sisi,
puncturing the tyres. Amazingly, De Gaulle’s driver a troubled woman obsessed with
got his passengers to safety. The episode was later her own beauty. When anarchist
ctionalised in The Day Of The Jackal.
Luigi Lucheni stabbed Sisi during a trip to Geneva,
Weirdest motivation: John Hinckley Jr it initially appeared that she was barely injured. In
When John Hinckley Jr opened re on Ronald Reagan fact, her corsets had stemmed the flow of blood
on 3 March 1981, his motive was one of the strangest.
Obsessed with Jodie Foster after seeing her in Taxi from her chest and she was mortally wounded.
Driver, the deluded Hinckley mistakenly believed that Freed from her tight-laced stays, Sisi bled to death
killing the president was the surere way to impress from the fatal blow that had pierced her heart. Her
the actress he adored. Instead, he remains in a secure assassin was arrested and imprisoned, where he Sisi was stabbed with very
hospital to this day. thin sharpened needle file
later committed suicide. that was four inches long
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