10 adorable children who grew into evil adults

How does a sweet, innocent child grow up to be so heartlessly evil? It’s one of history’s greatest mysteries.

Reinhard Heydrich

“The Hangman,” as he was widely known, played a crucial role in orchestrating the Holocaust.

Heydrich was born into an upper-class, intellectual and musical family in Germany. As a young boy he was extremely sensitive with delicate features. He loved classical music and practiced vigorously to become a highly skilled violinist.

He endured dreadful bullying as a boy due to his delicate build. Schoolmates constantly teased him about his thin, high-pitched, feminine voice. Heydrich developed a merciless obsession with proving his physical and Aryan strength/capability for the rest of his life.

Lavrentiy Beria

Beria was Stalin’s most sadistic and merciless secret police chief. He ruled over the Soviet Union’s deadly forced labor camps and mass execution teams.

But, as a young boy from a desperately poor Georgian village, he was remarkably well-mannered, polite, and tidy. His super religious mother loved him.

His thirst for knowledge was so immense that his parents actually sold off half their land to cover his school fees. Even his teachers remember him as an unusually well behaved student who spent all his time either reading or quietly assisting his family.

Jean-Bédel Bokassa

Before Jean-Bédel Bokassa was a slimy, cannibalistic dictator responsible for slaughtering dozens of school children in cold blood, he was an orphaned child whose adopted guardians absolutely adored him.

When Bokassa was only twelve years old, he lost both of his parents and was taken in by Christian missionaries who grew fond of his shy and attentive demeanor. His classmates and teachers affectionately nicknamed him “the intellectual” because he was so quiet, polite, and obsessed with reading French history books.

Looking at the quiet boy he was, you’d hardly imagine young Jean-Bédel Bokassa would eventually squander his nation’s wealth just to style himself an emperor in a brutal regime.

Heinrich Himmler

Leader of the Nazi SS and mastermind behind the concentration camps started off life as an ultra-weak, milky-cheeked child with the manners of a darling prince.

Hitler’s right hand was raised by an affectionate but strict father to be courteous and well-behaved. Young Heinrich’s long survived childhood journals detail a happy little boy who would quietly play piano, collect stamps, and delicately prune plants during the afternoon.

Who would have thought that a boy so gentle he’d weep for crushed insects would go on to orchestrate the deaths of millions?

Bashar al-Assad

Before starting a bloody civil war and gassing his own people, Bashar al-Assad was the ignored, reclusive second son of Syria’s presidential family.

In stark contrast to his outgoing and athletic older brother Bassel, Bashar was a remarkably reserved, quiet, and well-behaved child who deliberately avoided confrontation and involvement in politics.

So passive was he that he became a simple doctor, moving to London and quietly practicing medicine as an ophthalmologist. He didn’t return to Syria to take power until his brother died in a car accident.

Pol Pot (Saloth Sâr)

The Khmer Rouge dictator who perpetrated the Cambodian genocide and killed as many as two million people was raised as an exceptionally sensitive, mild-mannered child from a wealthy rural family.

At the age of six, Saloth Sâr was sent to a Buddhist monastery, where he lived for eighteen months as a novice monk, immersing himself in quiet contemplation and honing his reading and writing skills. Relatives often spoke of Saloth Sâr as one of the sweetest, most gentle children they had ever encountered.

He cried easily when exposed to violence and went out of his way to avoid schoolyard fights. His soft-spoken, polite exterior remained with him even as an adult, completely masking the genocidal tyrant within.

Tsar Nicholas II

Yes, history remembers Russia’s last Tsar as “Nicholas the Bloody.” His reign was defined by violent anti-Semitic pogroms and an army crackdown that saw thousands of peaceful protesters shot down on Bloody Sunday.

But Nicholas himself was a terribly sweet-natured kid. Given strict British tutelage from birth, he grew up conditioned to be a perfect gentleman with quietly soft manners and a tendency to speak softly. He was so sensitive that whenever he’d ever get into a small argument with one of his brothers or sisters, he would rather walk away to another room to read a book than utter a harsh word in return.

He carried this weak and easily-led personality into his rulership and became an indecisive, tyrannical leader who would eventually lead his country to destruction.

Marshall Applewhite

Before he was the cult leader of Heaven’s Gate who led 38 of his followers to mass suicide in 1997, Marshall Applewhite was his town’s golden boy.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, Marshall was sweet-natured, charismatic, and had an overabundance of love to give. Both classmates and teachers adored young Marshall. He spent his adolescent years singing in the church choir and serving on the student council.

Applewhite truly personified that wholesome, innocent “all-American boy” persona he would later twist to manipulate his followers.

Ilse Koch

Nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald,” Koch was hated by many for her cruelty against prisoners in concentration camps. 

Her upbringing in Dresden, Germany, was quite the opposite. Sweet. Elementary school teachers who worked with her and neighbors who grew up around her remember Koch as an above average student who was exceptionally happy, well-mannered, and quiet. 

She came from a stable lower- middle-class family and was known to be very gentle and helpful before she married her SS commandant husband and unleashed her sinister sadistic personality.

Rodney Alcala

Rodney Alcala, who earned the chilling moniker “The Dating Game Killer,” was an American serial murderer responsible for the deaths of many women and children in the Los Angeles suburbs throughout the late 1970s. 

But as a child growing up in suburban Los Angeles, he was the complete opposite: bright, highly artistic, and charismatic. He was liked by his classmates, cherished by his mother, and he kept very busy in high school on the yearbook planning committee and on the track team. 

He was handsome, sweet-faced, and kind on the outside, which made for the perfect front of someone who was secretly capable of hiding a monstrous double life for years.

Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.

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