Friendly smiles and fame can take you very far, to the point where some of the most evil monsters used them to seem like safe people.
Jimmy Savile
Jimmy Savile spent decades looking like an eccentric entertainer who raised millions for hospitals and other charities. He appeared on TV in the UK, and it was his fundraising that gave him freedom inside medical facilities. It was too much freedom.
Official investigations after his death found that he had abused numerous victims inside hospitals, including both children and adults. The allegations against him had covered several decades, and TV bosses had helped cover them up. Truly disgusting stuff.
John Wayne Gacy
Most people know John Wayne Gacy’s name today for his horrific crimes, but there was a time when it wasn’t that way. He was actually popular for being a contractor who joined community organizations and helped organize public events. He even met First Lady Rosalynn Carter.Â
Gacy entertained people as a clown, but behind that respectable image, he assaulted and murdered 33 young men and boys. 26 victims were buried beneath his house. He was convicted in 1980 and executed in 1994 for his crimes.
Dorothea Puente
The thing with Dorothea Puente was that her grandmotherly appearance did a lot. She had a boarding house in Sacramento where she presented herself as someone who cared for people. She helped the elderly and disabled, along with those struggling with addiction. It was all an act.
She actually killed tenants and continued collecting their government benefit checks in the meantime. Her killings spanned several years. It was only in 1988 that police began digging in her yard and discovered the bodies. She was convicted of three murders and received life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Puente died in 2011.
Larry Nassar
So many people trusted Larry Nassar, and it’s mostly because he was a doctor connected with Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics. He was a different person during appointments, however. He assaulted girls and young women.
He claimed to be giving them legitimate treatment the whole time, and some of his assaults happened while with parents nearby. Nassar later pleaded guilty to state charges and was sentenced to 175 years on seven counts of assault.
Keith Raniere
‘Vanguard.’ That’s how Keith Raniere referred to himself, and he promoted NXIVM as a program for self-improvement. It was supposed to help people achieve professional success while living ethically. Except it was all a lie.
Raniere was actually running a criminal organization that involved forced labor and trafficking. Identity theft was another part, and so were many other offenses. A federal judge sentenced him to 120 years in prison in 2020.
Dennis Rader
People saw Dennis Rader in many different ways. Church members believed he was a congregation president, and neighbors saw him as a married father who worked in local government. He murdered 10 people in and around Wichita, Kansas between 1974 and 1991.
Rader became known as the BTK killer, and the letters stood for ‘bind, torture, kill.’ He mailed photographs and descriptions of the crimes to police and news organizations. It took over a decade, but eventually, metadata from a floppy disk he sent investigators helped connect the messages to Rader and the church where he served.
Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy didn’t exactly approach women with open threats. No, he often acted polite or helpless, sometimes wearing a sling to really sell the image of someone who needed help. He’d also pose as an authority figure. It all changed once a victim was near his Volkswagen.
Bundy would overpower and abduct women, later confessing to 30 murders committed across several states. The full number remains unknown. He escaped custody twice in 1977 and reached Florida, where he committed additional murders. He was finally arrested and later executed in 1989.
Rodney Alcala
Nobody knew that Rodney Alcala was a convicted child predator when he appeared on The Dating Game in 1978. He actually won, as the female contestant, Cheryl Bradshaw, selected him. She refused to go out with him afterward.Â
Behind all that charm was a monster, and Alcala was eventually convicted of murdering four women and 12-year-old Robin Samsoe. He later pleaded guilty to two additional murders in New York. So much for the dream guy to date.
Dee Dee Blanchard
Practically everyone thought that Dee Dee Blanchard was completely dedicated to her severely ill daughter, Gypsy Rose. She was. But not in the way you might expect. She claimed Gypsy had leukemia and muscular dystrophy, along with developmental issues and other problems.
She forced Gypsy to use a wheelchair and feeding tube, despite the fact that Gypsy didn’t have many of the illnesses described. She forced her daughter to undergo unnecessary procedures, including the removal of salivary glands. The deception only came to light after Gypsy helped plan Dee Dee’s murder. The lies had brought the family donations and free trips.
Beverley Allitt
You’d assume that the nurse assigned to care for a sick child would be a safe person. You’d be wrong. Beverley Allitt used that position at Grantham and Kesteven General Hospital in England to murder four children and attempt to murder three more. She seriously injured six others.
Her methods of killing children included administering insulin and other substances, forcing the infants into sudden collapses. It took some time, but the doctors and police eventually identified deliberate harm in the patients.
Charles Cullen
Charles Cullen was another man who appeared to be a hardworking nurse. He took difficult shifts and cared for seriously ill patients, with a nursing career lasting roughly 16 years. He secretly administered dangerous amounts of medications to his patients.
He later admitted to murdering 16 patients in New Jersey and additional patients in Pennsylvania, although the figure may actually be as high as 400. Cullen was sentenced to eighteen consecutive life sentences.
Bruce McArthur
Quite a few clients hired Bruce McArthur to maintain their gardens. There were also some families who knew him from his appearances as a mall Santa. If only they knew the truth. He murdered eight men connected with Toronto’s LGBTQ community between 2010 and 2017.
Many of his victims were immigrants or men living with limited social support. He actually hid the human remains in large planters placed at properties where he performed landscaping work. In January 2018, he was finally arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment the next year, with no possibility of parole for twenty-five years.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
The 15 most hated actors in Hollywood history
Some actors receive hate after criminal cases, some receive it after the things they’ve said, and as for others, it’s because they took on a role that went very badly.
