As Taylor Swift sang, “Karma’s on your scent like a bounty hunter, karma’s gonna track you down.” She also sang that karma is “her boyfriend” and “a cat,” neither of which make sense to me, but her point stands — karma can get the best of bad people.
Unfortunately, too many bad people never get the payback they deserve in life, so I thought it’d be satisfying to put together a list of historical assholes who got their comeuppance and died the way they deserved — with delicious poetic justice. Check ’em out:
1.
In 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were University of Chicago students and friends turned lovers who believed their intellect made them superior to laws. These P.O.S. were filthy rich, smart (but not nearly as smart as they thought they were), and arrogant. To test their theory, the duo committed some petty crimes — not for money, revenge, or passion — but simply to prove they could get away with it. They next raised the stakes and decided to prove they could kill someone and get away with it. Their victim? Loeb’s 14-year-old distant cousin Bobby Franks, whom they lured into their car, bludgeoned with a chisel, and suffocated to death. They then got root beers and hot dogs.
2.
OK, so Leopold didn’t get the 100% karmic justice he deserved, so let me tell you about someone who did: Sigurd the Mighty. Sig (is it OK if I call you “Sig,” Sigurd?) was a Viking who led the conquest of Northern Scotland in the 9th century. The Scottish people feared Sig for his ruthless campaigns across their land, killing with impunity. One day, Sig defeated a local chieftain named Máel Brigte, and in his brutal way, beheaded the chieftain and tied the head to his saddle as a trophy. But as ol’ Sig rode home, one of the chieftain’s teeth grazed Sig’s leg, caused an infection, and killed the mofo!
3.
If there’s ever been a historical example of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” it’s this one. In the summer of 1862, Andrew Myrick, a trader at the Lower Sioux Agency in Minnesota, was approached by the Dakota people, who were starving after being forced onto reservations and denied delayed treaty payments and food shipments. They begged for help or, at the very least, credit. But instead of compassion, Myrick reportedly sneered, “So far as I’m concerned, if they’re hungry, let them eat grass or their own dung.” What a dick, right?
4.
In 1983, Michael Anderson Godwin was convicted of raping and murdering a 24-year-old woman. He was sentenced to death by electric chair, but later had his conviction overturned on appeal, and he received a life sentence instead. Quite the break for Godwin (assuming he liked breathing and not having 2,000+ volts of electricity pumped through his body), but if he’s on this post you know karma won in the end. Six years later, Godwin made the mistake of trying to repair a pair of earphones connected to his television. Seated naked on the metal toilet in his cell, Godwin bit into a live wire to fix the device — and accidentally electrocuted himself. Godwin may have escaped the electric chair, but he couldn’t escape the, uh, electric toilet.
5.
George Beurling was Canada’s most celebrated fighter pilot of World War II. The dude was fast, deadly, and nicknamed “Buzz” for his habit of flying dangerously low over airfields just to show off. He racked up 31 confirmed kills during the war, and was hailed as a national hero. But (there’s always a “but”), Beurling’s ego and antisocial streak made him impossible to work with. He clashed with superiors and insulted fellow pilots (calling them “blind bats”), and wasn’t exactly a team player either. When a reporter asked him about his team’s successful mission, he replied, “Team? I was the team.” He treated regulations like polite suggestions, too, refusing, for example, to fly in formation, saying, “I’m here to shoot Nazis, not hold hands.” After the war, no air force wanted him — not Canada’s, not Britain’s — so he took a contract flying for the Israeli Air Force in its early days.
6.
Thomas Midgley Jr. didn’t seem like an A-hole to those who knew him; in fact, they described him as friendly, curious, and genuinely proud of his work. The problem is that his “work” accidentally did more long-term harm than almost any individual in history, and he became so invested in his own inventions that he refused to accept the consequences of what he’d created. And that definitely made him an asshole. In the 1920s, Midgley helped General Motors develop tetraethyl lead gasoline, which solved engine knocking (cool!) but also released toxic lead into the air (not cool!). Workers began collapsing with lead poisoning, and doctors raised the alarm.
7.
Maximilien Robespierre didn’t start out as an A-hole. In the early French Revolution, he actually argued for universal male suffrage, abolishing slavery, and the end of the death penalty. Way to go, Max! But somewhere along the way, Max discovered that killing your enemies via the guillotine was really, really effective — and the idealist turned into a total dick (and the architect of the Reign of Terror). Robespierre signed off on the execution of thousands of people: nobles, political rivals, skeptical revolutionaries, random peasants who were “insufficiently enthusiastic,” and plenty of ordinary citizens who simply said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Most alarmingly, the dude started to believe he alone could determine who was “virtuous” enough to live in the new France. (“I alone can fix it,” he might’ve said…hmmmm.)
8.
Let’s go back in time for a real throwback a-hole who got what he deserved. Marcus Crassus, aka Rome’s richest man circa the first century, owned silver mines, slave-labor fire brigades (yes, he’d let your house burn until you sold it to him cheap), and entire neighborhoods of Rome. His greed was legendary. Crassus, of course, wasn’t satisfied with all that (eye roll), so he decided to seek military glory. Specifically, the kind where poets write about you and statues show up with your face on them. So he launched an invasion of Parthia (modern-day Iran), purely to boost his personal legacy. It did not go well.
9.
Vlad III — better known as Vlad the Impaler and the loose inspiration for Dracula — ruled Wallachia in the 15th century and was definitely a bad dude. His favorite way to deal with his enemies? Impalement: forcing sharpened stakes through their bodies and leaving them upright like scarecrows. Oh, and he massacred tens of thousands — invaders, rivals, villagers, and sometimes entire cities. Yep, definitely an asshole. Thankfully, at least for 15th-century Wallachians, Vlad was killed in battle in 1476. Here’s the “just desserts” part: His body was decapitated and the head was sent to the Ottoman Sultan, where it was displayed on a spike in Constantinople as a warning. In the end, “Mr. Put ‘Em on a Pike” got put on one himself.
10.
Charles Ponzi didn’t invent the scam that bears his name — but he’s the reason we call it a Ponzi scheme. In 1920, this clown promised investors a 50% profit in 45 days by trading international postage coupons. That sounded sophisticated and financially impressive enough that people just nodded and handed him cash. But Ponzi never invested anything. He just took money from new investors and used it to pay earlier investors, making it look like they were earning huge returns — and attracting new investors in the process. He, of course, also pocketed a whole lot of his client’s so-called “earnings.”
11.
Pablo Escobar was the billionaire head of the Medellín Cartel, the man who basically ran Colombia with cocaine money in the 1980s. He funded schools and soccer fields (that was nice of him!), but he also ordered assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, and massacres (that was, uh, not). It didn’t matter who it was — if someone irritated him or stood in his way, they died. At the height of his power, Escobar built himself a private zoo at his mansion-palace and lived like a king while regular Colombians lived in fear of his wrath.
Know of someone bad in history (or hell, in your own life) whose death was pure karma? Tell us about in the comments or via the anonymous form below and it could be featured in a future BuzzFeed post!
