A note from Nick Grosso, Dramaturg:
Assassins tells the untold stories of nine American evildoers.
They are the objects of our fascination because they committed crimes the rest of us could never dream of carrying out.
Or could we?
Perhaps there have been times when our hearts have been broken.
Or times when we have been dealt a bad hand by someone more powerful than us.
Someone who will never know our pain, but who has the authority to administer it freely and without guilt.
Maybe we have felt helpless. Maybe we want control. Over something. Anything.
Or maybe we’ve simply felt unheard.
As if our voices were much tinier than the dreams, sorrows, and passions they carry.
As if nobody ever cared enough to listen.
What if we could make the whole world listen? If only for a moment?
Just one tiny moment where the world stops just for you.
What if the reason we are so fascinated by the Assassins is because we are scared to humanize them, and what if we are scared to humanize them because we know, deep down, that they will be like us or someone we know?
What if we fear how easy it was to pull the trigger?
When we dreamed up our production of Assassins in 2019, it felt like a new mass shooting was occurring every week. In Pittsburgh, the horrifying anti-semitic shooting at Tree of Life had left our community feeling helpless for five months. We feared that nowhere was safe. Not our schools, not our bars, not even our places of worship.
We feared the next killer could come from anywhere. Or anyone.
Perhaps the best we can do, then, is to recognize the pain and the passion before it’s too late. In ourselves, in our loved ones, in our friends, acquaintances, coworkers, in the people we pass on the street. To snuff out white supremacy, to act in solidarity with workers and the oppressed, to offer kindness, to demand justice, to denounce hatred.
With that said, let’s meet our nine Assassins.
Perhaps their stories can help us imagine a world where there won’t have to be a tenth.
John Wilkes Booth
1839-1865
"I do not wish to drop a shed of blood, but I must fight the course. 'Tis all that's left of me."
~ John Wilkes Booth
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Jealous of his older brother, Edwin, for becoming a more famous actor than him.
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Became relatively famous after joining a Virginia Shakespeare company.
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Sympathetic to the Confederacy, volunteered in the Richmond militia that killed abolitionist John Brown.
If all the world’s a stage, as Shakespeare once said, John Wilkes Booth saw himself as the leading man. But leading men aren’t the ones who write the stories - or their endings. When Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the Ford’s theater, he descended upon the stage shouting “Sic Semper Tyrannis!”, expecting to be hailed as a hero for finally offing the man who many in the South deemed a murderous traitor. After escaping on horseback with a co-conspirator, David Herrold, Booth went into isolation for three days. In those three days, he realized that the narrative was unfolding quite differently than how he expected - Lincoln, who just a few days ago was one of the most hated men in America, was now being deemed a martyr while Booth was painted to be the villain.
He spent his final days in an abandoned farmhouse, pouring the entire truth of why he killed Lincoln into a journal in order to combat the narrative he saw unfolding. He was cornered by police and, while Herrold surrendered, Booth was killed after officers opened fire.
The journal was published by the War Department shortly after his death, with 86 pages missing.
Charles Guiteau
1841-1882
“I saved my party and my land, Glory hallelujah!
But they have murdered me for it,
And that is the reason I am going to the Lordy!”
~ Charles Guiteau
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Rejected from the University of Michigan after spending the inheritance he received from his grandfather to move there.
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Joined a religious utopian cult called the Oneida Community. Guiteau idolized its leader, John Humphrey Noyes.
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Wrote a book called “The Truth” in which he told people how to achieve oneness with God. He stole most of it from Noyes’ theory, yet credited himself with everything.
Charles J. Guiteau was a jack of all trades - as a corrupt, money-embezzling lawyer, abusive husband, religious cultist, and epic poet, one wonders how he ever managed to juggle it all. After he became convinced that God spoke through him, Guiteau believed it was his duty to have as much influence as possible. He particularly wanted the position of ambassador to France, so much so that he wrote an incessant amount of letters to then-president James Garfield and his cabinet members begging for the job. After so many rejections, Guiteau became convinced that God had given him the duty to “save” the Republican Party by his own hands, which led him to kill President Garfield. Even in court, he showed no remorse for his actions, delivering all his testimonies in long poem form.
Guiteau wrote a poem, “I am Going to the Lordy”, which he giddily performed while singing and dancing as he mounted the gallows.
His request to be accompanied by an orchestra was denied.
Leon Czolgosz
1873-1901
"I am not sorry for my crime."
~ Leon Czolgosz
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After his mother died when he was 11, Czolgosz worked in a steel mill for his entire young life.
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Joined a socialist club when the economic crash of 1893 left him and many others jobless.
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Kept newspaper clippings from the assassination of Italy’s King Umberto 1 by anarchists.
Leon Czolgosz was a quiet man from his youth until his death. After a childhood of working in steel mills, Czolgosz spent his twenties immersing himself in communist-anarchist theory. He became obsessed with one figure in particular, orator Emma Goldman, and began stalking her as she moved from place to place giving her impassioned pro-worker speeches. After finding out her address and keeping it on a slip of paper, Czolgosz encountered Goldman at a train station, where he told her about all the failed jobs and relationships that had riddled his entire life. The brief conversation that ensued was followed just weeks later by Czolgosz killing President William Mckinley in broad daylight at the Pan-American Exposition, one of the country’s most popular and elaborate fairs.
Conspiracy theories were thrown out about Goldman after Czolgosz admitted that he was inspired by her words “all rulers should be exterminated.” Czolgosz was executed in 1901, and Goldman would later write a book in which she discussed him as being the face of the dejected and abused American workforce.
Guiseppe Zangara
1900-1933
“I kill kings and presidents first, and next, all capitalists.”
~ Giuseppe Zangara
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Worked menial jobs at his father’s farm as a child. Developed a pain in his hip that lasted his entire life.
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Served in World War 1, then returned to menial farm work.
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Moved to the U.S. in 1929, just as the Great Depression hit. He couldn’t find a job, and lived in extreme poverty.
Too far too many, the American Dream proves to be little more than just that - a dream. Giuseppe Zangara was one of many immigrants who, after promises of wealth and a booming economy, was let down by one of the most devastating market failures in U.S. history. After a lifetime of menial farm labor that left him permanently disabled, Zangara began to develop feelings of resentment for the wealthy capitalists who controlled the economy and sent people like him to fight in wars. When President-elect Franklin Roosevelt was passing through on vacation to Miami, Zangara saw an opportunity. At the scene, Zangara encountered a crowd of high-profile Democratic party members and a sea of voters schmoozing and cheering for Roosevelt as he gave improvised speeches. In a burst of rage, Zangara stood up from the back of the crowd shouting “Too many people are starving!” and fired six shots at Roosevelt. None of them hit their target, but one did ricochet and hit a bystander. When this bystander died several days later, Zangara’s original charge of attempted murder was upgraded to manslaughter, and he was sentenced to execution by electric chair.
He rejected the presence of a priest and spat his hatred of capitalists until the hood went over his head. His last words egged on the executioner.
“Push the button!” “Push the button!” he shouted.
Samuel Byck
1930-1974
“The fact that this government does not have the ability, nor I suspect the desire, to cleanse itself, then I will cleanse it by fire.”
~ Samuel Byck
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Born into poverty. Dropped out of high school to support his family.
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Honorably discharged from the military in 1956. Married and had four children soon after.
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Inspired by Mark Essex, who killed six people in New Orleans. Essex’s famous slogan was “Kill Pig Nixon” which Byck especially liked.
When his wife left him in 1972, Samuel Byck entered a deep depression. He had spent his entire life knowing nothing but poverty, failing not only in all his professional pursuits but now even in his relationships. He admitted himself to a psychiatric ward to combat his depression, and it was here that he started to believe that the Nixon administration was conspiring to oppress the poor. Byck began sending threats to Richard Nixon. He detailed his deepest and darkest thoughts into a set of audio tapes that he would send out to various high-profile celebrities, including Leonard Bernstein. He eventually planned an attack he called “Operation Pandora’s Box” in which he would hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into the White House. He did not think this plan through, because when he killed the pilot and copilot before the plane was even off the ground, he had no way of escaping as police surrounded the aircraft.
As the police opened fire on Byck from outside, Byck shot himself in the head. Despite years of recorded threats monitored by the FBI, nobody took him seriously. The FBI had always considered him “harmless”.
John Hinckley Jr.
1955 -
“Guns are neat little things, aren’t they? They can kill extraordinary people with very little effort.”
~ John Hinckley Jr.
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His father was the president of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation.
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A popular athlete in middle school, he became reclusive in high school, retreating into his songwriting.
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Dropped out of college to pursue songwriting.
Nobody can attest to the power of cinema quite like John Hinckley Jr., whose obsession with the 1976 film "Taxi Driver" and its stars extended far beyond the silver screen. Not only did he begin to dress like the main character Travis Bickle in day-to-day life, but he developed a major crush on actress Jodie Foster, who played the love interest. Hinckley sent Foster dozens of voicemails, love letters, poems, and postcards, none of which ever received answers. As a final, desperate plea to garner Foster’s attention, Hinckley once again looked to Travis Bickle for inspiration. Just as Bickle attempted to kill a Presidential candidate in the movie, Hinckley would attempt to shoot President Reagan at a press conference in 1981. Hinckley fired twice, narrowly missing Reagan’s heart. Reagan survived, but Hinckley was placed in a psychiatric ward for the rest of his life.
Hinckley was found not guilty on account of insanity - a ruling that would spark a national debate on the legitimacy of the insanity defense.
Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme
1948 -
“Anybody can kill anybody.”
~ Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme
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Grew up in California as a bright, cheery, promising young girl until substance abuse ruined her.
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Did horrifying and dangerous rituals for the Manson Family, most of which were done in the name of stoking the fires of “Helter Skelter” the hypothetical race war that Manson convinced his family was inevitable.
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She gained her nickname from George Spahn, the elderly owner of Spahn Ranch who Charles Manson forced her to have sex with in order to forgo rent for the Manson Family.
After substance abuse got her expelled from college and kicked out of her own home, Lynette Fromme had nowhere to go. Then, in 1967, by some miracle, A long-haired man introduced himself to her on the beach, and the two became locked in conversation about the universe and their greater purpose in life. Fromme was enamored with the man who called himself Charles Manson, and found new meaning in the “family” he had created of similarly lost souls. She traveled with the Manson Family for years, until Manson himself was arrested for his involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders. While most of Manson’s family split for fear of being associated with him, Fromme never relented her support of her “savior”. After spending years moving from place to place and reading up on Mansons’ teachings, Fromme decided to take her anger out on President Gerald Ford (who opposed the Clean Air Act, which was popular with the hippies) by shooting him at a convention center. The shot missed, but Fromme was detained for many years.
Today, she lives a low-profile life with her boyfriend in upstate New York.
Sara Jane Moore
1930 -
“There comes a point where the only way you can make a statement is by picking up a gun”
~ Sara Jane Moore
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Went to nursing school before working as a medic in the Women’s Army Corps.
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Worked as an accountant after leaving the Army Corps.
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Divorced five times, and had a total of five children.
The kidnapping of Patty Hearst, daughter of famous magnate William Randolph Hearst, by the left-wing crime syndicate Symbionese Liberation Force made for great newspaper headlines across the country. One reader who found the story particularly interesting was Sara Jane Moore, a humble accountant from Charleston, West Virginia. Not only was Moore fascinated by the drama of it all, but she became especially interested in the politics of SLA. They demanded William Hearst to use his wealth to help working people, and so Hearst founded a charity group called “People in Need” to fix his image. Moore signed on with the FBI to work at PIN as an undercover informant. In private, she read up on socialist theory and trained herself to shoot. On September 22, 1975 (just a few months after Lynette Fromme’s assassination attempt) Sara Jane Moore shot at President Gerald Ford in front of a hotel.
Moore was released from prison in 2007. In an interview on CNN, she reveals that she took the shot because Ford was not an elected official - he was promoted from Vice President after Nixon was impeached. She expressed little remorse for her actions, claiming “I’m no different today than I was then.” She returned to prison in 2019 after violating her parole.
Lee Harvey Oswald
1939-1963
“Revolutions require a certain amount of rationing, a certain amount of calluses, a certain amount of sacrifice.”
~ Lee Harvey Oswald
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Distant cousin of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
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Famously irritable, rude, and cocky, even as a child. Threatened his mom with a knife at age 12.
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Sharpshooter in the Marines before he received an “undesirable” discharge (one rank short of “dishonorable”) for bad behavior and his fascination with the Soviet Union.
Since he was 15, Lee Harvey Oswald had made it a goal to start a new life in the communist Soviet Union. He idolized everything Russian - the politics, the language, even the women. He applied for citizenship several times - an endeavor that, in the 1960s, earned him a high-priority spot on a CIA watchlist and a defection from the military. He did spend several years there, but despite attempts to overstay his visa, he ended up back in Dallas - only this time, he brought home the love of his life, a Russian woman named Marina Nikolayevna. Together, they concocted a plan to return for good, this time by exploiting a Cuban visa. The plan was shut down once again, and with the FBI hot on his scent, Oswald was running out of options.
One day, he heard that President John F. Kennedy would be driving through Dallas on a motorcade. That morning, he purchased a rifle, climbed to the sixth floor of a warehouse and, when Kennedy’s car drove by, shot him in the head.
Oswald was shot and killed two days later by a distraught night club owner named Jack Ruby while being moved to a jail cell. Ruby was sentenced to death.