When you think of monuments, you probably picture heroes, innovators, or beloved leaders. Yet history is also dotted with stone and bronze tributes to some of the most infamous murderers their own statues commemorate. From battlefield massacres to genocidal campaigns, each of these ten figures left a bloody legacy that still echoes in the monuments erected in their honor. Below we dive deep into each story, exploring the murderer, the mayhem they wrought, and the monument that keeps their memory alive.
10 Nathan Bedford Forrest
The Murderer: In the mid‑19th century a bitter national dispute over the future of black slavery erupted into the American Civil War. The Confederacy fought to preserve its slave‑holding way of life, while the Union fought to keep the nation together and eventually to abolish slavery. Among the Confederate generals, Nathan Bedford Forrest stood out for his fierce combat skill and his equally fierce, uncompromising racism. Before the war he was a slave trader—a disreputable occupation even in the pre‑war South. After the war he helped found the Ku Klux Klan, cementing his reputation as a man without a shred of gentlemanly conduct.
The Mayhem: Forrest’s most notorious act occurred at Fort Pillow, Tennessee. The fort was defended by Union troops, many of them black soldiers. Southern sentiment, steeped in generations of fear about armed black men, made the idea of black soldiers repugnant. Confederate policy even threatened to enslave or execute captured black soldiers. Forrest, acting on his own initiative, allowed a far uglier outcome. After a prolonged siege, his men stormed the fort when its defense collapsed. White Union soldiers surrendered and were taken prisoner, but the black troops were massacred. Surrendering black soldiers were cut down by the dozens, many forced into the Mississippi River where they were bayoneted. Forrest’s after‑action report boasted, “The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards… It is hoped these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.” Nearly 300 Union soldiers died, most of them black and most after surrendering. The debate over whether Forrest personally ordered the massacre continues, but as senior officer on scene he bears command responsibility.
The Monument: An equestrian statue of Forrest was erected in Memphis, Tennessee, completed in 1905. The bodies of Forrest and his wife were reinterred beneath it, and the inscription celebrated his war record, omitting any mention of Fort Pillow. The statue stood for 112 years, becoming increasingly controversial. On December 20, 2017, city officials finally removed the monument, citing its inflammatory nature, on the 157th anniversary of the beginning of Confederate secession.
9 Nat Turner
The Murderer: Slaves throughout history faced a grim set of choices: endure, escape, suicide, or rebel. While many, like Frederick Douglass, chose escape, Nat Turner, a black slave and preacher in Virginia during the 1830s, chose active resistance. Turner claimed to hear divine voices urging him to fight for his own freedom and that of all black slaves. He described a vision: “I saw white spirits and black spirits engaged in battle, and the sun was darkened… the thunder rolled in the heavens, and blood flowed in streams.”
The Mayhem: On the predawn darkness of August 21, 1831, Turner and several fellow slaves broke into the Travis family home, slaughtering the couple in their beds. Though Turner personally avoided delivering fatal blows, his men killed the infant later. The rebellion spread, with Turner’s band moving from farm to farm, recruiting slaves and committing merciless murder. They spared some impoverished whites, deeming them equals, and spared fellow blacks regardless of participation. However, they did not spare white women or children above the poverty line. The carnage continued until roughly 60 whites lay dead, killed with blades and clubs (as gunshots would have alerted the countryside). Turner’s most gruesome act involved the murder of a young girl, Margaret Whitehead, whom he hacked repeatedly with a sword before beating her to death with a fence rail.
The Monument: Turner’s rebellion was quickly suppressed; he and many of his followers were captured and hanged. The ensuing hysteria led to numerous lynchings of blacks throughout the South. For decades, Turner’s legacy swung between being labeled a vengeful sadist and a zealot. In September 2017, Richmond, Virginia voted to include Nat Turner on a memorial celebrating notable Black American advocates for freedom and civil rights. When completed, his likeness will stand alongside Martin Luther King Jr., Wyatt Tee Walker, and other non‑violent activists, sparking ongoing debate about whether his murderous means tarnish his noble ends.
8 Genghis Khan
The Murderer: Conquering a massive swath of the known world makes you a memorable figure, and Genghis Khan certainly earned that distinction. From East Asia to Central Europe, his Mongol armies swept away resistance. While many invading forces of the era mistreated defeated enemies, the Mongols under Genghis’s command garnered a fearsome reputation for extreme ruthlessness. This reputation served as a psychological weapon, frightening cities into surrender without battle, yet the Mongols’ cruelty far exceeded mere intimidation.
The Mayhem: The Mongols preferred intact, subservient nations to smoking ruins, but they annihilated defiant enemies with extreme prejudice. One chilling example is the sack of Merv, a great Silk Road city in modern‑day Turkmenistan, in 1221. Merv, renowned for its fine goods, scholars, and libraries, was a pearl among desert dunes. The Mongols approached the fortified city, bringing human shields—prisoners from other fallen cities—into the siege. They used catapults to hurl disease‑ridden corpses over the walls, an early form of biological warfare. After breaching the walls, the Mongols fought street‑by‑street, suffering heavy casualties before finally prevailing. The aftermath was apocalyptic: most buildings, including priceless libraries, were set ablaze; survivors were marched out, with a few artisans and young women sent to slavery. The rest were butchered. Contemporary Muslim scholars estimated 700,000 dead; modern historians suggest a plausible figure of around 100,000.
The Monument: Genghis Khan remains a polarizing figure. In regions he devastated, he is remembered as an unparalleled butcher; in Mongolia, he is revered as the courageous founder of the Mongol state. Fittingly, his most impressive monument stands in Mongolia: a 40‑meter (131‑ft) high equestrian statue completed in 2008, the world’s largest of its kind. The statue faces east, turning its back on the ruins of Merv and other sites he razed, symbolizing triumphant return after victories. Yet for the victims of Merv, the monument serves as a stark reminder of the devastation they endured.
7 Enver Pasha And Talaat Pasha
The Murderers: Relations between Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks have long been fraught, but tensions peaked during the last days of the Ottoman Empire. Armenians, subjects of the empire, sought a nation of their own, while Turkish officials feared this would jeopardize their shaky authority. During World War I, the trio of Young Turk leaders—Grand Vizier Mehmed Talaat Pasha, Minister of War Ismail Enver Pasha, and Minister of the Navy Ahmed Djemal Pasha—saw an opportunity to cement their power by orchestrating systematic, industrial‑scale murder of the Armenian population.
The Mayhem: In early 1915, Enver Pasha led Ottoman forces to a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Sarikamis, prompting the government to shift blame onto the Armenians, accusing them of treachery. The plan unfolded in stages: first, able‑bodied Armenian men, already drafted into the imperial army, were disarmed and placed in labor battalions, making them defenseless against government‑encouraged mobs. Soon after, Armenian civilians were evicted from homes and slaughtered in the streets, or killed en masse through burning, drowning, poison, and gas. Those who survived were forced on death marches through harsh mountain and desert terrain to concentration camps in Ottoman Syria, where starvation, disease, and brutalization took a horrific toll. By the war’s end, approximately one million Armenians had been annihilated.
The Monument: After the empire’s collapse, the Three Pashas’ regime fell. Talaat Pasha and Djemal Pasha were assassinated by Armenian revolutionaries in the early 1920s (Operation Nemesis). Enver Pasha died in a head‑on attack against Soviet forces in 1922. Despite their culpability, Turkey later re‑interred the bodies of Talaat and Enver in the Abide‑i Hurriyet (Monument of Eternal Liberty) in Istanbul—an imposing complex with clean stone arches and tulip trees. Their graves remain the only memorials in Turkey honoring the architects of the Armenian genocide; the Turkish government still denies the events as genocide, preventing monuments to the victims from being erected within its borders. The graves receive minimal maintenance, and while some Turkish citizens now join genocide memorial events each April, the monuments to the Pashas endure, starkly contrasted with the absence of memorials for the dead.
6 John Mason
The Murderer: At the dawn of the 17th century, European colonists in New England were already embroiled in violent confrontations with Native American peoples. In 1637, only a year after the English Connecticut Colony was founded, tensions with the local Pequots—who were allied with England’s Dutch enemies—escalated due to famine‑driven attacks on both sides. Captain John Mason, an English Puritan and former soldier, had already distinguished himself by commanding the first American naval force and helping build Boston Harbor’s fortifications. When the Pequots threatened the colony, Mason was chosen to lead the Connecticut militia in a decisive, deadly surprise attack.
The Mayhem: In late May, Mason’s militia, joined by hundreds of Native allies who were traditional enemies of the Pequots, approached the main Pequot village along the Mystic River undetected. The village was heavily fortified with a thick wooden palisade but had only two gates for exit. After an initial assault on one gate resulted in heavy wounds among Mason’s men, he ordered part of the village set ablaze to cover his retreat. As the fire raged, Mason’s militiamen blocked the two exits, cutting down any Pequot—men, women, or children—who tried to flee. Over 400 Pequots faced a horrific choice: die in the flames or be slain by sword. John Underhill, Mason’s second‑in‑command, later recounted the brutal scene, describing how many were burned, how swords and swordsmen cut down those attempting to escape, and how the village was left in ruins with countless dead.
The Monument: After the Mystic massacre, Mason was promoted to major and served Connecticut for decades in various governmental and military roles, earning the moniker “the Major.” More than two centuries after his death, a larger‑than‑life bronze statue of Mason was erected in Mystic, believed to mark the exact spot of the Pequot village he destroyed. The Pequots, whose descendants later revived their cultural identity, protested the statue’s placement from the start. In the 1990s, Connecticut authorities revisited the issue. A Pequot spokesman suggested moving the statue to a more appropriate location and adding an inscription that acknowledged Mason’s broader contributions without glorifying his role in the massacre. After extensive discussion, the statue was re‑inscribed with a nuanced description and relocated near Mason’s home in Windsor, where it now stands as a complex reminder of history’s contradictions.
5 Hernan Cortes
The Murderer: Zeal can be a double‑edged sword, and the Spanish conquistadors wielded it with lethal force. Hernan Cortés arrived in the Spanish colonies as a teenager, quickly rising through the ranks. By age 20, he owned a large estate and numerous slaves; by 30, he was mayor of Santiago, Cuba. Yet he craved more. The newly discovered mainland of North America, specifically Mexico, beckoned. Cortés’s ambition led to an unprecedented campaign that resulted in massive wealth, upheaval, and slaughter.
The Mayhem: While the conquest of the Aztec Empire has been extensively chronicled, a stark example of Cortés’s brutality lies in the massacre at Cholula. This bustling Mexican city, with a population of around 100,000, served as a vital trade and religious hub, home to the massive pyramid Tlachihualtepetl. Though Cholulan leaders initially welcomed the Spanish peacefully, their distrust of the Spanish‑allied Tlaxcalans kept the allies outside the city. Cortés, fearing betrayal, gathered the Cholulan nobility in the great temple courtyard, ensuring they were unarmed. After accusing them of treachery, he ordered a massacre. Spanish soldiers hacked and slashed through defenseless nobles, priests, merchants, and families, while the Tlaxcalans rushed in to finish the slaughter. By sunset, thousands lay dead, and the city never recovered.
The Monument: Cortés’s later career saw him celebrated in Spain, though his statues sometimes faced vandalism, such as a 2010 incident where red paint was splashed on his monument in Medellín. In Mexico, monuments to Cortés have been contentious. In the 1980s, President López Portillo commissioned the “El Monumento al Mestizaje” in a Mexico City suburb, depicting a subdued scene of Cortés, his mistress Malinche, and their son Martín—one of the first mestizo families—sitting together. However, protests continued, and the statue was eventually moved to a less prominent park, reflecting ongoing tension over commemorating a conqueror responsible for immense bloodshed.
4 Vlad Tepes
The Murderer: Before the myth of Dracula, there was Vlad III of Wallachia—better known as Vlad Tepes, the “Impaler.” While he never walked among the undead, his insatiable lust for power drove him to commit wholesale cruelty. In the mid‑1400s, Wallachia was a tinderbox of noble infighting, Hungarian ambitions, and Ottoman expansion. Vlad’s father, Vlad II, tried to maintain power, while the Ottomans held two of his sons, including Vlad III, as hostages to ensure tribute. This imprisonment likely scarred the future ruler.
The Mayhem: After his father’s death at the hands of Hungarian invaders, Vlad III pursued the throne, alternating alliances with the Ottomans, Hungarians, and fellow Wallachian nobles. To cement his authority, he turned to mass murder. In a trade dispute with Saxon settlers in Transylvania, Vlad burned their villages, killing many, and executed survivors in various gruesome ways, sparing no infants. His signature method—impalement—was inspired by Ottoman practices he witnessed as a hostage. He impaled thousands, displaying the bodies as warning. In a letter to the Hungarian king, he boasted of killing 23,884 Turks and Bulgarians, sending sacks of severed heads, noses, and ears as proof. His psychological warfare terrified the Ottoman army, leading to a retreat after confronting a “forest of the dead” with an estimated 20,000 corpses.
The Monument: Despite his terror, Vlad’s legacy endured in Romania, where he is celebrated as a national hero who defended Wallachia’s independence. Outside Bran Castle, a striking white statue of Vlad stands on horseback, portraying him as a stoic lord. The pedestal bears the word “Tepes,” reminding viewers of his ruthless reputation. The monument faces east, symbolically turning its back on the ruins of places like Merv, yet for the victims, it remains a stark reminder of his brutal reign.
3 John Doyle Lee
The Murderer: Modern perceptions of Mormons often emphasize peace, but early Church history is riddled with violence. After founder Joseph Smith was murdered by an anti‑Mormon mob, the community formed its own armed militias for self‑defense. John Doyle Lee, a close friend of Smith and adoptive son of Brigham Young, rose to prominence, eventually becoming a major in the Mormon militia—positioning him to orchestrate one of the darkest chapters in American frontier history.
The Mayhem: In 1857, a wagon train from Arkansas—the Baker‑Fancher party—crossed Mormon‑controlled Utah en route to California. Growing anxiety about federal interference led Brigham Young to declare martial law, and local leaders deemed the emigrants a threat. They conspired to eliminate the party by enlisting local Paiute natives, reinforcing them with Mormon militiamen disguised as Native warriors. The resulting attack at Mountain Meadows in Washington County, Utah, turned into a brutal siege. When the Arkansans, exhausted and thirsty, accepted a promise of safe passage, Major Lee and his men revealed their true identities, shouting “Do your duty!” and turning on the emigrants. Muzzles flashed, knives emerged, and musket barrels became clubs. Nobody escaped; even teenage girls who tried to flee were captured, raped, and killed. Only 17 children under six survived. Within a week, the orphans were distributed among Mormon families, the victims’ belongings auctioned, and wild animals roamed the shallow graves.
The Monument: Lee was the sole perpetrator ever tried; after a decade‑long legal process, he was convicted and executed by a U.S. Army firing squad at Mountain Meadows. In 2004, Washington, Utah commissioned a 2.1‑meter bronze statue to honor Lee’s role in settling the state. Public outcry delayed its installation, and the sculptor eventually bought it back, placing it in his private gallery where it remains on display.
2 Jean‑Jacques Dessalines
The Murderer: Like Nat Turner, Jean‑Jacques Dessalines was a former slave seeking vengeance against the brutal white slave system. Yet, unlike Turner, Dessalines wielded systematic ruthlessness from a position of absolute authority. By 1804, the Haitian slave rebellion—only 13 years old—had achieved extraordinary success, culminating in a coalition of black slaves, mixed‑race creoles, and a few white colonists controlling the island. Dessalines rose from a plantation laborer to one of the top generals, known for his personal bravery and harsh tactics, including burning enemy villages and taking few prisoners. After betraying rival revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture, Dessalines became the supreme leader, proclaiming the Empire of Haiti in 1804.
The Mayhem: While many whites fled the island after earlier French defeats, about 4,000 chose to stay. Dessalines saw this remnant as a cancer threatening the new Haitian state. In early 1804, rumors circulated that the remaining whites planned to solicit European support for an invasion to reinstate slavery. Dessalines ordered all whites killed quietly, using blades and clubs to avoid detection. Although some soldiers hesitated, the emperor toured settlements, ordering mass executions. He forced all white colonists onto the streets, where they were slaughtered, raped, and murdered, sparing no adults or children. Even women were initially spared in some towns, but advisors argued that they could bear future white children, leading to their eventual execution if they refused forced marriage to black Haitians. By April 1804, nearly 4,000 whites lay dead; only a few captive wives and doctors survived.
The Monument: Dessalines was assassinated in 1806, but his role in Haiti’s independence earned him heroic statues and busts in Port‑au‑Prince, Gonaïves, and even Quito, Ecuador. Haitians view him with pride, recognizing the Haitian Revolution as the sole successful slave rebellion in history, achieving independence without external aid. His monuments stand as testaments to his pivotal, though brutal, contribution to Haitian nation‑building.
1 Nana Sahib And Tatya Tope
The Murderers: In 1857, British India simmered like a powder keg. Native resentment toward British imperial arrogance and fears of cultural erosion sparked a massive rebellion. Nana Sahib, heir to a princely state subsumed by British rule, initially hesitated, having befriended many British officials in Cawnpore (now Kanpur). His lieutenant, the cunning Tatya Tope, urged decisive action. Eventually, Nana Sahib committed fully to the uprising, unleashing devastating violence.
The Mayhem: The British civilian population in Cawnpore fled to a defensible compound called the Entrenchment, where they endured weeks of relentless cannon and musket fire from Nana Sahib’s forces. After a cease‑fire agreement, the British commander accepted evacuation terms, allowing survivors to board boats on the Ganges. However, Nana Sahib’s men, led by Tatya Tope, lay in wait. They promised safe passage, but once the emigrants were vulnerable, the rebels turned on them, killing men, women, and children—many burned alive, drowned, or shot at the river’s edge. Approximately 200 women and children were spared as hostages, confined to a house called the Bibighar. After a British relief force approached, the Indian leadership—most likely Tatya Tope—ordered the massacre of the captives, slashing women, mothers, fiancées, and newborns with cleavers. When the British finally arrived, they found a blood‑soaked well and a house littered with dismembered bodies.
The Monument: British outrage spurred the erection of a memorial park at the Bibighar site, featuring an angel statue atop the well and an Anglican cathedral commemorating the victims. After Indian independence in 1947, the memorial was vandalized and dismantled. The site now hosts Nana Rao Park, a civic green space honoring Nana Sahib as a freedom fighter, complete with plant nurseries, swimming pools, and sports facilities. Statues of Indian nationalists, including a martial bust of Tatya Tope, replace the former angel, shifting the narrative toward Indian heroism while the original British memorials have vanished.