Under the surface, the Cold War wasn’t all that cold. All the key players backed campaigns of espionage and even murder. In this environment, the 10 deadly assassins stalked the globe, turning ordinary cities into hunting grounds. As lethal operatives ranged across continents, everyone became a suspect and no one felt truly safe.
10 Deadly Assassins Overview
10 Gun Man
In 1950, a 19‑year‑old Ukrainian student named Bohdan Stashynsky was caught riding a train without a ticket. Local police handed him over to the KGB, which threatened his family unless he agreed to cooperate. After several years of infiltrating the anti‑Communist underground, the agency considered him trustworthy enough to receive a weapon.
The weapon was a compact aluminum cylinder that emitted a jet of liquid cyanide. If the spray struck a victim’s face or chest, the vapors caused a sudden contraction of the arteries, instantly cutting blood flow to the brain and producing a rapid death (a CIA report noted it might “conceivably … allow the victim time to scream”). The arteries relaxed after about five minutes, leaving virtually no trace of poison. Stashynsky first tested the device on a dog in the woods outside Karlshorst.
In 1957, Stashynsky emerged from a stairwell in Munich and eliminated Ukrainian anti‑Communist Lev Rebet with a cyanide jet. Two years later, he used the same method to kill Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. He swallowed antidote pills before and after each strike, and both deaths were initially recorded as heart attacks.
The saga could have ended there if Stashynsky hadn’t fallen in love with an East German woman. The KGB disapproved of the liaison and repeatedly tried to break them apart. When their young son suddenly died, the agency relented, allowing Stashynsky to travel to the funeral in Germany. The couple fled to the West, where Stashynsky confessed to the murders.
9 William Bechtel
In a diary uncovered by Swiss police, William Bechtel boasted, “I can break a man’s neck without his having time to shout. I know how to kill. But I look harmless.” These traits, honed during his stint in the French Foreign Legion, made him an ideal operative for the “Red Hand,” a clandestine unit of France’s SDECE tasked with eradicating anti‑French independence leaders in Africa.
One target was Cameroonian nationalist Felix Roland‑Moumie. In 1960, Bechtel posed as a journalist, inviting Moumie to dinner in Geneva. While Moumie was distracted by a phone call, Bechtel slipped a lethal dose of thallium into his aperitif, timing the poison to act after Moumie boarded a flight to Guinea in the early hours. The plan assumed the toxin would evade detection.
The scheme went awry when Moumie set aside the aperitif and drank a glass of wine instead. Undeterred, Bechtel poisoned the wine as well, but Moumie abruptly returned to the aperitif and drained it, ingesting a double dose. He collapsed almost instantly, and Swiss investigators linked the killing to Bechtel. Shielded by the French government, Bechtel never faced conviction before his death in 1980. Later, the head of SDECE provided a detailed account of the murder.
8 Jean‑Pierre Cherid
Jean‑Pierre Cherid was radicalized as a member of the OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète), a right‑wing paramilitary group that opposed Algerian independence and repeatedly plotted against French President Charles de Gaulle. In retaliation, de Gaulle launched his own shadowy death squad: the SAC (Service d’Action Civique).
After the OAS collapsed, Cherid fled to Spain, where he found work as an assassin for the Spanish government. He became especially active against the Basque separatist group ETA. Among his deeds, he planted the car bomb that killed ETA leader José Benaran Ordenana and orchestrated the murder of José Martin Sagardia in southern France. He also led the infamous machine‑gun assault on the Hendayais bar, which claimed two French lives.
Cherid met his end in 1984 when a wiring mistake while setting a bomb in Biarritz, France, led to his mangled remains being recovered from the roof of a neighboring house.
7 Michael Townley
In 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende fell in a U.S.-backed coup. The new junta unleashed a reign of terror, most famously the “Caravan of Death” that raced across the country murdering political prisoners. Meanwhile, Chile’s secret police (DINA) began recruiting killers to eliminate the regime’s overseas enemies. One of their most successful hires was a young American, Michael Townley, who had cut his teeth building bombs for CIA‑backed Cuban groups in Miami.
In 1974, Townley planted a car bomb that killed General Carlos Prats, an opponent of the coup who was residing in Argentina. The following year, he coordinated the shooting of exiled politician Bernardo Leighton and his wife in Rome.
In 1976, Townley executed his most notorious operation: detonating a bomb in Washington, D.C., that killed former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and an American associate. The murder sparked an international scandal, especially because Townley and DINA had strong links to the CIA, leading to rumors that the agency may have known about the plot.
Townley was extradited from Chile to the United States in 1978. In exchange for his testimony against various Cuban collaborators, he received a light ten‑year sentence. He is believed to be living quietly as a free man under the Witness Protection Program.
6 Josip Perkovic
In 1977, a Serbian exile named Dragisa Kasikovic was discovered dead in his Chicago office, having been stabbed more than 60 times. His girlfriend’s nine‑year‑old daughter, Ivanka, was found nearby, similarly butchered. Dragisa and Ivanka were among dozens of Yugoslavian émigrés murdered during the Cold War, spanning continents from America to Australia to France. All victims opposed the Yugoslav government established by Josip Broz Tito.
Tito famously resisted Soviet influence, and it has been alleged that Western governments were reluctant to probe the Yugoslav assassination program for fear of jeopardising relations. Investigators were reportedly warned against accusing the Yugoslav state, and the murders never received the publicity given to killings by other Communist regimes—even though the Yugoslavs eliminated more people in the West than the KGB did.
Even after the Cold War, resistance persisted in pursuing the perpetrators. When Croatia joined the European Union, it passed a law effectively blocking the extradition of Josip Perkovic, who headed the unit responsible for many of the killings. Perkovic was finally arrested in 2014 and is now serving a life sentence in Germany for the 1983 murder of exile Stjepan Durekovic.
5 Vinko Sindicic
In 1988, football fans swarmed Glasgow for a World Cup qualifier between Scotland and Yugoslavia. One of the “fans” slipped away, traveled north to a wooded area, and retrieved a hidden gun. Continuing to Kirkcaldy, he shot Croatian dissident Nikola Stedul in the mouth and chest.
Astonishingly, Stedul survived, largely thanks to his dog Pasha, who lunged at the gunman and barked loudly, alerting neighbors and forcing the assassin to flee before completing the job. The killer was later apprehended at Heathrow Airport and identified as Vinko Sindicic, perhaps the deadliest operative of the Yugoslav murder program.
Sindicic is believed to have carried out more than a dozen assassinations worldwide. His most infamous act was the killing of journalist Bruno Busic, who was shot in the doorway of his Paris apartment in 1978. An attempt to prosecute Sindicic for this murder collapsed after a disastrous trial, and he is now a free man, having completed ten years for attempted murder in a British prison.
4 Craig Williamson
Craig Williamson killed from a distance, but that didn’t make him any less lethal. As South Africa’s “superspy,” he infiltrated the anti‑Apartheid movement during the 1970s, only to be recalled in 1980 when suspicions grew. Promoted to major in South African military intelligence, he ordered bomb‑maker Jerry Raven to design tiny explosives that could be slipped into envelopes.
In 1982, Williamson employed one of these letter bombs to assassinate exiled writer and activist Ruth First in Mozambique. In 1984, he sent another envelope bomb to ANC members Marius and Jeanette Schoon in Angola; the device killed Jeanette and the couple’s six‑year‑old daughter. Williamson had known the couple from his double‑agent days and allegedly dispatched the bomb as revenge for their role in exposing his cover, though he denies that motive.
In 2000, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission granted Williamson amnesty for all three murders, as well as the 1982 bombing of the ANC office in London. He remains a free man.
3 Mehmet Ali Agca
As a youngster, Mehmet Ali Agca joined the violent Turkish neo‑fascist group known as the Grey Wolves, which sent him to Syria for assassin training. He carried out his first killing in 1979, shooting noted newspaper editor Abdi İpekçi.
After escaping prison, Agca spent several years on the run, during which he is believed to have carried out at least one more assassination, gunning down a Turkish nationalist in Germany. Then, in 1981, he pushed his way through a crowd in Rome and shot Pope John Paul II.
The Pope was struck four times but survived, later publicly forgiving Agca. The shooting remains shrouded in mystery. Agca made several bizarre and conflicting statements, including a claim to be the Messiah. Experts remain divided on whether these proclamations stemmed from mental illness or were a deliberate ploy to confuse investigators.
A plausible theory links Agca to the Bulgarian Secret Service acting on behalf of the KGB, which was unsettled by the Pope’s popularity in his native Poland. An equally plausible view holds that Agca was a lone, deranged individual who decided to kill the Pope. He was released from prison in 2010 and now lives in Turkey.
2 Mike Harari
In 1972, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September murdered 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich. In retaliation, the Israeli government launched Operation Wrath of God, aiming to assassinate the entire Black September leadership. The operation’s mastermind was Mike Harari, a Mossad veteran and founder of the Kidon assassination unit.
Harari was a legend within Mossad—during the famous Entebbe raid, he personally scouted the airport and even infiltrated the air‑traffic control tower disguised as an Italian businessman. Under his command, the hit squad eliminated at least seven suspected Black September members across Europe. In one case, a target answered his telephone, confirmed his identity, and was instantly killed by a bomb concealed in the receiver.
Harari’s reputation suffered a blow when he personally led a mission to Norway that mistakenly killed an innocent Moroccan waiter, who had been misidentified as Black September leader Ali Hassan Salameh. Six members of the squad were arrested by Norwegian authorities. Harari escaped, but the episode dealt a severe blow to Mossad’s standing.
Harari’s final known operation came six years later, when he finally succeeded in assassinating Salameh, partially restoring his image after the Norway fiasco. He died in 2014, spending much of his retirement denying alleged work for Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
1 The Giant, The Killer, And The Old Man
In the early 1980s, Belgium’s Brabant region was terrorised by a shadowy trio that claimed at least 28 lives. Though the attacks outwardly resembled robberies, the sheer brutality and the paltry sums taken revealed that money wasn’t the motive.
In one incident, the gang burst into a supermarket and shot seven people dead, including young children, then walked away with a small bag of cash that was later found unopened in a canal. On another occasion, the group triggered the alarm in a food shop and waited for police to arrive, only to ambush the gendarmes as they entered.
Three regular members were tentatively identified: the Giant, a tall figure who seemed to lead the crew; the Killer, noted for extreme violence; and the Old Man, who usually acted as the getaway driver. Later investigations suggested that members of the Belgian neo‑fascist group Westland New Post had scouted some of the locations on the orders of their leader Paul Latinus. This fueled speculation that the extreme right carried out the murders to discredit leftists or undermine the government, and that the group may have been linked to elements of the Belgian state or the CIA‑backed Gladio network. The killings remain unsolved.