The idea of an assassin often invokes the image of the lone gunman, working on his own to eliminate whoever he views as a threat. But a handful of groups have recruited enough of these individuals to assemble into entire organizations—made up of those willing to kill for what they believe in.

10The Vishkanyas

The vishkanya, deadly and beautiful assassins, were developed in ancient India to end the conflict between kings without widespread violence. According to ancient literature, one way of grooming a girl was to dose her with poison a bit at a time until she built up an immunity to it.^[1] She would then be sent into an enemy camp or tasked with getting close to a rival king, administering poison to him while eating and drinking from the same vessels to allay suspicion. In other cases, the girl might be purposely infected with a poison (spread through blood or sexual contact) or an infectious disease before being dispatched to the rival capital or camp.

9Werwolf

The Werwolves were a group of around 5,000 volunteers selected from the most promising members of the Hitler Youth and the Waffen SS. They were trained in sabotage and silent killing, and then they were left behind in territories taken from Nazi control and placed in Allied hands. While there are a few sporadic reports of Werwolf cells being effective, they were, for the most part, crippled by many of the same problems that plagued the mainstream Nazi armies at the end of the war.^[2]

In the spring of 1945, there was a rash of assassinations of civil officials and Allied-appointed mayors in towns once held by German forces. The most famous was the assassination of Franz Oppenhoff, appointed head of Aachen. Officially called Operation Carnival, the assassins disguised themselves as downed German pilots to get close enough to Aachen’s mayor to shoot and kill him.

8The Band of Thebes

The Sacred Band of Thebes, a troop of soldiers that consisted of 150 gay male couples, formed the elite force of the Theban army in the 4th century BC. The rationale behind the Band’s composition was that lovers would fight more fiercely and cohesively than strangers with no intense bonds. Theban general Pelopidas formed these couples into a distinct unit—the “special forces” of Greek soldiery—and the 40 years of their known existence (378–338 BC) marked the pre-eminence of Thebes as a military and political power in late-classical Greece.

The Sacred Band fought the Spartans at Tegyra in 375 BC, vanquishing an army that was at least three times its size. It was also responsible for the victory at Leuctra in 371 BC that established Theban independence from Spartan rule and laid the groundwork for expanding Theban power. Their only defeat came at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), against Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great. It is written that Philip, after the fight, took a view of the slain; coming upon the place where the three hundred that fought his phalanx lay dead together and, understanding that it was the band of lovers, he wept. Around 300 BC, the town of Thebes erected a giant stone lion on a pedestal at the burial site of the Sacred Band that still stands today.^[3]

7Sarasota Assassination Society

Founded in 1884 as a political club, the Sara Sota Vigilance Committee was renamed the Sarasota Assassination Society by The New York Times. By then, nine of the 22 members were on trial for two murders.

Their politics was an angry divide between the North and the South. With so many Northerners heading down to enjoy the business opportunities in the South, there was quite a bit of bitterness. The group’s official purpose became ridding the state of those the law wouldn’t touch, “the removal of all obnoxious persons.”^[4]

It is not clear how many of these obnoxious persons the society got rid of, but the murder of a postmaster named Charles Abbe catapulted the society to the front page of the national news. Abbe’s body was dumped in the Gulf of Mexico and was never recovered, and the prison sentences handed out to society members were enough to lead to the organization’s downfall.

6The Black Hand

When 10 men from Serbia formed The Black Hand in 1911, they did so with a very straightforward goal: using violence and terrorist activities to create a unified Serbia.

That started with sending out assassins to first kill Emperor Franz Josef, then the governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, General Oskar Potiorek. Both attempts failed, but membership in the group rose. By 1914, one man, in particular, needed to go: Archduke Franz Ferdinand.^[5]

Three Black Hand assassins set up along the motorcade’s route to ensure someone’s success, and Gavrilo Princip succeeded, where Trifko Grabez and Nedeljko Cabrinovic failed. All three had been inducted into the group by members recruiting from Belgrade cafes.

5The Sicarii

The Sicarii were Jewish assassins named for their weapon of choice—a curved dagger called a sica. They received the name from ancient Greek historian Josephus, who wrote about the anti-Roman group’s preferred method of killing. While they were known for their large-scale raids, they are more commonly associated with their tactics of simply hiding their weapons in their clothes and stalking their targets through what would normally be rather inconvenient public locations.

The group was known as followers of Judas of Galilee, and their goal was a simple one: incite rebellion against Rome. A revolt did happen in Jerusalem in 65 BC, but the unsuccessful revolt led to the eventual disappearance of the group.^[6] They last appeared at an attack on the ancient fortress at Masada. Eventually, the term “sicarii” was broadened to refer to any Jewish terrorist.

4Harmodius, Aristogiton, and the Tyrannicides

According to Cicero, the assassination of a political leader is sometimes justified if that act meets certain criteria. If the leader has committed atrocities against his people and the common good, if the death will advance the common good, and if the act is a last resort, it can be justified—and those who commit the assassination are the tyrannicides.

The original tyrannicides were Harmodius and Aristogeiton, a pair of lovers who murdered the brother of Athenian tyrant Hippias. Even though they failed to kill their target, their actions were glorified by Athenian history, and their motivation was elevated to an Athenian ideal.^[7] After their martyrdom, Athenian citizens vowed to assassinate any future tyrants, and tyrannicides (and their descendants) were granted rewards like tax exemptions, free meals, and front-row theater seats.

3Murder, Inc.

Murder, Inc. was a branch of the National Crime Syndicate, responsible for 400–1,000 assassinations during the 1930s and 1940s.

Their headquarters were in the Midnight Rose Candy Store, a 24-hour store in Brooklyn. The store had a bank of payphones, and assassins would wait for the phone to ring with details about the next hit. Most hits were along the East Coast, and most were done with an ice pick, and most targets were either gangsters more trouble than they were worth or ordinary citizens who had the misfortune of witnessing a crime.^[8]

Murder, Inc. was run by Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, who met his own end in the electric chair in 1944. Originally, his arrest came with a 14-year sentence on drug charges, and his execution came amid conspiracy theories about just who he had killed and who he was really connected to.

2The Nokmim

A handful of different words refer to the Jewish assassins who made it their duty to make sure unpunished Nazi war criminals paid the price for their actions. Some call the group “Nokmim,” Hebrew for “Avengers.”

The group was secretive, and the few testimonies of former members tell differing stories and give no real estimates as to how many Nazis were hunted and killed by the organization. One BBC reporter who wrote extensively on the Nokmim told stories about everything from hit-and-run incidents to one former Gestapo officer who was in the hospital for a minor operation when he came down with a fatal case of kerosene injected into his blood.

No one knows how long the Nokmim were active, but they likely operated well into the 1950s. Their reach was worldwide and included individual assassinations and massive operations aimed at eliminating scores of men with (failed) plans to poison the water supplies of entire cities.^[9]

1Hassan-is-Sabbah’s Assassins

When Hassan-is-Sabbah died in 1124, he left behind a sect of believers in the Fortress Alamut, the heart of an assassin’s guild for the next century and a half until they were wiped out by the Mongols in 1256.

A philosopher and preacher, also known as the Old Man of the Mountain, he taught that there was nothing honorable about leaders who lived a life of luxury while their people starved. The most devoted were trained to remove heads of state and military they saw as corrupt and too powerful, along with those who followed the Sunni doctrine.

The first recorded assassination was in 1092, and the order then targeted anyone they saw as unjust, including those who fought in the Crusades. Viewing themselves as judges rather than murderers, the ranks of the assassins would grow so large they would eventually occupy 70 locations and communicate through their own coded language.^[10]

Prince Harry has finally published his long-awaited memoir, Spare, and as one can expect from anything slathered with royal honey, it’s selling like hotcakes. The book is supposed to tell his side of the story, how his family’s rule has shaped him, his time at war, and his well-documented exit from royalty hand in hand with his polarizing American wife.

For Harry, there was likely an incredible financial incentive and the promise of riches that would probably have never come had he remained a backup to the throne his entire life. His story proves that every so often, a person is scorned by an organization they were once part of and even loved, only to turn their backs against that very institution, telling their story and outing secrets that were never meant for the public eye.

Here are ten examples of members of secret societies who have spilled the beans.

Related: Top 10 Things Possibly Hidden In The Vatican Secret Archives

10 John Robison—Freemasons

A scientist with a long-established reputation in the British scientific community, John Robison was also a professor at Edinburgh University and an authority on mathematics and optics. In the late 1700s, Robison was also the author of Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, a book about the reach of the Freemasons. In particular, it focused on a Masonic cell—a source of hundreds and thousands of ominous conspiracy theories—the Illuminati. As a Mason himself, he had insider information about the workings of the organization and wrote about it all. As you might expect, the first edition sold out shortly after release and was published many times after that.

From Edinburgh, he witnessed the fall of the French monarchy and the dispossessing of the church as well as the entire French Revolution. This, he subsequently blamed on the Freemasons, suggesting that all the agents involved in the revolution were mere pawns in a much bigger game with ambitious ends.^[1]

9 Ed Decker—Mormon Church

Born in 1935, Ed Decker was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (or LDS Church) before he became a prominent member of the Christian group for ex-Mormons called Saints Alive in Jesus. Considered one of the most influential people with regard to the Mormon Church, Decker (in collaboration with Dave Hunt) penned a book known as The God Makers in which he exposed the inner workings of the church.

Decker’s relationship with the Mormon Church waned when he was exposed to the beliefs of other groups critical of Mormonism. He decided he could no longer live according to the premise that its founder, Joseph Smith, was called upon by God to restore pure Christianity to the world.^[2]

8 Stetson Kennedy—the KKK

Stetson Kennedy, a writer who documented life in the Depression era, produced a book showcasing the inner mechanisms of the notorious Ku Klux Klan. The work he was most known for, a book known as The Klan Unmasked, which hit the shelves in 1954, was set in motion in the 1940s when he set himself the goal of exposing the organization and its efforts to terrorize black citizens in the region.

In this book, he exposed many things that were not known to the public before then, like their folklore, secret handshakes, and passwords, as well as mocking their white sheet attire. With evidence collected from the grand dragon himself, he provided the IRS with enough information to press for collecting a $685,000 tax lien from the Klan. He also provided assistance with the drafting of a brief used by the state of Georgia to revoke the Klan’s national corporate charter and also testified in other Klan-related cases. Kennedy passed away at the age of 94 after decades of tormenting Klansmen.^[3]

7 Heinrich Himmler—Nazis

The architect of the Holocaust, the right-hand man of Adolf Hitler himself, kept a diary. Diaries kept by Himmler, compiled by Himmler’s assistant, covered most of the war and were discovered in 2013. Although Himmler did not technically “spill the beans,” as the title of the article suggests, they do provide a sobering account of one of history’s most vile men.

The diaries include over a thousand pages documenting day-to-day life, executions of Nazi-allied officers in Poland who refused to fight, and other details all the way to the Final Solution. They add depth to the understanding of Himmler’s character and the atrocious acts he gave the order for. One particular such order was to equip Auschwitz concentration camp with new guard dogs that could rip the prisoners apart. The diaries are personal and do not give insight into his emotional well-being or his relationships, but is that really necessary?^[4]

6 Jeannie Mills—People’s Temple

Jeannie Mills, her husband Al, and their two children left the People’s Temple in 1974. Previously known as Elmer and Deanna Mertla, they rose to positions of responsibility within the ranks of the church, with Deanna serving as the head of the Temple’s publication office and Elmer as their official photographer. After they left the church, the husband and wife pairing became two of the most vocal critics, also founding the Human Freedom Center, which acted as a refuge for other defectors from the temple. After the Jonestown tragedy, the center offered itself as a place to go for survivors.

In February 1980, the couple, along with their daughter (15 years old at the time), were murdered in their home in Berkley, igniting rumors that a death squad made up of previous members of the church had taken their lives. Evidence later showed that the sole survivor of the ordeal, their son Eddie Mills, was perhaps not as innocent as initially suggested, quelling some fears about the church death squads.^[5]

5 Leah Remini—Scientology

Known for her supporting role in the popular sitcom King of Queens, Leah Remini was also a member of the Church of Scientology. Brought into the church at the young age of eight when her mother converted, Remini’s decision to leave the church ultimately came down to her own nine-year-old daughter. One month after her exit from the group, Remini filed a missing person’s report for Scientology leader David Miscavige’s wife, Shelly, who has not been seen since 2007.

Since then, she has been an active opponent of the ideologies of the church and throws her weight behind cases against its members. She also produced a show about the inner workings of the religion called Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.^[6]

4 India and Catherine Oxenberg—NXIVM

Catherine and her daughter India signed up for NXIVM classes that were advertised as workshops to develop their entrepreneurial skills. It was at these workshops that India was recruited into a secret society within the organization, which ultimately ruined her relationship with her mother. It took the pair seven years to free themselves from the sex cult. Catherine eventually penned a memoir about her experience trying to save her daughter from the cult-like group to no avail.

India eventually saw the folly in her ways. The group founder, Keith Raniere, was found guilty of racketeering, sex trafficking, and possession of child pornography in connection with the group.^[7]

3 Janja Lalich—Democratic Workers Party

The Democratic Workers Party (DWP) was created in the U.S. in the 1970s by a collective of women led by Marlene Dixon. The party was one of the more controversial attempts to create a Marxist-Leninist party in the U.S., which championed sectarianism toward the forces on the left. The organization disbanded in 1985, but not before establishing a cult-like following for their primitive conception of Leninism and the Leninist party.

One of the party members and defectors, Janja Lalich, joined the DWP and was exposed to a range of strange requests and rules by which the party controlled her income and cut her off from her family entirely. She was ordered to pick a name and burn her belongings and was taken to book for spending time with her dying mother. Lalich has since become a sociologist and writer and has written numerous books about cults and coercion, exposing how these organizations work and recruit.^[8]

2 Joe Valachi—The Mafia (aka Cosa Nostra)

Joe Valachi, an American gangster who turned state informer in 1962, held a high rank in the Mafia, equivalent to that of sergeant, and was a member of the Lucky Luciano’s mob family. Convicted of drug-related charges and sentenced to prison, Valachi received the promise of death from Vito Genovese. In a flat panic, Valachi killed a fellow prisoner in paranoia-induced rage, then opened up about the entire organization to the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the U.S. Senate in retaliation to the death threats he received.

Considered one of the most influential informants in organized crime history, Valachi was on a mission to destroy the underworld that had betrayed him and put a $100,000 bounty on his head. He had lost his wife and his mob family, and consumed with guilt, he relied on government protection to keep him alive until his final days when a heart attack finally killed the rat.^[9]

1 Carlos Lehder—Medellín Drug Cartel

Lehder, who dipped his toes into the criminal underbelly by smuggling stolen cars into Canada and the American East Coast, which led to his incarceration, quickly made friends with the wrong people. He soon became a key player in the cocaine import business, persuading Goerge Jung to use planes to transport the drugs. Fast forward a few years when Lehder had worked his way up the ranks of the Medellín cartel, where he fell out of favor with the notorious Pablo Escobar. He was arrested shortly after that and sentenced to life in prison.

Authorities agreed to reduce Lehder’s jail term on the condition that he testify against former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, who had ties with the Medellín cartel and allowed them to ship cocaine through Panama. Lehder was placed under witness protection and eventually released from prison after serving his reduced sentence. He was deported to Germany, where he held citizenship through his father.^[10]

Question: what do the Nobel Prize, ASPCA, Planned Parenthood and Batman all have in common? The answer is their shockingly dark origin stories. It turns out that it’s not just violent vigilantes who have to deal with a tortured past; some of our most beloved organizations are burdened with a history more befitting The Punisher than a respected charity. I’m talking organisations like:

SEE ALSO: 10 Holidays With Twisted, Dark, And Unusual Histories

Planned Parenthood is a charity dedicated to women’s reproductive rights. Without getting into the politics of it, most of us can at least agree that their work with contraception and cervical screening has a positive impact—despite the fact that their organization was founded by a genocidal racist.

It’s true, Margaret Sanger was as crazy as they come; her 1932 paper My Way to Peace cheerfully categorizes the world into countries whose people have “the national characteristics desirable” and those whose people don’t. She was also a rampant eugenicist, with an abhorrence of physical, moral and mental “defectives,” who she campaigned to have segregated, sterilized and sent to work on “farms.”

Her list of defectives, by the way, included paupers, epileptics, the unemployed, and people who couldn’t read; all in all, she estimated that the USA needed to segregate five million of its citizens. Even her charitable work on birth control was promoted to “improve the quality of the race”; proof that sometimes the best things come from the worst places.

Without the ASPCA, we’d probably still have cockfighting, unregulated slaughterhouses, and no penalties for animal cruelty. Please bear that in mind while you read the next bit.

In 1894, the charity began operating New York’s municipal animal shelter, a service they provided for one hundred years. During that time they managed to make it probably the most murderous animal shelter in the history of the world. At its peak, forty to fifty thousand stray animals were destroyed each year—a level of extermination so vast that it probably would probably have depopulated the world of dogs if left unchecked.

Things got so bad that in 1976 two members of the charity’s own board sued it for animal cruelty. Just to clarify, this is the same charity that named itself “American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.” It wasn’t until 1994 that the charity finally ended their annual bloodbath, handing the reigns over to ACC; who promptly lowered the annual euthanasia rate to a less-terrifying 8,000.

It may not exactly be “beloved,” but the Department of Energy does its job. Without it we’d have no domestic power, Human Genome Project, or possibility of nuclear annihilation.

That’s not a joke. Before they got into the day-to-day business of government, the Department’s only remit was to build a city-vaporizing bomb. See, before the Cold War even got started, the race was on to perfect a nuclear weapon. The British, Germans and Americans were all busy trying to crack the Konami Code of WWII and it was pretty clear whoever got there first would win the game.  To make sure it wasn’t the Nazis, the US government set up the Manhattan Project, a top secret project employing almost as many people as the car industry. After the war, the project changed hands and names, eventually metamorphosing into the innocuous-sounding Department of Energy.

Everyone reading this remembers Kony. He’s the brutal, child-soldier-using warlord the world was going to take down by watching youtube videos. The closest our post-Stalin world has to a bona-fide monster, there’s no way any charity that stood up to him could be accused of something as base as rank hypocrisy.

Except, of course it could. As one expert on international conflict in the Congo region pointed out, Kony’s LRA were not the only army to exploit child soldiers and massacre civilians. The Ugandan President has been implicated in the sort of war crimes nobody wants to read about on a family site, as has the SPLA; both of whom Invisible Children are involved with. Supporters say it’s a necessary evil that doesn’t detract from their mission, though how supporting the very thing you stand against constitutes “fulfilling your mission” is anyone’s guess.

Aside from Gandhi, Mother Teresa is probably the figure most commonly associated with words like “good” and “selfless.” She reached out to the homeless, took tea with lepers, raised astronomical amounts of money for her Missionaries of Charity, and generally lived her life as the perfect Christian. What’s not to like?

Unfortunately, she also palled around with some of the nastiest figures of her day. Just as Gandhi once obsequiously referred to Hitler as his “friend”, Mother Teresa had no qualms about accepting money from “Papa Doc,” the murderous Haitian leader; or Charles Keating, the American fraudster who gifted her charity more than $1 million of other people’s savings; savings the Missionaries never returned.

But hey, that money was probably going to people who deserved it, right? Think again. A 1991 report alleged that the Missionaries gave only seven percent of donations to those whom they supported, while the rest went to building new missions. All this might even be forgivable, were it not for the horrific accounts of negligence in the Calcutta mission. According to this report, volunteers often lacked any medical training, resulting in deaths that could have easily been avoided. Depressing proof, if needed, that nobody’s perfect.

There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of PEW. Basically, they’re a non-partisan NGO who get their kicks improving public policy and protecting the environment. Oh, and they were established by a bunch of free-market psychos.

Before anyone gets offended, let me add that supporting a free-market economy is as valid a position as any other. On the other hand, claiming Roosevelt’s New Deal was “a gigantic scheme to raze US businesses to a dead level and debase the citizenry into a mass of ballot-casting serfs” crosses that hazy line from “opinionated” to “insane.” Set up by the children of oil tycoon Joseph N. Pew, the PEW Trust spent the first years of its life vigorously campaigning for unrestricted drilling rights and such-like, before undergoing a Scrooge-like change of heart and becoming staunch environmentalists.

While Mensa was officially founded after a chance meeting on a train, the idea of a club for clever people had first been floated by Cyril Burt in 1946. Earlier in life, Burt was a member of the British Eugenics Society; a group of doctors, scientists, and teachers concerned with “preserving the virility of the Anglo-Saxon race”.

This isn’t just a tenuous connection either; one of Mensa’s two founding fathers openly acknowledged Burt’s influence and the society made him honorary president. Of course, this was all years ago and Mensa has no truck with eugenics now—apart from that brief period in 1995 when their newsletter suggested the homeless “be humanely done away with, like abandoned kittens”.

For most people, receiving a Nobel Prize is probably the highest accolade they can imagine. Forget the Oscars and the Pulitzers—a Nobel Prize tells the world that you’re not only fantastic, but that you’re fantastic for the common good. What sort of living saint would set up such a philanthropic award?

How about one nicknamed “The Merchant of Death”? Before dedicating his fortune to encouraging awesomeness, Alfred Nobel was foremost an inventor; and foremost among his inventions was dynamite. When it came time to print his obituary in 1888, a French newspaper recognized his contribution to suffering by running the headline “The Merchant of Death is Dead.”

Except here’s the kicker: he wasn’t. The paper had jumped the gun and Alfred was alive and well enough to read his premature obituary and become obsessed by it. So obsessed, in fact, that he decided to set up the Nobel Prize specifically to protect his future reputation from sneering French obituary writers.

Being a homeless child in Victorian London wasn’t all jolly songs and artful dodges; for every wise-cracking scamp there were roughly a gazillion scared and hungry kids at perpetual risk of exploitation. In 1867, philanthropist Dr Thomas Barnardo decided enough was enough; he was going to help Britain’s orphans, even if he had to kidnap healthy children from happy families to do so. Wait, what?

Turns out Dr Barnardo had a pretty broad definition of what constituted “help”; while sometimes this involved rehousing homeless kids, other times it involved abducting infants from their godless Catholic parents. See, for Barnardo, abuse and Catholicism were interchangeable. Over the course of his life he snatched and sent thousands of otherwise-happy kids to Canada or Australia, usually without even bothering to inform their parents. For those of us not familiar with the finer points of Victorian law, this was very much illegal; Barnardo was hauled into court eighty-eight times on related charges, but each time the case was dropped. Oh yeah, and that ‘Dr’ at the front of his name? He totally made that up.

Lord Baden-Powell was as old-time British as they come: tough, adventurous, terrified of masturbation and probably gay. In 1908 he published the aptly-titled book ‘Scouting for Boys’ and the rest is history; except for the part where he supported Hitler.

I kid you not. Baden-Powell’s 1939 diary includes the immortal line “Lay up all day. Read Mein Kampf. A wonderful book.” Throughout the thirties he continued to hand out Swastika badges, way beyond the point it was advisable to be seen in public wearing one; while in 1937 he met the German ambassador in London to discuss forging closer ties between the Scouts and Hitler Youth.

If that wasn’t enough, MI5 even have him on record moaning about the difficulties he faced with the “socialist press when our boys had appeared in uniform at a fascist demonstration”. So to surmise, the founder of the Scouts was a sexually repressed admirer of Hitler who gave swastikas to children and supported Nazi Germany. Way to ruin our childhoods, history.