Top 10 Strangest Motives for Murder: When Logic Dies and Madness Takes Over

Murder is often explained by the old trinity of motive: money, jealousy, revenge. But some killers defy all logic — their reasons are so strange, irrational, or chillingly absurd that they leave even seasoned detectives shaking their heads.

From the Cold War agent slain with a poisoned umbrella to a cannibal who believed eating beauty could make it his own, these crimes show that not all murder is born of hatred. Some are rooted in delusion, obsession, superstition — or simply the bizarre corners of the human mind.

Each case in this list reminds us that the question “why?” is sometimes the hardest one to answer.

1. The Umbrella Assassin – Georgi Markov (London, 1978)

It was a bright London morning when Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov waited for a bus near Waterloo Bridge. A stranger brushed past him, tapping his thigh with an umbrella tip. Markov felt a sting — like an insect bite — and within days, he was dead. The autopsy revealed a tiny metal pellet laced with ricin, a poison with no antidote. Investigators suspected Bulgarian secret police, aided by the KGB, had orchestrated the hit to silence the outspoken journalist who mocked the Communist regime on Radio Free Europe. The murder weapon, an umbrella modified to fire a micro-pellet, sounded like something from a spy novel — and it was. No one was ever charged. The “Umbrella Assassin” disappeared into Cold War legend, leaving behind one of history’s strangest motives: the silencing of a voice, delivered with a gentleman’s umbrella.

2. The Lottery Curse – Abraham Shakespeare (Florida, 2009)

When construction worker Abraham Shakespeare won $30 million in the Florida lottery, he believed his troubles were over....Read More