We hope you’re ready because you’re about to
learn who the worst people in America were. From serial killers who did unspeakable
things to science experiments gone wrong, you won’t believe what these 20 Americans did. Number 20 on our list is the American
known as the “Merchant of Misery.” James DeWolf was the head of one of the
largest slave-importing families in America. Based out of Rhode Island, DeWolf amassed
a huge fortune selling other humans. Normally we think of slavery as happening in the
southern states during early American history, however, DeWolf made his fortune by selling slaves
in the northern territories. He was indicted for murder in 1790 for throwing a sick female slave
overboard on one of his ships, but the charges were dropped. Anyone who dealt in the slave trade
was a bad person, but making tons of money off of selling other people without any remorse makes
James DeWolf one of the worst Americans ever. In the 1600’s William Stoughton was the judge
who presided over many of the Salem witch trials. He was a crazed madman who saw witches around
every corner. He is also the 19th worst American on our list. Stoughton had no legal
training and was only educated for ministry. When women in Salem were accused of being
witches, Stoughton presided over the trials. He had no intention of allowing the women
representation, or witnesses to defend them. Instead, Stoughton used his nonexistent legal
background to condemn the women on the basis of what he believed. He sent 19 people to the gallows
to be hung for witchcraft, 14 of which were women. William Stoughton was the worst fake judge
presiding over fake claims in American history. Sometimes we forget how terrible Americans were
earlier in the country’s history. The atrocities on other peoples, especially those native to the
land were sometimes unfathomable. John Chivington is a name you’ve probably never heard before, but
he is number 18 on our list of the worst Americans for what he did to native peoples. On November
29, 1864 Colonel John Chivington ordered the massacre of over 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho women,
children, and elderly at Sand Creek, Colorado. They had already surrendered, but Chivington
ordered his men to take no prisoners, and he watched as his troops slaughtered the defenseless
indigenous people. And something to keep in mind as you try to grapple with this terrible
American; he was also an ordained minister. For number 17 we come to an early American
president. Presidents can be polarizing depending on who they are, and what party
they belong to. However, only one president did nothing as the United States literally
got ripped apart. James Buhanan idly sat by as the southern states spread slavery further
west after the Louisiana Purchase and Mexican War. During his inauguration he vehemently
supported the Dred Scott decision in which the Supreme Court stated that Congress could not
keep slavery out of newly acquired territories. Buchanan also refused to challenge states that
intended to succeed from the Union. Instead, he let the situation become more and more out of
control, until finally it was all but inevitable that the southern states would leave the Union
and civil war would ensue. The really messed up thing is that he repeatedly claimed history
would remember him fondly as a president who did the duty given to him by the Constitution.
Unfortunately for Buchanan, history remembers him as one of the worst presidents of all time.
And speaking of the Confederacy, there was one American who may have been worse than all the rest
during the Civil War. Nathan Bedford Forrest is number 16 on our list because of the heinous war
crimes he committed during the Civil War. In April of 1864 an entire garrison of black Union soldiers
surrendered to Forrest’s troops, but rather than take the soldiers prisoner, he ordered them killed
even after they laid down their weapons. And this was not just an execution, it was a slaughter as
Forrest ordered every soldier in the garrison be killed. It should come as no surprise that Forrest
was also one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan and may have been the organization's first Grand
Wizard. Either one of these atrocities is enough to make Forrest one of the worst Americans of all
times, and together they put him high on the list. Men of the cloth are supposed to be loving and
pious, but not Father Charle Coughlin who is the 15th worst person in America. He used his
popular radio show in the 1930’s to spew hate, facisim, and anti-Semitism across the country. He
is considered to be one of America’s first mass propagandists, and he did not have a nice message
to spread. Basically Coughlin was the first person to use the airwaves to spread radical,
unfounded, messages of hate. Unfortunately, he would not be the last person to do this,
and the practice persists even to this day. Most of the worst people
in America tend to be men, but not all. Some American
women can be just as bad. Number 14 on our list of the worst people
in America is Belle Gunness, also known as “Hell’s Belle.” She was one of the worst female
serial killers to ever live in the United States. Her body count may have been as high
as 40 people between 1884 and 1908. Belle lived in Chicago where she killed two
of her husbands and all seven of her children. She collected the insurance money on her
victim’s lives to live a life of luxury. Belle was also reported to have lured suitors to
her farmhouse where she would drug and kill them. When things started to go south for Belle Gunness
she faked her own death by killing her maid and last three children. Then she burnt down
her house with all of the bodies inside. When investigators looked into the fire
they found that the smoldering remains of the adult body were too small to be Belle.
They also uncovered that she had withdrawn all of her money from the bank only days
before. Belle Gunness was never found, but her atrocities most definitely make
her one of the worst people in America. Number 13 is a lesser known murderer in
American history. Her name was Clementine Barnabet. She lived in Louisiana where she may
have murdered as many as 35 people around 1910. But it is not the amount of people who got her
on this list, it is how she killed them and why. Barnabet was a member of the Church of Sacrifice.
When arrested she stated that priestesses of the church had given her “conjuring bags” which
would make her undetectable to the police if she committed a crime. Barnabet claimed that her first
murder was just to see if the Voodoo magic worked, and then all subsequent murders were the
will of the church. It was reported that several of Barnabet’s victims
were chopped to death by an axe, making Barnabet one of the earliest
axe murderers in American history. What this next American did is so messed up and unbelievable that even the
Nazi’s kept tabs on his work. Number 12 on our list is Charles
Davenport. Davenport was an American proponent of eugenics. This
alone makes him a bad person, but what he did to others in the name of science
makes him one of the worst people in America. His goal was to create an American master
race of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon Protestants. He advocated for immigration restrictions of
“undesirable” ethnic groups. Davenport was also a vocal proponent for sterilization of certain
groups and forbidding marriages between races. He also contributed to the unknown sterilization
of between 40,000 and 70,000 people during this time. Most of these people were poor,
uneducated, and of non-white populations. This was a dark part of American history often
not talked about. Davenport and his colleagues literally sterilized tens of thousands
of Americans. At the end of World War II German leaders cited America's eugenic
sterilization laws in defense of their own actions at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals.
Think about how messed up that is for a second. Number 11 on the list of worst people in America
also exploited pseudoscience and bad practices for his own means. Both animals and humans
were definitely harmed by this next American. At the turn of the twentieth century John
Brinkley made millions of dollars through implanting goat testicles in men to help restore
their virility. I think it is pretty obvious why he is on the list of worst people in America.
Eventually the American Medical Association sued him for libel and his practice quickly
collapsed as he went bankrupt. He did this procedure to hundreds of men, 42 of which we
know died from infections after the procedure. None of the men had increased potency because of
the goat testicles now attached to their bodies. We are now moving forward in American history and
you may be surprised how much worse things get. The worst people in America are actually
more recent than you might think. The 10th worst American on our list is Samuel
Little. Little was one of the most deadly, if not the deadliest, serial killer in American
history. He claimed to have killed as many as 93 victims between 1970 and 2012. Although not all of
these murders were actually connected to Little, the FBI did launch an investigation to see how
many innocent lives were taken by the serial killer. They confirmed that Little killed at
least 50 people and that it was likely his total body count was closer to the 90’s. Many of
his victims were strangled to death so the last thing they ever saw was the crazed look in Samuel
Littles’ eyes as they slowly lost consciousness. Ted Bundy is a name you’ve probably heard
and it should come as no surprise that he is number 9 on the list. Bundy was often
identified as charismatic and good looking, which is an odd description for someone
as terrible as this serial killer. He kidnapped, abused, and murdered numerous
women. He confessed to killing 30 women, but the worst part is that many of the lives
could have been saved. Bundy was arrested and incarcerated multiple times, but he
escaped from prison not once, but twice. He murdered multiple victims in the same day, and
is even reported to have abducted multiple women from the exact same location only hours apart.
He was eventually executed by electric chair, but we may never know the full extent of the
carnage left behind by this terrible American. If you’re afraid of clowns, number 8 on our list of worst people
in America is probably the reason why. John Wayne Gacy murdered a minimum
of 33 young men in the 1970’s. This should be enough to make him one
of the worst Americans of all time, but this gruesome murderer took things to
nightmarish levels. He was known as the “Killer Clown.” This was because he performed
shows as a character named “Pogo the Clown” or “Patches the Clown” at different children’s
hospitals and charity events. He would abduct young men from these functions and bring them
back to his house near Chicago where he would abuse and torture his victims before eventually
using a garrote to strangle the boys to death. What’s worse than a person committing their own
atrocities? People who get others to do their bidding for them. And the next few people
on our list are the worst of the worst. Number 7 on our list of worst people
in America embodies this persona. Charles Manson gathered a group of about 100
followers who were called The Manson Family. They carried out as many as 35 killings. One of
the most brutal killings was in 1969 when The Manson Family murdered a number of Hollywood's
elites at a dinner party. And although Manson was not directly involved in the massacre,
he was charged with inciting the violence. He was convicted of first degree murder for
directing members of his cult to commit the crime. The family members claimed that they killed in
the name of Manson because the Hollywood industry had rejected their leader. Anyone who
would brain wash over a hundred people and use them for his own deranged means is
definitely one of the worst people in America. Number 6 and 5 is a tag team duo. They are both
terrible people who did horrible things to others. Keith Raniere was the founder of a pyramid scheme
turned cult called NXIVM. Think of it as a pay as you go program. As you want to learn more about
Raniere’s philosophy and teachings, you have to pay more and more money. And if this wasn’t
bad enough, members were so invested that they started recruiting their own friends and family
into the cult. It was literally a pyramid scheme. As the years progressed more and more members,
especially women, found themselves being exploited by Keith Raniere and his close associate Allison
Mack. They would target anyone who had even the slightest interest in the organization saying
it would change their lives. They collected millions of dollars from their members since each
level in the organization required that they take courses offered by NXIVM to receive peace
and understanding around their lives. Of course all of this was just a way to make
money and no benefits came from the courses they offered. But this is where things get really dark.
There were special groups of women that Allison Mack would recruit from within the cult. This
group of women would be literally branded with a hot poker and the brand itself was unbelievable.
The women were told it was a special symbol, but what the brand turned out to be were the
initials of Keith Raniere and Allison Mack. As you might suspect from a cult leader, the women
who were branded and others in the organization were sexually assaulted by
Keith Raniere. Both Raniere and Mack were arrested in Mexico and
extradited back to the United States. Keith Raniere received 120 years in
prison for racketeering, sex trafficking, and forced labor conspiracy. Allison Mack only
received three years in prison for racketeering, even though other women have come forward and said
that Allison Mack was the reason they got branded, and that she helped lure unsuspecting
women into the clutches of Keith Raniere. Number 4 is a man who literally made up a religion
to influence followers and hold power over them. This man was a sci-fi and fantasy author named
L. Ron Hubbard. The religion he created is called Scientology. You’ve probably heard horror
stories of people who were pretty much abducted into the Church of Scientology and had to escape.
Hubbard didn’t so much start a religion as a cult. Hubbard used made up stories about aliens and
what he called “Dianetics” as the foundation of his cult. He promised members that through his
teachings they could remove the trauma from their mind and live a life of happiness. Obviously
there wasn’t, and still isn’t, any evidence that Scientology and its teaching can provide
benefits to someone’s life. But people paid massive amounts of money to join the organization,
and once they were in, they were trapped. Hubbard completely made up the teachings
of Scientology and accumulated massive amounts of money from its members. But
the lasting effects of Scientology, the abuse of its members, and the
lies about being able to help people are what makes L. Ron Hubbard one
of the worst people in America. What these next few Americans
did will shock and disgust you. The top 3 worst people in America were all into
necrophilia. Earle Nelson makes our list not because of how many people he killed, but who his
victims were and what he did to the bodies after they were dead. In the 1920’s Nelson was known
as the “Gorilla Killer” or “the Dark Strangler” for the murders he committed along the west
coast of the United States. He would target middle aged landladies, rent an apartment
from them, and then brutally murder the women. He killed the woman via strangulation and then
used their bodies after death. Nelson was also connected to the killing of a 14-year-old girl who
he not only killed, but mutilated after she died. Number 2 on our list is Gary Ridgway.
He was known as The Green River Killer. In the 1980’s and 90’s he targeted sex workers
from Seattle. He was convicted of 49 murders, but is suspected of killing over
90 women. Other than sex workers, Ridgway also targeted women in vulnerable
circumstances and young females who were under-aged runaways. He would dump the
bodies in secluded areas of King County, Washington and was reported to go back to them
to have sexual intercourse with their corpses. We have now reached the end of our list. The
worst person in America goes to Jeffrey Dahmer who took being terrible to a whole new
level. Dahmer was a serial killer who targeted mostly African American men at gay
bars and other public places. He lured them back to his house where he offered them alcohol
laced with drugs that would knock them out. After the victims were subdued
he would strangle them to death. Once his victims were dead Dahmer
engaged in sexual acts with the corpses. If this wasn’t bad enough he would then dismember
the bodies and dispose of the remains. However, perhaps the worst part was that Dahmer kept
souvenirs of his victims like their skulls or genitalia. And if all of this wasn’t bad
enough, Jeffry Dahmer would take photos of the murder and mutilation processes so he
could remember and relive each heinous act after committing them. The body parts in his
fridge and photos of his gruesome atrocities are clear evidence that Jeffry Dahmer
was the worst person in America. Now check out “American Behaviors
Considered Rude In Other Countries.” Or watch “Who Are The Most Evil
Serial Killers in America?”
