20 historical villains whose last words helped cement their legend

Booth spent twelve days on the run after shooting Lincoln, before he was finally shot and paralyzed in a barn in Virginia. As he raised his hands to his face, he whispered, “It’s no use, it’s no use.” For a man who thought he was making history, it was a devastating ending.

The architect of the Reign of Terror attempted to shoot himself the day before his execution, but instead tore off part of his jaw. The executioner reportedly ripped off the bandage holding it in place just before the blade fell, and his last words were a scream.

As she walked toward the guillotine, she accidentally stepped on the executioner’s foot and apologized: “Forgive me, sir. I didn’t mean to.” ” Whether this composure stemmed from genuine grace or was the result of reflexes acquired over a lifetime spent at Versailles, it was the one detail everyone remembered.

When the guards standing near the gallows mocked him by chanting Moqtada al-Sadr’s name, Saddam turned to them and said, sarcastically, “Moqtada?” ” He then recited a prayer, and his last words were “Muhammad.” This exchange, captured in a video posted online, showed a man who refused, right to the very end, to let himself be shaken.

Custer was killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, a battle so devastating that no American soldier survived to tell the tale. His last words, attributed to him—“Hurry up, boys, we’ve got ’em!”—come from accounts gathered after the fact; whether accurate or not, this phrase has become a symbol of the overconfidence that marked his career.

The outlaw, who had gone into his final duel wearing makeshift armor, was hanged in Melbourne in 1880. On the scaffold, he is said to have declared, “That’s life”—three words that are at once provocative, philosophical, and deeply Australian, a phrase that has since appeared on tattoos and pub signs across the country.

On his way to the guillotine, Danton called out to the executioner: “Don’t forget to show my head to the people. It’s really worth a look.” This was a grotesque display on the part of a man who had spent his career studying crowds, and the executioner is said to have granted his request.

Weakened by months of torture, Fawkes did not utter a word on the scaffold in 1606. He was helped up the ladder, then threw himself off it, breaking his neck rather than face what awaited him; a contemporary account simply notes that “he did not utter a word.”

Shot in the back of the neck by a member of his own gang on April 3, 1882, James is said to have remarked, “This painting is really dusty,” while adjusting a wall hanging just seconds before the shot was fired. The accuracy of this quote is disputed, but the mundane nature of his final moments made this murder seem even more sordid than the act itself.

A war hero who fought alongside Joan of Arc before being executed in 1440 for crimes committed against children, Gilles de Rais broke down in tears during his trial and begged the victims’ families for forgiveness. On the scaffold, he reportedly urged his fellow prisoners to show courage and promised them that they would all go to heaven together.

Sentenced to death by hanging in Nuremberg in 1946, Göring swallowed a cyanide capsule the night before. In a written note, he asserted that he had the right to die as a soldier rather than be hanged, and this suicide deprived the court of its final act, literally leaving the last word to Göring.

The pirate Edward Teach was shot five times and struck numerous times with a sword before succumbing off the coast of North Carolina in 1718. His last words are said to have been: “May damnation seize my soul if I grant you quarter or accept yours,” a dramatic and undoubtedly embellished phrase, but one that fits well with a man who built his reputation on theatrical threats.

On his way to the gallows in 1859, Brown handed a note to a guard: “I, John Brown, am now convinced that the crimes of this guilty land will never be atoned for except by blood.” He did not deliver a speech at the gallows, having already said everything he had to say.

In 1587, Mary ascended the scaffold at Fotheringhay Castle dressed in dark red—the Catholic color of martyrdom—and is said to have declared, “My end is my beginning.” The execution required several blows, but the carefully staged symbolism ensured that she died as she had apparently wished: as a martyr.

Still the sole inmate at Spandau when he died at the age of ninety-three in 1987, Hess left a note that simply read: “Written a few minutes before my death.” Whether his death was a suicide or something more controversial, this sentence attests to the resolve of a man determined to control his own narrative until the very end.

Found guilty of spying for Germany and executed by a French firing squad in 1917, Mata Hari is said to have refused to be blindfolded and to have blown a kiss to the soldiers. Whether these accounts are entirely accurate or have been embellished by the press, the image of a woman remaining calm in the face of the firing squad has become one of the most frequently told stories of that war.

On July 14, 1881, Billy the Kid entered Pete Maxwell’s pitch-black room in Fort Sumner, unaware that Pat Garrett was already there. Sensing a presence in the dark, he asked, “¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?”—“Who’s there? Who’s there?”—and Garrett shot him before he could get an answer.

The guerrilla leader who had ordered the Lawrence Massacre in 1863, resulting in the deaths of more than 150 civilians, slowly succumbed to his injuries over the course of several weeks after being ambushed in Kentucky in 1865. He is said to have converted to Catholicism and expressed remorse toward the end of his life—a peaceful conclusion for a man whose career had been marked by spectacular violence.

Capone died in a room on Palm Island in 1947, his mind severely impaired by untreated syphilis. The phrase most often attributed to him—“You get a lot further with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone”—was already circulating as a Capone quote long before his death. Whatever he actually said that day, this is the version that history has retained.

Captured near Lake Como as he attempted to flee to Switzerland, Mussolini is said to have made a final request to his supporters: “Shoot me in the chest.” Some accounts confirm this; others are less definitive. His body was hung upside down at a gas station in Milan the next day, and that image became the culmination of his regime.