r/AskReddit • u/Ok_Daikon_1219 • 18h ago
Who's a famous criminal you're 90% positive was framed?
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u/RocketPoweredSad 18h ago
The Hamburglar
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u/SinisterKid 17h ago
I mean his name isnt Ham-I-buy-all-my-burgers-honestly
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u/GuiltyLawyer 10h ago
We assigning culpability by names now? Damn
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u/burntcircuits 5h ago
In local news, beloved shop owner John Murderer has opened a SECOND bakery, after the sudden disappearance of his long time business partner, Peter Victim.
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u/PolPotbelly 17h ago
Hamburglary is a victemless crime.
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u/ElHamburglare 17h ago
Its true. The real villians are Big Burger and that Clown Ronald McDonald
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u/MikeHawka2 17h ago
how would he even steal the burgers, like in mcdonaldland they just grow on trees or some shit so they're probably free, and even if he were in a world like ours he'd have to pay before they make the burgers for him, unless he like ran into the kitchen and started stealing them but like idk man bro is innocent
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u/klockworx 17h ago
The hamburgler doesn't steal hamburgers...he steals ham. He's not the hamburgerler..
I'm assuming in a place wear fully cooked beef grows on trees..cured pork is a form of currency.
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u/Coilspun 13h ago
Dr Richard Kimble.
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u/CaroylOldersee 18h ago
Roger Rabbit
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u/CraigKostelecky 17h ago
But who did that?
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u/WestleyThe 16h ago
There is a very compelling documentary I can point you towards that answers that question
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u/Steebusteve 17h ago
Big Automobile and big Road.
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u/OldJames47 15h ago
Who needs a highway when you can take a Red Car for a nickel,
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u/pedrograntyl 16h ago
Listen, they had photographic evidence of his wife playing patty-cake. The motive was there.
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u/LafielSalas 18h ago
Cameron Todd Willingham. Pretty conclusive at this point
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u/clever80username 16h ago
Not really framed, just a shoddy investigation of the accidental fire and subsequent murder of an innocent man by the state of Texas.
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u/T2lit 18h ago
Emmitt till
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u/KatrinaPeanutbuttr 16h ago
Such a disgrace that still hasn't been acknowledged as such in the way it should be. That child's story should be in everyone's minds
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u/imagirlwatcher 16h ago
It's been acknowledged just not appreciated enough. That bitch that claimed he whistled at her admitted on her death bed that she was lying. Her husband literally got away with murder & all based on a lie. Little dude was visiting family at the time. Fucked up time. I go back & forth between thinking how backwards & fucked up we are now & realizing how much worse it was then & usually come to the same conclusion that we have not come far enough. Fuck racists & at the same time I feel bad for them that they're so ignorant & missing out on the beauty, artistry, love & compassion of what, 70% of the world? All because of insecurities & the desire to feel superior. Not to mention the fact that we're literally all brothers and sisters & fighting ourselves. No wonder the aliens keep away.
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u/KatrinaPeanutbuttr 15h ago
Yup, his family was part of the great migration and he was visiting the hellscape they left for a better place...not that anywhere in the US would have been that, and Chicago wasn't much better...see Eve Ewing's book 1919. Here's her poem about Emmit Till: https://poets.org/poem/i-saw-emmett-till-week-grocery-store It's a reference to Ginsberg: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47660/a-supermarket-in-california
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u/No-Fudge3487 11h ago
I appreciate you mentioning this, but I also want to say that he wasn’t a criminal. What they made up about him wasn’t even a crime.
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u/Bettal56 7h ago
Shit, even if he wasn’t framed it’s not like he actually did anything bad. His case is either he did something blown out of proportion by terrible people or he did something that was harmless. Either scenario just hammers home what happened to him was unjust and fucked up. There is no sensible take on the case where what he did and the response to it was justified.
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u/noudcline 17h ago
Bill Posters
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u/corporatemumbojumbo 10h ago
Do these signs exist outside Australia. Even as a youngun I always thought these signs were so wack. Such strange language. Who calls a poster a bill? It's so weird. I remember seeing a sign in the wild and I still chuckle when is see it.
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u/eldergias 17h ago
Sacco & Vanzetti
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u/punkbenRN 17h ago
Doing a lot of reading about this, I think Sacco played a part in the murder but wasn't explicitly the person that did it. Despite the story that they were singled out for being anarchists - definitely played a part, but their politics weren't exactly fringe at the time - but because they were Italian immigrants.
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u/dance_rattle_shake 7h ago
They almost surely did it. Their conspirators confessed on their deathbed. The issue was how poorly the case was handled.
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u/pinewind108 14h ago
There was someone who knew one of them, and apparently he said they did actually do the robbery. It was just that the cops had no evidence (but probably an informer), and so they did plant the evidence to get a conviction.
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u/Mustache-Cashstash 18h ago
Andy Dufresne
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u/BigBeeOhBee 17h ago
I've got some inside information and can 100% unequivocally tell you he was 100% not guilty of murdering his wife and her lover.
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u/Sad-Artichoke-2174 7h ago
'"I want him found. Not tomorrow. Not after breakfast. Now!"
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u/lostroadrunner22 6h ago
Like a fart in the wind.. Bob Gunton was so good in that role
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u/KatrinaPeanutbuttr 18h ago
Um, Reflecting Pool Olympian!!
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u/kittycookly 16h ago
Assuming you mean Richard Jewell.
The way the media and the FBI tore that poor man's life apart after he literally saved dozens of people was disgusting. He spotted the bomb, cleared the area, and because he was an overweight security guard who lived with his mom, they immediately decided he fit the "wannabe hero" profile and leaked his name.
He was completely cleared and won major settlements from the news outlets, but the stress wrecked his health and he died at 44. Eric Rudolph was the actual bomber.
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u/Jesus_Is_My_Gardener 16h ago
No. Hecs talking about the recent events at the reflecting pool where they tried to prosecute an Olympian saying he destroyed the liner.
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u/KatrinaPeanutbuttr 15h ago
I didn't mean him, but an mportant mention. The movie was great, especially Paul Walter Hauser's performance https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3513548/
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u/GreatScottGatsby 6h ago
You have to be ai if you took what he said and got this from it. He was talking about David Hearn.
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u/swallowrazors 9h ago
The West Memphis Three.
100% positive those three boys were framed.
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u/Ketchum_gunshot 9h ago
Absolutely. So much small town corruption with police manipulating a mentally handicapped boy into confessing, a local investigator who just badly wanted to have Echols arrested for any crime, and a lot of bullshit satanic panic nonsense when evidence has pointed to one of the victims step fathers.
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u/tracyduncanze 16h ago
Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the man executed for the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.
The deeper you dig into that case, the dirtier it gets. The New Jersey State Police (led by Norman Schwarzkopf Sr.) were under unprecedented pressure to produce a culprit, and the entire investigation was built backwards from "we need this guy to be guilty."
They suppressed testimony from his employer that placed him working in New York the day of the kidnapping. They coached witnesses who had previously stated they couldn't identify him. Even the famous ladder wood evidence, where a rail supposedly matched a floorboard in Hauptmann's attic, looks heavily like it was manipulated or staged after police had already torn the place apart.
Hauptmann was definitely a petty criminal who possessed some of the marked ransom money (which he claimed was left with him in a shoebox by his business partner Isidor Fisch before Fisch died in Germany), but the actual kidnapping and murder evidence was paper-thin.
He was even offered a plea to save him from the electric chair and a huge sum of money for his family if he confessed, and he turned it down because he refused to admit to a crime he insisted he didn't commit.
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u/Kwyjibo68 6h ago edited 6h ago
No no and no. Hauptmann was guilty, though very likely not the only one involved.
The investigation was horribly handled, letting Lindbergh run a lot of investigation. The trial was a spectacle. And Dr John Confon was just bizarre. Today he’d probably not be convicted based on these issues.
I definitely believe the ladder evidence. The wood was from Hauptmann’s house and was exhaustively researched by a professor who tracked down the specific mill and blade that cut the wood. And also showed the wood had been delivered to a lumberyard in the Bronx, where Hauptmann’s house was.
Also, Hauptmann had some of the ransom money on his person and in his home. It’s impossible to say if he took the baby out of the nursery and dropped him (the likely cause of death) but he was, I believe, involved.
ETA: I like book Hauptmann’s Ladder. Not only does it give a thorough accounting of the situation, he also explains why some points in other books are likely wrong.
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u/noggerthefriendo 17h ago
Dr Crippen
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u/letsburn00 15h ago
I just looked this up. I had no idea that there was so much unsurity.
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u/punkbenRN 17h ago
Edward Snowden. What he did was technically a crime, but exposed a much worse crime by the government. They ran a smear campaign to make him look like the most treasonous American that ever existed, and people took the bait. People that half remember what happened still hate him and they aren't sure why, beyond "sharing government secrets". He warned us about the world we turned into, and he had to spend the rest of his life in exile for it.
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u/YourFriendPutin 15h ago
This stuff happened to the CIA agent who spoke out about torture at Guantanamo Bay even though he was a spy for decades and a great asset. I know his name i promise I just can't remember right now but he's massively famous
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u/Sparescrewdriver 16h ago
I wonder how he is doing and if still safe in Russia. They used to say that he had some dirt on US goverment people, but that was 3 adminstrations ago, and can’t see whatever he could have is worse than epstein stuff level
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u/its_mabus 15h ago
It's just convenient for Russia to give him asylum and let him do interviews that make America look bad or whatever. Doesn't need anything unseen to explain.
Russia will also support just about any dissenting cause in the West, even the ones you agree with.
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u/coltrainjones 14h ago
For the record he never planned to stay in Russia. He was trying to travel through countries without US extradition laws starting in China and ideally ending in South America. However the US revoked his passport/travel visas and he was unable to go beyond Russia
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u/Special_Kestrels 11h ago
Sort of dumb to not make it to your destination before you leak shit.
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u/Remcin 15h ago
The general consensus (not mine) seems to be, “well he’s not wrong but that’s not how you do things.” Okay sure, I’m sure internal reports will fix this problem.
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u/caduceushugs 16h ago
Snowden is a fucking hero! But yeah; people suck
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u/LostMyKeyboard 15h ago
A tale as old as time. Look at what they did to Alan Turing.
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u/UnhappyFranchisee 11h ago
I read this as Alan Tudyk and panicked. Thought ICE might have detained him as a Resident Alien.
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u/StupidTired89 17h ago
Courtney Love. Technically not a criminal but bu many viewed as one. I'm a long time Nirvana fan, but she didn't do it or pay for a hitman.
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u/Scared_Confidence_61 17h ago
Agreed. Heroin addicts don’t tend to have the long-term planning or cognitive abilities required for orchestrating a high-profile assassination of a public figure.
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u/HalfSoul30 16h ago
I usually leave the planning up to the assassin, i just provide the money.
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u/Herandar 11h ago
"usually"? How many assassins, HalfSoul30?
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u/Cabbage_Vendor 12h ago
Kurt Cobain has to be one of the least unexpected suicides, he was a drug addict and mentally unstable, deeply troubled guy. Yeah, he just became a dad, but that doesn't magically remove depression.
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u/MarvinLazer 15h ago
I always liked Courtney. Obviously a troubled person but smart as fuck and deserves credit for being waaaay ahead of the curve on Weinstein.
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u/Cantsleepatnite 12h ago
And she said it right into a reporter’s microphone! I’m glad that clip has lasted!
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u/RoarOfTheWorlds 17h ago
While we’re at it, Yoko Ono for splitting up the Beatles. It’s complicated but they were four guys basically tethered to each other from their boyhood years. They all developed musically and they needed more space to grow.
Also the major tensions that grew largely had nothing to do with her. She didn’t make George Harrison feel stifled. She didn’t kill Brian Epstein. She didn’t make John find her, he sought her out.
Whether what she does has any artistic merit is fair to argue, but she didn’t split up the Beatles yet shouldered that label for decades.
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u/deluxereverb 17h ago
A music professor told me it was more likely Paul that caused the split. He said John, George, and Ringo all wanted to leave and make solo records. Paul convinced them to stay, then released a solo record of his own.
I can’t verify that this is true, it’s what a Beatles fanatic told me.
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u/BlueLaceSensor128 15h ago
George released two solo albums and Lennon did four with Plastic Ono Band while the Beatles were still together.
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u/thaddeusd 10h ago edited 9h ago
Its a combination.
Paul wanted a new manager, who was his father in law, and was shouldering a ton of band leadership, but was kind of a prick about it.
George felt stifled by Paul and John creatively. John famously mocked I Me Mine, which lead to a near permanent split. He was also having a friendly rivalry with Clapton at the time which wasn't helping things.
John (and Yoko) were heavy into drugs, and were no showing practices and writing sessions. Yoko takes blame because John insisted on having her at rehearsals which went against past practices of keeping wives and girlfriends seperate. And also, for John cheating on Cynthia.
Ringo was kinda just doing his thing. Showing up. Recording stuff in his own time.
Paul was THE LAST Beatle to release a solo album. George released Wonderwall Music in 1968, John had Two Virgins also in 1968. Ringo released Sentamental Journey in March 1970. Paul released McCartney in April 1970, which was at the same time when the news broke about the Beatles dissolving.
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u/whiskeytangosix 15h ago
I always hear that Paul wanted the Beatles to hire Linda’s dad as manager and the other three were strongly opposed. John wanted an American manager I believe and Ringo and George were uncomfortable with him. Lee Eastman I think it was.
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u/Maxtrt 12h ago
Randy Weaver
He was a sumbag and a White nationalist but he was framed by the ATF.
The ATF agent entrapped him by asking for him to sell them a sawed off shotgun. They killed his kid, his wife and dog all over a sawed off shotgun.
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u/StonerJack 15h ago
Rubin 'The Hurricane' Carter. There's a film about it. And a song.
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u/dongeckoj 11h ago
“Framed by Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied, and the newspapers all went along with the ride. How can the life of such a man be in the palm of some fool’s hand? To see him obviously framed makes you feel ashamed in a land where justice is a game.” – Bob Dylan, “Hurricane”
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u/FuckYouThrowaway99 9h ago
While Ruben sits like Buddha in a 10 foot cell. An innocent man in a living hell.
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u/WarhammerRyan 10h ago
He has a dark story after his release from prison, sadly.
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u/StevenSaguaro 18h ago
The Count of Monte Crisco
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u/No_Glove2067 18h ago
He wasn’t the Count of Monte Cristo then. He was just Edmond Dantes when he was framed.
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u/DrFrylock 18h ago
We will probably never fully understand what Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole did or didn't do. They were not so much framed as coerced / taken advantage of, albeit somewhat with a level of knowing consent.
The fact that the solution to the Adam Walsh case (or not) lies in that morass is doubly sad. John Walsh says he is confident enough. I don't know whether to be that sure.
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u/theWild-man 16h ago
My choice was going to be Henry Lee Lucas
He confessed to something like six hundred murders, most of which he was in the wrong location for and almost all of which he was straight up given the records on by the Texas Rangers
Of the murders he's directly implicated in: he served time for stabbing his abusive mother, he road tripped with Otis, and his girlfriend was collecting the landlord's benefits
He was certainly complicit with people who did terrible things, but doesn't seem to have done much in the way of actually killing anyone except the one which he had personal motivation
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u/letsburn00 15h ago
This is one that's really complicated. He's clearly a few Tooles short of a shed.That the investigations just wasted so much time was crazy. That it's likely that at least some of the cases were incorrectly closed is probably an injustice the world will never resolve.
I feel like they wanted another PeeWee Gaskins and got a guy dumb enough to admit to it.
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u/RevolutionaryHead550 9h ago
Thinking about this, the Central Park Five case always stands out to me. Those kids were convicted way too fast based on confessions that didn't hold up, and it seems like the system just wanted someone to blame amid all the public fear.
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u/AlfalfaLive3302 17h ago
Budd Dwyer…don’t look up the video. Hey man, nice shot
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u/abovedafray 16h ago
Huge snow storm that day, many school districts took a snow day.
They pulled away from cartoons to that news conference.
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u/LowerBackPain_Prod 16h ago
Then got back just in time to see Elmer Fudd blast Daffy's beak clean off his face
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u/letsburn00 15h ago
This is actually a really interesting one. That there is some reasonable evidence that he was innocent really makes it hard to disentangle.
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u/abovedafray 9h ago
My understanding is if he died in office (before being formally charged) his family got his pension, if he was removed they got nothing.
But this could be people guessing after the fact, its not like his last words were a "more weight" A'la Giles Corey
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u/h0sti1e17 7h ago
Interesting side note. He is the reason AP photographers all started carrying color film. They saved color film for only big events. For run of the mill things they carried only black and white since it wouldn’t be on the front page, and was cheaper. This was just local guy resigning. No need to carry color. But it turned out to be front page news and there were no color photos (there was color video).
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u/TobogonXero 14h ago
Ray Gibson and Claude Banks, evidence suggests they were framed for murder by a sheriff in rural Mississippi in the 1930s.
Both died in a fire in the prison infirmary in 1997
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u/Material-Dot7684 18h ago
Framed is not exactly the right word but I think the police and prosecution were allowed to...let's say take some shortcuts and liberties with the Luigi case
I think he probably did it, but the argument the judge gave on why the evidence from the illegal search should be admissible was let's say creative to be generous.
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u/FRagebait 13h ago
Amazing he can plead guilty and people will say "he probably did it".
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u/IamImposter 12h ago
Are you saying he knows more about it than me, a rando on internet?
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u/glorified_throwaway 18h ago
Jean Valjean
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u/Nothos927 13h ago
No shade to my man 24601 but he did do the crimes. He admitted he stole the bread, then we saw him breech parole and assault a cop.
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u/Angry_Edemame 15h ago
Steven Truscott.
At 14 he was convicted of the death of a 12 year old that went to his school despite none of the evidence matching him.
The cops simply pinned the case on him and it took several decades for him to be exonerated.
He had been seen giving her a ride to a nearby highway and shockingly under interrogation that would be labeled cruel and unusual today he struggled to keep a straight story so they decided he did it and quite a significant amount of evidence was just never given to the defense. This was back when Canada had the death penalty and they tried him as an adult they could have executed this kid.
Their best direct evidence was bicycle tires near the body and a pathological report that stated about a half an hour time frame for her death. In that pile of undisclosed evidence it was noted the bike tire marks were at least a week old and on the dates of his failed appeal to the Supreme Court was a letter the police buried that the pathologist wrote stating he regretted using that narrow of a time frame. There was also statements made by children who said they saw the two together, which he had already admitted to.
They'd also buried the witness statements of two people who saw the girl hitchhiking which matched Truscotts story (she had asked for a ride to the highway to hitchhike, presumably to her grandma's house. There was also a much more likely suspect who had literally been arrested trying to lure a little girl not far from there less than a month before the victim was murdered.
He had been convicted in 1959 as a teenager. in 1966 he was paroled. It wasn't until 2007 his name was cleared (after a certain point he could request the conviction be overturned but it would take new evidence that hadn't been presented to court that could have changed the outcome which is where all this stuff was found).
For all of this he was given 6.5 million dollars a pitiful amount
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u/jayne-eerie 7h ago
Ethel Rosenberg. Julius actually did pass classified info to the Soviet Union, but the most Ethel did was maybe help retype his notes once or twice. The government threatened her with the death penalty to try to get her to flip and she decided she would rather die.
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u/FearOfABlackPotus 16h ago
Joe Hill
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u/Lower_Description398 15h ago
I thought you were talking about Stephen King's son 😆
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u/POEness 17h ago
Trump has been framed by the media as innocent, which he is absolutely not.
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u/RangerMatthias99 17h ago
Not exactly a Criminal Who Was Framed, but Lizzie Borden was found Not Guilty.
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u/BongoProdigy 17h ago
Cops ignored a bunch of bloody clothes because they thought it was menstrual. There's been an axe murder but watch out for them cooties.
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u/RebekahR84 16h ago
Reminds me of that John Mulaney bit, something like, “detective, we found a pool of the killer’s blood.” “Gross. Mop it up. Now about my hunch…”
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u/letsburn00 15h ago
I've been to the house. I think it's unlikely she could have cleaned herself up that well that quickly given the arrangement of the place.
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u/letsburn00 15h ago
I was at the Borden house a few years ago and the tour guide was very strongly of the opinion her Uncle paid someone to do it.
I suspect that Lizzie was supposed to be killed, but she had pretty severe cramps and took too much Laudenum and was passed out. When the killer went past her room he didn't realize she was passed out in bed or on a chair.
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u/Mountain_Willow8104 10h ago
Richard Jewell is a strong example. He helped save people during the Olympic bombing, yet the media and investigators treated him like the prime suspect. Even after he was cleared, the damage to his reputation was already done.
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u/everydaywasnovember 6h ago
Lee Harvey Oswald.
As we all know, Castro disguised himself as Marilyn Monroe and gave JFK a case of syphilis so bad that it eventually blew out the back of his head.
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u/Captain_Aware4503 7h ago
Cameron Todd Willingham
States like Texas are so hell bent on executing people, they'll kill innocent people.
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u/h0sti1e17 6h ago
Karen Read. I don’t usually buy into conspiracy theories. This IMO wasn’t an example of overzealous prosecution or just weak evidence. Something went down, the city and state troopers covered shit up and she was the scapegoat.
To many odd things, the family didn’t see all police activity in their front yard. The house was never searched. A dead dude ends up on your lawn, you sure as will have your home searched. One of the involved who was flirting with Read goes to the police station in the middle of the night. The only eye witness with no connection to the victim or defendant didn’t see shit. One of the family members searched “hos long to die in snow” at 230ish in the morning. I can go on and on.
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u/Sweatybutthole 18h ago edited 17h ago
HikingGlaciers4
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u/RufusWorld 16h ago
Col. John 'Hannibal' Smith, Lt. Templeton 'Faceman' Peck, Sgt. Bosco Albert 'B.A.' Baracus, and Capt. H.M. 'Howling Mad' Murdock.