Throughout history we find that there have always been truly evil people. Sometimes they are harder to spot than others, because they hide behind the cloak of respectability, but the truly evil always give themselves away. There is a problem however, in looking back into history and declaring that someone was evil or not, because our perspective many not be the same as the people of that time. There are numerous examples of this, as we look back into the past. One that really stands out is Vlad III the Impaler, or better known as Dracula. He lived from about 1431 to 1476. He was Romanian and was extremely cruel. Prince Vlad defended Wallachia against the Ottomans. He was a hero to his people so they didn't regard him as an evil person. The opposite was true for the Turks. He impaled thousands of their soldiers all around his castle and the story goes that he would eat his lunch outside and watch them suffer. By the standards of today he was a fiend, but by the standards of his country back them, he was a hero for frightening the Turks and keeping them at bay as long as he did. One has to remember that he lived in a much crueler time.

Not all cruelness might be the cause of evil, there is always the possibility that mental illness might play a part in some or all of it. Some people think that Nero, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was as they say “touched”. He ruled from 54 AD to 68 AD and I don't think that I have to tell anyone that he was the emperor of Rome. Nero was big on executing people, even family. He executed his mother and adopted brother. I guess no one could expect mercy from someone who would do that? He loved to throw Christians to wild animals to be torn apart in the arena. He is also accused of having people from the audience in the coliseum pulled out of their seats and thrown to those same animals. Even with all that, his most grievous act may have been the burning down of most, or a good part of Rome to clear the land for a much bigger residence for himself. The fire killed thousands and displaced many. The city of Rome was the only ancient city said to have over one million people living in it.

Sometimes evil masks itself in the robe of religion. Tomas de Torquemada was such a man. He belonged to the Spanish branch of the Dominicans and was the first Inquisitor General of Spain. One chronicler of the time described him as "The hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the savior of his country, the honor of his order". He better had, because this was one of the evilest men that ever lived and he had tremendous power in his country. One word from him and you could be roasted alive and this happened many times. He was the head of the famous Spanish Inquisition where people were subject to horrible tortures and death in the name of faith. No one knows how many people he had burned at the stake in public, but it was thought that the figure was several thousand, but lately historians have put the figure somewhere between 1100 to 1500. In Spain all one had to do to get rid of an enemy was report them as a heretic and that was the end of them. Bribery was also prevalent at one time. For a tidy sum, you could have the inquisition eliminate anyone for you. It was ironic, but Torquemada tried to weed this out. I guess there is a difference between being evil and just being a crook.

A more recent evil person was Pol Pot. The cruelty this man and his subordinates exhibited was beyond even that of any of the three that I just spoke about. He was responsible for the murdering of about one third of the population of Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge was a communist movement that sought to change the demographic of this country from urban to agrarian. He was responsible for the famous liver hook, a tool designed to remove the liver from a person so that they would experience an excruciating death that would take days. This was often used on children. The North Vietnamese were very disturbed by Cambodia and fought them for years. I personally think that one would be hard pressed to find greater evil than this guy. The worst part of all this is that his followers thought nothing of committing terrible atrocities against the population and they didn't care one bit if it was against men, women or children. The effect that he had on Cambodia will be felt forever and never be forgotten.

Joseph Stalin was born in 1879 and died in 1953. From the time he took power in the Soviet Union, people began to disappear. He had beat Leon Trotsky to become the premier, after the death of Lenin in 1924. He began by forcing rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union, which included taking the land away from farmers and creating collectives. Millions of farmers were killed, because he believed that they were not cooperating. Some of them just starved to death when everything was taken from them. If Stalin thought that you didn't agree with him, you ran the risk of being killed or sent to Siberia, to a concentration camp. The joke of that day used to be, “I wondered what happed to Ivan, he just disappeared?” This was an illustration of what could and did happen to anybody. Sometimes they would just disappear and you would never see them again. Then there was the Great Purge in the late 1930s. Anyone suspected of being a threat was executed, or sent to concentration camps in Siberia known as Gulags. Stalin has been accused of secretly starting World War II by signing an agreement with the Nazi's to divide Poland up, before the Nazis turned on him.

Adolph Hitler, need I say more? He thought nothing of killing millions of Jews, Gypsies, Poles and others. He encouraged his subordinates to devise ways of getting rid of bodies even faster and they came up with ovens that destroyed human remains. Under his rule, thousands of people were not only tortured, but subject to the most horrible of medical experiments, which cost them their lives or horribly disfigured them. He sent a million man army into the Soviet Union and slaughtered many of the peasants that were in his way. He sent ballistic missiles into London, killing thousands. His army ravaged and destroyed many of the countries that they entered. He even betrayed some of his faithful supporters in what has become known as the night of the long knives, where he had a list made up of who to kill and this was all carried out from June 30 to July 2, 1934.

Belle Sorenson Gunness was born in Norway in 1859. She moved to the U.S., after losing her baby and then working for three years to save up the fare. Gunness was a very big woman for the time. She was said to weigh over 200 pounds and her height is estimated to be anywhere from 5 foot 8 inches to 6 feet. The thing that made her so different is that Belle was a female serial killer. You don't see too many of them around. She began her criminal career by burning down an unsuccessful business that she and her husband owned and then their home, for the insurance money. The first murder seems to be the daughter of her husband , who just happened to die while alone in the house with Belle. The criminal investigation on the case was dropped. She began to put ads in papers that stated, “Personal - comely widow who owns a large farm in one of the finest districts in La Porte County, Indiana, desires to make the acquaintance of a gentleman equally well provided, with view of joining fortunes. No replies by letter considered unless sender is willing to follow answer with personal visit. Triflers need not apply.” As the suitors arrived, they would disappear in a short time. They were being killed off for their fortunes. I won't go into all the details of how the money was stolen, or how they were killed, but this went on for years. It is believed that this evil woman killed at least 20 people, until she herself met a gruesome end.