Whenever tasked to be a part of a team protecting presidents or presidential candidates, being aware of the history of assassinations kept me especially alert throughout my assignment. Maybe it will help you as well. Here is a condensed history of such events.
Andrew Jackson
On January 30, 1835, as Andrew Jackson was leaving a funeral at the U.S. Capitol, an unemployed house painter, Richard Lawrence, approached, drew a Derringer single-shot pistol, and fired at Jackson. It misfired, so the warrior president beat his attacker with his walking cane. Lawrence then drew a second Derringer, which also misfired.
Jackson had no formal protection, but Congressman David Crockett (of Alamo fame) subdued the man. President Jackson was unharmed.
Abraham Lincoln
In August 1864, President Abraham Lincoln was riding his horse unaccompanied toward his retreat at the “Veterans Home” when an assassin placed a rifle bullet through his hat. Lincoln spurred his horse and galloped away. After this attempt, D.C. police assigned a protection detail to Lincoln.
On April 14, 1865, Lincoln and his wife were watching the comedic play “American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre. Confederate sympathizer and actor John Wilkes Booth entered through an unguarded door, silently approached and shot Lincoln in the head with a .44-caliber Henry Derringer pistol.
Lincoln’s guest, Major Henry Rathbone, wrestled with Booth, but Booth produced a knife and seriously wounded Rathbone. Booth jumped to the stage below, shouting “sic semper tyrannus” as he exited stage left and rode his horse into the night.
President Lincoln expired on April 15, 1865, at 7:22 a.m.
Booth, cornered days later in a tobacco drying shed by Union soldiers, was shot by Sergeant Boston Corbett. Four of Booth’s co-conspirators were captured, tried and hanged.
Officer John Parker, who had abandoned his post covering the assassin’s point of entry, claimed he had been relieved of duty for the night by the president. Mrs. Lincoln did not believe him, but it could neither be proved nor disproved. Parker carried the shame of his failure to the day he died in 1890 when he was laid low in an unmarked grave.
James Garfield
In 1881, rebuked office-seeker Charles Julius Guiteau stalked President Garfield for weeks until on July 2, he shot the unprotected president at a railway station with a Webley .442 British Bulldog revolver, seriously wounding him. Garfield lingered for weeks before succumbing to his wounds.
After a circus trial, made so by the antics of an emotionally disturbed Guiteau, he was convicted and hanged in 1882.
William McKinley
On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shaking hands in a receiving line in Buffalo, New York. A large contingent of Secret Service and police on hand failed to notice the neatly dressed man with the oddly shaped bandage on his right hand in the receiving line. When McKinley reached to shake the man’s hand, the rabid anarchist Leon Czolgosz’s Iver Johnson .32-caliber revolver exploded, striking McKinley.
The security stood stunned as a large man named Big Jim Palmer intervened instantly, delivering thundering blows, and pounding Czolgosz to the ground.
McKinley died of gangrene days later, and Czolgosz was tried and executed in the electric chair on October 29, 1901.
Teddy Roosevelt
On October 14, 1912, President Teddy Roosevelt was leaving the Gilpatrick Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when saloon keeper John Schrank shot him in the chest with a Colt .38-caliber revolver.
Schrank was wrestled to the ground by a stenographer, Elbert E. Martin, former Rough Rider A.O. Girard, as well as several members of the Milwaukee Police Department. Post-arrest, the police officers were required to protect their prisoner from the crowd, which had turned into a lynch mob.
After Roosevelt convinced the mob to stand down, he delivered his scheduled speech before seeking treatment for the gunshot wound. His doctor later discovered Roosevelt was saved because the bullet traveled through his glasses case and a folded 50-page speech before it penetrated his chest.
Schrank explained that a dead president visited him and alleged that Roosevelt had murdered him and therefore he should die. Schrank, who was ruled “insane,” was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
On February 15, 1933, an Italian Army World War I veteran and United States immigrant, Giuseppe Zangara, stood on a wobbly chair and set his .32-caliber US revolver on the shoulder of Lillian Cross as she listened to President Franklin D. Roosevelt give an impromptu speech in the Bayfront section of Miami.
After Zangara fired, Lillian grabbed the gun and helped others struggle to disarm Zangara as he continued to fire wildly. Bullets struck Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, NYPD detective/bodyguard William Sinnott, Secret Service agent Bob Clark, Russell Caldwell, Miss Margaret Kruis and Mrs. Joseph Gill. Cermak died. Roosevelt was unharmed.
Zangara was tried, convicted and executed. His last words to the executioner, shouted from the electric chair, were, “Push the button! Push the button!”
Harry S. Truman
On October 31, 1950, President Harry S. Truman and his wife Bess were residing in Blair House while the White House was being renovated. While Truman was upstairs taking a nap, Puerto Rican Nationalist Party members Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola converged on Blair House with murderous intent. An intense gunfight ensued between the assassins and Truman’s Secret Service and White House police detail.
Secret Service officer Vincent Mroz shot Collazo in the chest, taking him out of the fight. However, Torresola effectively ambushed and wounded White House officers William Leslie Coffelt and Joseph Downs with a 9mm German Luger.
Downs, shot in the hip, shouted “Get down!” to President Truman, who was looking out the window. Downs gamely dragged himself over to secure the Blair House door, thus saving the president.
Torresola continued to fire, hitting White House officer Birdzell in the knee but wrongly assumed Leslie Coffelt, who was mortally wounded, was out of the fight. Coffelt courageously propped himself up against his guard shack, acquired his weapon, aimed and fired at Torresola, hitting him just above the ear, thus ending the attack on the president. With his duty done, Officer Coffelt succumbed to his wounds.
Torresola was tried, convicted and sentenced to death, but Truman commuted his sentence, and President Jimmy Carter ordered him released in 1979.
John F. Kennedy
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was riding in an open limousine in Dallas when he was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald from his prepared sniper’s lair at a window in the Texas Book Depository where he was employed. Texas Governor John Connally was also hit in the wrist and leg. Oswald fled, leaving behind his 6.5x52 mm Italian Carcano M91/338 bolt-action rifle with a 4x Hollywood scope.
Dallas police quickly released a description of Oswald, who Officer J.D. Tippit spotted shortly thereafter, nervously walking near 10th and Patton. As Tippit contacted Oswald, he shot Tippit with a .38-caliber revolver, and as the wounded officer lay on the ground, Oswald coldly executed him.
Minutes later, Oswald was wrestled into custody by Dallas police officers inside a nearby movie theater. Oswald was later shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby while being transported to jail.
Robert F. Kennedy
On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy had just won California’s Democratic presidential primary and was walking from a speech at the Ambassador Hotel through the kitchen when he was shot by Sirhan B. Sirhan with a .22-caliber eight-shot revolver. The assassin was restrained by football player Rosie Grier and writer George Plimpton but continued to fire during the struggle, wounding five more bystanders.
Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant, was angry over Kennedy’s support for Israel, explaining, “The friend of my enemy is my enemy.”
This assassin was convicted and sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life with the possibility of parole.
George Wallace
Arthur Bremer, hungry for fame, purchased a Charter Arms .38 snub-nose revolver and began stalking President Nixon. He found security too tight to kill Nixon.
Therefore, on May 15, 1972, Arthur Bremer stepped out of a crowd of 1,000 at the Laurel Shopping Center, 14 miles from Washington, D.C. Wearing a “Wallace for President” button and a smile, Bremer shot presidential candidate George Wallace.
Bremer kept firing as he was swarmed, wounding Wallace, bodyguard Trooper Captain E.C. Dothard, Secret Service agent Nick Zarvos and a campaign volunteer, Dora Thomson.
Bremer was sentenced to 53 years in prison but was released in 2007.
Gerald Ford
First attempt: On September 5, 1975, President Gerald Ford walked across the California State Capitol grounds. As Ford shook hands with some smiling people, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, pointed a Colt M1911 and squeezed the trigger, but had failed to chamber a round.
Secret Service agent Larry Buendorf disarmed and subdued Fromme.
Second attempt: On September 22, 1975, President Ford was walking to his limousine after a speech. Sara Jane Moore fired a shot at him but missed.
Bystander Oliver Sipple grabbed Moore’s gun arm and directed it away from the president, causing the next round to hit cabbie John Ludwig. Moore was disarmed and arrested by San Francisco Police Captain Tim Helfrich.
Both women, who hoped their actions would trigger a violent revolution, were sentenced to life but were paroled in 2007.
Ronald Reagan
On March 30, 1981, as President Reagan exited the Washington Hotel, John Hinckley Jr. opened fire with his Rohm RG-14 .22-caliber snub-nose revolver loaded with “Devastator exploding rounds,” striking Reagan under the arm.
Secret Service agent Jerry Parr jumped on Reagan and pushed him into the limousine. Hinckley kept firing, hitting Press Secretary James Brady and Washington D.C. officer Thomas Delahanty.
Bystander Alfred Antenucci punched Hinckley in the head and wrestled him to the ground, where he was joined by law enforcement, who swarmed and arrested the gunman.
The assassin confessed he had an obsession with Jodie Foster’s character in the movie “Taxi Driver” and hoped to impress her with his murderous deed.
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity, hospitalized and released in 2016.
George Bush Sr.
In April 1993, Kuwaiti officials arrested 17 people involved in a car-bomb assassination plot targeting former President George Bush Sr. during a commemoration of the First Gulf War.
George W. Bush Jr.
In 2001, Robert W. Pickett fired at the White House with a .38-caliber Taurus revolver and was shot in the knee by a Secret Service agent. Pickett was sentenced to three years in prison.
On May 10, 2005, while President Bush was on a state visit to Armenia, Vladimir Arutyunian threw a live Russian RGD-5 hand grenade at Bush and Armenian President Saakashvili. Because a red scarf was wrapped so tightly around the grenade to conceal it, the safety lever failed to release.
Arutyunian was given a life sentence.
Donald J. Trump
On July 13, 2024, Thomas Matthews Crooks, while prone on a rooftop approximately 140 yards away, fired rounds from an AR-style rifle, hitting the former president’s ear as he was delivering a speech. The Secret Service formed a diamond-shaped human shield and shuffled Trump into his armored limousine. The shooter killed one and wounded two before he was killed by a Secret Service countersniper.
On September 15, 2024, a Secret Service agent thwarted a second attempted assassination of former president and candidate Trump. While Trump was playing golf at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, the agent, venturing ahead of the president, spotted a barrel extended out of a fence. It proved to be an AK-47-style rifle with a scope.
The agent fired toward the suspect, and the suspect fled on foot, leaving behind his rifle, a backpack containing ceramic plates and a GoPro camera. A witness took a photo of the suspect’s vehicle license plate. The plate number was entered into the system, and license plate readers picked up the vehicle as the would-be assassin fled on I-95. Martin County Sheriff’s officers spotted the black Nissan driven by Ryan Wesley Routh, stopped it and took the suspect into custody. The former president was uninjured.
Conclusion
Assassins are fame seekers, revolutionaries, hyper-enraged political opponents, terrorists and/or in mental crisis.
To stay alert while working presidential events, I thought, “What has happened before can happen again, but not on my watch!” With that in mind, I continually and critically scanned and assessed the crowd within my purview.
During such a detail in your future, you may someday be able to prevent an assassin from changing our government with bullets instead of ballots by remembering, “Not on my watch!”
Primary resource
“Law Dogs: Great Cops in American History” by Lt. Dan Marcou
