The act of taking the life of anyone by surprise or treacherous violence, either by a hired emissary, as in the case of political plots, or by a fanatic who hopes to further his ideas through the death of his victim. Generally the term is applied to the murder of a public personage by one who aims solely at the death of the victim.
New International Encyclopedia
"A man who goes forth to kill another whom he does not know must believe one thing only--that he will change the course of history" (Itzhak Yizernitsky, member of the Stern Gang)--
Heaps, William A. Assassination: A Special Kind of Murder. New York: Meredith Press, 1969.
"Ironically, the assassin is both conservative and hopeful. He believes in the promise of America, believes he has been cheated of the dream’s fruits, and so with gun in hand presents to his victim, to the individual he thinks has caused his woes, what amounts to a petition...in murder. Our surviving assassins tell us their act righted a fundamental wrong, that they have behaved in accordance with America’s ideals."
McKinley, James. Assassination in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
"The political murderer in American history has been an obsessed, fanatical, and deluded [individual]. But he has murdered a stranger, as soldiers kills strangers, impelled by a cause that goes beyond his own personality. No more than a soldier does he regret his act."
Freedman, Lawrence Zelic. "Psychopathology of Assassination." Assassinations and the Political Order. Ed. William J. Crotty.New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
"The men they murdered were famous, men who had won popularity contests, and those who murdered them, for the most part, were individuals who had been losing popularity contests all their lives. . . . The characters, from Booth to Oswald, are haunting American malcontents who have lived their lives underwater, bubbling to the surface only for one ghastly gasp of air, a spasm of dreadful clarity."
Schwartz, Jonathan. "Background Information." Review of Broadway musical Assassins. http://www.rose.brandeis.edu/users/peisach/assassins/assassins.html (23 Dec. 23, 1996)
Status Incongruence is defined as the gap between "biologically ascribed status" and "achieved position" in terms of occupational variable. "Over and over a consistent pattern for . . . presidential assassins repeats itself": this gap between the position they believe they are entitled to in life and the reality of their existence, "as well as an extreme and obsessive desire for greatness of a scale totally inconsistent with the achievements of each. . . .their achievements are not congruent with their aspirations."
Wilkerson, Doris Y. "Political Assassins and Status Incongruence: A Sociological Interpretation." Social Structure and Assassination. Doris Wilkerson, ed. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing, 1976. 25-39.
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