Note: Many individuals gain their temporary or one-shot celebrity by way of the good things they do, but others, by their misdeeds. Under the heading "Notorious celebrity" will appear a miscellany of miscreants. Then will follow other more specific categories of wrongdoers who have captured the media's and hence the public's attention: mass/serial killers, other murderers, spies/traitors, disgraced political figures, disgraced business figures, disgraced media figures, and disgraced religious figures. And what a fascinating rouge's gallery they are!
Most of the notorious temporary celebrities that come to be known to U.S. audiences are either born and bred in the American brierpatch, or else live in the United States. An exception is Mehmet Ali Agca, the young Turkish man who in 1981 tried to shoot and kill Pope John Paul II in Rome's St. Peter's Square.
Ali Agca had a rough youth, was a member of a street gang, and was trained in terrorist activities by a far-right Turkish faction called the Grey Wolves. At the age of 21, he shot and killed a liberal newspaper editor in Istanbul.
Ali Agca got a life sentence but escaped prison.
In 1981, he made his attempt on the Pope's life, succeeding in wounding the pontiff in the abdomen and one arm. Ali Agca told more than one story about who hired him to shoot the Pope--Bulgarians, the Soviet KGB, the Turkish mob, and even Freemasons-- and was given a new life term.
AT one point, Ali Agca claimed to be the second coming of Christ. Before his death in 2005, the Pope met with his attempted assassin and pardoned him. The Pope also claimed that the assassination attempt was tied in with the mysterious three secrets of Fatima.
In 2000, Italian president Carlo Ciampi pardoned Ali Agca, but he was returned to Turkey to serve out his sentence for killing the editor. Italy's Supreme Court overruled Ciampi's pardon.
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