Beloved Criminals

Beloved Criminals

This article relates to A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage

In A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage, Fox and Hazel are an attractive, wealthy, glamorous couple who kill others for sport. (But they only kill evil men, like rapists and child abusers—making them, in the reader's eyes, less serial killers and more vigilantes.) Their wealth and beauty offer them an inconspicuousness that lets them literally get away with murder. But there is a different kind of privilege that these qualities may afford a killer, which is public approval.

Many criminals and vigilantes have come to be lauded rather than reviled for their crimes—for daring to do things that others won't, for seeking justice outside of corrupt institutions or failing systems. One need look no further than Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and the almost instantaneous celebrity status he was given by a public equally incensed by the failings of the US healthcare system. The New York Times wrote about how Mangione's looks—he was popularly christened "the hot assassin"—may have influenced people's opinions about his alleged crime, referred to as "the halo effect."

Mangione is far from the first person to have captured public attention and approval based on a combination of his alleged actions and his charm and attractiveness.

Bonnie and Clyde
Depression-era criminals Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker didn't exactly share Fox and Hazel's lavish lifestyle, but they did have a similar love and devotion for each other. They met only a few weeks before Clyde was sent to prison for two years, and spent his confinement sending passionate love letters back and forth. When he was paroled, they embarked on a marginally successful crime spree that culminated in a prison break that they envisioned as a humiliating revenge on the system that had failed them both.

Their criminal aspirations were cut short when they were gunned down in a police ambush in 1934. But their youth, good looks, and motivations spoke to people at a time when many had lost faith in a system that had let them fall so far with so little hope for recovery. History remembers the couple not as murderers—though they were guilty of that—but as young rebels fighting back against an unjust and uncaring world. Their exploits and passionate love story have been immortalized in books, movies, and even musical theater.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
When the names Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are mentioned, you'd be forgiven for immediately imagining Paul Newman and Robert Redford stealing hearts and robbing banks on the silver screen. But their real-life counterparts, best known for their thrilling railway heists in the 1860s, were almost equally as beloved, and soon came to be known for their charm and charisma as much as for their crimes. Their gang, the Wild Bunch, made it a point to avoid bloodshed, going so far as to warn their victims before dynamiting their way into a train car, and mainly targeted powerful entities like railroad companies and banks. Among the public, their exploits were looked on with far more fondness than fear.

Frank Abagnale Jr.
Con man Frank Abagnale Jr. is probably best known as the subject of the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can, based on his semi-autobiographical book of the same name, where he was famously portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio. In the movie, Abagnale poses as an airline pilot, a lawyer, and a doctor and cashes millions of dollars of fake checks before being caught and imprisoned by Tom Hanks' resolute FBI agent. The veracity of Abagnale's exploits has been under scrutiny almost since his book was published; several journalists have called his supposed crimes into question, and many of the institutions Abagnale purports to have defrauded deny the allegations. Still, as a con man and criminal, Abagnale has captured public attention not as a villain but as a daring, almost mischievous prankster.

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This "beyond the book article" relates to A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage. It originally ran in January 2025 and has been updated for the November 2025 paperback edition. Go to magazine.