Ted Kaczynski before...

What is the “typical” Harvard alum? Smoking jacket, riding whip, and trophy wife on his arm. WASP extraordinaire. Money-grubbing power-hungry CEO. Hopeless academic. The list goes on as long as the line outside Heaven and Hell (that is before they shut it down).

But, in the spirit of Halloween, it’s important to be reminded that some graduates leave Harv to go on to lives spent not on filling their wallets or on aggrandizing their already-inflated egos, but rather on lengthening their rap sheet.

In which we discuss not-so-nice Harvard alums:

• Ted Kaczynski: Probably the most notorious of criminal crimson alums, Kaczynski unleashed terror and gained infamy by sending pipe bombs, segregating himself from humanity by living off-the-grid in Montana and writing his manifesto.
• Dr John White Webster: When George Parkman didn’t have the money he owed Webster, Webster killed him and hacked his body up in a laboratory at Harvard Medical. Police found portions of the body hidden all through the medical building, but some organs were never found.


Ted Kaczynski after.

• Sinedu Tadesse: This gruesome murder hits a little closer to home. On May 28, 1995, Sinedu Tadesse, after a week of planning and forethought, stabbed her roommate Trang Phuong Ho 45 times and hung herself in her Dunster bathroom. Her motives remain somewhat unclear, but fears of housing issues and a suit waged by Ho’s family lead some to believe that this murder led Harvard to change its housing system.
• Chas Lee:  Working with the Jimmy Fund which hosts An Evening with Champions, Chas Lee embezzled over $100,00 while he was still a junior at Harvard and managed to escape prosecution for two years, completing his degree in biology. Lee received a light sentence and remains an alumnus in good standing.

All information from Wikipedia. Photos from Wikimedia Commons and Getty Images