ABSTRACT
No matter what results the murder of a political leader may have, some of those murders are motivated only by the most traditional of personal reasons. Classic murders, especially of the Agatha Christie variant, are quite rare, and politicians apparently are no more likely to be victims of outraged fathers or embittered debtors than are any other group. The American examples of personal motives have largely been minor officials, but this is not always the case. Various Latin American presidents have been killed out of personal hatred and private revenge, by an outraged brother of a mistress, in vengeance for business losses. All these were quite reasonable personal motives that resulted only in the replacement of one El Presidente by another. At times maximum leaders are not so easily replaced, often fortunately. In April 1972, Sheikh Abeid Karume, the president of Zanzibar, was assassinated.
