Edgar McNabb is the first convicted murderer from the higher echelons of sports. In his case, baseball. He runs off with a married woman, Louise Kellogg, and they live in California. In 1894, Kellogg tells McNabb she intends to leave him and, in what appears to be a fit of jealousy, he shoots her three times before turning the gun on himself. Long before the term toxic masculinity is coined, McNabb appears to have manifested a belligerence toward women typical of that still witnessed. Crimes passionnels recur throughout this timeline.

Leslie Hylton, a West Indies fast bowler, shoots his wife dead after a furious confrontation about her longtime affair. She was Lurline Rose, the daughter of a police inspector. An anonymous letter tipped Hylton off to her dalliance. Seven bullets are found in her body. He is found guilty in 1954 and hanged in 1955. Hylton’s presents a paradigm case: a successful and lauded athlete is enraged by his partner’s infidelity and opts for a violently conclusive settlement.

Robert Rozier is one of seven National Football League (NFL) players who have killed people over the years. Rozier played for the St. Louis Cardinals. He converts to a Miami-based sectarian movement called “Nation of Yahweh.” Its credo includes the belief that blacks are god’s chosen people and whites are infidels. In 1992, a jury convicts Rozier of seven killings dating from 1986. As part of a deal to reduce his sentence, Rozier testifies against sect leader Yahweh. He gets paroled after 10 years, then receives 25 years after bouncing checks in 1999. He remains in prison.

Carlos Monzón, in the 1980s, vies with Diego Maradona as Argentina’s leading sports star, defending his world middleweight title 14 times before retiring. In 1988, he plunges from a second-floor balcony, holding partner Alicia Muñiz, a model, as he falls. She dies. Monzón claims it was an accident, but receives 11 years in prison. In 1995, while out on a weekend furlough, he dies in a car crash.

Mark Rogowski, aka Mark Anthony, an international skateboard champion of the 1980s, is a jilted lover who confesses to the rape, torture and murder of Jessica Bergsten, his ex-girlfriend’s best friend, whom he blamed for the breakup of his relationship. He zips her body up in a skateboard bag and dumps it in a southern Californian desert. Rogowski was once listed as one of the top ten skateboarders in the world. He has no previous criminal record, but has been dependent on alcohol for a while during retirement. He has also experienced a religious conversion to a form of evangelical Christianity.

Sally McNeil is the only female in this deadly gallery. A one-time wrestler and competitive bodybuilder, Pennsylvania-born McNeil serves in the Marines and, after her discharge, starts wrestling professionally. She meets her second husband, a bodybuilder, who, she claims, abused her. On Valentine’s night, 1995, McNeil calls 911 and announces: “I just shot my husband because he just beat me up.” She is convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 19 years to life. Her defense is similar to those of fellow convicted murderers Aileen Wuornos and Francine Hughes, both of whom cited abuse — what became known as “battered woman syndrome.”

Rae Carruth, a Carolina Panthers player, is convicted of the first-degree murder of his girlfriend Cherica Adams, at the time pregnant with his baby. Adams is shot in the neck and chest from a passing vehicle as she drives her car. Carruth, according to prosecutors, arranged the drive-by. Doctors perform an emergency delivery to save the baby, who is born with severe disabilities. Carruth is the first active NFL player to face a murder charge. He is convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, attempting to destroy an unborn child and discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle. He receives 18 to 24 years as his sentence. The case has distressing parallels with that of Félix Verdejo (see 2023).

Jovan Belcher, a Kansas City Chiefs player, shoots girlfriend Kasandra Perkins to death before driving to the Chiefs’ practice facility and committing suicide in front of his head coach and general manager, among others. Perkin’s apparent infidelity was a source of conflict between the two.

Oscar Pistorius features in arguably the most notorious murder in the history of sports. The double-amputee Paralympian fires at Reeva Steenkamp, a model, four times through a locked bathroom door at his home in Pretoria. Pistorius consistently maintains that he mistook Steenkamp for a burglar. He is initially found guilty of culpable homicide — an offense comparable to manslaughter — but is ultimately convicted of murder, his sentence eventually set at 17-and-a-half years. He is denied parole in 2023, but is granted parole and released in 2024.

Félix Verdejo, a lightweight boxer, receives life in prison for killing his pregnant lover. He injected 27-year-old Keishla Rodríguez Ortiz with fentanyl and xylazine, an animal sedative, before tying her to a cement block and throwing her off the Teodoro Moscoso bridge that connects San Juan and Carolina, in Puerto Rico, in 2021.