7 People Who Took Justice Into Their Own (Insane) Hands

You're probably thinking, "It was so simple! Why doesn't every hostage situation end like this?" Well, despite the bold ass-kickery of it all, it didn't help. McNally simply grabbed some hostages to shield himself from FBI snipers and stole a different plane. He parachuted out mid-flight, but dropped his gun and the ransom money. The shitty idiot was arrested a couple days later. He attempted to escape prison six years after his arrest by having a friend hijack a helicopter, but the plan was foiled by a second, completely unrelated vigilante. David Hanley didn't just foil McNally's crime: He started a vigilante trend that followed him his whole life.

In 2010, some drug cartel members came to Don Alejo and told him they wanted his farm. They weren't interested in buying it so much as just moving in after he fled for his life. They gave him 24 hours to comply. Don Alejo now had a few options. One: Give his farm to the cartel. Two: Call the police and hope they weren't corrupt. Don Alejo picked option three: KILL ALL THESE MOTHERFUCKERS. The cartel didn't know this, but Old Farmer Tamez was a stubborn old man with an objectively absurd number of guns.

Don Alejo told all of his farmhands to take a long weekend. He spent the remaining hours of the ultimatum cleaning his massive arsenal and fortifying the shit out of his house. He never thought twice about calling the cops, since, as we alluded to before, the police in his area were usually on the drug cartels' side.

Via npr.org

By the time his 24 hours were up, Don Alejo's house was a fortress with a rifle at every door and window. When the cartel gunmen showed up, firing into the air like hooligans, Don Alejo just started picking them off one by one. He would fire a shot or two from one location, then rush across the house as quickly as his 77-year-old knees allowed. He'd take up a new firing position with a new gun, then blast new holes into the bewildered gunmen.

Multimedios / Family of Don Alejo, Multimedios / Family of Don Alejo

The cartel members fell into disarray, and it turned into a long, bullet-flying standoff. Don Alejo almost certainly went into this knowing it was his final act, and he was right. But he went out gunfighting, and the cartel had to literally blow up his house to kill him. When the bullets finally stopped coming from the rubble, the mostly killed cartel gunmen ran like hell, leaving behind four dead and two wounded (and we'll never know how many casualties they took with them). So not only did the cartel not get Don Alejo's farm, six of its members are now fertilizing his crops.

This is probably the least likely first sentence in the bio of a vigilante, but Andre Bamberski, Kalinka's father, was a French accountant. He fought and fought to get Krombach extradited through legal channels, yet nothing worked. Then, in 2009, 27 years after his daughter died, a French police station near the German border received an anonymous call. It was a man with a Russian accent telling them where to find Krombach, bound, gagged, and bleeding from his head. Minutes later, the rapist was rescued and arrested.

Who could have delivered this package? The obvious suspect was Andre Bamberski, the man nagging the world to make this happen for 27 years. Suspiciously, he was found in a nearby hotel with 19,000 euros in cash and no alibi. Bamberski said he didn't kidnap Krombach, but he agreed to let someone else do it. It was a story so thin it may as well have been a full confession, but no one is going to throw the book at an elderly accountant for roughing up his daughter's murderer. They set his bail at 19,000 euros, which turned out to be just a lovely coincidence.

Franck Prevel/Getty Images News/Getty Images

If the intrigue surrounding the case has you on the edge of your seat, you should know: The mysterious Russian informant was Andre doing a funny accent, and if Andre had an accomplice, the courts didn't care. They decided it was just barely illegal to beat the shit out of the fugitive that killed your daughter, and ultimately handed him a one-year suspended sentence.

Franck Prevel/Getty Images News/Getty Images

It was a brilliant plan, and it worked. It seems officials are far more motivated to cover a squirting dong than they are to fill a pothole. But not "officially." The city couldn't encourage this kind of activity, so they denied these cocks had any effect on their hole-filling process.

Wanksy / Facebook

Despite the city's claims, the happy citizens of Manchester seem to think the dong paintings were effective. They began to notice potholes that had been around for months, suddenly being filled within 48 hours of growing a dick. Wanksy even used a paint that would wear off after a few weeks, meaning nothing but happy endings. He knew a penis onslaught today would lead to smoother, dickless roads in the future. God bless this brave penis-painting hero.

So far, most of the vigilantes in this article have been relatively ordinary people -- farmers, soldiers, accountants. The Gulabi Gang from India are a little closer to how we usually picture vigilantes. They dress in bright colors and beat criminals with thematic weapons.

Al Jazeera

The Gulabi Gang patrol neighborhoods in bright pink saris armed with lathis, traditional Indian fighting sticks. The country has a terrifying female abuse problem, and poor people don't get much police protection. The Gulabi Gang was formed to fix the problem.

They came together in 2006 after a woman named Sampat Pal Devi kicked the hell out of her neighbor for abusing his wife. She had learned how to stick-fight when she was younger, and it had finally paid off. It hit her that smashing sticks into rapists and wife-beaters was just crazy enough to work, and since she formed the group, over 400,000 volunteers (most of them women) have joined. They are spread across 11 territories in India and have developed the perfect way to fight Indian crime:

First, they report the crime to the police. This is so often useless that it's more of a technicality than anything else. Second, they go to the man who is beating or abusing his wife and tell him to stop. If he refuses, they beat him with sticks. You may have been expecting some kind of twist, but no. They just beat him with sticks. This often leaves the man unable to abuse any more women and converts his wife into an enthusiastic member of their gang.

McKay Savage

Don't misunderstand -- the gang is more than women hitting men with sticks. The Gulabi Gang travels to the poorest villages in India to make sure the government is properly distributing food and recognizing basic human rights. They fight against child marriages, give victims of abuse a safe environment, and help prevent "dowry death," a horrible thing that's exactly what it sounds like. They also help loving couples get married and work to undo India's caste system that keeps women and poor people oppressed. We led with it, but beating rapists with fighting sticks barely scratches the surface of what they do. It's mostly just a job perk.

But it turns out John Wick could have also been Luttrell's biopic. When he returned home from his disastrous trip to Afghanistan, he was given a puppy to help him get through the trauma. He named it DASY, an acronym for his team members he lost in the fight. You've probably already guessed this from this entry's title, but the story is about to get sad.

One night Luttrell was at his house when out of nowhere, he heard a gunshot. He quickly grabbed his pistol and ran to check on his mother, who lived next door. After making sure she was OK, he went down to the road and saw something horrible: His dog had been shot. And not only that, two men were standing in a ditch with it, laughing.

Luttrell immediately went after the two men. He ended up in a high-speed car chase that spanned 40 miles and reached speeds over 100 mph. During the chase, he stayed on the line with a 911 operator and told them he needed authorities because, and we quote, "If I catch them, I'm going to kill them."

Marcus Luttrell / Facebook

Thanks to Luttrell's help and maniacal pursuit, the police were able to catch the suspects. The two were found guilty of cruelty to a non-livestock animal, which is a felony but seems an entirely inadequate way to describe the crime. Still, we're sure these garbage dog-killers are happy with any sentence that keeps a giant prison wall between them and Marcus Luttrell.

Escobar had spies everywhere due to his policy of plata o plomo, which we think means, "Take this bribe and be on my side or I will murder you and everyone you've ever met." The government formed a special 200-man incorruptible police squad known as Search Bloc to kill Escobar. Escobar killed 30 of them in the first 15 days. Many Colombians decided that being at the mercy of a murderous drug lord was wrong and rallied behind Luis Galan, a presidential candidate who stood against wanton, rampant violence. Escobar had him assassinated at a campaign rally. Then he blew up a goddamned passenger jet in an attempt to kill his replacement. Also, we should mention, Escobar had a personal zoo full of deadly and exotic animals. He was a full James Bond villain in a movie where every James Bond gets killed in Act 1.

BBC

So, who finally brought Escobar down? It wasn't a government sting or a police raid. It was a shadowy group of vigilante assassins known only as Los Pepes. Like all good assassins, they appeared suddenly, seemingly from nowhere. One day, Escobar's henchmen started dying, justice system be damned. Obviously, details are fuzzy when a network of well-intentioned murderers appears, but the group was mainly made up of paramilitaries, police, and rival drug lords -- basically everyone who hated Pablo Escobar. It's apparently hard to take over thousands of drug territories and kill hundreds of people without making a few enemies.

Los Pepes were as ruthless as Escobar. They considered working with the drug lord in any capacity a capital offense. They very publicly assassinated huge numbers of Escobar's men on a daily basis and left signs around their necks signed "Los Pepes." Whenever Escobar set off another car bomb, Los Pepes would just kill some of his lawyers or money launderers. Or they would blow up one of his houses, massacre some drug-related facility, or, in one case, burn down his prized collection of classic cars. One could make the argument that Los Pepes very nearly killed the phrase "two wrongs don't make a right."

Steve Murphy/DEA

It got to the point where top cartel members, hitmen, and lawyers began turning themselves in to avoid a Los Pepes slaying. And, as his support network dissolved, Escobar himself died in a shootout with Search Bloc, an organization with a lot of alleged ties to Los Pepes. It was a murdernado of a life and a double murdernado of a death.

Zachary Frey's family laughed at his ability to remember random facts and stories until he turned knowing random facts and stories into taxable income. You can read his 10 most recent awesome articles here. Nathan Shulkin is currently trying to get his town to fill all its potholes. You can follow him on Twitter.

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It turns out there's a lot more vigilantes out there than we realized. And it's all very depressing. See what we mean in 6 Real-Life Vigilantes Crazier Than Batman. And also check out 5 Real World Criminals Who Were Certified Supervillains.

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