5
AC/DC Drummer Phil Rudd Put A Hit Out On His Former Personal Assistant
Phil Rudd was the drummer for AC/DC from 1975 to 1983, when he left the band due to drug and alcohol abuse, which you'd think would be mandatory for AC/DC. He joined the band again for 1994-2015, and started getting into meth. He was a man of the times.
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"An artist always has to evolve."
In 2014, Rudd released a solo album tastefully titled Head Job, but it didn't perform so well. Rudd also did not perform so well when he heard of the album's commercial failure. First he fired his entire staff for incompetence, because he knew the quality of his music couldn't possibly be the issue. But for reasons unknown (or at least not revealed to the media), Rudd had a particular vendetta against one former, unnamed personal assistant. Not content with merely giving passive-aggressive references, Rudd called another former associate of his and demanded that the PA be "taken out." And not to "a lovely brunch."
The associate thought Rudd was blowing off steam, until Rudd followed up and offered him a choice between $200,000, a car, a motorcycle, or a house if he got the job done. It seems Australian assassins work under Let's Make A Deal compensatory rules.
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"The mystery door was a lifetime supply of Vegemite."
Rudd also bucked another conventional rule of murder-for-hire by repeatedly calling his victim to tell him that he was coming to kill him. For some reason, the guy eventually stopped picking up the phone. When police finally came to arrest Rudd for the torrent of death threats, they also found a mother lode of meth and other drugs hidden around his home. Presumably so he could find them later, like a wonderful surprise!
However, Rudd is still a wealthy musician, which means that he was only sentenced to eight months home detention. Having completed his sentence, Rudd now regularly sees a psychiatrist and has "quit all the crazy shit." He will tour Europe in the Spring of 2017, and the fact that he did not call that tour "All The Crazy Shit" leaves us direly disappointed.
4
Norman Mailer Tried To Murder His Wife (In Public!)
Norman Mailer was one of the world's preeminent journalists, the winner of two Pulitzers and a co-founder of "New Journalism" -- a style he shares with the likes of Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson. He's a giant in the 20th century literary canon. He also tried to stab his wife to death in full view of dozens of horrified witnesses.