5 Shocking Crimes From People Who Founded Famous Companies

5

The Founders Of Chippendales Were A Bunch Of Murderers

Somen "Steve" Banerjee was a true pioneer of the 20th century. In 1979, he was hosting a female mud wrestling night when he had an epiphany: "What if we did this, but with cocks?" Together with some unlikely partners -- lawyer Bruce Nahin, former pimp Paul Snider, and Emmy-winning choreographer Nick De Noia -- he launched Chippendales, America's favorite bulge-based dance troupe. But while the beefcakes on stage were all about healthy living and positive male sexuality, the founders were all about anger, jealousy, and occasionally some light murder.

The first murder came in 1980, when Snider's wife and former client, Playboy model Dorothy Stratten, left him. Snider found out that Stratten was sleeping with director Peter Bogdanovich, so he broke into Stratten's house, raped her, murdered her, then blew his own head off with a shotgun.

Meanwhile, Banerjee was growing concerned about how many other entertainers were stealing his absolutely unique idea of getting hot people to take off their clothes for money, so decided he needed to take strong steps to protect his brand. Steps such as burning down nightclubs that dared to host rival dance troupes, or hiring a hitman to shoot Nick De Noia dead in front of his apartment because he decided to quit the Chippendales and do choreography for one of its rivals. Remember, we're talking about dick-dancing here. Professional dick-dancing.

Banerjee was also behind a plot to murder Nahin, but that took a backseat to a much grander plan to wipe out the competition. Through two inept goons, Banerjee contracted Lynn Bressler, code-named "Strawberry," to kill several members of the Chippendales' biggest rival beefcake factory, Adonis. Banerjee's goons supplied Strawberry with a bag o' cyanide and told him to poison three Adonis employees. That bag was later recovered by the FBI, and was found to contain enough cyanide to kill 2,300 people, suggesting that any one Adonis dancer was worth 766 ordinary men. Truly, they were gods.

But if there's one thing Strawberry Bressler liked more than poisoning strippers, it was being an informant for the feds. When pressed, he turned over quicker than an oiled-up Chippendale on Ass Night, and the authorities arrested Banerjee. This opened the floodgates, exposing the murder, racketeering, and arson. Banerjee, seeing no exit stage left, hung himself in prison before a judge could sentence him. Those Chippendales always were well-hung.

4

The Founder Of DHL Was A Pedophile Who Rampaged Unchecked Across The Pacific

Larry Hillblom was the kind of guy who'd get banned from multiple bakeries for fondling the muffins. Unfortunately, he was also the kind of guy who could sell sand to a desert, and he became very rich after co-founding DHL, the Pepsi to FedEx's Coke. And trust us when we say that he was the last man you'd want to have "Fuck you" money. You would not like where he applied it.

3

The Founder Of Popeyes Tried Bribing A Judge With Seafood

Popeyes Chicken founder Al Copeland is everything you'd ever want out of a shady New Orleans business tycoon: corrupt, crazy, and completely shameless. How shameless? He bought a showroom for his collection of speedboats ... right next to a busy intersection, solely so that drivers could see how rich he was. He also got the local sheriff's department to divert traffic from his house during the Christmas season just so he could set up ridiculous decorations.

But perhaps the best shenanigan occurred in 1993, during Copeland's bidding war to open a floating casino on the bayou. Did we say bidding war? We meant bribing war, as both he and tugboat magnate (New Orleans, everybody!) Robert Guidry had openly been trying to pay off Governor Edwin Edwards, a man who got elected on the slogan "Vote For The Crook." In the end, Guidry managed to out-bribe Copeland by kicking back a whopping million bucks. Copeland's response? To get into a bare-knuckle fistfight with Guidry in the restaurant where Copeland was celebrating his one-year anniversary with his fourth wife -- who was pregnant. New Orleans, everybody!

2

Sam Colt Let His Brother Die In Jail To Keep His Teenage Wife A Secret

Samuel Colt's brother John was a prominent New York accounting expert and former riverboat gambler. Did you already guess that this story involves New Orleans? You must be psychic.

John also had a bit of a temper, highlighted in 1841 when he hacked a printer to bits with a hatchet. Now, everyone who ever had to deal with a printer can relate to that frustration, except that in John's case, the printer was a human being named Sam Adams. After the murder, John hid Adams' body in a crate full of salt and tried to have it shipped to New Orleans. But the Crescent City never got its shipment of salted Sam, as the body was discovered before the ship left port.

Charles SuttonSure, make room for the small child to get a good look at a salt-packed corpse. Great parenting, 19th century.

1

Hobby Lobby Execs Trafficked Stolen Iraqi Artifacts

Hobby Lobby was founded and is still owned by the Green family, who are such hardcore evangelical Christians that they refused to include birth control in their company health plan. You might have heard about the little legal tiff over that issue. When not reading the Bible to their cashiers, the Greens use their millions to fund weird historical projects. The jewel in their crown is Washington's Museum of the Bible, which sounds like the most boring school trip ever, but contains a treasure trove of legit religious artifacts acquired at great expense. The artifacts are so amazing that the museum actually got the family into quite a lot of trouble, since many of them were easily identified, and had been looted from Iraqi museums and archaeological sites during the ongoing conflict with ISIS.