10 Famous People Who Have Killed Someone

5. William S Burroughs (1951)

One of the most influential postmodernist authors of the 20th Century, William Burroughs wrote such key literary works as "Naked Lunch" and "Junkie" - but it is not as widely known that the man who experimented with all sorts of drugs also accidentally killed his second wife. When Burroughs and his "common-law wife" Joan Vollmer - they were never actually formally married - fled to Mexico City in 1950 in order to escape from the former's conviction for forging a narcotics prescription, things went rapidly downhill for the pair. Burroughs was feeling withdrawal symptoms from heroin, to which he was addicted, and his homosexual tendencies were also returning so he turned to drink. With the pair drinking above an American-owned pub named Bounty Bar in Mexico City in September 1951, a soused Burroughs turned to Vollmer and said: "It's time for our William Tell act." Referring to shooting an apple off a child's head, Vollmer put a highball glass on her head and then Burroughs shot at it with a handgun - but he aimed too low, and killed her instantly. Although he first claimed he had dropped the gun and it had accidentally fired, Burroughs served 13 days in jail in Mexico City and was given a two-year suspended sentence in absentia of homicide back in the US. When writing his novel "Queer" in 1952, which was not published until 1985, Burroughs stated in his introduction:

"I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan's death... So the death of Joan brought me into contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and manoeuvred me into a lifelong struggle, in which I had no choice except to write my way out."

Many believe that Vollmer's death made Burroughs the writer he was - and without such an incident his classic works would never have been.