Celebs who met with a violent end

Mark David Chapman

Mark David Chapman, currently serving a prison sentence of 20 years to life, shot former Beatle John Lennon to death outside the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan 25 five years ago on Thursday.

HT Image

Here is a list of some other murdered celebrities:

1969 - Sharon Tate, actress wife of film director Roman Polanski, was murdered by followers of Charles Manson at her Beverly Hills estate when she was eight months pregnant. Manson was later convicted of masterminding the murders.

1976 - Sal Mineo was a US actor stabbed to death in the street outside of his Los Angeles home. Together with his co-stars in the film Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, Natalie Wood and Nick Adams all died a violent or unusual death.

1984 - Motown singer Marvin Gaye was shot dead by his father during an argument.

1996 - Rapper Tupac Shakur is murdered in drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Another rival rapper, Christopher The Notorious B.I.G. Wallace, was gunned down in Los Angeles in 1997 in a killing widely attributed to a long-running feud between East and West Coast record labels.

1996 - Haing S. Ngor, Oscar-winning actor in The Killing Fields, was robbed and shot to death outside his home. In July, 2005 an appeals court reinstated the murder convictions of three members of the Oriental Lazy Boyz gang found guilty of the murder.

1997 - Fashion designer Gianni Versace was gunned down outside his Miami Beach mansion by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, who later killed himself, capping a cross-country murder spree.

2003 - Marie Trintignant, daughter of movie star Jean-Louis Trintignant, was killed by her boyfriend, Bertrand Cantat in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Cantat, lead singer with the rock group Noir Desir, is in prison in France.