Famous Villains Who Were Actually Innocent

Burr: the sound you make when it's really cold and you feel like killing a founding father. For many Americans, that pretty much sums up Aaron Burr, who fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel. He also served as America's third vice president, but as Princeton Alumni Weekly writer Mark Bernstein observed, people prefer to focus on his other vices. Burr, in Bernstein's words, "has been portrayed as a conniver, a cynic, and a seducer. He has become an archetype, the 'bad' founder, an American Lucifer who fell from grace."

Frankly, America's Lucifer has been shown in a bad light. Thomas Jefferson spuriously asserted that Burr tried to steal the 1800 presidential election and later accused him of treason based on false information. Alexander Hamilton, America's $10 daddy, impugned Burr's character with truthless abandon, inciting their fateful showdown. Moreover, according to Time, by modern standards Burr should eclipse Hamilton as a hero, rather than the reverse.

Unlike Hamilton, Burr rejected economic elitism and xenophobia and championed the rights of indigents and immigrants. He also opposed slavery and called for an instant end to the institution in 1785. An avid advocate of gender equality, Burr heavily invested in his daughter's education and argued for women's rights. Plus, as Time opines, it's possible he didn't have his sights set on murder. People seldom died from duels back then, and the pistols –- which Hamilton picked –- were, in fact, trick pistols (via The Smithsonian). Burr aimed and shot in response and has been under fire ever since.

Mating is always a game of genital roulette. But in 1980s America, the only outcome people seemed to fear was AIDS. Initially touted as a "gay" disease, the virus quickly outed itself as an indiscriminate killer whose only sexual preference was sex itself. People pined for someone to blame. In the late '80s, they zeroed in on Gaetan Dugas, the infamous "Patient Zero."

Per NPR, Dugas was a Canadian flight attendant with a hearty carnal appetite. During his dalliances in the '70s, he contracted HIV and most likely infected others. Of course, people knew next to nothing about HIV and AIDS or how they spread. Dugas helped illuminate the issue by partaking in a study on homosexual men with HIV. In the resulting paper, he was anonymously labeled Patient O (the letter), as in "Oh no, people are going to horribly misconstrue this."

"Patient O" became "Patient Zero" in Randy Shilts' 1987 work And the Band Played On, in which Shilts baselessly pinned the bulk of America's (and possibly North America's) AIDS epidemic on Dugas. According to The LA Times, the book painted Patient Zero as "a vain and arrogant playboy who ignored doctors' orders to stop having sex to keep his infection from spreading." The media bought that steaming pile of Shilts, branding Dugas "the man who gave us AIDS." In reality, AIDS had existed in the U.S. years before Dugas could have spread it. Even so, the lie plays on.

On December, 7, 1941, Japanese fighter pilots descended on U.S. servicemen stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. As the History Channel detailed, increasingly undiplomatic exchanges between America and Japan had reached an acrimonious impasse. Determined to stake a claim on China without U.S. intervention, Japan resorted to preemptive brutality. Like marauding mechanical storm clouds, hundreds of planes unleashed a lethal hail of bombs and bullets on soldiers, ships, and shipmen. The ambush left 2,403 Americans dead and 1,178 wounded.

The U.S. had taken a staggering sucker punch, and in the ensuing months, the government tasked the Robertson Commission with discovering why. Per CBS affiliate WUSA 9, the commission held two men especially responsible: Admiral Husband E. Kimmel (shown testifying above) and Lieutenant General Walter Short. The men had supposedly received intel on a possible Japanese assault, only to greet the news with statuesque inaction. The commanders were commanded to retire.

In the aftermath, seething civilians refused to hold back their bile. Kimmel got flooded with threats hate mail. In one instance, someone sent him a gun and instructions to shoot himself. An ex-judge also encouraged suicide after asserting in no uncertain terms that Kimmel's life had no value. But what these pre-internet trolls failed to realize was that the government had erred in its assessment. The New York Times revealed that reports of an impending attack never reached Kimmel and Short. In 1999, the U.S. Senate contritely pardoned the pair. Sadly, they weren't alive to see it.

People normally associate French intellectualism with hoity-toity, baguette-smoking know-it-alls like Jean-Paul Sartre, but that's not all there is to know about it. As the New York Times elaborated, France's tradition of snooty-booty thinkers originated with a late 19th-century court case that polarized the populace, incited duels, and reeked of acrid antisemitism. At the heart of this societal schism was French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus.

In 1894, the French military uncovered evidence that Dreyfus had conspired with German forces during the Franco-Prussian War, contributing to France's eventual defeat. The blame actually lay elsewhere, but according to the History Channel, Major Hubert Henry had concocted a letter that fingered Dreyfus as the culprit. Even with this manufactured proof, the allegation proved largely untenable. However, Dreyfus was Jewish, which made him guilty in the eyes of many officers and the public at large.

Dreyfus was unceremoniously court-martialed, deprived of his rank, and shipped off to Devil's Island. As the truth surfaced, members of the literati (the soon-to-be-dubbed "intellectuals") flocked to Dreyfus's defense, noting the train-sized holes in the prosecution's case. Others continued castigating Dreyfus and Jews in general, sometimes lashing out violently. The military, meanwhile, refused to budge, even when the true traitor was discovered. Instead, it stubbornly absolved the culprit and convicted Dreyfus a second time. The French government later overturned this farcical decision, granting Dreyfus his freedom. In response to the often-bigoted mayhem that occurred, France's government established a separation of church and state.

To call "The Troubles" troubling would be reductively redundant. When England annexed part of Ireland, it ignited a powder keg of political, religious, and social strife. Irate dissidents like the IRA wanted to expel the English, and they frequently expressed themselves through explosions. In fact, for nearly a quarter-century, Belfast boasted "the most bombed hotel in the world," according to The Irish Times. But one of the IRA's most incendiary attacks took place at a pub in Guildford, England, in 1974. As the New York Times detailed, five people died, more than 50 sustained injuries, and a group of unlucky chums got charged.

Known as the Guildford Four, the star-crossed quartet consisted of Carole Richardson, her boyfriend Patrick Armstrong, Paul Hill, and Gerry Conlon (shown above). The first two were freewheeling hippies and the latter two were former schoolmates who liked to drink. Police had tortured Hill into confessing. Under severe duress, he falsely copped to the Guildford attack and a London pub bombing and further pointed the finger at his friends.

British authorities arrested the rest of the Guildford Four. For bad measure, they also rounded up Gerry Conlon's father, aunt, and five other people (dubbed the Maguire Seven). All did time based on bogus evidence while the police were hailed as heroes. Per The Telegraph, the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were vindicated and released years later, but in one case freedom came too late. Conlon's falsely imprisoned father died behind bars.

It might sound silly now, but the game Dungeons & Dragons used to scare the bejesus out of Christians. It wasn't the dungeons or dragons per se that bothered them, but the distinct lack of Jesus. In fairness, Jesus and Dragons sounds amazing. But rather than bringing that joy to the world, the fearful faithful denounced Dungeons & Dragons and any person, place, or thing they deemed vaguely satanic. As the Washington Post recollected, this so-called "satanic panic" spanned much of the 1980s and '90s and sparked a spate of highly publicized arrests.

Literally thousands of children, many of them coached by therapists, falsely accused adults of unconscionable cruelties and perversions likened to devil worship. Among these supposed sinners were Texas daycare managers Fran and Dan Keller. Children at their facility claimed that the Kellers perpetrated an ungodly number of evils, including child murder, molestation, resurrecting the dead, chainsawing a dog's privates, and (impressively) "using Satan's arm as a paintbrush." Circumstantial evidence and shoddy investigative work led to a sexual assault conviction in 1992. Both Kellers received 48-year prison sentences. 

It took more than two decades for a court to overturn the unjust verdict. In the meantime, the couple suffered tremendously. Fran Keller recounted having boiling water lobbed at her by incensed inmates who didn't take kindly to child abusers. The Kellers won their freedom in 2013 and were awarded $3.4 million. Finally, they can play as much Dungeons and Dragons as they want.