Crime #1: Valentines Day Massacre February 14, 1929

Capone Gang vs. Moran

Capone’s target was Bugs Moran.

Gang was lured with a shipment of whiskey

Bugs was late…

Two men disguised as cops approached, fired machine guns

Seven men died (one, Frank Gusenberg, would die hours later stubbornly claiming he wasn’t shot.)

• Impact: This was the most famous example of the Prohibition era gangster rivalry in American history

Crime #2: Beltway Snipers October 3rd, 2002: 4 deaths

between 7:41 and 9:58 AM

One more that night…all from a single bullet fired from a distance

For 2 weeks, the snipers made the police perform for the news in return for not killing.

On October 24th, John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were arrested at a rest stop with a matching Bushmaster rifle.

Impact: role of guns and mass panic in days after 9/11

Crime #3: DB Cooper November 24, 1971

“Dan Cooper” boarded flight 305, PortlandSeattle

He showed the flight attendant a bomb & demanded $200,000

Cooper was polite and got his money upon landing. Then he took off again toward Reno with four parachutes.

By the time the plane landed in Reno for refueling, Cooper was no longer on the plane.

Impact: development of modern airport security measures

Crime #4: Amber Hagerman January 13, 1996, Amber

Hagerman was kidnapped and thrown in the back of a truck while riding her bike.

The kidnapping was witnessed, but police could not locate the truck in time

4 Days later Amber’s body was found by local searchers.

Her kidnapping inspired the creation of a victim-tracking system now known as “Amber Alerts.”

Crime #5: Leopold and Loeb Nathan Leopold (19) and

Richard Loeb (18) were child prodigies, already college graduates, and huge egoists.

May 21, 1924, they kidnapped Bobby Franks (14) demanded a ransom, then killed him and destroyed the evidence.

The only evidence they missed was Leopold’s glasses, which had accidentally fallen out of his pocket.

Upon questioning, the pair admitted they had committed the “perfect” crime just for fun

• Impact: One of the candidates for the “crime of the century.”

• Defense attorney Clarence Darrow’s speech against the death penalty is considered one of the great summations of all time.

Crime #6: The Lufthansa Heist December 11, 1978, a Lufthansa

airline lands at Kennedy airport with $6 million in cash and jewels, the largest ever robbery at the time.

Members of the Gambino and Luchese crime families stormed the plane, tied the crew, and began loading carts with cash.

64 minutes later, the entire contents of the plane and the suspects were gone.

The scene was described in Scorsese’s movie Goodfelllas

• Impact: The heist has been the longest continuous FBI investigation in history

Crime #7: Tylenol Poisonings September 29, 1982, the first of

seven random deaths in the Chicago area occurred due to Tylenol.

Eventually, the connection was made that the Tylenol they all took was actually cyanide.

Since the Tylenol bottles were filled at different factories, investigators concluded someone slipped the pills into bottles at the supermarkets.

Since then, medicine bottles have been equipped with tamper-locks and childproofing

Crime #8: Hanssen and Ames Two of the worst spies in

American history were dedicated FBI investigators

Aldrich Ames extorted nearly $5 million from the soviets during his CIA and FBI career

Robert Hanssen sold names of agents in Russia for $1.4 million in diamonds

Ames was arrested February 22, 1994; Hanssen on February 18, 2001

Both are serving life sentences in Supermax prisons in Pennsylvania and Colorado

• Impact: In terms of lives lost and missions compromised, the two men are the costliest spies in American history

Crime #9: Oklahoma City Bombing April 19, 1995, the Alfred P

Murrah Federal building was bombed killing 168 people

The attack occurred on the anniversary of Waco, TX and Ruby Ridge, ID

90 minutes after the bomb, Timothy McVeigh was arrested for driving without a license and carrying a concealed weapon. He would later be identified as one of the bombers

McVeigh is believed to be the first domestic terrorist in American history.

Crime #10: Dillinger’s Escape March 3, 1934, John Dillinger

carved a fake gun out of a potato and shoe polish

Surprised by his weapon, the guards were apprehended by Dillinger and fellow inmates

Dillinger then escaped in Sheriff Lillian Holley’s V-8 Ford, casually driving out of town.

July 22nd, trailed by BOI, Dillinger was shot outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater

Impact: Dillinger’s legacy of courting public favor became a trademark of 1930’s gangsters

Trial #1: Hatfield’s vs McCoys It began with a dispute over

pigs in each other’s lands. It ended with dozens of deaths, burned homes, and destroyed property.

The feud took place between the Kentucky (McCoy) and West Virginia (Hatfield) state lines, so arrests were either difficult or potentially illegal.

In Mahon v Justice, the Supreme Court used the case to rule that extradition between states was legal if properly conducted.

Trial #2: The Sweet Trials Ossian Sweet was a wealthy

black man who bought a home in a wealthy white Detroit neighborhood

September 9th, 1925, a mob attacks the Sweet’s home with rocks. Someone inside the Sweet house fires a gun and kills Leon Breiner.

Sweet and eleven other occupants are arrested and charged with murder.

Michigan vs. Sweet. In two trials, the verdicts are hung jury and not-guilty. The Sweets are freed.

• Impact: This was proof that race relations weren’t just a problem for the south as many claimed.

Trial #3: The Chamberlain “Dingo” Trial August 17, 1980, 9-week old

Azaria Chamberlain disappeared on a camping trip at Ayer’s Rock.

Her parents claim she had been attacked and taken by a Dingo, but her mother Lindy was convicted for the murder

On February 2nd, 1986, Azaria’s jacket was discovered deep in a dingo lair and the Chamberlain’s were set free.

The case is still an example of how biases and miscarriages of justice are still a modern issue

Trial #4: Haywood December 30, 1905 anti-miner

Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg, is killed by a bomb

The murder was ordered by IWW leader Bill Haywood

For the past two decades, union leaders had been attacked and persecuted by big business and government.

In People vs. Haywood, prosecutors could not build a jury to convict Haywood over what was considered a just killing, one of the first union vs government battles.

Trial #5: The Scotsboro Boys March 25, 1931, nine black teenage

boys are arrested for hoboing, rape and abuse of two white teenagers

Despite a lack of evidence, 8 of the nine (all except 12 yo Roy Wright) were convicted and sentenced to death

The boys were tried, appealed, retried more than a dozen times, citing lack of evidence, change of venue, mob riot influence, and jury tampering

All together, the boys would spend 15 years fighting for their innocence, most dying before it could happen.

• Impact: One of the most famous examples of the racial divide in the north vs south and the lingering injustices blacks experienced in America.

Trial #6: The OK Corral No one knows who shot first,

but the argument was over illegal possession of weapons in Tombstone, AZ

October 26, 1881 at 3:00 PM, the lawmen vs. cowboys fired 30 rounds in 30 seconds, leaving 3 cowboys dead

Wyatt Earp and his brothers were tried of murder, but found innocent.

The trial has symbolized vigilantism, the right of police and lawmen to brandish weapons, and vendetta killings

Trial #7: Sacco-Vanzetti Sacco and Vanzetti were admitted

arsonists, but what about murderers?

September 11, 1920, the pair are indicted for a stagecoach robbery that killed 2 men.

Sacco and Vanzetti admitted to purgery, plotting anarchy and robberies, and carrying illegal weapons, but not to the stagecoach robbery.

On August 23, 1927, the pair are electrocuted. To this day it remains America’s most famous example of immigrant treatment and prejudice.

Although Massachusetts formally considers them innocent, many details are uncertain

Ex. Sacco’s gun was later established as the murder weapon, but there’s further evidence that the gun was planted.

Trial #8: Mississippi Burning June 21, 1964, three civil rights

workers were lynched by the Meridian sheriff and KKK

After multiple appeals, the Supreme Court upholds the indictments of 19 conspirators

It takes three years, but most of the conspirators are eventually found guilty and sentence to 10 years in prison.

The attacks (against a white, black, and Jewish man) helped spur support for the Civil Rights acts of 1964-1966.

Trial #9: Bruno Hauptmann March 1 1932, Charles Lindbergh Jr.

is kidnapped from his bed and accidentally killed

30 months later, Bruno Hauptmann was arrested in possession of the ransom money, which he claimed he was holding for a friend.

Samples of the paper & ladder used in the kidnapping were also found

Hauptmann was executed April 3rd, 1936, flatly denying any involvement in what papers dubbed the “Crime of the Century”

The crime led to kidnapping becoming a federal crime.

Trial #10: Amistad August 1839, the slave ship

Amistad is discovered off the coast of Long Island with 56 slaves at the controls.

The slaves were arrested for mutiny and murder. They were tried two times, each time being acquitted due to being the victims of an illegal slave trade.

Finally, the supreme court upheld their acquittal in 1841 and the Africans were freed.

The case was the first successful abolitionist appeal in the Supreme Court’s history