For 75 years, the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list has been a powerful tool to track down some of the country’s most dangerous criminals.
Big names like a 9/11 terrorist, a serial killer, and a mob boss have all been caught thanks to this famous list. It shows how serious the FBI is about stopping violent offenders.
The list started back in 1949 after a news reporter asked the FBI who the toughest criminals they were chasing were. The story got so much attention that FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover made it official on March 14, 1950.
Since then, it’s been helping catch bad guys for decades.
“This list is one of the oldest and most well-known things the FBI does,” said Amie Stemen, who runs the program. “It works so well because we use the news and regular people to spread the word about these criminals, showing their pictures and what they did.”
She added, “It’s also successful because we’ve caught so many--hundreds of them. That makes people trust it and want to help us.”
Out of 535 fugitives put on the list, 496 have been nabbed. Just this past January, two of them were caught in the same week.
The first guy ever on the list was Thomas James Holden, arrested in 1951 after someone spotted his picture in an Oregon newspaper. Back then, the list had bank robbers and car thieves.
Over time, it changed--think kidnappers in the ‘60s, mobsters in the ‘70s, and drug dealers in the ‘80s. Now, it’s all about the worst of the worst: killers, armed robbers, gang members, and people who hurt kids or shoot up public places.
The Bureau looks at two things: Is the person super dangerous with a long rap sheet or a bold crime? And can getting their name out there help catch them? “It’s all about using attention to find them,” Stemen said.
The FBI offers at least $250,000 for tips that lead to an arrest--sometimes even more.
The list isn’t ranked, but sometimes it has more than ten names, like when they added an extra spot for a murderer in 1961 and another for James Earl Ray, the named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.' in 1968.
Fugitives get taken off the list if they’re caught, their case gets dropped, or they don’t fit the rules anymore.
From the very first wanted poster in 1919--catching an escaped Army prisoner in 1920--to today--the FBI’s been using this trick to lock up the bad guys, and it’s still working 75 years later.
