Historical Crimes
Cases from American history that still resonate today — from frontier outlaws to Prohibition-era violence.
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Victor Lustig: The Con Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower — Twice
He printed fake official letterhead, invited France’s top scrap-metal dealers to a secret hotel meeting, and calmly offered to sell them the Eiffel Tower. Then he did it again. Then he conned Al Capone — and still came out ahead. Continue reading
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The Great Brink’s Robbery: Boston’s “Crime of the Century” and the Confession That Came Just in Time
On January 17, 1950, seven masked men pulled off what newspapers called “the perfect crime”: a $2.7 million Boston robbery that took the FBI nearly six years to crack. The confession came just days before the statute of limitations expired. Continue reading
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Vanished Before the King Arrived: The Theft of the Irish Crown Jewels
Four days before a royal visit, Ireland’s most valuable jewels disappeared from a locked strongroom inside a heavily guarded castle — and nobody had broken in. More than a century later, the diamonds have never resurfaced, and the case file… Continue reading
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Charles Ponzi and the $20 Million Postal Stamp Scam That Gave Fraud Its Name
In 1920, a broke Italian immigrant convinced Boston that he had found a legal loophole to double anyone’s money in 90 days. For a few dizzying months, people mortgaged their homes to hand him cash. Then the math stopped working,… Continue reading
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Agatha Christie’s Vanishing Act: The 11 Days Britain’s Best-Selling Mystery Writer Became Her Own Unsolved Case
On a cold December night in 1926, Agatha Christie drove away from her home and disappeared. Her car turned up abandoned by a chalk quarry, but the queen of crime fiction was nowhere to be found. Eleven days and a… Continue reading
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The Theft of the Mona Lisa: How a Louvre Handyman Turned a Painting Into the Most Famous Object on Earth
A Louvre glazier who helped build the Mona Lisa’s protective case simply lifted it off the wall one quiet Monday morning and walked out. It took police over two years to catch him — and by then, his theft had… Continue reading
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The Escape from Alcatraz: Three Papier-Mâché Heads, a Homemade Raft, and America’s Greatest Unsolved Disappearance
Three inmates left papier-mâché heads in their beds, slipped through a ventilation shaft, and paddled a raft of stolen raincoats into San Francisco Bay — and vanished forever. The FBI says they drowned. The U.S. Marshals never closed the file.… Continue reading
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The Great Train Robbery: The £2.6 Million Night That Made Ronnie Biggs a Legend
A rigged signal light, a mail train full of used banknotes, and a farmhouse full of fingerprints. The 1963 heist that stunned Britain turned its getaway driver’s replacement into the world’s most famous fugitive — and it all started with… Continue reading
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The Hall–Mills Murders: America’s First Media Circus Murder Case
In September 1922, an Episcopal minister and his choir singer — secret lovers — were found shot to death beneath a crabapple tree in New Jersey, their intimate letters scattered around them like a confession. The suspects were wealthy, well-connected,… Continue reading
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The Christmas Portrait: The Lawson Family Murders of 1929
On Christmas Day, 1929, tobacco farmer Charlie Lawson murdered his wife and six of their seven children on their farm in Stokes County, North Carolina, then took his own life. He had bought the family new clothes and taken a… Continue reading
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