Historical Crimes
Cases from American history that still resonate today — from frontier outlaws to Prohibition-era violence.
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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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Buried Alive: The Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping of 1976
On July 15, 1976, twenty-six children and their bus driver were abducted on a California road and buried alive in a quarry in Livermore. The Chowchilla kidnapping was the largest mass abduction of children in American history — and every… Continue reading
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In Cold Blood: The Clutter Family Murders That Changed American Crime Writing Forever
On a November night in 1959, a prosperous Kansas farming family was murdered in their rural home by two strangers looking for a safe that didn’t exist. The crime shocked a nation — and inspired Truman Capote to write what… Continue reading
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The Cleveland Torso Murders: The Killer Even Eliot Ness Couldn’t Catch
In the depths of the Depression, dismembered bodies appeared in Cleveland’s Kingsbury Run — most never identified. The case fell to Eliot Ness, the lawman who took down Al Capone. He never caught the killer. At least a dozen died,… Continue reading
