On December 28, 1968, Ruth Eisemann-Schier became the first woman to claim a spot on the notorious FBI Most Wanted list when she and her then boyfriend, Gary Stephen Krist, kidnapped the daughter of a millionaire and demanded a $500,000 ransom. The 26-year-old and her boyfriend buried Barbara Mackle outside of Atlanta in a coffin […]

William Hutton Coble was an escaped fugitive who got into a running gun battle with police after robbing a bank in Charlotte, North Carolina. While fleeing police, he dropped the stolen loot, shot a woman in the leg to steal her car, then turned down a dead end street where he surrendered after a shoot-out […]

Kenneth Eugene Cindle, 48, aka “Screwdriver,” was named to the FBI’s Most Wanted List on Dec. 23, 1960 following the shotgun hold-up of a Wichita, Kansas restaurant that netted him and a partner, $236. The partner was quickly captured in Amarillo, Texas. The FBI circular said he was an avid gambler, heavy smoker, and heavy […]

. Kenneth Malcom Christianson – 1964, FBI Most Wanted, Escaped convict Kenneth Malcolm Christiansen, was a tall, tattooed California prison escapee who engaged in a “white collar” holdups,  was  added to the FBI’s list of “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” on July 27, 1964. On Christmas Eve, 1963, Kevin Malcolm Christiansen escaped from the California Institution […]

Summary: Student with poor grades murders one woman, injures two others including his English Tutor. Story 1: “Tucson Youth Goes Wild, Kills Woman,” by Dominic Crolla, Tucson Daily Citizen, May 16, 1964 pages 1 and 6. A bitter argument over his poor marks in English triggered a wild rampage early today by an enraged 16-year-old […]

In 1962, Queens County, New Yorker Armando Cossentino, 19, and his 36 year-old lover, Jean Difede, murdered her physician husband, Dr. Joseph Difede in order to collect on his $72,000 life insurance policy. They were arrested not long after and went on trial early that summer. Armando was sentenced to die in the electric chair […]

  Follow HistoricalCrimeDetective.com on Facebook The Zodiac Killer, whose serial murders terrorized northern California in the late ’60s, was a man named Earl Van Best Jr., according to a new book by Gary L. Stewart, who happens to be his biological son. Stewart’s The Most Dangerous Animal of All, as we reported Monday, is for […]

Posted below is a short but interesting documentary about the murder of Sonja McCaskie in 1963. She skied for the British team during the 1960 Olympics. Her killer, 18 year-old Thomas Lee Bean, was tried and sentenced to die in the Nevada gas chamber in 1963.  In 1972,  the United State Supreme Court overruled all […]