John Elgin Johnson, 1919 to 1953, was a career criminal who ended up in the federal prison system for robbing banks. After a failed escape attempt from Fort Leavenworth that left one guard severely injured, Johnson was sent to Alcatraz in 1944. He served nine years there and was released in 1953. During his […]

George Edward Cole George Edward Cole shot and killed a San Francisco Police Sergeant during a hold-up of a tavern on Dec. 30, 1956. He was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List on Feb. 25, 1957. He was captured two years later in Des Moines, Iowa after a citizen identified his girlfriend, Yvonne Conley, […]

. Originally Published: “I Had To Kill,” by George Beltz, Front Page Detective, May, 1950. Editor’s Note: Articles written for detective magazines during the 1940s, 50s and 60s often incorporated “recreated dialogue” in order to both tell the story and to advance the storyline. For readers today, this dialogue will feel contrived and trite. In […]

. Originally published: “The Mad Butcher of O’Farrell Street,” by Mitchell Chaindown, Front Page Detective, April, 1956. San Francisco, December 25-28, 1955 The sound was a shriek that started high and piercing and ended in a gurgle that was scarcely audible. The man leaped from his bed and ran out into the hallway of the […]

  I am really proud [because of its rarity] of today’s mugshot of Lloyd Sampsell, a career bank robber whose amazing escapades spanned three decades. This is the only mugshot of him to known exist on the internet, outside of an FBI wanted circular. From the early 1920s to 1952 Lloyd Sampsell was one of […]

On Jan. 1, 1950 ne’er do well brothers Malcolm and Windol Whitt, and Leon Turner broke out of the Attalla County Jail in Mississippi. The three  men were serving time for the attempted rape of a 15 year-old black girl named Verlena Harris. Leon Turner had suffered the shame of being convicted for molesting a […]

. During the evening of July 7, a 1954 Nash Rambler station wagon driven by 28 year-old Lynn Baggett bore into the rear of a station wagon near Waring and Orlando Avenues in Los Angeles. The car she hit was filled with young boys returning from a day trip to a camp site. The force […]

. Story #1: Child Brutally Slain in LA, Suspect is Hunted LOS ANGELES, CA, Nov. 15, 1949: The gashed and mutilated body of six year-old Linda Glucoft was found today in a rubbish heap, wrapped in a brightly colored Indian blanket. Police Sgt. Bill Brennan said he definitely had established that the blanket came from […]

Wife Accused of Mate’s Murder Sobs Out Details [Sendai, Japan, Aug. 6, 1955] — An attractive 26 year-old Army wife on trial for her life yesterday told an Army court-martial through shuddering sobs how the husband she Is accused of murdering bragged of his lurid sex life, beat her end threatened the lives of her […]