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 […]

: Music:  “Nobody’s Fault but Mine” – Blind Willie Johnson, 1897-1945. I thought this recording, which was done around 1927, would go great with 10 vintage mug shots of prisoners from McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary taken between 1899 to 1911. I put this together over the weekend. The lyrics are posted below.   Nobody’s fault […]

: Wesley Leroy Sischo was a former maritime customs agent who decided it was more profitable to work on the other side of the law. During World War I, he began working with a Seattle Chinese gang to smuggle opium into Washington State. As the captain of a small coastal vessel, it was his job […]

  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, […]

Ed Hagen was a former semi-professional boxer and hero policeman turned bootlegger. He was caught in April of 1919 trying to break into a government liquor warehouse. He was sentenced to two years in McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. He appealed his sentence but eventually lost and began serving his sentence in March, 1921. The article […]

. WJ Edwards 2-15-39, Convicted of Murder Story 1: “Two Are Held in City Death, Shots Blamed on Robbery Fear” Two men were held in the city jail Monday and funeral arrangements completed for a third as the aftermath of a shooting Sunday night in a one-room house at 129 West Chickasaw Avenue, Services for […]

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 […]

. “Police Officers Capture Opium Smugglers and All their Plunder,” The San Francisco Call, April 9, 1902. Police Officers A. 0. Juel and E. C. Gould captured two opium smugglers yesterday and secured their plunder. The officers will very likely receive a substantial reward from the Government. The men arrested were John Gavin, alias Murphy, […]

. Fighting Frederick Hansen “Fighting” Frederick Hansen, first mate on the SS ROLPH,  picked up a crew at Vancouver to haul lumber to Melbourne in 1920. The vessel was owned by James Rolph Jr., the mayor of San Francisco and future governor of California. Hansen had been convicted of killing a seaman in 1917 and […]