: 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 […]

While searching my newspaper archive sources for specific stories, or just on fishing expeditions for new ones, I often come across stories about a lynch mob serving up vigilante justice to an unconvicted murderer. In most cases, the lynch mob would storm the jail where the prisoner was held and grab him while others held […]

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 […]

. “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, […]

. The Harry Thaw & Stanford White case of 1906 is perhaps one of the most famous cases of the 20th Century in terms of newspaper coverage and books written. The case had all the elements a lasting true crime story requires: high society, famous people, sex, jealousy, and cocaine. The following story was published […]

  Roy G. Gardner (January 5, 1884 – January 10, 1940) was once America’s most celebrated outlaw and escaped convict during the Roaring Twenties. During his criminal career, he stole over $350,000 in cash and securities. He also had a $5,000 reward placed on his head three times in less than a year during his […]

The following story was made into a movie in 1984 entitled, Mrs. Soffel, and starred Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson.   Story by Thomas A. Duke, for his book, Celebrated Criminal Cases of America, 1910. . During the early months of 1901, twenty-seven burglaries were committed in Pittsburgh, and the modus operandi of these bold […]

Jan. 8, 1909, San Francisco, CA Anton J. F. Nolting was born in San Francisco on February 9, 1860. He was of a studious disposition and acquired a high education. As a young man he was in comfortable circumstances financially but meeting with reverses, he joined the San Francisco Police Force on December 2, 1895. […]

. Told he was dying from a heat stroke, Fuller Schallenberger confessed on a hot summer day in July 1913, that he and another man, Charles Kopf, murdered Julian Behaud in 1899 at the victim’s home in Julian, Nebraska. When Schallenberger awoke the next morning, he was well on his way to recovering. Unfortunately, he […]

Update to this story posted on May 16, 2018: Earlier this year, a graduate student in cinema directing at Columbia College in Chicago discovered this unique story of two women who married in small town Colorado in 1913. For her, this story connected with her own struggles in her native Russia. After reading about this […]