The punishment fits the crime, but does the manhunt fit the criminal? From three months
to ten years – these infamous criminals evaded the law in more ways than one.
Their names have become shorthand for "criminal couple," they were folk heroes in their time,
and a Hollywood film starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway made them into icons.
"I'm Miss Bonnie Parker, and this here's Mr. Clyde Barrow. We rob banks."
But it's important to remember what Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker really were:
bank robbers who weren't afraid to kill.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bonnie and Clyde killed a total of 13 people while
committing a variety of crimes, including kidnapping and bank robbery. Generally,
they did so with zero regard for the lives of anyone who got in their way.
Their vicious spree spanned 1932 through 1934, the height of the Great Depression,
when many Americans had little sympathy for banks. Parker and Barrow were in and out of
jail several times before 1932 — but after Parker was released from jail that year,
the duo assembled a gang of accomplices and launched a violent crime wave across five states.
According to History, after the gang sprung one of its members from a Texas
prison — using machine guns and killing one guard — a retired Texas Ranger named
Captain Frank Hamer was hired to track them down.
The manhunt lasted three months, until Hamer finally got a tip that Barrow and Parker were
headed to Louisiana. He had his men hide in bushes along a road that Bonnie and Clyde were
likely to use. When they appeared, the hunters opened fire, killing the couple immediately.
The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1968 was one of the most infamous
moments in American history, so there wasn’t much of a mystery as to who fired the fatal shot.
As noted by History, there was plenty of evidence pointing to
James Earl Ray, a small-time criminal who had escaped from prison the year
before. From a bathroom window across the street from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis,
Ray had aimed a rifle at King, who was standing on a balcony, and shot him dead.
Incredibly, PBS reported, Ray walked to the street, saw a parked police car,
and panicked, dropping everything he was carrying. Even though the police had
established a perimeter in the area within four minutes of the shooting, Ray escaped.
The ensuing manhunt was massive. According to History Daily, Ray initially intended to
drive to New Orleans, but after listening to details of the search organized to find him,
he changed his mind and headed to Canada. Once across the border,
Ray obtained false passports and managed to board a flight to London.
Nearly two months went by without any concrete leads, but the FBI knew Ray had used a fake
passport, and quickly identified several names under which he might be traveling.
When Ray showed up at London's Heathrow Airport for a flight to Belgium, an alert
customs officer noticed he had two passports. Ray was pulled out of line and arrested.
"We've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end."
Christopher Dorner was a veteran of the U.S. Navy
and a former police officer when he launched what BBC News described as a
"vendetta" against his ex-peers in the Los Angeles Police Department in 2013.
As noted by Mel Magazine, this wasn't speculation:
Dorner had posted a lengthy manifesto on social media, detailing his outrage
after being booted from the police force. An internal investigation had found he falsified
a complaint by claiming his training officer had physically abused a homeless man. Dorner
was convinced he was a victim of racism — and he launched a bloody murder spree to get revenge.
"Of course he knows what he's doing, we trained him."
Over the course of nine days in late January and early February 2013, Dorner killed four people —
two law enforcement officers, the daughter of a retired police captain, and her fiance — and
wounded three more officers. The manhunt for him was enormous — and poorly run. According to CNN,
breakdowns in communication and discipline led to a terrifying incident when eight officers
fired more than 100 rounds at three people who were not involved with Dorner in any way.
Dorner was eventually tracked to a remote cabin at Big Bear Ski Resort. There he engaged in
a shootout with police, who ended up causing a fire with pyrotechnic tear-gas canisters. Dorner
ultimately committed suicide, and his body was found in the charred ruins of the cabin.
According to History, James "Whitey" Bulger ran an organized-crime empire for decades without
fear of consequences — in large part because he was an FBI informant for much of that time.
That all changed in 1995, says The New York Times, because Bulger's
handler warned him that he was about to be arrested — so in December 1994, Bulger ran.
The FBI launched an international manhunt but failed to come up with any leads,
and Bulger managed to remain free for 16 years. He settled in California with his girlfriend,
Catherine Greig, and lived openly under an assumed name. In 2011,
the FBI changed tactics, focusing on Greig, and targeting a female
audience who might have encountered her at beauty salons or plastic-surgery offices.
"Bottom line is that Bulger has to be caught, and the sooner,
the better. This has gone on long enough."
The tactic paid off, and Bulger was finally arrested in 2011. Bulger
was suspected in 19 murders. The BBC News reported that he was convicted of
11 killings and sentenced to two life sentences, but he wouldn't serve them:
In October 2018, Bulger was beaten to death at a maximum-security prison in West Virginia.
The hunt for the man known as the Unabomber began in 1978,
after he mailed the first of 16 bombs he would send over the course of the next 17 years.
History reported that the Unabomber killed three people and injured 23,
and the manhunt led by the FBI was the longest and most expensive in
American history. One reason it was so difficult to track down Ted Kaczynski,
according to Smithsonian Magazine, was the nature of his handmade and untraceable bombs.
Another reason was Kaczynski's lifestyle: He lived in a small hand-built cabin on a plot
of land near Lincoln, Montana, without electricity, running water, or heat.
As noted by the FBI, one of Kaczynski's few social connections eventually ended the search:
The FBI published the dark, violent manifesto Kaczynski had written laying out
his anti-technology philosophy. His brother, David, read the manifesto in a newspaper and
recognized Kaczynski's unique writing style. He provided the FBI with letters from his brother
that allowed them to confirm linguistically that they were written by the same man.
Kaczynkski was arrested at his cabin on April 3,
1996. He is currently serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.
One of the most famous American manhunts focused on the mastermind of the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks: Osama bin Laden. Spanning 10 years and ending in an operation that lasted
just 40 minutes, the search remains one of the most complex in American history.
As noted by Voice of America, bin Laden was almost immediately known to be the key
planner behind the attacks on the World Trade Center that resulted in the deaths of nearly
3,000 people. Bin Laden initially found refuge in Afghanistan, which prompted
the United States to go to war with the ruling Taliban. The regime was toppled — but the U.S.
got no closer to bin Laden: According to CNN, he "slipped away" as American forces closed in.
In 2007, U.S. officials identified a man who was known to be close to bin Laden,
often acting as a courier. They suspected he might be involved in supporting bin
Laden wherever he was hiding — and by 2010 the man had been traced to a compound in Pakistan.
A raid was planned and authorized. As The New Yorker pointed out,
American Black Hawk helicopters were able to enter Pakistan undetected in
part because the country's air defense systems were almost entirely focused on
India in the east, leaving the western border open. Less than an hour later,
bin Laden had been executed by a U.S. Navy Seal. The manhunt for the terror mastermind was over.
Just after 9 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a massive truck bomb exploded outside
the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The building was destroyed,
and 168 people died in the blast, including 19 children who were at the building's day-care
center. According to History, the significance of the date of the blast became clear later:
It was the two-year anniversary of the deadly Waco siege between
religious sect the Branch Davidians and federal agents that left 80 people dead.
The investigation that was launched led to a lightning-fast manhunt. According to the FBI,
the rear axle from the rented truck used in the blast was found the next day. Using the
truck's vehicle identification number, authorities traced the rental to a body shop in Junction City,
Kansas. Employees there were able to describe the man who'd rented the truck,
and a composite sketch soon revealed his identity: Timothy McVeigh.
Incredibly, when the FBI identified McVeigh as the main suspect in the worst terrorist attack
in United States history, he was already in jail: As reported by the Los Angeles Times, McVeigh had
been pulled over on Interstate 35 because his car had no license plate. He was arrested for carrying
a concealed weapon, and was still behind bars when authorities finally figured out where he was.
He was given the death penalty, and executed in 2001 in spite of his appeals.
"Well, am I pure evil, am I the face of terror,
sitting here in front of you? Or am I able to talk to you, man to man?"
Ted Bundy would eventually confess to 28 murders, but it's believed he was responsible for many
more — NBC Chicago estimates that he averaged one murder per month for more than four years.
According to WKRG News, he was initially arrested in August 1975 after attempting
to abduct a woman named Carol DaRonch. He was tried and convicted on charges of aggravated
kidnapping, but when he was transferred to Utah to stand trial for a separate murder
charge, he managed to escape out of a second-floor window at the courthouse.
Biography noted that after Bundy was recaptured, he was placed in a more secure facility in
Colorado. After losing a substantial amount of weight, he was able to escape again — through a
hole he had cut in the ceiling of his cell. This time the hunt went on for two months — he killed
several more women in that time — before he was caught for good in February 1978.
Bundy evaded the law so effectively during the manhunts for two reasons.
Firstly — and most famously — he was considered handsome,
superficially charming, and too "normal-looking" to be suspicious.
"I am not guilty," -laughing- "Does that include the time I
stole a comic book when I was 5 years old?"
And per A&E True Crime, Bundy was very good at altering his appearance, drawing on drama
classes he had taken in school. He used props like fake casts and frequently gained
or lost weight to change his look and make him difficult to identify. He was executed in 1989.
"He's the most pleasant killer I've ever interviewed."
"No man is truly innocent."
Most students of American history know that John
Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865,
while Lincoln was enjoying a play at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.
There was no doubt as to who the president's assassin was: He did,
after all, jump from the balcony. Yet despite that,
and the fact that he broke his leg in the jump, he remained at large for 13 days. Remarkably,
he was even stopped by a guard at the Navy Yard Bridge but was allowed to pass. He hooked up with
one of his co-conspirators, David Herold, and the pair traveled to Surrattsville, Maryland.
By the next day, more than 1,000 soldiers were searching for Booth and Herold,
and a reward totaling $100,000 had been posted. The duo hid in the wilderness,
sometimes literally watching search parties pass by.
They made their way into Virginia and posed as war veterans while hiding on a tobacco
farm. When a tip led troops to them, Booth refused to surrender, so the soldiers set
fire to the barn he was hiding in. When he fled the flames, he was shot to death on the spot.