The FBI’s most wanted list has been instrumental in the capture of some of the most notorious
criminals in history.
Some of the criminals on this list have been fugitives from the law for many years and
may never be apprehended.
Others who are not as lucky, however, have been tracked down and arrested, very often
with help from the public.
5.
Eduardo Ravelo
Since 1994, Eduardo Ravelo had formed relationships with cartel members who are considered to
be among the top ranks in organized crime.
Thanks to his connections within the Juarez Cartel, he climbed the highest rank of “Capo”
in the Barrio Aztecas, a Mexican-American street gang that was formed originally in
the prisons of El Paso, Texas in 1986.
He was wanted by the FBI for his involvement in the gang’s money laundering, racketeering
and controlled substance activities in El Paso, as well as for his role in ending the
lives of United States Consulate employee, Lesley Ann Catton, El Paso County Sheriff’s
Office employee Arthur Redelfs who was Catton’s husband and Jorge Ceniceros on March 13, 2010.
Ravelo started living a life of crime in 2003 and he was indicted in 2008 and 2011, having
been added to the FBI’s most wanted list in 2009.
He became only the second person from El Paso to ever be added.
In an effort to find him, a reward of up to $100,000 was offered for any information leading
directly to his arrest.
Other efforts to spread information on Ravelo included social media publicity, video public
service announcements and digital billboards in the El Paso area.
In a raid carried out at a house in Uruapan, Michoacán by the Mexican military and federal
agents, he was taken into custody without a single shot being fired.
During the raid, authorities confiscated a number of vehicles, weapons and illegal substances,
finally ending Ravelo’s life of crime, 9 years after being added to the most wanted
list.
4.
Barker-Karpis Gang
The Barker-Karpis gang, better known as the Ma Barker gang, carried out their criminal
activities during the depression era.
The gang was led by Alvin Karpis and Fred Barker who met each other while serving time
in the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas.
Shortly after both men were released, they were arrested again in Tulsa, Oklahoma in
June 1931 for jewelry theft.
Shortly after his arrest, Barker was transferred to Claremore where he managed to escape.
Karpis pleaded guilty to the robbery, but received only a 4-year suspended sentence.
After he was released, he met up with Barker once again in Thayer, Missouri where Barker’s
mother lived on a farm that she rented.
In the 8th of November, Barker, Karpis and William Weaver were driving around Pocahontas
in search for more placed to rob.
When they made a stop so that Weaver could relieve himself, Manley Jackson who was the
town’s marshal, spotted the car and wrote down the license plate number, but he was
seen by the gang and ordered to their vehicle while a firearm was pointed at him.
The gang drove him out of town and ended his life, effectively starting the true evolution
of the Barker-Karpis gang.
A month after the incident, they were involved in ending the life of Sheriff Roy Kelly from
West Plains, Missouri and the burglary of a string of stores in the same town.
Thereafter, they travelled to St. Paul, Minnesota where they met an experienced bank robber
named Frank Nash.
He would go on to accompany the gang on several more bank robberies between 1932 and 1935
with some of their hauls exceeding $250,000.
They would also go on to commit two kidnappings, that of William Hamm Jr. and Edward George
Bremer, the president of the Commercial State Bank of St. Paul.
The two kidnappings brought them a combined ransom total of $300,000, but Barker’s fingerprints
were found on a gas can left at the scene of the second ransom exchange and the FBI
started to close in.
The gang scattered all over the United States but on the 16th of January, 1935, the FBI
located Barker and his mother at a house in Lake Weir, Ocklawaha and after an intense
standoff with police, their lives were ended.
Karpis would continue to evade the FBI, but on the 1st of May, 1936, he was apprehended
by agents and J. Edgar Hoover.
He pleaded guilty to his crimes and was given a life sentence, most of which was spent in
Alcatraz.
After nearly thirty years behind bars, he was released and would pass away in Spain
on the 26th of August, 1979.
3.
Donald Keith Williams
Donald Williams was added to the FBI’s most wanted list on July 18, 1986, known as the
Veil Bandit.
He earned this moniker thanks to a cloth veil that he wore over the visor of his baseball
cap in order to disguise himself and became the 401st fugitive to be added to the list.
Williams was wanted by the FBI for a string of robberies that he committed over the span
of three years in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, California and Washington.
Williams, who had several previous convictions, violated the terms of his parole in Oklahoma
after he was convicted of robbery in 1968.
Before that, he was also convicted of larceny and burglary in 1952 and 1961 respectively.
All in all, when he was finally arrested, he had committed 34 bank robberies in total
with 15 of those taking place in the Los Angeles area.
At 57 years of age, he was finally tracked down to an apartment located at the 12700
block of Venice Boulevard in the Mar Vista section of West Los Angeles where he was arrested
without incident after a tip was received from a concerned citizen.
But Williams had almost gotten away with his crimes.
Another man named Brian Patrick Malverty was arrested in San Diego, California after ending
the lives of Ricky Lee Sims and Gene West.
After robbing them and ending their lives, he set fire to their house.
He was suspected by the FBI of being the Veil Bandit until Williams was eventually arrested.
2.
Robert Durst
Robert Durst grew up in Scarsdale, New York as the son of a real estate investor.
He had two brothers and a sister and when he was 7 years old, his mother fell from the
roof of their house, ending her life.
He would later claim that his father had walked him over to a window moments before, from
where he witnessed the accident, though this was later refuted by his brother.
The two brothers would later undergo therapy together, as they were embroiled in an intense
sibling rivalry.
The psychiatrist would report that Robert suffered from personality decomposition and
possible schizophrenia.
At school, he was described as a loner, but he would go on to earn a bachelor’s degree
in economics.
He would eventually become a real estate developer in the Durst Organisation, though his brother
was appointed to run the business, causing a rift between Robert and the rest of his
family.
In 1971, Durst met Kathleen McCormack who he would go on to marry in 1973.
Kathleen was a student at the Albert Einstein College of medicine in The Bronx where she
was studying to be a pediatrician.
Just a few months before her graduation in 1982, she went missing.
Durst didn’t seem too concerned with his wife’s disappearance, but when several of
Kathleen’s friends launched their own investigation, their homes were broken into and materials
pertaining to the case were stolen.
On the 24th of December, 2000, a friend of Durst’s, Susan Berman, was discovered deceased
in her house in California.
It had been made to look like a gang hit, but when it came to light that she had been
questioned about Kathleen’s disappearance, Durst was questioned by the FBI.
Thereafter, he went into hiding in Galveston, Texas where he disguised himself as a woman
to avoid detection.
Many people believed that Durst ended Berman’s life because she knew too much about his wife’s
disappearance.
On the 9th of October, 2001, he was arrested once again after it was suspected that he
had ended the life of his neighbor, Morris Black.
He was released on $300,000 bail, but failed to appear for his next hearing and a warrant
for his arrest was issued.
On the 30th of November, he was finally apprehended at a Wegmans supermarket after he was caught
shoplifting a newspaper, band aids and a chicken salad sandwich, despite having $500 in cash
in his pocket.
His rental car was searched and it was found that he had $37,000, two weapons and Black’s
driver’s license in his possession.
At his trial, he claimed to have slain Black as an act of self-defense, but after his defense
team found it difficult to communicate with him, a psychiatrist was summoned to assess
him and he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome.
He entered into a plea bargain and was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was given credit
for time served; meaning that he only had to serve 3 years.
He was paroled in 2005, but after making unauthorized visits to the boarding house where Black had
lived and to a shopping mall, he ran into the judge who had presided over his trial,
violating his parole terms.
He was returned to jail but was finally paroled again in 2006.
1.
Jacob Shapiro
While Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro was confined in a protectory in Brooklyn, he met Joseph
Valachi, Jimmy DeStefano and Louis Buchalter.
For the next few decades, Shapiro and Buchalter would form an alliance in which Buchalter
served as the brains and Shapiro as the muscle in their criminal exploits.
Soon after, they would meet Mayer Lansky and Lucky Luciano who would both become well-known
mobsters under the watchful eye of Arnold Rothstein who was already an established mobster.
Shapiro and Buchalter would become involved in New York labor racketeering, working for
Jacob Orgen.
Orgen was part of a group who infiltrated labor unions in the garment district of Manhattan
where they would intimidate and assault union leaders to gain control.
They then devised a system where they would receive kickbacks while extorting garment
manufacturers under the threat of strikes.
In 1927, Shapiro and Buchalter started devising a plan to take over Orgen’s operations,
but he caught wind of their plans and allied himself with Eddie and Jack Diamond.
On the 15th of October, the two men ended the life of Orgen and managed to take over
his racketeering operation, creating a huge criminal monopoly in the Garment District.
In the early 1930’s US Attorney, Thomas E. Dewey began prosecuting members of organized
crime syndicates in New York City.
The mobsters became so concerned that Dutch Schultz asked the National Crime Syndicate
to have Dewey done away with.
Shapiro approved of the request, but Buchalter and the rest of the syndicate felt that it
would go against mob tradition and turned down the plan, feeling that it would draw
further attention from the FBI to their criminal activities.
They were so alarmed at Schultz’s request that they decided to have him done away with
instead, which Buchalter did on October the 3rd of 1935.
In October of 1936, Shapiro and Buchalter were convicted under the Sherman Anti-Trust
act and sentenced to two years in Sing Sing Prison.
Shapiro went into hiding for a full year, becoming one of the FBI’s most wanted, but
he eventually handed himself over to the FBI and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
While Buchalter was on trial in New York, he received a message from Shapiro, who at
this point had not been caught yet.
The note simply read: “I told you so”, implying that the two mobsters would still
be free men had they gone through with the request of doing away with Thomas Dewey.