Since 1950, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has published an updated annual list of its
Most Wanted fugitives.
It serves as a who's who of the people terrorizing America.
Here are the most dangerous people to ever make the FBI's Most Wanted list.
Infamous mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger is one of a few to spend nearly as much time
as an FBI informant as he did getting hunted by the Bureau.
Johnny Depp played him in the 2015 film Black Mass, and he was the inspiration for Jack
Nicholson's character in The Departed.
He began cooperating with the FBI in 1975, but such was his love for crime that he eventually
gave up his double life.
He went on the run in 1994 rather than allow himself to be arrested on suspicion of being
involved in the disappearances of 19 people.
Bulger was a mainstay on the Most Wanted list until his capture in 2011 in Santa Monica,
California, where he was living in a tiny apartment under an assumed name.
He was found guilty in 2013 of no fewer than 11 crimes, for which he was given two life
sentences, plus five more years for good measure.
In 2018, he was offed in prison.
"He was a mobster, but so what?
Everybody's got a occupation."
Eric Rudolph is best known as the man behind the 1996 bombing of Atlanta's Centennial Olympic
Park during the Summer Olympics.
That attack killed two and injured over 100, but that was only the beginning of his spree.
He targeted a clinic in an Atlanta suburb the next year, followed by a bar about a month
later.
In both of these instances, he also planted secondary devices intended to affect responders
to the scene.
In the case of the clinic incident, it worked, getting six people, including reporters and
police detectives.
Next, Rudolph set his sights on another women's clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.
That event affected the clinic's security guard, but it also led to his eventual capture.
He activated the device remotely so he could watch the proceedings, and witnesses identified
his pickup truck at the scene.
His face was added to the Most Wanted list, but he managed to hide out until 2003, when
a rookie cop happened to catch him digging in a dumpster outside a North Carolina grocery
store.
He pleaded guilty to all four events and was slapped with four life sentences with no possibility
of parole.
Perhaps the most notorious criminal in American history, Ted Bundy's main M.O. was to pretend
to be disabled or otherwise in need of assistance, luring attractive female coeds to the vicinity
of his 1968 Volkswagen Beetle.
Then he'd knock them unconscious with a pipe, handcuff them, and cart them away.
Bundy's reign of terror began around 1974, and even though police had a pretty good description
by the late '70s, he kept evading suspicion because of his charm and intelligence.
After he was finally caught, he escaped prison not once but twice.
His first escape lasted only a week, but after his second, which landed him on the Most Wanted
list, he was able to elude authorities for several months, during which he took down
six more people.
He was finally recaptured driving a stolen car.
He received a sentence and was offed in the chair in 1989.
“My chance to talk to the press.”
“Contrary to section 78204 Florida statute.”
"I'll plead not guilty right now."
You probably know that Osama Bin Laden founded al-Qaeda and masterminded the 9/11 events.
But it wasn't that pivotal event in American history that landed him on the Most Wanted
list.
He'd already been a target of the FBI for over a decade by 2001 due to the activities
of his followers.
These included such events as the earlier 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the
1995 attempted taking out of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the 1996 bombing of a U.S.
Air Force complex in Saudi Arabia, and the twin targetings of U.S. embassies in Africa
in 1998.
The 9/11 events, though, drove him into hiding for the rest of his life.
That life came to an end on May 1, 2011, when U.S. forces stormed his hideout in Pakistan
and shot him dead.
It was a fitting end for a man likely responsible for more deaths than all other Most Wanted
fugitives combined.
Santiago Villalba Mederos was added to the Most Wanted list in 2017, and there's currently
a $100,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
He's an extremely trigger-happy gang member who, in 2010, fired into a car just because
one of its passengers was wearing the wrong color jacket.
The victim, who had no ties to any gang, was seriously injured and his sister, the car's
driver, was relegated to the past tense.
Just a couple weeks later, Mederos and his gang buddies were looting a car that they
believed belonged to somebody who owed them money.
A group of men confronted them, and then Mederos fired randomly into the crowd, striking and
offing a man who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He's been on the run ever since, and though the FBI believes he initially fled to Mexico,
they also think he may have returned to the U.S. by now.
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