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Crime & Notoriety

Assassins, demagogues, gangsters and frauds. Influence is not the same as merit, and this corpus records both.

39 people

John Wilkes Booth 1838–1865Notorious FiguresActor who assassinated President Lincoln in 1865 — altering the course of Reconstruction.Benedict Arnold 1741–1801Notorious FiguresContinental Army general whose plot to surrender West Point made his name the American synonym for treason.Al Capone 1899–1947Notorious FiguresGangster whose criminal empire made him the defining symbol of Prohibition-era organized crime.J. Edgar Hoover 1895–1972Notorious FiguresLongtime FBI director who built a powerful national police institution while conducting extensive political surveillance and abuses.Lee Harvey Oswald 1939–1963Notorious FiguresAssassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963Joseph McCarthy 1908–1957Notorious FiguresSenator whose unsupported accusations and investigations gave “McCarthyism” its name and damaged civil liberties.Jefferson Davis 1808–1889Notorious FiguresPresident of the Confederacy whose defense of slavery and secession made him central to the Civil War and its memory.John C. Calhoun 1782–1850Notorious FiguresVice president and theorist of slavery and states’ rights whose doctrines intensified sectional conflict.Ted Bundy 1946–1989Notorious FiguresSerial killer whose multi-state murders and televised trial shaped American criminal profiling and true-crime coverage.Jeffrey Epstein 1953–2019Notorious FiguresFinancier and convicted sex offender whose 2008 plea deal became a national scandal.Charles Manson 1934–2017Notorious FiguresCult leader whose followers’ murders became a lasting symbol of violence and the collapse of 1960s countercultural idealism.George Wallace 1919–1998Notorious FiguresSegregationist governor whose campaigns helped shape racial backlash and modern populist politics.Bernie Madoff 1938–2021Notorious FiguresFinancier who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in history — costing investors tens of billions of dollars.Charles Ponzi 1882–1949Notorious FiguresThe 1920 Boston postal-coupon fraud that gave the Ponzi scheme its nameJesse James 1847–1882Notorious FiguresMissouri bandit and ex-Confederate guerrilla whose Robin Hood legend was built for him in the press.Ted Kaczynski 1942–2023Notorious FiguresMathematics prodigy who left academia for a Montana cabin and killed three people in a 17-year bombing campaign that ended when his brother recognized his writing.Harvey Weinstein b. 1952Notorious FiguresFilm producer convicted of sex crimes in New York and CaliforniaTimothy McVeigh 1968–2001Notorious FiguresDomestic terrorist whose Oklahoma City bombing became one of the deadliest attacks in American history.Nathan Bedford Forrest 1821–1877Notorious FiguresConfederate cavalry commander and early Ku Klux Klan leader whose legacy remains central to debates over racial violence and commemoration.Jim Jones 1931–1978Notorious FiguresPeoples Temple founder whose 1978 Jonestown murder-suicide killed over nine hundred followers.Lucky Luciano 1897–1962Notorious FiguresBuilding the Commission that governed the American MafiaPhil Spector 1939–2021Notorious FiguresRecord producer who built the Wall of Sound, convicted of murdering Lana ClarksonJDJeffrey Dahmer 1960–1994Notorious FiguresMurdered 17 young men and boys between 1978 and 1991 in a case whose lasting scandal is how completely Milwaukee police failed his victims.Elizabeth Holmes b. 1984Notorious FiguresTheranos founder convicted of fraud over false claims about the company's blood-testing technology.James Earl Ray 1928–1998Notorious FiguresConvicted of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.John Dillinger 1903–1934Notorious FiguresDepression-era bank robber whose 14-month run was used to build the modern FBI.Roy Cohn 1927–1986Notorious FiguresChief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy and prosecutor of the RosenbergsCBClyde Barrow 1909–1934Notorious FiguresThe West Dallas boy the Eastham Prison Farm turned into a killer bent on revenge.Bonnie Parker 1910–1934Notorious FiguresBarrow Gang member and the most photographed outlaw of the DepressionEthel Rosenberg 1915–1953Notorious FiguresExecuted in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage, on testimony her brother later recanted.Julius Rosenberg 1918–1953Notorious FiguresRan a Soviet spy ring and was executed for espionage in 1953John Gotti 1940–2002Notorious FiguresBoss of the Gambino crime family, convicted of murder and racketeeringDavid Koresh 1959–1993Notorious FiguresBranch Davidian prophet whose 51-day standoff with federal agents ended in fire at Mount Carmel.Bull Connor 1897–1973Notorious FiguresBirmingham commissioner of public safety who ordered dogs and fire hoses used on marching schoolchildren.Alger Hiss 1904–1996Notorious FiguresState Department official whose perjury conviction made Richard Nixon's career and split American opinion for decades.Charles J. Guiteau 1841–1882Notorious FiguresAssassinating President James A. GarfieldAlexander Berkman 1870–1936Notorious FiguresAnarchist who shot and stabbed Henry Clay Frick in 1892 and wrote Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.Leon Czolgosz 1873–1901Notorious FiguresAnarchist whose assassination of William McKinley put Theodore Roosevelt in the White House.Ferdinand Ward 1851–1925Notorious FiguresFinancier whose Ponzi scheme destroyed the firm bearing Ulysses S. Grant's name and bankrupted him.