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Scent of Evil
Louis J. Marcone came up with a novel way to catch bank robbers in 1989: The teller might step on a trigger and surreptitiously spray the robber with “a non-toxic, clear, odorless and harmless liquid...
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Valise Police
Briefcase security, then and now: In 1925, August Eimer invented the case above, which emits smoke when torn from its owner’s hand “in the form of a continually issuing cloud that will envelop the...
View ArticleBitter Justice
An 1873 arrest report by Arizona sheriff George Tyng, quoted in Case and Comment, 1934: Received the within process Arizona City, Jan. 1873 and served same by arresting defendant at Ehrenberg, A.T.,...
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Tilt
Here’s a philosophical question. Some pinball machines reward high scores with free replays. And in states with anti-gambling statutes, some prosecutors crack down on this feature, saying that it...
View ArticleWill and Deed
In 1968 British police constable David Morris was directing Vincent Fagan to a parking space when Fagan’s car ran onto his foot. Morris shouted at him to move the car, but Fagan refused and turned off...
View ArticleInside Job
I hope this is true — Charles Whitehead’s Lives and Exploits of English Highwaymen, Pirates, and Robbers (1883) recounts a notable heist by one Arthur Chambers. Chambers rented a room from a wealthy...
View ArticleHomework
Twenty-nine-year-old James Landis was operating a currency-wrapping machine at the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing when an idea occurred to him. He went home and cut ordinary bond paper into...
View ArticleMethodical
In April 1922, 17-year-old Ernest Albert Walker, the footman to an English colonel, approached a policeman in Tonbridge and said, “I believe I have done a murder.” At the house, investigators...
View ArticleProfessional Monster
Issei Sagawa took an unlikely path to fame — after killing and cannibalizing a Dutch woman in Paris in 1981, he wrote a fictionalized account of the crime, In the Mist, that sold 200,000 copies in his...
View ArticleSpecial Delivery
On June 23, 1908, a messenger delivered a bottle of ale to the door of Philadelphia doctor William Wilson. “We are taking the liberty of sending a few physician’s samples of our new product,” read an...
View ArticlePandora’s Divorce
In June 1946, 44-year-old Fern Bowden filed for divorce from her husband James, charging him with “cruel and inhuman treatment” and asking $100 a month to support their two teenage daughters. James...
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Stick Up
John Van Zandt’s “combined cane and burglar alarm,” patented in 1884, is low-tech but effective: The head contains a percussion cap, and the ferrule contains a spring clamp. “The operation is as...
View ArticleVictimized
As he enters the room, he knows what awaits him. Resistance is useless. He cannot escape; there are simply too many of them, and there is nowhere to hide anyway. Hands take hold of him and strap him...
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Lending a Hand
The tricks by which a shop-lifter succeeds in plying her profession without being caught are many and ingenious. The most successful of all tricks is the false arm and hand, shown in one of the...
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Minor Theft
In 1955 Carolyn Wharton became the youngest person ever kidnapped — 29 minutes after she was born, she was abducted from the Baptist Hospital in Beaumont, Texas, by a woman disguised as a nurse. This...
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Crime Does Not Pay
In 1799, the English cutter Sparrow intercepted the brig Nancy in the Caribbean. The area was forbidden to American ships, but the Nancy’s captain, Thomas Briggs, produced papers claiming she was...
View ArticleThe Easy Way
Ludwig Schlekat bought a bank with its own money. Over the course of 17 years, starting in 1936, he embezzled $600,000 from the Parnassus National Bank of New Kensington, Pa. Then he invented two...
View ArticlePlanning Ahead
Excerpts from the diary of 16-year-old Pauline Parker of Christchurch, New Zealand, 1954: February 13th: Why could not mother die? Dozens of people, thousands of people are dying every day. So why not...
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False Confessions
After the Great Fire of London, a French watchmaker named Robert Hubert confessed to having started the blaze in Westminster. When he learned that the fire had never reached Westminster, he claimed to...
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A Parting Kiss
In December 1912 Hungarian tinsmith Béla Kiss told his neighbors that his wife had run off with another man. At the same time he began collecting large metal drums, telling the town constable that he...
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