Born September 6, 1860 (Cedarville, Illinois) Died May 21, 1935 (Chicago, Illinois) Social reformer By the early 1900s Jane Addams was one of the most famous and respected women in America. Her practical approach to charity, business, and reform worked well within the American free enterprise system (the freedom of private businesses to operate competitively for profit with minimal government regu…
Born February 6, 1802 (Beaumont-la-Chartre, France) Died February 22, 1866 (Paris, France) French magistrate, prison reformer Gustave de Beaumont was a nineteenth-century French statesman when he received a commission from the King of France Louis Phillipe (1773–1850) to inspect American prison systems for the French government. In 1831 Beaumont and his friend and noted historian Alexis de …
Born March 6, 1937 (Detroit, Michigan) Wall Street financier, white-collar criminal Ivan Boesky worked in the fast-paced, high stakes world of Wall Street investing during the suddenly lucrative years of the 1980s. He was a financier who built a highly successful business by trading stock in companies experiencing financial difficulties. Boesky, however, became involved in a financial scam using &…
Born July 19, 1860 (Fall River, Massachusetts) Died June 2, 1927 (Fall River, Massachusetts) Accused murderer Lizzie Borden was accused in the gruesome double homicide of her father and stepmother in 1892. The violent nature of the murders and the gender of the accused killer made the case a national sensation. The trial had all the elements of a media drama, ensuring the high profile case a place…
Born November 24, 1946 (Burlington, Vermont) Died January 24, 1989 (Starke, Florida) Serial murderer Ted Bundy did not fit the stereotype of a murderer yet he was responsible for one of the most gruesome and notorious killing sprees in American history. Bundy was handsome and charming and lured dozens of unsuspecting women to their deaths. The sheer volume of those killed (suspected to be over one…
Born September 30, 1924 (New Orleans, Louisiana) Died August 25, 1984 (Los Angeles, California) Author Truman Capote was an author who became famous as much for his eccentric personality as for his writing. Capote initially wrote dark, mystical fiction but later shifted toward nonfiction. He preferred writing more about people and places than about issues or ideas. Capote's professional rep…
Born April 18, 1857 (Kinsman, Ohio) Died March 13, 1938 (Chicago, Illinois) Defense attorney Clarence Darrow was an attorney who championed the fundamental principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial in a court of law. He promoted radical political and social causes and secured his place in history by opposing governmental and religious limits on individual freedom. Darrow helped sway publ…
Born March 24, 1902 (Owosso, Michigan) Died March 18, 1971 (Bal Harbor, Florida) Criminal prosecutor, governor Thomas E. Dewey was an attorney who became a national hero for his success in prosecuting organized crime in New York City. He later played a crucial role in moving the United States forward as a major world power following World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France,…
Born February 7, 1812 (Portsmouth, England) Died June 9, 1870 (Kent, England) Social reformer, novelist Charles Dickens is considered by many as the most important writer of his time and remained the most widely recognizable British author, after William Shakespeare (1564–1616), throughout the twentieth century. He ushered in an age of serious attention to novelists with his dynamic writing…
Born November 15, 1882 (Vienna, Austria) Died February 22, 1965 (Washington, D.C.) Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter was one of America's more powerful people in the legal profession who sought increased protection for criminal defendants in the early twentieth century. As a Supreme Court justice, he was a major force behind the creation and validation of President Franklin Delano Roo…
Born June 27, 1869 (Kovno, Russia) Died May 14, 1940 (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) Social activist Emma Goldman came to America and made a career of challenging the legitimacy of government, religion, and property. Throughout her political life she championed the constitutional right to freedom of speech and worked to improve conditions for the poor, laborers, and immigrants. Goldman criticized the s…
Born January 1, 1895 (Washington, D.C.) Died May 2, 1972 (Washington, D.C.) Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) During his tenure J. Edgar Hoover built the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into one of the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the world. Appointed director in 1924, he held the position for nearly fifty years, through eight presidents beginning with Calvin…
Born May 22, 1942 (Evergreen Park, Illinois) Domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski was an American terrorist who used his crimes to draw attention to his political views. His campaign to fight what he believed was the evil of technological progress was waged with bombs he delivered or mailed to sixteen different places across the country. Over a period of eighteen years, Kaczynski killed three people a…
Born July 26, 1903 (Madisonville, Tennessee) Died August 10, 1963 (Bethesda, Maryland) U.S. senator Estes Kefauver was a senator from Tennessee who gained national attention as chairman of the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce. Conducted by the Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses in 1950 and 1951, the committee was more commonly known as the "Kefauver Committ…
Born August 30, 1982 (Springfield, Oregon) Murderer Kip Kinkel confessed to killing his parents on May 20, 1998, and then opening fire the following day at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, killing two and wounding twenty-five. The following year he was sentenced to 111 years in prison. His case focused national attention on the continuing tragedy of school violence that plagued America…
Born November 22, 1938 (People's Republic of China) Forensic scientist Dr. Henry C. Lee is an internationally respected authority in the field of forensic science. Forensic science refers to scientific testing methods and the latest technologies to the collect, preserve, process, and analyze evidence. He has worked with law enforcement agencies on thousands of crime scenes in over thirty co…
Born October 24, 1830 (Royalton, New York) Died May 19, 1917 (Washington, D.C.) Attorney Belva Ann Bennett McNall Lockwood gained notoriety as the first woman to run for president in the United States. She was nominated in both the 1884 and the 1888 presidential races by the National Equal Rights Party. Lockwood is best remembered, however, as the first woman admitted to practice law before the Su…
Born May 23, 1846 (Burlington, Iowa) Died August 1, 1911 (Aurora, Illinois) Attorney, social activist Arabella Mansfield sought equal opportunities for women in all aspects of U.S. society. She was an activist in the nineteenth century women's rights movement that spanned a range of issues from voting rights for women to the right of practicing law. As a result she became the first female l…
Born c. 1812 (Glasgow, Scotland) Died May 3, 1865 (Berkshire, England) Murderer Daniel McNaughtan was tried in 1843 for the murder of a British government official. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and his case created a widely used legal precedent known as the McNaughtan Rules. These rules, established by Great Britain's House of Lords, were delivered by Chief Justice Nichola…
Born March 9, 1940 (Mesa, Arizona) Died January 31, 1976 (Phoenix, Arizona) Robber, rapist, murderer Ernesto Miranda was a career criminal whose name became familiar to every American following a Supreme Court decision that created what became known as the Miranda Rights. Miranda's conviction in an Arizona court in 1963 would be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1966. In Miranda v. Ar…
Born August 25, 1819 (Glasgow, Scotland) Died July 1, 1884 (Chicago, Illinois) Private investigator Allan Pinkerton provided America with a national policing system at a time when there was little federal or state law enforcement. Credited as a reformer for popularizing private security, he focused primarily on crime prevention and investigation. During the American Civil War (1861–65; war …
Accused rapists In 1931 the United States was in the second year of the Great Depression (1929–41; the period, following the stock market crash in 1929, of depressed world economies and high unemployment). On March 25 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a Southern Railroad freight train eased out of the station headed west. Dozens of people, men and women, black and white, jumped on board for a free…
Born December 23, 1923 (Cleveland, Ohio) Died April 6, 1970 (Columbus, Ohio) Accused murderer, physician In 1954 Dr. Sam Sheppard was accused of the brutal murder of his wife Marilyn at their home in Cleveland, Ohio. Before the sensational Sheppard criminal case was over, a landmark Supreme Court ruling would be handed down on the widely debated conflict between freedom of the press and a defendan…
Born May 5, 1903 (Baker City, Oregon) Died February 1, 1982 (Greenbrae, California) San Francisco madam Sally Stanford was a bootlegger of illegal liquor during Prohibition in the 1930s before becoming a famous San Francisco madam during the 1930s and 1940s. A madam is a woman who manages a house of prostitution, also known as a brothel. Stanford supplied prostitutes to male customers and collecte…
Born May 1, 1823 (New York) Died December 31, 1891 (New York) New York City police chief George Washington Walling was the police chief of New York City from July 1874 until June 1885. Walling gained a reputation as a tough but fair and honest law officer during his decades on the force. He was elevated to the position of chief of police because of his personal heroics during the New York City Dra…