Clyde Barrow. Criminal, American Folk Figure. Even though he lived on the edge of the law as a youngster, Clyde Chestnut Barrow’s first crime was not until an auto theft in 1926 at the age of 17. Clyde, one of several sons of a poor East Texas sharecropper, had little formal education, but had learned “street smarts” from teenage gangs in the Dallas, Texas area. At a slim 5’7″ frame with a face of an innocent baby, he was attractive to women. He met his partner in crime and romantic interest, Bonnie Parker, in 1930 while he was on a short parole from jail. They became inseparable. By slipping him a handgun, Bonnie helped him and two other men in a 1932 jailbreak. During the next two years, the couple traveled in a stolen 1932 Ford V8 Sedan from Texas through New Mexico and Oklahoma, to Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana robbing every type of business from banks, hardware stores to gas stations. Along the way, they killed twelve people including nine law enforcement officers in three different states. Kidnapping a man and woman in Louisiana along with stealing another Ford getaway car and transporting it across state lines brought the Federal Bureau of Investigation into the picture. Clyde would just spray a burst of gunfire from his machine gun killing in cold blood without much conscience. During their tour, they were captured by law enforcement at least twice, but escaped each time and continued on the way with their criminal activities. Clyde had several aliases: Roy Bailey, Carl Beaty, J.A. Callahan, Jack Halle, Robert Thomas, Eldin Williams, Elvin Williams. After being released from a Texas penitentiary, Clyde’s older brother Buck and his wife Blanche ganged with the two in their crimes before Buck was killed and Blanche captured by law enforcement. It was on a farm at daybreak in Bienville Parish, Louisiana that couple met their deaths. Bonnie and Clyde were shot and killed in a trap by Texas Rangers and FBI agents in a furry of gunfire. A viewing of their bodies was held in Dallas before they were buried each separate cemeteries. The couple carried a Kodak box camera with them capturing many black and white photos of the them posing in front of a Ford automobile with machine guns in-hand.

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker. Criminal, American Folk Figure. She joined with her boyfriend Clyde Barrow to commit robberies and murders in the American Southwest between 1931 and 1934. Their exploits became highly captivating to the American public, and after their deaths they have become enshrined in American lore as “Bonnie and Clyde”. Born the middle child and oldest daughter of laboring family in Rowena, Texas, after the death of her father in 1914, her mother moved the family to the West Dallas, Texas area called “Cement City.” In her youth, she was known for being kind, an Honor Student and a writer of poetry (and other creative writing endeavors). In 1926, She married high-school sweetheart Roy Thornton. Despite the rocky and sometimes abusive marriage and Roy’s imprisonment in 1929, she remained married to him until she died. To support herself, she worked as a waitress and became friends with future sheriff deputy Ted Hinton (who would ironically take part in gunning her down). In 1930, she met Clyde Barrow when she was unemployed and helping out a mutual friend. When he was arrested shortly after, she smuggled a gun into the prison to help him escape. When he was rearrested, and released two years later, she decided to join him as an outlaw. After their notorious crime sprees, they were eventually stopped when Law Enforcement Officials ambushed their car and killed both in a hail of bullets not too far away from their Louisiana hideout. Before her death, she sent the reporters her infamous “Story (or Ballard) of Bonnie and Clyde.”

Lizzie Borden. Alleged Murderess. At the age of 32 she was accused of the double homicide of her father and stepmother. On August 4, 1892, Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby (Durfee) Borden were killed in their family home at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts. Although it was Mr. Borden that was the initial victim discovered, Mrs. Borden died first at approximately 9AM from receiving 19 blows with a heavy bladed object in an upstairs bedroom to be followed by her husband who is estimated to have been killed two hours later by receiving 11 blows with a similar weapon. No murder weapon was officially confirmed however a “handleless hatchet” later discovered to be tainted with cow’s blood spurned the conception of Lizzie Borden as an ax murderess. The murders have never been solved and due to extensive media coverage (Lizzie’s arrest and subsequent trial made world news and was followed by the media daily in media across the country and the world) and horrific nature of the crime this case has gone down in history as being a fascination to academians and amateur sleuths alike. Many movies, plays and books have explored various theories as to the identity of the killer. The only person to ever be arrested and stand trial, however, was Lizzie Borden herself. She and her sister Emma lived in the house with their stepmother, father and maid, Bridget Sullivan. While Andrew Borden was a very wealthy and successful man, he chose to keep his homestead in a less fashionable part of town to be closer to his business holdings. This fostered the idea to the “polite society” of the day that the Bordens, despite their affluence, were not quite the upper crust. With two unmarried daughters, many thought the situation some what less than idyllic; two single daughters should have a bit more to offer as far as social position to secure a good marriage. While some feel that the family situation was enough of a motive for one of the daughters to kill one or both of the parents, it was not proven to be as such at the trial. On August 6, 1892, the day that Andrew and Abby were put to rest in Fall River’s Oak Grove Cemetery, Mayor John Coughlin announced that Lizzie Borden is a suspect. Following a grueling two-day inquest from August 9th to the 11th, she was arrested. Arraigned the next day, she pleaded “not guilty” and started her long stay at the Taunton Jail awaiting the seemingly endless process until her trial. During her incarceration, preliminary hearings and convening of the grand jury occurred before her indictment was official in December of 1892. Her infamous trial took place in the Bristol County Courthouse in New Bedford, Massachusetts and included testimony from such key witnesses as Bridget Sullivan, the housekeeper, Lizzie’s uncle, John Vinnicum Morse (brother of Lizzie and Emma’s birth mother Sarah Morse Borden), busybody neighbors such as Alice Russell, Dr. Seabury Bowen (the family doctor) and a slew of others who offered nothing more than what was to be determined as circumstantial evidence and hearsay. Lizzie Borden’s biggest gaffes during the trial would be admitting the strained but cordial relationship she held with her stepmother (to whom she exclusively referred to as “Mrs. Borden”) and changing the locations of her whereabouts at the times of the murders. She was a nervous, scattered inconstant witness who proclaimed her innocence throughout the ordeal. The trial lasted from June 5, 1893, and the jury reached a verdict on June 20. In 15 days, she was acquitted. Upon hearing the verdict Lizzie Borden simply stated, “Please take me home, I wish to go home now.” While she was found innocent by the jury, polite society condemned and shunned her. She moved to “Maplecroft” a house in the “Highlands” portion of Fall River (a more upscale section of town) with her sister Emma and despite sharing the dwelling, Lizzie and Emma never spoke again. She was noted to “take up” with theater people (considered very low class in that era) and was especially fond of actress Nance O’Neill who lived out her years as her companion. Lizzie Borden is remembered most by the school yard rhyme which erroneously states: “Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks, when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one”. From the lips of schoolchildren to the mouths of scholars, this case has lived on in history as the most fascinating, gruesome, unsolved murder in Fall River History and that of Victorian America.

John Wilkes Booth. Presidential Assassin. An acclaimed Shakespearean stage actor, he assassinated 16th United States President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865. Born in Bel Air, Maryland, he was the 10th child of Junius Brutus Booth, and English-born stage actor who had gained fame for his dramatic Shakespearean roles first in England, then in the United States. John Wilkes Booth followed in his father’s profession, debuting on stage at age 17. He soon became nationally renowned for his acting abilities, and became part of a touring Shakespearean company based in Richmond, Virginia. By the time of the Civil War he had become one of the most famous theatre figures in the United States. A Southern-rights supporter and sympathizer, he was strongly opposed to the Abolitionist movement, and became a Confederate agent after the war began, using his position as a national touring actor to smuggle quinine into southern hands. He was outspoken with his devotion to the South, and his virulent distain for President Lincoln and the North. In 1864 he formulated a plan to kidnap the President, but it did not go beyond any talking and planning stages by the time Abraham Lincoln was re-elected in November 1864. After that point the plot changed from kidnapping to assassination. During this period he would recruit the figures that would be forever linked to the Lincoln Assassination – Samuel Arnold, Michael O’Laughlen, Lewis Powell, David Herold, George Atzerodt, and John Surratt. They often met at the boarding house of John Surratt’s mother, Mary Surratt. The plan coalesced after President Lincoln’s 2nd Inauguration, fueled by Booth’s increasing hatred of the President, especially in the face of comments Lincoln made about granting suffrage to the freed slaves. On April 14, 1865, while President Lincoln was attending a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, Booth leveled a single shot derringer pistol at the back of Lincoln’s head and fired, mortally wounded him. He then jumped from the Presidential Box on to the stage, infamously shouting “Sic Semper Tyrannis!” (“Thus Always to Tyrants!”). He escaped on a previous placed horse, and became the subject of the largest manhunt in American history up to that point, especially after President Lincoln died the next morning. Hunted though Maryland and Virginia, he kept a diary, using it to justify his actions. On April 26, 1865 he and fellow conspirator David Herold were caught and trapped in a barn on the Garrett Family Farm in Port Royal, Virginia, by a detachment of the 16th New York Volunteer Cavalry. After the barn was set ablaze, he was shot and mortally wounded by Sergeant Boston Corbett, dying a few hours later. The body was later taken to Washington, DC, where it was positively identified as John Wilkes Booth by ten people who knew him intimately. Originally interred at the Washington Arsenal, in 1869 the remains were released to the family, and they were interred in the family lot in Baltimore, Maryland’s Green Mount Cemetery, where they lie in an unmarked grave. Theories later would be expounded that Booth did not die in the Garrett Barn, and lived into old life anonymously. Modern day legal efforts to exhume the remains for DNA testing and identification were eventually rejected. John Wilkes Booth’s older brother, Edwin Booth, became renown in his own right in the 19th century as an acclaimed tragedian actor, and had clashed so frequently with his brother over the issues involved in the Civil War that John Wilkes was banished from his brother’s house.

Lee Harvey Oswald. Accused Assassin of 35th US President John F. Kennedy. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Robert Edward Lee Oswald and Marguerite Claverie. His father died of a sudden heart attack, and Lee was raised by a succession of step-fathers. Growing up, he was considered a loner, not very good academically, and dropped out of high school when he was 15. When he was 16, he took an interest in Communism, and applied to join the Socialist Party of America, but nothing came of the application. In 1956, he joined the United States Marine Corps, and was trained as an Aircraft Maintenance Repairman (despite stories to the contrary, he never learned to fire his rifle as an “expert” and was never trained as a sniper). He was stationed in El Toro MCAS, California, and Atsugi MCAS, Japan (near Tokyo). He was court-martialed twice, once for keeping a private weapon (pistol) in his locker without permission, and once for assaulting an NCO. During this period, he remained a loner, and upon receiving his discharge in 1959, he used his savings to travel to Russia. After the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, he shot Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit, killing him. Arrested for the death of Officer Tippit, and later charged with the death of President Kennedy, he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby in the Dallas Police Station on live television, an act that shocked the already stunned nation. Despite the fact that the later Warren Commission declared that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy, and he acted alone, many conspiracies about the assassination abound to the present day.

Doc Holliday. American Western Frontier Figure. A gunfighter and professional gambler, he is remembered for his friendship with Wyatt Earp and his involvement in the notorious Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona that resulted in the killing of three members of the Cochise County Cowboys, a loosely associated group of outlaw cowboys in Pima and Cochise County in the Arizona Territory

Kid Curry. Western Outlaw. Born in Tama County, Iowa, he was an orphaned cowboy who grew up to be a rustler, gunman, bank and train robber. In the early 1880s, along with his brothers Logan was on a cattle drive to Colorado when due to trouble with the law headed to Wyoming. Soon he was located on a horse ranch in Montana, when he was in a confrontation with a miner who he shot and killed. He fled to New Mexico, where he joined Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum’s gang and robbed trains in 1886. In April, 1897, he formed his own gang and was involved in the killing of Deputy Sheriff at Powder River, Wyoming, where they were rustling horses. His gang robbed a bank in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, were captured and jailed but soon escaped. Moving on he hooked up with the Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch gang and robbed the Union Pacific Railroad overland flyer in Wyoming, in June 1899. Logan went with Butch Cassidy to New Mexico, robbed trains, rustled cattle and in a gun battle killed Sheriff Ed Farr at Turkey Creek. On the run again, he formed up with members of the Wild Bunch gang in May 1900, he killed Grand County Sheriff John Tyler and his deputy Sam Jenkins in fight at Moab, Utah. With the gang, he robbed a train near Tipton, Wyoming, in August 1900 and returned north robbed a Union Pacific train near Wagner, Montana, in June 1901. The gang split up, going the various directions, but Logan remained in the territory seeking revenge when he shot and killed outlaw Jim Winters, who had killed his brother John back in 1896. He then headed to Tennessee, where he was passing bad banks notes and when they tried to apprehend him, he shot and killed a Knoxville policeman in December 1901. Convicted of multiple charges, he was sentenced to prison and escaped from jail on June 27, 1903. On June 7, 1904, he participated in robbing the Denver & Rio Grande train near Parachute, Colorado. Two days later, a posse caught up with the outlaws and rather than go to prison, Logan took his own life at age 37.

Kit Dalton. American Frontier Outlaw. Born in Kentucky during the Civil War, he fought for the Confederacy and served as a Captain in William Quantrill’s Raiders. After the war he rode with Cole Younger, Jesse and Frank James, committing a series of robberies through out Kentucky and Tennessee. Five territory governors had set a price upon the head of Kit Dalton of $50,000 for his capture dead or alive, but he was never captured. He also rode as a member of outlaw Sam Bass’ gang in Texas until Bass was shot and killed. After the 1882 Kentucky trials which Frank James and the remaining Dalton gang members were charged and proved innocent resulted in an agreement by the Government in which the slate was wiped clean, Kit Dalton returned to civil life. He made a profession of religion and was a member of the Central Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, when he died.

Elmer McCurdy. Sideshow outlaw. A notorious outlaw in the early 20th century, who’s events in death have become more famous then anything he did in life. He was born in 1880 to an unwed teenage mother whose family gave infant Elmer to her brother George and his wife to raise. He was later told the news which he did not take well. He began to drink heavily and eventually ran away. He tried several jobs working as a plumber and a miner and even tried to enlist to go in Theodore Roosevelt’s occupation of The Philippines. McCurdy missed the expiration dated and didn’t get to go. His tour of duty in the Army lasted only three years. After leaving the Army, McCurdy had no luck finding work and tried making his fortune as a robber. He and friend Walter Shapelrock were arrested for possession of tools used for burglary. Awaiting trial he met a man named Walter Jarrett. After being found not guilty, McCurdy was released and met up with Jarrett. Jarrett gave McCurdy the nickname “Missouri McCurdy. The two were not very successful as bank robbers, often blowing up the money with the nitroglycerin used to blast open the safe. In 1911, the two tried to to steal the safe from a Kansas train. The safe contained only a few dollars so taking their meager shipment, the gang headed into Oklahoma where McCurdy would meet his match. On October 8th, drunk and in need of rest, he fell asleep in a barn and later awoke to find that a small posse had tracked him down. Holing himself inside the barn he shot it out with the posse for better then an hour. When the shooting stopped, McCurdy was dead at the age of 31. No family or friends came to claim the body and the undertaker refused to give the body to the sideshow carnies who asked to have it for display. Sometime later two con men (one claiming to be his brother) showed up and claimed it and took it back to California where they encased it in painted wax. McCurdy was an outlaw doomed to fade into historical obscurity until his story took a bizarre twist some 65 years later. In 1976, a film crew went to Nu Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, California to film an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man. One of the technicians came across a wax dummy hanging from a rope. Trying to move it, the arm came off and sticking out of the wax was a bone. The dummy was taken to a forensics laboratory for an autopsy but it was so petrified that the doctors had to use a hacksaw to get through it. They learned that this was in fact the body of Elmer McCurdy and that he had died of a .32 caliber gunshot wound. He was soon after buried in a formal ceremony and cement covered the coffin of a man who’s body had made a 65 year journey to the grave. 

Bill Doolin. American Western Frontier Outlaw. The exact date of his birth has been lost over time and the date of his death, while not a true controversy, is listed as August 25th as often as August 24th, but the year is definitely 1896. At the age of 23, he left his sharecropping family in Arkansas and moved to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) and went to work as a cowboy on a ranch. After some scrapes with the law, he joined the notorious Dalton Gang, known as the “most cold-blooded gang in the west.” The Daltons were led by brothers Bob, Grat, Emmett, and later Bill Dalton. Over the next year Doolin rode with the Daltons as they robbed trains, depots, and banks in the Indian Territory. In October of 1892, the Daltons made a decision to rob two banks at the same time in Coffeyville. Not everyone, including Doolin, thought this to be a good idea as many of the members were known by citizens of Coffeyville and it was a risky proposition. Riding toward Coffeyville, Doolin claimed that his horse had come up lame and that he was going to a nearby ranch to replace it, saying he would catch up with the gang. Some historians claim it was just a way to get out of joining the gang in a robbery that he felt was doomed to failure. If so, he was right. The poorly planned, poorly executed attempt was recognized as a bank robbery by the local citizens and in a big shootout only Emmett Dalton escaped. Following this failure, Doolin formed his own gang which became known as the “Wild Bunch.” For a period of time they were the most powerful gang in the southwest and terrorized southern Kansas and the Indian Territory. In July of 1893, E D Nix was appointed US Marshall for the Indian Territory under the jurisdiction of Judge Isaac Parker. Nix immediately put together a strong force of 100 deputies, including Bill Tilghman, Heck Thomas, and Chris Madsen. They were to bring law and order to the territory. In August of 1893, Nix learned that Doolin was in Ingalls, Indian Territory and sent a deputy and13 man posse to capture him. Most historians consider it the biggest shoot out in southwest history and on September 1st three marshals were killed, two bystanders were killed and one wounded, three of the gang members were wounded and Arkansas Tom Jones was wounded and captured. Doolin was wounded but shot and killed Deputy Marshal Richard Speed and escaped with several of his men. Hearing that Doolin was in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, Bill Tilghman was sent to arrest him and he did so. Unfortunately, the night before his trial was to begin, Doolin and several inmates escaped from the Guthrie, Oklahoma federal prison. Heck Thomas received word that Doolin was hiding at his father-in-laws homestead near Lawson, Oklahoma. On the night of August 24 (or 25), 1896, Thomas and nine deputies, including his son Albert, surrounded the place and when Doolin came out of the barn Thomas called for him to surrender. Instead he shot at Thomas and the posse in turn shot and killed Doolin. The fatal shot was probably a shotgun blast from Heck Thomas. Once again controversy springs up and there are several versions of what happened in the shooting and whose shotgun killed him. The undertaker counted twenty buckshot wounds in his chest. One story says he died of natural causes and the posse shot him to collect the reward. By the end of 1898, all of the remaining former Wild Bunch gang were dead, killed in various shootouts with lawmen. Heck Thomas had tracked most of them; the remainder were tracked down and eliminated by lawmen Chris Madsen and Bill Tilghman, and other posses.

Harry Orchard. Bomb slayer of scores of men in mine labor violence. Pleaded guilty to the dynamite slaying of former Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg in 1905. He was sentenced to hang, but the sentence was commuted to life. He was converted to Christianity, and wrote the book, “Harry Orchard: The Man God Made Again.”

Seth Bullock. Western Folk Figure. He arrived in Helena, Montana in 1867 and was later elected as a Republican member of the Territorial Senate of Montana in 1871 to 1872. He also introduced a resolution that prompted Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park. In 1873, he was elected Sheriff of Montana territory in Lewis and Clark County. In 1876, he followed the gold rush to Deadwood, South Dakota, opened a hardware store and a horse ranch. Befriending Wild Bill Hickok and after Hickok’s death in August 1876, which triggered a growing demand for law and order, resulted in Bullock’s appointment as the first Sheriff of Deadwood. As Sheriff, he was called upon to settle various disputes but never had to resort to killing anyone while serving as chief lawman. As a established citizen in the community he built the Bullock Hotel in 1895, which is still in use today. During the Spanish-American War 1898, he volunteered for active service in the Cavalry and was the Captain of Troop A in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders Regiment. Roosevelt, as the newly elected Vice President under McKinley, appointed Bullock as the first Forest Supervisor of the Black Hills Reserve. Invited to Roosevelt’s own presidential inaugural in 1905, Bullock startled citizens by recruiting 50 young cowboys, including Tom Mix, to ride their horses in the inaugural parade. Roosevelt’s death came as a personal blow to Bullock, he erected a monument to Roosevelt made of native Black Hills stone on mountain near Deadwood, renamed the peak Mount Roosevelt and it was formally dedicated on July 4, 1919. He passed away in his own motel and it has been reported that his ghost still wanders the hallways of his old hotel at 633 Main Street in Deadwood. Seth Bullock is one of the pivotal characters in the HBO historical fiction series DEADWOOD.

Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery, Chicago, IL 

Al Capone. Organized Crime Figure, Chicago Gangster. This is Al Capone’s original burial site. Probably the best known of the 1920s gangsters, he controlled Chicago until brought down by FBI Agent Elliott Ness. Ness later wrote a book “The Untouchables” which detailed his efforts to jail Capone. Capone was the largest of the racketeers, and captured the American public’s imagination as few ever did. Born Alphonse Capone in Brooklyn, New York, of Italian immigrant parents, Gabriele and Teresina Capone, the fourth of nine children. Raised in a loving middle class Italian family, he was brought up to be honest and hard working. Surprisingly unbiased for his time, he would become friendly with anyone of any race, creed or color who was loyal to him. He quit school at 8th grade, and began work for Johnny Torrio, a new breed of gangster then taking over New York. From him, Al Capone learned his trade, initially running errands and working his way up the ladder to manager. He also learned from a rough local gangster, Frank Yale, about the use of violence to build an empire, while maintaining a respectable home and social life. He married an Irish Catholic, Mae Coughlin, and they had a son, Albert Francis Capone, born December 4, 1918. Baby Albert was born with congenital syphilis, which Al later admitted he had contracted many years before, but had thought the disease had gone away when it went into remission. His syphilis was never treated properly. When Johnny Torrio moved his operations to Chicago in 1921, he brought Capone with him, and together, they built up the crime empire, concentrating on nightclubs, prostitution, and illegal liquor. His first murder occurred in 1924, for which he was found innocent when the eyewitnesses were bribed. In March 1925, Torrio quit the business to retire to Florida, and gave his entire empire to Capone. Killing other gang members to build his empire, Al Capone’s violence peaked with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, 1929 when seven members of Bugs Moran’s gang were murdered. This murder brought the attention of the Federal government, who swore to get Capone off the street and into jail. In 1931, he was indicted and convicted of Income Tax evasion and sentenced to eleven years in jail. He died in his home in Miami, Florida, of cardiac arrest resulting from third stage syphilis. He was originally buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.

Earl “Hymie” Weiss. Organized Crime Figure. Real name Henry Earl J. Wojciechowski. Born in Poland, he grew up on the North Side with his Polish-American family. He was Catholic, despite the “Jewish-sounding” moniker. He befriended an Irish-American teen named Dean O’Banion. With Weiss and George “Bugs” Moran, O’Banion established the North Side Gang, a criminal organization that eventually controlled bootlegging and other illicit activities in the northern part of Chicago. Weiss was suspected of having formed an alliance with South Side beer baron Joe Saltis, who went on trial for murder in October 1926. It was widely rumored that Weiss would buy off the jury in order to ensure an acquittal for Saltis. Weiss, along with four others were sighted at the courthouse for the jury selection. Weiss and his men left for their State street headquarters, where O’Banion had been killed. The four men was crossing State street to enter the shop when two gunmen with a machine gun and a shotgun. Weiss and Paddy Murray were killed while the others were wounded.

JonBenét Ramsey. Murder Victim. She was a 6-year-old Little Miss beauty pageant winner who was murdered in her home on Christmas day 1996, in one of the most high-profile child homicides in recent history. Her numerous award titles include ‘Little Miss Colorado,’ ‘National Tiny Miss Beauty,’ and ‘Little Miss Christmas.’

Rodney Glen King. He was the central figure in the police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on March 3, 1991. A bystander videotaped much of the incident from a distance. The footage showed seven officers surrounding the solitary King, with several LAPD officers repeatedly striking him with their batons while the other officers stood by watching. A portion of this footage was aired by news agencies around the world, causing public outrage that increased tension between the local black community and the LAPD, resulting in increased anger over police brutality, racism and social inequalities in Los Angeles. Four LAPD officers were later tried in a state court for the beating; three were acquitted and the jury failed to reach a verdict for the fourth. The announcement of the acquittals sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots. A later federal trial for civil rights violations ended with two of the officers found guilty and sent to prison and the other two officers acquitted.

Lester Moore. Western Figure. In the late 1880s, Lester Moore worked as a Wells Fargo Station Agent in the Mexico-United States border town of Naco, Arizona. One day a man named Hank Dunstan arrived at the Wells Fargo station to pick up a package he was expecting. When Moore handed him a badly battered and mangled package, Dunstan became enraged over the condition of it and an argument ensued. The argument quickly became heated and both men reached for their guns. Moore was shot four times from Hank Dunstan’s gun. Before Moore died, he managed to fire off one shot of his own, hitting Dunstan in the chest and Dunstan died from his injury. Lester Moore’s body was transported to the nearby town of Tombstone, where he was buried in the Boothill Graveyard. There he became forever known for the epitaph inscribed on his headstone which read, “Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a .44, no Les, no more”.

Gary Alan Hinman. Manson Murder Victim. He was the oldest of three children born to Robert and Frances Hinman. He had two younger sisters. He was born in Grand Junction, Colorado, but grew up in Fort Collins, CO, and attended Colorado university in the mid-1950s. He was married in 1959 and soon after moved to the Los Angeles area. Gary loved to travel and had planned a trip to Japan, but was killed before he could go. Gary lived life to its fullest and would have started a job in the sociology field where he would have continued his work in public service. He loved helping people and he was a generous and kind man. As with the Tate and La Bianca residences the week after his murder, a message was scrawled in blood on a wall. Paw prints (symbolic of the Black Panthers) were put next to the phrase “political piggy.” Official cause of death was “stab wound to chest.”

Rachel Joy Scott. Rachel Joy Scott was the third of five children born to Darrell Scott and Beth Nimmo. She was an aspiring actress and writer. Rachel was the first victim to be shot at the Columbine High School Massacre, killed by Eric Harris. She was shot while eating lunch with a friend on the lawn outside the library. She is the inspiration of “Rachel’s Challenge”. Rachel’s Challenge is a nationwide school outreach program that helps prevent teen violence. She was awarded the 2001 National Kindness Award for Student of the Year by the Acts of Kindness Association.

Daniel Lee Rohrbough. Murder Victim. Victim of the Columbine High School Shooting in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999.

Heck Thomas. American Western Frontier Lawman. The youngest of 12 children, when he was only 12 years old he joined his father and his uncle and went off to the Civil War. They were officers in the 35th Georgia Infantry and he was a courier for them on the battlefields of Virginia. When Union Army Major General Philip Kearney was killed in at the Battle of Chantilly on September 1, 1862, the general’s horse and equipment was placed in the trust of young Heck Thomas and General Robert E Lee, himself ordered him to take them through the lines to Kearney’s widow. He contracted typhoid fever in 1863 and was sent home to the family in Georgia. By the age of 18 he was an Atlanta Georgia police officer. The family moved to Texas in 1875 and he secured a job as a railroad guard and became a railroad detective. While with the railroad, he and other detectives tracked down the notorious Sam Bass Gang. He left the railroad in 1885 and went to work for the Fort Worth for a year. The famed “Hanging Judge”, Isaac Parker appointed him a deputy United States Marshall out of Fort Smith, Arkansas. From 1886 to 1900, his jurisdiction was the Indian Territory, now known as Oklahoma. Famed for his bravery, integrity, and fairness, he quickly became a legend. Teamed up with Bill Tilghman and Chris Madsen, they were soon known as the “Three Guardsmen” and they were largely responsible for bringing law and order to the territory. They were responsible for the arrest or killing of more than 300 outlaws during their service. Heck had no equal when it came to hunting fugitives and his most notable accomplishment was the killing of Bill Doolin in August of 1896. In 1902 he became chief of police for Lawton, Oklahoma and lost the job in 1909 because of failing health and three years later died of heart failure.

J. D. Tippit. Law enforcement officer. He was the Dallas Police officer that was allegedly killed by Lee Harvey Oswald on the day of the Kennedy assassination. Evidence fully indicates that Lee Harvey Oswald killed officer Tippit, but since Oswald was never brought to trial, it remains only an allegation.