Crime & Anti-Crime
This category explores both sides of crime, delving into many different aspects and cases of unlawful conduct. It includes perpetrators as well as victims and those who fought against crime in an effort to establish a safe community environment.
Crime & Anti-Crime Encyclopedia Articles
Featured Articles
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper, pseudonymous murderer of at least five women in or near the Whitechapel district of London’s East End between August and November 1888. The case is one of the most famous unsolved mysteries...
assassination of John F. Kennedy
Assassination of John F. Kennedy, mortal shooting of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, as he rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. His accused killer was Lee...
Gaius Cassius Longinus
Gaius Cassius Longinus was the prime mover in the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar in 44 bc. Little is known of his early life. As a quaestor in 53 bc, Cassius served under Marcus Licinius Crassus...
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), transnational Sunni insurgent group operating primarily in western Iraq and eastern Syria. First appearing under the name ISIL in April 2013, the group launched...
Joaquín Murrieta
Joaquín Murrieta was a legendary bandit who became a hero of the Mexican-Americans in California. Facts of his life are few and elusive, and much of what is widely known about him is derived from evolving...
Jean Laffite
Jean Laffite was a privateer and smuggler who interrupted his illicit adventures to fight heroically for the United States in defense of New Orleans in the War of 1812. Little is known of Laffite’s early...
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks, series of airline hijackings and suicide attacks committed in 2001 by 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda against targets in the United States, the deadliest...
Alcatraz escape of June 1962
Alcatraz escape of June 1962, jailbreak from the supposedly escape-proof maximum-security federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island, California, on the night of June 11, 1962. After six months of meticulous...
USA PATRIOT Act
USA PATRIOT Act, U.S. legislation, passed by Congress in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and signed into law by Pres. George W. Bush in October 2001, that significantly expanded the...
John Walker Lindh
John Walker Lindh U.S. citizen who was captured along with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan during the Afghanistan War in 2001. In 2002 he agreed to a plea bargain and was sentenced to 20 years in prison....
Brandon Teena
Brandon Teena biologically female individual who lived his life as a male and was murdered by two former friends after they discovered his biological sex. Teena and his story have been at the center of...
the man in the iron mask
The man in the iron mask was a political prisoner, famous in French history and legend, who died in the Bastille in 1703, during the reign of Louis XIV. There is no historical evidence that the mask was...
Allan Pinkerton
Allan Pinkerton was a Scottish-born detective and founder of a famous American private detective agency. Pinkerton was the son of a police sergeant who died when Allan was a child, leaving the family in...
Jesse James and Frank James
Jesse James and Frank James were two brothers who were among the most notorious outlaws of the American West, engaging in robberies that came to typify the hazards of the 19th-century frontier as it has...
Paris attacks of 2015
Paris attacks of 2015, coordinated terrorist attacks that took place in Paris on the evening of November 13, 2015. At least 130 people were killed and more than 350 were injured. France was shaken on January...
Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes was a British soldier and the best-known participant in the Gunpowder Plot. Its object was to blow up the palace at Westminster during the state opening of Parliament, while James I and his...
William Burke and William Hare
William Burke and William Hare were a pair of infamous murderers for profit who killed their victims and sold the corpses to an anatomist for purposes of scientific dissection. Hare immigrated to Scotland...
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde were a robbery team that became notorious in the United States through their flamboyant encounters with police and the sensationalization of their exploits by the country’s newspapers....
Leopold and Loeb
Leopold and Loeb, two celebrated Chicago murderers of 1924, who confessed to the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Robert (“Bobby”) Franks for an “intellectual” thrill. Pleading guilty, Nathan F. Leopold,...
Oslo and Utøya attacks of 2011
Oslo and Utøya attacks of 2011, terrorist attacks on Oslo and mass shooting on the island of Utøya in Norway on July 22, 2011, in which 77 people were killed—the deadliest incident on Norwegian soil since...
Tokyo subway attack of 1995
Tokyo subway attack of 1995, coordinated multiple-point terrorist attack in Tokyo on March 20, 1995, in which the odourless, colourless, and highly toxic nerve gas sarin was released in the city’s subway...
George Barrington
George Barrington was an Irish adventurer notorious for his activities as a pickpocket in England in the 1770s and ’80s. He was falsely said to be the author of several histories of Australia. Barrington’s...