Page 14 - All About History - Issue 08-14

Crime

Hall of fame

10 INFAMOUS CRIMINALS

Meet the criminals who have sealed their place in history through illegal actions

Charles Bronson
ENGLISH 1952-
Commonly referred to as the most
violent prisoner in Britain, Bronson,
whose birth name is Michael Gordon
Peterson, is a petty criminal who has
become notorious for his crimes inside
prison. Sentenced in 1974 to seven
years in prison, Bronson’s sentence
doubled due to fights with fellow
criminals and prison officers and
one-man rooftop protests. Released
in 1988, he began bare-knuckle
Hardin again for planning a robbery.
boxing but was only a free man
for 69 days before entering prison
Hardin spent most
of his life on the run
from the authorities
Bronson is still in prison,
as a ‘Category A’
John
Wesley
prisoner, and has spent
AMERICAN 1853-1895
more time in solitary
confinement than
A serial murderer named after the founder of
the Methodist church, Hardin was just 14 years
British history.
old when he stabbed a boy who was taunting
Britain’s most
him. He spent the majority of his adult life any other prisoner in violent prisoner
being pursued by the law until he was finally
captured in 1878. He claimed to have killed
42 men in total, although the newspapers
attributed ‘only’ 27 killings to his name. Hardin
CHARLES PONZI wrote his autobiography and studied law while
in prison, but was shot and killed in a Texas
ITALIAN 1882-1949 saloon only a year after his release.
A criminal so infamous that a type of crime – the ponzi scheme
– has been named after him. The fraudster promised business
partners a 50 per cent profit within 45 days, or a 100 per cent “ I rob banks for a
profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons living, what do
abroad and redeeming them at face value in the US as a form of
arbitrage. In reality, Ponzi was paying early investors using the you
investments of later investors and it collapsed after a year, costing do?”John Dillinger
his victims $20 million (£12 million), a small fortune at the time.
He was sentenced to five years in prison and was later deported
from the United States. He died in poverty in Brazil. John Herbert Dillinger
AMERICAN 1903-1934
Reginald Kray Such was John Dillinger’s notoriery that his actions
sparked the formation of the FBI as the
ENGLISH 1933-2000 nation demanded an end to Dillinger
Along with his twin brother Ronald, and his gang’s reign of terror. Early
Reginald became one of the most in his life he was sentenced to 10
feared gangsters in London. After being years in prison for assault and
dishonourably discharged from the army battery and when he was released
the pair bought a snooker club in east during the Great Depression,
London and started running protection work was so difficult to come
rackets. They were soon involved in by he turned back to crime and
hijacking, armed robbery and arson and robbing banks. After his second
had bought a number of clubs and other arrest he broke out of prison
properties. In the Sixties they were involved and continued his crime spree
in London’s celebrity scene before both before it was finally put to an
were sentenced to prison for the killing of end when he was fatally shot
Jack McVitie. Reginald was released in 2000 by J Edgar Hoover’s FBI agents
Reggie and his brother Ronald on compassionate grounds due to bladder in a bloody showdown outside
became British celebrities cancer and died at home. a theater in Chicago in 1934.

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