March 14, 2022 – FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List

72 years ago today, the FBI debuted its 10 Most Wanted Fugitive List! In 1949, J Edgar Hoover (head of the FBI at the time) and William Hutchinson, editor in chief of the Internation News Service had a conversation about ways to promote capture of the FBI’s biggest criminals. It turned into a published article that received so much positive publicity, the agency decided to create the list to increase law enforcement’s ability to catch dangerous fugitives.
People are usually only taken off the list if they die or are captured. However, there have been 11 times when the FBI removed individuals from the list after determining that they were no longer a menace to society. The process of adding a fugitive to the list goes like this: The Criminal Investigative Division (CID) at the FBI’s headquarters asks all 56 field offices for candidates to add the list. Then the CID and the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs proposes finalists for the FBI’s Deputy Director to approve. The criminal must have a lengthy record, their pending charges must make them particularly dangerous, and the GBI must feel that the added publicity will help them apprehend the fugitive.
There is a minimum $100,000 reward for information that leads to the capture of a fugitive on the list. There have been 526 fugitives on the list, only 10 of them women. The FBI has captured or located 491 of them, 162 due to help from the public. Learn more here.