FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, 1950s

In the 1950s, the United States FBI began to maintain a public list of the people it regarded as the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Following is a brief review of FBI people and events that place the 1950s decade in context, and then an historical list of individual fugitives whose names first appeared on the 10 Most Wanted list during the decade of the 1950s, under FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

FBI headlines in decade of 1950s

In late 1949 the FBI helped publish an article about the "toughest guys" the Bureau was after, who remained fugitives from justice. The positive publicity from the story resulted in the birth of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list on March 14 1950.

Cases of espionage against the United States and its allies were some of the prevalent investigations by the Bureau during the 1950s. Eight Nazi agents who had planned sabotage operations against American targets were arrested. Organized crime networks and families in the United States also became targets, including those headed by Sam Giancana and John Gotti.

FBI "Most Wanted Fugitives" in the 1950s

As wanted fugitives were added, and then later removed, the FBI began to keep track of the sequence number in which each fugitive appeared on the list. Some individuals have even appeared twice, and often a sequence number was permanently assigned to an individual fugitive who was soon caught, captured, or simply removed, before his or her appearance could be published on the publicly released list. In those cases, the public would see only gaps in the number sequence reported by the FBI. For convenient reference, the wanted fugitive's sequence number and date of entry on the FBI list appear below, whenever possible.

The most wanted fugitives listed in the decade of the 1950s include (in FBI list appearance sequence order):----

Year 1950

Willie Sutton

March 20 1950 #11
William Francis (Willie) Sutton
Sutton was arrested in New York without incident, February 18 1956, after two years on the list.

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Year 1951

see the full year 1951 list of Fugitives added

George Arthur Heroux

December 19 1951 #28
George Arthur Heroux
A bank robber with accomplice and fellow top Ten Fugitive, Gerhard Arthur Puff, Heroux was caught on July 25 1952 at Miami, Florida, after seven months on the list.

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Year 1952

see the full year 1952 list of Fugitives added

Gerhard Arthur Puff

January 28 1952 #30 - was added soon after his partner George Arthur Heroux, #28
Gerhard Arthur Puff
A bank robber with accomplice and fellow top Ten Fugitive, George Arthur Heroux, Puff was caught after killing an FBI Agent in a gunbattle, and was executed two years later. He had spent six months on the list.

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Year 1953

see the full year 1953 list of Fugitives added----

Year 1954

see the full year 1954 list of Fugitives added----

Year 1955

see the full year 1955 list of Fugitives added----

Year 1956

see the full year 1956 list of Fugitives added----

Year 1957

see the full year 1957 list of Fugitives added----

Year 1958

see the full year 1958 list of Fugitives added----

Year 1959

see the full year 1959 list of Fugitives added----By the end of the decade, six of the ten places on the list remained filled by these elusive long-time fugitives, then still at large:

* 1950 #14 (ten years), Frederick J. Tenuto
* 1952 #36 (eight years), James Eddie Diggs
* 1954 #78 (six years), David Daniel Keegan
* 1956 #97 (four years), Eugene Francis Newman
* 1958 #107 (two years), Angelo Luigi Pero
* 1959 #112 (one year), Edwin Sanford Garrison

Later entries

*FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, 2000s
*FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, 1990s
*FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, 1980s
*FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, 1970s
*FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, 1960s

External links

* [http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/fugitives.htm Current FBI top ten most wanted fugitives at FBI site]
* [http://frank.redpin.com/~urbex/topten.pdf FBI pdf source document listing all Ten Most Wanted year by year (removed by FBI, mirrored)]