When did the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list start? The FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list started on March 14th, 1950.
The first person on the FBI’s most wanted list was an accused murderer called Thomas James Holden. He was part of a gang that had been involved in robbing trains, banks, and payroll trucks. He had been arrested in 1928 and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but he escaped in 1930 and carried on with his activities. He slowly escalated but was rearrested and spent another two decades in prison. After being released, he killed his wife and two of her brothers before going on the run. It was these murders that made him the first person on the FBI’s list. He was captured in 1951, mostly owing to the publicity of the FBI’s list, and he died two years later in prison.
Since it was started, up to the middle of 2025, 537 people have featured on the list. 498 of these people have been located since then, which is a pretty good statistic. Only 163 of those were located because of help from the public, but that is 163 that might not have been found were it not for this list.
The FBI’s most wanted list was started by J. Edgar Hoover, the founder and head of the FBI. He had started working with the FBI when it was known as the Bureau of Investigation. He rose to head the bureau and stayed as head while it changed from the Bureau of Investigation to the Division of Investigation, and then, in 1935, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hoover spent a lot of time shaping the FBI into the beginnings of what we have today. Some of his methods might have been questionable, but he made the FBI into a more professional and well-organized force. One of his good points was that he was always open to new ideas, if they would improve his beloved FBI.
One of those ideas came from a journalist called William Kinsey Hutchinson, the editor in chief of the International News Service. Well, it wasn’t so much an idea as a question that sparked the idea. Hutchinson asked Hoover in 1949 who the “toughest guys” and the “worst of the worst” fugitives were. Hoover gave him some names that Hutchinson published in a story. The public fascination and involvement surprised everybody, and Hoover realized it was something he would be able to use.
The very first FBI wanted list (although they weren’t known as the FBI) came out in 1919. It started as a bulletin list that was sent out to all special agents, employees, and local enforcement officers. The first one was for the capture of William N. Bishop, who had escaped from a military prison in northern Virginia. The bulletin had a lot of the same information that would end up in the top ten list. It had his name, age, physical description, possible locations, known acquaintances, and his picture. Thanks to the bulletin, Bishop was found pretty quickly, and the FBI started issuing these bulletins more frequently. So, when Hoover was asked in 1949 who the most wanted criminals were, he had a pile of bulletins he could quickly access, and it wasn’t difficult to produce a list of names and pictures to go with them.
Hoover probably didn’t intend for his most wanted list to be anything more than a single news story, but it took hold, and it was enshrined in FBI rules. There is now a strict system for the list. A new person can only be added when an old person is removed, and there is a long process to get somebody on the list. Names are suggested by all of the FBI’s 56 field offices, and they are reviewed by officers in the Criminal Investigative Division at FBI Headquarters. It can take a long time for a person to be put on the list, sometimes negating the reason for having the list. To be eligible, a criminal must have a lengthy record of crime and be a danger to society, and it must be believed that the public can assist in catching the person.
The FBI put its list online in May 1996, just as the Internet was taking off. They don’t release the figures for how many people view the site every month, but it is presumably a lot. After 2011, they also branched out and made a top ten most wanted terrorist list as well. The rewards for information that results in the capture of people on their regular list are generally $100,000, but rewards for their terrorist list went into the millions. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Ten_Most_Wanted_Fugitives
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Bureau_of_Investigation#History
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/march-14/the-fbi-debuts-10-most-wanted
https://www.fbi.gov/history/artifacts/original-top-ten-ledgers
https://www.britannica.com/topic/FBI-Ten-Most-Wanted-List
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden%E2%80%93Keating_Gang
https://www.biography.com/history-culture/a64164393/fbi-most-wanted-list-origins