889 articles
List of sexual abuses perpetrated by groups
Survey of sexual abuses perpetrated by organized groups: state forces, armed groups, gangs, and peacekeepers. Covers the UN definition of conflict-related sexual violence, documented cases in Sudan, Ukraine, CAR, Israel and Gaza, Mali, and Haiti, organizational patterns, and accountability.
List of stolen paintings
List of stolen paintings: catalog of major art thefts, from the unsolved 1990 Gardner heist ($500M, 13 works) to the 1911 Mona Lisa theft by Peruggia, repeatedly stolen works like Jacob de Gheyn III and The Scream, and INTERPOL/FBI databases.
List of types of killing
The list of types of killing sets out the legal categories of homicide, from murder and its degrees through manslaughter and felony murder to justifiable homicide, where no crime occurred.
List of unsolved murders (1900–1979)
List of unsolved murders (1900–1979): twentieth-century homicide cases never solved, from the 1907 Camden Town Murder to 1970s cold cases, with scale figures and how DNA, forensic genealogy, and fingerprint databases later resolved some of them.
List of unsolved murders (2000–present)
List of unsolved murders (2000–present): homicides since 2000 without an identified offender. Covers US clearance rates (54–64%), the 250,000-case backlog, cold-case definitions, notable cases like the Grim Sleeper, and DNA and genetic genealogy methods.
Lizard Squad
Lizard Squad is a cybercriminal group behind the Christmas 2014 DDoS attacks on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live; it also ran the Lizard Stresser DDoS-for-hire tool ($6–$500 per attack) and saw several teenage members arrested in the UK, US, Netherlands, and Finland.
Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Andrew Borden, Fall River woman tried and acquitted (June 20, 1893) for the August 4, 1892 hatchet murders of father Andrew and stepmother Abby; case unsolved, no one else charged; famous for the '40 whacks' rhyme.
Loaded sock
Loaded sock: an improvised weapon made by filling and knotting a sock with rocks, batteries, a padlock, or similar dense objects; treated in law as a dangerous weapon based on use. Distinct from the police less-lethal sock round and from socks used to conceal guns.
Loitering
Loitering is a US criminal offense: remaining in a place with no apparent lawful purpose, per state statutes like NY Penal Law §240.35 and Florida §856.021; courts strike vague versions (Papachristou, Morales), and enforcement falls heavily on unhoused people.
Looting
Looting, also called pillaging or war booty, is theft of goods during a disturbance such as war, riot, or natural disaster, when normal property enforcement breaks down.
Los Angeles crime family
Los Angeles crime family (Dragna family), the Southern California La Cosa Nostra organization led by Jack Dragna until 1957; weakened by informant Jimmy Fratianno and 1980s prosecutions, it remains California's last Mafia family.
Los Ántrax
Los Ántrax, armed enforcement and security group of Ismael El Mayo Zambada's faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, founded 2008 by Chino Antrax after the Beltrán Leyva split; its leaders were killed, imprisoned, or fugitive by 2024.
Los Pepes
Los Pepes, acronym of People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar, was a Colombian vigilante coalition formed in January 1993 to destroy Pablo Escobar, who was killed in December 1993.
Los Zetas
Los Zetas, Mexican criminal organization founded in the late 1990s by Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas from military deserters; split from the Gulf Cartel in 2010, notorious for the San Fernando and Allende massacres, fragmented after 2012 into the Northeast Cartel and Old School Zetas.
Lucchese crime family
Lucchese crime family, one of New York's Five Families of La Cosa Nostra, originally the Gagliano family; led by Tommy Lucchese from 1951, later Anthony Corallo; known for garment district, union, and airport rackets and ongoing RICO prosecutions.
Lufthansa heist
Lufthansa heist: December 11, 1978 armed robbery of Lufthansa's JFK cargo terminal, stealing about $5 million cash and $875,000 in jewelry, the largest US cash robbery at the time, linked to Jimmy Burke and depicted in Goodfellas.
Lululemon murder
The Lululemon murder: Brittany Norwood killed co-worker Jayna Murray (331 injuries) at a Bethesda, Maryland Lululemon store on March 11, 2011, staged a fake masked robbery, and received life without parole.
LulzSec
LulzSec (Lulz Security) was a black-hat hacking group formed in 2011 inside Anonymous chatrooms; its 50-day spree hit Sony, PBS, and Fox before FBI informant Sabu (Hector Monsegur) helped dismantle it.
Lust murder
Lust murder (Lustmord; erotophonophilia) is a subcategory of sexual homicide in which sadistic killing itself produces sexual gratification, distinguished by mutilation, FBI offender typologies, and Krafft-Ebing's 1886 origins.
Lynching of Jesse Washington
The lynching of Jesse Washington, known as the Waco Horror, was the 1916 mob torture and burning of a seventeen-year-old Black farmhand in Waco, Texas.
Lynching of Michael Donald
Lynching of Michael Donald: 1981 Ku Klux Klan killing of 19-year-old Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama, recorded as the last documented US lynching; his mother's civil suit bankrupted the United Klans of America.
Lynda Lyon Block
Lynda Lyon Block (1948–2002), also known as Lynda Lyon, was an American anti-government activist executed in Alabama's electric chair on May 10, 2002 for the 1993 murder of Opelika police sergeant Roger Lamar Motley, the first woman executed in Alabama since 1957.
Made man
Made man: a fully initiated member (soldier) of the American Mafia, also called man of honor, goodfella, or wiseguy; entered via a blood-oath ceremony, restricted to men of Italian descent, revealed publicly by Joseph Valachi in 1963.
Mafia
Mafia: organized crime born in 19th-century western Sicily, tied to citrus exports and weak post-1860 rule of law; comprises Cosa Nostra, Camorra, 'Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita; defined by protection rackets, omertà, initiation rites.
Mafia Commission Trial
The Mafia Commission Trial, formally United States v. Anthony Salerno, was a 1985–1986 federal RICO prosecution led by Rudolph Giuliani that convicted eight bosses of La Cosa Nostra.
Mahadev Betting App Case
Mahadev Betting App case: Indian ED and CBI probes into Mahadev Online Book, a Dubai-run illegal betting syndicate of Saurabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, with estimated proceeds of ₹36,000–43,400 crore, money laundering charges, and fugitive proceedings.
Mail and wire fraud
Mail and wire fraud are parallel U.S. federal crimes (18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1343) punishing schemes to defraud executed through the mails or interstate wires, including honest-services fraud limited by Skilling to bribery and kickbacks.
Malcolm Webster (murderer)
Malcolm Webster (born 1959), English former nurse, convicted 2011 in Scotland of murdering first wife Claire Morris in a staged 1994 Aberdeenshire car crash and of attempting to murder second wife Felicity Drumm in New Zealand in 1999 for insurance money; life sentence, 30-year minimum.
Manacled Mormon case
The Manacled Mormon case, or Mormon sex-in-chains case: Joyce McKinney's 1977 alleged kidnap and rape of LDS missionary Kirk Anderson in a Devon cottage; no trial, bail jumped, later the subject of the documentary Tabloid.
Manslaughter
Manslaughter: unlawful homicide without the culpability for murder, split into voluntary (heat of passion) and involuntary (negligence, unlawful dangerous acts) forms in US, English, Canadian and Australian law.