3,576 articles
Black Bart (outlaw)
Black Bart was the alias of Charles E. Boles, an American stagecoach robber who held up 28 Wells Fargo stages in Northern California and southern Oregon between 1875 and 1883.
Black Dahlia
Black Dahlia: Elizabeth Short, 22, found murdered in Los Angeles January 15, 1947, body severed at waist; unsolved despite 22 major suspects, dozens of false confessions; investigation closed 1950.
Black Dahlia suspects
Black Dahlia suspects: proposed killers of Elizabeth Short, murdered in Los Angeles on January 15, 1947. Named candidates include George Hodel, Walter Bayley, Leslie Dillon, and Marvin Margolis; the case remains unsolved.
Black Disciples
Black Disciples (BDs), a Chicago street gang founded by David Barksdale in 1966, once part of the Black Gangster Disciple Nation with Larry Hoover's Gangster Disciples; ran a massive 1989-2004 South and West Side drug-trafficking organization dismantled in a 2004 47-defendant federal takedown.
Black Dolphin Prison (Чёрный дельфин)
Black Dolphin Prison (Чёрный дельфин), officially Penal Colony No. 6 (IK-6), is a special-regime FSIN colony in Sol-Iletsk, Orenburg Oblast, Russia, near the Kazakhstan border, holding roughly 700 men, mostly life-sentenced, named for a black dolphin fountain sculpture.
Black Guerrilla Family
The Black Guerrilla Family, originally called the Black Family or Black Vanguard, is a prison gang founded in 1966 at San Quentin State Prison by George Jackson.
Black Hand (extortion)
The Black Hand (Mano Nera) was an American extortion method of the late 1800s and early 1900s, using mailed threat letters signed with a black hand; not an organization, it declined after Joe Petrosino's 1909 death and Postal Inspector crackdowns.
Black Mafia
The Black Mafia was a Philadelphia African American organized crime group formed in the 1960s, distinct from Detroit's Black Mafia Family (BMF), known for extortion, heroin trafficking, the 1972 Club Harlem and 1973 Hanafi massacre murders, and the Junior Black Mafia successor.
Black Mafia Family
Black Mafia Family (BMF), cocaine trafficking and money laundering organization founded in early 1990s Detroit by Demetrius "Big Meech" and Terry "Southwest T" Flenory; dismantled in 2005 by Operation Motor City Mafia; also the name of the 2021 Starz drama series.
Black site
Black site: a secret military or intelligence prison and interrogation facility whose existence the government denies; best known from the CIA's 2002-2008 network in Poland, Thailand, and elsewhere holding 119 detainees.
Black Swan manslaughter case
The Black Swan manslaughter case was the Florida prosecution of former ballet dancer Ashley Benefield, convicted in 2024 of fatally shooting her estranged husband Doug in 2020.
Blackmail
Blackmail: threatening to expose damaging information unless a demand for money, property, or action is met; a form of extortion. Illegal in all US states and federally (18 USC 873), and under the UK Theft Act 1968 s.21 (max 14 years).
Blackstone's ratio
Blackstone's ratio is William Blackstone's maxim from the Commentaries (1765-1769) that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer, underpinning the presumption of innocence, with variant ratios from Fortescue's 20:1 to Maimonides' 1000:1.
Blaine Milam
Blaine Keith Milam (TDCJ #999558), Texas death row inmate convicted in 2010 of capital murder of 13-month-old Amora Carson; executed by lethal injection September 25, 2025, after stays in 2019 and 2021 over bite-mark science and intellectual-disability claims.
Blanche Barrow
Blanche Barrow (Blanche Caldwell), wife of Buck Barrow, Clyde Barrow's brother; joined the Barrow gang in 1933, was captured at Platte City, Missouri, sentenced to 10 years, and wrote a memoir.
Blanche Monnier
Blanche Monnier (1849–1913), the Séquestrée de Poitiers, a Frenchwoman found 23 May 1901 after about 25 years shut in a closed room of her family's Poitiers house; mother died in detention, brother Marcel acquitted on appeal, case made famous by André Gide.
Blanche Taylor Moore
Blanche Taylor Moore (born Blanche Kiser, 1933), also called the Black Widow of North Carolina, is a former Kroger head cashier on death row since 1990 for the arsenic murder of boyfriend Raymond Reid; also suspected in other poisonings.
Bling Ring
The Bling Ring: Los Angeles youths including Rachel Lee, Nick Prugo, and Alexis Neiers who burglarized celebrity homes such as Paris Hilton's in 2008-2009, stealing over $3 million; subject of Coppola's 2013 film.
Block Parent Program
Block Parent Program: Canadian volunteer child-safety network whose approved members display a window sign offering their home as an emergency refuge. Founded in London, Ontario, in 1968, nationalized in 1983-1986, RCMP-affiliated, and in decline since the 2000s.
Bloods
The Bloods, also known as the Blood gang, are a loose association of predominantly African American street gangs that formed in Los Angeles in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bloody Benders
Bloody Benders, a German immigrant family of four (John Sr., Ma, John Jr., Kate) who ran an inn on the Osage Mission Trail in Labette County, Kansas, and murdered at least 11 travelers from 1871 to 1873 before fleeing; their fate is unresolved.
Bloody Code
The Bloody Code is the name later given to the English criminal law of the long eighteenth century, under which many crimes, mostly property crimes, carried the death penalty.
Blowing from a gun
Blowing from a gun was a method of execution in which the condemned was tied to a cannon's front and killed by a blank charge. A Mughal punishment for mutiny, adopted by the British in India and used in Persia and Afghanistan into the twentieth century.
Blue wall of silence
Blue wall of silence, also called the blue code or code of silence: the informal police norm against reporting fellow officers' misconduct, documented from Westley's surveys to the Mollen Commission, with cross-national variation and reporting channels.
Bobby Baccalieri
Bobby Baccalieri, Robert 'Bobby Bacala' Baccalieri Jr., is a fictional Sopranos character played by Steve Schirripa: Junior's caretaker who marries Janice Soprano, becomes underboss, and is killed in a train store in 'The Blue Comet.'
Bobby Beausoleil
Bobby Beausoleil (Robert Kenneth Beausoleil, born 1947) is an American musician and convicted Manson Family associate serving a life sentence since 1970 for the 1969 murder of Gary Hinman; his death sentence was commuted in 1972, and he remains at California Medical Facility, Vacaville, repeatedly denied parole. Distinct from BeauSoleil the Cajun band and the French commune Beausoleil.
Bobby Cummines
Bobby Cummines (Robert Cummines, 1951–2026), British reformed armed robber, Parkhurst Category A prisoner, and chief executive of the ex-offenders' charity Unlock; OBE 2011, adviser to Commons committees and the Zahid Mubarek inquiry.
Bobby Joe Long
Bobby Joe Long (Robert Joe Long), the 'Classified Ad Rapist,' murdered at least 10 women in the Tampa Bay area in 1984, was caught after kidnapping Lisa McVey, pleaded guilty to eight murders, and was executed in Florida in 2019.
Body snatching
Body snatching: secret removal of corpses from graves for sale to medical schools, also called resurrectionism. Flourished 17th–early 19th centuries, ended in Britain by the 1832 Anatomy Act after Burke and Hare.
Bombings in Sweden
Bombings in Sweden (sprängningar): gang-linked explosive attacks against homes and vehicles, prosecuted as publicly dangerous destruction; record 159 detonations in 2025, falling to 76 in January–September 2026.