3,576 articles
Alexander Pearce
Alexander Pearce (c. 1790–1824), Irish convict transported for stealing six pairs of shoes, twice escaped Macquarie Harbour penal settlement in Van Diemen's Land; sole survivor of the 1822 escape party and executed in 1824 for murdering fellow escapee Thomas Cox after confessed cannibalism.
Alexander Pichushkin (Александр Юрьевич Пичушкин)
Alexander Yuryevich Pichushkin, the Chessboard Killer or Bitsevsky Maniac, is a Russian serial killer convicted in 2007 of 48 murders and three attempted murders near Moscow's Bitsevsky Park, sentenced to life imprisonment.
Alexis Flores
Alexis Flores, Honduran fugitive also known as Mario Flores and Alex Contreras, was FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive #487, wanted for the 2000 kidnapping and murder of five-year-old Iriana DeJesus in Philadelphia; arrested in Honduras in February 2026 and extradited in 2026.
Alexis Haines
Alexis Haines, born Alexis Neiers, is an American recovery advocate and memoirist who starred in E!'s Pretty Wild and was convicted of first degree burglary as a Bling Ring member, serving one month for the Orlando Bloom burglary.
Alfie Solomons
Alfie Solomons, also Alfie Solomon, is the fictional Camden Town Jewish gang leader in Peaky Blinders, played by Tom Hardy from series 2 (2014), loosely based on a real gangster who was Darby Sabini's enforcer.
Alford plea
Alford plea (US law): a guilty plea, from North Carolina v. Alford (1970), in which the defendant maintains innocence while accepting conviction; requires voluntary, intelligent entry and a strong factual basis, and is forbidden in a few states.
Alfred Bourgeois
Alfred Bourgeois, Louisiana truck driver executed December 11, 2020 at Terre Haute for the 2002 torture-murder of his two-year-old daughter at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station; his Atkins intellectual-disability claim, based on IQ scores of 70 and 75, was denied.
Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935), French Jewish artillery captain, wrongly convicted of treason in 1894 and deported to Devil's Island; the Dreyfus Affair divided France until his 1906 exoneration by the Cour de cassation.
Alfredo Beltrán Leyva
Alfredo Beltrán Leyva, known as El Mochomo, is a Mexican drug trafficker who led the Beltrán Leyva Organization and was sentenced to life in a US prison in 2017.
Alice Crimmins
Alice Crimmins (born 1941) is an American woman from Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, tried twice (1968, 1971) for the 1965 deaths of her children Eddie Jr. and Missy; only a manslaughter conviction survived appeal, and she was paroled in 1977.
Alice Marie Johnson
Alice Marie Johnson, American criminal justice reform advocate and former federal prisoner, served about 22 years of a life sentence for a first-time nonviolent drug offense before Trump commuted her sentence in 2018 and pardoned her in 2020; she became his pardon czar in 2025.
Alicia Kozakiewicz
Alicia "Kozak" Kozakiewicz, American internet safety advocate; abducted January 1, 2002 at 13 from Pittsburgh by online predator Scott Tyree, held four days in Virginia, rescued by the FBI; campaigns for Alicia's Law funding ICAC task forces.
Allan Legere
Allan Joseph Legere, the "Monster of the Miramichi," was a New Brunswick serial killer who escaped custody in 1989, killed four people, and became Canada's first murderer convicted largely on DNA evidence; he died in prison in 2026.
Allan Meehan
Allan Meehan is an Australian outlaw bikie, national president of the Comanchero Motorcycle Club from June 2022, formerly ACT and Sydney chapter commander, subject to a 2022 NSW Serious Crime Prevention Order he breached and was convicted for in 2023.
Allen Dorfman
Allen M. Dorfman, Chicago insurance executive and Teamsters Central States Pension Fund consultant with organized-crime ties, convicted in 1982 of bribing Sen. Howard Cannon, shot dead January 20, 1983 in Lincolnwood, Illinois; murder unsolved.
Allen Lee Davis
Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis, Florida triple murderer executed July 8, 1999 in the state's new electric chair; his bloody, botched electrocution was Florida's last and spurred constitutional challenges.
Allgemeines Gesetz über Verbrechen
The Allgemeines Gesetz über Verbrechen, known as the Josephinian Penal Code (Josephina, StG 1787), was a criminal code issued by Emperor Joseph II in 1787 that replaced Maria Theresa's Theresiana.
Alligator Alcatraz
Alligator Alcatraz, officially the Florida Soft Sided Facility South, was an Everglades immigration detention facility at Dade-Collier Airport, opened July 1, 2025, built in eight days, costing over $1 billion, and emptied June 2026.
Almighty Black P. Stone Nation
Almighty Black P. Stone Nation (BPSN), also Blackstone Rangers and El Rukns: Chicago street gang founded circa 1959-1960 by Jeff Fort and Eugene Hairston in Woodlawn, uniting 21 gangs, later convicted of a Libya-linked terrorism plot.
Almighty Vice Lord Nation
Almighty Vice Lord Nation (AVLN), a People Nation alliance of African American street gangs founded as the Conservative Vice Lords in Chicago around 1958; major factions include Conservative, Traveling, Mafia Insane, and Four Corner Hustlers, active in drug trafficking and subject to federal RICO prosecutions.
AlphaBay
AlphaBay was a darknet marketplace on Tor, online December 2014 to July 2017, selling drugs, weapons, malware, and stolen data for Bitcoin, Monero, and Ethereum. Founded by Alexandre Cazes (Alpha02), it was seized in Operation Bayonet as the largest darknet market to that date, with over $1 billion in transactions.
Alphabet murders
Alphabet murders, also called Double Initial murders: unsolved 1971–1973 killings of Carmen Colón, Wanda Walkowicz, and Michelle Maenza near Rochester, New York, whose alliterative names matched the towns where their bodies were found; no one was ever charged.
Alphonse Bertillon
Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914), French criminologist, creator of bertillonage, the anthropometric criminal-identification system of 11 body measurements plus the mug shot, adopted worldwide from 1882 and later replaced by fingerprinting.
Alphonse Gangitano
Alphonse John Gangitano, the 'Black Prince of Lygon Street', was a Melbourne criminal and Carlton Crew figure murdered in his Templestowe home's laundry on 16 January 1998, the killing usually treated as the start of the Melbourne gangland war.
Alphonse Persico
Alphonse Persico ('Allie Boy') names two related Colombo crime family figures: Carmine Persico's brother (1929–1989), a consigliere and acting boss imprisoned for murder and loansharking, and Carmine's son Alphonse T. 'Little Allie Boy' Persico, acting boss convicted in 2007 of the William Cutolo murder and sentenced to life.
Alpo Martinez
Alberto "Alpo" Martinez (1966–2021), Harlem drug kingpin of the crack era who ran cocaine from New York to Washington, D.C., testified against Wayne Perry, lived in witness protection as Abraham Rodriguez, and was killed in Harlem on Halloween 2021.
Alternatives to imprisonment
Alternatives to imprisonment are non-custodial sanctions such as fines, community service, probation, restitution, and electronic monitoring served in the community instead of prison, promoted under the UN Tokyo Rules and used by an estimated 12.5 million people worldwide.
Alton Coleman
Alton Coleman (1955-2002), American spree killer who with Debra Brown murdered eight people across six Midwestern states in 1984; captured as an FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive, sentenced to death in three states, executed in Ohio in 2002.
Alves dos Reis
Artur Virgílio Alves dos Reis (1896–1955), Portuguese fraudster of the 1925 Angola e Metrópole affair: forged a Banco de Portugal contract to have Waterlow & Sons print 200,000 duplicate 500-escudo notes, roughly 1% of GDP, founding Banco Angola e Metrópole; sentenced to 20 years in 1930.
Alvin Karpis
Alvin "Creepy" Karpis (born Karpavicz/Karpowicz, 1907-1979), Lithuanian-born leader of the Barker-Karpis gang; kidnapped Hamm and Bremer, last Depression-era Public Enemy No. 1, captured by Hoover in New Orleans 1936, served 26 years at Alcatraz.