3,576 articles
Max Mermelstein
Max Mermelstein, Brooklyn-born engineer and Medellin cartel's Miami distributor 1978-1985, claimed 56 tons of cocaine and $300 million moved; became federal witness and wrote The Man Who Made It Snow (1990).
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law
The Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law is a criminology and criminal law research institute of the Max Planck Society in Freiburg, Germany.
Maya Dolas
Maya Dolas, born Mahindra Dolas, was an Indian underworld gangster from Mumbai who worked for Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company and died in the 1991 Lokhandwala Complex shootout.
McStay family murders
McStay family murders: Joseph, Summer, Gianni, and Joseph Jr. McStay, missing from Fallbrook, California, since February 4, 2010; remains found in Mojave Desert shallow graves in 2013; business partner Chase Merritt convicted 2019, sentenced to death.
Me Facing Life: Cyntoia's Story
Me Facing Life: Cyntoia's Story is a 2011 American documentary directed by Daniel Birman, who filmed Cyntoia Brown for nearly six years through her trial, conviction, and life sentence.
Mean world syndrome
Mean world syndrome, George Gerbner's cultivation-theory concept (also scary world syndrome): heavy media-violence exposure breeds exaggerated crime fear and distrust. Pooled effect near .10; contested under controls; extended to social media.
Medellín Cartel
Medellín Cartel: Colombian cocaine trafficking organization based in Medellín, led by Pablo Escobar, dominant in the 1980s US cocaine trade, defeated by the early 1990s.
Medieval Inquisition
Medieval Inquisition: the papal anti-heresy system of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Europe, based on the inquisitio judicial technique, run mainly by Dominicans and Franciscans, distinct from the later Spanish Inquisition.
Megan Ambuhl
Megan Ambuhl (Megan Ambuhl Graner), former U.S. Army Reserve specialist of the 372nd Military Police Company, served on the night shift at Abu Ghraib's Tier 1B in 2003, pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty in 2004, and married Charles Graner Jr. in 2005.
Megan's Law
Megan's Law: US sex offender registration and community notification laws named for Megan Kanka, murdered in New Jersey in 1994. New Jersey enacted it in 1994; a 1996 federal law amended the Wetterling Act; SORNA (2006) later replaced it.
Mehmet Ali Ağca
Mehmet Ali Ağca (born 1958, Malatya), Turkish Grey Wolves militant who murdered Abdi İpekçi in 1979 and shot Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square on 13 May 1981; life sentence in Italy, pardoned 2000, Bulgarian-connection case collapsed.
Mehul Choksi (मेहुल चोकसी)
Mehul Choksi (मेहुल चोकसी), fugitive diamantaire and former Gitanjali Gems managing director, accused with nephew Nirav Modi in the $1.8 billion Punjab National Bank fraud; fled India in 2018, holds Antiguan citizenship, arrested in Antwerp in 2025.
Melanie McGuire
Melanie McGuire, the "suitcase killer," is a former New Jersey fertility clinic nurse convicted in 2007 of murdering, dismembering, and dumping her husband Bill McGuire in Chesapeake Bay suitcases in 2004; she is serving a life sentence and maintains innocence.
Melbourne gangland killings
Melbourne gangland killings, also called the Melbourne gangland wars or underworld war: tit-for-tat murders among Melbourne crime factions from 1998 to about 2010, driven by the amphetamines trade, ending with Carl Williams' 2010 prison killing and followed by the Lawyer X informant scandal.
Melbourne tobacco wars
Melbourne tobacco wars: violent turf conflict since March 2023 between organised crime syndicates, notably Kazem Hamad's 'The Commission', over Victoria's illicit tobacco and vape market, marked by 200+ arson attacks, homicides, and escalating police closure and seizure powers.
Melissa Lucio
Melissa Lucio, first Hispanic woman sentenced to death in Texas, convicted 2008 of killing daughter Mariah; 2022 stay, 2024 innocence finding, 2026 CCA 5-4 denial.
Memorandum trial
The Memorandum trial (Procesul Memorandului) was the political trial held at Cluj in May 1894 against Romanian National Party leaders of Transylvania who had signed the 1892 Memorandum.
Memorial Medical Center and Hurricane Katrina
Memorial Medical Center, formerly Southern Baptist Hospital, a Tenet-owned Uptown New Orleans hospital where 45 patients died during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, leading to murder charges against Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses, a grand jury's refusal to indict, and lasting disaster-medicine reforms.
Mens rea
Mens rea, Latin for "guilty mind," is the mental state required to convict a defendant of a crime, paired with the actus reus; the Model Penal Code sorts it into four levels of blameworthiness.
Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago
Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago (MCC Chicago), a Federal Bureau of Prisons administrative-security jail at 71 West Van Buren Street, a 1975 Harry Weese triangular tower holding pretrial federal detainees for the Northern District of Illinois.
Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York
Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York (MCC New York), 150 Park Row federal jail opened 1975, held SDNY pretrial detainees including Gotti, Madoff, El Chapo; Epstein died there 2019; closed 2021.
Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn
MDC Brooklyn, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is the Federal Bureau of Prisons' administrative jail holding pretrial detainees for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York, about 1,300 inmates, site of the 2019 week-long power outage and, since June 2025, an ICE detention facility.
Mexican Mafia
The Mexican Mafia is a loosely structured criminal organization that directs over 21,000 gang members. It controls allied Hispanic street gangs across the United States and Mexico.
Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky (Maier Suchowlansky), 1902-1983, American organized-crime financier and Syndicate accountant behind Las Vegas and Havana gambling; indicted 1970 and 1972, charges dropped; died nearly broke.
Miami cannibal attack
The Miami cannibal attack (Miami Zombie, Causeway Cannibal) was Rudy Eugene's 2012 face-biting assault on Ronald Poppo on the MacArthur Causeway; toxicology found no bath salts, only marijuana.
Miami River Cops Scandal
Miami River Cops scandal: 1985 case in which Miami police officers stole cocaine from riverfront smugglers; three drownings exposed a ring of 19 charged officers, the largest MPD corruption investigation.
Miami Vice
Miami Vice: NBC crime drama (1984–1989) created by Anthony Yerkovich with executive producer Michael Mann, starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as undercover detectives Crockett and Tubbs, famous for pastels, MTV-style editing, and Jan Hammer's score.
Micah Xavier Johnson
Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, an Army Reserve Afghan War veteran from Mesquite, Texas, killed five officers at a July 7, 2016 Dallas protest and was killed by a police bomb robot, a first in US law enforcement.
Michael Alig
Michael Alig was a New York nightclub promoter and leader of the 1990s Club Kids scene; he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 1996 killing of Angel Melendez, served 17 years, and died in 2020.
Michael Bear Carson and Suzan Carson
Michael Bear Carson (James Clifford Carson, born 1950) and Suzan Carson (Susan Barnes Carson) are the married "San Francisco Witch Killers," convicted of three 1981–1983 California murders of people they deemed witches, sentenced to 25-years-to-life terms, and repeatedly denied parole.