A BYTE OUT OF HISTORY
Fugitive Alert: Our First Identification Order
12/15/06
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Fugitive William Bishop appeared 87 years ago on the FBI's first Identification Order, precursor to today's Wanted poster. |
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On
December 2, 1919, a 23-year-old soldier named
William N. Bishop slipped out of the stockade
at Camp A. A. Humphreys—today’s
Fort Belvoir—in northern Virginia.
Little
did anyone know at the time, but that escape
set in motion a chain of events that would
forever change how the FBI and its partners
fight crime.
Shortly
after Bishop’s getaway, the Military
Intelligence Division—established during
World War I by the Army—requested our
help in finding him. One of our early assistant
directors, Frank Burke, responded by sending
a letter to “All Special Agents, Special
Employees and Local Officers” asking
them to “make every effort” to
capture Bishop.
In
the letter, Burke included every scrap of
information that would help law enforcement
of the day locate and identify Bishop: a complete
physical description, down to the pigmented
mole near his right armpit; possible addresses
he might visit, including his sister’s
home in New York; and a “photostat”
of a recent portrait taken at “Howard’s
studio” on seventh street in Washington,
D.C. (see the photo above).
Burke
labeled that document—dated December
15, 1919, 87 years ago this Friday—“Identification
Order No. 1.” In essence, it
was our first wanted poster…and it
put us squarely in the fugitive-catching business
just eleven years into our history. We’ve
been at it ever since, working hand-in-hand
with our law enforcement partners and the
general public to take wanted fugitives off
the streets.
Within
a few years, the identification order—or
what soon became known throughout law enforcement
as an “IO”—had become a
staple of crime-fighting. By the late 1920s,
these wanted flyers were circulating not only
throughout the U.S. but also Canada and Europe
(and later worldwide). The IO evolved into
a standard 8x8 size, and we soon added to
them fingerprints (thanks to our growing national
repository), criminal records, and other background
information. By the 1930s, IOs were displayed
in post offices around the nation, enlisting
the eyes of the public in the search for fugitives.
Since
1919, we’ve issued more than 5,400 IOs—including
quite a few memorable ones: Charles “Pretty
Boy” Floyd, number
1194; George “Machine Gun”
Kelly, number 1203;
John Dillinger, number
1217 ; Lester Gillis, aka “Baby
Face” Nelson, number
1223; and Bonnie and Clyde, number
1227.
Building
on the “wanted posters” concept,
we created the FBI
“Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list
in 1950. Today, our Wanted
by the FBI website lists not only fugitives—terrorist
and criminal alike—but also missing
and kidnapped persons.
And
what of Mr. Bishop? With the help of the
identification order, he was captured less
than five months later, on April 6, 1920.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Resources:
FBI History
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