which was a federal offense at the time. Had Morgan sold the whiskey outside of Indian Territory, he would have had been able to do so legally. He pled guilty to “disposing of liquor” and was sentenced to one year and six months. Early Leavenworth inmate case files, such as this one, often contain sparse content, but Morgan stated that he committed the crime “to accommodate some friends.” For more information on prohibition inside Indian Territory, check out the Oklahoma Historical Society’s website:
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/P/PR018.html

hotographs of Cuba. CIA analysts, working around the clock, had deciphered in the pictures conclusive evidence that a Soviet missile base was under construction near San Cristobal, Cuba, just 90 miles from the coast of Florida. The most dangerous encounter in the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union had begun.

rs! Check out this blog post to learn more about what abbreviations like UACB mean (spoiler: UACB = Unless Advised to the Contrary by the Bureau):
http://blogs.archives.gov/TextMessage/2012/10/10/the-challenge-of-federal-bureau-of-investigation-records-abbreviations-and-euphemisms/

county title during his
senior year at Johnson City High School. After working for several
years in California after high school, Johnson returned home and
attended Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Texas State University). In addition to various photographs from his childhood, the exhibit includes reproductions of Lyndon Johnson's third- and ninthgrade report cards as well as an invitation to his graduation from college.

To learn more about the presidents and view photographs and
documents from their youth, visit School House to White House: The Education of the Presidents, available for viewing through February 23, 2013.

s City in 1902, and soon proved that he was not a fully-reformed convict. In Kansas City he took on the alias George Ryan and became known as the “ice-box man” after he held up several “box tenders” (railroad employees) and locked them in their ice-box cars. Cronin was caught and sentenced to eight years in the Missouri State Penitentiary.

While at the Missouri State Penitentiary, Cronin concocted a plan to escape with Hiram Blake, Harry Vaughn, and Edward Raymond. The foursome had H.E. Spencer, a recently-released convict, send them Colt .44 revolvers and nitroglycerin. Cronin handed out the revolvers to the other three inmates on the afternoon of November 24, 1905. From there, the inmates headed to the Deputy Warden’s office, R.E. See, and shot him in the shoulder after he resisted. The foursome ran from the office to the main gate, killed two guards, and blew a hole through the gate using the nitroglycerin. Outside prison walls they hijacked a wagon with a team of horses, leading guards, police, and armed citizens on a 12-block chase. According to local newspapers, Hiram Blake was killed in the pursuit, Harry Vaughn was injured from a shot to the arm, Cronin sustained minor injuries after he fell off the wagon in front of the Capital City Brewery, and Raymond was uninjured.

After multiple trials, the three remaining escapees were sentenced to death by hanging and were executed side-by-side on June 27, 1907, in Jefferson City, Missouri.

seless hunk of iron." President Eisenhower and some of his advisors, when they realized the significance of the Soviet achievement, met to discuss the alarming developments. This memo of that meeting, dated October 9, 1957, preserved the initial reactions of those present.

ned to the business of kidnapping.

Their first abduction was William Hamm, President of the Hamm Brewery in Minnesota. When this successful kidnapping netted them $100,000 in ransom money and was blamed on another gang by inept police work, they turned their attention to more lucrative targets. Their next target was Edward Bremer, Jr., bank president and son of another St. Paul brewer. They successfully received a $200,000 ransom in this kidnapping, but sloppy clean-up of the crime put the FBI on their trail.

The nucleus of the Barker-Karpis gang was made up of Fred Barker, Arthur "Doc" Barker, Harry Campbell, Volney Davis, and Alvin Karpis. Doc Barker was the first gang member arrested. Soon after, the Federal Bureau of Investigation tracked Fred Barker and his mother Kate to a house in Florida where a gunfight ensued and both were killed. Meticulous tracking, scientific methods, and new technology employed by the FBI led to the eventual arrest of the remaining gang members.

Always the smartest of the bunch, Alvin Karpis was the last of the 1930s public enemies to be captured. Arrested in 1936 by none other than FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Karpis was tried in six cases related to the Hamm and Bremer kidnappings and sent to Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary.

This letter dating 1967, survives in one of those six court cases, and indicates that Karpis was interested in receiving copies of his original indictment from 1936. He was paroled just two years after this letter was written, and soon moved to Spain where he lived out his life. He died in 1979, having authored two books about his criminal exploits and time in Alcatraz.