Jesse Edward Curry (1913 - 1980)

Kennedy Assassination Figure, Police Officer. A native of Dallas, Texas, Curry was the Chief of the Dallas Police Department at the the time of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Born in 1913, Curry was educated at the Dallas Technical High School, and later worked for the Vitalic Battery Company. […]

George Walker Crawford (1798 - 1872)

Governor. Born in Columbia County, Georgia. He was the fourth son of Peter and Mary Ann Crawford. His father was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War from Virginia who had settled in Georgia to claim a land share, known as a bounty grant which the state of Georgia had set aside for those who […]

Joseph Force Crater (1889 - 1930)

New York Supreme Court Judge.  Born in Easton, Pennsylvania. Joseph was one of four children born to his father, Frank E. Crater, an orchard owner and operator of a produce market and the former Leila Virginia Montague. Joseph began to show a passion for music during his youth, and was encouraged by his mother to […]

Samuel Parkinson Cowley (1899 - 1934)

FBI agent. He was educated at the Utah State Agricultural College and George Washington University Law School. After graduation in 1929 he joined the FBI. Promoted to Inspector in July 1934 he directed the operation to apprehend John Dillinger. In an attempt to capture George “Baby Face” Nelson (Lester Gillis) he was mortally wounded. Nelson […]

Timothy “Longhaired” Courtright (1970 - 1887)

Western Lawman. Born Timothy Isaiah Courtright, in 1848 at Sangamon County, Illinois, he had a reputation as being fast with a gun. He was at various times a jailer, hired killer, private detective and racketeer. In 1876, he was elected the first US Marshal of Fort Worth, Texas and inherited the task of cleaning up […]

Judge Jonathan Corwin (1640 - 1718)

Jurist. He was a judge in the infamous Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, assisting in conducting examinations of many of those accused of witchcraft, which helped create a hysteria in the coastal Massachusetts town. As a result of the witchcraft trials, 20 people from in and around Salem Village (now Danvers), Massachusetts were hanged, and […]

David J. Cook (1840 - 1907)

Western Lawman and Detective. Began his career in the Rocky Mountain area tracking down Confederate Spies for the Colorado Cavalry during the Civil War. During the 1870’s he was a Denver City Marshall, Deputy U.S. Marshall, Arapahoe County Sheriff and General of the Colorado Militia. He started the Rocky Mountain Detective Association, the first formal […]

James Conner (1829 - 1883)

Civil War Confederate Brigadier General. Born in Charleston, he was one of the best officers that South Carolina furnished the Confederacy. He was a graduate of South Carolina College, and became a distinguished lawyer and a United States district attorney before the outbreak of the Civil War. Serving as Captain of the Montgomery Guards, a […]

William Egan Colby (1920 - 1996)

United States Intelligence Service Officer. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the son of Elbridge Colby, an army officer and educator, and Margaret Mary Egan Colby, an ardent Catholic who guided her son in the path of that religion. His grandfather, Charles Colby, had been a professor of chemistry at Columbia University but had died prematurely. […]

Roy Cohn (1927 - 1986)

Renowned Attorney. Born in New York in 1927, Cohn graduated from Columbia Law School at 20, passed the bar at 21, and rose to become the youngest assistant U.S. attorney at the time. The case that launched his career was the 1951 trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused of leaking atomic secrets to the […]

Leslie William Coffelt (1910 - 1950)

Police Officer. Born to Will Coffelt and Effie Keller in the town of Oranda, Virginia. He was one of five children. Leslie grew up hunting and handling firearms, and was only the second in his family to graduate from high school. Leslie was described as an excellent shot with a gun and a quiet, good […]

Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr (1937 - 2005)

Legal Figure. He was best known for successfully defending Football star O.J. Simpson from 1994 to 1995 on double homicide charges as part of Simpson’s “Dream Team.” Cochran, who originally was from Shreveport, Louisiana, moved to Los Angeles, California, at a young age with his family. Cochran was a graduate of UCLA and received his […]

John Philip Clum (1851 - 1932)

Western Folk Legend. After completing his first year at Rutger’s College, New Brunswick, New Jersey, he entered the meteorological service of the United States Government. He was ordered to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and there opened a station for meteorological observations in November 1871. On February 27, 1874, President U.S. Grant signed his commission as […]

Sam Houston Clinton (1923 - 2004)

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Justice. He was a criminal defense attorney and he represented atheist leader Madeline Murray O’Hair and Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who allegedly shot and killed President John F. Kennedy. Mr. Clinton was able to get the guilty verdict against Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed Oswald on […]

Royal C. Cline (1970 - 1938)

Alcatraz Prison Guard, Murder Victim. Hired as a prison guard in 1931, Cline was first assigned to the US Detention Farm at La Tuna, Texas. In 1934 he was transferred to the new Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary where he rose up to the rank of Senior Custodial Officer. On May 23, 1938 he was assigned to […]

Claude Chauveau-Lagarde (1756 - 1841)

Lawyer. He was the lawyer of Queen Marie Antoinette and Charlotte Corday.

Lyle B. Chapman (1890 - 1966)

Law Enforcement Figure. He was one of the original members of Elliot Ness’ “The Untouchables.” A 1910 Colgate College football player and a World War I United States Army officer,  and being known to be a gifted investigator and physically strong, he was one of the first nine agents that Ness selected for his team, […]

Sir George-Étienne Cartier (1814 - 1873)

Statesman, Premier of Canada East, Father of Confederation. George-Étienne Cartier, son of Jacques Cartier and Marguerite Paradis, was baptized at Saint Antoine sur Richelieu, Vercheres County, in what would eventually become the province of Quebec, on September 6, 1814. He was named in honor of King George III. After completing his secondary education in 1831, […]

Frank Canton (1849 - 1927)

Outlaw and Lawman. His real name was Joe Horner, born near Richmond, Virginia. As a child his family moved to Texas where he became a cowboy, and worked the trails from Northern Texas to Kansas in the late 1860’s. In 1871 he started robbing banks and rustling cattle. In 1877 he was jailed for robbing […]

Jerome Caminada (1844 - 1914)

Legendary policeman and real-life Victorian super-sleuth. A master of disguise with a keen eye for detail and ingenious methods of detection. He was the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes. Caminada was born in Deansgate, Manchester in 1844, to an Irish mother and an Italian father. At that time, Deansgate consisted mostly […]

California Peace Officers’ Memorial (1970 - 1970)

Located inside the east entrance of the California State Capitol, the monument was dedicated in 1988, to honor California’s peace officers who gave their lives serving the citizens of the state. The memorial which has three bronze figures represent the more than 1,400 peace officers who have died in the line-of-duty since California became a […]

Henry Clay Caldwell (1832 - 1915)

Civil War Union Army Officer. Served during the Civil War as Colonel and commander of the 3rd Iowa Volunteer Cavalry. He led the cavalry forces that caotured Little Rock, Arkansas, on September 10, 1863. The next year, President Abraham Lincoln appointed the native Iowan to be a United States District Judge for the Eastern District […]

Rusty Burrell (1925 - 2002)

Sheriff, Bailiff, and Reality Actor. Born in Metropolis, Illinois,  as Roy Justus Burrell, better known as Rusty, he had sometimes moonlighted as an actor in his youth. A World War II Navy veteran who had lied about his age to join, After his discharge he was a minor league baseball player who played for a […]

William John Burns (1860 - 1932)

FBI Director. He was appointed to the the post of Director of the Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) on August 22, 1921 and served until June 14, 1922, when he was asked to resign by Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone. At the time of his resignation, Burns had been involved in the Teapot Dome Scandal, the […]

Vincent Bugliosi (1934 - 2015)

American Attorney, Prosecutor and Author. Bugliosi will best be remembered for successfully prosecuting Charles Manson and his accomplices for the seven Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969. Bugliosi graduated from the University of Miami, which he attended on a tennis scholarship. In 1964, he received his law degree from UCLA, where he was president of his graduating […]

Samuel Lindsay “Sam” Browne (1869 - 1951)

Law Officer. Famous for single-handedly saving the Central Division Los Angeles Police Station from being blown-up by a terrorist. Ran for the office of Los Angeles County Sheriff in 1926, but lost by less that 1000 votes. The first cousin of J. Edgar Hoover, it has believed that he invented the police uniform gun belt […]

Raymond A. Brown (1915 - 2009)

Attorney. He was a veteran New Jersey defense attorney noted for his many controversial high-profile cases. In 1960s, he defended professional boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, poet Amiri Baraka and Soviet spy John W. Butenko. He gained a reputation as civil rights lawyer in 1968, when he defended black students which included his son, were arrested […]

Robert Lee Brokenburr (1886 - 1974)

Civil Rights Leader.  The son of a former slave, he was born in Phoebus, Virginia (now part of the city of Hampton), received a law degree from Howard University in 1909, and began a practice in Indianapolis.  A Republican, as were most African-Americans who could vote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Brokenburr […]

Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin (1755 - 1826)

Lawyer, he was an amateur of french cooking and wrote “La Physiologie du gožt.”

Richard M. Brewer (1850 - 1878)

Western Rancher and Lawman. On March 1, 1878, at the beginning of the Lincoln County War, New Mexico, he was appointed constable by the Magistrate. His group known as “The Regulators” included Billy the Kid and other deputies. There purpose was serving arrest warrants to members of the Dolan Gang for the ambush and murder […]