1. History of Violent Crime in America Part 3

2. Outlaws in the West After the Civil War, violence in the West took a new turn. The Reno Brothers of Indiana were the first train robbers in October 1866, and dozens of small gangs followed their example.

3. The James Brothers The most famous robbers were the James Brothers – Jesse and Frank. They had been Confederate guerrillas, and after the war they turned to robbing trains and banks, terrorizing Union states from Missouri to Minnesota. They killed 16 people.

4. William Henry McCarty, Jr. In the 1870s, Billy the Kid, who was born in a New York slum tenement, roamed the Southwest, gambling, killing, and hiring out as a cattle rustler. Sheriff Pat Garrett finally tracked him down and shot him. According to legend, the Kid had killed 21 men, one for each year of his life.

5. John Wesley Hardin John Wesley Hardin from Texas killed his first victim at age 15. The victim was a black teen who had beaten him at wrestling. He went on to kill more than a dozen others, including one because he had badmouthed Texas. Hardin was shot and killed in 1895 and became another outlaw legend, though today we would probably think of him as a psychopathic serial murderer.

6. The Range Wars The subject of these conflicts was control of "open range", or rangeland freely used for cattle grazing. Typically triggered by disputes over water rights or grazing rights for this land, they would involve farmers and ranchers.

7. The Range Wars Even more violent were the range wars. Throughout the Western states, cattle and land barons hired armies of gunmen to guard or expand their private empires. In some cases, the cattlemen had the law squarely on their side. But often their gunmen fought battles and used violence to settle scores.

8. Texas had the Sutton-Taylor feud, the Horrell-Higgins feud, the Jaybird- Woodpecker feud, and several others.

9. Montana had the Johnson County War, which pitted European immigrant homesteaders against a cattle baron.

10. Arizona had the worst range war of all. In the Pleasant Valley War, the cattle-raising Grahams fought the sheep-raising Tewkesburys with hired armies. The conflict rage for six years and was fought literally “to the last man.”

11. History of Violent Crime in America Part 4

12. Racial Violence

13. Chinese Massacre of 1871 The end of the century marked the beginning of a long era of race riots. 24 October 1871, a white mob of over 500 in Los Angeles went on a rampage, tortured and hanged 18 Chinese workers from street lamps. It was the largest mass lynching in American history.

14. Near the turn of the century, mobs in Eastern cities began descending on black neighborhoods to lynch any black man unlucky enough to be caught. Major race riots against blacks erupted in Atlanta in 1906, Springfield, Illinois, in 1908, and in many other cities.

15. Springfield Had No Shame – The Springfield Race Riot of 1908

16. History of Violent Crime in America Part 5

17. Prohibition and Organized Crime

18. 18 th Amendment In 1920, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution made the manufacture, transport, or sale of alcoholic beverages illegal. The era of Prohibition, one of this country’s most violent crime periods, extended from 1920 until the 18 th amendment was repealed in 1933. Prohibition created the conditions for thriving illegal businesses. The 20 th century saw the rise of organized crime.

19. Chicago In Chicago, gangsters set up illegal beer-brewing and distribution businesses, plus a network of bribed police and politicians to protect them. The business proved so lucrative that rival gangs fought for control. Between 1923 and 1926, the Chicago beer wars killed more than 200 people. By 1927, the mobster Al Capone had come out on top. His business took in over $60 million a year, which would be well over $1 billion in today’s dollars.

20. During the early 1930s, various crime organizations sought to form alliances to control gambling, prostitution, narcotics, and other illegal money-making activities. Gangster rivalry and greed, however, led to many underworld murders.