Convicted
1920 · Massachusetts
Charles Ponzi
Boston, 1920: an Italian immigrant promised 50% in 45 days on postage coupons. Eight months later his name was a byword for fraud.
Era
The twenties (1920s)
12 cases from 1920s.
12 cases7 solved3 unsolved1920–1931
Convicted
Executed
1920–1922 · United Kingdom
Herbert Rowse Armstrong
'Excuse fingers': a Hay-on-Wye solicitor handed his rival a buttered scone, and the arsenic trail led back to his wife's grave.
Disputed verdict
1920–1927 · Massachusetts
Sacco and Vanzetti
Two Italian anarchists executed in 1927 for a Braintree payroll robbery and double murder. Their guilt is still argued; their unfair trial is not.
Acquitted
1922–1926 · New Jersey
Hall-Mills murder
A New Jersey rector and his choir singer were found shot under a crab apple tree in 1922. His rich widow and her brothers were tried in 1926 and acquitted.
Unsolved
1922–1955 · Germany
Hinterkaifeck
Six people were killed on a lonely Bavarian farm in 1922, and someone kept feeding the cattle for days afterwards. A century later no one has been charged.
Executed
1922–1923 · United Kingdom
Thompson and Bywaters
A young ship's steward stabbed his lover's husband on an Ilford street in 1922. Her letters, not her actions, took her to the gallows beside him.
Unsolved
1922 · California
William Desmond Taylor
A leading Hollywood director was shot in his bungalow in 1922. The suspects included two film stars and a stage mother, and the case files later vanished.
Convicted
1924 · Illinois
Leopold and Loeb
Two rich Chicago students killed Bobby Franks, 14, in 1924 to prove they could commit a perfect crime. A pair of glasses gave them away.
Convicted
1924 · Illinois
Rondout train robbery
June 1924: the Newton brothers stop a mail train north of Chicago and take some $2 million, America's biggest train robbery. A postal inspector planned it.
Convicted
1925–1947 · France
Victor Lustig
Did Victor Lustig really sell the Eiffel Tower for scrap in 1925? His counterfeiting and Alcatraz are on record. The tower sale rests on one later book.
Executed
1929–1931 · Germany
Peter Kürten
For fifteen months Düsseldorf hunted a killer it could not see. The break came from a survivor's letter, misaddressed and opened at the post office.
Unsolved
1929–1931 · Illinois
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Seven men lined against a garage wall in Chicago, 1929. Gunmen dressed as police. Capone blamed by everyone, charged with nothing. Nobody was ever tried.