The FBI has been on a hot streak! Five days after the July 18th arrest in Mexico of Top Ten Fugitive Emigdio Preciado Jr., the FBI arrested Top Ten Fugitive Edward Eugene Harper in Wyoming. The 39-year-old Preciado had been wanted since the Sept. 5, 2000, attack in Whittier, California, in which Deputy Michael Schaap was shot in the face and badly wounded. He has since recovered. His partner escaped uninjured. Preciado also was wanted on a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Eugene Harper was wanted for his alleged involvement in the sexual assault of two girls, ages 3 and 8, in Hernando, Mississippi. He had been a fugitive for approximately 14 years. He was placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list on November 29, 2008, and was 491st person to be placed on the list and the most recent.
The Ten Commandments, David Letterman’s Top Ten, and the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list are probably the three most well known, although most people couldn’t name all the commandments, nor most of the fugitives wanted by the FBI.
Supposedly, the list arose from a conversation held in late 1949, during a game of cards between FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and William Kinsey Hutchinson, Editor-in-Chief, of the International News Service. They were discussing ways to promote capture of the FBI’s “toughest guys”. This discussion turned into a published article, which received so much positive publicity that on March 14, 1950, the FBI officially announced the list to increase law enforcement’s ability to capture dangerous fugitives. Since then, over 460 fugitives have been apprehended or located.
Currently, Victor Manuel Gerena has remained on the list since May 14, 1984. He is wanted in connection with the armed robbery of approximately $7 million from a security company in West Harford, Connecticut in 1983. He allegedly took two security employees hostage at gunpoint and handcuffed, bound, and injected them with an unknown, non-lethal, substance to further disable them. The FBI believes he may be living in Cuba. If true, the $1,000,000 reward for information leading to his capture may already be in the hands of Fidel Castro.
The most infamous name on the list–and the name Americans are most familiar with–is, of course Usama (as the FBI calls him) or Osama Bin Laden His name first appeared on the list June 7, 1999. Other infamous names that have appeared on the list include Ted Bundy, James Earl Ray, who assassinated Martin Luther King, and Civil Rights activist and former Black Panther, Angela Davis, who later became a best-selling author, popular speaker and college professor.
Currently, there are no women on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitive list and just eight have ever appeared, including Davis. The last woman listed was Shauntay Henderson, a 24 year-old reputed gang member who was apprehended less than 24 hours after being listed. She was charged with one count of second-degree murder in the September 2006 shooting of a man who was killed as he sat in his car outside a local convenience store.
We’ll soon see if women fill one or both of the open spots.