By Joe Valiquette
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — For sixty years, the country's most notorious mobsters, murderers, terrorists and bank robbers have tried to avoid not just the law, but also inclusion on “the list” — the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List.
Why? Since its creation 60 years ago, 94 percent of the people put on the list (463 of 494) have been caught or located, FBI officials said. A total of 486 men and eight woman have been listed over the years.
The list originated in 1949 when a reporter spoke with the FBI about a story he was writing about the “toughest guys” being sought by federal investigators. Legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover provided the reporter with names and descriptions of 10 fugitives.
The story received such national attention and public interest that, on March 14, 1950, the FBI inaugurated its Ten Most Wanted List.
New York, both the city and its people, has made a significant contribution to the history of the list. Many New York criminals have been named to the list and several were captured in the city.
Prolific Brooklyn bank robber Willie Sutton was the 11th person named to the FBI list in 1950. “That’s where the money is,” Sutton famously responded when he was asked why he robbed banks.
Carmine “The Snake” Persico, boss of the notorious Colombo crime family, was placed on the list in 1985. Persico attempted to flee after hearing he was about to be indicted. Persico was later captured on Long Island and convicted of being a member of the ruling mob commission.
Costabile “Gus” Farace, a Brooklyn mobster, was added to the list in 1989 after he shot and killed a DEA agent on Staten Island. Later that year, Farace was killed in a mob hit in Brooklyn.
While "The Snake" and "Gus" were among New York's most infamous home grown crooks on the list, several other members of the Ten Most Wanted List saw their criminal careers come to an end in the Big Apple.
Gerhard Puff, a 38-year-old bank robber, was captured in 1952 after a shootout with the FBI inside the Congress Hotel on W. 69th Street. An FBI agent was shot and killed by Puff, who later was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison.
Maghfoor Mansoor, a jewel thief and kidnapper, was captured in 2001 following a shootout with the FBI and NYPD inside the Hampshire Hotel on W. 47th Street. Mansoor later died of his wounds.
The makeup of the list has evolved over the decades to reflect the international scope of crime exemplified by the addition of terrorists, cyber-criminals and white-collar criminals.
A number of individuals, including Osama bin Laden, were named to the list in recent years because of terrorist acts either committed in New York or investigated by the New York FBI’s Joint Terrorist Task Force.
Bin Laden, was added to the list in 1998 after being charged in Manhattan federal court with participation in the bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in which more than 200 people were killed. He remains on the list today.
Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and a later unsuccessful plot to simultaneously detonate bombs on 11 US airliners as they crossed the Pacific Ocean. Yousef was captured in Pakistan in 1995.
Just as the composition of the list has changed over the years, so has the way the FBI seeks to get the information about its fugitives out to the public. In addition to newspapers, magazines, the Internet and television, digital billboards are now used to obtain the public’s help.
Earlier this year, the FBI began using a digital billboard in Times Square to display its most wanted fugitives. It'll be a while until the effectiveness of the billboards can be determined, but the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List has certainly been an unquestioned success.
