On this day, Dec. 15, 1919, the FBI put out its first Most Wanted poster, essentially putting the fledgling agency in the fugitive-chasing business.
It happened almost by accident.
Two weeks earlier, a soldier named William N. Bishop escaped from the stockade at Fort Belvoir in Northern Virginia. The military asked the FBI to help and an assistant director issued a letter to agents with information to locate Bishop: physical description down to the mole near his right armpit; addresses he might visit; and a portrait taken at “Howard’s studio” on Seventh Street NW in Washington.
Bishop was captured less than five months later. That document — “Identification Order No. 1.” — would forever change how the FBI fights crime.
The identification order — or “IO” — has become a staple of the FBI. By the 1920s, the bureau soon added fingerprints and criminal records. By the 1930s, IOs were sent to police stations around the nation. In 1950, building on the “wanted posters” concept, the FBI created its “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list.
– Scott McCabe
