Original subtitles

[gunfire]

Narrator: This is the story of america...

Seen in color for the first time.

In the 1920s and '30s,

Gangsters like bonnie and clyde become celebrities.

America's most wanted try desperately

To stay one step ahead of the law.

Man: He had the tips of his fingers sliced by a knife.

Narrator: Crime soars,

And j. Edgar hoover's fbi cracks down.

J. Edgar hoover: The special agent must have the courage

To shoot it out with the most venomous of public enemies.

Narrator: New forensic technology

Helps catch the most elusive criminals,

And hidden cameras bust the largest nazi spy ring

In u.S. History.

[people screaming]

By the 1960s,

Americans can see a mass shooting in real time.

And a novelist turns a murder in the heartland

Into a pop culture phenomenon.

These are america's crimes of the century,

As you've never seen them before.

♪

John kennedy: I want us to recapture that...

♪

Narrator: In April 1933,

Two of america's most famous outlaws

Leave a stash of remarkable photos

In an abandoned hideout in joplin, missouri.

These shots of bonnie parker and clyde barrow,

With their heady mix of sex and violence,

Fascinate depression-era americans.

A year later, a short screened across america

Cements the couple's legacy.

The film mixes reality and re-enactment,

Including the killers' brutal slaying

Of two highway patrolmen.

[gunshot]

So far, they've killed 11.

William schieffer: I noticed a car parked on that hill,

A man and a woman in it.

Narrator: William schieffer, who claims he saw the outlaws

Kill the two motorcycle cops,

Is one of many eyewitnesses to appear in newsreels.

Schieffer: They reached down and got their gun and came up,

When they was about ten feet away,

And says boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!

Narrator: By may 1934, the pair's violent exploits

Dominate the headlines

And a massive manhunt is well underway.

The climax of the film is a re-enactment

Of bonnie and clyde's dramatic end

In a shootout with the cops

On this stretch of deserted road in louisiana.

[gunshots]

But this part of the film is no re-enactment.

It's actual police footage taken by one of the sheriffs

Just minutes after they've pumped over 100 rounds

Into clyde's yellow ford sedan,

With his and bonnie's corpses slumped inside.

Announcer: Bonnie is seen leaning against clyde.

Any one of these bullets would have been fatal to both,

But after having killed 14 people,

It did not seem advisable to fire just one bullet.

Narrator: The sheriffs show off clyde's weapons for the cameras,

Along with bonnie's vanity case.

Announcer: Really a pretty girl.

Bonnie was found at the time of her death

To have had a new permanent wave.

Her fingernails were clean and prettily manicured.

Vanity, thy name is woman.

Narrator: Dead or alive,

Bonnie and clyde have a magnetic appeal.

10,000 crowd the dallas, texas, funeral home

Where clyde's body is laid out.

An estimated twice that flock to bonnie's funeral.

Their demise pushes public interest in crime

To an all-time high.

But it hasn't always been this way.

At the dawn of the 20th century,

There is little newsreel coverage of crime,

And most is reconstructed for the cameras...

Such as these shots taken in 1903 by the edison company,

Featuring river pirates in new york harbor,

Who are captured by a police patrol boat

Before they can make off with any stolen cargo.

New york movie theaters show it as a local oddity.

But in 1921, newsreel coverage of an explosive criminal case

Captivates the whole country.

On may 5th, two italian-born anarchists,

Nicola sacco, at right, and bartolomeo vanzetti are arrested

For the robbery and murder of two men

At a shoe factory in massachusetts.

Their case becomes a sensation,

Thanks to the hot-button issue of immigration.

By the 1920s, 4 million italians have come to live in america.

Those with communist or anarchist leanings

Are seen as a national security threat.

Many have been deported.

The crackdown on dangerous immigrants

Will fuel the extraordinary rise of a young federal agent,

J. Edgar hoover.

But the case against sacco and vanzetti is flimsy,

And many consider them scapegoats.

When judge webster thayer sentences both men to death,

People are outraged.

Thousands take to the streets in protest.

As the story spreads, riots erupt nationwide

And overseas.

First in paris, rome and milan,

Then in london, where communists attack

America's excessive use of the death penalty.

Back home, judge thayer's house is bombed,

Along with a new york subway station on 28th street.

But thayer holds firm,

And despite six years of appeals and requests for a retrial,

On the 23rd of August 1927,

He sends sacco and vanzetti to the electric chair.

Following this perceived miscarriage of justice,

Idealists like dr. William marston

Attempt to introduce impartiality into the courts.

The harvard-educated psychologist gets credit

For inventing an early form of the lie detector.

Later, he creates wonder woman and her lasso of truth.

In 1922, he tests the new device

On earl dudding from west virginia,

Who's just served five years for shooting his uncle.

Marston takes his blood pressure.

His theory is that an elevated reading would point to guilt.

But dudding's readings stay even,

Suggesting to marston that dudding's claim of self-defense

Has been true all along.

Police come to embrace the polygraph.

But its findings are still inadmissible in most trials.

Miles from massachusetts, deep in the bible belt,

America puts science itself on trial.

In dayton, tennessee, it's darwin's word against god's.

It is July 1925, and a young high school science teacher,

John scopes, is accused of contravening

Tennessee's butler act, which bans the teaching of evolution.

The press goes to town with the story,

Dubbing it the monkey trial.

National newsreels feature trained chimps

As so-called key evidence for evolution.

Stores in dayton see a run on toy monkeys.

For one of the first times ever, motion picture cameras

Are allowed inside the hot, crowded courtroom.

[banging gavel]

The trial will pit two great legal heavyweights

Against each other.

Defending scopes: Famous liberal clarence darrow.

For the prosecution: Three-time populist presidential candidate

And devout christian william jennings bryan.

Very quickly, the judge destroys darrow's strategy by ruling

That scientific evidence for evolution is inadmissible.

It is scopes who is on trial for breaking the law,

Not the law itself.

Changing tactics, darrow challenges

Bryan's literal reading of the bible.

Asked if a whale really swallowed jonah,

Bryan says he believes god could make it happen.

Jurors convict scopes.

But the press and public opinion give darrow the win

For ridiculing bryan.

Five days later, exhausted and humiliated,

Bryan takes an afternoon nap...

And never wakes up.

As cameras become more available,

Amateurs begin to capture crimes and their aftermath

On film for the first time.

In rural michigan, undertaker george bettes

Has been using his new home movie camera

To document scenes of local interest--

Farmers hard at work during harvest

And preparing for michigan's famous blossomtime festival.

But in may 1927, he captures haunting scenes

That most locals would prefer to forget.

Bettes' films, aired here for the first time,

Show his wife greta and a family friend

Holding the hands of their two little girls

As they walk through the rubble

Of what was once bath schoolhouse.

On may 18th, a suicide bomber attacked the school.

Andrew kehoe, the 55-year-old former school treasurer,

Planted hundreds of pounds of dynamite

In the school's north wing,

Killing 44 people, 38 of them children.

The final act of devastation comes when kehoe detonates

A shrapnel-filled device in his truck,

Killing himself and four bystanders.

The carnage at bath shocks the nation.

It still ranks as america's worst school massacre.

Within days, though, the bombing is out of the headlines,

Replaced by news of charles lindbergh's

First-ever non-stop solo transatlantic flight.

Five years later, this all-american hero

Will be back in the headlines,

This time at the center of a shocking crime.

In March 1932,

Newsreel cameramen flood into hopewell, new jersey.

Someone has kidnapped

Charles lindbergh's 20-month-old son

From the family mansion.

News of the kidnapping spreads fast.

Hordes of reporters converge on the site,

Destroying valuable footprint evidence.

The only clues left behind are a $50,000 ransom note

And a wooden ladder used to access the child's bedroom.

This is just one of 283 kidnapping cases that year,

But the toddler's profile is by far the highest.

Announcer: The sympathy of the world

Goes out to colonel lindbergh and his devoted wife

In their supreme anguish.

Narrator: When all leads dry up,

The deeply private and publicity-shy lindberghs

Release treasured home movies of their young son.

Police plaster posters with photos

Of golden-haired little lindy all over new york.

[whistle blows]

But soon after the ransom money is paid via a go-between,

His decomposed body is discovered in the undergrowth

Near the lindbergh mansion.

Kidnapping is not yet a federal crime.

But now president herbert hoover passes the new lindbergh law,

Giving jurisdiction for all interstate kidnapping cases

To the bureau of investigation.

Its director, j. Edgar hoover, in charge for 8 years now,

Appeals directly to the american public.

Hoover: May I emphasize

That the federal bureau of investigation

Is as close to you as your nearest telephone.

If you give proper notification immediately upon the receipt

Of a threat of kidnapping or extortion,

The entire power and facilities of this bureau

Will be thrown into action to bring the culprits to justice.

Narrator: Even so, it takes the fbi two years

To arrest a suspect--

German immigrant bruno hauptmann.

Announcer: Bruno hauptmann is questioned

In the prisoner's line-up

At new york's police headquarters.

Under the spotlight he still maintains his innocence.

[singing]

Narrator: His wife anna,

Herself a mother to a golden-haired baby son,

Stands by him.

Anna hauptmann: I'm positively sure that my husband

Had nothing to do with the lindbergh baby kidnapping.

Narrator: But when over $13,000 of the ransom money

Is discovered in his garage, along with wood

That is identical to the kidnapper's ladder,

The fbi agents are convinced they have their man.

Before hauptmann is tried,

The fbi also arrests george "machine gun" kelly.

In September 1933, they charge kelly and his gang

With kidnapping an oklahoma oil tycoon.

Eager to paper over his bureau's poor performance

In the lindbergh case,

Hoover makes much of kelly's trial.

Announcer: Uncle sam wars on kidnappers.

Abductors of charles urschel, oil millionaire,

Are sentenced for life

Under the new so-called lindbergh federal law.

Narrator: Kelly's court appearance

Shows off the fbi's hardball tactics.

Announcer: Look at the knot on his head,

Which he received at the hands of one of the federal guards.

He has another one on the back,

And his yellow-dyed hair was streaked with his own blood.

Narrator: The press report that kelly,

Cornered without his famous machine gun when arrested,

Yelled, "don't shoot, g-men!"

Popularizing the nickname for the fbi's government men.

[applause]

Narrator: Kelly gets away with his life,

Even if the rest of it will be spent

In the fed's now notorious new maximum security prison,

Alcatraz.

Just over a year later, on January 3, 1935,

Huge crowds descend on flemington, new jersey.

Announcer: Unashamed, thousands who come from near and far

Struggle to get a seat at the grim legal drama

That will decide a man's life or death.

Narrator: Bruno hauptmann,

The suspected lindbergh kidnapper,

Is brought into court for what is quickly billed

The most sensational trial of the century

By over 700 reporters and celebrated writers.

Announcer: Arthur brisbane, famous writer,

Sits with adela rogers st. Johns and james cameron,

And nearby sits walter winchell,

All awaiting the greatest of courtroom dramas.

Narrator: Anne and charles lindbergh

Enter the crowded courtroom to relive every parent's nightmare,

As the prosecution lays out its evidence,

Detailing every twist and turn of the horrific case.

Man: Number 3 garment is the child's nightclothes.

Narrator: Forensic evidence from america's leading graphologist

Confirms hauptmann's handwriting

Matches that in the ransom notes.

The infamous ladder also makes an appearance.

In a dramatic climax, cameras roll as hauptmann

Takes to the witness stand to defend himself.

Announcer: Spellbound, crowds and jury sit tense

As sound cameras record the relentless cross-examination

By prosecutor wilentz.

Narrator: With this pile of evidence stacked up against him,

The jury finds hauptmann guilty.

For six weeks, the trial has gripped americans.

Adela rogers st. Johns, reporting on the case

In nationally syndicated newsreels, explains.

Adela rogers st. Johns: This has been the greatest

Emotional trial that I have ever covered.

In one courtroom, within a few short days,

We've had the heartbreak of anne lindbergh,

The tragedy of lindy and his baby,

And the horror of bruno hauptmann

As possibly the arch criminal of our age,

And one of the most amazing mystery dramas

That anyone has ever conceived.

Narrator: The final chapter in this explosive drama

Closes in April 1936,

When hauptmann goes to the electric chair,

Still protesting his innocence.

High-profile cases like these

Prove there is a dark glamour in solving crimes.

And as the reporting of crime goes up,

So, too, does the public's interest.

Now entrepreneurs cash in on a growing market

For amateur sleuths, keen to play detectives for fun.

Announcer: Latest development of all

Is the crime file or clue book.

This solemn industrial innovation

Is compounded of tangible clues for crime-conscious readers.

Strands of hair from the victim's clenched hands,

Telltale matches dropped by the murderer

At the scene of the crime.

Given such evidence as this,

Families can spend whole evenings

Hot on the trail of some elusive homicidal maniac!

Narrator: With hollywood whodunits at an all-time high,

Amateurs from all over the country

Try making their very own murder mysteries.

Jack calvin from sitka, alaska, corrals his entire family

Into starring in his debut feature, "murder is fun."

In medford, oregon, 15-year-old mary kem

Persuades her dad, huxley,

To let her use his prized movie camera.

Mary has no shortage of volunteers

At the auditions for her new movie,

In which she and her cousin martha

Confront two escaped convicts hiding out in the woods.

[screaming]

[gunshot]

All ends well, and the two perps are eventually rounded up

And returned to the local jail.

Back in the real world, the fbi develops ingenious new means

Of tracking down the most hardened criminals.

[gunshot]

Between 1934 and 1937,

Homicides in the united states drop 20 percent.

Many of the public enemies are dead or behind bars.

Credit goes to hoover, who has expanded the fbi

Into a nationwide investigative force.

[gunshots]

A film promoting the fbi's new national police academy

Polishes that reputation and sends a stark warning

To all would-be criminals.

Announcer: Spurred on by the presence of j. Edgar hoover,

Their chief, uncle sam's ace g-men

Sharpen their shooting eyes on public target number one,

Oscar the dummy.

[gunshot]

Hoover: The special agent must be a good marksman

And have the courage to shoot it out

With the most venomous of public enemies.

[gunshots]

Narrator: Hoover's g-men take aim at crime from every angle.

[gunshots]

The films show agents training

At the academy's combat ghost village well into the night.

They don't spare the ammunition.

Announcer: Even darkness can't hide

Lawbreakers from g-men.

[gunfire]

Narrator: But there is another crucial new weapon

In the fbi's armory.

[gunfire]

An army of special agents now labors away

In the fbi's new forensic laboratories.

Announcer: This is the g-man science

Which has helped in the conviction

Of more than 11,000 federal offenders

During the last three years.

Narrator: Fbi films show off the new technology

They hope will halt criminals in their tracks:

Plastic molds of footprints, heads, and machine guns,

Made into 3d models as key courtroom exhibits;

Firearms and ballistic analysis;

And testing fabric for traces of blood.

One particular set of forensics proves particularly useful.

Announcer: All important in the war on crime

Is fingerprinting, the surest and most scientific means

For keeping track of law-breakers.

Narrator: In 1936, an amateur detection club

From elizabeth, new jersey,

Made up of doctors, dentists and chemists,

Steps in to lend hoover a helping hand.

The volunteer group comes up with a pioneering invention--

The comparison projector,

A device which makes it easy to I.D. Matching fingerprints.

New jersey cops use it to solve over 300 cases.

That same year hoover endorses

A voluntary fingerprinting program across america.

By 1951, the agency will have the fingerprints

Of 20 million americans on file.

In berkeley, california, famous aviator amelia earhart

Inspires others to join her

In one of the program's most successful drives.

16,000 locals, nearly half berkeley's population,

Line up to have their prints taken.

But it's not long before some residents start to fear

It will become a compulsory exercise,

And the campaign is stopped.

Criminals follow the newsreels, too,

And some are determined to outwit the new technology.

By 1933, alvin "creepy" karpis is public enemy number one

On the fbi's hit list.

Karpis rolls with the notorious ma barker gang,

So called because gangsters fred and arthur barker's mother,

Kate, is seen as the brains behind the operation.

Over four years, they've netted $3 million

In robberies and kidnappings, leaving ten dead.

In June, the gang kidnaps

Wealthy minnesota brewer william hamm.

His family pays the ransom to gain his release unhurt.

But hoover now sets out to make an example

Of the ma barker gang.

His agents run ma and fred barker to ground

In ocklawaha, florida, when the shooting starts.

As with bonnie and clyde,

Newsreels are quick to cover the aftermath.

Announcer: For six hours the neighborhood

Was like a battlefield.

Agents fired more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition.

A neighbor, mrs. A.F. Westbury, was in the direct line of fire.

Mrs. Westbury: The firing began at 7 o'clock,

And the bullets went through our house,

And one went through my hair, and we went through the window.

Narrator: The fbi's policy of shoot first, ask questions later

Is justified by the huge arsenal of weapons

Found stashed inside the barkers' hideout.

Announcer: In the center is the tommy gun found

Clutched in the stiffening fingers of the 55-year-old ma.

Narrator: It takes another year, but the fbi eventually catches

Their accomplice, alvin "creepy" karpis.

Thanks to the fbi's latest

Silver nitrate fingerprinting techniques,

His prints are detected on the ransom notes,

Despite the best efforts of an underworld surgeon.

Announcer: Karpis was afraid of fingerprints.

Here's the g-man record.

He had the tips of his fingers sliced by a knife.

No use. His fingerprint characteristics

Identified him just the same.

He had his face lifted, his ears clipped.

But look at his eyes! Same old creepy.

[gunshot]

Narrator: In the mid 1930s,

The same camera technology that reports on crime

Begins to catch criminals in the act.

[gunshots]

Here one of l.A.'s finest demonstrates

The pistol movie camera,

The harbinger of the 21st century bodycam.

New film technology also finds its way

Onto the increasingly busy roads.

Ingenious inventions like the traffic eye,

Which allows highway patrolmen to incriminate speeding drivers.

Announcer: The speedometer on the fender

Is in range of the camera

That registers the speed as the police chase a culprit.

Be careful how you weave on the highways,

For from now on, it's your word against the camera.

Oh, yeah, buddy?

Tell it to the judge.

Narrator: With the end of prohibition,

A new type of criminal looms into view.

In 1938, nearly one in eight drivers are caught

With significant alcohol levels in their blood.

Reconstruction shows a clearly-worse-for-wear driver

In pasadena hauled into the police station

And asked to walk the line.

The filmed evidence convicts him in court.

Judge: After seeing this film, I can't imagine what defense

You'd possibly have to this charge.

Man: I have nothing to offer.

Narrator: As war looms, the fbi now turns its attention

To a new public enemy: The enemy within.

In 1940,

President franklin roosevelt has j. Edgar hoover

Create the special intelligence service.

Its job: To track german spies on u.S. Soil.

Hoover: Never before was there greater need for unity.

The rabble-rousing communists, the goose-stepping bundsmen,

Their stooges and seemingly innocent fronts,

They seek to weaken law enforcement

In every conceivable manner.

Narrator: A morale-boosting newsreel,

Narrated by hoover himself,

Reveals the ingenious means by which the largest nazi spy ring

In u.S. History is caught.

It's 1941

On a busy new york street.

Double-agent harry sawyer is secretly filmed

Luring frederick fritz duquesne and other members

To his downtown office, where duquesne has promised

To give sawyer stolen america secrets.

Inside, fbi agents are poised,

Ready to use the earliest examples

Of surveillance footage, as hoover's narration explains.

Hoover: A concealed camera in the next office

Took these incriminating pictures.

The money kleiss is giving to sawyer

Is for the purchase of a leica camera

To be used in his activities as a spy.

There's duquesne, the leader of the ring,

And the most cautious of them all.

Narrator: A veteran spy,

Duquesne knows to check for microphones.

But he overlooks the camouflaged lens.

It films him handing over diagrams of the m-1 rifle

And other top-secret documents, which he's hidden in his sock.

It's one of the earliest instances

Of a crime being filmed as it occurs.

And on the strength of this incontrovertible evidence,

All 33 male and female members of duquesne's spy ring

Are found guilty.

Fritz duquesne himself is sentenced to 18 years.

Newsreels go big on america's most successful spy sting.

Announcer: 33 nazi agents afraid to show their faces,

And with good reason.

These agents of adolf hitler

Have now had their poisoned fangs extracted.

Narrator: Foreign espionage continues to preoccupy the fbi

Throughout world war ii.

But in peacetime, the agency refocuses on domestic crime.

In 1950, one in particular proves a tough nut to crack--

The great brinks robbery,

Which will go down in history as the almost perfect bank heist.

On January 17th, a skilled team of thieves

Carries out a precisely planned strike

On the brinks armored car depot

In boston.

A day later,

A brinks guard reconstructs

The gang's unique m.O.

Guard: ...And I heard a "stick 'em up!"

I looked up quick, and I saw approximately about 7 men

With the Halloween masks on

With the chauffeur's caps and pea coats and blue pants.

I look down and see the revolver,

And he said, "lay still!"

So I lay there for about the longest 20 minutes of my life.

Narrator: That's all the time it takes for the masked thieves

To take off with $2.8 million in cash and checks

From the securely guarded building.

The thieves agree not to touch the loot

For six years to avoid detection.

But on January 6, 1956,

Just 11 days before the statute of limitation runs out,

One of the gang members, joseph "specs" o'keefe,

Confesses while in prison for another crime.

One by one, his accomplices are marched into court.

But one thief remains at large,

And there is no sign of the stolen loot.

Announcer: The first money to be recovered

From the 1950 brinks million-dollar robbery

Turns up in baltimore with the arrest of jordan perry,

Caught passing a suspicious $10 bill.

Police found $4,600 cash in his room,

With serial numbers matching those stolen six years ago.

Narrator: Perry leads the fbi to this boarding house in boston,

Where another $52,000 is found

Stashed in the ceiling and walls.

The rest of the $2.8 million is never recovered.

Despite that, the round-up of all 11 suspects

Is trumpeted in the press as a huge coup for the fbi.

But it doesn't act as much of a deterrent.

[alarm ringing]

Throughout the '50s, a series of bank robberies,

568 in 1955 alone,

Prompt banks to invest huge sums

In developing new surveillance technology

To catch stick-up men.

Announcer: An investment in science pays off

For a west side manhattan bank

When it is visited by a robber who doesn't believe in signs.

Narrator: In 1959, an early closed-circuit tv system

Captures an unsuspecting thief

Slipping teller margaret kilkenny

A threatening note over the counter.

Announcer: She tripped the automatic cameras

That caught the hold-up man in the act.

He turns and flees, dropping a few hundred dollars.

[alarm ringing]

But since police are armed with the in-the-act mugshots,

It's likely he won't get far

In his well-documented career of crime.

[alarm ringing]

♪

Narrator: As the country enters the '60s,

Racial tensions explode...

And tv reports on the assassination

Of a prominent civil rights leader shock the nation.

Hoover: ...Law enforcement agencies

The resources to adequately...

Narrator: October 3, 1960,

Washington, d.C.

65-year-old j. Edgar hoover,

Now 36 years into his job as fbi head,

Gives a sobering speech

To the international association of chiefs of police.

Hoover: Today we find ourselves confronted with the worst era

Of lawlessness in our nation's history.

Each 20 seconds,

Another serious crime is added to the nation's total.

Narrator: Hoover blames the breakdown in law and order

On a new anti-establishment generation.

The era of the g-men is over.

The mood of the country is changing,

And many are fighting back,

Especially in the segregated south.

Hoover keeps a close eye on the civil rights movement,

Which he and many others consider subversive.

In 1963, medgar evers,

The naacp secretary for jackson, mississippi,

Organizes boycotts of shops that enforce jim crow laws.

Medgar evers: Let me say this to you,

I had one merchant to call me,

And he said, "we don't need nigger business."

So, let us not trade at these stores.

Let's let the merchants down on capital street

Feel the economic pinch.

[applause]

Narrator: Nbc news cameras carry

Evers' impassioned speech nationwide.

Three weeks later, a gunman shoots him in the back.

Reporter: Shortly after midnight on June 12th,

Medgar evers stepped from his car in this driveway.

He was silhouetted against the carport light behind me.

A shot from a high-powered rifle fired from a vacant lot

Across the street from evers' home

Shatters the nighttime stillness.

Evers fell, fatally wounded. He was 37.

Narrator: As a world war ii veteran,

Evers is buried with full military honors

At arlington national cemetery.

His funeral airs on national television.

Over 3,000 mourners come to pay their respects.

His brother charles, a fellow activist,

Comforts his distraught widow myrlie

And their two young children, darrell and reena.

Evers' murder only deepens the movement's resolve

To defeat racism through non-violent means.

At his memorial service held in jackson,

A 5,000-strong March is led by dr. Martin luther king, jr.

Martin luther king, jr.: The brutal murder of medgar evers

Came as shocking and tragic news to all people of goodwill.

I think this reveals

That we still have a long, long way to go in this nation

Before we achieve the ideals of decency

And the ideals of brotherhood.

Narrator: It will be another 30 years before evers' killer

Is finally brought to justice.

Former u.S. Marine and white supremacist byron de la beckwith

Is arrested just days after evers' funeral,

Smiling for the camera.

He's twice tried by an all-white jury.

Both trials end in a hung jury.

It's not until 1994 that he's eventually found guilty.

On August 1, 1966,

Another former marine, charles whitman,

Sets a grisly precedent in austin, texas.

Armed with a hunting rifle and scope,

Whitman heads to the university of texas

To sow an entirely new kind of terror.

♪

Commentator: A murderously accurate sniper

Atop the university of texas tower

Eludes austin police counter fire for 80 minutes

As he picks and shoots his victims, 27 stories below.

[people screaming]

Narrator: Tv news cameras capture each second

Of the country's first mass shooting on a campus

As it unfolds.

That same night, these shocking scenes play out

In people's living rooms.

Announcer: Armored cars move in to pick up the bodies

Of the 40 human targets of charles j. Whitman.

[gunshot]

Narrator: As a former student of the university,

Whitman easily manages to gain entrance

To the tower's observation deck.

From there, he picks off his terrified victims,

Who take cover where they can.

Some locals shoot back with their own weapons.

But the carnage only stops when police manage to rush the tower

And shoot whitman dead.

Announcer: Later it is found

That he had slain his wife and mother

Before he armed himself with an arsenal of rifles and pistols

And gave into the rage,

Which he had previously described to a psychiatrist,

To kill people from this very tower.

Narrator: In total, whitman has injured 31 and killed 14.

40 years after andrew kehoe's

Seemingly motiveless bath school massacre,

Insanity is again suggested as a probable cause.

The mass shooting prompts president johnson

To call for tougher regulations on firearms.

But more than 50 years later,

Mass shootings still plague the united states.

Holcomb, kansas, November 1959.

A new chapter in america's fascination with crime

Is about to open.

Herbert clutter, his wife and two of their four children

Are brutally murdered in their home.

News reporters are quick to pick up the case.

Narrator: Within hours, police discover a bloody footprint,

Which eventually leads to the conviction

Of perry smith and richard hickock.

In 1960, they are sentenced to death.

Reporter: Tonight, shortly after midnight,

Two men, richard eugene hickock and perry edward smith,

Will be hanged by the neck until dead.

Narrator: The media's interest in the quadruple murder

Might have ended here.

But a year later the publication of this instant best-seller,

"in cold blood,"

Turns it into one of the most notorious crimes of the century,

And its author, truman capote, into an international star.

In 1966, as the book's sales skyrocket,

An nbc crew follows capote as he returns to kansas.

Truman capote: Well, here we are on the prairie-blown main street

Of little holcomb, kansas, population 270.

When I first came out here to western kansas

At the time of the clutter murder case

With the idea of working on this book,

It was for me a very strange and different atmosphere

Than anything I was used to,

And I guess I was something quite different

From anything they were used to.

Narrator: In nearby garden city, star-struck locals line up

To have their prized copies signed by the famous author.

Capote: Thank you very much. Woman: Thank you.

Woman: We've all read it,

And everyone's been so interested.

Narrator: Despite the book's horrific subject matter,

Most locals are flattered capote has immortalized them.

Woman: My husband was herb clutter's college roommate,

So he'll be especially happy.

Capote: Well!

Reporter: When capote first came to holcomb and garden city,

Most of the local residents had never heard of him.

Today his "in cold blood" is known here simply as "the book."

And now there are two books every western kansan

Is sure to have read: The book and the bible.

George page, nbc news, reporting from holcomb, kansas.

Narrator: Blending journalism and evocative prose,

"in cold blood" popularizes a new genre,

The true crime non-fiction novel.

In 1967, it's adapted for the screen

By director richard brooks,

Who returns to the original site of the quadruple murder

To make his movie as authentic as possible.

"in cold blood" goes on to be nominated

For four academy awards,

Setting a high bar for the true-crime stories

That continue to feed a voracious public appetite

To this day.