Bonnie Elizabeth Parker and Clyde Chestnut (Champion) Barrow were an American criminal couple who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression. The couple were known for their bank robberies, although they preferred to rob small stores or rural funeral homes. Their exploits captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is occasionally referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934, until the couple were ambushed and shot to death in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They are believed to have murdered at least nine police officers and four civilians.
Decatur is the county seat of Wise County, Texas, United States. Its population was 6,538 in 2020.
Henry Lee Lucas was an American convicted serial killer. Lucas was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. He rose to infamy while incarcerated for these crimes when he falsely confessed to approximately 600 other murders to Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions and officially attributed the murders to Lucas, and he was considered the most prolific serial killer in history. Lucas was convicted of murdering 11 people and condemned to death for a single case with a then-unidentified victim, later identified as Debra Jackson. An investigation by the Dallas Times-Herald newspaper showed that many of the murders Lucas confessed to were flatly impossible for him to have committed. While the Rangers defended their work, a follow-up investigation by the Attorney General of Texas concluded Lucas was a fabulist who had falsely confessed. Lucas' death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998. Lucas himself later recanted everything, with the exception of his confession to murdering his mother, as a hoax. He died of congestive heart failure in 2001.
The Department of Public Safety of the State of Texas, commonly known as the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), is a department of the state government of Texas. The DPS is responsible for statewide law enforcement and driver license administration. The Public Safety Commission oversees the DPS. However, under state law, the Governor of Texas may assume command of the department during a public disaster, riot, insurrection, formation of a dangerous resistance to enforcement of law, or to perform his constitutional duty to enforce law. The commission's five members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate, to serve without pay for staggered, six-year terms. The commission formulates plans and policies for enforcing criminal, traffic and safety laws, preventing and detecting crime, apprehending law violators, and educating citizens about laws and public safety.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a 1986 American psychological horror crime film directed and co-written by John McNaughton about the random crime spree of a serial killer who seemingly operates with impunity. It stars Michael Rooker in his debut as the nomadic killer Henry, Tom Towles as Otis, a prison buddy with whom Henry is living, and Tracy Arnold as Becky, Otis's sister. The characters of Henry and Otis are loosely based on convicted real life serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole.
A law enforcement officer (LEO), or peace officer in North American English, is a public-sector employee whose duties primarily involve the enforcement of laws. The phrase can include campaign disclosure specialists, police officers, prosecutors, municipal law enforcement officers, health inspectors, special police officers, customs officers, lawyers, state troopers, federal agents, secret agents, special investigators, coast guards, border patrol officers, judges, district attorney, bounty hunters, gendarmerie officers, immigration officers, private investigators, court officers, probation officers, parole officers, arson investigators, auxiliary officers, animal control officers, game wardens, park rangers, county sheriffs, constables, marshals, deputies, detention officers, correction officers, sworn campus police officers and public safety officers. Security guards are not law enforcement officers, unless they have been granted powers to enforce particular laws, such as those accredited under a community safety accreditation scheme such as a security police officer.
Francis Augustus Hamer was an American lawman and Texas Ranger who led the 1934 posse that tracked down and killed criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Renowned for his toughness, marksmanship, and investigative skill, he acquired status in the Southwest as the archetypal Texas Ranger.
The Texarkana Moonlight Murders, a term coined by the contemporary press, was a series of four unsolved serial murders and related violent crimes committed in and around the Texarkana region of Arkansas and Texas in the late winter and spring of 1946. They were attributed to an alleged unidentified serial killer known as the Phantom of Texarkana or simply the Phantom Killer or Phantom Slayer. This hypothetical perpetrator is credited with attacking eight people, of whom five died, in a ten-week period.
The Texas Highway Patrol is a division of the Texas Department of Public Safety and is the largest state-level law enforcement agency in the U.S. state of Texas. The patrol's primary duties are enforcement of state traffic laws and commercial vehicle regulation, but it is a fully empowered police agency with authority to enforce criminal law anywhere in the state. Highway patrol troopers are also responsible for patrolling the state Capitol Complex in Austin and providing security to the governor. The current Chief is Lieutenant Colonel Dwight Mathis.
In the U.S. state of Texas, a constable is an elected law enforcement officer for a precinct of a county. Counties may have between one and eight precincts each depending on their population.
The Harris County Sheriff's Office (HCSO) is a local law enforcement agency serving the over four million citizens of Harris County, Texas, United States. It is headquartered on the first and second floors in the 1200 Baker Street Jail in Downtown Houston.
Adrian Garcia is an American politician and the current County Commissioner for Precinct 2 in Harris County, Texas. Garcia spent 23 years with the Houston Police Department, before becoming a city councilman. Garcia served six years as a Houston City Councilman, eventually becoming Mayor Pro-Tempore under former Mayor Bill White. In 2008, he became Sheriff of Harris County. In 2015, Garcia stepped down from post as Sheriff to run for Mayor of the City of Houston. Garcia won the general election to be Commissioner of Precinct 2 for Harris County on November 6, 2018, after advancing from the primary on March 6, 2018. Garcia ran for re-election in 2022 and won the election against former Precinct 2 commissioner Jack Morman, with 52.6% of the vote.
In the United States, the state police is a police body unique to each U.S. state, having statewide authority to conduct law enforcement activities and criminal investigations. In general, state police officers or highway patrol officers, known as state troopers, perform functions that do not fall within the jurisdiction of the county sheriff, such as enforcing traffic laws on state highways and interstate expressways, overseeing the security of the state capitol complex, protecting the governor, training new officers for local police forces too small to operate an academy and providing technological and scientific services. They support local police and help to coordinate multi-jurisdictional task force activity in serious or complicated cases in those states that grant full police powers statewide.
Feuds in the United States deals with the phenomena of historic blood feuding in the United States. These feuds have been numerous and some became quite vicious. Often, a conflict which may have started out as a rivalry between two individuals or families became further escalated into a clan-wide feud or a range war, involving dozens—or even hundreds—of participants. Below are listed some of the most notable blood feuds in United States history, most of which occurred in the Old West.
The San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office provides police services for San Joaquin County, California. Established in 1849, the current sheriff is Patrick Withrow, who heads a department of over 800 sworn and support personnel. He also serves as the county’s coroner. Withrow replaced multi-term sheriff Steve Moore in 2019.
The Shooting of Darren Goforth refers to the shooting death of a ten-year deputy sheriff of the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Goforth, who was in uniform at the time, was killed by Shannon Miles, a repeat offender with a history of mental illness, who shot Goforth repeatedly in the back of the head with a .40 caliber handgun while Goforth was fueling his car. Miles' mother provided an alibi, but the police found the murder weapon in his garage, and he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty; he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in September 2017.
Samuel Little was an American serial killer who confessed to murdering 93 women between 1970 and 2005. In 2014 he was convicted of the murders of Linda Alford, Guadalupe Duarte Apodaca, and Audrey Nelson Everett, and in 2018 for the murder of Denise Christie Brothers. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) has confirmed Little's involvement in at least 60 of the 93 confessed murders, the largest number of confirmed victims for any serial killer in United States history.
The Confession Killer is a 2019 American true crime documentary miniseries directed by Robert Kenner and Taki Oldham. The plot revolves around the 1983 case of Henry Lee Lucas who confessed to over 200 murders in the United States. Years after his admissions, they turned out to be lies.
Troy Edwin Nehls is an American politician and former law enforcement officer who is the U.S. representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district. From 2013 to 2021, he served as the sheriff for Fort Bend County, Texas. Nehls is a member of the Republican Party.