American escapees

Theodore Robert Bundy (né Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 murders committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. His true victim total is unknown.Bundy often employed charm to disguise his murderous intent when kidnapping victims, and with law enforcement, the media and the criminal justice system to maintain his claims of innocence. His usual technique involved approaching a female in public and luring her to a vehicle parked in a more secluded area, at which point he would beat her unconscious, restrain her with handcuffs and take her elsewhere to be sexually assaulted and killed.
Bundy typically simulated having a physical impairment such as an injury to convince his target that he was in need of assistance, or would dupe her into believing he was an authority figure. He frequently revisited the bodies of those he abducted, grooming and performing sex acts on the corpses until decomposition and destruction by wild animals made further interactions impossible. He decapitated at least 12 of his victims, keeping their severed heads as mementos in his apartment. On a few occasions, he broke into homes at night and bludgeoned, maimed, strangled and/or sexually assaulted his victims in their sleep.
In 1975, Bundy was arrested and jailed in Utah for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He then became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in several states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, Bundy engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults in Florida, including three murders, before being recaptured in 1978. For the Florida homicides, he received three death sentences in two trials, and was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford on January 24, 1989.
Biographer Ann Rule characterized him as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death and even after." Bundy once described himself as "the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet", a statement with which attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, agreed. "Ted", she wrote, "was the very definition of heartless evil."

Joseph Morgan (born Joseph Međugorac; April 10, 1929 – November 8, 1993) was an American gangster who became the first non-Hispanic member of the Mexican Mafia. He received the nickname "Pegleg" by authorities because of his prosthetic leg.

Benjamin Hoskins Paddock Jr. (November 1, 1926 – January 18, 1998) was an American bank robber and con man who was on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list from 1969 to 1977. He was the father of mass murderer Stephen Paddock, the perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.

Charles Howard Schmid Jr. (July 8, 1942 – March 30, 1975), also known as the Pied Piper of Tucson, was an American serial killer whose crimes were detailed by journalist Don Moser in an article featured in the March 4, 1966, issue of Life magazine. Schmid's criminal career later formed the basis for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", a short story by Joyce Carol Oates.: 9  In 2008, The Library of America selected Moser's article for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American true crime literature.

Viva Leroy Nash (September 10, 1915 – February 12, 2010) was an American career criminal and one of the oldest prisoners in history as well as one of those longest incarcerated (for a total of 70 years), spending almost 80 years behind bars. He was the oldest American on death row at the time of his death in February 2010.Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Nash spent much of his life in and out of prison for crimes including transporting stolen vehicles, robbery, and attempted murder. He was first imprisoned in 1930 at 15 years old for armed robbery.
In 1947 at 32 years old, he was sentenced to prison again after shooting a Connecticut police officer. He spent almost 25 years behind bars.
In 1977 he was sentenced to life for having murdered postal carrier David J. Woodhurst, but escaped from a prison work crew in 1982, at age 66, where soon after he went into a coin shop in Phoenix, Arizona, and shot an employee dead.Nash was sentenced to death in 1983. His attorneys claimed that senility had rendered him legally incompetent to be executed, describing him as a "doddering old man, who can't hear, can't see, can't walk, and is very, very loony". The sentence was never carried out; Nash died of natural causes on February 12, 2010, at the age of 94 in the Arizona Eyman State Prison Complex. At the time of his death, he was the oldest person on death row in the US. Sadamichi Hirasawa died on death row in Japan in 1987, nearly one year older with a full 95 years and three months.

Lawrencia Ann "Bambi" Bembenek (August 15, 1958 – November 20, 2010), known as Laurie Bembenek, was an American former police officer, convicted for the 1981 murder of her husband's ex-wife. Her story garnered national attention in 1990 after Bembenek escaped from Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Wisconsin and was recaptured in Thunder Bay, Ontario, an episode that inspired books, movies and the slogan "Run, Bambi, Run". Upon winning a new trial, Bembenek pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and was sentenced to time served and 10 years' probation in December 1992. For years, she sought to have the sentence overturned.Prior to her arrest, Bembenek was fired by the Milwaukee Police Department and subsequently sued the department, claiming that its officers engaged in sexual discrimination and other illegal activities. She worked briefly as a waitress at the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Playboy Club. At the time of her arrest, she was working for Marquette University's Public Safety Department in downtown Milwaukee. On November 20, 2010, Bembenek died at a hospice facility in Portland, Oregon at age 52.