From infamous criminals like the Unabomber and Osama bin Laden to notorious outlaws such as Bonnie and Clyde, throughout U.S. history, dramatic manhunts, often involving extensive law enforcement resources and sometimes spanning years, have captured the public's imagination.
In 1950, the FBI launched its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives program, which has led to the location or capture of nearly 500 dangerous fugitives. These outlaws evolved from bank robbers, car thieves and burglars in the 1950s, to social revolutionaries involved in kidnapping, sabotage and the destruction of government property in the 1960s, to organized crime and terrorism in the 1970s, to drug traffickers, sexual predators and international terrorists in the 1980s and 1990s.
According to the FBI, there are two main criteria for making the list: Being a dangerous menace to society and/or having a long record of serious crimes and the belief that national publicity will help find the fugitive. The following list ranks the top 13 manhunts in modern U.S. history.
1. Unabomber Ted Kaczynski
One of the longest and most extensive manhunts in U.S. history was the search for the suspect known as the Unabomber, which lasted 17 years, from his first bombing in 1978 to his eventual capture in 1996. Police eventually identified former mathematics professor Ted Kaczynski in the series of bombings targeting universities, airlines and individuals that resulted in three deaths, with 23 injured.
According to the FBI, more than 150 agents were part of a task force to identify the bomber, with a break coming in 1995 when his manifesto was published in The Washington Post, leading his brother to recognize his writing style and contact authorities. Kaczynski was captured in his Montana cabin in 1996, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life without parole.
2. MLK Assassin James Earl Ray
After assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, shooter James Earl Ray led more than 3,000 law enforcement agents on an intense, two-month-long international manhunt that is one of the FBI’s most expansive investigations to date.
Ray was on the run before the shooting: He escaped from prison April 23, 1967, while serving a 20-year robbery sentence at the Missouri State Penitentiary. After chasing thousands of tips and leads, Ray was captured at London’s Heathrow Airport June 8, 1968, after a customs agent, not knowing his true identity, detained him for possessing two passports. He pled guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison without parole.
3. 9/11 Mastermind Osama bin Laden
The search for Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind and al-Qaeda founder, remains one of the most high-profile and extensive military manhunt operations in American history. For more than a decade, billions of military and intelligence dollars were spent on the mission, according to former CIA Director Leon Panetta and his chief of staff, Jeremy Bash.
According to the U.S. Navy, the hunt for bin Laden began five years earlier, in 1996, following a number of global terrorists linked to him. The FBI, CIA, NSA and Department of Homeland Security searched for the terrorist, finally locating him in Pakistan after securing intelligence from an al-Qaida leader held at Guantanamo Bay. Following a covert operation to identify bin Laden’s location in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a team of nearly 80 Navy SEALS killed him during a raid on May 2, 2011.
4. The Boston Marathon Bombers
The intense, high-profile five-day manhunt for the brothers responsible for the April 15, 2013, bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, garnered front-page headlines nationwide involving local, state and federal agencies. With three dead and more than 260 injured at the marathon after they detonated a homemade bomb housed in a pressure cooker, brothers Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, were soon identified via surveillance footage, and authorities released photos and videos of the suspects on April 18.
The brothers shot and killed an MIT police officer that night, and early in the morning, a shootout with police in Watertown, Massachusetts, on April 18, left Tamerlan dead. Dzhokhar fled, and the city was put on lockdown. Police found Dzhokhar the next day when an infrared image showed him hiding in a boat in the backyard of a home. He was sentenced to death, and the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the sentence after a federal appeals court tossed it in 2022. His attorneys continue to challenge the decision.
5. Lincoln Assassin John Wilkes Booth
One of the earliest high-profile manhunts in modern U.S. history was the search for John Wilkes Booth following his April 14, 1865, assassination of President Abraham Lincoln at the Ford Theater in Washington, D.C. With a well-planned getaway route, Booth, accompanied by friend David Herold, evaded capture for 12 days during a multi-state manhunt that involved nearly 1,000 Union soldiers and included a $100,000 reward. Eventually found cornered in a Virginia tobacco barn, Herold surrendered, but Booth refused and was shot and killed.
6. Police Shooter Christopher Dorner
On February 3, 2013, Christopher Dorner, a disgraced former Los Angeles police officer, began a shooting spree in Southern California targeting law enforcement personnel and their families that led to an unprecedented nine-day manhunt. In a manifesto he posted online, Dorner cited grievances with the LAPD, vowing retribution for his firing and “unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty … You will now live the life of the prey.”
As police rushed to protect approximately 50 targets Dorner named in the manifesto, sightings of the suspect led to gunfights with officers during a series of police chases on February 7. After finding Dorner’s abandoned vehicle in Big Bear Lake, the manhunt focused on the area in the San Bernardino Mountains during blizzard conditions. Involving more than 100 police officers and a $1 million reward offered for info leading to Dorner’s arrest, it is the largest manhunt in Southern California history.
On February 12, after a series of carjackings, the manhunt culminated in a shootout standoff at a remote cabin. Refusing to surrender, and with fires blazing through the cabin, Dorner took his own life. In the end, four were killed, with three others wounded.
7. Olympic Park Bomber Eric Robert Rudolph
Eric Robert Rudolph was the culprit behind a series of bombings across the Southern U.S. between 1996 and 1998, including the infamous Centennial Olympic Park pipe bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Also targeting abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, Rudolph was responsible for two deaths, and injuring more than 150 people.
The five-year manhunt for his capture was one of the country’s largest and most expensive, costing more than $20 million. Hiding in the Appalachian Mountains, the survivalist evaded capture until his 2003 arrest when a police officer arrested him while digging for food in a grocery store dumpster in western North Carolina. Rudolph pleaded guilty and is serving multiple life sentences with no possibility of parole.
8. Crime Boss James 'Whitey' Bulger
Notorious South Boston organized crime boss and FBI informant James “Whitey” Bulger escaped capture for 16 years after going into hiding in 1994 to avoid being indicted on 19 murder counts and racketeering, extortion and narcotics charges. On the FBI’s Most-Wanted List for 10 years, the $2 million reward for his arrest was the most ever for a domestic target, according to The New York Times.
In June 2011, Bulger and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, were arrested in Santa Monica, California, after a tip following a renewed FBI public service campaign seeking new leads. The leader of the Winter Hill Gang was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 at 84 years old. He was beaten to death by inmates in 2018.
9. The Beltway Snipers
Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad terrorized the Washington, D.C., metro area for three weeks in October 2002 when they murdered 10 people at random in sniper-style attacks, injuring three more. According to the FBI, approximately 400 agents worked the case, with the extensive manhunt involving local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
A break led to a fingerprint match that soon identified Malvo and Muhammad as suspects. The duo was located and arrested without incident on October 24, 2002, at a Maryland rest stop where police found them sleeping. Muhammad was sentenced to death and was executed in 2009. Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the murders, was sentenced to life without parole in Virginia and Maryland, but his sentences in Virginia were later commuted to life with the possibility of parole following a change in Virginia’s juvenile parole sentencing law.
10. Son of Sam David Berkowitz
A series of crimes that left six dead and seven others wounded in New York City from July 1976 to July 1977 caused panic in New York City. For more than a year, one of New York’s largest manhunts ever, with 300 officers on the case, focused on finding the serial killer, known as the Son of Sam, after calling himself that in a letter he left at one crime scene.
According to Time magazine, snags in the manhunt included the randomness of the murders and unreliable witnesses providing information for police sketches, leaving the public to be “on alert for someone who didn’t resemble the killer.”
David Berkowitz, a 24-year-old mail sorter, was finally arrested on August 10, 1977, when a tip from the neighbor of one the victims led police to link Berkowitz to the crimes via a parking ticket. After his arrest, he told police the murders were demonic commands from a dog belonging to a man named Sam. He pled guilty and was sentenced to 25 years to life for each murder and attempted murder.
11. Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the infamous Great Depression-era outlaws known as Bonnie and Clyde, were behind a 1932-1934 crime spree robbing banks, gas stations and stores across the central U.S., and at least 13 murders, including several police officers. Their shootouts and escapes made national headlines, earning them celebrity status culminating in one of the most extensive manhunts in U.S. history at that time, according to the FBI. The duo was eventually killed during a police shootout on May 23, 1934, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
12. Serial Killer Ted Bundy
The extensive two-month manhunt for accused captured serial killer Ted Bundy happened after his initial arrest. While on trial in Aspen, Colorado, for the murder of Caryn Campbell in June 1977, he escaped from a second-story window and was caught five days later. But a few months later, in December, he again escaped, this time from his jail cell in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He murdered two women and severely injured two others at a Florida State University sorority. He also attacked another FSU student who survived and murdered a 12-year-old girl before a police officer finally arrested him in February 1978 for driving erratically. Bundy confessed to at least 30 murders and was executed by electric chair in 1989.
13. Domestic Terrorist Robert Jay Mathews
Robert Jay Mathews, leader of the white supremacist group The Order, was the focus of one of the largest manhunts in FBI history in the early 1980s after evading capture for armed robberies, counterfeiting and planning to overthrow the U.S. government. He was eventually captured on December 8, 1984, at a cabin where he had been hiding on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound following a dramatic standoff and shootout with federal agents lasting more than 30 hours and setting the cabin on fire. Refusing to surrender, Mathews died, and the FBI arrested six members of The Order.
