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Worst Crimes of the Century

            The past century has been one of sensational crimes that have amazed many Americans. Form the Lindbergh baby to the exploits of Al Capone, to serial murderers like Ted Bundy. Crime has become a cultural phenomenon that has captured the interests of academics and the causal reader alike. To look back at the last century we can see an explosion in books on true crime and a growth in the fields of psychology, sociology, and criminology. This growth in book sales as well as academic research has shown that the crime wave of the twentieth century has caught the attention of the average citizen. How can one decide what crimes are the greatest crimes of the century? What sets these crimes apart from all the others? In a world that is controlled by the media, one simple criterion would be that a crime must cause a media frenzy. Often the frenzy is caused by either large victimization or the crime itself strikes at the very core of the American way of life. In order for a crime to be considered one of the great crimes of the century, the incident should cause a large public out cry. If the public shows concern, often the crime affects legislation and the process of policing this criterion will allow us to see if there is a long lasting effect from the crime. It is through change in legislation or policing that these crimes have a lasting effect on the country as a whole. It is by the before mentioned criterion that we have selected the worst crimes of the century. In each case there was a large level of victimization. Due to mass media attention, the public became enraged and an outcry for justice was felt to the extent that legislation or policing practices were changed. The worst violent crime of the twentieth century happened at 9:02am on April 19th, 1995. It was at this time that a bomb made of fertilizer and fuel oil exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City (Clark, 1995).


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