The Crime Machine Blog

Hero or villain, detective or criminal: pulp author Jack Boyle had a choice in 1916 whether he wanted to be a good guy and crusading reporter, or a blackmailer and liar who let an innocent man suffer and a guilty man escape justice. He chose wrong. Boyle, the creator of the popular character “Boston Blackie,” could claim to write his stories of the criminal underworld from personal knowledge. At one point he was a successful reporter and editor, working for newspapers in San Francisco, often covering the police beat. He was well known in San Francisco’s Chinatown, including the opium dens and among the bars and dives of the Barbary Coast frequented by professional criminals. A gambler, a hard drinker and something of a reprobate, he became a opium addict, leading to the loss of his job and a descent into crime. He committed fraud, hooked up with a professional gang and even committed at least one brazen armed robbery. For his crimes he served terms in California and Colorado....

The career of "Midget Bandit" Henry J. Fernekes is largely forgotten today, but he rose from a beginning as a bumbling stickup man to a criminal mastermind rarely seen outside of thriller novels. In fact, it turns out that his criminal career was even inspired by popular fiction. Fernekes, a “pygmy dynamo of crookedness” according to the newspapers of the day, was a brilliant pint-size general of crime, the scourge of bank officers, police and the Pinkertons across the north east. As the head of an army of crime, he plotted and executed bank robberies from New York state to Florida to Chicago. He was known for the meticulous scientific planning of his jobs and the military precision used to carry out bank robberies. Fernekes had but a high school education and a few months of law school, but he educated himself by reading books at free libraries, becoming an expert in welding, acetylene cutting, explosives, chemistry, gas and physics. When they weren’t calling him “...

Mystery novelist S. S. Van Dine, author of the Philo Vance mysteries, never seemed to learn not to play Jessica Fletcher and get involved in real life crime. It never went well for him. However, unlike some of his contemporaries, his meddling didn't seem to cause any real damage and he was smart enough cut out the amatuer detecting and call in the professionals when things got serious. But it didn't stop the newspapers of the day from giving him a good ribbing. Case in point is the 1929 Neptune City pajama factory case. Van Dine, under his real name of Willard Huntington Wright, was made Police Commissioner of the New Jersey community of Bradley Beach because of his fame as the creater of "The American Sherlock Holmes" Philo Vance. The post was pretty much honorary and there doesn't really seem to be much of a police force to be commissioner of. The whole appointment took place during a chess gathering at the Mayor's home. When he realized he was in ...

Looking into some pulp tropes in real life, I've done a bit of research recently into Occult Detectives. Unfortunately, I haven't found any "real" occult detectives that investigate haunted houses, evil cults, or things man was not meant to know. I have, however, uncovered some occult detectives that royally mucked things up. In one case, a "detective" used his "occult" powers to accuse an innocent man of wrongdoing, according to newspaper reports in 1907. Sam Flint persuaded a police judge to issue a warrant for the arrest of Will C. Bradford based on nothing more than a vision he had while "in a trance". He accused Bradford of being wanted for a murder committed in South Carolina "Flint, who on many occasions has offered his services to the local department as a trance medium and human bloodhound, said there was a mark on the alleged murderer's shoulder which he had seen in his dreams," according to the Times. ...

He walks into the bank, right up to the teller, a Big Mac in one hand and a straight razor in the other. "Where's my money?" The teller had made a mistake that would end her career. Twenty minutes before, he had walked up to her window. He had handed her an empty pillowcase. He had told her to fill it up. Then he had turned and walked out the door, walked across the parking lot and walked into the neighboring McDonald’s. She had thought it was a joke. She had thought it was in poor taste, but she had thought it was a joke. So she hadn't called the police. Now it was too late. Now he was back. "Bitch! Where's my money!" He vaults the counter and begins to fill the bag himself. The teller, the other tellers, their customers flee. The robber sits down at one of the desks, puts down the razor and counts the money he'd just stolen. He takes a bite out of the Big Mac. Counts some money. Another bite. He stacks the money in nice ...