Portal:Criminal justice/Selected article/6
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The FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list arose from a conversation held in late 1949, during a game of Hearts between J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, and William Kinsey Hutchinson, International News Service (the predecessor of the United Press International) Editor-in-Chief, who were discussing ways to promote capture of the FBI's "toughest guys." This discussion turned into a published article, which received so much positive publicity that on March 14, 1950, the FBI officially announced the list to increase law enforcement's ability to capture dangerous fugitives. The list itself has no particular ranking. This may be because the FBI does not want to promote competition between criminals to gain the Number 1 spot. However, the FBI has in the past identified individuals by the sequence number in which each individual has appeared on the list. Some individuals have even appeared twice, and often a sequence number was permanently assigned to an individual suspect who was soon caught, captured, or simply removed before his or her appearance could be published on the publicly released list. In those cases, the public would see only gaps in the number sequence reported by the FBI. Individuals are removed from this list upon capture or death, and replaced by a new entry selected by the FBI. Individuals can also be taken off the list should the charges against them be dropped.
