FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives by year, 1957

FBI headlines in decade of 1950s

In late 1949 the FBI helped publish an article about the "toughest guys" the Bureau was after, who remained fugitives from justice. The positive publicity from the story resulted in the birth of the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list on March 14, 1950.

Cases of espionage against the United States and its allies were some of the prevalent investigations by the Bureau during the 1950s. Eight Nazi agents who had planned sabotage operations against American targets were arrested. Organized crime networks and families in the United States also became targets, including those headed by Sam Giancana and John Gotti.

FBI "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" in the 1950s

As wanted fugitives were added, and then later removed, the FBI began to keep track of the sequence number in which each fugitive appeared on the list. Some individuals have even appeared twice, and often a sequence number was permanently assigned to an individual fugitive 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. For convenient reference, the wanted fugitive's sequence number and date of entry on the FBI list appear below, whenever possible.

FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives added during the 1950s

The most wanted fugitives listed in the decade of the 1950s include (in FBI list appearance sequence order):

End of the decade

By the end of the decade, the following fugitives were remaining at large on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list:

FBI directors in the 1950s

J. Edgar Hoover (1935–1972)