Yesterday, the FBI announced a new addition to its Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitive List: According to the fed, former D.C. teacher Eric Justin Toth "is wanted for allegedly possessing child pornography in Washington, DC. It is alleged that in June of 2008, pornographic images were found on a school camera that had been in Toth's possession. Toth also allegedly produced child pornography in Maryland. Toth has often been described as a computer 'expert"' and has demonstrated above-average knowledge regarding computers, the use of the Internet, and security awareness. Toth has the ability to integrate into various socio-economic classes, and is an expert at social engineering. He possesses an educational background conducive to gaining employment in fields having a connection to children. Toth may advertise online as a tutor or male nanny." more ›

A few weeks ago, the Staten Island Advance ran a front page story about the borough's "most wanted" fugitives. Now, one of them has turned himself in—because his mug shot was on the front page. Travis Jones, accused of shooting "another man over the score of a basketball game in Rosebank" (a game Jones wasn't even playing in!) was arraigned on attempted murder and other charges after surrendering at Staten Island DA Daniel Donovan's office. more ›

This will likely freak out tourists, but the Daily News is reporting that sometime today the FBI will unveil a massive digital billboard in Times Square dedicated to getting the faces of fugitives out there. more ›

A man suspected in 14 subway robberies since January was arrested yesterday in North Carolina. Rasheem Williams, 37, who had been one of the NYPD's most wanted criminals, was apprehended, as were two other fugitives wanted by the cops, in Rocky Mount, N.C. more ›

Police officials announced that the man killed by plainclothes narcotics officers in Brooklyn Sunday night had been on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Darin Richardson had shot and wounded a Cobb County, Georgia police officer in 2005 and had been on the run the past two-plus years. more ›

Time Out NY has a list of PETA's most wanted in the city. The organization has 25,000 of its 1.6 million members based right here, and while we wish they'd have a crack team of those members targeting folks like Brooklyn's Cruella DeVil, here are some of the big offenders. more ›

The authorities gave details about the Philadelphia apartment of Rebekah Johnson, the woman suspected of shooting a Staten Island commune leader last year. Like how they found an AK-47 rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammo. more ›

Last year, Rebekah Johnson went on the lam after allegedly shooting the leader of a Staten Island commune. Over a year later, police found Johnson after she got off a train in Philadelphia yesterday morning. Johnson, who had dodged the authorities after the shooting, was tracked down after she "bought a car in Delaware using her real name, and opened a post office box in nearby Cherry Hill, N.J." per the Post. And the final tip came when a subway rider in Philadelphia recognized her from America's Most Wanted. more ›

A jury has been selected in the trial of Peter Braustein, the journalist suspected of kidnapping and sexually assaulting over many hours a former colleague. Braunstein was the subject of a month long manhunt that took investigators from NYC to Memphis, where he was captured at the University of Memphis. more ›

Residents in NY and Pennsylvania breathed a huge sigh of relief when Ralph "Bucky" Phillips surrendered to police last night. Phillips is wanted in the shootings of three state troopers - one of whom died from his injuries - during his many months on the lam after breaking out of an Eric County jail. Phillips had been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list (the NY Times noted, "just three names down from Osama bin Laden"), but police were able to track him yesterday when they found a car they suspected he had stolen and abandoned. The bloodhounds were able to track his scent, and Phillips surrendered from the Pennsylvania woods (right at the Penn-NY border) unarmed with helicopters and SWAT teams and US Marshals starting to surround him. more ›

The Post reports that the police are investigating whether there's a link between the murder of Brooklyn teen Chanel Petro-Nixon and the NJ teen Jennifer Moore who was killed after a night of clubbing. Police have been showing a photograph of the suspect in Moore's murder, self-proclaimed pimp Draymond Coleman, in Petro-Nixon's Brooklyn neighborhood. In June, Petro-Nixon was on her way to an Applebee's to apply for a job, and she never made it home - her strangled body was found in a garbage bag days later. Moore had been strangled and was stuffed into a garbage bag as well. Another thing: Coleman is suspected of washing Moore's body with bleach to remove clues, and Petro-Nixon's body had a "chemical scar on her leg - possibly caused by bleach." A source tells the Post, "Until we get something concrete we can't rule anyone out." more ›

After a decade of being featured on America's Most Wanted, Charles "Chaka" Raysor turned himself in at a Brooklyn police precinct. Raysor, who had been a "Most Wanted" fugitive on the program 11-13 times, had been indicted in 1996 for leading a drug gang that made weekly profit of $90,000 in Bed-Stuy. The gang which was called "The Killers" was also accused of killing many people, including three people they wrongly thought would testify against them. Raysor ended up hopping around different states, from North Carolina and Virginia to Alabama and Pennsylvania, until coming back to Brooklyn where he told the police he was tired of running. more ›

Not that we'd want to be on any most wanted lists, but those crazy anti-smoking fascists in City Hall have come up with a new list that we wouldn't want to be on: The Most Wanted Smokers List. more ›

NBC4 is reporting that suspected fake-firefighter perv Peter Braunstein has been captured on the campus of the University of Memphis. Apparently he was recognized by a student, and stabbed himself in the neck before he was apprehended by university police. more ›

The man suspected of attacking a former coworker has been spotted in Cleveland. According to America's Most Wanted, Peter Braunstein traveled to Cleveland (NYC to Hoboken to Newark then a bus!) in early November, telling people he was a movie producer or writer from LA, visiting strip clubs, placing ads in the Cleveland Plain Dealer looking for a driver, and calling himself "Peter Bronson." Braunstein was spotted in Brooklyn in mid November, which is possible since police are unsure of his whereabouts after November 10-11 (seen at a bus station in Columbus, OH). more ›

The Daily News has fun bit of reporting today called "Whatever happened to..." in which they track down ten front page headliners from the past year and give a brief little update on them. That sounds fun, you say, so where is the link? That, my friend, is the problem. For some reason the News doesn't think you deserve to read it online (unless, and this wouldn't be surprising, we're just too stupid to find it). more ›

A graffiti arist, Oliver Siandre, with the tag "Kiko," was arrested for criminal mischief yesterday, after tagging at least fifty locations in Astoria. And you know who made one of the first calls to the police when "Kiko" started to appear? You got it: City Councilman Peter Vallone. In the Post, Vallone says, "He tagged private homes and the columns at Athens Square Park, apparently because he was trying to impress his girlfriend," who lives in Astoria; his quote in the Daily News is "I want this punk, and I want him bad." Police found spray cans and graffiti books in Siandre's Upper West Side apartment, and Queens District Attorney Richard Brown called Siandre "one of New York City's more notorious graffiti taggers." Really? Gothamist is curious to know who else is on the most wanted list. If anyone has seen the NYPD's notebook of graffiti, let us know. Anyway, this is either a lesson not ot tag in Vallone's neighborhood or it's a clarion call to tag in Vallone's neighborhood, to really mess with him. more ›

There's something oddly satisfying about a fugitive, wanted by the NYPD for killing his girlfriend, being turned in by his new girlfriend. The NYPD told the media that Gary Jackson, who had been on the run since beating Joneese Davis to death in a Bronx apartment building in November 2003, was returned to the city over the weekend; he will be charged with Davis's murder. Jackson had been in Florida, and a girlfriend there found a clipping in his wallet saying that he was wanted for Davis's murder; she called the police. more ›

I was looking to get myself a set of those Iraq's most wanted playing cards that they are giving out to soldiers, and I had found a bunch of auctions on ebay for them with bidding going into the hundreds of dollars. Turns out you can buy them for $5.95 - they claim to be printed by the same company that printed them for the government, although these were not actually issued by the government (which if you read the fine print on the auctions on ebay, is basically the exact same thing). looks like its just a bunch of people buying decks for $5 and reselling them for $200.. quite an ebay scam... more ›

With the recent New York tragedy of the undercover cop killings (with the surreal capture of one suspect while he was dressed as a women, in a wig and bra - "the ugliest woman" a witness who called in the tip had seen) and the series of killings in Queens and Brooklyn (which are incredibly scary, when you think about how often you go to the corner store or bodega...crazy people just coming in and shooting customers in the head), Gothamist suggests that NY1 or the MetroChannel or one of the local networks have a New York version of America's Most Wanted to alert New Yorkers about people they should be on the lookout for. Sure, the local newscast have the info and police sketches on their broadcasts, but we think a dedicated program would be a good idea and viewers would be psychologically ready to absorb the information, versus the soundbites while in a regular news program. Especially when considering the the Elizabeth Smart case - apparently one of the couples noticed Brian Mitchell because they were dedicated America's Most Wanted viewers. Gothamist used to watch it, in the early days of Fox, but these days, we don't even know when it's on.
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