The March of Crime

Using photographs, newsreel footage and dramatic reenactments, this documentary chronicles the lives and careers of many American criminals. It also discusses how local and state police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, led by J. Edgar Hoover, and the justice system capture and punish fugitives. Among the criminals described in the picture is Edward Hickman, a Los Angeles-based thief who kidnapped and murdered the twelve-year-old daughter of a banker. Labeled as a "sex degenerate," Hickman was caught in Oregon and sentenced to die in the electric chair. The kidnapping and rescue of George Weyerhauser, the scion of the Washington State lumber king, is detailed, as is the bloody career of Pretty Boy Floyd, a machine-gun carrying gangster credited with robbing sixty banks in 1932. After killing a police officer, Floyd escaped capture by jumping from a train and remained a fugitive for two years, until he was killed in a shootout with police in October 1934. Footage of Floyd's funeral in the Cutson Hills of southern Oklahoma, where he and many other criminals hid out, is seen. Next shown are bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who were responsible for a much-publicized crime spree that claimed fourteen lives, most of them policemen. Their deaths in Louisiana at the hands of six law officers is dramatized. The 1933 kidnapping and rescue of Oklahoma oil tycoon Charles F. Herschel then is depicted, followed by the apprehension and trial of the perpetrators. The film then shows "for the first time in history...sound pictures of an actual court scene." Judge Edgar North of Texas is seen pronouncing sentences on the Herschel kidnappers, most of whom received life terms. A discussion of the cost of apprehending, trying and incarcerating criminals is presented. Next the film describes the life and crimes of John Dillinger, his infamous escape from an Indiana jail using a handcarved, wooden gun and his capture and death outside a Chicago motion picture theater. After noting that Dillinger was responsible for killing eighteen people and stealing $475,000, but had only $7.70 at the time of his death, the film reflects on the folly of crime. A depiction of an execution by electric chair, and a warning to criminals that "crime never pays," concludes the picture.