By Steve Neavling

A police car stolen by notorious gangster John Dillinger after his daring escape from an Indiana jail in 1934 has returned to Indiana. 

Dillinger escaped jail using a fake gun and stole the 1933 Ford V8 police car from Lake County Sheriff Lillian Holley and drove it to Chicago before abandoning it.

FBI agents killed Dillinger in a shootout on July 22, 1934, about four months after the escape. 

The car was impounded and then auctioned off. 

“A gentleman from Milwaukee acquired the car,” Lake County Realtor Roger Pace, who helped track the car down, told WBOI. “He didn’t know what the car was. He relocated to Maine, decades later, he died.”

Now officials are searching for a permanent home to display the infamous car. 

By Steve Neavling

A 37-year-old Arizona man wanted in connection with the 2016 murder of his girlfriend has been added to the U.S. Marshals 15 Most Wanted List, the agency announced Monday.

Raymond “RJ” McLeod is the first fugitive to debut on the list with a $15,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. 

McLeod is wanted by the San Diego Police Department for the murder of 30-year-old Krystal Mitchell. 

Authorities believe he fled the country and may be hiding out in Mexico or Central America. He was last spotted in Belize in 2018 and Guatemala in 2017. 

“McLeod poses a significant threat to the public and must be brought to justice,” U.S. Marshal Service Director Donald Washington said in a statement. 

The San Diego District Attorney’s Office charged McLeod with murder after Mitchell was found dead in June 2016 at an apartment in San Diego, where the couple was visiting friends. McLeod was the last known person to see Mitchell alive, authorities said. 

“The passage of time will never deter the Marshals’ fugitive investigation for McLeod,” U.S. Marshal Steve Stafford of the Southern District of California said. “If anything, it fuels our determination. We will leave no stone unturned until he is brought to justice.”

McLeod is 5 feet 11 inches tall and has brown hair and hazel eyes. At the time he fled, McLeod weighed 245 pounds and had “a tattooed muscular physique.”

By Steve Neavling

On this date in 2007, an FBI agent was fatally shot while trying to arrest three heavily armed bank robbery suspects in central New Jersey. 

Barry Lee Bush, 52, of the FBI’s Newark Field Office, was killed when another agent’s gun accidentally discharged outside a PNC Bank branch in Readington.  

The agent who mistakenly shot Bush was absolved after an investigation by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility determined the agent was within the bureau’s guidelines for firing his weapon. 

In honor of Bush in April 2008, the bureau’s Newark office was renamed after him.

Bush joined the FBI in 1987 and transferred from the Kansas City Field Office to Newark in 1991. 

At a memorial service on April 12, 2017, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller described Bush as a “dogged investigator” who “loved being part of the action.”

“Barry loved his job,” Mueller said at the time. “But he had two loves in his life. One was the Bureau. The other love—his first love— was his family. He talked about them constantly. They were his pride and joy. No matter how much he loved his work, he loved coming home at the end of the day even more.”

Read Mueller’s full remarks at the memorial service.

By Steve Neavling

A 32-year-old man who shot a member of a U.S. Marshals Service Task Force outside of a hotel in Mississippi has pleaded guilty to four counts of assaulting and resisting officers and one count of discharging a firearm.  

Joseph Dale Sonnier, of Hancock County, entered the plea in federal court Thursday and is set to be sentenced on July 8. He faces up to 20 years of prison on each count. 

Sonnier shot a member of the task force in the neck while executing a search warrant on July 21. The officer survived. 

Sonnier was wanted on two counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated assaulted, armed robbery and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon. 

By Steve Neavling

A Customs and Border Protection dog sniffed out nearly $60,000 worth of fentanyl stuffed inside breakfast burritos near the U.S.-Mexico Border. 

The canine alerted his handler to a Chevrolet Tahoe at an inspection checkpoint in Yuma on Monday, CBP said in a news release.

The dog sniffed out the drugs in a black backpack inside the vehicle. 

Agents found several small packages containing 5 pounds of fentanyl pills inside the burritos. 

CBP arrested the 37-year-old driver, who was a U.S. citizen.  

By Steve Neavling

Former FBI Special Agent William E. Plunkett just released his third book in his G-Men series, which brings to life the true story of a tormented, good-looking gangster who kidnapped a beautiful socialite from Louisville. 

In “The G-Men and The Heiress: The 1934 Alice Speed Stoll FBI Kidnapping Case,” Thomas Robinson Jr. masterminds the kidnapping of Alice Stoll and collects a $50,000 ransom, which he uses to fund a cross-country trip to Hollywood.

The story spans three decades and shows how Robinson dodged the death penalty and escaped from prison twice. 

Plunkett’s other books in the G-Men series are “A True FBI Crime Story of the 1930s” and “A 1929 FBI Washington Cold Case.”

Plunkett joined the FBI in 1982 and worked in Albany, Syracuse, Cincinnati, and Washington D.C. He was an original member of the Cincinnati FBI Joint Terrorism Working Group and the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, which was created in the aftermath of 9/11. 

By Steve Neavling

The search for former FBI Agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran 14 years ago, appears to be at the center of an alleged extortion scheme involving a former federal prosecutor and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

The information came to light earlier this week when The New York Times reported that Gaetz is under investigation for a sexual relationship he allegedly had with a 17-year-old girl.

In an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday, Gaetz claimed former prosecutor David L. McGee, who has been searching for Levinson on behalf of his family, offered to make sex trafficking charges disappear in exchange for money to help in the search for the former FBI agent.

McGee denied wrongdoing, telling the Daily Beast that the extortion allegations are “completely, totally false,” adding, “This is a blatant attempt to distract from the fact that Matt Gaetz is apparently about to be indicted for sex trafficking underage girls.”

The whereabouts and fate of Levinson have been speculated about for years. On the 14th anniversary of his disappearance last month, the Biden administration called on Iran to return Levinson to his family and provide answers about what happened to him. 

Levinson, who would be 73, disappeared while on Kish Island, a tourist spot off the coast of Iran. He worked part-time for the CIA, and U.S. officials believed he died while in Iranian custody. 

He was last seen in a 2010 hostage video.