What Makes The Top 25?

I’ve been on a big-time true crime reading kick lately—in the last six months, I’ve read Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, plus books about the Black Dahlia and the Zodiac Killer, just to name a few. So I was definitely intrigued when I read Time magazine’s feature on the “Top 25 Crimes of the Century.”

Obviously, the criteria for a Top 25 crime is pretty vague—and they chose to omit crimes including genocide and mass suicides—but they put together a pretty interesting list, I thought. Alongside obvious picks like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, for example, the magazine also profiled The Great Train Robbery of 1963 and the theft of “The Scream.”

But, I have to admit I was surprised at inclusion of some crimes at the expense of others. Why profile Andrew Cunanan and the Versace murders, for example, but not the Zodiac Killer? Why include the collapse of Barings Bank but nothing on the Boston Strangler? And I think everyone can agree that Mary Kay Letourneau is way creepy (not to mention worth her weight in Law & Order: SVU episodes), but Top 25 material? Really?