Ray Bowman and Billy Kirkpatrick, who began boosting together as teenagers, were arrested only twice during their prolific partnership. The first time was for stealing 38 records from a K-Mart in 1974. The second arrest came in 1997. In between, Bowman and Kirkpatrick robbed 27 banks, including the single biggest haul in United States history: $4,461,681 from the Seafirst Bank in suburban Tacoma.

Peggy Jo Tallas, a soft-spoken bachelorette, spent much of her adult life doing two things: taking care of her ailing mother and robbing bank after bank dressed as a pudgy, bearded cowboy.

Anthony Curcio was the pride of his small town in Washington state. A former football star, he had married his high-school sweetheart and was making good money flipping houses. Then the real estate market crashed, and Curcio turned his obsessive attention to planning an ingenious heist involving Craigslist, an inner tube, and $400,000.

The robbers had a helicopter, explosives, and inside information on a $150 million cash repository. But the police were on to them—sort of.

A young man named John Wojtowicz, desperate to provide for his children and finance his lover’s sex-change surgery, attempts to rob a Chase branch in Brooklyn. The bank is surrounded almost immediately and a 14-hour standoff ensues. The story inspired Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon.

In 2003, a man named Brian Wells robbed a bank in Erie, Pa., with a bomb around his neck. Shortly thereafter, with Wells surrounded by cops and claiming he’d been forced to commit the crime, the bomb detonated, leaving authorities to piece together who had put it there. Eight years later, they’re still not entirely sure who was behind this bizarre crime, or even the true motive.

How a 24-year-old nurse discovered Vegas, high-stakes gambling, and serial bank robbery.

The Servant Girl Murders were one America’s earliest serial killings, predating Jack the Ripper by three years.

In 1948, a corpse was found on a beach in Adelaide, Australia. His identity, and how he died, remains a mystery.

In 1964, a Ku Klux Klan “hit squad” rode into Ferriday, Louisiana and set Frank Morris on fire. Nearly a half-century later, one of the alleged participants is still a free man.

In 1982, seven people ingested Tylenol sprinkled with a fatal dose of cyanide. The case has never been solved.

An oral history of Motown Records, its founder Berry Gordy, and 1960s Detroit.

On wandering through the city’s “post-American” landscape.

A response to the national media’s mourning.

On Mayor Dave Bing’s plan to demolish 10,000 abandoned homes throughout the city.

On his last day at the paper, memories from Kaplan’s 15 years at the helm.

A profile of Beatty as Bulworth hit theaters.

A profile of post-Observer Kaplan.

Kaplan on 9/11 and the city he loved.

On the Wise and Cranky Kaplan Twitter feeds.

A profile of Gardner in her twilight.

Three Dallas prostitutes were found dead in as many months. Charles Albright might be the last person you’d suspect—unless you knew about his unique, lifelong obsession.

How two love-struck, type-A high-schoolers almost got away with murder.

A charming assistant funeral home director in a small Texas town murders a wealthy widow, keeps her in a freezer for months, finally gets caught, and still has the town’s sympathy as his case goes to trial.

Lance Butterfield was the captain of the football team, had a 4.0 GPA and a girl he loved. It wasn’t enough for his dad. And then his dad became too much for him.

Peggy Jo Tallas, a soft-spoken bachelorette, spent much of her adult life doing two things: taking care of her ailing mother and robbing bank after bank dressed as a pudgy, bearded cowboy.

The story of Dean Corll and his accomplices, who killed more than 20 teenage boys in the Heights neighborhood of Houston in the early 1970s, and the families searching for their missing sons.