Ranking the Baltimore area's top 10 crime stories of the past two decades is a daunting task, and this list is far from complete. I tried to choose stories that fit certain categories - the most heinous, for example - or ones that can speak to broader themes, such as witness intimidation. I agonized over ones that dropped off the list, but more details on these crimes and others that didn't make the cut can be found on my blog.
Dontay Carter kidnapped two downtown businessmen in 1992, killed one and later escaped custody by leaping out of a second-floor courthouse window, sparking a sweeping manhunt. Before getting caught, he obtained a driver's license in the name of a man he killed, forcing authorities to change the design of the license.
Joseph C. Palczynski went on a two-week rampage in 2000 when he fatally shot three people and then kidnapped his ex-girlfriend's mother and two others, prompting a 97-hour hostage ordeal that ended when Baltimore County police shot him dead.
Anthony Ayeni Jones, a drug lord who ruled over one of the city's most murderous narcotics organizations in the 1990s, was convicted of killing and conspiring to kill rivals, federal witnesses and their mothers. He calmly popped a Lifesaver into his mouth as the jury found him guilty.
The Dawsons, a family of seven, including five children, who complained to police about drug dealers, died when drug dealers firebombed their house in 2002. The case is one of the most horrific acts of witness intimidation the city has seen.
John Frederick Thanos, who killed three teenagers in a weeklong 1990 Labor Day rampage, was the first person put to death in Maryland after a 33-year moratorium. He told his victims' families he wished their children would rise from the dead so he could kill them again.
Solothal Deandre "Itchy Man" Thomas embodied in 2002 everything that was wrong with Baltimore's criminal justice system, having accumulated more than a dozen murder and attempted-murder charges in less than a decade. He once astounded police by scaling a public housing high-rise to elude capture, climbing from balcony to balcony until he disappeared into a vacant seventh-floor apartment.
Mark Castillo systematically drowned his children, ages 2, 4 and 6, in a bathtub at a downtown hotel, timing the submersion with a stopwatch. He then called the desk clerk to report what he had done.
