The first man on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list was a wife killer, train robber, and prison breaker. Thomas James Holden capped his long career in crime on June 5, 1949, when he shot dead his wife, her brother, and her stepbrother after a drinking party in Chicago. Holden fled across state lines, and the Chicago Police Department requested FBI assistance for his capture. On March 14, 1950, the fugitive’s mug shot began appearing in newspapers across the country as the FBI’s first “Top Tenner.” The media blitz worked. A citizen in Oregon, who recognized Holden from the newspaper, helped officers arrest their man on June 23, 1951.

Nearly 60 years later, 491 fugitives have been deemed America’s Most Wanted. Of these, 461 have been captured. The odds a person named to the "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list has been caught are 1 in 1.06(94%). Every capture is different. Billie Austin Bryant spent 2 hours on the list, the shortest amount of time, after he was found hiding in a Washington, DC attic. Donald Eugene Webb spent nearly 26 years on the list—longer than any other fugitive—and is considered still at large. The only other ways off the list are through death, dropped charges, or to no longer be considered “a particularly dangerous menace to society”—a 1 in 81.83 chance.

Part of the list’s success is owed to teachers, hotel clerks, storeowners, and others who were at the right place at the right time. These are people like Kathy Nail, who encountered fugitive Eric Rosser in Bangkok. She was unknowingly training Rosser, a convicted pedophile, to teach English as a foreign language to 10-to-12-year-old children. When she saw her student’s face on the television program, America's Most Wanted, she began gathering evidence for the FBI. “As they took [Rosser] away, he turned and shouted, ‘It's all lies! I'm really a good person!’ I'll remember those words for the rest of my life,” Nail wrote in the UK Guardian. The odds a person named to the "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list will be caught as a direct result of citizen cooperation are 1 in 3.23.

The list has evolved since its origins as a Washington Daily News newspaper story naming the “toughest” criminals of the day (The story generated so much publicity that former Director J. Edgar Hoover began the "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" program). Once dominated by mobsters and bank robbers, the criminals on the list today include terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, organized crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, and child rapist Alexis Flores. In July 2009, the FBI nabbed sexual predator Edward Eugene Harper, thanks to a citizen’s tip. The 63-year-old, who was on the run for 15 years, was found living in a 1979 truck with a camper, earning his meals as a sheepherder. Of the current “Top Tenners,” armed robber Victor Manuel Gerena has been listed the longest, over 25 years.

Only 8 of the 491 fugitives that have appeared on the FBI’s list have been women. This makes the odds that a person named to the “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list is a woman 1 in 61.38. The first, Ruth Eisemann-Schier was added in 1968 for helping her boyfriend, Gary Steven Krist, kidnap (and bury alive) American heiress Barbara Jane Mackle. The lovers planned to use the ransom money to escape to Europe. Eisemann, however, was arrested 79 days after the kidnapping, after applying for a job as a carhop. She was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison.

With such great odds that a person on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list will be captured, criminals know when they see their picture in the post office that their days are numbered. As former “Top Tenner” Rudolph Alonza Turner said upon his capture, “I knew you’d get me sooner or later.”