In 1938, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover labeled John Henry Seedland, the nation's cruelest criminal.

That was no easy distinction considering the infamous

criminals who had made names for themselves over the past few years, like Leopold and Loeb, Bonnie

and Clyde, John Dillinger, Babyface Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, and the Barker gang, not to mention

the kidnappers who had killed the Lindbergh baby and Brooke Hart.

Al Capone had led a bloody gang war in Chicago, and Lucky Luciano had been instrumental in a bloody

mob war in New York. But Jay Edgar Hoover had applied the label of Nation's Cruelist

Criminal to John Seedland. To be fair to Hoover, there was probably a lot of recency bias in the pronouncement.

By 1938, all of those other famous criminals were dead or in prison.

Coming up behind them was John Seedland, who, according to the story,

was directly influenced by a soon-to-be member of the Dillinger gang.

Seedland grew up in the woods around Ironton, Minnesota, a small town that sits right in the

middle of the state. And at that time, likely in April 1933, he was particularly susceptible to

romanticize stories of crime. In the past five years,

his life had gone from difficult to really rough. After he graduated high school in 1928,

he worked with his father in the local iron mines and mechanic shops. One year later,

the stock market crashed, and John was laid off. He bounced

around the region looking for steady employment before he finally moved back home with his parents

and worked part-time jobs at small local businesses. Then on March 23, 1933, John's father was found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Shortly afterward, John was duck hunting in the woods when he stumbled upon a gangster named Tommy Carroll.

By 1933, Tommy Carroll had been in and out of jail for 13 years.

He started his criminal career at the age of 20, in 1920, not long after he returned from service in World War I.

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