Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even

earn the label Crime of the Century.

But the stories that made headlines in decades past aren't necessarily remembered today.

I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author, and in each episode of this show, I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened.

This is Crimes of the Centuries.

Music This is Crimes of the Centuries. This is Crimes of the Centuries. The Alcatraz, an island in the Bay of San Francisco that was once a fort, then a prison, then a tourist attraction,

now draws more than 1.5 million visitors a year.

They wait patiently in line on the San Francisco wharves,

watch the sea lions do their daily layabout in the sun on any piling they can find,

and then a boat arrives to take the visitors over to

the island, which is only a mile away, visible from almost any point in the Golden Gate City.

It's here that they get to do the oddball thing, really. They tour through what was once considered

the most maximum of maximum security prisons in the country.

They get to see where Al Capone lost his mind while they're on tax evasion charges,

and where excessively violent gangster and kidnapper Machine Gun Kelly,

was considered a model prisoner.

They get to step into the regulation 8 foot by 5 foot prison cell where men

lived out life sentences for barbaric crimes against humanity, a place nicknamed by them as

Hellcatraz. Paying visitors get to be put in solitary confinement and then giggle or

quietly freak when the lights are turned

out for the merest of minutes, knowing that some men spent months, even years, down there in the

dark. They get to ramble through the mess hall where, before a minor riot changed things,

...