Last Updated on October 5, 2025 by Matt Staff
The early 2000s moved fast, with 24/7 news, flip phones, and headlines that wouldn’t quit. In the middle of it all were criminals whose stories the whole world watched in real time.
This gallery rounds up 20 infamous tales from that era and the moments that turned those cases into memories.
1. Dennis Rader – BTK
In 2005, Rader outed himself with a church-computer floppy disk that investigators traced in minutes. The details found in the evidence were so mundane and decisive that they became a significant part of the case’s grim legend.
2. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo – DC Snipers
They were caught asleep at a Maryland rest stop in a Caprice that had a hole in the trunk. It was a sniper’s nest hiding in plain sight. The arrest was almost quiet compared to the fear that preceded it.
3. Richard Reid – Shoe Bomber
Reid was subdued mid-flight in 2001 by passengers and crew. He was literally taped to his seat until the plane landed. One attempt changed airport security everywhere.
4. Zacarias Moussaoui
Moussaoui was the only person convicted in a U.S court for 9/11. He baffled judges with his outbursts while the evidence quietly mounted. His trial became a primer in how terror cases reshape the procedure.
5. Robert Hanssen
Hanssen was an FBI spy who was arrested in 2001 near a dead-drop under a footbridge at a Virginia park. The takedown ended two decades of leaks from inside the Bureau.
6. Martha Stewart
Stewart was convicted in 2004 for lying to investigators during an insider-trading probe. She served time and then engineered a rare post-prison brand comeback. The arc turned a cautionary tale into a business case study.
7. Bernie Madoff
In 2008, Madoff confessed his Ponzi scheme to his sons, who turned him in the same day. The number that stuck from this case wasn’t just the losses; it was how quietly the illusion had held for years.
8. Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay
Convicted in 2006, the once-untouchable executives from Enron watched their empire unravel into acronyms like SPEs, LJM, market-to-market, that became household names.
9. Andrew Fastow
Fastow was Enron’s CFO. He cut a 2004 plea deal and testified about the off-books partnerships he built. His pivot from architect to key witness recast the narrative from the inside.
10. Dennis Kozlowski
Prosecutors pointed to a $2 million birthday party in Sardinia and that infamous $6,000 shower curtain as symbols of Kozlowski’s excesses. The images made the accounting charges unforgettable.
11. John Rigas
Rigas was a cable magnate convicted in 2004 after the prosecutors said that the company’s funds paid for everything from apartments to a hockey arena. In the photos, the hometown pride felt suddenly complicated.
12. Jack Abramoff
Abramoff was a D.C. super-lobbyst who pleaded guilty in 2006 and became shorthand for pay-to-play. The trench coat and fedora were theater, but the emails were the evidence.
13. Rod Blagojevich
Wiretaps caught the Illinois governor calling a vacant Senate seat “bleeping golden” in 2008. The quotes did as much damage as the charges.
14. Michael Vick
A 2007 federal case detailed dogfighting at a property Vick financed. He served time and later returned to the NFL. His redemption arc sparked a decade of debates about second chances.
15. Conrad Black
Black was considered the media’s baron. In 2007, his fraud trial featured a surveillance video of him removing boxes from his company’s offices. The tape became the clip everyone remembered.
16. Amanda Knox
Knox was arrested in Italy in 2007, and she spent years in a legal maze before her ultimate exoneration. The case showed how global media can warp a narrative.
17. Saddam Hussein
Hussein was captured in 2003 in a spider hole outside Tikrit. He was tried and executed in 2006. The images felt historic the second they aired.
18. Slobodan Milosevic
His trial at The Hague started in 2002, but he died before the verdict in 2006. The unfinished ending still shapes how people remember the wars he led.
19. José Padilla
Padilla was arrested in 2002 amid the “dirty bomb” fears. Later, he was convicted on different conspiracy counts in 2007. The shift from the headline to the charges became part of the story.
20. Hans Reiser
The Linux file-system creator pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2008 and led the police to the body as part of the deal. A brilliant coder with a case that defied the tech-genius myth.
Explore more historical content:
If these early-2000s snapshots rewired your memory of the decade, cue up more time capsules like these 20 Yearbook Photos of Criminals from the 1990s, or these 20 Mugshots Of Prohibition Era Gangsters. You can also check these 20 Photos of Prohibition Era Sheriffs.
