The Crime Museum is a private museum dedicated to the history of criminology and phenology in the United States. It is found in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, D.C., half a block south of the Galleria Place station. The museum opened in May 2008 and was built by Orlando businessman John Morgan in collaboration with John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted, at a cost of $21 million. Unlike most museums in Washington, D.C., the Crime Museum is a commercial enterprise.
The more than 700 exhibits in the exhibit space connect the history of crime and its consequences, in America and American popular culture. The museum shows exhibitions on colonial crime, pirates, Wild West criminals, gangsters, the Crowd, serial killers and white-collar criminals. Twenty-eight interactive stations include high-speed police pursuit simulators used in law enforcement training and a Firearms Training Simulator (F.A.T.S.) similar to that used by the FBI.
Galleries
The first floor is devoted to a mock crime scene investigation where a murder took place. Visitors to the museum are guided through the process of solving the crime through forensic techniques including ballistics, blood testing, finger and toe printing and dental and facial reconstruction.
The museum includes a false police station with an order room, celebrity photos, a police line, a lie detector test, prisoner art and self-created wound and rescue devices and a recreation of the Al Capone prison cell at East State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The Death Penalty Room offers recreations of the guillotine and gas chamber, along with an authentic lethal injection machine from the state prison in Smyrna, Delaware and the electric chair from Tennessee State Prison in Nashville, which was used for 125 executions.
The crime-fighting gallery draws attention to such luminaries as the foundation of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Edgar Hoover and legendary law enforcement agent Eliot Ness. It also includes uniforms, firearms and equipment of law enforcement officers’ limitations, and shows on night-vision technology and a squadron of bombers. There are no exhibits dealing with police misconduct or the beliefs of an innocent.
America’s Most Wanted Studio
The museum also served as the television studio for America’s Most Wanted, a long-running (1988-2013) television series that dramatized unresolved crimes. The television program led to the capture of more than 1,000 fugitives (16 from the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives) because of the crime clues reported by the public when the criminals were introduced. Surrounding the studio are exhibits at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and McGruff the Crime Dog, as well as the Cross Match Technologies station for children’s finger printing. Because of a number now shot at the location, the studio is now used as an interactive exhibit where visitors can solve crime.
Mission
The mission is to provide guests of all ages with an unforgettable understanding of our National History of Crime and its consequences, law enforcement, forensic science, crime scene investigation (CSI) through a fascinating interactive, engaging and educational experience.