Omar August Pinson

Omar August Pinson was a serial criminal, prisoner and fugitive in the US during the 1940s and 1950s.  He was the 5th person to be listed on the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted List.

Pinson was first convicted of armed robbery in January 1936, and was sentenced to 18 months in the Eldora, Iowa State Reformatory. He was released and then in 1941 sentenced to the Missouri State Penitentiary for automobile tampering.  Having spent his time he was once again released.  In 1944 Pinson was sentenced for a third time to the Washington State Prison, Walla Walla, Washington for burglary and released in 1945.

Pinson shot and fatally wounded Oregon State Police Officer Delmond Rondeauin April 15, 1947, in Hood River, Oregon after a burglary and was captured within 24 hours by the Oregon State Police and local officers at Ordnance, Oregon. On May 24, 1947 this act brought the sentence of life imprisonment for first degree murder to be served in Oregon State Penitentiary.

However he escaped with a cellmate on May 30, 1949 and was charged with unlawful flight on September 7, 1949 and began using aliases to hide his identity.  Pinson became wanted in 1949 in eastern Washington and Idaho for burglary under the alias Joseph Anthony Dorian.  He then evaded capture after a shootout with police January 30, 1950, at Polson, Montana while burglarizing a hardware store under the alias of Sam Cignitti.

This brought his listing as the fifth person on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list on March 18, 1950.

He was finally arrested on August 28, 1950 at Pierre, South Dakota by South Dakota Highway Patrol and an FBI National Academy graduate, and imprisoned at Oregon State Penitentiary on September 5, 1950;