Chicago and crime long have been linked in the public imagination.

Talk to foreigners about Chicago, and they cock their fingers like guns and say: "Al Capone."

Rent a movie, and see Chicago as home to "The Untouchables."

Here are 10 of the top crimes that shocked a city and seared themselves into the public's memory.

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He was the boogeyman down the block.

An object of fascination and fear.

He was the guy who worked construction, held the big neighborhood party, loved local politics, even had a picture of himself with the wife of the president of the United States.

To entertain the kids, he dressed as a clown.

He wiped at least 33 people off the face of the earth.

Most were buried in his crawl space in his Norwood Park Township home.

John Wayne Gacy.

The state executed him in 1994.

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Before he died of a heart attack in prison in 1991, Richard Speck never admitted guilt in the slayings of eight student nurses.

The crimes were discovered in July 1966 when the sole survivor screamed for help.

Corazon Amurao - one of the student nurses Speck had bound up after forcing his way into their townhouse - had managed to roll under a bed and hide while her friends were slaughtered. Speck apparently lost count of how many women he had tied up.

Several years ago, Speck gained more notoriety when a secretly made videotape of him in prison was broadcast showing him having sex and using drugs.

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The crew killed for kicks - horribly mutilating their victims -whether stalking prostitutes on North Avenue in Chicago or spreading their reign of terror to the suburbs.

The "Ripper Crew," made up of at least four men, was responsible for an estimated 20 deaths in the early 1980s.

The leader was Robin Gecht, who was sentenced to 120 years in prison.

Last March, another crew member, Andrew Kokoraleis, was executed. His brother, Tommy, is in prison under a 70-year sentence.

The fourth member, Eddie Spreitzer, is on Death Row.

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It's the centerpiece of a few Hollywood movies.

Even Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis stumble onto it in Billy Wilder's classic comedy "Some Like it Hot."

The 1929 St. Valentine Day's Massacre of seven gangsters in a North Side garage was to become an integral part of Chicago's image, much to the chagrin of city officials.

While the slayings never have been solved officially, the story goes that Al Capone dispatched his killers, some dressed as cops, to the 2100 block of North Clark Street to wipe out the Bugs Moran gang as part of an ongoing gangland feud.

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Capone's end would come - but not for another two years, when he was convicted for tax evasion in October 1931.

He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Capone died in 1947 from a heart attack.

The subject of Capone's fortune made headlines again when television journalist Geraldo Rivera opened what he claimed was a secret vault on the site of the old Lexington Hotel where Capone had some offices. The vault, though, was empty.

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On that fateful night of July 22, 1934, John Dillinger decided to see "Manhattan Melodrama" at the Biograph Theatre with a lady in a red dress accompanying him. (Or maybe it was an orange dress that just looked red under the theater lights.)

It was the bank robber's last big show.

Outside waiting were Dillinger's law-enforcement nemesis, Melvin Purvis, and police.

They had been tipped off by the lady, Anna Sage. They killed the bank robber in an alley near the Biograph in the 2400 block of North Lincoln Avenue.

Children supposedly dipped pieces of newspaper in his blood as souvenirs.

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Bobby Franks, 14, was heading home one afternoon in May 1924 when a car pulled up beside him and he was lured inside.

Two brilliant University of Chicago students, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, killed him for the thrill of it and to prove their intellectual superiority.

The boy's body soon was found, along with Leopold's glasses.

Once on trial for their lives, famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow would save them in a speech that condemned capital punishment.

Loeb would die in prison after the intellectual - in the infamous phrase of one Chicago newspaper - ended his sentence to another inmate with a proposition.

In 1958, Leopold was released on parole. He died in 1971.

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Another child killing shocked the city, although this one happened thirty years later and involved not one but three boys from the Northwest Side.

Anton and John Schuessler and Bobby Peterson had been making their first trip to the Loop by themselves but were never seen again.

For 40 years, the slayings, which shocked a city, went unsolved until Kenneth Hansen was named as the killer by a government informant in an offshoot of another investigation.

Hansen was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to life behind bars. His supporters say he was framed by unreliable informants.

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William Heirens, convicted of a kidnapping and killing a 7-year-old girl in 1946 in Chicago, has his supporters, too, who argue he should be released. They point to his model behavior.

Critics, though, still remember the horrific crime.

Suzanne Degnan was spirited away from her bedroom in the night. Her body parts would be discovered across the city.

Heirens was arrested after an attempted burglary, and the police say he confessed to the killing. His supporters insist he is innocent.

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While no one died, or much less was injured, in the scandal, the 1919 Chicago White Sox team brought pain to the city.

Forever known as the Black Sox, eight members of the team were banned permanently from baseball after being linked to throwing the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds in a deal cut with gamblers.

While they were cleared in court, they fared less well with the public, except for Shoeless Joe Jackson. Many say Jackson was unfairly punished for a scheme he never took part in. Jackson, his supporters note, played stellar ball in the series.

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