Alcatraz East facts for kids
Alcatraz East is a fun museum about crime history located in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It opened in 2016 and used to be a museum in Washington, D.C. The museum helps visitors understand American crime history. It was created by John Morgan and Janine Vaccarello.
The museum is very large, covering 24,000 square feet over two floors. It looks like an old 19th-century prison, inspired by the famous Alcatraz island prison in San Francisco. Alcatraz East has many interactive displays and real items. These show how crimes happen, how police solve them, and how our justice system works. You can also learn about crime prevention and forensic science, which is using science to solve crimes.
Welcome to Alcatraz East!
The museum's history area shows how crimes were committed. It also explains how cases were solved and how juries decided on punishments. You can also find interesting stories and facts about famous criminals.
What's Inside?
There are 20 different areas to explore at Alcatraz East. These areas cover five main topics:
- The history of American crime
- What happens after a crime
- How crime scenes are investigated
- How crime is fought by law enforcement
- Crime in movies and pop culture
Explore the Exhibits
You can see real items that were part of famous criminal cases. There are also many hands-on activities. For example, you can try out a CSI lab. You can also learn about safe-cracking or try a pretend shooting range. Another cool activity is digital fingerprinting.
Cool Things to See
The museum displays many interesting artifacts. These include:
- John Dillinger's car, an Essex-Terraplane
- Al Capone's rosary beads
- Ted Bundy's Volkswagen Beetle car
- The Ford Bronco from the famous O. J. Simpson car chase
- An FBI polygraph machine, also known as a lie detector
- Al Pacino's sub-machine gun from the movie Scarface
- The newest tools used by law enforcement today
