Burns, William John (1861-1932), was a prominent American detective. He founded the William J. Burns International Detective Agency. Burns later served as director of the Bureau of Investigation of the United States Department of Justice—now the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Burns was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on Oct. 19, 1861, the son of Irish immigrant parents. He was educated in Columbus, Ohio. Burns spent many of his young adult years working as a U.S. Secret Service agent. In the early 1900’s, his investigation of land frauds for the U.S attorney general during President Theodore Roosevelt’s Administration led to the conviction of Oregon congressmen in what became known as the Oregon Land Fraud Trials.
In 1909, Burns founded his own private security firm, the William J. Burns National Detective Agency. Two of his most publicized cases were the 1909 investigation of alleged corruption within the San Francisco political machine and the deadly bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in 1910. The bombing left 21 people dead and dozens more injured. Burns’s skilled detective work, outstanding successes, and instinct for publicity made him a national media figure. In 1913, the internationally recognized agency changed its name to the Burns International Detective Agency. By this time, the agency had become famous for its innovative detective methods.
In 1921, Burns was appointed director of the newly formed Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of the FBI. He was the fifth director of the bureau. Burns took over during what were called the “lawless years,” an era of gangsters and violators of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a ban on the drinking of alcoholic beverages. During his three-year tenure, Burns cut the number of employees at the agency from 1,127 to around 600. Burns was forced to resign from the bureau in 1924 after he was caught up in the notorious Teapot Dome government scandal. The scandal involved the secret leasing of naval oil reserve lands to private oil companies. It occurred during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Burns was succeeded by J. Edgar Hoover, whom Burns had appointed as his 26-year-old deputy director.
By the early 1930’s, Burns’s small agency was being run by his two sons and had grown into the second-largest security provider in the United States, behind Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. Burns retired to Florida. For several years, he published detective and mystery stories based on his long career. Burns died in Sarasota on April 14, 1932.
