Vintage Crime Scene Photos

Album of Paris Crime Scene - Attributed to Alphonese Bertillon 

Alphonse Bertillon, the chief of criminal identification for the Paris police department, developed the mug shot format and other photographic procedures used by police to register criminals. Although the images in this extraordinary album of forensic photographs were made by or under the direction of Bertillon, it was probably assembled by a private investigator or secretary who worked at the Paris prefecture. 

Famous Forensic Cases

Forensic science is a fascinating topic in its own right but when its employed, discussed and debated in relation to celebrities, high profile trials and key historical figures it becomes utterly compelling.

Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen

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Forensic science is shedding new light on one of the most notorious murder cases in British history. In 1910 American born Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was found guilty and subsequently hanged for the murder of his wife Cora. Crippen is said to have poisoned Cora, dismembered her body and then buried her remains in the cellar of their London home.

However, in a remarkable twist to a case that has spawned intrigue and interest for almost a century a team of forensic scientists from Michigan State University believes that modern forensic science proves that the remains buried in Crippen’s cellar could not be those of his wife.

The forensic team behind this amazing finding was David Foran, a forensic biologist and director of MSU’s forensic science program, forensic toxicologist John Harris Trestrail and genealogist Beth Wills. The basis for their claim arose from DNA analysis conducted on a microscope slide sample that was presented as evidence during Crippen's trial. During the trial forensic pathologist Bernard Spilsbury testified that the sample revealed an abdominal scar consistent with Cora Crippen's medical history, testimony that helped convince the jury that the remains were those of Cora.

The simple premiss underpinning extremely complex forensic DNA analysis is that if Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen murdered his wife and disposed of remains, then those remains would share specific DNA characteristics with Cora Crippen’s living relatives. However, they do not! As David Foran notes "We took a lot of precautions when doing this testing...We just didn’t stop. We went back and started from scratch and tested it again. The DNA in the sample is different from the known relatives of Cora Crippen."

Which of course begs the question, whose remains were buried in the cellar?

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Bloodstains With a Story: The Allure of Artifacts Linked to Famous Crimes

A bloodstained tan stocking was unrolled across a Manhattan cafe table the other day. It had belonged to Bonnie Parker, the murderous robber, and was found in her getaway car in 1934 after she and her partner, Clyde Barrow, died in a hail of police bullets.

ArtsBeatA waitress at the cafe was told about the clothing’s notorious past. “That is awesome,” she replied. Then she asked, “How much is it worth?”

The stocking had arrived in New York in the company of Bobby Livingston, a vice president at R R Auction in Amherst, N.H. The company has organized a “Gangsters, Outlaws, and Lawmen” memorabilia sale for Sept. 30 in Nashua, N.H.

Souvenir hunters descending on crime scenes had saved many of the objects now in the auction, with estimates into the six figures. The stocking is expected to bring $1,000 to $2,000, in a group lot with Parker’s empty aspirin tin, an engraved metal eyeglass earpiece and a screwdriver useful for repairing guns.

Law officers and vigilantes who had gunned down outlaws would routinely hand out bloody relics as crowds gathered. “There was a mania or whatever about collecting that stuff,” Mr. Livingston said.

The R R sale is part of a torrent this fall of exhibitions and sales of artifacts connected to felonies. 

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Guns Found on Outlaws Bonnie and Clyde Up For Sale

Christopher Klein

Clyde Barrow’s gun, found inside his waistband after his death. (RR Auction)

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were partners in both crime and love. Nearly 80 years after the lives of history’s most famous gangster couple ended in a hailstorm of bullets, it has been announced that the personal handguns found on their bodies will be sold to the highest bidder this September.
On the morning of May 23, 1934, a stolen Ford V-8 automobile kicked up a cloud of dust as it sped down a dirt road near Sailes, Louisiana. Inside was America’s most infamous duo—Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. For nearly two years, the outlaws—and lovers—had captured headlines as they eluded authorities on one of the most notorious crime sprees in history. Along with the “Barrow Gang,” Bonnie and Clyde had gone on a binge of kidnappings, murders and robberies, knocking off banks, country stores and gas stations throughout the South and Midwest. While there are conflicting accounts as to whether Bonnie ever fired a shot, according to the FBI the couple is believed to have committed 13 murders.

Bonnie Parker’s gun, found taped to her thigh after her death. (RR Auction)

The 1934 Ford driven by Clyde through the Louisiana pines that morning was a veritable arsenal on wheels. Inside were three Browning Automatic Rifles, two sawed-off shotguns, almost a dozen handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. In case that wasn’t enough, tucked inside Clyde’s waistband was a Colt .45 Army pistol, believed to have been stolen from the federal arsenal in Beaumont, Texas. Concealed beneath Bonnie’s red dress was a Colt .38 revolver taped to her inner thigh with white medical adhesive tape.

Clyde Barrow’s gun, found inside his waistband after his death. (RR Auction)

“Seldom did anyone ever live when Clyde got the first shot,” warned a newsreel of the day.

On this day, however, Clyde never even had a chance to grab for his Colt. A six-man posse led by retired Texas Ranger captain Frank Hamer, hiding in the bushes on the side of the dirt byway, unleashed a fatal blizzard of gunshots into the vehicle carrying Bonnie and Clyde. The lawmen emptied their automatic rifles, then their shotguns and then their pistols. They pumped more than 130 rounds of steel-jacketed bullets into the car. The duo was killed nearly instantly. When the authorities opened the doors of the automobile after the ambush, they found Bonnie’s body leaning on Clyde’s.

As part of his bounty, Hamer was given the Colt Model 1911 U.S. Army pistol recovered from Clyde’s waistband and the snub-nose detective special revolver found on Bonnie’s leg. The guns were passed down to Hamer’s son and then sold to a private collector. Last week, New Hampshire-based RR Auction announced that the guns, along with other personal effects recovered from Bonnie and Clyde’s perforated car, will be sold to the highest bidder during a live auction on September 30.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in a photograph from the early 1930s. (Library of Congress)

Bobby Livingston of RR Auction said he expects each gun to go for at least $100,000. “As far as handguns connected to Bonnie and Clyde, these are the finest you can have as a collector,” he said. “They were on the market last in 1986, so we are obviously getting intense interest. These items are as close to Bonnie and Clyde as you can get.”

Other items up for sale include Bonnie’s light brown leatherette cosmetic case—minus the lipstick, box of face powder and powder puff that were found inside after the ambush. Another item up for bid is Clyde’s Elgin pocket watch, which has a 10-karat gold-filled screw-back case. The watch was among the personal effects returned to Clyde’s father, along with his body. Clyde’s father wore the watch in memory of his son for more than 20 years until his death.

More than 100 other lots that are part of RR Auction’s “Gangsters, Outlaws and Lawmen” collection will be up for bid on September 30, including a letter written by John Dillinger from prison and a handwritten score of “Madonna Mia,” a song composed by Al Capone while he was incarcerated at Alcatraz.

FBI Launches $1 Billion Face Recognition Project

Mugshots are just the start. Courtesy of Timothy Fadek/Corbis

by Sara Reardon

"Face recognition is 'now'," declared Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon Univ. in Pittsburgh in a testimony before the US Senate in July.

It certainly seems that way. As part of an update to the national fingerprint database, the FBI has begun rolling out facial recognition to identify criminals.

It will form part of the bureau's long-awaited, $1 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) programme, which will also add biometrics such as iris scans, DNA analysis and voice identification to the toolkit. A handful of states began uploading their photos as part of a pilot programme this February and it is expected to be rolled out nationwide by 2014. In addition to scanning mugshots for a match, FBI officials have indicated that they are keen to track a suspect by picking out their face in a crowd.

Another application would be the reverse: images of a person of interest from security cameras or public photos uploaded onto the internet could be compared against a national repository of images held by the FBI. An algorithm would perform an automatic search and return a list of potential hits for an officer to sort through and use as possible leads for an investigation.



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Source: New Scientist

Is This Really Jack the Ripper's ‘Autobiography’ ?

By Jennie Cohen

Written in the 1920s and rediscovered in 2008, a first-person account of what may be the most legendary cold case in history was published today as “The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper.” Its author, whose identity remains a mystery, presents himself as the eponymous serial killer who butchered at least five women in London’s Whitechapel district during the fall of 1888. Has “James Carnac”—who dedicated his manuscript to “the retired members of the Metropolitan Police Force in spite of whose energy and efficiency I have lived to write this book"—finally confessed to his crimes? 

Typed on yellowed pages with a handmade cover, the manuscript that inspired the new book comes from an unlikely source: Sydney George Hulme Beaman, the British author and illustrator who created the “Toytown” radio series for children. Beaman wrote in a preface that a one-legged acquaintance named James Carnac, whom he describes as having a “streak of cynical and macabre humor,” bequeathed the document to him in the 1920s and asked that it be published after his death. Beaman also claimed to have omitted certain “particularly revolting” passages from the original text and expressed his personal opinion that Carnac was indeed Jack the Ripper.

Did Beaman himself pen the alleged autobiography, using a centuries-old literary convention in which a writer presents fictional memoirs as a found document?

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What Readers are saying About Seven Ways To Die!

"SEVEN WAYS TO DIE is tense, gripping and impossible to put down, featuring a truly compelling homicide detective. I was intrigued from the first page!"     ~ Carla Neggers Carla Neggers is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 60 novels, with translations in 24 languages. 

Verdict in: Peterson Jury United on Clothes

By MICHAEL TARM Associated Press

AP FILE - In this Tuesday, July 31, 2012 file courtroom sketch, Drew Peterson, foreground, looks on, as Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow gives his opening statement before Judge Edward Burmila and jurors, in Joliet, Ill., in Peterson's murder trial. Peterson is charged in the 2004 death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio. Jurors at the trial have been showing up wearing matching clothes. (AP Photo/Tom Gianni, File) 

One expects coordinated outfits from cheerleaders, fast-food workers, military units — clowns even. It fosters unity of purpose, team spirit. But color-coordinated jurors? And at a murder trial, no less?

For a month, the jurors at the sensational murder trial of former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson have been filing into court wearing matching clothes — all yellow one day; other days black, blue or green. They've even walked in wearing alternating red, white and blue.

And the coordinated attire hasn't been just about color. Once, it was business suits. Then there was the day they all wore jerseys from sports teams — mostly Chicago Bears and White Sox, though one was a Green Bay Packers shirt, and none for the Cubs.

The oddity has left courtroom observers scratching their heads. It has led to jokes and banter among the judge and attorneys. But it's also raised questions about propriety and precedent during a trial in which evidence against Peterson has included descriptions of his violent threats and grisly photos of his dead wife, Kathleen Savio, who was found dead in her bathtub in 2004.

It's unclear what — if any — message jurors might be sending, because no one can speak to them. But one thing is clear about the 12 panelists expected to begin deliberations after closing arguments next week: At least they are unanimous about what to wear.

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