The 13 Most Infamous & Haunting Crime Scene Photographs Ever Taken
Crimes usually aren't pretty, so it goes without saying crime scene photos can be disturbing. The images of dead bodies, pools of blood, and murderers on rampages act as both haunting reminders of our mortality and the savage capabilities of human depravity.Â
Not all photos of crimes scenes are modern - some date back to the 1930s, showing that no matter how much society advances, gruesome crime still occurs. Photographs, as opposed to live video, only capture a singular moment in time, leaving the viewer to dwell upon the horrific details frozen before them.
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
The 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre was the culmination of rival mafia gang wars between Al Capone and George "Bugs" Moran. Both ran bootlegging operations at the time - the height of Prohibition - and fought over the same turf, the city of Chicago. On February 14, 1929 a group of unknown men believed to be members of Capone's gang forced seven of Moran's men to line up against a brick wall.
Moran's men were then brutally slaughtered by machine gun fire. Around 70 shots were fired at them, and most hit their targets. To this day, the murders are still officially unsolved.
Black Dahlia Murder
On January 15, 1947, Elizabeth Short, posthumously dubbed the "Black Dahlia" by local newspapers, was found dead in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. Her naked body had been cut in half, mutilated, and then posed in the grass. All of her blood was drained, and her skin was scrubbed, making it clear that her murder and mutilation had taken place elsewhere.
Short's killer was never found, despite the fact that grisly photos from the crime scene were disseminated across the country.
'The Most Beautiful Suicide' Of Evelyn McHale
On May 1, 1947, California native Evelyn McHale jumped off of the Empire State Building's observation platform, plummeting onto the roof of a car parked on a street below. The impact of her body crushed the roof of the car, and killed her immediately. However, in the famous crime scene photograph, taken by Robert Wiles, a photography student at the time, McHale appears to be simply taking a nap with her legs daintily crossed at the ankles.
Dubbed "the most beautiful suicide," the picture was published in Time magazine later on that month. McHale was only 23 was she killed herself, and left behind a note that read "He is much better off without me... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody," likely aimed at the fiancé she broke up with days beforehand.
William J. Gaynor's Shooting
William J. Gaynor had been the mayor of New York City for less than a year when he was shot in the neck while on vacation. A disgruntled city employee, John J. Gallagher, upset at having lost his job, followed Gaynor onto the ocean liner, SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. Gallagher confronted Gaynor, and wound up firing at him right as a picture was taken.
The photo was taken by a photographer from the New York World newspaper. Gaynor survived the assassination attempt, although he died of a heart attack three years later.
Manson Family Murders: Sharon Tate Murder Scene
August 6, 1969 is remembered as the day the bodies of actress Sharon Tate (then pregnant with husband Roman Polanski's child) and five of her friends were found in her house in the hills of Los Angeles. They had been brutally murdered by several of Charles Manson's followers in an attempt to create a race war.
The crime scene photos show the reality of the horrific murders - there were blood pools on the carpets, a cord was hung around Tate's neck, and there were hundreds of bullet holes in the walls and ceiling.
The Calico Kidnapping Polaroid
19-year-old Tara Leigh Calico vanished from her Belen, New Mexico, neighborhood on September 20, 1988. Almost one year later, on June 15, 1989, a Polaroid picture was found in a parking lot on the other side of the country - in Port St. Joe, Florida. An examination of the photo determined that it couldn't have been taken before May, 1989, and that the woman in the foreground of the photo had scars on her leg that were virtually identical to the ones on Calico's leg.
The FBI determined that the woman in the photo was Calico, but additional investigations didn't turn up anything concrete, and to this day she is still listed as a missing person.
Harvey Glatman, The 'Glamour Girl Killer, Photos
Harvey Glatman, also known as the Glamour Girl Killer, was a serial killer who posed as a fashion photographer to lure in women. He went to modeling agencies, claimed he needed women to pose for pulp fiction magazines, took them to his apartment, tied them up, and shot disturbing photos of them before sexually assaulting and killing them.
Glatman was found guilty of three murders in 1957 and 1958, and was sentenced to death.
Oklahoma City Bombing
One famous photo from the Oklahoma City bombings is of a firefighter holding a deceased child. The fireman, Chris Fields, rescued the child, Baylee Almon, from the rubble that once was her daycare center on the first floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
The bombing, planned and carried out by Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols, destroyed the building on April 19, 1995. The blast killed 168 people, including Almon, and wounded over 680 others.
9/11 - The Falling Man
After two hijacked aircraft hit the World Trade Center towers on the morning of September 11, 2001, many people were trapped on the top floors of the buildings. The airplanes cut off access to the central stairwells, meaning that the only way out was the jump - or wait for the inevitable.
One of the most poignant pictures from this day shows an unidentified man falling from the building.
Jonestown Massacre
Jonestown, the shortened way of referring to the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, a cult located in Guyana and run by Jim Jones, was the location of one of the largest mass suicides in history. A total of 918 people died after drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.
The photos from the massacre show hundreds of bodies lying on the ground. According to researchers, the poisoned drink caused death within five minutes.
Columbine High School Massacre
On April 20, 1999, one of the worst school shootings in US history occurred. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot and killed 13 of their Columbine High School classmates, leaving another 20 wounded, before killing themselves.
One of the most haunting crime scene photos of the shooting is a taken from a security camera. It shows Klebold and Harris stalking around their school cafeteria with high-powered guns.
Kent State Shootings
May 4, 1970 represents the height of Vietnam War protests, as well as the low of a national tragedy. Four students - all part of a mass protest of the war - were killed by Ohio National Guard troops on the Kent State University campus in Kent, Ohio.
One of the photos, taken by journalism student John Filo, became a stark, unmistakable representation of this tumultuous period of history when it won a Pulitzer Prize.
JonBenet Ramsey's House
Six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her family's Boulder, Colorado, home on December 26, 1996. The case made headlines, mostly due to the unusual facts surrounding the case (the odd ransom letter, the botched police work) and the fact that Ramsey was only a child.
To this day, her murder is unsolved. The image that most people remember best from that tragic day is the one showing the house with both Christmas decorations and yellow crime scene tape.
