"Murder is My Business" the Weegee crime scene photos

[Lady Cop]

evocative & fascinating old photos around NYC~

The hard shadows and dark imagery, these photos shot by Arthur Fellig look as though they could have been taken from any number of crime scenes featured in a melodramatic film noir.

But these grisly photos are no movie magic. In fact, they inspired the genre.

What follows are the real-life depictions of New York between 1935 and 1946, when Fellig, or Weegee as he's often called, covered the police beat on the Lower East Side.

Weegee's work from those years - 100 framed photographs, magazine, newspapers and films - is now on display as part of a travelling exhibition called 'Weegee: Murder Is My Business', opening at the International Center for Photography on January 20.

Running 400ft, the exhibit features the museum's extensive Weegee Archive, including lurid highlights of crime scenes, murder victims covered in cloth and crowds gathered around bodies - scenes that have been repeatedly replicated in film noir.






night court



killed a cop





"Ruth Snyder Murder" wax display, Eden Musée, Coney Island, New York], ca. 1941




























daily mail UK

[Middle Finger]

Being from New York, I am always intrigued by the old photos you throw my way, LC. These are no exception! Nice departure from a more typical crime thread. What is the deal with the hat photo? Hats of suspects?

[Lady Cop]

probably hats of dead guys hahaha. all nicely labeled.

i do enjoy these old photos also, back in the good old days when you had bare light bulb interrogation rooms and rubber truncheons. heh

[Middle Finger]

Agreed.

[Maggot]

Ruth Snyder:

In 1925, Snyder, a Queens Village, Queens housewife, began an affair with Henry Judd Gray, a married corset salesman. She then began to plan the murder of her husband, enlisting the help of her new lover, though he appeared to be very reluctant. Her distaste for her husband apparently began when he insisted on hanging a picture of his late fiancée, Jessie Guishard, on the wall of their first home, and also named his boat after her. Guishard, whom Albert described to Ruth as "the finest woman I have ever met", had been dead for 10 years.

Ruth Snyder first persuaded her husband to purchase insurance, but with the assistance of an insurance agent (who was subsequently fired and sent to prison for forgery) "signed" a $48,000 life insurance policy that paid extra ("double indemnity") if an unexpected act of violence killed the victim.

According to Judd Gray, Ruth had made at least seven attempts to kill her husband, all of which he survived. On March 20, 1927, the couple garrotted Albert Snyder and stuffed his nose full of chloroform-soaked rags, then staged his death as part of a burglary. Detectives at the scene noted that the burglar left little evidence of breaking into the house; moreover, that the behavior of Mrs. Snyder was inconsistent with her story of a terrorized wife witnessing her husband being killed.[citation needed]

Then, the police found the property Ruth had claimed had been stolen—still in the house, but hidden. A breakthrough came when a detective found a paper with the letters "J.G." on it (it was a memento Albert Snyder had kept from former love Jessie Guishard), and asked Ruth about it. A flustered Ruth's mind immediately turned to her lover, whose initials were also "J.G", and she asked the detective what Judd Gray had to do with this. It was the first time Gray had been mentioned, and the police were instantly suspicious.

Gray was found upstate, in Syracuse. He claimed he had been there all night, but eventually it turned out a friend of his had created an alibi, setting up Gray's room at a hotel. Gray proved far more forthcoming than Ruth about his actions. He was caught and returned to Jamaica, Queens and charged along with Ruth Snyder.

(Dorothy Parker told Oscar Levant that Gray tried to escape the police by taking a taxi from Manhattan to Long Island, which Levant noted was "quite a long trip". According to Parker, in order "not to attract attention, he gave the driver a ten-cent tip".

[Lady Cop]

that infamous photo of Ruth's execution was taken by a resourceful reporter who had a camera strapped to his ankle.

[Red_velvet71]

Wow! interesting stuff LC.