The Restless Sleep header image 2

April 26th, 2012

Old Crime Scene Photographs

Once again I was talking about something on my other blog that I thought I should mention here. The Municipal Archives recently put 870,000 photographs online, including 1,326 crime scene photographs.

Many of the photographs come from a collection of glass plate negatives that are sitting in the basement of One Police Plaza. They sit in piles in a small caged room, cracking anytime someone steps too hard. They’re in bad shape and continually getting worse and eventually there will be nothing left if something isn’t done about them. (And maybe something has been done since the last time I was down there.)

This is one of the photographs from the collection. The caption reads: “Body Bessie Weils alias Dumont found in kitchen #5 Monroe Street 4-2-17” “File #159.

Bessie Weils alias Dumont Crime Scene April 2, 1917

→ 2 CommentsTags: Old Murder Cases · Police History ·

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Nat // Sep 8, 2016 at 4:10 am

    Need help finding an old crime scene photo from 1976 my mothers murder

  • 2 Stacy Horn // Sep 12, 2016 at 10:01 am

    Nat, crime scene photographs from 1976 (especially if it’s an open case) would not be made available to you.
    The only reason the Municipal Archives displays photographs like the one I posted above is because it’s around 100 years old. Anyone associated with the crime, and friends and family members of the victims, are long dead.

Leave a Comment