Mug shot photography changed the way police investigate crimes and let them maintain pictures of the people they detained.
Starting in the middle of the 1800s, police took pictures of the faces of offenders they already knew. These pictures, which are called “mug shots” (from the British slang word “mug,” which means “face”), replaced drawings and information on wanted posters. Scientists even looked at mug photographs to see if they could tell if someone was going to commit a crime based on their physical attributes.
If they were found guilty, the men had their hair and beards chopped off and had another series of pictures taken to stop the spread of lice. Not shaving women’s hair.
The Nebraska State Penitentiary started taking pictures of the state’s most renowned criminals in 1867. When the Omaha police arrested someone, they took pictures of them.
There is a human tale behind every picture, no matter if the people in it are guilty or innocent. These pictures of the Nebraska State Penitentiary and the Omaha Police Court Collections give us a look into the lives of some random people over 130 years ago.
A lot of the people in these mug photographs were arrested for “grand larceny.” Larceny is the crime of taking someone else’s property without their permission. The word is still used in the U.S. Larceny “from a person” means pickpockets.
“Mayhem” is another word that comes up. It means permanently disfiguring or crippling someone else.
Different people had different emotions when they were photographed. For example, Herbert Cockran had to be held in a headlock, and Minnie Bradley wouldn’t look at the camera. George Ray, who had been in prison for 10 years for manslaughter, was able to smile.
James Whitewater murdered two men. He became a Christian while in prison from 1872 to 1889. The Nebraska legislature passed a law in 1889 that let the governor pardon two inmates who had “been in jail for more than 10 years or whose behavior while in jail deserved such mercy.”
Albert Johnson showed up in the Nebraska State Prison with a big handlebar mustache. Johnson got a year and a half in prison for grand theft. As part of their efforts to get rid of lice, prison officials shaved Johnson’s head and face.
Police and jail officials needed detailed descriptions and mug photographs. It was easy for criminals to change their names and make a lot of fake ones. Usually, each prisoner had three pictures taken of them.
It’s not common to see people smiling in Victorian-era photos, but George H. Ray’s prison mug image is very odd. Ray was sentenced to ten years in prison for killing someone in the late 1890s.
In pictures from the 1800s, people didn’t grin very much. People typically blame long exposure periods for the lack of joyful faces.
By the end of the 1800s, improvements in photography made exposures last only a few seconds, yet getting a picture shot by a professional was still a serious and sometimes somber event.
On May 12, 1897, James Collins was arrested in Omaha for breaking into a house. Collin’s head is covered in a bandage in his mug shot. The police report says that Collins got away and was detained again.
The 23-year-old Omaha tailor was sentenced to five years in prison on March 19, 1898.
For her Omaha Police Court mug shot, Goldie Williams crossed her arms defiantly. Williams, who was also known as Meg Murphy, was arrested for vagrancy on January 29, 1898. Police records say she was only five feet tall and weighed 110 pounds.
She said she lived in Chicago and worked as a prostitute. Her arrest reports say that she suffered a cut below her right wrist and a broken left index finger. Williams wears a fancy hat with satin ribbons and feathers. She also has big hoops in her ears.
On February 15, 1898, three thieves blew up a safe in a bank vault in Sheridan, Missouri. They stole roughly $2,400.
The bank’s insurance company hired the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency and sent Assistant Superintendent F.H. Tollotson to find the thieves. Tollotson followed one of the wanted men from Missouri to Council Bluffs and then to a room at the Sheridan Hotel in Omaha.
With the help of the Omaha police, Tollotson caught a fugitive with a gun after a short fight. The man who is said to have robbed the bank said his name was Charles Martin, although he had a lot of letters sent to Charles Davis.
The Omaha police didn’t sure who Martin was, but several detectives told reporters that he might be the infamous bank thief and safe blower Sam Welsh.
Martin possessed a gold watch and $565 in cash when he was arrested. This was thought to be his portion of the money stolen from a Missouri bank.
Martin was escorted to the police court, where he was measured, photographed, and put in jail as he waited to be sent to Missouri.
On June 3, 1898, Omaha police arrested Jim Ling for running an opium den. On the back of his mug shot, it says that he is a thief. People said Ling was five feet six inches tall, weighed 104 pounds, had black hair, and hazel eyes.
During his mug shot, an unknown member of the Omaha police force has Herbert Cockran in a headlock. On November 24, 1899, Cockran was arrested for breaking and entering.
According to the authorities, Cockran was a tailor from Fairmont, Nebraska. He was a little bent over and had a pale complexion. His eyebrows met at the base of his nose.
On the night of December 4, 1899, a double murder shook the small town of Odessa, Buffalo County. Lillian Dinsmore was found dead in the kitchen of the house where she lived with her charming husband, Frank L. Dinsmore. Someone shot Fred Laue, the proprietor of the boarding home, in his bedroom.
The Dinsmores had only been married for a year. Fred Laue’s wife says that Mr. Dinsmore grew enamored with her and seduced her.
Dinsmore was unhappy in his marriage and was said to have planned to kill his young wife and Laue. Lillian Dinsmore’s brothers said that Dinsmore employed hypnotism on their weak sister after she was killed.
Mrs. Laue also said that Dinsmore had hypnotized her after hearing the charge. The Dinsmore case made headlines in the papers.
Even after the guilty verdict was pronounced, he strongly contested all the charges and was given the death penalty by hanging. Dinsmore’s lawyers asked for a new sentence, and Governor Dietrich stepped in to change it to life in prison.
Dinsmore wore a plain white cotton shirt, a sack jacket, and striped prison-issue pants when he posed for his mug shot in the Nebraska State Prison.
In Omaha, Mrs. Adams was arrested for blackmail. She said she lived in Palisade, Nebraska, and worked as a prostitute. The police report says she was five feet, one inch tall, had a medium frame, and a pale complexion.
Bert Martin was found guilty of stealing a horse in Keya Paha County. Bert worked in the broom factory when he was in prison.
Bert’s cellmate for 11 months told the jail authorities a secret one day: Bert was really a woman called Lena Martin. Lena was able to get a job as a cowboy in Keya Paha County, which is not very populated, because she looked like a man. Records from prison show that Martin was sent to the women’s division on September 22, 1901.
A woman, thought to be Martin’s wife, stood next to him when he was convicted. Martin got two years in prison.
Ezra P. Savage, the Governor of Nebraska, said of her: “a sexual monstrosity, unfit for association with men or women even in a penal institution, and on the solemn promise of its aged mother to care for it and guard it, and that prison morals imperatively demanded its removal, the sentence was commuted to one year, six months, Feb. 3, 1902.”
Nora Courier was better known as “Red Nora.” On March 31, 1901, Omaha police arrested Nora for stealing a horse. According to police court records, she was 22 years old and stood five feet, three inches tall. She had slate blue eyes and a scar on the center of her forehead.
On November 21, 1901, Robinson tried to pay for a beverage at a bar on Lower Douglas Street in Omaha using a Mexican dollar.
The beer cost five cents, and Robinson got back 95 cents in American money. At the time, the foreign dollar looked a lot like the American dollar, but it was only worth around 45 cents.
Robinson was ahead of the game by 50 cents and a glass of beer thanks to this smart money trick.
On December 23, 1901, George Leonard, a bookkeeper from Omaha, was arrested for breaking and entering. His big silk bowtie is a little off-center because of the stiff collar on his shirt.
In her Omaha Police Court mug shot, Minnie Bradley won’t look at the camera. A 27-year-old woman named Minnie who is 5’2″ tall was arrested in Omaha for stealing from someone.
She said she lived on North 11th Street in Omaha and worked as a prostitute. The description also said that Minnie had a wig on.
Bertha Liebbeke became known as one of the Midwest’s most infamous pickpockets. She would look for a well-dressed man, preferably one with a diamond-studded lapel pin.
Bertha would then “accidentally” run into the defenseless victim and appear to faint in his arms. Bertha would take the man’s possessions or wallet while he was trying to help her.
People started calling her “Fainting Bertha” after this trick. People in Illinois, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska knew Bertha and her pranks.
Bertha Liebke, Jennie Jennings, Bertha Nixon, J. Armstrong, Carrie Jones, Bessie Milles, Menni Swilson, and Bertha Siegel were some of the names she used. The name on her Omaha Police Court mug photo was Bertha Siegel.
Eli Feasel went missing from his farm southwest of Bostwick, Nebraska, on November 1, 1903. It was about 15 miles east of Red Cloud. Nannie Hutchinson, his housekeeper (see picture below), stated he traveled to see his son in Kansas City. When people asked around and couldn’t find Eli, Feasel’s brother Thomas started to get concerned.
The investigation led to the arrest of the housekeeper and her son Charles, who is 21 years old. They were let go after their hearing since there wasn’t much evidence that a crime had been committed.
In the spring that followed, a Mr. Stanley started farming Eli Feasel’s land. He found what looked like a freshly dug grave while working in a field.
When officials looked closely, they found a human hand, some hair from a man’s head, part of a coat with an empty whisky bottle in the pocket, and other parts of clothes.
Authorities thought that Charles Hutchinson had observed Mr. Stanley mowing the field where the grave was eventually found. Charles started to act strangely. He leased a buggy on May 6.
He claimed he would help drive the rig to Starke Ranch in Amboy, which is about five miles east. Charles took the rig back to the livery stable in Red Cloud the next morning and paid Amboy the customary amount.
Charles’s team of horses seemed to have been on the road for longer than it took to get to Amboy. Stable personnel also noted a horrible smell coming from the leased buggy and seats.
They didn’t pay much attention to it until Mr. Stanley found the open grave at Eli Feasel’s house. Authorities swiftly detained Charles and his mother Nannie again after getting new evidence.
Authorities thought that the night Charles leased the buggy, he and his mother went back to the place where they had hidden Feasel’s body to transfer it.
The Hutchinsons had left behind clear signs: footprints of a man and woman that matched their shoe sizes. The Hutchinsons were convicted guilty of second-degree murder at their trial.
On the night of May 13, 1906, there was a violent fight between the African American members of Troop B, Tenth United States Cavalry Regiment, and the inhabitants of Crawford, Nebraska.
A year before, Crawford Marshal Arthur Moss and Sergeant John Reid of Troop B had almost gotten into a fight after a horse race on July 4. The two men still hated each other.
On the night of May 13, Moss was ordered to break up a soldier’s beer party near the municipal park on the west side of town. Moss told the group to be quiet or leave.
Moss, Reid, and Pvt. Jordan Taylor, who was also from Troop B, got into a fight. Reid shot Moss with a.38-caliber pistol during the short fight. Reid and Taylor ran into town and hid at the home of Edna Ewing, an older black woman.
As the soldiers tried to get away, a group of locals chased them and shot at them. Art Moss died soon after being shot.
As a gathering formed at the Ewing house, Taylor abruptly hurried away and headed toward Fort Robinson. He was killed before he could get very far. Reid was caught and transported to the city jail under guard.
People in Crawford heard rumors that soldiers from Fort Robinson had threatened to overrun the jail and let Reid out. City leaders were worried that a mob of civilians may grab the prisoner and hang him.
They chose to relocate Reid to the Chadron jail for his own safety. Before he could be moved, the fort said that Troop B was lacking a few men and rifles.
Colonel Augur swiftly deployed Troops I and K into town to stop more violence. There were soldier guards all around the jail. The next day, things were still tense.
The seven men who were said to be missing from the B Troop barracks were put in the post guardhouse, and 14 firearms were found hidden near the town limits.
Reid was sent to jail in Chadron. He was eventually tried and found guilty of manslaughter for killing Arthur Moss. He was given a seven-year term in the Nebraska State Prison.
In February 1914, Alberto Interciago was given a sentence of one to twenty years in prison for “assault to wound.”
In the first picture, Interciago has a big mustache that was made famous by Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, two rebel commanders during the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1920. After Interciago’s hair and mustache were removed, the second set of mug photographs showed him.
As a clairvoyant, palmist, and astrologer, Thomas Whitney, who his clients called The Professor, ran a lot of ads in Omaha newspapers.
Whitney said he was the best at offering advise on love, the law, deeds, wills, mining, divorce, changes, investments, patents, and all other financial matters.
Gentlemen pay $1 for readings, and ladies pay $0.50. In December 1915, The Professor was jailed for getting money under false pretenses after one of his customers said they were unhappy with the readings.
Whitney had tattoos on both of his arms, as shown in the picture of him.
In November 1916, Shock was found guilty of grand larceny and imprisoned to the Nebraska State Prison for two years. His jail records show that he joined the US Army immediately after being released in February 1918 to fight in World War I.
For stealing from someone in Douglas County, Mattie Brown was committed to the Nebraska State Prison for a year. “Larceny of a person” was a common legal word for the offense of stealing from someone.
On May 1, 1917, Nebraska’s prohibition law went into force. It made it illegal to make and sell alcohol. Not long after, Nebraska jails were full of people who broke the liquor laws.
In December 1919, William H. Lee was imprisoned to the Nebraska State Prison for six months to two years for bootlegging in Hitchcock County. “Bootlegging” is the unlawful business of moving alcohol from one place to another.
Lee’s official file says that prison officials gave him a furlough so he could visit his wife, who was dying. He went back to jail and was let go on July 4, 1921.
In her mug shot from Nebraska State Prison, Lola Lopez wears a big gold locket. On January 9, 1922, in the Null Rooming House in Sidney, Nebraska, her friend Cicerio Estrada hit, strangled, and robbed Stephen Pann in a moment of “blind greed.” Estrada and Lopez ran away hours before the homicide was found.
They were caught in Greeley, Colorado, and sent back to Sidney to face prosecution. Lopez, who was born in Mexico, pleaded not guilty through an interpreter, but he did say he knew about the murder. She was in jail for two years, two months, and 22 days.
In May 1925, Mary Shannon was confined to the Nebraska State Prison for two years for mayhem. Her records don’t say what she did to get charged with mayhem.
A legal definition of mayhem is “the criminal act of disabling, disfiguring, or cutting off or making useless one of the members (leg, arm, hand, foot, eye) of another either intentionally or in a fight, called maiming.”
Because the injuries is so bad, mayhem is a crime, which most states call “aggravated assault.”
Frank Carter, known as the “Omaha Sniper,” scared the people of Omaha in February 1926. He shot individuals at random, and occasionally he used a silencer on his gun.
Omaha media said to turn out the lights since folks were shot while standing at their windows. Carter stopped Omaha in its tracks for more than a week, leaving the streets deserted.
He was caught on February 26 and put on trial for killing two individuals, but he said he had killed 43. His lawyers tried to say he was crazy, but he was found guilty and put to death by electrocution in June 1927. People said that Carter’s last words were “let the juice flow.”
Jake Vohland, who is depicted below with a shaved head, tried to steal hens from Mr. and Mrs. Stubblefield. But the Stubblefields had come up with a clever way to defend their big chicken farm in Gibbon with a handmade burglar alarm.
They put a mousetrap near the entryway of the chicken barn that rang bells in both their bedroom and living room. On a dark night in March 1931, Vohland accidentally set off the burglar alarm.
The person who was accused of stealing raced out of the chicken house and wouldn’t stop when Mr. Stubblefield told them to. The alleged burglar dropped some of his loot as he tried to get away, leaving him with only 10 chickens worth more than $5. The burglar was in such a hurry that he didn’t stop for his car and ran away on foot.
Mr. Stubblefield parked close to the old car and called the sheriff. The sheriff quickly found out that the car belonged to Vohland and went to his house.
Vohland was arrested even though he said that someone else stole the car for the purpose of the chicken house raid.
The jurors didn’t believe what Vohland said. He was convicted guilty of stealing and given a year in the Nebraska State Prison.
The mug photo card for James Pappas says, “This man ran a general store in Deweese, Nebraska, and had a lot of insurance on it.” He had a young man working for him and told him to set fire to the store so he could get the insurance money.
Alv Lytle, who is shown below with a shaved head, was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in the Nebraska State Prison for robbing a bank in Kearney County, Nebraska.
Lytle got $2,500 from the state for being falsely imprisoned after another guy admitted to the crime. He was in prison for two years and seven days for a crime he didn’t do.
Ruby Fox and Myrtle Hetrick (below) met while they were both in prison at the State Reformatory for Women in York, Nebraska. Ruby was in jail for breaking and entering, and Myrtle was in jail for being homeless.
Ruby and Myrtle planned an escape because they were unhappy with how they were being treated. The two women drove away from Nebraska with the help of an anonymous male.
The fugitives were caught by the police in Casper, Wyoming. When they got back to Nebraska, Ruby and Myrtle asked to go to the Nebraska State Prison instead of the woman’s reformatory in York.
They got what they wanted and were transported to the Nebraska State Prison for a year for escaping.
Amos Holloman was a repeat offender. He got a new number every time he went to prison. The mugshots below depict how he became older.
(Photo credit: Nebraska State Historical Society / Mashable).
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