This LAPD mugshot of gangster Johnny Stompanato dates from today in 1952, when he was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery. Stompanato was an Illinois boy who joined the army and after his discharge fell into the west coast gangster lifestyle. He quickly became well known to the cops. Beverly Hills police chief Clifford Anderson described him as “one of the most successful wolves in Hollywood,” which was a polite way of saying he was a pimp, blackmailer, and boy toy for a series of wealthy women, who he often shook down for cash. By the time these images were made he was living the high life as a connected subordinate to top tier mobster Mickey Cohen.

After numerous scrapes, liaisons and adventures, plus an arrest in 1956 for violating the White-Slave Traffic Act, aka the Mann Act, Stompanato met actress Lana Turner. It was the spring of 1957. Turner had just survived an ugly divorce involving a husband who molested her daughter from a previous marriage, and her movie career had taken a hit when MGM had declined to renew her contract. But she was still one of the biggest names in Hollywood, and Stompanato thought he’d finally found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Turner was rich, connected, beautiful, and wild. And she was drawn to him because he looked good, had a bad reputation, and was known to be a dynamo in bed.

Stompanato was accustomed to being physical with women, and, while Turner put up with the abuse, her daughter Cheryl grew less and less inclined to stand by and watch. One April night in 1958 Stompanato was allegedly roughing up Turner, when Cheryl—fourteen years old at the time—grabbed a knife and stuck Stompanato in the chest. Either by intent or lucky aim, one of the toughest and meanest wiseguys in Hollywood ended up cold on the floor, and the case became the tabloid sensation of the decade. Turner’s daughter was eventually acquitted at trial of murder charges on the grounds of justifiable homicide. The photos below provide a chronology of the events and aftermath of the night that brought Johnny Stomp to his end, and you can read a bit more about the killing at a previous post here.

Above, two mugshots from today 1946 of Iva Toguri D’Aquino, who was one of many women who broadcast English-language radio from Tokyo during World War II. These broadcasts were aimed at Allied personnel in the Pacific, and the soldiers referred to all the women collectively as Tokyo Rose, despite whatever they actually called themselves on air. D’Aquino called herself Orphan Ann, and her radio stints were limited to twenty-minute segments on Radio Tokyo. It wasn’t much time, but her low, raspy voice made an impression on listeners. What did she say? History.net answers that question by providing an example of a typical D’Aquino intro:

Hello there, Enemies! How's tricks? This is Ann of Radio Tokyo, and we're just going to begin our regular program of music, news and the Zero Hour for our friends—I mean, our enemies!—in Australia and the South Pacific. So be on your guard, and mind the children don't hear! All set? OK. Here's the first blow at your morale—the Boston Pops playing ‘Strike Up the Band!’

When the war ended D’Aquino, who was an American citizen, was taken into custody and shipped back to the U.S., where she was tried and convicted of treason. There was no actual proof that she had done anything traitorous—in fact her humor-tinged broadcasts had often undermined her Japanese employers’ intentions—but she neverthelesslanguished in prison for six years. D’Aquino’s legal troubles only ended in 1977, when U.S. president Gerald R. Ford pardoned her after evidence emerged that witnesses had lied at her trial. Cleared of wrongdoing, and the constant threat of deportation lifted, D’Aquino lived the rest of her days quietly and died in 2006 at age 90.

This mugshot of Lili St. Cyr appears on literally hundreds of sites around the internet, but we’re posting it anyway so we can correct some misinformation. Every source we saw—all of them—refer to this as St. Cyr’s September 1951 booking photo, but it’s actually from today in 1947, a fact that should be abundantly clear from the date under her chin: 12/17/47. The arrest, which was for lewd behavior, occurred in Los Angeles, and when St. Cyr appeared in court several months later she lost her case and was fined fifty dollars—a slap on the wrist. Things didn’t go so leniently for the owner of the Follies Theater, where St. Cyr had performed. He was sentenced to thirty-nine days in jail. See plenty more St. Cyr by clicking her keywords below.

One of Pulp Intl.’s sharp-eyed readers sent us a link yesterday to a collection of early twentieth century mugshots compiled by Australia-based Historic Houses Trust. The photos are glass plate negatives from New South Wales police stations and were mostly taken between 1920 and 1930. Above you see a typical mugshot, this one of Eugenia Falleni, who was arrested in Sydney in 1920. Her crime is detailed as follows: When Harry Leon Crawford, hotel cleaner of Stanmore, was arrested and charged with wife murder he was revealed to be in fact Eugenia Falleni, a woman and mother, who had been passing as a man since 1899. In 1914, as Harry Crawford, Falleni had married the widow Annie Birkett. Three years later, shortly after she announced to a relative that she had found out “something amazing about Harry,” Birkett disappeared. Crawford told neighbors that she had run off with a plumber. In 1919 Birkett’s young son, who had remained in Crawford’s custody, told an aunt of attempts made on his life by his drunken stepfather. The aunt contacted police. A charred body which had been found in Lane Cove in 1917 was belatedly identified as Birkett’s. Crawford’s astonished second wife, when finally convinced of Falleni’s true gender remarked, “I always wondered why he was so painfully shy...”

More examples with descriptions of the perpetrators’ crimes appear below. You’ll notice the compositions are often quite nice. That’s partly because of the glass plate photography, but also because the subjects were allowed to compose themselves however they pleased. There's more at the Sydney Living Museums website. Because it isn’t very user-friendly, we’ve linked you past the home page and directly to the mugshot archive, but the rest of the site is worth visiting as well.

Vera Purcell, 7 September 1926, aged 25, stole a large quantity of clothing from a house in Darlinghurst and was sentenced to six months hard labor at the State Reformatory for Women at Long Bay.

Mrs. Osborne, circa 1919, details unknown.

Giuseppe Mammone, aka G. Mammona, 15 February 1930, arrested for suspicion of the murder of Domenico Belle. Mammone ran a barbershop in Leichhardt and owed Belle money. Despite police suspicions, Mammone was never charged with the crime.

Albert Sing, 31 March 1922, received stolen goods, including fountain pens, cutlery and clothing, and was sentenced to eighteen months hard labor.

Barbara Turner, aka Tierney, Tiernan, Taylor, Florence Gillespie, Jessi Turner, et. al., 10 October 1921, Central Police Station, Sydney, was a confidence woman who operated widely across Australia and was arrested for defrauding a man named Henry Placings of 106 pounds by borrowing against a forged check. She served a year in prison.

John Walter Ford and Oswald Clive Nash, June 1921, both aged sixteen, were arrested for breaking and entering.

Masterman Thomas Scoringe, 29 November 1922, Central Police Station, Sydney, was a house thief who specialized in robbing the residences of Chinese people.

May Blake, 1 September 1930, Central Police Station, Sydney, charged with cocaine possession and sentenced to one year in jail.

Ruby Furlong, 15 November 1920, State Reformatory for Women, Long Bay, arrested for malicious wounding. Furlong was a feared criminal, and during an argument with a Newtown man she pulled a razor and cut his face open. 

And what the heck—since we referenced Eraserhead, how about a man whose head has been erased? Been a while since we’ve posted a mugshot, so today, courtesy of Deadspin, this unaltered booking photo shows a 25-year-old Miami man who was arrested for soliciting prostitution over the weekend. Word is he asked for some head. Oh please, don't get all high and mighty with us—you were thinking the same damn thing. 

Actor Rip Torn, best known for his role as Zed in the sci-fi blockbuster Men in Black, was found Friday inside Lichfield Bancorp, a Connecticut bank, drunk and carrying a loaded handgun. Police arrested the 78-year-old and charged him with first-degree burglary, third-degree criminal mischief, carrying a firearm while intoxicated, first-degree trespassing, and possession of a firearm without a permit. Quite a laundry list. The mug shot here is actually from a previous arrest, but we’ll just assume he looked more or less the same Friday. Anyway, we laid out the rules for American justice in yesterday’s post—the richest person or entity wins. Torn is, one would assume, reasonably well off, which means he’d walk from this crime if he broke into, say, your house. But since he broke into a bank, he’s basically screwed. His only chance is to blame it on alcohol. That’s a lot like shooting someone, then rubbing the gun’s nose in the victim’s blood and screaming, “Bad weapon!” But for some reason, it seems to work for celebs.

In the winter wonderland of Aspen, Colorado, American actor Charlie Sheen was arrested yesterday and taken to the Pitkin County jail, where he was booked for investigation of second-degree assault, menacing, and criminal mischief. As of yet, Sheen's accuser has not been named, but is believed to be his wife Brooke Mueller. However, she reportedly did not need medical attention and hints are already dropping that she may have been the one doing the beating. Sheen's attorney, Aspen resident Richard Cummins, said late Friday, "I think at the end of the day it will be much ado about nothing. I don't think there's any criminality about what went on."

Sheen has had domestic problems before. In 1990 he accidentally shot his then-fiancee, Kelly Preston, in the arm, inflicting a minor wound needing two stitches. In December 1996, he was arrested and charged with attacking a girlfriend in his Southern California home. He pleaded no contest in that incident and was placed on two years' probation. And his ex-wife Denise Richards accused him of threatening her with violence on numerous occasions. For the moment, Sheen remains in the Pitkin Jail, where he will be held without bond until his first court appearance.

Haven’t had a mugshot on the site for a while, so here’s a doozy from astronaut/stalker Lisa Nowak, who was sentenced yesterday to a year’s probation for burglary and misdemeanor battery. Nowak, 46, a mission specialist on the space shuttle Discovery in July 2006, ambushed and pepper-sprayed a woman who was dating a space shuttle pilot for whom Nowak had the hots. When arrested, Nowak had in her possession a steel mallet, a knife, rubber tubing, and several large garbage bags, all of which police suspected she planned to put to sinister use. We disagree. We suspect she was going to put them to awesome use. Wait—that came out wrong. We’re 100% glad Nowak’s intended victim survived. That’s a given. Goes without saying. Obviously. But there’s also a teeeeeny pulp-influenced part of us that’s curious what sort of mischief a NASA specialist had in mind with those items. On our smartest day we could, like, maybe improvise a hickory smoker with that stuff. But a NASA specialist? The possibilities are endless. Guess we’ll never know unless she left behind diagrams like da Vinci, another homicidal scientist. Yeah, we know—you haven’t heard about his many killings. Read a book people.     

It feels like we’re piling on, but mugshots are pulp, and this one makes our last mugshot look tame by comparison. Besides, we have a responsibility to you, our readers. So at top is Phil Spector wearing one of his fright wigs, and below you see the cringe-worthy fringe he was hiding the whole time. There we did it—we joined ten-thousand other websites in posting poor Phil’s imprisoned puss, but we did it with alliteration because that's how classy we are.