The Perp Walk of Fame
Revisiting infamous perp walks from the past as the NYPD rolls out the Blue Carpet for Luigi Mangione.
The white Ford Bronco was getting away.
Four University of Montana photojournalism students were hot in pursuit, chasing the exclusive of a lifetime. Gregory Rec’s old Subaru was struggling, overheating on the climb up Flesher Pass. So when Rec reached the top, he threw it into neutral and let gravity take over.
It wasn’t O.J. Simpson in the backseat; it was Ted Kaczynski—the Unabomber.
Rec and his classmates caught up just as night fell. Two FBI agents emerged from the Bronco, leading a scruffy-looking Kaczynski across North Jackson Street in downtown Helena. Backpedaling with cameras raised and strobes popping, they got their exclusive.1
Rec, Bruce Ely, Derek Pruitt, and Steve Adams made the first photos of Kaczynski after his April 3, 1996 arrest, ending an 18-year manhunt. Rec's rarely published photo, showing two FBI agents flanking a scruffy, disheveled Kaczynski on an empty street, is my favorite.
I was a photojournalism student at Western Kentucky University when this went down, watching with envy as these four student photographers, dubbed the The Unabomber Boys, became instant legends. They banded together, told the Associated Press to get lost, hooked up with a photo agency, and sold their photos as a package—a bold move that wouldn’t happen today.
Derek Pruitt landed the then-coveted cover of Newsweek. A little back-focused, but for an exclusive like this, Capa-sharp will do.
Side note: that’s Bruce Ely, who rode shotgun in Rec’s dying Subaru, in the background holding his camera. According to the Spokesman-Review, Ely’s mom bought six copies of the magazine before it sold out.
I thought about Kaczynski and The Unabomber Boys when word of a Luigi Mangione manifesto started making the rounds. Some of you may remember when, at the FBI’s request, The Washington Post and The New York Times published Kaczynski’s 35,000-word manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future. This time corporate media passed, leaving it to investigative journalist
to drop Mangione’s manifesto first. But it wasn’t the manifesto that interested me—it was another piece Klippenstein wrote about The New York Times’ reluctance to show the alleged CEO-assassin’s face.When Mangione was arrested, The New York Times published this compelling perp walk photo by freelancer Rachel Wisniewski.
Wisniewski’s photo was perfect for Mangione’s media debut—rim light, a raised-brow glance back over the shoulder, and even what looks like steam rising from his neck.
But in subsequent pieces on Mangione, The New York Times published these anti-perp walk photos by Wisniewski, which triggered Klippenstein’s article.
According to screenshots leaked to Klippenstein, New York Times photo editor Clinton Cargill messaged the team: “The news value and public service of showing his face is diminishing, compared with concerns of amplifying the crime and inspiring others—something we avoid with mass shooters in particular… When he is arraigned, we’ll have fresh pictures, but until that moment, we should dial back. Happy to discuss.”
When Mangione was extradited back to New York, the NYPD made certain “fresh pictures” were possible, rolling out the Blue Carpet. The New York Times tapped photographer Alan Chin to cover the premier.
Even New York City's Mayor showed up for the perp walk, bringing his own photographer, Michael Appleton, who had this exclusive angle.
Michael Nagle’s photos for Bloomberg appeared to get the most traction online—some comparing them to the perp walk scene in Superman.
An alternate frame by Nagle, slightly less heart-throbby, made Page One of The Wall Street Journal. The front page of The New York Times skipped Mangione entirely. The disparity between the two covers is glaring—The New York Times is not reporting the news here, they’re attempting to shape it.
Aloof editorial decisions aside, the Mangione perp walk photos call to mind Timothy McVeigh—minus the firepower. McVeigh’s April 21, 1995, perp walk was his debut to the world, paraded by FBI agents outside the Noble County Courthouse in Perry, Oklahoma. Bob Daemmerich was all over it for Agence France-Presse.
Ralf-Finn Hestoft, hustling the story for SABA, made the cover of TIME. The restraint and placement of Charles Porter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a firefighter cradling a baby on the cover is admirable—props to Michelle Stephenson.
While researching this piece, I ran across this rare deer-in-the-headlights photo of McVeigh, taken by FBI agent Chuck Choney. It’s not a perp walk per se—it feels more like an elbows-flying paparazzi scrum, punch-flashed, camera-pressed-against-the-car-window grab—and it’s fascinating.
Another notable through-the-window perp photo is Ira Schwarz’s photo of John Hinckley Jr., after his arraignment on March 31, 1981. Schwarz caught Hinckley’s cuffed wrists and glaring mug surrounded by agents in a wood-paneled, nine-seat station wagon.
Few perp walks are as stark and intimate as Roy Hill’s 1978 photo of John Wayne Gacy for the Chicago Tribune. Following a tip that the Killer Clown was being moved from the Des Plaines police station, Hill photographed Gacy hiding his face with his cuffed hands.
“Look at them!” Gacy said, gesturing toward the photographers. “They’re like a pack of dogs chasing a bone.”2
While we’re on the topic of serial killers…how about this intense, chaotic mess of a perp walk photo by Newsweek’s Robert R. McElroy.
That’s the Son of Sam, aka David Berkowitz, getting hauled into the 84th Precinct in New York City on August 10, 1977. A tabloid editor would rip you to shreds for filing a photo this messy—but I like it. That one creepy blue eye says it all.
Another perp walk photo that would piss off most photo editors is this one of Charles Manson, following his arraignment on December 11, 1969. Architectural, formal, a little bizarre, but full of context and mood.
I tried to track down who shot it—could be Bob Flora, Harold Matosian, or maybe Wally Fong. Anyone know?
Lastly, no discussion of perp walks is complete without mentioning Lee Harvey Oswald—the most notoriously botched perp walk of all time. At 11:21 a.m. on November 24, 1963, Dallas Times Herald photographer Robert “Bob” Jackson hammered the shutter just as Jack Ruby killed Oswald.
Jackson feared Ruby would block his view of Oswald, ruining his Pulitzer Prize-winning perp walk photo. “If he had taken one more step…I’d have a picture of Ruby’s back,” he recalled. “I don’t even like to think about that.”
I appreciate the bluntness. All business.
Was Jackson, like other photographers that cover perp walks, part of what John Wayne Gacy called “a pack of dogs chasing a bone”? Maybe. But it’s the police who orchestrate and encourage the feeding frenzy.
Perp walks aren’t going away. Like mug shots, we need them, because they are not of us.3
Vince Devlin, “The Unabomber Boys,” Main Hall to Main Street (University of Montana—Missoula, Office of University Relations), vol. 12, no. 7 (July 2006): 1.
Terry Sullivan, Killer Clown: The John Wayne Gacy Murders (New York: Pinnacle Books, 1983), 196.
Mark Haworth-Booth, Sandra S. Phillips, Carol Squiers, Police Pictures: The Photograph as Evidence. (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997), 11.
Nicely done. A guilty pleasure, somehow, ogling killers. But very well done. And some very good photography, it goes without saying.
Oh, what does "Capa-sharp" mean. Presumably a reference to Frank, but . . .
Thanks -- I always learn something.
Love reading this Patrick. Thank you for the insight.