Beschreibung:

[CRIME & POLICE—NEW JERSEY]. Crime scrapbooks with shocking murder and crime scene photographs of a New Jersey state trooper. V.p. (principally New Jersey and neighboring states, bulk mid-1920s-30s). Five folio volumes, largest 14 x 8 ½”, belonging to Sgt. Joseph J. Orzechowski of the New Jersey State Police. Hundreds of pages, generally neatly organized with various materials including photographs, mugshots, missing and wanted persons flyers (including Charles Lindbergh Jr. kidnapping/abduction poster), clippings, programs, typed documents, letters including J. Edgar Hoover on FBI letterhead, certificates, and related ephemera; many pages with the trooper’s notations. Binders well worn; some contents occasionally stained and otherwise worn. SHOULD BE EXAMINED. Two of these scrapbooks are devoted to murders, fatalities, and other serious violent crimes, and are filled with chilling and graphic photographs of dead bodies taken at crime scenes and in morgues. The three remaining scrapbooks include New Jersey police photographs and memorabilia, including police training and instructional images, parades, and other contemporary scraps. “DEATH FORGOT TO ‘TAKE A HOLIDAY’—AND SO—READ ON!” The crime scrapbooks include photographs of the subject, crime scene, and news clippings. Murders of gangsters, racketeers, bandits, and robbers are included, as well as axe murder, murder-suicide, suicides, unidentified bodies, and various homicides. The victims are mostly white, with a few black and other ethnicities, and include men and women of various ages. Typed and signed confessions and police interviews with subjects on crimes such as bestiality, incest, and sodomy are also pasted in the scrapbooks. At least one hate crime is recorded. One volume begins with a photograph of an electric chair and the inked heading, “death forgot to ‘”take a holiday”-and so read on!” Anticipating a future audience, the policeman has added captions throughout the scrapbooks, as well as a paragraph on suicide at the front, and concludes one scrapbook, “Don’t be a policeman! Be a Laborer – a street cleaner – a WPA worker – but don’t be a policeman!...”