From Kurt Cobain to Martin Luther King Jr., see some of history's most famous mugshots and learn why these iconic figures were arrested in the first place.
David Bowie
The charges soon disappeared, but Bowie never performed in Rochester again.Public Domain
Pablo Escobar
Kurt Cobain
Rosa Parks
Johnny Cash
Joseph Stalin
Charles Manson
Manson was convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder and remains in prison to this day.Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Martin Luther King Jr.
Jim Morrison
Frank Sinatra
Bill Gates
Lee Harvey Oswald
Tupac Shakur
O.J. Simpson
John Wayne Gacy
He was ultimately executed on May 10, 1994.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
Sid Vicious
The Sex Pistols bassist died of a drug overdose (some say intentionally) before he could stand trial and the police subsequently dropped the case.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Larry King
Vladimir Lenin
Steve McQueen
Jimi Hendrix
John Dillinger
The Depression-era gangster served time for assault, robbery, and murder before dying in a shootout with police in Chicago on July 22, 1934. NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
Benito Mussolini
Malcolm X
John Gotti
David Berkowitz (a.k.a. "Son of Sam")
He was ultimately convicted of murder and remains in prison to this day.Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Jane Fonda
However, the actress/antiwar activist was only carrying vitamins, not illegal drugs, and insists that she was targeted by the Nixon White House because of her anti-establishment political convictions.Public Domain
Jeffrey Dahmer
Dahmer was soon convicted and sent to prison, where a fellow inmate killed him on November 28, 1994.Curt Borgwardt/Sygma via Getty Images
Charles "Lucky" Luciano
Ted Bundy
Bundy was convicted several times over and eventually executed at Raiford Prison in Starke, Florida, on January 24, 1989.Wikimedia Commons
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel
Mick Jagger
Hugh Grant
Al Capone
If you believe that people only truly reveal themselves when the proverbial chips are down, there may be no truer form of portraiture than the mugshot.
A staple of Western police procedure dating back to the mid-19th century, the mugshot captures its recently arrested subjects at their most angry, vulnerable, defiant, or defeated — and therefore perhaps at their most honest.
Unlike the posed and polished studio portrait, the mugshot tests the mettle of its subjects during the very moment at which they've been backed into quite a corner.
This makes the mugshots of famous historical figures all the more interesting, as their commonly-seen portraits have often been edited to the nth degree.
In spite — or perhaps because of — their raw nature, the mugshots may also affirm what more traditional portraits of these iconic men and women have led us to believe about them.
If you think that, say, Martin Luther King Jr. was resolute courage personified, you'll find that in his 1956 mugshot. If you believe that Jim Morrison was a bumbling drunk, you'll likewise find that in his 1963 mugshot. Or if you believe that Bill Gates really is just a huge dork, you'll find that too.
As you look through more and more famous mugshots of notable artists, leaders, celebrities, and celebrity criminals of decades past, you indeed start to suspect that you're learning something about these people that most other kinds of photographs could never truly teach you.
After this look at famous mugshots, allow these historical mugshots to show you the birth of the booking photo all the way back in the 19th century. Then, read up on six famous acquittals of well-known and powerful people who probably got away with crimes like rape and murder.
