Viewed: "Death Scenes" Edited by Sean Tejaratchi

Viewed: Death Scenes: a homicide detective's scrapbook, edited and designed by Sean Tejaratchi, 1996, 0922915296.

I picked this up after reading Steve Hodel's book. He refers to Death Scenes when writing about the Lipstick Killer. Huddleston had a couple photos of the Lipstick Killer corpse in his scrapbook.

Huddleston was a policeman for 30 years in the Los Angeles area. He was a homicide detective for LAPD but, beyond that, the book has little information on him. The introduction says the editors asked LAPD for more information on Huddleston but none was provided.

The photographs are mostly gruesome and sad scenes of homicides, suicides, and accidents. There are photos of arrests, hookers, flashers, and body parts. Shotgun suicides obliterate the face and head. Dead children photos make me turn away.

Comments:
1. The intro talks about how the gruesome crimes show that the good old days were also bad old old days. Not shit, Sherlock. It annoys me greatly when people say how awful crime is. How callous today's teen murderers are. How you never heard of mass murder in the '50s. Just because you never heard it does not mean it never happened. Of all of today's crime only a fraction gets newspaper coverage.
2. My reading this book began with Megan Abbotts' Bury Me Deep. I read that. I starting reading Abbott's blog. The blog discussions touched on Hodel's book. I read Hodel's book and learned of this. I read this book and see photos of the dismembered corpse of Hedvig Samuelson, murdered by Ruth Winnie Judd. Judd was the basis for Bury Me Deep.