wondering about origin of snuff photos

August 28, 2008 7:54 AM

Back in the mid 90s, in the early days of internetting, I visited the alt.tasteless.photos newsgroup for the first and last time; I saw a set of photos there that I still wonder about. (Gory inside)

This was a series of photos taken in what looked like the eighties of a man and a woman who had murdered a guy, posing with his body in various states of mutilation (i.e., with his junk in his mouth, etc.), laughing and pointing. There was no question of it being faked or photoshopped. I've wondered since then who those people were, and why there was not more notoriety around the killing and the resulting photos. Anybody know what I'm talking about? (Note, I'm not looking for a trip down memory lane here - pls don't bother digging up links to the photos. I'm just wondering if these photos are in fact well-known, and what the backstory was.)

posted by luser to society & culture (13 comments total)

A lot of those photos arent murder photos. They are just weirdos who get their hands on cadavers. This also true of a lot of "snuff films."
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:26 AM on August 28, 2008

Could this have been one of the Paul Bernardo/Karla Homolka killings? The timeframe fits, so does the man and woman team, but maybe not the victim's gender. That received tons of publicity here in Canada, back in the day.
posted by Milkman Dan at 8:29 AM on August 28, 2008

Seconding ape. It's because there were no killings.

All the fretting about it aside, not so much as one snuff film has been found. Time and again, what is originally decried in the press as a film of a murder turns out, upon further investigation, to be a fake. Police on three continents routinely investigate films brought to them, and so far this has always been their verdict.

posted by ignignokt at 8:32 AM on August 28, 2008

Incidentally, there's a recent-ish documentary on the topic which refutes the Snopes position. Can't imagine watching it.
posted by jbickers at 8:40 AM on August 28, 2008

I remember the series. It was some biker killing and was pretty weird. I did some Google searching and think this is probably it.
posted by JJ86 at 9:29 AM on August 28, 2008

ignignokt, plenty of murders and killings on film exist.

I know exactly the photos you're talking about luser, they did the rounds around 2000/01. They were highly disturbing, taken in a dingy house IIRC, and I also wondered about the backstory.
posted by fire&wings at 9:32 AM on August 28, 2008

Here's some more info: Natural Born Loosers (NSFW!!!)

Come on folks ^^, either do some research or don't post. Guessing about fake snuff doesn't cut it.
posted by JJ86 at 9:33 AM on August 28, 2008

Yeah the link posted by JJ86 is them.
posted by fire&wings at 9:33 AM on August 28, 2008

Some backstory on a snopes thread.
posted by fire&wings at 9:36 AM on August 28, 2008

fire&wings writes "ignignokt, plenty of murders and killings on film exist."

snopes, and probably the police, are using a fairly narrow definition of snuff film. They only consider it to be a snuff film if the film was produced for commercial entertainment purposes. So if Paul and Karla's tapes had been found by an electrician instead of the police and released to the web snopes wouldn't consider them snuff films because there was no commercial intent. Same with say the beheading of Eugene Armstrong.

It's probably only a matter of time before sociopaths like Paul and Karla intentionally release film of their exploits to youtube for kicks.
posted by Mitheral at 11:12 AM on August 28, 2008

Just for clarification - the Bernardo / Homolka tapes did not include the murder of any of their victims, only the events prior to them.
posted by davebush at 12:00 PM on August 28, 2008

Yes, sorry got a bit sloppy there.
posted by Mitheral at 12:02 PM on August 28, 2008

Well I had conveniently forgotten the sexual orgy with the corpse parts, and apparently the woman has been living free among us for fifteen or so years now... But it's interesting to finally know the backstory.

Now the challenge is going to be unknowing all this. Thanks, and thanks to mods for clearing out the links to the photos in the thread.
posted by luser at 1:52 PM on August 28, 2008