The best immortalized criminal moments of the decade.
Of all the great things the Internet’s done, “worldwide dissemination and eternal preservation of ridiculous mug shots” has to be in the top quartile.
I went through as many mug shots as I could find from this decade… almost all of which have been collected by one of the world’s greatest websites, The Smoking Gun… and put together this list of the strangest, greatest and/or funniest mug shots from the 2000s.
Enjoy.
1 | Way too serious
This mug shot was taken of 20-year-old Spencer Taylor of Three Rivers, Michigan, in 2008. Spencer went to see a midnight showing of The Dark Knight and dressed as Heath Ledger’s Joker, complete with purple suit and grease paint.
He was arrested at the theater for trying to steal Dark Knight memorabilia. It’s not quite as bad as blowing up a hospital or trying to make a boat full of rich people blow up a boat full of convicts (or vice versa)… but, ya know, gotta start somewhere.
2 | The Cow Lady
On September 27, 2008 (which is NOT Halloween, mind you), the Middletown, Ohio, police got a call: A woman was standing in the road, chasing children, yelling at people, urinating on a person’s porch, causing a disturbance… and doing all of this in a full-body cow costume.
The woman was 32-year-old Michele Allen of Middletown, Ohio… who was ultimately arrested for disorderly conduct.
She smelled of alcohol but, to this day, no one knows why she chose to have her meltdown while wearing a cow costume.
(PUNFEST! That’s right, I’m feeling bullish, so it’s time to pun it up! I guess she was just udderly crazy! But hey, if she wouldn’t mooove out of the street, the cops didn’t have a choice! She was grazing all kinds of hell! Alright, punfest over; I’m done milking this.)
3 | Celebrity mugshot of the decade
I think the 2000s were the tipping point where there were more celebrities who got arrested than celebrities who didn’t.
I only picked one, and, with apologizes to smug-ass Tom Delay and greased-up and Jew-hatin’ Mel Gibson, I went with Nick Nolte.
His September, 2002, DUI arrest really provided everything you could want in a celebrity mug shot: Weird clothing selection, absolutely crazy hair and a complete evisceration of the celebrity’s intricately-crafted public image.
4 | World’s Greatest Dad
This 2008 mug shot of 33-year-old Daniel Everett of Clarkston, Michigan, is perfect because it has more layers than a two-layer dip. (Three.)
(1): It’s an guy who got arrested wearing a World’s Greatest Dad shirt, which is funny in a vacuum. But…
(2): It’s not just a World’s Greatest Dad shirt, the “W” in World’s is the WWE logo, which adds a whole pro wrestling/low-class spin to it. And, on top of that…
(3): The reason this Great Dad was arrested is because he tried to solicit sex from an undercover cop posing as a 14-year-old girl in a chatroom. (Not that preying on minors is ever funny, but this smacks of fantastic irony. At least under the Internet-approved definition of irony, which means “anything even borderline coincidental.”)
5 | Red-handed, gold-mouthed — it’s all the same
This delightful huffer is 41-year-old Patrick Tribbet of Bellaire, Ohio. (Which, by the way, takes the running tally from this list up to two each from Ohio and Michigan. Go Big Ten!)
In 2005, he had been huffing gold spray paint and, when his stash ran out, he wanted to get a refill. So he went to a dollar store, mouth covered in gold paint, and tried to buy more. They called the cops and he was arrested for “abusing harmful intoxicants.” Which, in my opinion, shouldn’t be a crime. When I buy spray paint, it’s my business what I do with it. Whether I paint a wall, inhale it or use it as a rattle for my baby, it’s my spray paint. I say: Legalize it.
6 | Nothing faux here
This is 25-year-old Anna Clifford of Memphis, Tennessee, and the mug shot comes from her DUI arrest in March of 2007.
I don’t understand the physics of how she was driving. Unless she had a convertible. (Otherwise, how could she cram that hair into a car… then have it so perfectly vertical when she got to the police station?)
Also, I really wish the Memphis PD had taken her mug shot in front of a wall with different height measurements on it. Because I think she’s up there in Manute Bol territory.
7 | Keystone
This one is 39-year-old Robert Morin of Lewiston, Maine, who really should’ve parlayed this arrest into getting a national commercial for Keystone…
Sure, according to The Smoking Gun, he had that face because he became “flexible” when he took out his false teeth… not because he had some bitter Milwaukee’s Best or an equivalent Keystone competitor… but I dare to dream.
8 | It’s like a free trip to Glamour Shots
In March of 2006, 72-year-old Samuel McGilton of Wheeling, West Virginia, was arrested for masturbating in a public library (in Bellaire, Ohio — same town where the paint huffing guy above was arrested) while dressed in a flowered skirt, earrings, a woman’s wig and red high heels. I guess you gotta do whatever it takes to stay in your kids’ lives.
9 | The Runaway Bride
Remember this wide-eyed broad? Jennifer Wilbanks was a mid-2000s news sensation — after she skipped out on her wedding and initially said she was kidnapped by a Hispanic man.
After the dust settled, she tried to use her infamy to make a buck… but she just looked like a deer in headlights. HI-YO!
(I could totally write for Leno.)
10 | Who doesn’t?
There are thousands of great mug shots featuring people wearing stupid t-shirts… and since stupid t-shirts are an indispensable staple of the ’00s, I wanted to pick one representative for this list.
The winner: 28-year-old Jon Matteson of Dunedin, Florida. In July of 2005, he was arrested for drunk driving… and had the honor of being forever tied in to this t-shirt…
11 | And finally…
This is 80-year-old Thomas Preston of Florida. The Smoking Gun didn’t say why he was arrested, but I’m thinking it was for kidnapping after he attached thousands of helium-filled balloons to his house and flew it to South America… all with someone else’s eight-year-old son inside.
