If it were not for the whole "this person could be dead" vibe, the vast majority of those pictures were fascinating.

He was obviously a great fan of Polanski's "work".

The messed up thing? You just know that this grants SOMEONE'S Rule 34.

I have been obsessed with these photos since they were posted last week. They are haunting, creepy and sad.

I thought about sending this over a few days ago, but wasn't sure you'd post it. Glad to see it here, though for some reason the article you source doesn't include a link to the actual photos.

They're on flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scpr/sets/72157623600695928/ with the detectives' direct contact information.

OC Register says that 4 have already been id'd as missing persons. Jesus. http://www.ocregister.com/news/photos-239446-alcala-women.html

ah, now I see they are up there, just a bit hidden :) either way, very unsettling to look at these women (and children) and not know if they made it out of the photo shoot alive ...

There is always a creep-out factor when looking at old photos in that the persons may be dead but these take the cake. I have family in Huntington Beach including a lifelong schoolteacher Aunt; it pains me to do it but I am going to send her this link. She tells us that she has former students come up many years later and she recognizes/remembers them, who knows?

Me thinks we need a unicorn chaser after the last couple of posts.

Just a note to point out that this is an example of evidence that it really isn't "different than when WE were kids." The prevalance of serial rapist/murderers is probably the same now as it was 30 years ago. But for some reason people WORRY about it far more.

OC Register says that 4 have already been id'd as missing persons.

No, they haven't...

None of the connections have been confirmed yet, Smith said. Family members have sent other photos of the missing women to detectives, who are comparing them to the photos found in a storage locker Alcala rented near Seattle.

Some of those women appear to be very stoned. I got about 10 pics in and just couldn't look at any more.

Have you noticed that many of the women in the heads-n-shoulders pictures seem to have no top on?

Yep, that's what caused me to stop. Nothing wrong with nudity or photographing nudes but in those particular pictures the women did not seem comfortable at all. It made me sick to think they might they might be doing that unwillingly. In fact in a good number of those pics I had a hard time pinning down the context. Some looked like they might just be sitting around smoking pot and someone got out a camera, some looked like they were deliberately posed at the beach or park but the ones with the "shoulders up" shots in front of the paisley-hippie curtains looked awfully strange.

really? I do not agree.
What makes them noteworthy to me is that they ~aren't~ creepy - they look like just the sort of random, some stoned, some nude, photos that anybody young in 60's/70's would have in a storage locker.

Roman Polanski? Oh you mean the recent Winner of the Berlin Silver Bear for best film, pursued by American Justice Officials for over thirty years and but recently imprisoned for an offense long-forgiven by the "victim"?
What's he got to do with this? A little "drive-by" character assassination to benefit the LA County prosecutor's office?

Here's today's news on Mr Polanski's case: apparently the US prosecutors had knowingly lied to the Swiss Authorities as to the severity of the sentence Mr. Polanski faced, in order to obtain his arrest for extradition. The Swiss won't arrest if the sentence faced for the extradited offense is less than six months....

http://www.torontosun.com/entertainment/celebrities/2010/03/19/13288311.html

Truly OT: In fact having looked over the Posts up about the fellow who got TEN YEARS for growing marijuana and the guy who got TWO YEARS for being beaten up by a cop, it's plain that the US Justice System's sentencing is now little else but a make-work program for,and a cash grab from the public, by the prison corps.

As to these photos, it's the viewer's imaginations which are providing the horror, rather than the images themselves.
As truly great horror directors - which include amongst their number a certain Mr Polanski - well know.

The Affidavit leaked to the public from the County prosecutor's Office was a statement taken from a young person, with none of the procedures now in place to ensure reliability being followed, and never subject to legal cross-examination.

What's your problem with maybe the girl did not want the prosecution to go ahead, and Polanski agreeing to plead guilty to spare her a subpoena and publicity?
Last I heard, the "child" in this case stood shoulder to shoulder with Polanski's lawyers to ask a Judge to throw the matter out.

Who leaked Mr planski's young companion's affidavits to the press? What happened to the materials that were in the County prosecutor's files detailng the unfitness of the Judge hearing Polanki's matter as out by the prosecutor who handled the matter at trial?

Why so quick to assign guilt for a vile offense, in the absence of a proper trial of the facts?
Why the millions spent on going after Polanski, now no threat to any body any where?
Does the LA County prosecutor's Office have unlimited funding to pursue this minor matter, with a possible six-month sentence maximum attached?

Antinous: The LA County prosecutor has no case.

And you seem very quick to condemn others, upon untested evidence, and the word of mouth.

Oh: one other thing.
A person's achievements count in sentencing, for even serious offenses, in civilized jurisdictions.

And perhaps you should take up "who gives a fuck about Mr polanski' work" with those working assiduously to free him from the US justice system (the benefits of which are nobly reported upon regularly by Boing Boing), as well as the Jurors of the Berlin Film Festival.

Relying upon an affidavit leaked by the prosecution, in a case of an offense which carries a six-month sentence (for the sentence must be as it was to be at he time of the Offense, not as it would be now, so much harsher in the new "enlightened", every-one-gets-hard-time, Amerika) to argue for what? The burning of Polanski's films?
The excoriation of any who would claim that a person has the right to make full answer and defense, prior to be accused of "child rape"? That Mr Polanski be now sent to life in an American prison, without ever having a trial?

The term here is "illegal sexual intercourse", Antinous: you are using inflammatory language, which tends to act to the prejudice of the presumed-innocent accused, where guilt is yet undetermined by a full trial on the evidence, as in Polanski's case.

For Polanski only stipulated to facts, in exchange for a set sentence: that set sentence was not to be as agreed, yet they wished to - as you now do - still rely on the stipulated facts: but I take it to impose a harsher sentence than ninety days - everlasting social exile, too? But if the deal did not go through, the facts ain't "as stipulated": certainly not to a sufficnt level to impose any sentence harsher than that agreed - ninety days, in this case.

And that's regardless of your personal opinion that Mr Polanski is a "monstrous child rapist", any legal - or other - defense of whom, in itself, ought to be punished.

The affidavit was perhaps coached, and is not reliable without a full cross examination of the deponent.

Canuck? Way to support a rapist because he makes good movies. So...if Ted Bundy wrote operas should we have let him go? Of all of the silly concepts. Heck, Rodney Alcala raped a girl with a claw-toothed hammer, what sort of "personal achievements" should get this guy off? Surely we should take his actions into consideration...maybe he was a Deacon at his church or something.

Polanski raped the girl. There has never been any real argument about that. He's a rapist and a pedophile. Heck, some of the people defending him have blamed the rape on the girl....nice, defend the rapist by blaming the victim.

Now then, getting back on topic, 9 people have been identified from the photos and all of them are alive (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35954720/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/), though one had been molested.

I'm simply giving Mr Polanski the benefit of the doubt which all criminal defendants enjoy prior to the Prosecution having its evidence tested.
I do not consider what has happened in this case to have been a "trial of the evidence". Everything was being "stipulated and agreed": but if the agreement was not really made (ie if prosecutor & judge "sorted it out" without defense counsel's presence), then the deal is all the way off, and not "oh the affidavit is still uncontested so it at least is unquestionably accurate in all detail", half-way off.
But the Court of public opinion will it seems vote at the box-office, as to how much weight the allegations of the LA County Prosecutors & the Procedures of the California Courts should carry in their Judgment of his oeuvre - I trust that you will allow Mr Polanski that, that he has an oeuvre, at least?
If not an opportunity to make full answer and defense.

Sorry sorry...I think the LA county prosecutor ought to just drop that other matter already.

But I stand by my earlier comment on this foto topic: the horror in these fotos is to be found more in the imaginations and minds of their viewers, than in the arrangement of the colored blobs of emulsion on the paper.

That being said, it does make me sick to think that these are fotos of the victims to be of the photographer's violence: but I've no proof of that they were, and as my posts above make clear, evidence counts, for me.

That is, not knowing one way or the other, I will choose that belief in this case which causes me less stress, or more happiness: why not? So, until I find out for sure otherwise, I'll not consider any of these particular people to have been victims of anything other than a camera being pointed at them by a creep and the shutter squeezed.

Although suspended, by my awareness of my ignorance of the true facts, in any progress towards despair which could be threatened by a morbid speculation or contemplation of the possibilities of these faces' various fates: being not ignorant of those possibilities, yet gives these images a (more?) somber air, to my eyes.
To say it another way: My ignorance of their actual fates, together with my awareness of who was directing this camera's gaze,( and thus my strong reluctance to identify with that gaze) leads me to grant these particular faces in these particular photos greater dignity than I perhaps would give them otherwise.
Regardless of the creep that is reported to have squeezed the shutter, these people deserve respect. Whatever their fates may have been. Which until I know the contrary, I will assume to have been ordinarily varied.

OT: Jeez, feelin' wordy tonight...better get out & about.

As I said, 9 identified...all alive. One had been molested but the statute of limitations had run out.

And Xeni? I'll keep it to one. The rest is just too ludicrous anyhow.

I started to look but... it's too upsetting. I'm sorry. Personal issues. I can't not empathize. Yeah.

Oh my god. I recognize the men in this photo. I can verify that two of them are dead, one of them murdered.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scpr/4424638865/in/set-72157623600695928/

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=488

The last photo is awfully disturbing...look closely at her mouth there is a red ring shape around it, and there is terror in her eyes. Was she gagged with something prior to this photo? Is she alive after this? This is too creepy :(

If anyone has information on the young boy picture 110. Please let me know. When I first say this picture my heat dropped. He looks like he could be my 14 year old sons twin. I broke out in tears. Wondering if he was alive or dead. I pray he is alive. I wondered what his parents may have been going through. I looked at his hands, and I looked at my sons hands, I estimate he had to have been around 14, 15 or 16 but I doubt older. Please this boy has been on my mind ever since I saw his picture. When I see my son, I see him and I cry a lot for him and pray a lot for him. If he is alive please make it known on here.
Anna