Portland Rogues Gallery: A Baker’s Dozen Arresting Criminals from Portland History

In the nineteenth century, the art of photography revolutionized police methods of criminal identification as detectives made collections of criminal portraits in “Rogues Galleries.”

In this engaging collection, J. D. Chandler presents portraits of thirteen infamous criminals from Portland, illuminating the history of crime in that city. Some of them straddled the law and rose to positions of great power, like James Lappeus, Portland’s first police chief; Senator John Mitchell; and Tom Johnson, the notorious Black vice-king of Portland.

Some were career criminals like Dutch Pete Stroff, who created a regional crime empire based in Portland, and Little Dutch Herman, who ran a murder-for-hire ring from his nightclub, The Wigwam.

Others were brutal opportunists, like Portland’s most notorious woman of the nineteenth century, Carrie Bradley; mob-enforcer turned serial killer, Douglas Franklin Wright; and Alvin “Bud” Brown, Portland’s forgotten serial killer. All of them lived in Portland and left their bloody mark on the city.