"It looked like some pretty crappy work."

I still say there's no such thing as a bad tattoo[*], but whether it's
pretty crappy work or not, there's a tattoo out there that just might
help identify a murder victim:

Investigators visit Atlantic City tattoo parlors
Officials continue to seek help in identifying the other two marsh
victims
By Timothy Puko, Staff Writer

ATLANTIC CITY - The black outline of the heart and the Playboy bunny
is blotchy and inconsistent, like a child's crayon drawing.

"It looked like some pretty crappy work," said Frank Diamond, a
tattoo artist at Skin Sensations Tattoo Studio.

Diamond and tattoo artists at Lucky Lou's Tattoos first saw the work
Friday night, when investigators came to them looking for tips in the
homicide investigation surrounding the four dead women found in Egg
Harbor Township last Monday. One of the two remaining unidentified
women had tattoos, including the crudely drawn Playboy bunny in a heart
on her right shoulder and a frowning bulldog laying on a blood red
patch on the small of her back.

Lucky Lou's keeps copies of its customers' ID cards with descriptions
of their tattoos, but artists there knew the tattoos investigators
showed them would not be on file.

"You can tell by the quality of work," Nick Sabatino said. "It
was somebody who was practicing, not a professional."

Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey S. Blitz declined to discuss how
productive this part of the investigation has been, but did confirm
agents had visited area tattoo parlors.

Artists, however, pointed investigators back out into the neighborhood,
looking for amateur tattoo artists or people who remembered the tattoos
themselves. Almost any amateur artist anywhere, even in jail, could
have drawn the tattoos, Sabatino said. Nor is the Playboy bunny
distinctive, he added.

"The Playboy bunny, there's got to be 10 million people from this
shop alone who get that in the summer time," Sabatino said.

Residents and a business owner in the 100 block of Tennessee Avenue, an
area the first identified victim, Kim Raffo, frequented, said Sunday
they did not recognize the tattoos either.

Some of those same people feared last week that they knew the other
three dead women, one of whom did turn out to be the second identified
victim. Now they think it strange that investigators have yet to
identify one victim they remember from the butterfly tattoo reported on
her back, and stranger that investigators have not come to a house on
the block where several residents knew Raffo.

"Nobody cares," said Kerry Newell, 35, who lives on the block.
"Nobody's been around here because (the victims) were prostitutes and
drug dealers." From:
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/n...-6830799c.html

Prostitute or drug dealer, no one deserves being found dead and
unidentified. I hope the so-called "pretty crappy work" helps
investigators learn the identity of the victim and then the killer's
identity as well.
[*] And re "no bad tattoos" reasoning: Art is subjective. Yes, in my
opinion, there are no bad tattoos. There are, of course, tattoos that
you like or that you don't like for personal reasons.

--
Curt
http://curtjames.com/