A woman who became widely known as ‘mugshot beauty’ – with 18 of her police booking photos splashed across the internet – has said she ‘didn’t realise there were real consequences’ to her behaviour
Sara Jane Isbister’s online fame came from a series of police booking photos over the course of a decade, stemming from a string of petty crimes.
In a similar situation to ‘hot felon’ Jeremy Meeks, people were struck by her captivating look, as Sara’s first mugshot at 21 was taken for reckless driving and failing to pay a speeding fine.
Additional arrests also went viral after Maxim magazine featured her in a gallery of ‘ridiculously photogenic’ female mugshots.
Isbister was arrested six times in 2011. While many of her earlier bookings concerned her failing to appear before a tribunal when summoned, she was later arrested on suspicion of more serious offences.
In July 2011, she was arrested on suspicion of theft, then two months later, she was arrested on suspicion of possessing drug paraphernalia.
Two months after that, she was arrested on suspicion of possessing cocaine, then in April 2012 she was arrested on suspicion of possession or use of narcotics equipment.
Other arrests include suspicion of driving on a suspended license, giving a false ID to a law enforcement officer, and various probation violations.
Tragically, by the time she was 29, Sara’s appearance had markedly changed, as she was arrested once again in 2019 on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance.
“I didn’t realise there were real consequences at that age. I was just so reckless. I just wanted to be the baddest of the baddest,” Sara, now 34, told The Sun.
While some commentators were simply admiring the way she looked, others were spreading fake rumours online – like the supposed ‘murder of a house pet’.
“I was livid and upset,” Sara said, calling the claims ‘totally untrue’.
“I had no idea how much this was going to screw things up for me. This is all people are going to know me for now. But then I kept doing stupid things.
“I didn’t realise people were going to string them together and make articles out of it.”
What ‘mugshot beauty’ looks like now
Sara says her ‘life is now so far from’ those mugshot photos.
“I was raised with morals and values but I was just so edgy,” the artist and writer admitted. “Everything had to be more and more hardcore.”
Back in 2012, Sara said in response to Perez Hilton likening her to Angelina Jolie that she is ‘just another normal girl who has hobbies and dreams just like everybody else’.
“Except my past has been thrown in my face because it has been publicly leaked onto the internet,” she added.
Nowadays, Sara is focused on her art and writing career, though she says she wishes she’d invested more time in her career during her ‘bad girl’ era.
‘All the problems in my life have stemmed from using drugs’
Sara, however, thinks her troubled past was heavily influenced by the death of her father, whom she described as her best friend.
Around that time, she worked as a waitress at Hooters before moving into cocktail waitressing and eventually stripping, environments she says exposed her to drugs.
“All the problems in my life have stemmed from using drugs,” she said. “It’s never been anything good that has stemmed from that.
“When I was using drugs and stripping, the future was not the first thing I was thinking about.
“Every day is what’s going on right in front of me, which is a very dangerous way of living.”
‘Just get out of it otherwise you’ll end up like me’
Sara said it got to the stage where she was receiving fan letters in prison.
“There was one murder guy who was really cool to be honest,” she said.
One of his letters warned her not ‘to live this life while you’re young, just get out of it otherwise you’ll end up like me’.
“He was actually pretty nice and encouraging,” Sara added. “He even put a picture of himself in there.”
Other letters, meanwhile, were a lot more ‘creepy’, as one inmate – another convicted murderer – became obsessed with her.
Referring to himself as a ‘juggalo’, which is a follower of a violent clown-themed culture, he would write that she ‘better be ready to go with him’.
“He wrote at least five letters to me and then he would get really angry at me when I didn’t write him back,” Sara explained.
“He was a creep and a weirdo. It was scary because these people were sending the mail to my home, so they knew where I lived.”
