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.
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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.
Sara's other arrests include suspicion of driving on a suspended license, giving a false ID to a law enforcement officer, and various probation violations.
"All my problems have stemmed from drugs"
Sara, how 34, told The Sun she thinks her troubled past was heavily influenced by the death of her father, whom she described as her best friend.
Aged 18, 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."
Aged 21, she described a dangerous encounter with three men, who asked her to leave the club she was working at with them to earn more money. It quickly became clear they were expecting sex.
She says she pretended to hold them at gunpoint - despite having no weapon at all, and stole $500 from them.
"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 said.
“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.”
"My past has been thrown in my face"
In 2012, when Sara was 22, gossip columnist Perez Hilton ran a piece on her mugshots, comparing her to Angelina Jolie.
Two years later, she released a video defending herself after becoming infamous online, saying she had been receiving death threats.
She also spoke out about false claims doing the rounds on the internet, including a rumour that her charges involved the killing of house pets and lighting a house on fire.
She went on to say 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.
"I wasn't thinking to myself, 'I'll go and commit this crime and I'll have my picture taken. It'll get on the internet and I'll get some sort of attention from this.'"
"There was one murder guy who was really cool"
Her viral fame had real consequences for her, and she received disturbing fan mail, often from convicts.
“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.”
Nowadays, Sara lives a very different life.
According to her LinkedIn, she is now a 'multi-faceted, award-winning visual artist with a fearless approach to brand marketing' with '10 years of customer care experience'.
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.”
She is now more 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.
Anish Vij