Can you know someone is bad news just by looking at a photograph of them?

You cannot tell anything about the character of a person from their image captured by a lens and which simply shows them represented in time and space for a mere microsecond. The examples you give are just projection on your behalf. Somebody reminds you of a person you used to or currently dislike, then of course that bias is going to cloud your judgment of that person, and a lot of that thinking is occuring below the surface. It says absolutely nothing about the person in the picture.

Rose West looked like your average friendly housewife and neighbour, somebody seemingly ordinary and harmless when you saw her in a photograph. She was also arguably the most sadistic female serial killer that ever existed.

Photos of some lads from the Freewheelers give an impression of a fierce, evil looking type of person who would slit your throat if you looked sideways at them. The same lad cries at a sad movie and donates his time and money to charity.

You absolutely cannot know from a picture if you will or wont take to a person. Talking to them, getting to know them is the only way to decide if their character is aligned to yours.

Their attire would be more telling, there's a certain style that obvious scummers have. Unfortunately, the youth of today appear to think it's a style worth copying, blurring the lines between being able to identify a potential scummer and a young lad just following the fashion trend.

Then again, some of the biggest scumbags wear suits. People seem to think there's something in somesones eyes, but only see it after this person was caught doing something nasty. They didn't/wouldn't have seen it beforehand. I believe it's more a case of there's a scumbag in everyone, just most people hide it well or prevent it from being other peoples problems.

You can't and people who think you can are naive. The human brain often jumps to conclusions based on the fact that certain facial expressions often mean certain things but you could be looking at a picture of a nice guy who's just seen his wife getting assaulted.

it is. It was taken when he had put on a few pounds. it was published in The Daily Beast.

More importantly, why another weird thread?

Nope never, never make assumptions on how someone looks. Any idea who this is?

Nope, I'll give you a clue. Theres a statue dedicated to him on the Liffey

Who is he then. Never heard of Julien Blanc but without Googling him im guessing he killed people.