---
title: Wanted! For Murder — Her Careless Talk Costs Lives
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/wanted-for-murder-careless-talk/
description: Styled as a wanted poster, this image accuses an unnamed, glamorous woman of 'murder' for indiscreet conversation, superimposing drowning soldiers behind…
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

[![Wanted! For Murder — Her Careless Talk Costs Lives](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/wanted-for-murder-careless-talk.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/wanted-for-murder-careless-talk.jpg)

# Wanted! For Murder — Her Careless Talk Costs Lives

Styled as a wanted poster, this image accuses an unnamed, glamorous woman of 'murder' for indiscreet conversation, superimposing drowning soldiers behind her. A single social lapse is framed as directly and solely causal for deaths at sea, and the blame is gendered onto one civilian rather than distributed across command, weather, or enemy action.

- **Date:** 1942
- **Period:** [Second World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=wwii)
- **Made by:** U.S. government home-front security campaign; photograph by Victor Keppler
- **Region:** [North America](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=north-america)
- **Country:** [United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=united-states)
- **Medium:** [Poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=poster)
- **Issuer type:** [State](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=state)
- **Regime:** [Roosevelt Administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=roosevelt-administration)
- **Leader:** [Franklin D. Roosevelt](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=franklin-d-roosevelt)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Warn or inform](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=warn-inform)
- **Themes:** [Home front](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=home-front), [Security and surveillance](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=security-surveillance)
- **Event:** [World War II](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#event=world-war-ii)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/)
- **Regime:** [Roosevelt administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roosevelt-administration/)
- **Leader:** [Franklin D. Roosevelt](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/roosevelt-administration/#franklin-d-roosevelt)
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Source:** [U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22WANTED_FOR_MURDER_-_HER_CARELESS_TALK_COSTS_LIVES%22_-_NARA_-_513599.jpg), retrieved September 25, 2026
- **Rights:** Public domain (U.S. government work) Photo: Victor Keppler. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, World War II Posters series (1941-1945).

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
WANTED!

FOR MURDER

Her careless talk costs lives

[illegible — small printer's credit, bottom left]

Distributed for the issuing agencies by the Office of War Information
```

A photographer's signature ('Victor Keppler') is written in cursive across the lower-left corner of the photograph itself; it is credited in this entry's license/notes fields rather than transcribed here as body text. A small printed line at the bottom-left of the poster (likely a printing-office credit, matching the style of the bottom-right 'Distributed for the issuing agencies...' line) is too small and low-contrast in this scan to read with confidence.

[← This Man Is Your Friend: Russian. He Fights for Freedom](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/this-man-is-your-friend-russian-1942/) ['Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry' (exclusion order posted in San Francisco) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/exclusion-order-japanese-ancestry-1942/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)
- [時局圖 (The Situation in the Far East / Map of the Present Situation), newer version with English labels](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/situation-in-far-east-tse-tsan-tai-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)