The Las Vegas Sun explores the dark world of "murderabilia" -- the sale of collectibles linked to serial killers and the worst of humanity.
The story includes this disturbing passage:
There are a number of online auction houses specializing in
murderabilia, selling items of unusual appeal: hair clipped from
Charles Manson; dirt from the crawl space where John Wayne Gacy hid his
victims; school shooter Wayne Lo's sperm left to dry on a picture of a
pretty girl; a "fried hair" plucked off the floor under Ted Bundy's
execution chair.
The most prized of these items -- such as a Gacy oil painting of his
clown alter-ego, Pogo -- can sell for thousands. Others, the gimcracks
and gewgaws of killers with less cachet, sell for just a few dollars.
Some want to stop the trade:
This makes Andy Kahan crazy. Kahan is the director of the Houston
Mayor's Crime Victims Office and perhaps the most vocal critic of
murderabilia. He's spent years lobbying legislators and helping draft "notoriety for profit" laws that have criminalized the sale of such
collectibles in California, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas and Utah. Now
Kahan is working with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to pass a federal bill
that would punish prisoners who use the U.S. Postal Service to mail any
items for profit, effectively squelching much of the murderabilia trade.
The key to passing such legislation is not limiting what prisoners
can do, the art they can make or the poems they can write, but rather
limiting what they can sell. Otherwise, it's a violation of First
Amendment rights, which is exactly what got the 1971 "Son of Sam" law
overturned. Designed to prevent serial killer David Berkowitz, and
anybody else, from profiting from book sales, the U.S. Supreme Court
determined in 1987 that the law was a violation of free speech
protections.
So let them draw, or mail photos, or give away hair clippings, or
whatever else they want to send, Kahan says, but don't let them make a
dime.
"From our perspective, it's blood money, plain and simple," he said. "There’s nothing more nauseating and disgusting."
This is one of the best-known online murderabilia Web sites.
Last year, TIME magazine published a useful story on the trade and the effort to stop it.
