Why We Love Serial Killers

by Scott Bonn

  A John Wayne Gacy painting titled “Hi Ho, Hi Ho.” (photo credit: Associated Press)

  The dealers of murderabilia emphasized that a prospective seller must first befriend an incarcerated killer and gain his trust before requesting to represent his art or other items for sale. In 2011, Eric Gein told Christina Ng of ABC News:

  You can’t write to Richard Ramirez or Charles Manson and say, “Send me some artwork.” It doesn’t work like that. The relationship we have with these infamous serial killers, it takes time. It takes trust. You have to build a friendship, build a relationship just like you would with anyone else.112

  Gein said that once he forges a relationship with a killer, he is forthcoming about the fact that he wants to sell items of merchandise or art from that person. He finds that incarcerated criminals appreciate his candor once a relationship has developed between them. Gein is not the only one to follow these principles. Rick Staton developed a working relationship with serial killer Elmer Wayne Henley in addition to John Wayne Gacy, using the same method. Staton said that he was first attracted to Henley because of the “ghoulish horror” of his crimes. Henley is Houston’s most notorious serial killer of all time. In the early 1970s, Henley and his partner in killing, Dean Corll, carried out the horrific sexual murders of twenty-seven children. In the film Collectors Staton said, “Henley’s murders were the most ghastly thing I’d ever heard of and I couldn’t wait to get to know the guy. The brush with deviant celebrity was the big thrill for me.” Now serving multiple life sentences, Henley began to paint at Staton’s behest and the dealer is proud that he got Henley to “take the first step” into creating art.

  Opposition to the Murderabilia Trade

  Many people consider the sale of serial killer artwork and memorabilia to be tasteless, sensationalistic, exploitative, and obscene. Such people say that it poisons the memory of the victims, and that it is a sign of an American culture in spiritual decline. Commenting on this perspective in the film Collectors, Dr. Harold Schechter said:

  What people have found so reprehensible about art [and artifacts] produced by serial killers is not the subject matter itself . . . What inspires such widespread disgust is the mere notion that convicted lust killers are allowed to be treated like minor celebrities and enjoy the ego gratification of having their work put on display.

  Not surprisingly, the business of selling murder memorabilia has many vocal opponents, particularly among the families of victims. One such person is the brother of a boy who was killed by serial killer Elmer Wayne Henley, whose art is represented by Rick Staton. The victim’s brother, who chooses to remain anonymous, said, “These boys died in agony. This killer up here gets an art show? This is an abortion of justice.” Another family member of a victim who has aggressively spoken out against the murderabilia business is Dee Sumpter of Charlotte, North Carolina, whose daughter Shawna was killed by serial strangler Henry Louis Wallace in 1993. “The way he killed Shawna was a very personal killing,” Sumpter told ABC News’ Charlotte affiliate WSOC-TV. She said, “It was with his hands, he strangled her, and the unmitigated gall of him to sell a photo or an artist rendering of such—I simply don’t have words.” Sketches of Wallace’s hands have been listed for sale online starting at $100 each. Sumpter has admonished the public, saying, “Have a conscience. Have a heart. Have a mind. Legislatively, I know there has to be something that can be done to stop this.”

  Perhaps the most vocal opponent and leader of efforts to ban the sale of criminal art and artifacts is Andy Kahan, a victim rights advocate who works for the Houston Police Department. He has spent twenty years working against the sale of “murderabilia,” a term that he coined to define any items that have market value simply because of their connection to a murderer. Kahan told ABC News that the sale of murderabilia is a “wacky, insidious industry.” He said, “I think society has always had a fascination with the morbid and the ones who commit these kinds of crimes” but he finds the collecting of murderabilia to be “pathetic.” Kahan is troubled and incensed by the lack of consideration shown by the buyers and sellers of merchandise for the feelings of victims’ families. Regarding this, Kahan told ABC News, “From a victim’s perspective, nothing is more nauseating and disgusting than finding out that the person who murdered your loved one is hocking items to make a buck. It’s like being gutted all over again by the criminal justice system.”113 He further noted that the public can easily list the names of celebrity serial killers such as Dahmer, Ramirez, or Bundy but cannot recall a single one of their victims. Kahan is correct in this assessment and it is a sad and ironic truth about the public’s fascination with serial murder.

  Andy Kahan, a victim rights advocate and opponent of the “murderabilia” trade, in his Houston office. (photo credit: Associated Press)

  Kahan got interested in making sure that serial killers could not profit from their crimes after reading a newspaper article about the late Arthur Shawcross who had sold his original paintings and poems from his prison cell in upstate New York. Prior to his capture, Shawcross had sexually assaulted, raped, killed, and mutilated at least fourteen people, including two children, in the 1970s and 1980s. When Kahan discovered that murder memorabilia was being sold on eBay in 1999, he made it his mission to stop the sales. He told ABC News, “I was just stunned and mortified that individuals can commit these types of offenses and go on to further claim infamy and immortality” through the sale of their artifacts to the public. He eventually convinced eBay to prohibit the selling of the merchandise but the vendors had already tapped into a niche market and discovered that there was great demand for the items, so a handful of entrepreneurs such as Eric Gein built their own websites.

  Crafting legislation to curb the murderabilia market has been difficult and mostly unsuccessful. On September 25, 2013, a bill was introduced in Congress for the third time by Senator John Cornyn (R.-Texas) to combat the sale of murderabilia. The law is intended to ban a specific list of criminals from sending anything outside of prison by mail. The outcome of the proposed bill was undetermined at the time of this publication.

  Kahan has found out that securing legislation to outlaw the sale of murderabilia is very difficult because the vendors are not doing anything illegal. In the murderabilia business, a third party outside of prison is doing the selling and profiting from the items, which is entirely legal. Moreover, if the murderabilia vendors choose to send money or other gifts to the imprisoned criminals in exchange for their cooperation it is legal, so long as the killers are not profiting directly from the sale of the items. Kahan has twice attempted to file a federal law that would prohibit the selling of murderabilia but has not been able to get a hearing. In 2011, Kahan told Christina Ng of ABC News:

  Unfortunately, they [the vendors] are correct. It’s legal. I’m a firm believer in free enterprise and capitalism, but you should not be able to rob, rape and murder and then turn around and make a buck from it. It’s that simplistic. It’s one of the most egregious things I’ve seen after being involved in the criminal justice system for twenty-five years.114

  The Son of Sam Laws

  The so-called Son of Sam laws keep convicted felons in many states from profiting from their crimes by selling their crime stories directly to book publishers, film producers, or television networks. According to Kahan, the Son of Sam laws are based on a premise that “when you commit [extremely violent] crimes, you lose certain rights and privileges. One of them is the ability to tell your story.”115 While one would not normally associate David Berkowitz with the First Amendment right to free speech, legal scholar David L. Hudson, Jr., explained that the serial killer provided a test of the First Amendment when he was offered a large sum of money for his personal story following his criminal conviction. Named after Berkowitz’s serial killer alter ego, the Son of Sam laws are designed to take money earned by convicted criminals from expressive or creative works (e.g., books, films, TV shows, etc.) about their crimes and give it to their victims or the family mem
bers of their victims. The following discussion is based on a critique of the Son of Sam laws presented by Hudson, who is a First Amendment expert.116

  The Son of Sam laws were passed as a direct result of the celebrity criminal status attained by serial killer David Berkowitz. In 1977, after hearing reports that Berkowitz was being offered a significant amount of money for the rights to his personal story, the New York State Assembly passed a law requiring that a convicted criminal’s income from creative works describing his or her crimes must be deposited in an escrow account. The funds from the escrow account are then to be used to reimburse crime victims and their families for the harm they have suffered. Supporters of the laws say that they help crime victims and prevent convicted offenders from profiting from their crimes. Opponents counter that the laws infringe on fundamental First Amendment principles and rights.

  Following the example established by New York, more than forty states eventually passed Son of Sam laws. In a number of high-profile instances, however, state supreme courts have struck down their Son of Sam statutes for being unconstitutional in that they restrict freedom of speech. For example, the Nevada Supreme Court struck down its Son of Sam law in a constitutional challenge filed by former prison inmate Jimmy Lerner, who wrote the popular memoir You Got Nothing Coming: Notes from a Prison Fish. Lerner had served three years in prison for a voluntary manslaughter conviction following the suffocation death of his friend Mark Slavin in a Reno, Nevada, hotel room in 1997. Slavin’s sister, Donna Seres, filed a lawsuit in August 2002 to collect profits from Lerner’s book. In January 2003, a Nevada trial court judge dismissed Seres’s lawsuit on First Amendment grounds. Lerner’s attorney, Scott Freeman, explained the verdict when he said, “The [Nevada] law is content-based. It is very clear that these laws chill free speech. They not only violate the First Amendment rights of people like Mr. Lerner who engage in expressive work, but people also have a constitutional right to read books like his and receive information.”117

  The trial court judge in the Lerner case relied on a US Supreme Court decision from 1991—that is, Simon & Schuster Inc. v. New York State Crime Victims Board—to support his decision. The Nevada Supreme Court subsequently reaffirmed the lower court decision and struck down the Son of Sam law, relying once again on the Simon & Schuster precedent.

  The Simon & Schuster Decision

  What exactly is the Simon & Schuster Supreme Court decision and why is it important? In 1987, the state of New York attempted to enforce its Son of Sam law after admitted organized crime figure Henry Hill, who was in the federal witness protection program at the time, entered into a contract with major publisher Simon & Schuster to tell his life story. This relationship led to Nicholas Pileggi’s acclaimed book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family, which was later made into the blockbuster Hollywood film GoodFellas. The state of New York ordered Simon & Schuster to suspend all royalty payments to Hill as mandated by its Son of Sam law. The publisher sued the state claiming a violation of its First Amendment rights. The case eventually reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled in 1991 in Simon & Schuster Inc. v. New York State Crime Victims Board that the New York law indeed violated the First Amendment.

  The US Supreme Court voted unanimously to strike down the New York State law, finding that it was an overzealous and excessive attempt to protect victims’ rights. The court noted that “a statute is presumptively inconsistent with the First Amendment if it imposes a financial burden on speakers because of the content of their speech.” The Supreme Court further noted that the law was “content-based” because it applied only to works with a particular content. In First Amendment jurisprudence, according to Hudson, content-based laws must be justified by a compelling state interest in a narrowly tailored way. The Supreme Court found that state officials had a compelling interest, stating, “There can be little doubt, on the other hand, that the State has a compelling interest in ensuring that victims of crime are compensated by those who harm them.” The high court also found that the state had a compelling interest in preventing criminals from profiting from their crimes.

  Nevertheless, as explained by Hudson, in striking down the New York Son of Sam law, the US Supreme Court determined that it was too broad or “over-inclusive.”118 The law broadly defined a “person convicted of a crime” to include “any person [such as Henry Hill] who has voluntarily and intelligently admitted the commission of a crime for which such person is not prosecuted.” The New York law applied to creative works about crime even if the discussion about it was tangential or incidental to the work as a whole. The Supreme Court reasoned that the New York law, as it was written, could apply to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience or even Confessions of St. Augustine. A list of prominent figures whose “autobiographies would be subject to the statute if written is not difficult to construct,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the Supreme Court. Justice O’Connor further wrote, “That the New York Son of Sam law can produce such an outcome indicates that the statute is, to say the least, not narrowly tailored to achieve the State’s objective of compensating crime victims from the profits of crime.”119

  O’Connor emphasized that the decision affected only New York’s law and did not affect similar laws passed by the federal government or other state governments. “Some of these statutes may be quite different from New York’s and we have no occasion to determine the constitutionality of these other laws,” Justice O’Connor concluded.

  In summary, the constitutional hurdles imposed by the Simon & Schuster decision are quite high. Following the decision by the Supreme Court, many states, including New York and California, amended their Son of Sam statutes. The amended California law is a bit narrower than the New York law that was ruled unconstitutional. California’s statute applies only to persons actually convicted of felonies and exempted those works that had merely “passing mention of the felony, as in a footnote or bibliography.” Several other state supreme courts have invalidated Son of Sam laws entirely on First Amendment grounds. The clear message from these decisions is that legislation must be narrowly crafted to survive constitutional challenges. As concluded by David Hudson, it is evident that states must clear high First Amendment hurdles before targeting the expressive works of criminals on the basis of the content of their speech.120 Forty states still have Son of Sam laws on the books but their enforcement is inconsistent.

  The Son of Sam laws are not the only means available to victims seeking restitution from criminals who profit from their crimes. Legal analyst and commentator Julie Hilden has pointed out that there is another legal method for victims to recover financial damages from criminals—that is, civil tort suits. Hilden explained, “Crime victims and/or their families are always free to file a multimillion dollar tort suit, and go after a criminal’s profits by suing for financial damages.”121 Hilden has said that these civil laws “might best be thought of as Son of Sam laws in disguise.” The key point is that unlike Son of Sam laws, civil suits are not intended to target free speech in particular and, thus, these laws do not pose First Amendment violations. Therefore, according to Hilden, it is likely that the push for restitution by crime victims and their advocates in the future will focus on general civil-forfeiture actions or traditional tort suits against the criminals. States will likely extend the statute of limitations period for such lawsuits in order to assist crime victims and their families.

  Why Murderabilia Vendors Refuse to Back Down

  The sellers of murder memorabilia have no intention of abandoning their lucrative trade, despite the controversy surrounding it and the ongoing attempts by others to shut them down. For example, when asked if he feels guilty for profiting from the horrible crimes of others, Eric Gein, the man who owns and operates SerialKillersInk.net, insisted he does not. “I don’t feel badly at all,” he told ABC News. Somewhat shockingly, Gein further said, “I am desensitized to the crimes. When I’m in contact with these guys [convicted felons], I’m not thinking, ‘
Wow. This guy destroyed thirty families.’ I’m thinking, ‘This guy can make me money.’ It may sound brass and cold but that’s the reality for me.” While Gein would not say how much he makes from his business, he said that he makes “a comfortable living.” He claims to keep 100 percent of the profits and says that none of the money goes to the inmates. Gein speculates that financial gain is not even the primary motivation of criminals who offer their merchandise to him for sale. Instead of money, he contends that criminals crave the attention he offers, and they view the sale of their merchandise as a way to gain or increase their public notoriety.

  Tod Bohannon, who created the lucrative murderabilia website MurderAuction.com, defends the business as well as the convicted criminals who provide their artifacts for sale. “A lot of people think these prison inmates are sitting around eating donuts all day, drinking Coca-Cola and laughing about their crimes,” Bohannon told Christina Ng of ABC News in 2011.122 “A lot of these guys are remorseful and they’re doing the time for what they’ve done. Why should we continue to humiliate them?” However, Bohannon concedes that not all of the criminals are remorseful and some have written him letters in which they proudly gloated about their horrendous crimes. He claims that he never directly paid prison inmates for any of the items he received from them over the years, but he does not deny that he sent them money from time to time. It should be noted that Bohannon has sold his murderabilia website but it remains very much in operation under new ownership.

  The reaction of some people to the vendors of murderabilia can be downright hostile. For example, serial killer art dealer Rick Staton was once attacked while trying to photograph the house of Dean Corll, the murderous sidekick of Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr. Staton claims that he was “yelled at, physically grabbed, and even punched” in the assault. Similarly, Eric Gein has become acutely aware that victims’ families of the killers he works with are deeply hurt and angered by what he does for a living. Nevertheless, he expresses little sympathy for them. “While they do have a right to speak out against me, they don’t have a right to try to shut me down,” Gein told ABC News. “I run a legal business and I’m catering to a market that is in demand. I’m not a monster. I can’t say I understand their pain because I’m not in their position,” he said coldly.