August 24, 2023 • 53 mins
Whether in fiction or in real life, the concept of the serial killer occupies a unique space in the American zeitgeist. Audiences across the planet flock to films about serial killers, and readers across the world peruse headlines of true life crimes with morbid (in some cases, obsessive) curiosity. And, for many, this fascination goes further than reading a book or watching a film. Join the guys as they shine a light on the controversial, secretive trade of relics known as murderbilia.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's no secret that the idea of the serial killer
holds holds a prominent place in American culture, and it
being American culture, it's also sadly no surprise that serial
killer memorabilia has become a shadow industry all its own,
not just things like not just things associated with homicides
(00:25):
or associated with the killers themselves, but often art and
letters created by these murderers. That's what our classic episode's
about tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, I mean, it's really it's sad on a couple
of levels because oftentimes, you know, folks like this who
have been incarcerated, there are laws against them profiting off
of these kinds of you know, sale of memorabilia, so
there's a certain black market around it. But also it's
the people who obsess over this stuff. And you can
also find some of these pieces in like the Museum
(00:57):
of Death, for example, which I believe we talk about
in the episode. So it is a very interesting world,
if niche and kind of drenched in melancholy.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
So let's check out this episode, The Murky World of
serial Killer Memorabilia from May twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
They call me Ben. You are here, You are you,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know, featuring.
Of course, our superproducer, Paul Mission Controlled decand who I
have it on good authority, has never himself purchased something
involved with the murder.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Oh well, that's nice.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That is certainly a claim to fame that Paul can
attest to.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
He's got a whole heck of a lot of cool
posters though from movies.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Right right, and the murders may occur in those works of.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Fiction, they definitely do.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
But Mission Control is not the kind of cat to
go out and read about maybe a series of stabbings
and say I need to buy that knife, I want
a piece of that action, I want a shoe from
a victim or something like that.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, I was I couldn't believe that that existed before
we did this episode.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
It's a weird thing, of course, Paul. I promise we
will stop using you as an example. As far as
we know, none of us, Paul included have purchased this
sort of memorabilia previously on stuff They'll want you to know.
We had explored numerous stories of serial killers, specific cases
(03:02):
such as our unfortunately ongoing Uncaught serial Killer series and
larger phenomena such as the Highway of Tears.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Or even the East Area rapist slash original Nightstalker.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Right right, DiAngelo had just been caught, and we had
mentioned this, I think just briefly in an earlier episode.
We might have to do an entire follow up on
that because it leads to some wide reaching implications for
genetic testing DNA basis.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Didn't we do a whole episode on the We did
a whole original episode.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
We did, Yeah, and we wondered whether he would be caught.
We did speculate on his age, and overall we weren't wrong.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Remember we said he might be listening. He could have
been listening.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
That's true. He could have I don't know if he's
a fan of podcasts, allegedly is a recluse. Okay, but
they found him through some relatives DNA. Well, we'll dig
into that and so stay tuned. One thing's for sure, though,
there are probably going to be people who attempt to
(04:11):
associate themselves with this in one way or another. You know,
it's a very cold comfort for the surviving victims, and
it's a closure point for people who spent years, decades
of unpaid time investigating this. Today we're touching on serial killers,
but in a little bit of a different way. We're
(04:32):
not looking at so many specific cases, and we're not
tracing murders themselves. Instead, we're exploring an industry that's sprang
up around these grizzly tragedies, a monetization of monsters made flesh.
And here are the facts. We've already explored how law
enforcement and criminologists define serial killers, along with the problems
(04:53):
inherent in that definition and the difference between the way
these murders are depicted in fiction and the way they
actually behave. But we haven't explored the other side of
the dark mirror. We haven't looked at the public fascination
with these crimes and the public fascination with the people
who commit them.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yeah, and this stuff probably might, let's say, might not
apply to you, but it's overwhelmingly likely that somebody you
are an acquaintance with harbors this weird curiosity. I say
weird for me, and for I guess for the social
mores of the world, it is a bit strange, this
(05:31):
fascination with serial killers, murderers, people who go out and
take lives. People like this read exhaustive biographies. They read
accounts of the actual killers' activities, what occurs before the
mo of the killer. They can likely compare differences in
(05:51):
motivation between killers and execution and apprehension for multiple killers.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So we're talking about someone who's able to say, well,
the difference between John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer is
the following.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah, and we'll sit down with you at a bar
and tell you the difference is, for an hour.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I have been guilty of that. Yeah, I think, and
I think everybody has that fascination to some degree, right.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, because it is so different from normal everyday activities.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah. And there's a book we found from twenty fourteen
called Why We Love Serial Killers, in which criminologist doctor
Scott Bond explores the nature of this and he notes
the same things we've seen in previous arguments about this fascination.
Says there's a difference between perceptions of killers in reality.
He does a lot of myth busting in this book.
(06:45):
If you were at all interested in this topic, we
highly recommend it. One of the myths he busts is
that the majority of serial killers are believed to be
white males. However, according to the FBI, the race by race,
the racial break down of serial killers is about the
same proportion as that of the US population at large,
(07:05):
and based on the Radford University serial Killer Database, which
holy smokes, is a real thing, only forty six percent
of serial killers since nineteen ten have been white men.
And that's using data for a little less than four
thousand killers, or maybe right at four thousand now that
they've added the Nights Talker.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
But here's the thing, you know, none of us, including
Paul michelin man Mission Control decand own any of this,
these keepsakes of any kind of serial killer. And yet
I'm fond of serial killer movies. I'm not as into
true crime as it would seem literally everyone else on
the planet is. But it is obviously a huge booming business.
(07:48):
Where do you think that fascination comes from that makes,
you know, the average Jane and John Doe off the
street want to kind of dig into some of the stuff,
whether it's in reading books about it, or listen to
true crime podcast, watching films, or you know, exploring some
of this darkness.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, and we have to we'll stick with this perception
of serial killers being overwhelmingly white and male to hit
on this because when we bring up fiction and the zeitgeist,
what we see is that even if the facts bear
out that not all these killers are white males, the
ones who get remembered in pop culture do tend to
(08:29):
be white male killers, and Bond has a couple of
theories about this. He says the gender difference may come
down to a matter of method. Female killers, in his argument,
tend to be less use less gory methods like poisoned
and rather than shooting. But one of the most famous
(08:51):
or infamous female serial killers in the US, Eileen Wernos,
was murdering people with a gun. Bond thinks that's the
reason why she reached fame. But only nine percent around
nine percent of serial killers since nineteen ten have been women,
forty percent have been African American, and few have achieved
celebrity status. There's the disturbing thing. There is a choice
(09:14):
of victims. Bond believes most serial killers tend to kill
within their own race, and that white victims, especially white
female victims, usually get wider media attentions. So there's a
loop here between victims and killers and the media. And
so this racial bias, says disturbing as it is, is real,
and according to Bond, he says, although it may not
(09:37):
seem fair, affluent white neighborhoods are given priority over poor
black or Latino neighborhoods by state officials in the assignment
of valuable policing resources. This negatively impacts the ability of
law enforcement personnel to pursue serial murder cases in poor
racial minority communities. So society is valuing these victims less
and it's making as a result, it's making the crimes
(10:01):
as terrific as the sounds be presented or perceived as
somehow less important. And this means that the infamy of
the killer also becomes a lower.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yeah, because they're not spending the resources to catch the
people that do them. And when you're not spending the
resources to catch them, you're not getting the media attention.
You're not I mean, there's all he Bond makes all
these unfortunate points about the reality of our situation of
racial bifurcation.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And so there to that point, if we use this
information and we ask ourselves the same question Noel was asking,
or asking about fascination with serial killers, we have to
ask ourselves, does this mean we are more fascinated with
a stereotype rather than an actual phenomenon. But we can't
(10:55):
go too far, too fast down that path, because it
turns out there's solid evidence for the American obsess with
serial killers, and it's not particularly promising news. There have
been more than twenty six hundred serial killers in the
US since nineteen hundred. England, who has the next highest total,
has had.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Only one hundred and forty two.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Twenty six hundred to one hundred and forty two. We also,
in the States have higher rates of violent crime, and
that might be why some killers are more famous than others,
because again throughout the world, even though serial killers exist
in other countries throughout the world, when people picture as
serial killer, they usually picture either Jack the Ripper or
(11:36):
someone from the States.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, this is highly bothersome, this American obsession with it.
And I wonder how much you know? There are all
things that we can we can go down, and there's
more that we're getting in here about fiction about Americans
obsession with fictionalizing these kinds of things. It does feel
like the advent of the film industry in the United
(12:01):
States probably is linked with this.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
But he had that I was getting at. It's like
we're not obsessed with it, and that we empathize with killers,
or that we see ourselves in serial killers. I think
there's some part of us that maybe is fascinated by
it because it makes us feel superior in some way.
It's like, we do not have this compulsion or you know,
I'm wondering. I'm asking you guys, like where where you
think it comes from? Because I've always kind of been
stuck on that because it is so grizzly and unpleasant,
(12:27):
and yet it is something that seems to catch people's imaginations,
you know, the world over.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's true that many of the stories,
the way they're presented, whether by just the facts criminologists,
or whether by the film industry, they all have the
marks of gripping fiction, high stakes danger, fire knives, mysteries,
and clear heroes and villains often right. And research shows
(12:56):
I think this is pretty fascinating. Research shows that they're
there are a couple of groups of people who enjoy
these graphic, frightening stories, and they can have a number
of very different motivations. The study from nineteen ninety five
about adolescence said that some were gore watchers, meaning they
professed in like a confidential environment, that they were watching
(13:20):
horrific movies because they enjoyed the blood and guts. They
tended to have low levels of empathy, strong need for
adventure seeking. And then there were thrill watchers who got
the adrenaline Russia, being scared, that roller coaster feeling right,
and they have high levels of adventure seeking, but they
also have, you know, high levels of empathy. And the
(13:41):
gore watchers identified with the killers rather than the victims.
The thrill watchers identified with neither. I guess you'd say
they identify with the plot.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
So it's not just all in our minds, our smartphones,
our television. There's a physiological thing that weapons here. Just
like we talked about dopamine and social media. You get
a increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, increased blood glucose levels,
and you also get again a fit, a dose of
(14:14):
dopamine when you're watching these things. It's the neurotransmitter famously
associated with pleasure mainly food and sex, but also occurs
during time times of fear, and it's good for our survival.
I mean, we don't have to go too granular here,
but there is physiological evidence and so, in a very
(14:34):
real way, depictions of serial killers can function for adults
the way that monster movies function for kids.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Well, yeah, my son writer is a bit too young
to do this kind of thing, although we did recently
watch Toy Story in which there's that the little kid
next door that tortures toys.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yeah, it's scarier than I had remembered in it, you know,
about two and a half. It's like, okay, maybe we
shouldn't watch something like this anymore. But of course, you know,
he can handle something that has a a monster monster
just fine, and he thinks it's fun, not you know,
nothing too graphic. But something like Moana that has a
big volcano monster in it, you just think it's because
(15:18):
it's I don't know, it's not as real as a
little kid. That's actually scary.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
How do you handle Halloween? I don't know about you guys,
but for me, as a kid, Halloween was my favorite holiday,
and it has some scary themes in there that maybe
don't really hit you when you're when you're a child.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Well yeah, at his age, you just kind of have
to keep him away from it a lot of it.
But there's you know, dressed up like a dragon. Come on,
that's fun, would you because you're your kid's been a
little bit older.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, she dressed up as a creepy dead doll last
year with like corpse makeup bond stuff. Wow, she's nine.
But she also dressed up as Satan when she was
only four, so she's got a she's got a history creepy,
creepy Halloween costumes. She's all about the spooky stuff except
(16:07):
when she's not, except when it's too much. She likes
to control it, you know what I mean. And that's
the thing. Sometimes you don't know, like that that scene
and toy story. To one kid, it could be totally fine,
and the kid it could traumatize them for life, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Well, just to jump back into the dopamine dosing that
people get from watching this kind of fiction and experiencing
it through crime drama on television or some of the
murder shows that exist throughout it is. It's really interesting
to me that you can sit on your couch, or
you can sit in a movie theater and get those
same feelings that you would if you were out having
(16:40):
a fantastical meal somewhere, or let's say, being amorous with
your your loved one. And we talked in our Hidden
Brain episodes about this is one of the one of
the reasons that horror movies are so good for that
kind of date situation. Sure, because causing these things to
(17:01):
occur in your brain. But when you get into the
mind of some of the adolescents who are the gore watchers,
that frightens me. It feels like there needs to be
some kind of process of cataloging the gore watchers. Oh
that sounds awful when I say it out loud, but
I feel like they should. They should at least be
(17:22):
on the radar. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
You know, it's now more than ever it's possible to
do something like that. But the question is should we agreed? Agreed?
Society agreed, but they're always saving lives anyway, Where where
does this all leave us? This physiological stuff? It's real,
The stereotypes are real, the facts are remain disturbing. We'll
(17:47):
explore this after a word from our sponsors. And what
we see now is that the mythical killers, those who
don't don't fit into the existing sort of narrative, are
becoming separated from the facts of their cases. So with
(18:08):
each new film, novel, or other fictional iteration about someone
like ed gean right the loose basis for the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre film franchise, any part of the story that
doesn't fit into the mold of deranged, middle aged white guy,
possibly with a dark secret. Any stuff that doesn't fit
(18:30):
there is just shed. It's just on the cutting room floor,
and the stereotype becomes more streamlined. And now there's this
increasing trend. I'm really interested in hearing opinions on this.
There's this increasing trend of serial killers as protagonist. I
watched Dexter. I thought it was cool for the first
few seasons.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Oh boy, and then it jumped the shark pretty seriously.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah, well there's another one. Did you guys watch Luther
at all? I like Luther a lot, the Alice Morgan
character from the first episode. I won't spoil it too
much because it's relatively new, but it's a straight up
serial killer that becomes the love interest.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Like what, Yeah, it's sort of like one of those
like tortured loves too or is this forbidden love kind
of situation? And she's a threat to him as well, yeah,
pretty pretty constantly. Now, I see what you're saying. And
she is designed. That character is designed to make you
to kind of appeal to you, to make you like
see from her side, you know, because even we'll be
(19:27):
getting too much in the spoiled territories. But some of
the crimes that she commits, she has this really intense
rationalization for committing that you almost can kind of buy
into in a way. It's weird.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Well that's what all of these do.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I am so excited to watch this show.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
No, that's very good.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So behind the curtain, both Matt and Will have much
much better taste than me in general. So if you
guys have some advice on a show I am in
also interests, Elbow is dude.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I mean, come on, just watch it for him?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Is he a real smoke show? I heard that last
week tonight.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
I like this.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, we didn't make that one up, folks. So that's
that's all. John Oliver or his writers. So yeah, so
we identify with these people right in. One of the
most famous examples, of course, is Hannibal Lecter by the
third novel. He's pretty much a tortured anti hero.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
That eats people.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Well, that's kind of what I was getting at too earlier,
is trying to kind of like come to put my
finger on or put our collective thumbs on what this is.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Like.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I feel like that identifying feature is almost an evolution because,
like you know, earlier serial killer films, typically the killer
is you don't even know who it is. It's just
this unseen, murderous force of chaos and destruction.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It's a monster.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
It's a monster exactly. But now you know, because we
need more, you have to twist it around to make
it where Well, I kind of see where this person's
coming from.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
This.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I kind of like doctor Lecter.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
He's interesting, but isn't that closer to reality? Probably an
actual human, three dimensional character that is doing awful thing.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It's true, but separated from the fiction part of it.
I'm wondering why the fascination with true crime and grizzly
accounts of crime scenes and serial killer stories that are
you know, the subject of lots of nonfiction, and obviously
the podcast industry is kind of lousy with the stuff
right now, You're welcome, thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
That is one of the masterminds behind the enormously fascinating
Atlanta Monster podcast.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Well, one aspect of it is is we all like
we all like our tragedies at an arm's length, and
things like Penny Dreadfuls were super popular. This focus on
gore is is somehow linked to our understanding of our
(21:57):
own survival. And I love that you mentioned the evolution
from faceless monster to three dimensional character, because in older
days these things were straight up cautionary tales. Don't go
into the woods, the wolf will lead you. Look at
this girl of ill repute out late in the mean
(22:19):
streets of London. There's a lot of victim blaming in
this stuff, and it still happens in horror movies today,
and unfortunately it happens sometimes with victims of real life killers.
But I think part of it. No, you raised a
good point when you said you mentioned superiority. I am
not that monster, right, I am not that victim. If
(22:44):
I'm in a horror movie and I hear a door
creak by the front of the haunted cabin. I get
back in my Toyota Turcell, hope it starts and drive away.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Certainly, don't run up the stairs.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
You know that yoursell's not gonna run, go go, Who's
that You've got to fumble the keys?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, right, and then the car will choke.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Oh boy, you've got four flat tires, buddy.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
So maybe it's our way of safely experiencing and exploring
these things and then on the dark side. At some point,
whenever we as individuals see or hear about a crime
or a social transgression, whether it's shoplifting, whether it's cheating
(23:33):
on one spouse, or whether it's like swindling someone out
of a deal, like we hear about corporate scandals or
something we hear about Mark Zuckerberg and whatnot, on some level,
we all kind of do a gut check and run
it past ourselves and think would I do that? You know,
in some cases there's a threshold. It might be, well,
(23:55):
I'm not going to steal ten dollars from petty cash
at the company, But if I steal one hundred and
fifty million and I get an island, then you know, yeah,
maybe maybe I'll just won't have a Facebook profile.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
First thing you have to do is work for a
company that has that kind of money.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
That's true, that's true. But you see what I'm saying. Though.
It's like and we ask ourselves, am I someone who
would kill? What would it take for me to kill?
You know? Like? Would I kill to avenge loss of
a relative or a loved one? Would I kill to
protect one? That's the answer most people have, right.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, would I killed just for the thrill of it?
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Right? Would I kill if I felt there was a
divine message compelling me to? Like Abraham and the Bible?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, if God asks you to sacrifice your son, I'm
just gonna go ahead and say please don't, Please don't.
God'll be okay with it.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah. I think it's a very strange story. But regardless
of this fascination, you may ask yourselves, why are we
talking so much about this? Because we're walking toward something stranger.
This lion leonization and in some cases deification of serial murders,
regardless of what the motivation is, leads to strange and
(25:17):
disturbing situations. You know, there are copycat killers, people who
use a ongoing killer's activities as a as a cover
in some cases to get away with murder and pin
it on the other person.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Or even an homage to that killer.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
True. Yeah, And then they're obsessive fans of incarcerated murderers
and serial killers. They supply prisoners with money, they send
books and other stuff to them, and in some cases
they marry them while they're in prison. Yep. Charles Manson
is a great example of that.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Several times.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
I believe you're correct, man, I believe he's been married
several times. Yep, man. But that's not all. Here's where
it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Now we're entering the world of serial killer memorabilia. What
this episode is all about. It's also called murder abilia,
and it's that. Of course, word has just been the
portmanteau portmanteau, yes, of murder and memorabilia, which is it's
fun to say, So what is this? These are relics,
(26:26):
my friend.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, they're relics. They can be any number of things though,
right we sort of talked about at the top of
the show. But they can be everything from an artifact
generated by incarcerated serial killer or something they did when
they were out in the world. But that ups the
value a lot. If they did it while they were
actually on their spree at large. Right, A lot of
these killers get into crafting, you know, in they're in prison.
(26:48):
Like John Wayne Gacy became an avid painter while he
was on death row, and his paintings to this day
are I think, some of the most valuable items in
circulation in this pretty small, close knit community. But it
can also be artifacts associated with the murder, like, for example,
dirt from John Wayne Gacy's crawl space you can find
(27:10):
a pair of his clown shoes that he wore. Not
to make this all about Gaysey, but he is one
of the biggest kind of stars of this scene. There
was a an action figure that Jeffrey Dahmer made that
had human bits baked into it.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Are you serious?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah? All kinds of crazy stuff, man. So basically, anything
you can think of that would be associated with any crime,
the more grizzly and the more kind of outlandish, the better.
That's that's what we're talking about. And then there's this
whole scene of people trading this stuff, and there's a
lot of interesting legal ins and outs that go into
(27:51):
this whole world, right, Ben.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, yeah, No, all three of us have seen this
stuff firsthand. But we have seen it in museum. Yeah, Noel,
you went to was it the Murder Museum in California?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
It's the Museum of Death? Museum of Death in Los Angeles?
And where did you guys go in DC?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
I believe it was the National Museum of Crime and Punishment.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Cool, and I think we both saw some stuff from
John Wayne Gacy in those museums.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Yeah, ours was like a clown suit and a couple
other things of his. But it wasn't just serial killers
in the places where we went. It was also the
one about crime in particular. Was you know, the car
from somebody who went on a crime spree that wasn't
exactly a serial killer, but had murdered a bunch of
(28:42):
people in the crime spree. A lot of other things
like that.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, and it's still memorabilia, right and weapons from killers
from the wild West, Yeah, things like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
The one in Hollywood is a little more on the
prurient side. I would say it's filled with things like
crime scene photos of dismembered bodies, a lot of photos
taken by killers themselves. There's one where a couple went
on a spree and like dismembered several victims. I think
(29:13):
it was the woman's ex husband, and they like sever
the penis and things like that, and there are photographs
of all this. So this place in particular is not
for the faint of heart. There's a whole room devoted
to old like embalming techniques, and there's a video that
plays on a loop of like an old embalming video
tutorial that starts off innocently enough and just gets kind
(29:36):
of dropped dead horrendously graphic after a while. But yeah,
but they had There's a whole room devoted to the
Heaven's Gate called the Marshall Apple White Thing, where there
is kind of a almost a diorama set up where
there's a body in the bed covered with a purple
blanket and Apple Whites kind of sermons are playing on
(29:58):
a loop on a TV, a little small v HS
TV and it's a bunk bed. It's like a hole
meant to recreate that mass suicide that happened with the
Heaven's Gate cult. So really cool, really small. I really
recommend checking it out, but it's not for the faint
of heart, but really really interesting stuff, and that the
thing that was most interesting that I saw. There was
a notebook that had letters between a killer and an
(30:20):
art dealer who had been purchasing this killer's work, and
the killer wrote letters back to this art dealer threatening
to sue because they had not received payment. And there's
a real specific reason for why that might have been,
isn't there, Ben.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yes, there is a very specific reason.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
You see.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
We've talked about how almost anything could qualifies this stuff.
We've talked about how we have seen this stuff in
person in a museum, But when we get into the
world of private collectors, when we get into this idea
of this trade, we immediately enter a ongoing and intense
(31:05):
debate about legality. Should it be legal to traffic these
items on a private individual scale, or should be more
of an Indiana Jones approach. Can any of us do
a good Harrison Ford?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
No, I can't, but that may be good.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah, you're a leader.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
He's doing a hard shake. I can't do a Harrison Ford.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I don't. I don't know what. Well, yeah, just get
off my plane. Terrorists, Gum, that's great.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
You killed my I didn't kill my wife.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Fugitive right, Yeah, those are great. Will you see will
you say.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
The lie these belong in a museum.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
There we go, Indiana Jones, slaves and gentlemen, So yeah,
should they should they be stuck in a museum? And
museums can use this stuff under the auspice of educational experience, right,
We are giving knowledge about times past and their effect
on the presence, for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
And I think the key here too is that third
party curatorial kind of aspect, right. And the thing I
was getting at is that the reason that this person
had not been paid or they would have no legal
recourse to sue the art dealer that was not paying them,
is because it's illegal for perpetrators of crimes like this
(32:31):
to benefit financially from the legacy of their horrific acts.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Known as the Son of Sam Lungs.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Well, it certainly didn't work out for the National Crime
Museum in Washington, DC that we visited, because since twenty
fifteen it has been permanently closed.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Yeah, we really wrecked the place, yep. But that's the
thing though, It's like, how do you get this stuff?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
And you know, we'll get into more of this in
a little bit, but some of it comes from direct
involvement and direct communication with the criminals and that's when
you start getting into this gray territory where it's like,
how do I entice them to make work for me?
You know, make stuff just for me so that I
can sell it. I mean, someone is literally, whether it's
(33:15):
a dealer or the proprietor of a museum or what
have you benefiting financially from the suffering of hundreds thousands potentially.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Right, and the Son of Sam laws are not federal yet,
they're state by state and they're a little bit different.
We can explore some of this, but the primary question
is should someone who has committed multiple murders or any murder,
should they be able to profit themselves? Right? Like this
(33:45):
art dealer, should they sell a painting for five hundred
dollars and then give four hundred to someone who was
a cannibal or is a cannible and just happens to
be locked up now, dormant cannibal, A dormant can accountable
and waiting. It's weird because, like with Gaysey, Gasey's dead, right,
(34:07):
so people who are in this industry can sell this
dead man's stuff to each other and that is not
illegal right now, but it's frowned upon in two thousand
and one, eBay stopped all of these traffic, all of
these sorts of transactions. As you guys remember eBay a
(34:27):
while back, Oh my gosh, two thousand and one, so
long ago. Now you could buy all kinds of weird stuff.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I bought a haunted accordion, an allegedly haunted accordion.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
I had no idea that accordion was haunted.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
It certainly doesn't sound normal.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
Really, it's got sort of a ghostly quality to it.
It was advertised as a haunted accordion. And I'm not
gonna say where I was added life, but it was
pretty late night, was a wee hours of the morning,
and I said, that's what I need.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
What's the haunted markup for an accordion? It's got to
be pretty steep.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Uh. It was not my best financial decision, but that aside.
You know, that just says you can. That just shows
you can buy anything on eBay. But effective May seventeenth,
two thousand and one, items associated with quote notorious individuals
who have committed murderous crimes within the last one hundred
(35:18):
years were banned. And now the serious traders started their
own websites like super not in aught dot com, Serial Killersinc.
Dot com And as we record this, several people, including
US Center John Cornyan, are fighting to obliterate this trade.
(35:41):
There's an advocate named Andy Cann who is participating with
the with legislators to try to bring this trade to
a legal end. But while they're fighting it, it means
that it's still legal in most cases.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I think it was and that kind of got eBay
to pull the plug on this stuff, or it was
his a lot of his activism. I think that made
them force them to make that change.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
And the first question, the first question that we run
into here is should it be illegal? Should we stop
people from doing this? And if so why?
Speaker 3 (36:22):
We'll get to that right after a quick word from
our sponsor. Well, I think the obvious answer is yes,
it should be illegal, or at least people think that yes,
it should be illegal. It feels in your gut, maybe it.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Does feel wrong. And even the eBay rules sort of
point to this, because they they do still allow the
sale of artifacts I think that are older than a
certain date. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but
something that would be much more likely to be considered
a historical artifact, you know, like fossils and things like that, right,
(37:04):
that is legal to distribute on eBay, but this stuff
is not. And I think the real reason for that
is that the people affected by this stuff directly are
still living. It is inherently insensitive, and people are literally
profiting off of the suffering and torture and ruination of
people's lives.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Yeah, it does, however, feel like it could be and
probably is a free speech kind of issue that you're
dealing with here.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
That's one of the arguments that the collectors and many
many people in support of this trade, or at least
maybe supports weird word in opposition of banning it or
spanning it. They say that if we refuse to provide
incentives for criminals to tell their stories, then accounts of
(37:55):
some crimes may never be fully told. In some of
those crimes, like the jam k assassination was when they
bring up maybe a vital public interest personally, it's just
one person's opinion. I think that's a little bit disingenuous.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Yeah, well, there's profit to be made a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
And then to the point to the art collector correspondence
that we mentioned earlier, the trade becomes really murky when
we explore how these folks get their items direct contact,
writing to someone a corrupt prison guard.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Perhaps it does feel like perhaps there could be a
route somewhere in here. And this is off book, but
it feels like there could be a route somewhere that's
working with people who hold evidence, so law enforcement that
holds evidence and putting it in a museum setting that
is not for profit. So it feels like there's some
route there if we want to maintain it just for
(38:56):
a historical record of things not to do as society, right,
I could see.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
That, Yeah, yeah, and that makes sense. I feel like
that's the approach that the museums we've visited have taken.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Or at least I think their or like would would
say that that's the router taking right, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
But when it comes to the idea of a killer
directly profiting off this, it isn't legal.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
The son of Sam law as we mentioned before, named
after Sam Berkowitz are still state by state. They came
They came into effect when rumors started spreading that publishers
and movie studios were offering sam Berkowitz hundreds of thousands
of dollars for his story for the rights to the
(39:46):
Son of Sam's story, and obviously you would want to
move to stop that. It's not making someone a millionaire
because they've committed murder doesn't seem like the way a
society is supposed to work. And and the law was
invoked in New York eleven times between seventy seven and
nineteen seventy seven and nineteen ninety. Many of these laws
(40:08):
currently have been repealed and replaced by other versions. However,
right now some states still have no active Son of
sam legislation. This means that in Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, South Carolina,
and New Hampshire, it is still legal for anyone to
(40:28):
go to a prison and start some sort of financial
relationship or write to someone and say, hey, send me this.
I'll sell this letter and then I'll put money in
your account, your commissary account.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
All right, Well, you messed up millionaires out there that
are really into this stuff, head on over to one
of those states and go for it.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Get this, you guys. There's a really crazy article on
Vice about this very topic that starts off with just
the description of a group of three hundred people gathered
at an auction house in Illinois called the James Quick auctioneers.
They're gathered around two dozen paintings that they are burning,
setting on fire. And these paintings were the work of
(41:18):
convicted and executed murderer John Wayne Gacy, who killed about
two dozen children boys during his career as a serial killer,
and before he died, his lawyers actually put forty of
his paintings up for auction and sale at this auctioneer's house.
So this was kind of like early early on in
(41:39):
this debate, and it turned out that people were interested,
People were ready to drop, you know, tens of thousands
of dollars to buy this stuff up. And the people
that did buy them up decided they were going to
burn them right there on the premises so that the
families of Gaysey's victims could have some kind of closure there.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Yeah, what do you think about that? I remember hearing
a little bit about this, but I hadn't looked into
it too deeply. What do you think about that? Is
that the right move?
Speaker 2 (42:12):
He actually allowed? It was this Joe Roth and Wally Noble,
who were a local businessmen. They invited the families of
the victims to come and actually throw the paintings into
the fire. Themselves. I think that's pretty admirable.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Yeah, it's admirable. It does seem like a waste of money.
Not a waste of money. It's doing something admirable. It's
just it's crazy that you'd have to spend that much
money to get a hold of it just to burn it.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
That's true, and that therein lies the kind of conundrum
here because obviously you know they did have to pay
the fifteen large to get all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Jeez.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
True, And where does it go? I'm not sure what
the details.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Are there dustin the wind, my friend.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Well, I don't know though. I mean, if if it
was done through Gaysey's.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Lawyers, right, does the money legally have to benefit a charity? Right?
Does it have to go to a fund for the
survivors or the relatives of the victims? Hopefully it seems
that right now that stuff is functioning on a case
by case basis, because again there's no hard, explicit federal
(43:24):
law for this. There have been people who have been
banned from visiting prisons. We found in our research there's
a murder bilia trader named g William Harder who was
banned from visiting any Texas prisons after Texas adopted a
son of Sam Law, and it was revealed he had
been paying murderers directly for their belongings. So the stuff
(43:48):
they don't want you to know in this case often
is going to be where the money's going and how
they are obtaining these items. You know, this is this
is pretty I don't know, this is pretty filthy stuff.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Yeahtically, it's a terrible roundabout avenue to get rich for
somebody who is insane willing to do these things.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
But then also some people might be saying it's not
about the money, right. They may be saying, we want
to keep this in the public eye. Or I just
have a personal fascination because maybe I felt maybe I lived,
says someone in the California area when this one serial
killer is operative and this is an important time in
(44:34):
my life.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
I get that part of it. What I'm saying is
a roundabout way to get rich for the killer. That's
a thing for someone to go like if you're super
poor and you go to jail, but you can sell
all the stuff you murdered all these people with.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
But the son of Sam Law is like that. You
said they're different in different states, But isn't generally kind
of the law of the land.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Like, yeah, it's generally. The only state that has never
had any law like that is New Hampshire and the
ones that the other ones on that list they had
one and then it got struck down, but they're supposedly
working on a new one.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
So that's the safeguard. I mean, like you know, in theory,
unless you launder it and figure out some roundabout way
of getting paid, you can't really a state can't really
benefit from this. And I think the big part of
the reason for this law was so that people couldn't
sell the rights to their story to like movies, and
doesn't it you think you mentioned that at the top
of the show. But people find other ways of getting
(45:32):
this stuff, don't they, Because if it's coming directly from
incarcerated criminals and they're making this work, they want to
find a way for it to benefit them while they're alive.
Even if they can't make money directly, people will find
other ways of helping them out in order to get
this murder bilia right.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Blue payment in kind let me bring you some stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It's like what you were talking about with people actually
being banned from going into prisons. Because this is you know,
it's a sketchy territory, right.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, it is. But there are still legitimate reasons that
someone would conduct some of this stuff. Like the Vice
article that you have mentioned has a story about a
East Coast academic I believe who's conducting research on school shooters,
and he buys almost every school shooter letter that's available
(46:24):
because it's part of his research. So that's one argument.
But still it feels like those moments of understandable rational
action for this are few and far between, not going
to say, not gonna say impossible, just few and far between.
And right now, even though it's sort of a hidden industry,
(46:45):
right now, you can go, should you so choose, to
these websites, and you can find you can find all
sorts of stuff on offer. Be aware that some of
it could quite possibly be fraudulent, can't speak to it,
and then you have to ask yourself, is it worse
if it's fraudulent or it's worth Is it worse if
(47:05):
it's real? So the harder the guy we have mentioned
who got banned, he noted that he has a minimum
of one thousand active users on his website. There are
probably a lot of people who just read about this,
you know, or vicariously experienced it. I will say, I
(47:26):
don't know what you guys think, but I will say,
after researching this episode, I've come to the conclusion that
I'm not getting I'm not getting you guys anything like
this for for your birthdays.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, I'm good.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Thank you, Ben, I really appreciate it. Thanks for thinking about.
Speaker 4 (47:42):
Us, and likewise not to be too much of a diva,
but please just no sericular stuff for me either.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Right, And here's the thing. No matter what kind of
laws get passed, this is gonna this trade is going
to continue.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Yeah, black markets, green markets. I think there are ways
around it, and it will continue to happen.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
And it's impossible to stamp it out because the only
way you can stamp this stuff out, the most effective
way to do it would be denying incarcerated prisoners any
and all access of any sort to the outside world.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
But even then, you've got sisters, brothers, fathers, other members
of families of killers who may need money.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Who are free. I see what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Then what would you do? You would have to entirely
violate human rights.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yeah, Well, here's a question.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
What about folks that let's say I wanted to design
a line of serial killer themed trading cards or a
line of really high detailed serial killer themed action figures.
Who do I have to pay for the right to
do that? Do I have to pay anyone? Am I
allowed to do that if I'm making it and paying
(48:55):
for it myself and selling it directly?
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (48:57):
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Yeah? Who owns the IP of serial Killers?
Speaker 2 (49:02):
That's the thing, because it is public domain. I mean,
this stuff was reported in the public and obviously the
killers themselves can't benefit from the IP of their image.
They are public figures.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
I think, you know, oddly, UF the action figure thing
might might be an easier route because of the trading cards.
Depending on the image you use, you have to pay
somebody on h unless it's a mugshotters.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
That's right, That's right. But I'm actually I looked this
up just now. Just look up serial killer action figures.
There are a ton of them out there, bobbleheads, action figures,
plush dolls. There's a Jeffrey Dahmer. It's called the Peekaboo
Jeffrey Dahmer Slay set, and it is Jeffrey Dahmer in
his prison reds, you know, the full body suit with
(49:45):
the ankle, you know, cuffs and everything on, and it
comes with a little bucket of like it's meant to
be acid, I guess because he would dissolve bodies and acid.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Od god.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty hideous and tasteless, but is
but it's it. Is it legal?
Speaker 1 (50:02):
You know? I yeah, I think it is probably technically.
And there are some people who go further and say
is it art? Which is an argument maybe for another day,
But yeah, you're absolutely right, it is. It is legal.
People are doing it. You don't have to pay for
the rights to a real person. You would have to
(50:24):
go through a bunch of licensing stuff to make. It's
actually more difficult to make an action figure of say
Mike Myers or Jason Voorhees than it is for Jeffrey
Dahmer or something.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
That's because the license holders of those properties have like
people they pay to look around online constantly for people
doing like derivative kind of like there's a lot of
fan communities that make t shirts and prints based on
popular products, and they can very easily get shut down
if they're you know, making money off of it. But
(50:54):
a lot of times the studios and stuff will let
that stuff ride. But it's not the case. I don't
think with that.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Yeah, that's a real kick in the pants, you know,
because these are horrible people and they get action figures.
There are any action figures of us.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
We can change that. You know, there's a place at
the to Cab Mall here in Atlanta, the North to
Cab Mall where you can get a three D photograph
taken of you and your family and they will print
it into an action figure set of you and your
of your family.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Did you do it?
Speaker 3 (51:22):
No?
Speaker 2 (51:22):
I haven't done it yet, but I'm interested.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
We've got to do it.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
We should do it. For the for the team.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
We should do it. We should. Uh, let's see, Paul,
would you be interested in that?
Speaker 3 (51:30):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (51:31):
Yeah, Oh, we got a pretty enthusiastic nod wow from
Paul Mission control decade wow.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
So send us some links.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah, and let us know as well. What what do
you think? Where do you fall in this debate? Do
you believe that it is unethical and we should do
anything possible as a society to prevent this trade. Do
you believe that the past is the past, and these
(52:00):
things should be allowed to freely float through the world
as they will. Should they only be a museum's Should
they be destroyed entirely? Should we obliterate the traces of
these people like the way the Chinese government obliterated traces
of people in tianam and Square right, or the way
(52:22):
you stalin erased people from photographs.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Well, when you think about it that way, it seems
like maybe we shouldn't. But anyway, what do you think?
Speaker 1 (52:32):
What do you think? As always, thank you so much
for tuning in. You can let us know on Instagram
where we are a conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Or Twitter or Facebook where we are conspiracy stuff. Definitely
put all of your information into Facebook and talk to
us there because your data is completely safe. But it
is a great way to talk to us, especially no,
especially on our here's where it gets crazy. What do
we call that? Our page where we can all hang out.
We've been doing all kinds of stuff on there lately.
(53:00):
And just remember, if you are going to go there,
be inquisitive. Yeah, you can be intense, don't you just sick? Yeah,
that's it, okay.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Because we will destroy you. We will wipe all traces
of you from the group.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Oh gosh, okay, So we're not about just putting this
out there. We are not about censorship. But there's just
there's some things that you just don't want to say.
There's a line, and that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
(53:34):
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std WYTK. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
It's no secret that the idea of the serial killer
holds holds a prominent place in American culture, and it
being American culture, it's also sadly no surprise that serial
killer memorabilia has become a shadow industry all its own,
not just things like not just things associated with homicides
(00:25):
or associated with the killers themselves, but often art and
letters created by these murderers. That's what our classic episode's
about tonight.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, I mean, it's really it's sad on a couple
of levels because oftentimes, you know, folks like this who
have been incarcerated, there are laws against them profiting off
of these kinds of you know, sale of memorabilia, so
there's a certain black market around it. But also it's
the people who obsess over this stuff. And you can
also find some of these pieces in like the Museum
(00:57):
of Death, for example, which I believe we talk about
in the episode. So it is a very interesting world,
if niche and kind of drenched in melancholy.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
So let's check out this episode, The Murky World of
serial Killer Memorabilia from May twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
They call me Ben. You are here, You are you,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know, featuring.
Of course, our superproducer, Paul Mission Controlled decand who I
have it on good authority, has never himself purchased something
involved with the murder.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Oh well, that's nice.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That is certainly a claim to fame that Paul can
attest to.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
He's got a whole heck of a lot of cool
posters though from movies.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Right right, and the murders may occur in those works of.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Fiction, they definitely do.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
But Mission Control is not the kind of cat to
go out and read about maybe a series of stabbings
and say I need to buy that knife, I want
a piece of that action, I want a shoe from
a victim or something like that.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, I was I couldn't believe that that existed before
we did this episode.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
It's a weird thing, of course, Paul. I promise we
will stop using you as an example. As far as
we know, none of us, Paul included have purchased this
sort of memorabilia previously on stuff They'll want you to know.
We had explored numerous stories of serial killers, specific cases
(03:02):
such as our unfortunately ongoing Uncaught serial Killer series and
larger phenomena such as the Highway of Tears.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Or even the East Area rapist slash original Nightstalker.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Right right, DiAngelo had just been caught, and we had
mentioned this, I think just briefly in an earlier episode.
We might have to do an entire follow up on
that because it leads to some wide reaching implications for
genetic testing DNA basis.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Didn't we do a whole episode on the We did
a whole original episode.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
We did, Yeah, and we wondered whether he would be caught.
We did speculate on his age, and overall we weren't wrong.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Remember we said he might be listening. He could have
been listening.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
That's true. He could have I don't know if he's
a fan of podcasts, allegedly is a recluse. Okay, but
they found him through some relatives DNA. Well, we'll dig
into that and so stay tuned. One thing's for sure, though,
there are probably going to be people who attempt to
(04:11):
associate themselves with this in one way or another. You know,
it's a very cold comfort for the surviving victims, and
it's a closure point for people who spent years, decades
of unpaid time investigating this. Today we're touching on serial killers,
but in a little bit of a different way. We're
(04:32):
not looking at so many specific cases, and we're not
tracing murders themselves. Instead, we're exploring an industry that's sprang
up around these grizzly tragedies, a monetization of monsters made flesh.
And here are the facts. We've already explored how law
enforcement and criminologists define serial killers, along with the problems
(04:53):
inherent in that definition and the difference between the way
these murders are depicted in fiction and the way they
actually behave. But we haven't explored the other side of
the dark mirror. We haven't looked at the public fascination
with these crimes and the public fascination with the people
who commit them.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Yeah, and this stuff probably might, let's say, might not
apply to you, but it's overwhelmingly likely that somebody you
are an acquaintance with harbors this weird curiosity. I say
weird for me, and for I guess for the social
mores of the world, it is a bit strange, this
(05:31):
fascination with serial killers, murderers, people who go out and
take lives. People like this read exhaustive biographies. They read
accounts of the actual killers' activities, what occurs before the
mo of the killer. They can likely compare differences in
(05:51):
motivation between killers and execution and apprehension for multiple killers.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
So we're talking about someone who's able to say, well,
the difference between John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer is
the following.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah, and we'll sit down with you at a bar
and tell you the difference is, for an hour.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
I have been guilty of that. Yeah, I think, and
I think everybody has that fascination to some degree, right.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah, because it is so different from normal everyday activities.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah. And there's a book we found from twenty fourteen
called Why We Love Serial Killers, in which criminologist doctor
Scott Bond explores the nature of this and he notes
the same things we've seen in previous arguments about this fascination.
Says there's a difference between perceptions of killers in reality.
He does a lot of myth busting in this book.
(06:45):
If you were at all interested in this topic, we
highly recommend it. One of the myths he busts is
that the majority of serial killers are believed to be
white males. However, according to the FBI, the race by race,
the racial break down of serial killers is about the
same proportion as that of the US population at large,
(07:05):
and based on the Radford University serial Killer Database, which
holy smokes, is a real thing, only forty six percent
of serial killers since nineteen ten have been white men.
And that's using data for a little less than four
thousand killers, or maybe right at four thousand now that
they've added the Nights Talker.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
But here's the thing, you know, none of us, including
Paul michelin man Mission Control decand own any of this,
these keepsakes of any kind of serial killer. And yet
I'm fond of serial killer movies. I'm not as into
true crime as it would seem literally everyone else on
the planet is. But it is obviously a huge booming business.
(07:48):
Where do you think that fascination comes from that makes,
you know, the average Jane and John Doe off the
street want to kind of dig into some of the stuff,
whether it's in reading books about it, or listen to
true crime podcast, watching films, or you know, exploring some
of this darkness.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, and we have to we'll stick with this perception
of serial killers being overwhelmingly white and male to hit
on this because when we bring up fiction and the zeitgeist,
what we see is that even if the facts bear
out that not all these killers are white males, the
ones who get remembered in pop culture do tend to
(08:29):
be white male killers, and Bond has a couple of
theories about this. He says the gender difference may come
down to a matter of method. Female killers, in his argument,
tend to be less use less gory methods like poisoned
and rather than shooting. But one of the most famous
(08:51):
or infamous female serial killers in the US, Eileen Wernos,
was murdering people with a gun. Bond thinks that's the
reason why she reached fame. But only nine percent around
nine percent of serial killers since nineteen ten have been women,
forty percent have been African American, and few have achieved
celebrity status. There's the disturbing thing. There is a choice
(09:14):
of victims. Bond believes most serial killers tend to kill
within their own race, and that white victims, especially white
female victims, usually get wider media attentions. So there's a
loop here between victims and killers and the media. And
so this racial bias, says disturbing as it is, is real,
and according to Bond, he says, although it may not
(09:37):
seem fair, affluent white neighborhoods are given priority over poor
black or Latino neighborhoods by state officials in the assignment
of valuable policing resources. This negatively impacts the ability of
law enforcement personnel to pursue serial murder cases in poor
racial minority communities. So society is valuing these victims less
and it's making as a result, it's making the crimes
(10:01):
as terrific as the sounds be presented or perceived as
somehow less important. And this means that the infamy of
the killer also becomes a lower.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yeah, because they're not spending the resources to catch the
people that do them. And when you're not spending the
resources to catch them, you're not getting the media attention.
You're not I mean, there's all he Bond makes all
these unfortunate points about the reality of our situation of
racial bifurcation.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
And so there to that point, if we use this
information and we ask ourselves the same question Noel was asking,
or asking about fascination with serial killers, we have to
ask ourselves, does this mean we are more fascinated with
a stereotype rather than an actual phenomenon. But we can't
(10:55):
go too far, too fast down that path, because it
turns out there's solid evidence for the American obsess with
serial killers, and it's not particularly promising news. There have
been more than twenty six hundred serial killers in the
US since nineteen hundred. England, who has the next highest total,
has had.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
Only one hundred and forty two.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Twenty six hundred to one hundred and forty two. We also,
in the States have higher rates of violent crime, and
that might be why some killers are more famous than others,
because again throughout the world, even though serial killers exist
in other countries throughout the world, when people picture as
serial killer, they usually picture either Jack the Ripper or
(11:36):
someone from the States.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, this is highly bothersome, this American obsession with it.
And I wonder how much you know? There are all
things that we can we can go down, and there's
more that we're getting in here about fiction about Americans
obsession with fictionalizing these kinds of things. It does feel
like the advent of the film industry in the United
(12:01):
States probably is linked with this.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
But he had that I was getting at. It's like
we're not obsessed with it, and that we empathize with killers,
or that we see ourselves in serial killers. I think
there's some part of us that maybe is fascinated by
it because it makes us feel superior in some way.
It's like, we do not have this compulsion or you know,
I'm wondering. I'm asking you guys, like where where you
think it comes from? Because I've always kind of been
stuck on that because it is so grizzly and unpleasant,
(12:27):
and yet it is something that seems to catch people's imaginations,
you know, the world over.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah. Yeah, And it's true that many of the stories,
the way they're presented, whether by just the facts criminologists,
or whether by the film industry, they all have the
marks of gripping fiction, high stakes danger, fire knives, mysteries,
and clear heroes and villains often right. And research shows
(12:56):
I think this is pretty fascinating. Research shows that they're
there are a couple of groups of people who enjoy
these graphic, frightening stories, and they can have a number
of very different motivations. The study from nineteen ninety five
about adolescence said that some were gore watchers, meaning they
professed in like a confidential environment, that they were watching
(13:20):
horrific movies because they enjoyed the blood and guts. They
tended to have low levels of empathy, strong need for
adventure seeking. And then there were thrill watchers who got
the adrenaline Russia, being scared, that roller coaster feeling right,
and they have high levels of adventure seeking, but they
also have, you know, high levels of empathy. And the
(13:41):
gore watchers identified with the killers rather than the victims.
The thrill watchers identified with neither. I guess you'd say
they identify with the plot.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
You know.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
So it's not just all in our minds, our smartphones,
our television. There's a physiological thing that weapons here. Just
like we talked about dopamine and social media. You get
a increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, increased blood glucose levels,
and you also get again a fit, a dose of
(14:14):
dopamine when you're watching these things. It's the neurotransmitter famously
associated with pleasure mainly food and sex, but also occurs
during time times of fear, and it's good for our survival.
I mean, we don't have to go too granular here,
but there is physiological evidence and so, in a very
(14:34):
real way, depictions of serial killers can function for adults
the way that monster movies function for kids.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
Well, yeah, my son writer is a bit too young
to do this kind of thing, although we did recently
watch Toy Story in which there's that the little kid
next door that tortures toys.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yeah, it's scarier than I had remembered in it, you know,
about two and a half. It's like, okay, maybe we
shouldn't watch something like this anymore. But of course, you know,
he can handle something that has a a monster monster
just fine, and he thinks it's fun, not you know,
nothing too graphic. But something like Moana that has a
big volcano monster in it, you just think it's because
(15:18):
it's I don't know, it's not as real as a
little kid. That's actually scary.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
How do you handle Halloween? I don't know about you guys,
but for me, as a kid, Halloween was my favorite holiday,
and it has some scary themes in there that maybe
don't really hit you when you're when you're a child.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Well yeah, at his age, you just kind of have
to keep him away from it a lot of it.
But there's you know, dressed up like a dragon. Come on,
that's fun, would you because you're your kid's been a
little bit older.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, she dressed up as a creepy dead doll last
year with like corpse makeup bond stuff. Wow, she's nine.
But she also dressed up as Satan when she was
only four, so she's got a she's got a history creepy,
creepy Halloween costumes. She's all about the spooky stuff except
(16:07):
when she's not, except when it's too much. She likes
to control it, you know what I mean. And that's
the thing. Sometimes you don't know, like that that scene
and toy story. To one kid, it could be totally fine,
and the kid it could traumatize them for life, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:19):
Well, just to jump back into the dopamine dosing that
people get from watching this kind of fiction and experiencing
it through crime drama on television or some of the
murder shows that exist throughout it is. It's really interesting
to me that you can sit on your couch, or
you can sit in a movie theater and get those
same feelings that you would if you were out having
(16:40):
a fantastical meal somewhere, or let's say, being amorous with
your your loved one. And we talked in our Hidden
Brain episodes about this is one of the one of
the reasons that horror movies are so good for that
kind of date situation. Sure, because causing these things to
(17:01):
occur in your brain. But when you get into the
mind of some of the adolescents who are the gore watchers,
that frightens me. It feels like there needs to be
some kind of process of cataloging the gore watchers. Oh
that sounds awful when I say it out loud, but
I feel like they should. They should at least be
(17:22):
on the radar. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
You know, it's now more than ever it's possible to
do something like that. But the question is should we agreed? Agreed?
Society agreed, but they're always saving lives anyway, Where where
does this all leave us? This physiological stuff? It's real,
The stereotypes are real, the facts are remain disturbing. We'll
(17:47):
explore this after a word from our sponsors. And what
we see now is that the mythical killers, those who
don't don't fit into the existing sort of narrative, are
becoming separated from the facts of their cases. So with
(18:08):
each new film, novel, or other fictional iteration about someone
like ed gean right the loose basis for the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre film franchise, any part of the story that
doesn't fit into the mold of deranged, middle aged white guy,
possibly with a dark secret. Any stuff that doesn't fit
(18:30):
there is just shed. It's just on the cutting room floor,
and the stereotype becomes more streamlined. And now there's this
increasing trend. I'm really interested in hearing opinions on this.
There's this increasing trend of serial killers as protagonist. I
watched Dexter. I thought it was cool for the first
few seasons.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Oh boy, and then it jumped the shark pretty seriously.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah, well there's another one. Did you guys watch Luther
at all? I like Luther a lot, the Alice Morgan
character from the first episode. I won't spoil it too
much because it's relatively new, but it's a straight up
serial killer that becomes the love interest.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Like what, Yeah, it's sort of like one of those
like tortured loves too or is this forbidden love kind
of situation? And she's a threat to him as well, yeah,
pretty pretty constantly. Now, I see what you're saying. And
she is designed. That character is designed to make you
to kind of appeal to you, to make you like
see from her side, you know, because even we'll be
(19:27):
getting too much in the spoiled territories. But some of
the crimes that she commits, she has this really intense
rationalization for committing that you almost can kind of buy
into in a way. It's weird.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Well that's what all of these do.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I am so excited to watch this show.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
No, that's very good.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
So behind the curtain, both Matt and Will have much
much better taste than me in general. So if you
guys have some advice on a show I am in
also interests, Elbow is dude.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I mean, come on, just watch it for him?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Is he a real smoke show? I heard that last
week tonight.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
I like this.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, we didn't make that one up, folks. So that's
that's all. John Oliver or his writers. So yeah, so
we identify with these people right in. One of the
most famous examples, of course, is Hannibal Lecter by the
third novel. He's pretty much a tortured anti hero.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
That eats people.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Well, that's kind of what I was getting at too earlier,
is trying to kind of like come to put my
finger on or put our collective thumbs on what this is.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
Like.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I feel like that identifying feature is almost an evolution because,
like you know, earlier serial killer films, typically the killer
is you don't even know who it is. It's just
this unseen, murderous force of chaos and destruction.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It's a monster.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
It's a monster exactly. But now you know, because we
need more, you have to twist it around to make
it where Well, I kind of see where this person's
coming from.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
This.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I kind of like doctor Lecter.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
He's interesting, but isn't that closer to reality? Probably an
actual human, three dimensional character that is doing awful thing.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It's true, but separated from the fiction part of it.
I'm wondering why the fascination with true crime and grizzly
accounts of crime scenes and serial killer stories that are
you know, the subject of lots of nonfiction, and obviously
the podcast industry is kind of lousy with the stuff
right now, You're welcome, thank you.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
That is one of the masterminds behind the enormously fascinating
Atlanta Monster podcast.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Well, one aspect of it is is we all like
we all like our tragedies at an arm's length, and
things like Penny Dreadfuls were super popular. This focus on
gore is is somehow linked to our understanding of our
(21:57):
own survival. And I love that you mentioned the evolution
from faceless monster to three dimensional character, because in older
days these things were straight up cautionary tales. Don't go
into the woods, the wolf will lead you. Look at
this girl of ill repute out late in the mean
(22:19):
streets of London. There's a lot of victim blaming in
this stuff, and it still happens in horror movies today,
and unfortunately it happens sometimes with victims of real life killers.
But I think part of it. No, you raised a
good point when you said you mentioned superiority. I am
not that monster, right, I am not that victim. If
(22:44):
I'm in a horror movie and I hear a door
creak by the front of the haunted cabin. I get
back in my Toyota Turcell, hope it starts and drive away.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Certainly, don't run up the stairs.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
You know that yoursell's not gonna run, go go, Who's
that You've got to fumble the keys?
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, right, and then the car will choke.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Oh boy, you've got four flat tires, buddy.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
So maybe it's our way of safely experiencing and exploring
these things and then on the dark side. At some point,
whenever we as individuals see or hear about a crime
or a social transgression, whether it's shoplifting, whether it's cheating
(23:33):
on one spouse, or whether it's like swindling someone out
of a deal, like we hear about corporate scandals or
something we hear about Mark Zuckerberg and whatnot, on some level,
we all kind of do a gut check and run
it past ourselves and think would I do that? You know,
in some cases there's a threshold. It might be, well,
(23:55):
I'm not going to steal ten dollars from petty cash
at the company, But if I steal one hundred and
fifty million and I get an island, then you know, yeah,
maybe maybe I'll just won't have a Facebook profile.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
First thing you have to do is work for a
company that has that kind of money.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
That's true, that's true. But you see what I'm saying. Though.
It's like and we ask ourselves, am I someone who
would kill? What would it take for me to kill?
You know? Like? Would I kill to avenge loss of
a relative or a loved one? Would I kill to
protect one? That's the answer most people have, right.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, would I killed just for the thrill of it?
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Right? Would I kill if I felt there was a
divine message compelling me to? Like Abraham and the Bible?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, if God asks you to sacrifice your son, I'm
just gonna go ahead and say please don't, Please don't.
God'll be okay with it.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah. I think it's a very strange story. But regardless
of this fascination, you may ask yourselves, why are we
talking so much about this? Because we're walking toward something stranger.
This lion leonization and in some cases deification of serial murders,
regardless of what the motivation is, leads to strange and
(25:17):
disturbing situations. You know, there are copycat killers, people who
use a ongoing killer's activities as a as a cover
in some cases to get away with murder and pin
it on the other person.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Or even an homage to that killer.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
True. Yeah, And then they're obsessive fans of incarcerated murderers
and serial killers. They supply prisoners with money, they send
books and other stuff to them, and in some cases
they marry them while they're in prison. Yep. Charles Manson
is a great example of that.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Several times.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
I believe you're correct, man, I believe he's been married
several times. Yep, man. But that's not all. Here's where
it gets crazy.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Now we're entering the world of serial killer memorabilia. What
this episode is all about. It's also called murder abilia,
and it's that. Of course, word has just been the
portmanteau portmanteau, yes, of murder and memorabilia, which is it's
fun to say, So what is this? These are relics,
(26:26):
my friend.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, they're relics. They can be any number of things though,
right we sort of talked about at the top of
the show. But they can be everything from an artifact
generated by incarcerated serial killer or something they did when
they were out in the world. But that ups the
value a lot. If they did it while they were
actually on their spree at large. Right, A lot of
these killers get into crafting, you know, in they're in prison.
(26:48):
Like John Wayne Gacy became an avid painter while he
was on death row, and his paintings to this day
are I think, some of the most valuable items in
circulation in this pretty small, close knit community. But it
can also be artifacts associated with the murder, like, for example,
dirt from John Wayne Gacy's crawl space you can find
(27:10):
a pair of his clown shoes that he wore. Not
to make this all about Gaysey, but he is one
of the biggest kind of stars of this scene. There
was a an action figure that Jeffrey Dahmer made that
had human bits baked into it.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
Are you serious?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah? All kinds of crazy stuff, man. So basically, anything
you can think of that would be associated with any crime,
the more grizzly and the more kind of outlandish, the better.
That's that's what we're talking about. And then there's this
whole scene of people trading this stuff, and there's a
lot of interesting legal ins and outs that go into
(27:51):
this whole world, right, Ben.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah, yeah, No, all three of us have seen this
stuff firsthand. But we have seen it in museum. Yeah, Noel,
you went to was it the Murder Museum in California?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
It's the Museum of Death? Museum of Death in Los Angeles?
And where did you guys go in DC?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
I believe it was the National Museum of Crime and Punishment.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Cool, and I think we both saw some stuff from
John Wayne Gacy in those museums.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Yeah, ours was like a clown suit and a couple
other things of his. But it wasn't just serial killers
in the places where we went. It was also the
one about crime in particular. Was you know, the car
from somebody who went on a crime spree that wasn't
exactly a serial killer, but had murdered a bunch of
(28:42):
people in the crime spree. A lot of other things
like that.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, and it's still memorabilia, right and weapons from killers
from the wild West, Yeah, things like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
The one in Hollywood is a little more on the
prurient side. I would say it's filled with things like
crime scene photos of dismembered bodies, a lot of photos
taken by killers themselves. There's one where a couple went
on a spree and like dismembered several victims. I think
(29:13):
it was the woman's ex husband, and they like sever
the penis and things like that, and there are photographs
of all this. So this place in particular is not
for the faint of heart. There's a whole room devoted
to old like embalming techniques, and there's a video that
plays on a loop of like an old embalming video
tutorial that starts off innocently enough and just gets kind
(29:36):
of dropped dead horrendously graphic after a while. But yeah,
but they had There's a whole room devoted to the
Heaven's Gate called the Marshall Apple White Thing, where there
is kind of a almost a diorama set up where
there's a body in the bed covered with a purple
blanket and Apple Whites kind of sermons are playing on
(29:58):
a loop on a TV, a little small v HS
TV and it's a bunk bed. It's like a hole
meant to recreate that mass suicide that happened with the
Heaven's Gate cult. So really cool, really small. I really
recommend checking it out, but it's not for the faint
of heart, but really really interesting stuff, and that the
thing that was most interesting that I saw. There was
a notebook that had letters between a killer and an
(30:20):
art dealer who had been purchasing this killer's work, and
the killer wrote letters back to this art dealer threatening
to sue because they had not received payment. And there's
a real specific reason for why that might have been,
isn't there, Ben.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yes, there is a very specific reason.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
You see.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
We've talked about how almost anything could qualifies this stuff.
We've talked about how we have seen this stuff in
person in a museum, But when we get into the
world of private collectors, when we get into this idea
of this trade, we immediately enter a ongoing and intense
(31:05):
debate about legality. Should it be legal to traffic these
items on a private individual scale, or should be more
of an Indiana Jones approach. Can any of us do
a good Harrison Ford?
Speaker 2 (31:18):
No, I can't, but that may be good.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Yeah, you're a leader.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
He's doing a hard shake. I can't do a Harrison Ford.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
I don't. I don't know what. Well, yeah, just get
off my plane. Terrorists, Gum, that's great.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
You killed my I didn't kill my wife.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Fugitive right, Yeah, those are great. Will you see will
you say.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
The lie these belong in a museum.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
There we go, Indiana Jones, slaves and gentlemen, So yeah,
should they should they be stuck in a museum? And
museums can use this stuff under the auspice of educational experience, right,
We are giving knowledge about times past and their effect
on the presence, for sure.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
And I think the key here too is that third
party curatorial kind of aspect, right. And the thing I
was getting at is that the reason that this person
had not been paid or they would have no legal
recourse to sue the art dealer that was not paying them,
is because it's illegal for perpetrators of crimes like this
(32:31):
to benefit financially from the legacy of their horrific acts.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Known as the Son of Sam Lungs.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Well, it certainly didn't work out for the National Crime
Museum in Washington, DC that we visited, because since twenty
fifteen it has been permanently closed.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Yeah, we really wrecked the place, yep. But that's the
thing though, It's like, how do you get this stuff?
Speaker 2 (32:54):
And you know, we'll get into more of this in
a little bit, but some of it comes from direct
involvement and direct communication with the criminals and that's when
you start getting into this gray territory where it's like,
how do I entice them to make work for me?
You know, make stuff just for me so that I
can sell it. I mean, someone is literally, whether it's
(33:15):
a dealer or the proprietor of a museum or what
have you benefiting financially from the suffering of hundreds thousands potentially.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Right, and the Son of Sam laws are not federal yet,
they're state by state and they're a little bit different.
We can explore some of this, but the primary question
is should someone who has committed multiple murders or any murder,
should they be able to profit themselves? Right? Like this
(33:45):
art dealer, should they sell a painting for five hundred
dollars and then give four hundred to someone who was
a cannibal or is a cannible and just happens to
be locked up now, dormant cannibal, A dormant can accountable
and waiting. It's weird because, like with Gaysey, Gasey's dead, right,
(34:07):
so people who are in this industry can sell this
dead man's stuff to each other and that is not
illegal right now, but it's frowned upon in two thousand
and one, eBay stopped all of these traffic, all of
these sorts of transactions. As you guys remember eBay a
(34:27):
while back, Oh my gosh, two thousand and one, so
long ago. Now you could buy all kinds of weird stuff.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
I bought a haunted accordion, an allegedly haunted accordion.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
I had no idea that accordion was haunted.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
It certainly doesn't sound normal.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
Really, it's got sort of a ghostly quality to it.
It was advertised as a haunted accordion. And I'm not
gonna say where I was added life, but it was
pretty late night, was a wee hours of the morning,
and I said, that's what I need.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
What's the haunted markup for an accordion? It's got to
be pretty steep.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Uh. It was not my best financial decision, but that aside.
You know, that just says you can. That just shows
you can buy anything on eBay. But effective May seventeenth,
two thousand and one, items associated with quote notorious individuals
who have committed murderous crimes within the last one hundred
(35:18):
years were banned. And now the serious traders started their
own websites like super not in aught dot com, Serial Killersinc.
Dot com And as we record this, several people, including
US Center John Cornyan, are fighting to obliterate this trade.
(35:41):
There's an advocate named Andy Cann who is participating with
the with legislators to try to bring this trade to
a legal end. But while they're fighting it, it means
that it's still legal in most cases.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I think it was and that kind of got eBay
to pull the plug on this stuff, or it was
his a lot of his activism. I think that made
them force them to make that change.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
And the first question, the first question that we run
into here is should it be illegal? Should we stop
people from doing this? And if so why?
Speaker 3 (36:22):
We'll get to that right after a quick word from
our sponsor. Well, I think the obvious answer is yes,
it should be illegal, or at least people think that yes,
it should be illegal. It feels in your gut, maybe it.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Does feel wrong. And even the eBay rules sort of
point to this, because they they do still allow the
sale of artifacts I think that are older than a
certain date. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but
something that would be much more likely to be considered
a historical artifact, you know, like fossils and things like that, right,
(37:04):
that is legal to distribute on eBay, but this stuff
is not. And I think the real reason for that
is that the people affected by this stuff directly are
still living. It is inherently insensitive, and people are literally
profiting off of the suffering and torture and ruination of
people's lives.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Yeah, it does, however, feel like it could be and
probably is a free speech kind of issue that you're
dealing with here.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
That's one of the arguments that the collectors and many
many people in support of this trade, or at least
maybe supports weird word in opposition of banning it or
spanning it. They say that if we refuse to provide
incentives for criminals to tell their stories, then accounts of
(37:55):
some crimes may never be fully told. In some of
those crimes, like the jam k assassination was when they
bring up maybe a vital public interest personally, it's just
one person's opinion. I think that's a little bit disingenuous.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Yeah, well, there's profit to be made a lot of that.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
And then to the point to the art collector correspondence
that we mentioned earlier, the trade becomes really murky when
we explore how these folks get their items direct contact,
writing to someone a corrupt prison guard.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Perhaps it does feel like perhaps there could be a
route somewhere in here. And this is off book, but
it feels like there could be a route somewhere that's
working with people who hold evidence, so law enforcement that
holds evidence and putting it in a museum setting that
is not for profit. So it feels like there's some
route there if we want to maintain it just for
(38:56):
a historical record of things not to do as society, right,
I could see.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
That, Yeah, yeah, and that makes sense. I feel like
that's the approach that the museums we've visited have taken.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
Or at least I think their or like would would
say that that's the router taking right, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
But when it comes to the idea of a killer
directly profiting off this, it isn't legal.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
The son of Sam law as we mentioned before, named
after Sam Berkowitz are still state by state. They came
They came into effect when rumors started spreading that publishers
and movie studios were offering sam Berkowitz hundreds of thousands
of dollars for his story for the rights to the
(39:46):
Son of Sam's story, and obviously you would want to
move to stop that. It's not making someone a millionaire
because they've committed murder doesn't seem like the way a
society is supposed to work. And and the law was
invoked in New York eleven times between seventy seven and
nineteen seventy seven and nineteen ninety. Many of these laws
(40:08):
currently have been repealed and replaced by other versions. However,
right now some states still have no active Son of
sam legislation. This means that in Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, South Carolina,
and New Hampshire, it is still legal for anyone to
(40:28):
go to a prison and start some sort of financial
relationship or write to someone and say, hey, send me this.
I'll sell this letter and then I'll put money in
your account, your commissary account.
Speaker 3 (40:44):
All right, Well, you messed up millionaires out there that
are really into this stuff, head on over to one
of those states and go for it.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Get this, you guys. There's a really crazy article on
Vice about this very topic that starts off with just
the description of a group of three hundred people gathered
at an auction house in Illinois called the James Quick auctioneers.
They're gathered around two dozen paintings that they are burning,
setting on fire. And these paintings were the work of
(41:18):
convicted and executed murderer John Wayne Gacy, who killed about
two dozen children boys during his career as a serial killer,
and before he died, his lawyers actually put forty of
his paintings up for auction and sale at this auctioneer's house.
So this was kind of like early early on in
(41:39):
this debate, and it turned out that people were interested,
People were ready to drop, you know, tens of thousands
of dollars to buy this stuff up. And the people
that did buy them up decided they were going to
burn them right there on the premises so that the
families of Gaysey's victims could have some kind of closure there.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Yeah, what do you think about that? I remember hearing
a little bit about this, but I hadn't looked into
it too deeply. What do you think about that? Is
that the right move?
Speaker 2 (42:12):
He actually allowed? It was this Joe Roth and Wally Noble,
who were a local businessmen. They invited the families of
the victims to come and actually throw the paintings into
the fire. Themselves. I think that's pretty admirable.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Yeah, it's admirable. It does seem like a waste of money.
Not a waste of money. It's doing something admirable. It's
just it's crazy that you'd have to spend that much
money to get a hold of it just to burn it.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
That's true, and that therein lies the kind of conundrum
here because obviously you know they did have to pay
the fifteen large to get all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Jeez.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
True, And where does it go? I'm not sure what
the details.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Are there dustin the wind, my friend.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Well, I don't know though. I mean, if if it
was done through Gaysey's.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
Lawyers, right, does the money legally have to benefit a charity? Right?
Does it have to go to a fund for the
survivors or the relatives of the victims? Hopefully it seems
that right now that stuff is functioning on a case
by case basis, because again there's no hard, explicit federal
(43:24):
law for this. There have been people who have been
banned from visiting prisons. We found in our research there's
a murder bilia trader named g William Harder who was
banned from visiting any Texas prisons after Texas adopted a
son of Sam Law, and it was revealed he had
been paying murderers directly for their belongings. So the stuff
(43:48):
they don't want you to know in this case often
is going to be where the money's going and how
they are obtaining these items. You know, this is this
is pretty I don't know, this is pretty filthy stuff.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
Yeahtically, it's a terrible roundabout avenue to get rich for
somebody who is insane willing to do these things.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
But then also some people might be saying it's not
about the money, right. They may be saying, we want
to keep this in the public eye. Or I just
have a personal fascination because maybe I felt maybe I lived,
says someone in the California area when this one serial
killer is operative and this is an important time in
(44:34):
my life.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
I get that part of it. What I'm saying is
a roundabout way to get rich for the killer. That's
a thing for someone to go like if you're super
poor and you go to jail, but you can sell
all the stuff you murdered all these people with.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
But the son of Sam Law is like that. You
said they're different in different states, But isn't generally kind
of the law of the land.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Like, yeah, it's generally. The only state that has never
had any law like that is New Hampshire and the
ones that the other ones on that list they had
one and then it got struck down, but they're supposedly
working on a new one.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
So that's the safeguard. I mean, like you know, in theory,
unless you launder it and figure out some roundabout way
of getting paid, you can't really a state can't really
benefit from this. And I think the big part of
the reason for this law was so that people couldn't
sell the rights to their story to like movies, and
doesn't it you think you mentioned that at the top
of the show. But people find other ways of getting
(45:32):
this stuff, don't they, Because if it's coming directly from
incarcerated criminals and they're making this work, they want to
find a way for it to benefit them while they're alive.
Even if they can't make money directly, people will find
other ways of helping them out in order to get
this murder bilia right.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Blue payment in kind let me bring you some stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
It's like what you were talking about with people actually
being banned from going into prisons. Because this is you know,
it's a sketchy territory, right.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, it is. But there are still legitimate reasons that
someone would conduct some of this stuff. Like the Vice
article that you have mentioned has a story about a
East Coast academic I believe who's conducting research on school shooters,
and he buys almost every school shooter letter that's available
(46:24):
because it's part of his research. So that's one argument.
But still it feels like those moments of understandable rational
action for this are few and far between, not going
to say, not gonna say impossible, just few and far between.
And right now, even though it's sort of a hidden industry,
(46:45):
right now, you can go, should you so choose, to
these websites, and you can find you can find all
sorts of stuff on offer. Be aware that some of
it could quite possibly be fraudulent, can't speak to it,
and then you have to ask yourself, is it worse
if it's fraudulent or it's worth Is it worse if
(47:05):
it's real? So the harder the guy we have mentioned
who got banned, he noted that he has a minimum
of one thousand active users on his website. There are
probably a lot of people who just read about this,
you know, or vicariously experienced it. I will say, I
(47:26):
don't know what you guys think, but I will say,
after researching this episode, I've come to the conclusion that
I'm not getting I'm not getting you guys anything like
this for for your birthdays.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, I'm good.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Thank you, Ben, I really appreciate it. Thanks for thinking about.
Speaker 4 (47:42):
Us, and likewise not to be too much of a diva,
but please just no sericular stuff for me either.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Ah.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Right, And here's the thing. No matter what kind of
laws get passed, this is gonna this trade is going
to continue.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Yeah, black markets, green markets. I think there are ways
around it, and it will continue to happen.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
And it's impossible to stamp it out because the only
way you can stamp this stuff out, the most effective
way to do it would be denying incarcerated prisoners any
and all access of any sort to the outside world.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
But even then, you've got sisters, brothers, fathers, other members
of families of killers who may need money.
Speaker 1 (48:24):
Who are free. I see what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
You know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Then what would you do? You would have to entirely
violate human rights.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yeah, Well, here's a question.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
What about folks that let's say I wanted to design
a line of serial killer themed trading cards or a
line of really high detailed serial killer themed action figures.
Who do I have to pay for the right to
do that? Do I have to pay anyone? Am I
allowed to do that if I'm making it and paying
(48:55):
for it myself and selling it directly?
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (48:57):
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Yeah? Who owns the IP of serial Killers?
Speaker 2 (49:02):
That's the thing, because it is public domain. I mean,
this stuff was reported in the public and obviously the
killers themselves can't benefit from the IP of their image.
They are public figures.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
I think, you know, oddly, UF the action figure thing
might might be an easier route because of the trading cards.
Depending on the image you use, you have to pay
somebody on h unless it's a mugshotters.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
That's right, That's right. But I'm actually I looked this
up just now. Just look up serial killer action figures.
There are a ton of them out there, bobbleheads, action figures,
plush dolls. There's a Jeffrey Dahmer. It's called the Peekaboo
Jeffrey Dahmer Slay set, and it is Jeffrey Dahmer in
his prison reds, you know, the full body suit with
(49:45):
the ankle, you know, cuffs and everything on, and it
comes with a little bucket of like it's meant to
be acid, I guess because he would dissolve bodies and acid.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Od god.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, it's it's pretty pretty hideous and tasteless, but is
but it's it. Is it legal?
Speaker 1 (50:02):
You know? I yeah, I think it is probably technically.
And there are some people who go further and say
is it art? Which is an argument maybe for another day,
But yeah, you're absolutely right, it is. It is legal.
People are doing it. You don't have to pay for
the rights to a real person. You would have to
(50:24):
go through a bunch of licensing stuff to make. It's
actually more difficult to make an action figure of say
Mike Myers or Jason Voorhees than it is for Jeffrey
Dahmer or something.
Speaker 2 (50:34):
That's because the license holders of those properties have like
people they pay to look around online constantly for people
doing like derivative kind of like there's a lot of
fan communities that make t shirts and prints based on
popular products, and they can very easily get shut down
if they're you know, making money off of it. But
(50:54):
a lot of times the studios and stuff will let
that stuff ride. But it's not the case. I don't
think with that.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
Yeah, that's a real kick in the pants, you know,
because these are horrible people and they get action figures.
There are any action figures of us.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
We can change that. You know, there's a place at
the to Cab Mall here in Atlanta, the North to
Cab Mall where you can get a three D photograph
taken of you and your family and they will print
it into an action figure set of you and your
of your family.
Speaker 1 (51:21):
Did you do it?
Speaker 3 (51:22):
No?
Speaker 2 (51:22):
I haven't done it yet, but I'm interested.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
We've got to do it.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
We should do it. For the for the team.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
We should do it. We should. Uh, let's see, Paul,
would you be interested in that?
Speaker 3 (51:30):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (51:31):
Yeah, Oh, we got a pretty enthusiastic nod wow from
Paul Mission control decade wow.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
So send us some links.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah, and let us know as well. What what do
you think? Where do you fall in this debate? Do
you believe that it is unethical and we should do
anything possible as a society to prevent this trade. Do
you believe that the past is the past, and these
(52:00):
things should be allowed to freely float through the world
as they will. Should they only be a museum's Should
they be destroyed entirely? Should we obliterate the traces of
these people like the way the Chinese government obliterated traces
of people in tianam and Square right, or the way
(52:22):
you stalin erased people from photographs.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
Well, when you think about it that way, it seems
like maybe we shouldn't. But anyway, what do you think?
Speaker 1 (52:32):
What do you think? As always, thank you so much
for tuning in. You can let us know on Instagram
where we are a conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Or Twitter or Facebook where we are conspiracy stuff. Definitely
put all of your information into Facebook and talk to
us there because your data is completely safe. But it
is a great way to talk to us, especially no,
especially on our here's where it gets crazy. What do
we call that? Our page where we can all hang out.
We've been doing all kinds of stuff on there lately.
(53:00):
And just remember, if you are going to go there,
be inquisitive. Yeah, you can be intense, don't you just sick? Yeah,
that's it, okay.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Because we will destroy you. We will wipe all traces
of you from the group.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Oh gosh, okay, So we're not about just putting this
out there. We are not about censorship. But there's just
there's some things that you just don't want to say.
There's a line, and that's the end of this classic episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
(53:34):
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std WYTK. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
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An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.