The a to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (9 page)

Cover of Richard Speck comic book from Boneyard Press

(Courtesy of Hart D. Fisher)

By contrast, Eclipse’s true-crime series was positively tasteful, consisting of nothing but rather handsomely painted full-face portraits. Take our word for it—in terms of sheer repulsiveness, the Garbage Pail Kids were infinitely more objectionable.

Why kids (particularly little boys) should get such a kick out of all kinds of gross-out merchandise, from rubber vomit to Gummi worms, is a question we’ll leave to child psychologists (though we suspect that managing anxieties by creating games around them has something to do with it). But the notion that a three-by-five illustration of Jeffrey
Dahmer
’s face might cause “juvenile crime and impair ethical development” seems highly dubious, to say the least.

As it happened, a federal magistrate concurred with that opinion and ruled that Nassau County’s ban on these trading cards was unconstitutional. By that time, however, the point was somewhat moot, since Eclipse Enterprises had already gone out business.

Trading cards haven’t been the only controversial collectibles. Serial-killer
enthusiasts who covet a lock of Charles
Manson
’s hair or an original John Wayne
Gacy
artwork or an autographed letter from Ted
Bundy
now routinely buy, sell, and swap their macabre mementos over the
Internet
. This practice has led at least one critic—Andy Kahan of the Mayor’s Crime Victims Assistance Office in Houston, Texas—to launch a widely publicized campaign against the trade in what he has memorably labeled “murderabilia.”

The notion that collecting crime relics is a symptom of America’s “cultural rot” is, however, simply mistaken. From seventeenth-century Englishmen (and women) who would dip their handkerchiefs in the blood of beheaded criminals, to eighteenth-century Frenchmen who treated their children to working, scale-model guillotines, to God-fearing Americans in the early twentieth century who purchased graphic postcards of Southern lynchings, there have always been people drawn to grisly souvenirs. And after all, how much difference is there between collectors of “murderabilia” and the many people who scour the flea markets for Nazi memorabilia? There’s no point in denying the fact that, for countless ordinary law-abiding folk, evil exerts a dark fascination.

Cover of Ed Gein comic book by Pat Gabriele

(Courtesy of Hart D. Fisher)

Charles Manson T-shirt collection
(Courtesy of Damon Fox)

Serial-killer fashions
(Courtesy of Damon Fox)

Still, the thought that serial murderers are being “glamorized” by these hobbyists is deeply offensive to many people—particularly to those whose family members have fallen victim to a psychokiller. Some years ago, relatives
of some of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims sued a company called Boneyard Press of Champaign, Illinois, for publishing a Dahmer comic book. The same company also put out comics about Richard
Speck
and Ed
Gein
.
Gein’s story was also told in an earlier “underground” comic,
Weird Trips
No. 2, which featured a memorable cover illustration of ol’ Eddie in his kitchen by artist William Stout.

While some of these comics have been attacked for being exploitative, a number of more recent graphic novels have won praise for their artistry and intelligence. One of the most highly regarded is
From Hell
. This eight-part saga about
Jack the Ripper
, illustrated by Eddie Campbell and written by Alan Moore, was the basis for the stylish 2001 film starring Johnny Depp (see
Movies
). Rick Geary, a brilliant comic book illustrator whose work has appeared everywhere from the
National Lampoon
to
Rolling Stone
to the
New York Times Book Review,
has done a series of critically acclaimed graphic novels called “A Treasury of Victorian Murder,” whose subjects include Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, and H. H.
Holmes
.

The Collector!

In the realm of coveted collectibles, serial-killer memorabilia doesn’t quite rank with early American coins, rare commemorative stamps, and Golden Age superhero comics. Still, there are some serious collectors out there—people who would regard an original Ed
Gein
autograph as more valuable than a Mickey Mantle rookie card.

One of the most prominent of these is Rick Staton, an affable Louisiana funeral director, who—like so many members of the baby boom generation—developed an early taste for the macabre from his childhood exposure to creature-feature television shows, Roger Corman horror movies, and
Famous Monsters of Filmland
magazine.

In 1990, Staton—who until that time had collected nothing more controversial than grade-B movie posters—heard that John Wayne
Gacy
had taken up oil painting in prison. Staton struck up a correspondence with Gacy and eventually became his art dealer, selling original Gacy paintings (mostly of clowns) to a roster of clients that included celebrity collectors like Johnny Depp, John Waters, and Iggy Pop.

Before long, Staton had also contacted other infamous killers—including
Charles
Manson
, Richard
Speck
, Richard
Ramirez
, and Henry Lee
Lucas
—who were soon turning out everything from crude ballpoint doodles to oil-painted seascapes, which Staton sold through a mail-order business called Grindhouse Graphics (see
Art
).

Rick Staton
(Photo by Arbie Goings, Jr.)

In the meantime, Staton assembled his own personal collection of serial-killer artifacts and memorabilia, which currently includes such unique items as a bird painting on canvas by Speck; Polaroid photos of Lucas and David
Berkowitz
;
Ted
Bundy
’
s autograph; the high school diploma of
Hillside Strangler
Kenneth Bianchi; cards and letters from Jeffrey
Dahmer
, Edmund
Kemper
, and a host of other notorious killers; charcoal rubbings of Gein’s grave marker; soil from Gary
Heidnik
’s front yard; and many works by Gacy, including a unique painting of Michelangelo’s
Pietà.

Though Staton understands that his interests are bound to raise eyebrows, he makes no bones about his hobby (so to speak). Straightforward and self-aware, he knows that monsters have always exerted a fascination for people—partly because, in confronting them, we are facing and coping with our own deepest fears and forbidden desires.

Staton and his buddy Tobias Allen (creator of the infamous Serial Killer
Board Game
) are the focus of Julian Hobbs’s fascinating documentary
Collectors
(2000), which uses their obsession with convicted sex-killer-turned-sensitive-artist Elmer Wayne Henley to explore the phenomenon of serial-killer fandom.