What is Murderabilia?

In this episode I am joined by Loukas Ntanos, a criminologist from Birmingham City University and an expert on murderabilia - which is the collection of items related to homicide cases. Yes, believe it or not, there are people out there who collect and trade in ghastly souvenirs of serial killers such as Frederick Deeming (pictured) and infamous crimes. It's a fascinating subject which Loukas has been researching. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back. I'm Chris Summers. This is episode 14 of the Total Crime Podcast. And I have with me another very special guest, Lucas Danos, who is a lecturer in criminology at Birmingham City University. And he's got a sort of specialist researcher in a field which I'm really interested in, which I think it's called murderabilia. Please correct me. Who's coined that term, Lucas?

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Yes, exactly. The term is uh murderabilia, and uh it was Andy Kachan who coined the term uh in the United States. Uh Andy Kachan is a victims' right advocate and uh the former director of the crime victims office in Houston. Uh, so he coined the term because he was very much engaged and active, and he wanted to ban murderabilia in the United States. So he used that term, and that term later became standard in criminology and media.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, no, it is quite an emotive term when people sort of try to make profit, make money out of uh this sort of thing, as we're gonna as we're gonna talk about. Um, can you describe, you know, what where did you get your interest in criminology and then how did you begin to sort of uh focus on this particular field?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Yes, of course. So I started in law in Greece, it's the country where I originally come from. Um so I studied law. Uh I completed my studies and uh worked as a lawyer for a few years, but uh I decided to study criminology on a master's level, which I did here at Birmingham City University. I was more interested in criminology because it focuses more on um understanding the human behavior behind crime rather than being concerned with uh courtroom arguments. So I studied criminology here in Birmingham City University. Uh, when we do a master's, we need to submit a dissertation. And uh for that project, I had decided to look at public fascination with serial killers. Uh so this was a topic that my supervisor had helped me choose because I did not have much of a cultural reference and an understanding as to what is a topical area here to kind of look at what is interesting, what is under-researched, probably. So my supervisor had helped me, and uh, we had uh yeah, decided we decided to look at this particular subject area, public fascination with serial killers, and specifically how this type of crime is being discussed, and therefore how it is being understood or negotiated in online spaces like Reddit and Web Sleuths, where true crime enthusiasts speak about serial homicide. So, for that dissertation, uh, apart from the pragmatic aspect of me having to collect some data before that, I needed to contextualize my topic. So I wanted to look at public fascination with serial killers and through engagement with the literature, I found out about merduabilia, how this is a thing. I didn't know it was a thing. I did not know people could sell items and that there was an actual market for that. So this is when I first came across that term and when I started doing some reading. Uh again, my dissertation was not about memorabilia specifically, it was just something I kind of came across, but that term kind of stayed with me, and I thought that this could be worth exploring later uh in my professional journey in academia. So when I uh was given the opportunity to develop a PhD proposal, I went back to that and I said, yes, actually, this is something that's really interesting. It's under-researched. There are currently only two pieces of research that uh have engaged with Maudurabilia and people who collect Mirabilia. One of them comes uh from Italy and it's in the form of a questionnaire that was an online questionnaire, essentially. And the other one is uh pretty much an ethnographic uh piece of research. Uh, and it stems primarily from the United States. So within the English and Welsh context, there is not this type of research. So this is something I wanted to kind of address with my PhD.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, and when I should explain to people listening that we we met last year, didn't we, at CrimeCon in Crimecon UK in London. And at the time I had I had a stall there and I was showing uh some I brought with me some of my um I don't know what you what you call them, um not uh not souvenirs, but um some stuff from the Fred West case. Uh Fred and Rose West. Um and I mean by the time this podcast goes out, I I'm going to be at a uh a true crime convention in Poland, actually, and I'm I'm speaking again on the Fred and Rose West case. And uh you say, you know, like there is a public fascination in serial killers. Um you know, it doesn't have to be in your own country. You could be, you know, really interested in a case. I mean, America is often considered the sort of serial serial killer capital of the world. But um, you know, there there is uh a danger, you know, some of the stuff I've got, uh if I looked it up on the internet, do you think it'd be worth a lot of money? I mean, it'd be what what sort of people I'm I'm just wondering where they where they get some of this stuff. Is it sort of um dodgy police officers who are who are sort of taking stuff and then later sort of selling it on to people? Or how does it get onto the market?

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yes, so there are various ways in which somebody can access items. This can happen through uh through social media pages, for example. There are groups on Facebook where individual collectors sell items that they might have. Um there's also museums dedicated to mederabilia, therefore, some items that are mass-produced, somebody can access them there. Uh and sometimes uh collectors get items through auctions. For example, I've spoken with uh a collector who acquired some items that related to the victim of a crime, not the offender, but the victim of a homicide. Um, and the participant gained access to these items through an auction that uh the family had essentially set up, uh, selling items that belong to the victim. And um many times collectors have acquired these items through communication with people who have been convicted and they're in prison. So many times, and this really depends on the item because again, there's two types of items. There are items that are mass-produced, and there are items that are individually produced. So mass-produced items could be t-shirts that relate to a particular case, uh, postcards, mugs, stationery, this type of thing. Uh individually produced, they can come from the offenders themselves. For example, it can be things like letters or um signed poems or drawings, because many times they engage in art-based interventions in prison. So this is something that we are looking at. And in other instances, there are personal items that they have sent to a private collector that has communicated with them. And sometimes the collector keeps the items, or sometimes it decides to sell them. So collectors always manipulate the items somehow. They might want to organize them, they might want to store them, keep them locked, they might want to put them on display. Sometimes they want to sell them to actually profit from that.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, I mean, it's it's I remember coming across this years ago, the the c the whole uh subject of copyright when it comes to you know murderers. Um, there was a case of a guy called John Sweeney who was not quite a serial killer, he'd killed two women, I think, or two women that we know about, um, one in London and one in Amsterdam, I believe. And he was a quite an artist, and it were not a great artist, but he he drew these horrendous drawings, you know, sketches of violence against women and all sorts of things. And they they were, you know, they were exhibits during his trial. Uh, and then at the end of the trial, I remember asking the Met police to get um when he was convicted and jailed for life, to get, you know, can you give us the images? And the the first thing they said was, no, we can't, because they're his copyright. This is a convicted murderer, uh, you know, sometimes drawing pictures of his victims, you know, it just didn't make any sense. I think they eventually sort of uh gave way on that. But um you wonder you know, in many jurisdictions outside the UK whether that is still the case, you know. Um do you know, US serial killers remain, you know, if they draw their victim or even take a photograph of their victim, whose copyright is that? It's just a horrendous thought.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

This really depends on the jurisdiction that we are looking at and uh the legal frameworks within that jurisdiction. So if we speak about um, and also sorry, there's also an ethical element to all of that. Like obviously, legality draws from morality. This is what the law tries to reflect, right? Our morals, our society, how we view certain behaviors and certain things. And obviously, this changes because crime is a social construction, so it changes from time to time, and therefore, responses change in terms of what we view as criminal or what we view as being a deviant behavior. Now, with regard to memorabilia, there are a range of legal frameworks that have been established trying to regulate the phenomenon. For example, in the United States back in the late 70s, we had the Sun of Sum Laws. These were some legal frameworks that were established in response to David Berkovich, who was such a high-profile case, very much embedded in public consciousness. Uh, a great manhunt to actually arrest the offender. So shortly after he was arrested, he was given loads of money for his story, his criminal story. And this is what the public reacted to, and this is how the son of some laws were established. However, in the early 90s, just about 13 years after their enactment, the son of some laws were found to be unconstitutional on the grounds of violating the First Amendment right to free speech, because essentially the Son of Some Laws regulated the speech of a person, the right they have to actually express themselves, speak about their biographies or their lives, the criminal aspect of their lives as well. And yeah, essentially profit from that, like if you sell that story to uh a screenwriter or a publisher and so on. So they were found and constitutional, which created problems, and then many states tried to amend that and they created that they created the notoriety for profit laws that try to target items that belong to prisoners, for example, t-shirts, shoes, and all of that. So they're prohibited from selling this because these items they're not viewed as being part of their right to express themselves as part of the free speech. So again, we see uh different approaches within very uh similar contexts. Now, within the United Kingdom, it is a different story. So murderabilia is somewhat regulated under the Coroners and Justice Act of 2009, so there is a specific reference there uh that does not quite prohibit murderabilia, it doesn't ban it. So this is important to emphasize murderabilia is legal. You can sell items. Uh it's just that it's not that mainstream, so it's still controversial. But on paper, it is legal. Uh, what we try to regulate in England and Wales is essentially uh the profiting aspect of it. Because if because if somebody like a convicted criminal sells the story or specific items and they profit from that, there is scope for some of that money to be sent to the victim's family as compensation. But that's it. Again, we don't really ban memorabilia. There is legal tolerance, and there's a level of uh acceptability, so it's pretty much embedded.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

So it it's it's illegal. I mean, it's most people would find it immoral or or just bad taste, but it's actually legal, yeah. Um, can I ask about history? I mean, we think of you know the the current um sort of uh interest in true crime, you know, lots of Netflix documentaries and uh whatever. That there is a great appetite for total crime content. Sorry, true crime content. I'm picking myself up for a second. Um, but it it that goes back centuries, doesn't it? Because I I did an article on my Substack last year about um these books they they used to bring out, um which were sort of um every few months they would bring out um sort of annals of the uh the old Bailey or the you know um articles from famous trials, and you know, there's obviously we had public executions and things like that. And I imagine sort of people collected, you know, a bit of hair from the from the victim, or you know, the last thing they were wearing, or all that sort of thing. Is it is there always been a sort of murderabilia um industry to some degree?

SPEAKER_00 14:15

To some degree, yes. We see this public fascination with tangible items that relate to offenders way back, I would say back in the 18th and 19th centuries for sure. I think this is where public fascination with crime-related items really started taking shape. And there's several elements that contributed to that. For example, like you mentioned, public executions, right? These drew huge crowds, and people would buy souvenirs after the execution, like ballads or pamphlets, or um even supposed relics that somehow related to the case. Then we have the creation of the Metropolitan Police Service and the rise of the detective culture and the media that fueled the already existing public curiosity. And obviously, there were high-profile cases, like Jack the Reaper, for example, which is which still feels contemporary despite the crimes dating back to the 19th century. So, yes, people would keep letters, they would keep newspaper clippings, uh alleged artifacts as related to the crimes. And let's not forget also about Penny Dreadfuls, those stories that were very popular within um adolescents mostly. So young people, uh, stories about uh monsters and serial killers with uh supernatural, supernatural powers, so essentially very uh sensationalist, but also cheap, therefore affordable uh fictional tales of killers. So there is a fascination with uh with items, and I think uh especially when we talk about the public fascination with homicide, I think a key element to that is the concept of of death, yeah uh because it is a very specific form of crime, isn't it? It's uh crime that's that has irreversible consequences for the victim. So we talk about offenders who do. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

And I think um well, the the Metropolitan Police I think they had a um an exhibition at the London Museum a couple of years ago, which I went to see. You've got a vague recollection that they might have had something from the Jack the Ripper case. But the the the original, for example, the letters that um you know the the person claiming to be Jack the Ripper wrote to the newspapers, I believe they they the the Mets still have them. I mean, I would you be able to sort of uh guess a figure for you know if they went on the public market, you know, how how much you know a supposed letter from Jack the Ripper would be worth nowadays?

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Uh a lot because this case has historical value, educational value. There's still a mystery around this. Exactly because we don't know who Jack the Ripper was, um, there is still a mystery. Uh every time, every sort of uh publication that relates to the case is a success. Uh documentaries, for example, that look at the case, people will turn up and watch this type of engagement with the case. Uh still, so yeah, they will have value. I don't know the exact value because the prices tend to range from uh some hundred pounds to actual thousands of pounds. Yeah, I think it will cost many thousands of pounds.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

And what sort of figures have you seen on the internet people um charging for are we talking about thousands, tens of the thousands more?

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, it's thousands, it's many times thousands. For example, um last month I delivered a lecture on murderability and I showed some pictures to the students from sites that you can access through Google, uh, pretty much like you access Amazon, right? That were selling personal items relating to killers. And if memory serves me right, there was a pair of shoes owned by Aileen Wornos, the female serial killer in the United States, and uh the pair of shoes cost more than $8,000. Sorry, from who? Aileen Wornos. Oh, Aileen Wornos. Yes. What her sort of uh hooker shoes or something in the yes, uh she had killed uh six men between 1989 and 1990s in California. She was uh arrested. Uh she never regretted for her crimes. She was diagnosed with psychopathy. Uh she came from an extremely uh abusive background. She had been uh sexually, physically, emotionally abused uh as a kid. Um you said eight eight thousand dollars, you say uh it was more than eight thousand dollars, yeah. And sometimes uh some sites don't really sell that items in this particular price. This is the price you need to hit because sometimes this takes the form of an auction between people who might be interested. So there's always scope for selling prices to go higher.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

So that's sort of a a the low price, sort of guide price, but it would probably go much higher than that. Um that's fascinating. Um, is there any have you noticed or have you researched any sort of cultural differences, different countries or different cultures, you know, religions or or parts of the world where you know this is just not a done thing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

This again relates on um on morality, on legal differences, uh, media culture. I can definitely speak about Britain. I can speak um about how there is interest very clearly, but the interest tends to be a little bit more restrained. This type of interest is usually framed as historical or as educational here. So many times we see exhibitions that feature crime artifacts, they're being treated as part of the heritage, they're being treated as uh preserving history, policing policing history sometimes, or education. So, yes, murderabilia is controversial here and not that mainstream. And um, it's not just controversial in terms of the people who collect it and the people who don't collect it, there's also controversy within the collectors. So there's a range of views relating to murderabilia. For example, there's collectors who only emphasize the importance of vulnerability in terms of its historical value and educational value. So they see themselves as preserving history, essentially. There's others who are going to collect everything, so they don't really have criteria. If it relates to murder, it's okay. If they can profit, yes. So they have a little bit of a more cynical attitude to that. And there's participants as well who say that they're only interested in items that help them get into the mind of offenders. So against something that might have educational value, and they really dislike anything that might be seen as sensationalist. So essentially they say, yes, memorabilia is okay if you have an interest in cases, but it's not okay when you glorify the offender and you act as a group of that offender. So there's a range of attitudes. So this is really the British context in the way that I have understood it so far. I feel the interest is there, but it's restrained and usually framed as historical or educational. Things are very different in the United States for sure, because there the market is more visible, more commercialized. There are way more high-profile cases of multiple homicide offenders as well. So this is also important to. Because every homicide offender essentially can provide items for sale, but it's usually multiple homicide offenders that interest the public. First and foremost, serial killers and then mass murderers. And the phenomenon that's most prevalent in the United States is mass shootings. So I think in 2017 there were more mass shootings in the United States than calendar days within that specific year. And many of these offenders are treated as celebrities after they commit the crime. So if you look at uh recent publications on mass murder in America.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Sorry, yeah, I'm cutting you off. You carry on.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

If you look at uh contemporary publications, academic publications on mass murder in America, one of the arguments that scholars try to put forward is that we should stop mentioning the media should stop mentioning the mass homicide offenders with their name because this gives an incentive to other people to commit this type of crime and enjoy the attention, enjoy the fame and everything that comes with it.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Yeah, I remember that after the uh Victoria, I think it was called the Victoria Tech shooting. Um, a guy, I think his name was Cho, who um wrote a manifesto before he went and shot a load of people. And that I think that was the first time I remember that sort of campaign being suggested, you know, don't just you know, telling the media don't name them. Um and in reality it's it's virtually impossible to do. But I I yeah, that that you wonder, yeah, I mean the value of those, the original sort of manifesto or you know, the Ted Kachinski's uh unibomber manifesto, things like that, they must all be worth you know a pretty penny or a dollar on the market. Um I also I mean I went to the Metropolitan Police Museum recently and they showed me um they have got a door in there. So it's um it's from do you know the serial killer Christie, John Christie? In the in the 1950s, uh he killed a number of women um in London, and actually somebody was hanged, you know, wrongfully for one of his victims.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Yes, and the father was one of the victims.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

That's right, and he was anyway, he was later convicted, and um all the bodies were in the house, and this door was from I think it was from the like the garden shed or or an outhouse in the garden, and the the owner of the property, or somebody had many years ago, because I think that property has now been demolished and they built um road a road over it or whatever. Um, but somebody had had got hold of the door, and I think they were they were trying to sell it, and the the metropolitan police heard about it, and so they bought it off this guy. Um, I mean, m maybe if it was nowadays, he probably would have sold it on the internet, you know. Um, but you know, that is now in the hands of the Met police, and they they showed it to me, and it was uh it was kind of a bizarre thing, and it's just a door, but um it is when you think about it, the the sort of what the story within it that makes it valuable.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

And uh those items give the opportunity to people who collect them uh or get close to them to essentially feel this aura that relates to the crime, essentially to engage with the crime, engage with the case, but in a very uh safe manner. So, yes, there is engagement, but from a safe distance, essentially. And this leads back to the point I mentioned earlier in relation to homicides entailing the element of death that other crimes don't. Uh, death is a taboo subject. We almost have this cognitive dissonance from our deaths. Uh, and uh many times people find this topic intriguing uh exactly because somebody has committed what they think is unthinkable, somebody that not only scares them, but they genuinely don't understand. So this is why we see people actively trying to understand why would somebody break the law and also break the law in this specific way.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Yeah, I mean, there must be also like um a sort of strange sense where sometimes the state sort of creates things, and you know, for example, if you were executing somebody, there's probably a video of that execution, um, which they probably have to take for official purposes. And you know, they could, well, if we sell this, we could um, you know, use the money to compensate the victims or something like that. But there's you know, or or the last prison clothes that Ted Bundy wore or whatever. But there's so there must be a sort of um a bit of a sort of debate about you know how far should we push it or shall we is it just not the done thing, we should not be selling these items or pushing them out into the market um to feed this. Sounds like a sort of voracious market for that sort of out that sort of content.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

And it is a very controversial subject area, as I mentioned earlier. So some arguments for memorabilia is that um through the collection, through the acquisition of these items, somebody can learn about cases. Uh, so there is a again an educational value to that. And uh also another argument for memorabilia is that um when convicted uh criminals engage in art-based interventions in prison, this is very therapeutic for them. This helps them helps them change how essentially view themselves. So this also sometimes helps with rehabilitation. So there are some positive aspects of prisoner creating things and yes, making them available uh to the public. But on the other hand, uh there are arguments against memorabilia, and these relate usually to the protection of victims from what we call secondary victimization, because it is one thing to lose a loved one to homicide, and it is another thing to see some people profiting off from that.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Yeah. Are there are there victims groups or anybody like that who sort of go around campaigning against these sites or or you know, or or even just buying these things just to take them off the market, you know?

SPEAKER_00 28:41

I'm not sure about the extent to which there is awareness of memorabilia in England and Wales and where people actively know that there is a market for that. Because many times when I speak to people about my project, my subject area, many people are not aware of that. And I have spoken with memorabilia collectors that don't know fellow collectors. Um, so I'm not sure if the public is 100% aware that mederabilia exists. In the United States, exactly because some high-profile cases were embedded in public consciousness, and it was very clear that there would be a market for these items, then yes, in that context, there were voices that clearly opposed memorabilia, which is why I spoke to you also earlier about Andy Kachan, who is the victim rights advocate that tries to ban murderabilia for decades.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

And you sound like there is a sort of pecking order between, or not a there's a slight difference between those people who think think of themselves as sort of historians or curators and others who are strictly in it for the money. Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

There's a range of uh motives as to how as to why somebody would um collect murderabilia uh to preserve history, uh, to acquire knowledge, uh to sell the items, to maybe engage with fellow collectors. Uh, there are some psychological reasonings as well. Um sometimes people collect uh items that relate to homicide events because, again, they engage with crime and deviance, but from a safe space. If you think about this, we are law-abiding citizens, right? So somebody who breaks the law and in that way um provides the ground for us to engage with that sort of behavior, uh, and the thrill seeking maybe that it entails, but again from a safe space without us breaking the law ever. So there's an element of escapism, I would say, as well. And I think this also explains why there is such proliferation, such availability of uh crime representations, really, in books, in uh podcasts, in uh documentaries, uh fictional accounts, but also non-fictional, the true crime ones.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

What's the strangest item you've come across? Or and have you got any in your have you got a collection of your own?

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Uh no, I don't collect items. Uh it was just one of my students that I supervide uh her dissertation that brought me a mark with Ted Bundy as a gift because she was under the impression I would collect hearing about my PhD, but no, I don't collect. Uh, I have seen some items that uh collectors I have spoken with have. Uh it's usually letters or uh signed notes or uh books or drawings, and uh in some instances accessories. And I think the accessories are the ones that I find most intriguing. So one of my participants got a pair of glasses that belonged to to a homicide case.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Was that the perpetrator's glasses or the perpetrator's glasses? Yeah, right. Um, so you could almost put them on and think, you know, I'm I'm looking through a killer's eyes or you know. Um, and one last question, this is gonna get a bit dark, but um obviously there is the dark web as well. So are there people on there sort of selling you know snuff videos and all that sort of stuff, actual, you know, videos of people being murdered and all that sort of thing?

SPEAKER_00 32:27

This happens, but there is no organized black market that people sometimes imagine because murderabilia is legal. So if you want to disseminate items, uh you can do this through various websites, or you can do this through social media. I have um just about 20 pages on Facebook where collectors gather.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Yeah, so you don't you don't need to go to the dark web because it's all already on the it's not really illegal. Um okay, well, thank you very much. Uh, we've very much run out of time. Thank you, Lucas, for his fascinating subject. And uh hope my uh listeners will come back to listen to the next episode of Total Crime Podcast. Good night.