by Nancy Grace
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fat. They’re fat because they eat too much fast food! It’s deadly to the courts, the way these frivolous lawsuits bloat the system, choking Lady Justice.
A real way to curtail outrageous court claims that suck the system dry is to institute higher standards of proof in personal-injury cases as well as to have trial judges charge the jury in more detail. There is a theory of contributory negligence that should be taken into consideration. Our legislatures must enact more conservative statutes so as to reduce the number of ridiculous claims in which the complainant is actually at fault. If you’re harmed by eating french fries, prove it! Another measure to stop frivolous lawsuits would be to levy a punitive fine against attorneys who encourage money-grabbing clients to file suit. Instituting ethical reprimands isn’t an unreasonable solution either.
Another simple solution would be to allow the jury to consider an alternative within the same trial. If the jury first finds no liability on behalf of the respondent, it should then consider awarding not only attorneys’ fees to the respondent, but punitive damages as well, without needing a separate lawsuit based on the complainant’s bogus claims.
In many jurisdictions, when these shameful lawsuits are filed and the respondent is forced to hire lawyers to defend against the claim, punitive damages can and should be ordered by the court as punishment for the misuse of the system. Those parties who glut the system with false claims should be ready to face the fact that if they are found out, the court will come down on them with major-league punitive awards to the other side—that come out of their own pockets.
C H A P T E R F O U R
B L O O D M O N E Y
AT THE END OF EVERY FELONY TRIAL, WHEN I read out the word “guilty” in open court, I felt no jubilation. But at least I drove home those nights believing, naïvely, that I had helped set things right in some way. I believed that the system had given a small degree of peace to a family torn apart by violent crime. I had no idea that the persecution of innocent victims, once avenged by a jury verdict of guilty, continues on in a very real sense. I was shocked to discover there is a whole new meaning to revictimization—a whole new universe, in fact—in which that same family can be victimized over and over again, and at the moment there is not a darn thing we can do about it.
I’m talking about “murderabilia.” Sold through the Internet.
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Get yourself some ginger ale and soda crackers, because I predict you’ll soon be as nauseated as I was when I discovered the truth. The marketing of “murderabilia,” as it has been coined, is a business that’s not only alive and well on the Internet, but actually thriving. It’s a 9 4
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marketplace growing fat and happy off the intense pain and suffering of others. On any given day, you can log on and, for the right price, become the owner of disturbing and gruesome mementos from crime scenes. A frightening number of personal items once belonging to evil monsters—many of them convicted killers who are sitting on death row—are for sale.
Items like autographed, killer-owned, prison-issued socks, autographed photos, and letters, as well as other items from California serial killers Lawrence “Pliers” Bittaker, Roy Norris, William Suff, and Charles Manson are hawked online. “Railway Killer” Angel Resendez-Ramirez is believed to have started killing innocent victims while still in his twenties, and at the time of his 1999 arrest, he was a suspect in at least fourteen murders. This monster is so confident of his mar-ketability that he refuses to autograph any item behind bars for less than $25.00.
The online bloodsuckers hawking murderabilia aren’t to be under-estimated. They are not only innovative, but creative as well. As soon as they realized the legal loophole left open by the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Son of Sam laws, they got busy—but there was a problem. They weren’t smart enough to write a book or a screenplay, which is now allowed thanks to that same Supreme Court. The alternative moneymaking scheme gaining popularity among criminals in recent years is the online sale of articles related in any way to the most disturbing, the goriest, and the most emotionally racking criminal cases on the books. What happens when they run out of variety and the clien-tele wants something more than nail clippings, hair samples, autographs, or photos? An online auction hawking Resendez-Ramirez’s foot scrapings had opening bids that started at $9.99. Visa, MasterCard, and money orders accepted.
The movie Psycho has a cultlike following. Now the inspiration for the movie, Wisconsin farmer Ed Gein, is immortalized online through a range of bizarre items such as a wood fragment from his farmhouse and a crucifix Gein made in a mental hospital. A scrapbook of newspaper O B J E C T I O N !
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clippings detailing his murders dating back to 1957 sold online for nearly $200.
In this macabre online shopping mall, one item that stands out in its bizarre nature involves one of the most evil serial killers in U.S. history, the sadistic “Killer Clown.” John Wayne Gacy’s case is disturbing on so many levels. The number of known victims is an astonishing thirty-three. A little-publicized fact is that Gacy “slipped” through the fingers of the justice system shortly before his murder spree began. But for that miscalculation, how many lives would have been saved?
In 1968, Gacy was indicted by a Black Hawk County grand jury for forcible sodomy on a teen, for tying up and violently raping the boy while he was visiting Gacy’s home. Four months later, Gacy was hit with additional charges for hiring a man to beat up the rape victim in retribution for going to police. After court-ordered psychiatric testing, Gacy pled guilty to sodomy and got ten years behind bars at the Iowa State Reformatory for men. Thinking he had put Gacy away for years, the sentencing judge probably rested easy that night. But in a horrific error in judgment, prison and parole authorities overrode the judge’s intentions and paroled Gacy just eighteen short months later.
On June 18, 1970, Gacy walked out of Iowa prison gates a free man and immediately relocated to his hometown of Chicago. By 1976, the first of Gacy’s known murder victims was missing.
Gacy was ultimately convicted on all thirty-three murders after a hard-fought courtroom battle in which he mounted, complete with psychiatric “experts,” a formidable insanity defense. Among the more horrifying facts uncovered during the trial: Many of Gacy’s young victims were found buried beneath the foundation of his home with their underwear stuffed down their throats. Their deaths were due to asphyxiation.
Then to add insult to injury, the very dirt from Gacy’s crawl space was made available for purchase online.
It is inconceivable to me that the dirt purchased online may have come in contact with one of the poor victims—some snatched unaware and then chloroformed once in Gacy’s car. Parents of those who were 9 6
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killed by Gacy were left to wonder who bought the dirt that covered the body of their son.
The “dirt for sale” phenomenon isn’t just an aberrant flash in the pan. As of September 2004, the soil from the deadly disaster at David Koresh’s compound was still being hawked online. The raid on the Waco compound led to a fifty-one-day siege, a fiery inferno, and the deaths of eighty-five people, including four ATF agents and seventeen children. The Branch Davidians believed that God communicated with them through Koresh. In addition to stockpiling an arsenal of weapons and ammunition, Koresh preached that he was the “Lamb of God,” and only his “seed” was pure, meaning that only he could have sex with girls and women in the compound.
Not interested in dirt? How about fingernail clippings from the hands of an honest-to-God serial killer? Nails from the very hands that murdered as their victims begged for their lives. They’re yours if you know how to point and click online at a disgusting array of ghoulishly named sites. California serial killer Lawrence Bittaker is one of the cruelest serial killers ever known. He was ultimately convicted for the abductions, sex tortures, and murders of five known teenage girls. Bit
taker and his codefendant, Roy Norris, conspired to outfit the “Murder Mack,” as they called it, a van with tinted windows and devices on board to transform it into a mobile torture chamber. Literally snatching young girls off the street, one en route home from a prayer meeting, Bittaker and Norris delighted in raping, torturing, beating, and attacking their victims with pliers. With the music blaring to muffle any cries for help, the two often videotaped their tortures. Now in line for death by lethal injection, Bittaker spends his time on death row playing bridge and filing hundreds of frivolous lawsuits. One suit complained of cruel treatment because of a broken cookie on his lunch tray—and it wound up costing the state thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend. Bittaker often signs letters to fans with his pseudonym, “Pliers.”
Keep all the above in mind and get ready for this: an auction Web O B J E C T I O N !
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site once listed Bittaker’s fingernail clippings, with bids starting at $9.99, and described them as being “direct from the murdering hands of this fiendish killer.” The description of the item featured this enticing sales pitch: “Collect ’em or use them in rituals to summon the dead. . . . Own some pieces of Larry now, ’cause once they execute him, there won’t be enough of Larry left to go around.”
Another disturbing online offer involves cannibal serial killer Arthur Shawcross, now serving 250 years behind bars for the murders of eleven women in Rochester, New York. In just one more instance of justice gone wrong, Shawcross was released from prison in New York after serving fifteen years for the murders of two young children. After his inexplicable early release, Shawcross relocated to Rochester in the 1980s. He went on to murder and cannibalize eleven victims. As of this writing, a sample of Shawcross’s hair goes for $20 online.
Some of the most popular “killer” items for sale online are from Jeffrey Dahmer, convicted and sentenced to life for raping and murdering boys (some as young as thirteen) before cannibalizing them. Once in prison, Dahmer died at the hands of a fellow inmate, causing his murderabilia to skyrocket in price.
Actual crime-scene photos are linked online as well, complete with shots of murdered victims in various stages of undress. Morgue photos are not exempt. Web sites list the Charles Manson–Sharon Tate murder-scene photos, apparently laser-copied from the originals taken of the August 1969 slayings. As of September 2004, even copies of the autopsy report of murder victim Nicole Brown Simpson could be purchased online. Can you imagine how powerless the Browns feel, now forced to sit by, helpless, as a cold-blooded predator makes money off their daughter, their sister?
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T H E W O R L D ’ S
M O S T
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There is also a whole new genre of action figures available online, and I’m not referring to G.I. Joes or Power Rangers. I’m talking about serial-killer action figures, sold in toy stores and online. Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ed Gein are some of the serial-killer action figures created by Dave Johnson of Denver. They start at $39.99
apiece, and one site promises that the Columbine killers will soon be available.
Speaking of Columbine, last year I learned that a Texas man was peddling a card game based on the Columbine shootings, with players enacting the sickening roles of teenage shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The goal is to achieve “divine retribution” against high-school classmates and teachers. Harris and Klebold murdered a dozen students and a teacher, wounding more than twenty others at Columbine’s local high school on April 20, 1999. The two then killed themselves in the school library. Although the game’s creator insists he’s not trying to get rich, his Web site sells the game for $20. The box cover bears a shot of Klebold that was taken by a Columbine security camera. In it, Klebold is wielding the TEC-DC9 pistol he used at the school. The game states, “You are armed with guns and bombs . . . and your goal is to kill everyone, for that ultimate goal of immortality in the minds of men, with nothing more to sacrifice than a life with which you would have never done anything bigger than this, anyway.”
Serial-killer trading cards are available online, much like a kid’s baseball cards, offering the killer’s vital stats, photos, correctional facility, and body count. Can you bring yourself to consider the pain this will cause the families of innocent victims? To live through the death and the funeral of their loved ones, and then the trial of their killer, only to endure a slap in the face from an online huckster in league with O B J E C T I O N !
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a murderer? Serial-killer cards are offered by companies in New Jersey and California and by many other online sites.
The purpose of sites that promote their wares with phrases like
“death,” “dementia,” or “serial killer,” complete with sponsors listed, is clear: to profit from the pain of others. In that vein, a serial-killer museum is set to open soon. The band Korn’s front man, Jonathan Davis, wants to put his collection of serial-killer murderabilia on display. According to MTV online, Korn is working with archivist Arthur Rosenblatt to create a museum in Los Angeles to display his extensive collection of items from convicted mass murderers. Items include the Volkswagen that Ted Bundy used to search for his victims, clown suits worn by John Wayne Gacy, and drawings by “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez. Another site proudly announces that it “deal[s] with the devil himself ” and hawks, among other things, T-shirts featuring Railway Killer Rafael Resendez-Ramirez’s own artwork created in his cell at San Quentin.
If I hadn’t seen the glorification and marketing of killers online with my own eyes, I would never have believed it. I can’t help but wonder just who would buy fingernail clippings or hair samples of killers, knowing full well that victims’ families have only photographs, high-school yearbooks, and memories to remember them by. The level of victimization is so intense it is sickening, yet it is allowed to thrive under the current laws of nearly every state in this country.
You may, as I do, wonder not only who buys these items but who sells them as well. They go by monikers like Supernaught and Drfixa-tor. Others have more gruesome, crime-obsessed names that I won’t list here because I refuse to give these ghouls the attention they crave. The names, created by the sellers as their online pseudonyms, reveal these people’s aspirations and in themselves, speak volumes. You may be surprised that anyone would visit such a Web site, much less spend money on such repulsive offerings, but the reality is that bidding is lively. I was horrified to learn sales double at Christmastime.
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Killers and their online pimps are reaping a windfall off the lives of murder victims. The general consensus among website purveyors is that they are not the morality police, and until the law stops them, they will continue. In my mind, that makes them accessories to the further victimization of those now dead, unable to speak for themselves.
These sites take no responsibility and refuse to shut down the serial-killer auction site, blaming the marketplace. Remember, the dealers, their advertisers, and their buyers/enablers profit from every online sale, including sales of murderabilia. If these entrepreneurs won’t close down their sites, why won’t they give the proceeds from these sales to victims’-rights groups? When asked this question by various victims’-rights advocates and others, they declined to respond.
Believe it or not, it’s all legal.
L I T E R A R Y L O O P H O L E S
Not so long ago, it appeared that crime victims were protected by the Son of Sam laws. David Berkowitz got that moniker when he became known as one of the most feared killers in New York City in the 1970s.
His pent-up rage and frustration culminated in the murders of six people, injuries to seven others, and resulted in the largest manhunt in New York City history. During his reign of terror, he stalked lovers’
lanes looking for victims and held the entire city hostage. When he was finally captured, the country was shocked
to learn that the evil madman terrorizing the city was a chubby-cheeked postal worker with a deceptively sweet smile. Once in police custody, Berkowitz confessed to all the crimes and begged a trial judge to lock him away forever so he could never kill again. He is currently serving a 365-year sentence at the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg, New York.
The possibility Berkowitz might write a screenplay and capitalize on the terror he’d caused galvanized the country. The Son of Sam laws went into effect in New York in 1977 and were originally enacted to stop O B J E C T I O N !
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Berkowitz from profiting by selling his story. The laws prevent criminals from receiving profits for recounting their crime, including books, movies, screenplays, and television deals. The laws also require that the contracting party pay any proceeds directly to the actual victims or, as an alternative, to a state victims’-compensation fund. Following New York’s lead, forty-two additional states and the federal government enacted similar legislation.
Since then, the country has been lulled into the belief that our justice system would never allow criminals and their “dealers” to make money off the suffering of crime victims. Not so.
