Murderabilia

Have you ever thought if you could acquire stuff of a killer, maybe a signed book? or a dirty old i.d from the prison he stayed, well you can, and yes for a price. Murderabilia is form of underground market for those who wanted to buy a serial killer's stuff, from their clothes to just about anything! People usually buy this stuff on the internet which allows them to shop privately and can be hard to catch, one of a site the does this type of business is Darkvomit.com it is run by San Diego dealer Kelly Hutchison.

"The murderabilia trade is mostly legal (only eight states currently have laws regulating or banning it), but Kahan keeps looking for ways to impede it. He has corresponded with killers, including David Berkowitz, to explore how items offered for sale get out of prisons and into dealers' hands. He says he's heard about dealers who work just like sexual predators, grooming killers through the mail and during prison visits. Items are then handed over or mailed, and are often traded among dealers. Profits are sometimes shared with the killers."

I got this from a site called LAtimes.com in a article The unsavory 'murderabilia' market by Caitlin Rother. Of course it's illegal! who would buy such things? Well apparently.. Many. This type of business might sound good for others but it only brings more pain to the families of the victims but there is no good way of stopping, only thing people can do, is to not buy the stuff. What makes this more disturbing is the fact the profits are even shared with the killers, not cool at all. They are in a prison for a reason, they are in there to pay for what they've done not the other way around.

"But the public isn't always looking for lessons. People want to be entertained, and murder has become an abundantly popular subject for novels, movies and TV shows. An entire channel, Investigation Discovery, is dedicated to the topic."

It is everywhere, in my second blog posts I wrote how people are fascinated by violence, on why murder has been an popular subject in this day. Even though murderabilia has been spreading wide there are those who still fight against it. Meet senator John Cornyn. I've read from an article entitled John Cornyn’s Quest To End “Murderabilia” by Dan Solomon in texasmonthly.com, He first attempted to stop it in 2007 but failed due to this reason:

"The [new] bill does cause some concerns," says Marv Johnson, legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C. "It's a bit too broad and does raise some First Amendment issues by affecting protected activity."

Everyone had their point, but let's say someone special to you got killed, and you saw his personal belongings or even equipments used to kill your friend, posted on a site for sale, what would you feel?