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May 6, 2008 9:48 pm US/Eastern
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'Murderabilia': A Bizarre Twist To Online Auctions
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
Hadden Clark is a cross-dressing child killer who claimed to have buried victims on Cape Cod. It's hard to believe anyone would want to buy his used sweat socks, or his prison pillow case, but there it is -- online for $20.
Keep browsing and you'll find artwork by John Wayne Gacy for $350.
For $850, you can get a lock of Charles Manson's hair. It even comes with it a letter of authenticity from Mansion himself.
It's called murderabilia, and it's sold on several sites like
MurderAuction.com.
Prosecutor Abby Rivkind is not exactly a collector. "My first reaction was 'ewwww.' My second reaction was 'who would buy this?' My third reaction was, 'what kind of a person would sell this?'"
Well, meet Todd Bohannon -- founder of MurderAuction.com. He's one of the country's largest collectors of serial killer artifacts.
His fascination began at age 13. He saw the movie "Helter Skelter" and started writing letters to Charles Manson.
Manson wrote back.
Since then, he's written to 300 other killers and has made friends with many of them. He doesn't believe hawking items from people like Ted Bundy is a problem.
How do you put a stop to this? Congress is getting involved by introducing a measure that would make it a felony for prisoners to mail items for interstate commerce. However, stopping those items from getting out won't be simple. And the penalties only affect the inmates, not the person buying the murderabilia and not the person selling it.
Some states have taken their own action against murderabilia.
Massachusetts hasn't yet. There is a bill sitting up on Beacon Hill to stop criminals from cashing in, but it's been around for a few years.
Lawmakers have debated it, and it's gone nowhere.
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