APRIL 23, 2019

A November 2017 report from the New Yorker claims the United States is home to at least  2,000 uncaptured serial killers while the FBI estimates between 25 and 50 serial killers operate within the United States at any given time. 

If you ask Stephen Koschal, that’s a boatload of profit potential. 

With his easy-going demeanor, genuine smile, and head full of gray hair, Koschal seems like he could be anyone’s sweet old grandfather. While at 72, he is what many would consider old and he actually is a grandfather and likes to think of himself as decently sweet, many would never guess he runs the eponymous website stephenkoschal.com where he sells paintings created by John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer. He also sells their autographs as well as autographs from several lesser known serial killers. 

Most people would never guess this sweet old grandfather is a murderabilia dealer who is absolutely thrilled so many deranged serial killers have stalked and continue to stalk Americans. 

 “The more infamous and crazier the serial killer the better,” says Koschal. 

Koschal is a murderabilia dealer based out of Colorado Spring, CO and serial killers are good for business. 

“Murderabilia” is a broad term regarding collectibles related to murders and murderers and other violent crimes. According to Koschal, murderabilia related to serial killers sells out the fastest and fetches the highest prices. 

Koschal never expected he would be a frontrunner in the murderabilia trade. A self-proclaimed pioneer in the autograph collecting industry and moral compass, Koschal fell into the trade accidentally and decided to stay around once he realized what he terms the “outstanding demand” and “astronomical profit potential” in murderabilia. 

“I originally specialized in books signed by presidents of the United States,” says Koschal. “Then Gacy happened. Prices for his autograph started to skyrocket.”

Upon further investigation, Koschal found most of the Gacy signatures being sold were fake. 

“Through research I discovered a lot of the Gacy signatures on the market were sold by unscrupulous people and were fake,” says Koschal. “I’m a genuine guy and I wanted to protect the integrity of the autograph collecting industry. I knew what I had to do. I had to make sure people who wanted a Gacy signature got a real one.”

That is, a real one for the right price. 

How much does a genuine Gacy signature sell for? 

“Depending on the era and what he signed it on, Gacy signatures go for $1000 and up,” says Koschal.  

Gacy paintings easily go for upwards of $5000.

“What I had to make sure is that the people that wanted a genuine Gacy got a real one.” says Koschal. “So I had some correspondence with Gacy and told him what was going on about the fake paintings – paintings imitating his artwork and that it had started to go for some serious money.” 

Koschal explained to Gacy how they could team up and conquer the market. 

 “I told him I could represent him, and that people could come to me knowing they could get a genuine Gacy signature or painting,” says Koschal. 

What happened next is like something you would see in a movie – a very bizarre and scary movie. 

 “Gacy created on a letterhead what we could call a contract,” says Koschal. “A one-page contract that I would be his agent for two years and you can only go through me to purchase genuine Gacy paintings.”  

Koschal says his only goal was to protect consumers and preserve the integrity of the murderabilia collecting hobby. 

Who buys these signatures and  paintings? According to Koschal, the everyday people among us. 

“I always tell this story,” says Koschal. “I was in my store one morning and a twelve-year-old boy came in. I didn’t pay much attention to him because he doesn’t have the money or anything. He was in the store for two hours or so just looking at everything – amazed at what he was looking at. His eyes were big and all that. I didn’t pay attention to him and he left. Four o’clock in the afternoon he comes back with his mother and she buys him a Gacy painting.”

Now, the ethical circumstances of this sale are shaky at best. Koschal emphatically claims the boy and his mother knew the clown painting they bought was created by Gacy. But when pressed regarding why a mother would allow her young male child to own a painting created by a man famous for molesting, mutilating, and murdering young male children, Koschal back tracked.  

“Maybe she didn’t know exactly who painted it,” says Koschal. 

This isn’t the first time Koschal used blissful ignorance to his advantage. He claims in the early nineties he got 40 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame to sign a Gacy painting just by throwing the painting in the dogpile during an autograph session. 

“Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Roy Campanella – you name it, all the famous, famous baseball players in the Hall of Fame were signing it,” says Koschal. “Once they saw the first one signed it, they all signed it. Baseball players a lot of them you know aren’t very bright.” 

Koschal was working on a book about former presidents and their signatures at the time and claims in the process he became conversationally close with President Richard Nixon. 

“Richard Nixon was a big baseball fan,” says Koschal. “He loved to talk about baseball – especially the Yankees and the Mets and attended a lot of their games when he was in New York City. The next time I saw him, I showed him the painting. He saw all the signatures and he was just pleased to sign it.” 

And that is how one murderabilia dealer claims he got a former president of the United States to sign a painting created by John Wayne Gacy.

While there is no denying the murderabilia world is a twisted one, is it unethical or illegal?

The industry is not illegal and in terms of whether or not its ethical, it depends on who you ask. 

 Houston based victims’ rights advocate and board member at the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, Andy Kahan, has been with the Houston Police Department for 25 years. Kahan claims no industry is more unethical than the murderabilia industry.  

“What the murderabilia industry does is give serial killers, mass murderers, school shooters, and high-profile killers a platform in infamy and immortality that they don’t deserve,” says Kahan. “The message is: commit some of the nation’s most despicable, horrific acts and you can feel relevant and feed your narcistic ego because you will continue to get all this attention.”

 Kahan continues. 

“You rarely see intense bios of crime victims,” says Kahan. “But you see them of their killers. The killers are the ones who the movies and books are made of. They are the ones who remain household names while the victims are tossed away with this institutionalized disinterest and are essentially swept under the rug like they don’t exist.” 

Ángel Maturino Reséndiz, otherwise known as The Railway Killer, is a prime example of how the murderabilia industry fanned the ego of a deranged serial killer. Reséndiz, responsible for as many as 23 murders across the United States and Mexico during the 1990s, was known as “The Railway Killer” since most of his crimes were committed near railroads as he jumped off the trains. 

“Reséndiz was executed in Texas in 2006,” says Kahan. “One day, a few years before he was executed, he sent out a message to the media that he would no longer be signing anything for less than 50 dollars because he's famous now.”

While today most murderabilia dealers operate out of self-made websites, that wasn’t always the case. According to Kahan, eBay was the platform that dealers primarily used early on to sell their merchandise.

“eBay used to be the primary conduit buyers and sellers got together on and that’s how I first discovered the industry,” says Kahan. “I put eBay through the ringer for a couple years and then started crafting what we call ‘Notoriety for Profit Laws.’” 

Notoriety for Profit Laws are also known as “Son of Sam Laws.” These laws are designed to keep criminals from profiting from the publicity of their crimes and often enable the state to seize money criminals earned from murderabilia and deals with book, movie, and documentary publishers and use it to compensate the criminal’s victims. 

In theory, these laws make sense and should work. Unfortunately, just how often crime victims and their families see this money is debatable.

According to Mark Stemper, a childhood friend of Teresa Halbach whose murder story was made infamous by the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, the Halbach family hasn’t seen a dime. 

 “I can unequivocally say the Halbachs received no money from Making a Murderer,” says Stemper “Not only did they receive no money, but the documentary ripped them apart. They already had to live through the horror once and that documentary and the media storm and constant calls for interviews made them relive it all over again.” 

While the guilt of Halbach’s supposed murderer Steven Avery is still up for debate, there is no denying a family who already lost a loved one to a senseless act of violence was further harmed by a documentary who some view as just as senseless. 

 “The way I see it, what was the point?” says Stemper. “The documentary wasn’t going to bring Teresa back and now her family is more of a wreck than ever. When it first started filming, the producers or directors or whoever promised the family a share of the profits. The family has yet to see a dime.” 

Kahan says that while Making a Murderer claims to be a documentary, he deems true crime documentaries, movies, and books as just more socially acceptable forms of murderabilia.  

“It is probably one of the most nauseating and disgusting feelings in the world to have to tell someone that the person who murdered their loved one now has items being hawked by third parties simply to make a buck,” says Kahan.

But not everyone feels the same way as Kahan and Stemper. Christine Falco is a murderabilia buyer who sees absolutely no problem with what she describes as her “collector’s choice of passion.”

 “Murder is part of the human experience,” says the 48-year-old Montreal based film producer. “For that reason, artifacts related to crimes should be preserved so that we can learn from them and teach future generations, and further develop our understanding of the criminals’ minds.”

Falco understands that her choice of collection is upsetting to many but refuses to back down. 

“I don’t see how my collection should bother anyone,” says Falco. “It’s something I do in the privacy of my home, of my life. My collection doesn’t celebrate killers or what they’ve done, it simply expresses my interest in the subject. It is a sincere hobby, and I think people should be able to own stuff like that. Like comedian Ricky Gervais has said: ‘Just because you're offended, doesn't mean you're right.’”

She even blogs about the serial killers whose murderabilia she collects. 

“As for my blog, I understand that I contribute in my own, small way to the infamy of the serial killers I document,” says Falco. “But how is it worse than films or books about serial killers in the mainstream media? I'm doing my own thing. I don't solicit people that aren't interested.” 

 When asked how she first became involved in such a sordid subsection of collecting, Falco paused and then constructed her answer. 

“Very early on in my life, I became obsessed with the dark side of human nature and with the "monster" that lives in all of us,” says Falco. “My interest was nurtured by a worried family climate – some people in my immediate circle have been in prison for violent crimes – and by my mother, who was very protective of my sister and I when we were kids, and often warned us about ‘all the maniacs out there.’ Luckily, nothing ever happened to us, but I often wondered about these ‘maniacs’:  Who were they? What did they look like? How many were they? Why did they attack people?”

It was the 1977 arrest of David Berkowitz, otherwise known as the Son of Sam, that fully piqued Falco’s interest in the criminal mind. 

“I saw him on the TV news: two policemen were holding and bringing him in, and he was all smiles!” says Falco. “ He looked happy to have been caught. There he was, a short, bulky postal worker, who looked nice and friendly. He didn’t look like the demon I had imagined. He looked like an ordinary person. I was stunned but fascinated. Since then, I’ve been wanting to understand how some people give in to their ‘monster,’ snap and resort to violence is such atrocious ways.”

However, it wasn’t until recently that Falco took her curiosity to the next level. 

“A few years ago, I took a further step in my passion for the "monster" and became a collector of true crime memorabilia,” says Falco. “One day, I came across some never-before-seen polaroid pictures of serial killer Edmund Kemper on Pinterest and followed the link which lead to a website selling murderabilia. It was my first contact with this world. I knew you could buy items like these, but I had not realized how easy it was to access this stuff on the Internet.”

Falco argues that while Kahan claims the murderabilia industry is relatively new and spurred on by the advent of the Internet, that nothing could be further from the truth – especially in regard to the Catholic Church. 

“Human beings have been avid collectors of ‘things’ for centuries,” says Falco. “The murderabilia industry is generally considered to be a new phenomenon, but it can be argued that there is a long history of collecting items that may be viewed as morbid or ghoulish, notably in the Catholic Church which has long had a penchant for collecting holy relics, like bones, particularly the skulls of saints and martyrs that are highly coveted, and viewed with reverence. Similarly, items owned by, or used by a saint, are held in high regard amongst adherents to the faith.” 

Kahan just shakes his head.

“I'll say this ad nauseum,” says Kahan. “You shouldn't be able to rob, rape and murder and then turn around and make a buck off of it.” 

Falco collects from a broad range of cases but there are three main killers whom she prefers: David Berkowitz, Edmund Kemper, and John Hinckley – the man who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and whose story she personally identifies with. 

“John Hinckley tried to kill President Reagan in order to impress actress Jodie Foster,” says Falco. “She’s my favorite actress and it was a scary event. Funny irony in my life is that I also had to deal with a stalker for several years, in my early twenties. I can identify with her story.”

In terms of what specific items she collects, Falco says it depends on who the subject of her collection is. 

“For Berkowitz, I own mostly manufactured items, such as a figurine of him from Spectre Studios, and trading cards,” says Falco. “I also own press photos of his arrest, and some books. One is a biography of him that was owned by Dee Channel, a famous pen pal of his. She had used this book to study him before writing to him. All her notes are in there. As a researcher on true crime cases, it’s interesting to see which information and details were important to her during her own research.” 

Falco’s collection is a little more personal with Kemper. 

“For Kemper, I own many items that belonged to him or that were made by him in prison,” says Falco. “I have two of the ceramic mugs he is renowned for making. I have books, polaroids, and a ring that belonged to him. All these items he either signed or made a certificate of authenticity for. I also have a handwritten letter that he wrote to a pen pal, and drawings by a graphic artist who is preparing a book about Kemper’s life. I also have rare books about Kemper’s case, and props from Season One of Mindhunter.” 

 Where does one keep their murderabilia collection? According to Falco, if there is room, in plain sight. 

“I have a bookcase in my home office where I display some of my collection,” says Falco. “I also have a few things hanging on the wall, such as posters and photos. But most of the items are in binders, protected from dust and light.” 

Eric Holler is the dealer from whom Falco buys the majority of her murderabilia. Holler runs the website serialkillersink.com out of Jacksonville, Fla. In his early-40s, Holler looks as though he could be the long-lost Duck Dynasty brother. 

Like Koschal, Holler fell into the murderabilia trade by accident when he began writing to infamous inmates back in the mid-1990s with the intention of authoring a true crime book.  

“I first started writing to them from the perspective of wanting to author a book on my correspondence with them,” says Holler. “What exactly made them tick, why did they did do the things they did and did they have remorse?” 

Then Holler saw dollar signs.

“Shortly after writing Richard Ramirez aka The Night Stalker, he propositioned me with an offer to become his art dealer and sell his artwork,” says Holler.

Ramirez propositioned Holler in 1997 when eBay was still the main method of selling and buying merchandise online. So eBay was the first place Holler began listing Ramirez’s artwork. 

“I began listing his art and surprisingly it would sell out quickly and demanded a high price,” says Holler. “I started seeing this as a way to make money and abandoned the book idea and began speaking with other infamous killers in regard to selling their items. Needless to say items from this sub culture became quite popular and in demand.”

Holler opened serialkillersink.com – a website dedicated exclusively to the selling and buying of murderabilia – in the mid-2000s. 

“This 'career' has afforded me appearances on many television shows and documentaries, I as well have been the subject of countless articles by the media,” says Holler. “This industry has basically paid my bills the last 21 years.” 

 But Holler admits that contrary to what collectors may think, murderabilia has very few redeeming qualities. 

“I am not sure if the artwork has any redeeming social value but we have several customers in academia and psychology who purchase letters from us, I assume to help teach their classes and/or gain an understanding of the killers mindsets from their own written words and thoughts,” says Holler. “One psychologist in particular purchases letters from us that were written by school shooters in order to aide in his profession.”

Holler digresses, however, in the next breath when asked if he worried that selling murderabilia contributes to the glorification of serial killers and other vicious criminals.

 “I don't worry about anything in regard to that talking point,” says Holler. “True crime authors, producers of true crime documentaries and television networks that are devoted to crime documentaries 24/7 all, just as myself,  profit off crime. I do not sensationalize my inventory/stock outside of this small sub-culture. That is what the media is for and is exactly what they do. I do not like playing the blame game, but my opinion is that if there is anyone to blame for glorifying infamous killers it is networks like CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC who will plaster coverage of infamous cases around the clock. In their case it is for ratings so of course they use sensationalism to sell their product to world-wide audience.”

He also holds to the idea that murderabilia sold to academics and professional crime fighters can actually help improve society. 

“A large portion of my inventory, such as letters, actually benefit society because many professionals study the letters to,  I assume, gain a better understanding  - perhaps attempt to stop the crimes before they take place by noticing certain red flags in their patients or subjects in which a parallel can be drawn back to a convicted killer or mass killer’s written words and/or thoughts,” says Holler. 

Another long-time customer of Holler’s is Sharon Koogler. The 48-year-old New Englander has lived on the East Coast her entire life. She co-founded S.P.I.R.I.T.S. of New England, a paranormal investigation service that operates out of Winthrop, Mass. She sports a curly brunette bob. Like Falco and Holler, Koogler believes there is nothing inherently unethical or wrong about the murderabilia industry and what private collectors do in the privacy of their homes is in her opinion, no business but their own. She also believes the majority of murderabilia collectors are not collecting with the intention of glorifying serial killers but rather collect in the name of education.  

“As far as the ethics of murderabilia, I understand where the victims' families are coming from and it is a fine line,” says Koogler. “But as far as I know the majority of the people who collect murderabilia do so not to glamorize or glorify the murderers but rather to try to understand them better.”

Koogler cannot recall exactly how she got into murderabilia or what her first piece was, but as soon as she started collecting, she knew that she could not stop. 

“I can't really remember what my first piece was or how I started,” says Koogler. “I have been collecting for quite some time. I believe I started with Eric (Holler) back in the early 2000's. I really like the hand tracings, there's just something very disturbing about those. The personal letters are interesting as well, sometimes you get a glimpse of how these people tick.” 

One killer who is missing from her collection is Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. 

“I would love to have something from Andrei Chikatilo but as of yet do not,” says Koogler. He was a Russian serial killer, not sure there's anything out there from him.”

Unlike Falco, Koogler does not openly display her collection. 

 “At the moment, I do not have anything displayed as I do not have the space,” says Koogler. “I would like to hang my Gacy painting up, though.”

Kahan is absolutely flabbergasted how any human being could have such a nonchalant attitude towards such an insidious trade. 

“The only reason these people are relevant is because of the type of crime they committed,” says Kahan. “For a family to find out that people are making money off the murder of their loved one – it is truly awful.”