Morbid
Fascination
Who
else but a funeral director would be the premier dealer of serial-killer
art? Until the late 1980s, Rick Staton's pastime was innocuous enough--collecting,
trading, and selling posters from old B movies. Then he read that John
Wayne Gacy, one of history's worst serial killers, had taken up painting.
Staton's passion for collecting turned macabre, and now, he admits,
"most people are nauseated by it."
Staton,
a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, funeral director and true-crime buff, was
so fascinated by Gacy's new artistic bent that he wrote to the killer,
who is on Illinois's death row for the murders of 33 young men. The
two became pen pals, and within a year Staton was Gacy's "exclusive
art dealer." Staton's efforts helped give both men a weird underground
celebrity. Now the mortician is using his new contacts and the notoriety
of other serial killers to branch out. First up is a six-page catalog
of serial-killer art and memorabilia. Included in the collection: The
"bizarre pop-up greeting cards" of Lawrence Bittaker, who mutilated
and murdered five teenage girls; the self-bound short-story booklets
of William Bonin, the Freeway Killer, who murdered 14 in Southern California;
and the seascapes and koala drawings of Elmer Wayne Henley, part of
a Houston murder ring responsible for killing at least 27 people. The
39-year-old Staton says he'll follow up with a magazine devoted to killers--a
forum for infamous criminals to speak their minds, as well as "an outlet
for people like myself who collect this stuff." An affable Houston native
with a wife and young son, Staton believes such people are legion: The
profits from his new efforts will put his son through college, he says.
The serial-killer business is hot. Gacy's paintings of clowns quintupled
in price, to about $200, after gaining collectors such as movie director
John Waters. And they'll likely rise again when Gacy is executed: The
paintings of the late Richard Speck, one of the most notorious American
mass murderers, now command up to $2,000 each. Since grooming Gacy,
Staton has fallen out with his best-known client--he now calls the murderer
"insufferable." But he's betting he can still make money by turning
lesser-known criminals to art. His labor of love recently has been Henley,
the murder-ring member. Staton spent three years drawing Henley out
of his shell with regular letters. Finally, "I sort of talked him into
capitalizing on his notoriety. ... He had never drawn a picture in his
life, and now he's going to do commissioned portraits." About $70 of
an average $100 sale by Staton of serial-killer art goes into the murderer's
prison account. The remainder goes to Staton himself--though he argues
that he'd collect and trade this stuff even if no money were involved.
Still, profit isn't far from Staton's mind: "I'm just hoping to make
as much money as I can while people are interested," he says.