It’s 4PM; I’m in an underpass in central London with a convicted murderer and cannibal discussing love letters.
Just 50 meters away from us is a group of kids making TikToks and lip syncing to pop music. The jarring beats and giggles are so loud that I can barely hear Nico Claux, also known as ‘The Vampire of Paris,’ tell me how much post he received from adoring fans while he was locked up behind bars. A diagnosis of borderline psychotic disorder and schizophrenia earned Claux an early release in 2002 on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He served seven out of 12 years and assures me that art has rehabilitated him.
I was brought here by the murky world of murderabilia. For the best part of a year, I’ve been obsessed with Facebook groups facilitating this fanatical niche world of true-crime collectors and the dealers they do business with. I scroll through the groups daily, see posts selling John Wayne Gacy “murder site dirt” for $35; prison letters sent by Dennis Nilsen priced at £50; a bathroom tile from the house where Armin Meiwes killed, fried, and ate a willing victim for $120; locks—we are led to believe—of Charles Manson’s hair (price only revealed via DM). I’m a member of multiple groups, with ‘Serial Killer Murderabilia/True Crime Collectibles’ one of the biggest at 5.2k members. It’s a world dominated by American men, some fixated on female killers, but women and plenty of other nationalities still post daily seeking items.
“Sagawa’s blood, handprint and signature: $666” reads one post on the group. While browsing one day, I saw that a ‘Top Seller’ had tagged Claux in the comments. My new people-eating acquaintance had been penpals with Issei Sagawa, the infamous Japanese cannibal, for a decade until his death (VICE interviewed Sagawa back in 2009). Initially, Claux had reached out to bond over their shared cannibalistic experiences; they’d had the same investigating judge and had both been freed early.
“He had suicidal thoughts and wanted my Swedish girlfriend to eat him,” Claux explains casually, adding that Sagawa had a fascination with Scandinavian women. “She was mortified, she said there would be no way… I politely asked Issei to calm down and let’s just stay friends,” he says. Was Claux not concerned? “I’m not the average person, so I found it funny,” he chuckles. “Of course, I’d never allow it.” Claux tells me that in his letters Sagawa often obsessed over being eaten, that he saw it as a kind of redemption given he’d eaten someone himself. “He was a funny person,” Claux reminisces. “Of all the people I’ve written to, he was one of my favorites. He loved cannibal movies… and musicals.”
Claux is well-known on the murderabilia scene, and not just for his crimes. Last year, he ran his own serial killer exhibition in London Waterloo, dedicated almost entirely to his personal collection; when it first opened in September, you could line up to meet him. The queues were long, with many asking for his advice on “dark thoughts” and how best to deal with them, or grinning with their thumbs up as they stood arm in arm with the cannibal, posing for signed photos. Claux’s fascination with murderabilia began when people would send love letters to him in prison. “I had longer hair at the time, so it helped,” he chuckles. “I’d get three a week. [Jeffrey] Dahmer would get hundreds a week, so three is relatively low.” Then he belts out a loud laugh, quite literally like one you’d hear in a schlocky horror B movie.
Claux is of course rare in that, as both a murderer and a murderabilia collector, he straddles the fan-fame divide. This has aided his efforts; collectors who haven’t committed notorious crimes generally have to work a little harder to earn the trust of other notorious criminals, be a touch more devious. Occasionally, perps who are unwittingly being ‘milked’ for sellable artefacts by collectors get wind of the grift. The following was written in a letter to one prominent murderabilia dealer by the murderer Eddie Ray Routh, a former Marine with PTSD who shot dead two men (including commended US Navy SEAL sniper and bestselling author Chris Kyle) before leading the cops on a freeway chase:
“What’s up man, I haven’t written to you because I heard you were trying to sell one of the letters I wrote. Come on man, that’s pretty low, I would have never wrote to you if I know it…p.s if you had ask i’m sure it would not have pissed me off as bad. P.s.s so i’ve got supporters out there, whats up with the facebook people, if they claim to be my supporters it would be nice to get some money once in a while.”
It’s strange, reading a murderer take the moral high ground with a Facebook Marketplace seller. But then again, the question of morality in the murderabilia game is a murky one.
Routh’s letter of complaint was addressed to a collector named Andrew Dodge, a top recommended seller who is pretty infamous in the murderabillia scene. Active now for over 15 years, he’s regularly touted by dealers and sellers alike as someone you can trust, and trust—as I quickly learned—is a huge part of this subculture; selling on social media can leave you open to all kinds of scams, with many items impossible to verify.
Dodge is currently selling almost all of his collection so that he can focus on his podcast Unforbidden Truths, which he uses to interview killers about their pasts. Not only has Dodge written to serial killers, he has also visited them on death row out of pure curiosity. “I spent four-six hours a day with [serial killer and rapist] Phil Jablonski over two days in a prison cage,” he tells me over Zoom from the US. “I’ve always found serial homicide interesting, so I’ve always wanted to pick their brains,” he adds, saying that he’s written to multiple serial killers requesting visitation. “Phil was definitely a weird, creepy guy,” he laughs. “He had sores all over his hands and wanted to shake mine, so I shook his arm.” I asked Dodge if he considers the people he meets and writes to ‘friends,’ confused as to why people feel the need to become penpals with serial killers: “I don’t consider myself friends with them… We are acquaintances, I wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who has taken a life.” Dodge explains that the biggest misconception about collectors is that they look up to killers as heroes, which is “not the case at all”. He explains that while “you might get someone who wants to make an altar out of Charles Manson’s hair or something” most people are just morbidly curious and trying to understand why humans behave in atrocious ways.
Like every other area of modern life, murderabilia and true crime collecting are changing under duress from the internet. “Letters are becoming more rare; prisoners just want to email nowadays,” says Dodge, explaining that envelopes are much better tools for authentication than printed-out emails; it’s the letters people really want. Not a single person on any of the Facebook groups are selling emails, but plenty of posts read that the letters have envelopes included. Curiously, those within groups are all too friendly and happy to help with requests for certain pieces. “Any Hadden [Clark, a serial killer who drank the blood of his victims] letters or art?” asks one post, with ten or so people piping up in the comments. “Got a lot of art an [sic] letters from him, an his shower shoes, bead hair,” replies one; “Yes I do. I used to write to him, he is housed right down the road from me,” says another. The groups are filled with emojis of little smiley faces clutching hearts and people are praised warmly for items deemed “cool” or rare, like unseen John Wayne Gacy artworks.
When the flow of new items dries up, sellers often have no problem in getting proactive and seeking them out. Nathan Matthews has been collecting for the last few years. He’s a funny and extremely likeable former ghost hunter who now has an extensive collection of murderabilia oddities nailed to his wall like some kind of macabre art gallery. My laptop goes dead three times during our Zoom call, which convinces me his items are haunted. “I was once caught on [convicted murderer and suspected serial killer] Ed Gein’s abandoned farmland,” he laughs, adding that the neighbors chased him off the property in their cars. He often meets fellow murderabilia collectors for group digs on abandoned properties, while other spare time is spent running his metal detector over serial killers’ back and front yards, collecting pieces like Dahmer’s cutlery and vials of chicken wire from Ed Gein’s farm ($65).
“Hello, I am the wife of Frank Gust,” a new Facebook post begins, from someone selling two signed drawings by the serial killer and sexual sadist for €100. “We got married in June,” she replies to one inquisitive punter, adding that she can arrange for Mr Gust to write personally to the interested buyer if necessary. Then comes a spanner in the works. “It’s true that Frank Gust is married—but not to this woman,” replies another group member. Scammers are regularly called out like this, with suspect email addresses verified against a rolling blacklist. Collectors look after each other, circling the wagons to exclude potential con artists. Some posters write long essays about how certain sellers have wronged them. Even the most respected members of the community are caught out from time to time. “I’ve lost $6-7000 in this community,” Dodge explains, hanging his head. “There’s dishonest people everywhere… people fake letters and signatures all the time.” He adds that John Wayne Gacy portraits are “the biggest scamming issue at the moment,” which perhaps isn’t surprising given that originals sell for up to $15,000. “If you can make a Gacy that looks legit, you can get a nice payday,” Dodge says. Nathan Matthews has a Gacy that “looks legit.” Unfortunately, he paid $600 for it: “Oh yeah, that ended up being fake,” he sighs, gesturing towards the picture.
“There’s dishonest people everywhere… people fake letters and signatures all the time.”
Authentication in the murderabilia world is tricky, but not impossible. “For Gacy, all his paintings have serial numbers; he gave some people a master list of all those numbers,” Dodge explains. There aren’t too many Gacy paintings left in the wild. In 1994, a businessman bought more than two dozen of the killer’s portraits for $20,000, only to burn them to stop them falling into the hands of the other 200 people trying to buy them at auction.
For a lot of people, the murderabilia world is one that will never sit right. Yet the I spoke to were routinely polite, warm, and engaging people, more like guests on Antiques Roadshow than some vampiric gang of undead Lost Boys street punks. Dodge even explained to me how he’d drawn up plans to bring ethical trading to the murderabilia market, by striking up deals direct with killers based on a 50-50 profit share. Granted, it’s stretching the definition of “ethical” a fair bit. Yet I couldn’t walk away without a memento of my own. “To Elizabeth, thanks for listening to me,” scrawled Nico Claux, on a £7 mug shot of himself.
Follow Elizabeth McCafferty on X @ElizabethMcCaf
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