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That's a good bet. Public fascination with serial killers is at an all-time high. Spectators sat in a courtroom in Gainesville, Florida, last week to get a look at Danny Rolling, who terrorized the city with his slaying of college students 3 1/2 years ago, as jurors were deciding to recommend that he be put to death. Meanwhile, television viewers are tuning into interviews with Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee cannibal who dismembered 17 young men, and with David ("Son of Sam") Berkowitz, the lovers' lane stalker who shot and killed six men and women in New York City. The curious can call 1-900-622-GACY to listen, for $1.99 a minute, to John Wayne Gacy argue against his death sentence, which is due to be carried out in May. The Chicago contractor, who killed 33 young men and buried many under his house, explains that he "really is the 34th victim."
Bookstores are swamped with books on killers, from encyclopedias and scholarly treatises to true-crime accounts and the just published A Father's Story by Jeffrey's dad Lionel Dahmer. A documentary featuring hitchhiker Aileen Wuornos, who has been billed catchily if incorrectly as America's first female serial killer for her murder of seven men, is playing theaters. There is also an unsavory but frenetic market in serial-killer collectibles. Fans are swapping trading cards of their favorite murderers. Dahmer T shirts are big sellers at heavy-metal concerts, and a comic book celebrating his exploits ( has all but sold out to buyers. Most bizarre, collectors are paying up to $20,000 in posh galleries around the U.S. for Gacy's paintings of eerie clowns; the killer used to dress up as "Pogo the Clown" to entertain neighborhood kids between his bouts of murder.
For many Americans, these modern-day ogres offer a perverse thrill. "Serial killers are the werewolves of the modern age," declares Hart Fisher of Champaign, Illinois, who published the Dahmer comic. "By day they walk around unassuming, then boom! By night they turn into monsters. People want to know why." The most fascinated seem to be the most nonviolent people of all, "the kind who would find a spider in the bathroom and take it outside with a tissue," says crime writer Ann Rule, who turned her experience on a suicide- prevention hotline alongside fellow volunteer -- and serial killer -- Ted Bundy into the best-selling The Stranger Beside Me. "The more we learn about things that frighten us, the more we can ease our fears."
However, others invest more than curiosity in the subject. "It's like touching evil, getting close to it," says Thomas Jackson, 34, of Port Huron, Michigan. Like thousands of people around the world, he eagerly corresponds with murderers like Gacy and Charles Manson. Some are drawn by the temptation to redeem lost souls. Dahmer, imprisoned for life in Wisconsin, has been showered by fans with Bibles and $12,000. Richard Ramirez, California's vicious "Night Stalker" who killed 13 people and is now at San Quentin, has a devoted following of women who write and visit.