Word: sales
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...form letter from Martha Stewart, written on her trademark Living stationery and sent to supporters during her prison stay, sells for $25. An envelope hand-addressed by jailed Panamanian General Manuel Noriega is $350. Both are for sale on "true crime" Internet sites. But beyond the odd curiosity of a prison thank-you note from America's housekeeping guru and an innocuous envelope from a fallen dictator lies the online shopping world of macabre, shocking and soul-chilling prison collectibles - magazine fashion ads defaced with satanic symbols and stained with the bodily fluids of a campus shooter, a sketch...
...Dubbed "murderabilia" by Andy Kahan, director of the Houston-based Mayor's Crime Victims Office, the sale of what many consider grotesque items is already banned in five states - Texas, California, New Jersey, Michigan and Utah - thanks in great part to Kahan's lobbying efforts. In 2001, Kahan also successfully pressured eBay.com to drop "murderabilia" listings. But since much of the selling happens on websites operated beyond the five states, the legislation has had limited effect on Internet sales...
...dollar "stars" of the sites are Charles Manson, serving life in prison for murder, and the late John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer executed in 1994. Manson's prison art gets three- and four-figure prices; even his prison flip-flops are for sale. On daisyseven.com - whose logo proclaims "Where Crime Pays. Every Day" - a license plate from Gacy's snow plow is up for $1,700, a Gacy rosary...
...Daisyseven claims that no criminals receive financial gain from any sale, but the money trail can be difficult to track if prisoners use go-betweens like attorneys or family members. In most states, prisoners are prohibited from operating businesses from behind bars - rules aimed at drug dealers and organized crime - but they can have funds deposited in commissary accounts to purchase snacks, drinks and newspaper subscriptions...
...Despite the prison prohibition forbidding for-profit sale of artwork, many of the pieces sold by Ed Mead on his prisonart.org web site come from Texas, many of them panos or "handkerchief" art, a medium favored by Latino prisoners in the Southwest who do intricate ink drawings on squares of ripped sheets and other material. Mead makes copies of the works, scans and posts them on his website, charging a small commission fee if they sell. He says he rejects any art that he considers racist, sexist or homophobic and does not sell pieces by notorious killers. Recently, he refused...