"The buyers who seek out serial killer art don’t fall into easy categories."

"William Harder, who’s run Murder Auction from Fresno, California since 2005, says his customers aren’t just creepy murder fetishists. 'They’re regular people,' he says. 'I remember this contractor guy I sold to. He built houses and decks and stuff, and he came to me looking for something subtle. He told me, I thought about getting a Gacy, but I’m afraid that’s just going to attract too much attention. So he bought something by Charles Manson, but nothing you’d recognize as a Manson unless you looked closer and saw the signature.'... Murderabilia is in many ways a contradiction. The dealers and even the murderers themselves ask us to separate the art from the artist. Their creative ambitions aren’t an extension of their crimes; the two things, they insist, are unrelated."

From "Blood on the Canvas: The Lucrative, Controversial World of Art Made By Serial Killers" (Observer).