The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski. Photograph: AFP/Getty
Empty peanut butter jars, oatmeal containers, a rock, a copy of Strunk & White's Elements of Style, a plastic container with white powder and a brown envelope marked "autobiography". The list sounds like the remnants of a particularly down-at-heel car boot sale. But these items and others are going up for auction not because of their intrinsic worth but because of the man who owned them - the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski.
The US government has been ordered to sell Kaczynski's effects, including his writings, by the federal appeals court, rejecting the administration's claim that selling his effects would allow the Unabomber to profit from his crimes.
The proceeds will go to compensate the victims and their families, but some of them are horrified at the idea of "selling Kaczynski's property like a celebrity", according to assistant attorney Ana Maria Martel.
The decision caused a stir in what the LA Times described this week as the "shadowy collectibles world of 'murderabilia'".
Murderabilia taps into the joint obsessions of the collector and a macabre fascination for infamous serial killers.
After a quick scroll through the auctions on websites such as MurderAuction.com, it's clear there's a burgeoning market for items bearing the mark of a murderer. Experts in this "field" have told the LA Times that the Unabomber's journals could be sold for $1,000 each.
In a piece written in 2000 remarking on the quantity of murderabilia available on eBay, Andy Kahan, an ombudsman for victims of crime in Houston, Texas, wrote: "Murderabilia is just another example of the ways in which our culture glamorizes crime and forgets about the victim." In May 2001 eBay bowed to pressure and banned such sales, but it hasn't stopped a clutch of other sites being set up to meet - or fuel, depending on your viewpoint - the demand.
For an academic take on the matter, read this piece in the Australian journal M/C, which concludes:
It is our complicated relationship with celebrities, affective as well as intellectual, composed of equal parts admiration and resentment, envy and contempt, that provides us with a lexicon through which we can manage our appalled and appalling fascination with the serial killer, contemporary American culture's ultimate star.
Kaczynski, who pleaded guilty in 1998 to a series of attacks that killed three people and wounded 23, wanted to donate his writings to the University of Michigan. It now seems far more likely that his worldly goods will end up being sold off to the highest bidder.
