The ‘Murderabilia’ Market

Altogether, in an online auction that ended Thursday, the United States Marshals Service sold 58 lots of property that belonged to Theodore Kaczynski, a k a the Unabomber, who during a 17-year terror spree sent package bombs that killed three people and injured 23. The sale, ordered by a Federal District Court judge in Sacramento, Calif., yielded $232,246.

The items put to auction were the latest high-profile examples of “murderabilia” — artifacts of notorious killers that end up in private hands. In the case of the Unabomber, the auction’s proceeds will go to his victims and their families.

But that is not typical. Almost always, the sellers are in the business for their own profit. And that makes for some strong feelings.

“It’s a sick and despicable industry,” said Andy Kahan, director of the Crime Victims Office for the City of Houston and the individual who coined the word murderabilia to describe it.

Acquiring the physical artifacts of convicted killers is nothing new. In 1958, a carnival barker paid $760 for the 1949 Ford sedan of Ed Gein, the inspiration for the Norman Bates character in “Psycho.” In 1991, Anthony Pugliese III, a Floriday real estate developer, plunked down $200,000 for the .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver that Jack Ruby used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald.

But these were rare, isolated examples. Now, propelled by the Internet, the murderabilia market is growing. Mr. Kahan estimated that there were perhaps half a dozen murderabilia vendors in the United States who advertise online. They include serialkillersink.com, murderauction.com, and supernaught.com.

Just type in the address and behold: A holiday card signed by Joel David Rifkin, convicted of the murders of nine women in New York City, available for $350. A shirt worn by Richard Ramirez, a k a the Night Stalker, can be yours for as little as $1,400. Paintings by the executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy are especially popular and pricey; a portrait of his alter ego, Pogo the Clown, is currently going for $19,999.

Why would anyone want this stuff?

“Each piece tells a story,” Joe Turner, a British collector who owns a Gacy painting and a lock of Charles Manson’s hair, wrote in an e-mail. “At some point these killers were normal people who were children and were loved by people, then somewhere along the line they changed.”

The families of murder victims are generally appalled by this ghoulish trade. “I’m totally against it,” said Harriett Semander of Houston. In 1982, her 20-year-old daughter, Elena, was murdered by Coral Eugene Watts, a confessed serial killer . Years later, she discovered that a letter written by Mr. Watts was being sold online.

“It glorifies the criminal,” she said. “It brings back the grief.”

For the moment, however, survivors can do little to combat the trend. So-called “Son of Sam” laws are designed to prohibit criminals from profiting directly from the sale of their personal effects or stories. But there are few prohibitions against vendors who sell murder-related material on the secondary market. According to Mr. Kahan, only eight states — Texas, California, Utah, New Jersey, Florida, Alaska, Michigan and Montana — forbid the vending of murderabilia. An anti-murderabilia Senate bill sponsored last year by John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, is languishing.

That’s fine with Eric Gein of Jacksonville, Fla., who is the proprietor of serialkillersink.com. Mr. Gein (a nom de plume in “an homage to Ed Gein”) disputes the notion of a difference between the court-ordered Kaczynski auction and private vendors.

“I believe in this business there is no gray area, only black and white,” he said. “It’s O.K. for the government to sell this stuff but we can’t? I don’t understand anyone who would say, ‘Well, these proceeds are going to the victims’ families.’ They’re going to be sold and sold and resold.”

Mr. Kahan acknowledged the problem. “This is the ultimate catch-22,” he said. “Yes, it’s going to happen. The murderabilia industry is growing by leaps and bounds despite attempts to clamp it down. But as long as it’s going to happen, let it be done with the primary benefit of it going to the victims.”

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The Female Factor: Subtle Shift at the Gypsy Bride Market

Meet the tinkers of Thrace, semi-nomadic Roma who in the early 21st century are among the few in Europe hewing to ancient ways. A woman may govern Germany and men in Sweden may care for infants. But in this corner of southeastern Europe, that thinking is quite foreign, with — so far — limited impact.

Technically, the young women at this traditional St. Todor’s Day “market” were not for sale. But it is at this fair, held each year on the first Saturday of Orthodox Christian Lent, that the Kalaidzhi (as the estimated 18,000 Thracian tinkers are known) conduct the complex negotiations on a bride price that traditionally lead to marriage.

The identity of this semi-nomadic Roma group is based on the ancient craft of its menfolk: producing and repairing pots, pans and caldrons. For centuries, these smiths have scattered in ones or twos in Bulgarian villages to practice this craft, and they get together rarely for events like the St. Todor’s fair.

This is therefore one of the few opportunities for teenagers to meet other Kalaidzhi — and potential spouses. Dating is not really an option when teenage boys and girls are forbidden to meet without an adult. Marriage outside the group is equally taboo.

Leaning against his car, surveying the scene, Hristos Georgiev, 18, was pleased to be wrapping up negotiations with the father of Donka Dimitrova, an 18-year-old he expected to marry weeks later. Bargaining had narrowed to between 10,000 and 15,000 levs, or $7,500 to $11,300, well more than a year’s worth of the average Bulgarian’s wages of 8,400 levs. He said he saved the money working construction in Cyprus.

According to Velcho Krustev, an ethnographer with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, “the man is not buying a wife, but her virginity.” The payment ensures the bride will be treated well by her new family, he said.

Good looks nevertheless command a price. “If she’s really beautiful, the price can go up” to 20,000 or 25,000 levs, Mr. Georgiev said, within easy earshot of his prospective bride. (Others said a great beauty might fetch 40,000 levs.)

“I don’t approve,” said Ms. Dimitrova, who unlike less educated Bulgarian Roma girls recently completed a landscaping course. “You shouldn’t look at the money,” she said, “but at the person, his way of speaking, thinking, feeling and all the rest.”

Her cousin Todorka was blunt. The money, she said, “is no guarantee that the marriage will last forever. They can still find another better one 10 days later.”

Kalaidzhi families usually marry off daughters between the ages of 16 and 20 and take them out of school by eighth grade, allegedly to prevent their being “stolen” by suitors. (How often true bride theft occurs is not clear. Young people said it is often a face-saving family story when a daughter elopes.)

Kalaidzhi women have long woven their daughters’ dowries, and stoked the fires for their husbands’ craft. They are wives, mothers and assistant tinsmiths.

Education has not been a priority: the Open Society found in 2004 that one in five Bulgarian Roma women are illiterate — almost double the share among men. Only 10 percent of Bulgarian Roma women have secondary education, according to the World Bank, compared with 16 percent for the men.

However, support for marriage traditions is waning. A 2007 study by Amalipe, a nongovernmental organization in Bulgaria, found that 52 percent of Roma opposed parents' choosing the spouse of their children, with 35 percent in favor. Only 18 percent of Roma supported the bride price; 69 percent rejected it.

Kalaidzhi are among the most tradition-bound of Roma. But even they are changing — to the distaste of elders like Ivan Kolev, 73.

 

Suicide Bomber Kills 8 at Iraqi Market

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber on Saturday attacked a group of Iraqi soldiers at an entrance of a large market in the northern city of Mosul, killing 5 soldiers and 3 other people and wounding 19, according to an Iraqi security official.

Women and children were among the wounded, the official said.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his access to important information.

Around 6:30 p.m., the bomber attacked the group of soldiers as the market was closing and shoppers were leaving, the official said.

The soldiers typically stand at the market’s entrances as a safety precaution. The market, which sells food and clothing, is one of the largest in Mosul.

Just a few months ago, a merchant at the market was killed by a gunman. There have been several other attacks on the market in recent years.

There was other violence in Iraq on Saturday.

In Baghdad, gunmen dressed in military uniforms stormed the house of an employee of the Ministry of Industry and Minerals, killing the employee and his daughter. One of the gunmen was killed by the employee’s neighbors.

Also in Baghdad, gunmen stormed the home of a local judge, killing the judge and one of his bodyguards. The gunmen then blew up the judge’s house. An army colonel was also assassinated in Baghdad.

In Najaf, a homemade bomb was detonated near an American convoy, although no deaths were reported.

Violence has decreased significantly in Iraq over the past few years, although there has been a spike of violence — particularly assassinations — in recent weeks. It’s unclear what has caused the increase.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Parliament voted to pay $400 million to Americans who said they were tortured by Saddam Hussein’s regime during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Many of the victims were working in oil fields in Kuwait at the time.

The payments are part of settlement with the victims that Iraqi and American officials negotiated last year.

Iraqi officials said that by paying the victims, the Iraqi government would be prevented from similar suits in the future, which could cost the government significantly more money.

“If Iraq did not pay this settlement it would face major problems,” said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, adding that the country’s profits from oil and other sectors would have been exposed to lawsuits if the government did not reach the agreement with the victims.

 

Suicide Bomber Kills 8 at Iraqi Market

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber on Saturday attacked a group of Iraqi soldiers at an entrance of a large market in the northern city of Mosul, killing 5 soldiers and 3 other people and wounding 19, according to an Iraqi security official.

Women and children were among the wounded, the official said.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his access to important information.

Around 6:30 p.m., the bomber attacked the group of soldiers as the market was closing and shoppers were leaving, the official said.

The soldiers typically stand at the market’s entrances as a safety precaution. The market, which sells food and clothing, is one of the largest in Mosul.

Just a few months ago, a merchant at the market was killed by a gunman. There have been several other attacks on the market in recent years.

There was other violence in Iraq on Saturday.

In Baghdad, gunmen dressed in military uniforms stormed the house of an employee of the Ministry of Industry and Minerals, killing the employee and his daughter. One of the gunmen was killed by the employee’s neighbors.

Also in Baghdad, gunmen stormed the home of a local judge, killing the judge and one of his bodyguards. The gunmen then blew up the judge’s house. An army colonel was also assassinated in Baghdad.

In Najaf, a homemade bomb was detonated near an American convoy, although no deaths were reported.

Violence has decreased significantly in Iraq over the past few years, although there has been a spike of violence — particularly assassinations — in recent weeks. It’s unclear what has caused the increase.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Parliament voted to pay $400 million to Americans who said they were tortured by Saddam Hussein’s regime during the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Many of the victims were working in oil fields in Kuwait at the time.

The payments are part of settlement with the victims that Iraqi and American officials negotiated last year.

Iraqi officials said that by paying the victims, the Iraqi government would be prevented from similar suits in the future, which could cost the government significantly more money.

“If Iraq did not pay this settlement it would face major problems,” said Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, adding that the country’s profits from oil and other sectors would have been exposed to lawsuits if the government did not reach the agreement with the victims.

 

Preserving a Market Symbol

As the chief executive of the all-electronic Nasdaq exchange, Mr. Greifeld has questioned whether a physical place where human beings come together to buy and sell stocks is even necessary. He has dismissed the 219-year-old capitalist symbol of the New York exchange as “a stage prop” that ought to be taken apart “board by board.”

Now, though, with Nasdaq and the Intercontinental-Exchange in a fierce fight with the Deutsche B?rse to buy the Big Board, and its parent company, NYSE Euronext, Mr. Greifeld insists that he will not only keep the floor open but reverse its long decline.

Although it might seem largely symbolic — only about 1,200 traders remain on the floor, down from more than 2,500 a decade and a half ago — both bidders are promising to keep it open, a rare point of agreement and a nod to the high-stakes public relations battle now under way.

Behind the scenes, however, starkly different strategic visions of the future of stock exchanges are being proposed. The tussle between the exchanges is a question about which model is going to compete most successfully in a global marketplace: one that straddles continents and product lines or one that stays local and focused.

“The question is, what is the exchange of the future?” said Richard Repetto, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill, an investment banking and brokerage firm. “Both want to compete globally but Nasdaq is saying, hey, we think the best way to compete globally is to stay as narrowly focused as possible. NYSE is saying, hey, you need to be diversified to compete and have global capabilities.”

The strategy of the Deutsche B?rse calls for the combined company to trade stocks as well as higher-margin, faster-growing derivatives in both Europe and the United States.

“It is a bigger international play,” said Patrick J. Healy, chief executive of the Issuer Advisory Group.

Nasdaq’s vision is built on dominating stock trading in the United States. It would have some international equity trading, like its current OMX operations in the Nordic and Baltic countries, as well NYSE Euronext exchanges in European centers like Paris and Amsterdam.

But the merger would make the combined business the home of all the companies listed in the United States, responsible for 45 percent to 50 percent of domestic trading volume. Issuers, including overseas companies, might prefer a bigger, unified American capital market compared with the fragmented one now.

On Thursday the fate of the Big Board is likely to take center stage at the annual shareholder meeting of NYSE Euronext in Manhattan. But the final outcome may be decided only by a shareholder vote scheduled for July.

The deal with the Deutsche B?rse — which went mainly electronic more than a decade ago and has only about 120 traders on its floor in Frankfurt — would give NYSE Euronext a much bigger share of the market for exchange-based derivatives trading in Europe, including interest rate derivatives as well as NYSE Euronext’s 27 percent share of cash stock market trading in the United States.

Under the Nasdaq-ICE bid, NYSE Euronext would be split into two. The NYSE Euronext’s stock-trading operations, including the NYSE floor, would go to Nasdaq, while ICE would pick up most of the derivatives businesses in the United States and Europe.

NYSE’s board has twice rebuffed the Nasdaq-ICE bid, even though Mr. Greifeld sweetened his offer last week with firmer bank financing and an offer to pay a $350 million break-up fee to NYSE Euronext if regulators veto the deal.

The NYSE Euronext board said it still prefers to merge with the Deutsche B?rse, because that deal would keep the company intact, and emphasize the global cross-product strategy, while they argue an Nasdaq-ICE combination would run afoul of antitrust rules.

The Nasdaq-ICE bid is also a bet on the superiority of purely electronic trading. From its headquarters in Times Square, Nasdaq has done more than anyone else to draw business away and diminish the exchange, and in the shift to electronic trading the Big Board itself adopted ever more automation and set up its own electronic-only market, called Arca.

 

Market Place: Wreckage at the Intersection of Corporate and Consumer Markets

 

That’s a question the Ciscos of the world — big technology companies that sell stuff to businesses, but lack “ooh-ah” consumer products like iPads — never stop asking.

One obvious answer, of course, is this: Because you’re not Apple. Not only that, you are not a consumer company. You never have been.

The record of powerful companies charging into the consumer marketplace, only to retreat in humiliation later, is long and distinguished. Cisco’s announcement last week that it would shut its Flip video camera division, two years after buying Flip for $590 million, is just the latest chapter in a story that could be titled “The Consumer Marketplace: Destroyer of Dreams.”

So why try? For starters, the stock market rewards sexy consumer products. Their makers are not just companies — they become cultural movements. Apple’s stock trades at a price of about 18.5 times earnings per share, Cisco Systems at 13 times. No one ever waited in line to buy a Cisco networking solution. Cisco’s share price fell about 3.5 percent last week; it is down almost 16 percent so far this year.

“To enterprise companies, the consumer market is the Afghanistan of business,” said Andrew Zolli, consultant and director of the PopTech, an annual technology conference. “Lots of companies take a turn there and no one leaves satisfied — and they all leave eventually.”

Cisco came as ready for the challenge as any predecessor. It dominates the complex and demanding world of digital networking; in under 30 years, it has grown to be one of the largest companies in the world, with a market capitalization larger than Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s or Ford. At the time it acquired Flip, Cisco was said to have cash reserves of more than $29 billion.

But surely Cisco must have seen that the road to the consumer market is paved with the corpses of the fallen.

In 1995, for instance, the computer modem maker U.S. Robotics bought Palm, the maker of personal digital assistants. In the ensuing years, Palm was passed from U.S. Robotics to its new parent, 3Com, and then to its current owner, Hewlett-Packard. In the meantime, Palm, once a market leader, watched competitors like Apple, Google and Research In Motion carve up the smartphone market.

As Cisco hoped in its acquisition of Flip, each of Palm’s parents hoped that the smaller company’s innovations would bring fame and fortune to the entire organization. The parent company would no longer just be a business — it would be a brand. Its executives would be minor (or even major) celebrities. Perhaps the stock price would get a healthy bump.

“It’s a little tough when all the money and energy is over in the consumer space,” said an industry analyst, Mark Anderson. “If you’re on the enterprise side of things, you want some of that.”

I.B.M. was perhaps the most successful crossover artist, moving from mainframe to personal computing with the PC in the early 1980s.

But even that success was the exception that proves the rule. I.B.M. had to set up an autonomous division in Florida, far from corporate headquarters in New York, to give the PC room to grow. “The only way the PC was going to be developed was if it got out from under I.B.M.’s bureaucracy,” said the business historian John Steele Gordon. “That the PC succeeded at all was not because of I.B.M.’s corporate culture, but in spite of it.” (It is worth noting that Microsoft’s Xbox was developed in a similar fashion.)

Even I.B.M.’s move into the consumer space came to an end. The computing giant sold its PC group to Lenovo in 2005.

Acquiring or building a consumer business and successfully integrating it into the larger, existing enterprise company is challenging, says Mr. Zolli, the consultant. “Companies acquire consumer businesses for perceived synergies,” he said. “But the synergies are almost always illusory. These corporate marriages bring all the emotional baggage of a shotgun wedding.”

In 2008, Microsoft bought Danger, a small company that made a cellphone called the Sidekick. The Sidekick had already attained an enviable level of popularity in the much sought-after youth market. Microsoft integrated the Danger team into the group developing the Kin, a Sidekick-like device that Microsoft was hoping would have the same appeal to teenagers and young adults. The Kin was released in May of last year; 48 days later, Microsoft removed it from the market, a remarkably public admission of failure.

 

Market Place: Wreckage at the Intersection of Corporate and Consumer Markets

 

That’s a question the Ciscos of the world — big technology companies that sell stuff to businesses, but lack “ooh-ah” consumer products like iPads — never stop asking.

One obvious answer, of course, is this: Because you’re not Apple. Not only that, you are not a consumer company. You never have been.

The record of powerful companies charging into the consumer marketplace, only to retreat in humiliation later, is long and distinguished. Cisco’s announcement last week that it would shut its Flip video camera division, two years after buying Flip for $590 million, is just the latest chapter in a story that could be titled “The Consumer Marketplace: Destroyer of Dreams.”

So why try? For starters, the stock market rewards sexy consumer products. Their makers are not just companies — they become cultural movements. Apple’s stock trades at a price of about 18.5 times earnings per share, Cisco Systems at 13 times. No one ever waited in line to buy a Cisco networking solution. Cisco’s share price fell about 3.5 percent last week; it is down almost 16 percent so far this year.

“To enterprise companies, the consumer market is the Afghanistan of business,” said Andrew Zolli, consultant and director of the PopTech, an annual technology conference. “Lots of companies take a turn there and no one leaves satisfied — and they all leave eventually.”

Cisco came as ready for the challenge as any predecessor. It dominates the complex and demanding world of digital networking; in under 30 years, it has grown to be one of the largest companies in the world, with a market capitalization larger than Goldman Sachs, McDonald’s or Ford. At the time it acquired Flip, Cisco was said to have cash reserves of more than $29 billion.

But surely Cisco must have seen that the road to the consumer market is paved with the corpses of the fallen.

In 1995, for instance, the computer modem maker U.S. Robotics bought Palm, the maker of personal digital assistants. In the ensuing years, Palm was passed from U.S. Robotics to its new parent, 3Com, and then to its current owner, Hewlett-Packard. In the meantime, Palm, once a market leader, watched competitors like Apple, Google and Research In Motion carve up the smartphone market.

As Cisco hoped in its acquisition of Flip, each of Palm’s parents hoped that the smaller company’s innovations would bring fame and fortune to the entire organization. The parent company would no longer just be a business — it would be a brand. Its executives would be minor (or even major) celebrities. Perhaps the stock price would get a healthy bump.

“It’s a little tough when all the money and energy is over in the consumer space,” said an industry analyst, Mark Anderson. “If you’re on the enterprise side of things, you want some of that.”

I.B.M. was perhaps the most successful crossover artist, moving from mainframe to personal computing with the PC in the early 1980s.

But even that success was the exception that proves the rule. I.B.M. had to set up an autonomous division in Florida, far from corporate headquarters in New York, to give the PC room to grow. “The only way the PC was going to be developed was if it got out from under I.B.M.’s bureaucracy,” said the business historian John Steele Gordon. “That the PC succeeded at all was not because of I.B.M.’s corporate culture, but in spite of it.” (It is worth noting that Microsoft’s Xbox was developed in a similar fashion.)

Even I.B.M.’s move into the consumer space came to an end. The computing giant sold its PC group to Lenovo in 2005.

Acquiring or building a consumer business and successfully integrating it into the larger, existing enterprise company is challenging, says Mr. Zolli, the consultant. “Companies acquire consumer businesses for perceived synergies,” he said. “But the synergies are almost always illusory. These corporate marriages bring all the emotional baggage of a shotgun wedding.”

In 2008, Microsoft bought Danger, a small company that made a cellphone called the Sidekick. The Sidekick had already attained an enviable level of popularity in the much sought-after youth market. Microsoft integrated the Danger team into the group developing the Kin, a Sidekick-like device that Microsoft was hoping would have the same appeal to teenagers and young adults. The Kin was released in May of last year; 48 days later, Microsoft removed it from the market, a remarkably public admission of failure.