The instant Timothy McVeigh was dead, crime-buff bottom-feeders were filling Internet auction sites with McVeigh items, trying to make a killing off his infamy.
eBay was auctioning what it billed as his “handwritten” last statement for bids starting at $100, along with personal letters he allegedly received from “friends.”
At the same time, transcripts of his terror trial were being offered on Yahoo! while a sketch-artist rendition of the dead Oklahoma City bomber was sold on eBay within hours for a fast fortune. Another seller was pushing the domain names: McVeighbombing.com and McVeighexecution.com.
eBay yesterday even advertised the baseball cap of a guard who oversaw McVeigh in federal prison. The asking price was $1,000.
“Now that he’s dead, he’s becoming a hot commodity,” said Andy Kahan, a crusader against crime memorabilia who’s been monitoring eBay since McVeigh’s execution.
Kahan, who works for the Houston mayor and has lobbied for legislation preventing criminals from profiting on their personal items, worries the McVeigh items mark the beginning of his “martyrdom.”
“You have to realize that this stuff will become really expensive over time, and he’ll likely end up in the top-dog category of cash-cow killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy, whose personal items fetch in the hundreds and thousands of dollars,” Kahan said.
But good taste may prevail. Moments after each McVeigh item was posted, eBay would remove them from the site as part of its new policy to kill anything involving murderers and high-profile criminals.
The edict was issued May 17, days before McVeigh’s first execution date.
“We were certainly looking at the McVeigh stuff this weekend as part of our watch list for offensive materials,” said eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove. “We had some increased activity, but anything we received complaints on we pulled.”
Crime-memorabilia experts believe sellers and collectors are now scrambling to find the killer’s scattered ashes or get hold of his Persian Gulf War medals.
These items could fetch thousands of dollars in the murky underground of crime-memorabilia collectors, experts said.
“As sad as it is, anything you can possibly imagine is out there,” Kahan said.
As part of his research, Kahan bought the foot scrapings of Houston railroad killer Angel Maturino Resendez for a few bucks. He bought dirt from John Wayne Gacy’s crawl space for $20.