World’s Largest Collection of Serial Killer ‘Murderabilia,’ From John Wayne Gacy to H.H. Holmes, Opens in Chicago

A harrowing curation of artifacts linked to the world’s most notorious serial killers—including the “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy and H.H. Holmes of The Devil in the White City infamy—anchors a new exhibition, now open in Chicago. Spanning a massive, 21,000-square-foot space, “Serial Killer: The Exhibition” brings together more than 2,000 items that confront myth with true crime’s gruesome reality.

Displays spotlight personal belongings, investigative evidence, authentic artworks and other “murderabilia” that offer an uncanny peek into the lives of roughly 150 killers from dozens of countries who devised and committed unthinkable crimes. Throughout the 1970s, Gacy—who worked as a birthday party clown alternately named Pogo and Patches—killed at least 33 teenage boys and young men after luring them to his home on the outskirts of the city, where he buried the remains of 29 of his victims in his basement’s crawl space. Gacy was sentenced to death in 1980, though he spent the next 14 years appealing his sentence.

While on death row, he became a prolific painter and made more than $30,000 selling his canvases, which often featured clowns and skulls, the Los Angeles Times’ Stephen Braun reported in 1994, the year Gacy was executed. Some of Gacy’s paintings featured in the exhibition, on show for the first time, come from people who knew him personally. I’m not selling them, because I would hate to profit,” Karen Conti, a lawyer who was part of Gacy’s legal team during his death row appeals, tells the Chicago Sun-Times’ Selena Fragassi.

Two depict variations of clowns and skulls, while the third is a coastal landscape with a low-hanging moon and red trees beside open water. The exhibition dedicates displays to other local killers, including Holmes, who, as one of America’s first serial killers, used his “Murder Castle” hotel to claim victims’ lives during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Lesser-known featured Chicago killers include Richard Speck; the satanic Ripper Crew cult; and Tillie Klimek, known as Chicago’s “Black Widow,” who claimed to have had precognitive dreams of the deaths of her husbands, whom, in reality, she poisoned.

Although Robert Ressler, an FBI investigator, is largely credited with having coined the term “serial killer,” Ernst Gennat of the Berlin Criminal Police used the German translation, “serienmörder,” in a 1930 article. Billed as the world’s largest private collection of serial killer artifacts, the exhibition toured Europe before arriving stateside, where it made its first stop in Atlanta. More than 500,000 visitors worldwide have visited the installation.

Its Chicago stop, which opened to the public over Labor Day weekend, runs through January. There’s rooms that are dedicated strictly to the victims alone, and we’re reaching out to try to bring closure to more families.” Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.