By Alaine Griffin and Christine Dempsey
The Hartford Courant
HARTFORD, Conn. — Poems and drawings purportedly by Cheshire home invasion killer Joshua Komisarjevsky and clothes he reportedly wore in prison are for sale on a website that hawks items of serial killers and other notorious murderers.
The website darkvomit.com began selling the items this week in its “True Crime Museum & Prison Art Gallery,” adding Komisarjevsky’s name to its collection of the more well-known heinously infamous like Charles Manson, Gary Gilmore and “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz.
The items caught the eye of a victim advocate in Texas where efforts to stop the sale of so-called “murderabilia” has gained the support of legislators, prompting prison officials here to investigate how items tied to one of Connecticut’s worst crimes in recent history ended up in such a morbid collection.
“Two days ago, this didn’t exist,” Andy Kahan, director of the Houston-based Mayor’s Crime Victims Office, said Thursday during a telephone interview from his Texas office. Kahan, who has battled against the macabre industry for 15 years, said he does daily checks of the roughly six websites that sell such items.
“This is probably just the beginning of the marketing of Komisarjevsky, the latest criminal, he said, who “has achieved a high-profile status” among true-crime collectors, he said. Kahan said publicizing the sale of these items does not promote the practice but rather brings it to the attention of those who may not know such an industry exists.
“This is an issue that’s not going to go away,” Kahan said. “Getting word out about this is the only way you’re going to combat it.”
Komisarjevsky and his accomplice, Steven Hayes, await execution for the torture and slayings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters, Hayley and Michaela, during a home invasion and arson at their Cheshire home in July 2007.
“The horrific murders of Jennifer, Michaela and Hayley will forever resonate with the citizens of Connecticut,” Kahan said. “I am sure the public will be shocked and appalled to find out one of the perpetrators is attempting to cash in on his ill-gotten notoriety. Like it or not, the burgeoning industry of “murderabilia” is growing. Connecticut needs a Notoriety For Profit Law to prevent high-profile killers like Komisarjevsky from profiting from his criminal conduct. Hopefully, the public will be so outraged positive action will result and put Komisarjevsky and others out of business permanently.”
But Kelly Hutchison, an artist and art dealer from California who runs the three-year-old darkvomit.com, said he did not pay Komisarjevsky for the items and obtained them through a “pen pal” of Komisarjevsky.
“Joshua Komisarjensky was not paid nor will get paid any amount of money nor was compensated in any form, for the items that I offer for sale,” Hutchison said. “I personally have never communicated with him, nor could I even imagine he knows who I am.”
Hutchison said a woman he declined to name offered him the items.
“I was contacted by a gal who offered the items for sale, who is a struggling single mom who has fallen on hard times,” he said. “I am also not at liberty to speak of who she is ( in respect to her privacy ), nor how much I paid for the items.”
On Thursday, Hutchison said he put up for sale an “incredibly detailed masterpiece of a pen and ink drawing done of Frankenstein” called “The Bride of the Monster.” Normally the price tag would be $350, he said, but the website had it on sale Thursday for $275.
Hutchison said it was “very suitable for the Valentine’s Day holiday.”
The website – which Hutchison said garners “a fair amount” of traffic but he could not give numbers -- is also selling another Komisarjevsky drawing for $150, a poem for $75 and sweatshirts Komisarjevsky reportedly wore on Connecticut’s death row for $150. A state Department of Correction commissary list said to be filled out by Komisarjevsky sold “immediately” for $30, Hutchison said.
Hutchison did not reply to a question about how he responds to criticism about his website which has been up for about three years.
Andrius Banevicius, a spokesman for the state Department of Correction, said prison officials are looking in to whether the items are indeed Komisarjevsky’s and if they were sent from death row at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers where Komisarjevsky is being held. Photographs on the website of packages that the items were mailed in show the prison as a return address. The recipient on the package is not visible and was covered up.
“We cannot verify that those are authentic items from Inmate Komisarjevsky,” Banevicius said this week.
The poem and the drawing are considered correspondence, and inmates are allowed to send those through the mail, he said. The DOC does periodic reviews of outgoing mail, he said.
A majority of the mail that goes out is reviewed and all incoming mail is checked, Banevicius said.
After a review, Banevicius said prison officials will then decide if the department needs to conduct a formal investigation.
Jeremiah Donovan, one of Komisarjevsky’s attorneys, said Komisarjevsky gets “lots of correspondence” sent to him in prison, which could include someone looking to make a profit from his belongings.
“There is an industry of people who write to prisoners who are lonely and persuade them to send them things,” Donovan said. “Then these people go off and sell the things.”
Donovan said even if Komisarjevsky were to profit from these items, he said any money he would make would be put into the state’s victim compensation fund.
“And that money would go to Dr. Petit,” Donovan said, referring to Dr. William Petit Jr., the lone survivor of the Cheshire home invasion, and the husband and father of the victims.
On Friday, Petit said he and his family are awaiting the outcome of the DOC investigation.
This isn’t the first time items connected to a notorious crime in Connecticut have turned up for sale on the Internet.
In 2005, as serial killer Michael Ross’ execution date approached, copies of a DVD of a criminologist’s interview with Ross were sold on a serial killer website. Years later, other items remain for sale, including a “one-of-a-kind” watch Ross reportedly wore “before, during and after” his execution, according to murderauction.com which is selling it for $4,750.
The website is also selling Ross’ “underwear shirt” purportedly worn under his prison sweater until his execution. The website said the shirt was sent to his fiancée after the execution by prison staff “just like Michael asked.”
The shirt is on sale for $9,799.99. “We can clearly see dark sweat marks left on the shirt from that day,” the website states.
Ross was convicted of kidnapping and strangling four young women and girls from eastern Connecticut and admitted killing four others. He was put to death in 2005 by lethal injection.
Concerned that serial killer David Berkowitz might profit for writing about the “Son of Sam” murders, New York lawmakers in 1977 seized literary and movie proceeds from accused or convicted criminals, a move the U.S. Supreme Court would later rule was unconstitutional.
Five years ago, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., introduced the “Stop the Sale of Murderabilia to Protect the Dignity of Crime Victims Act” in Congress. The bill has failed to make it out of the committee level but Cornyn is planning to re-introduce the legislation soon, most likely in April during Crime Victims Week.
“No murderer or violent criminal should be able to profit from their notoriety behind bars,” Cornyn said. " My legislation would honor victims and their family members by putting a stop to the heinous practice of murderabilia and keeping vile criminals from making a single cent off of their crimes.”