What happens to a man whose young son Adam is abducted in 1981 and left to be discovered only as a decapitated head in a river, the killer never revealed? For John Walsh, host since 1988 of the America's Most Wanted television show, it means dedicating the rest of your life not to mourning your loss and hating the world you live in but ensuring with every ounce of energy you can muster that you will prevent child abduction and other criminal acts from happening to anyone else. Walsh through his show exposes criminals of all types in hopes that the American public will do its civic duty and turn them in, taking scum off the streets, as he likes to say. He also has become a legislative reformer, working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to create a national sex offender registry that was recently signed into law by US President George Bush. Walsh is most definitely a man on a mission and he is well aware of the power of educating the public and getting the word out about what just one person can do to make the world a better place.
Walsh's latest endeavor over a crime-fighting career that has spanned over 25 years was to partner with an Orlando businessman to open the National Crime & Punishment Museum in May in downtown Washington D.C. Housed in a seemingly innocuous brick building, it is an absolute thrill and one of the best in a museum-heavy area for the breadth and depth of the subject it addresses, all for a very fair price of $17.95 for entry. Serious thought was clearly put into the contents in order to connect the astonishing range of some 700 historical relics, such as torture devices from the Middle Ages, Bonnie & Clyde's shoot-out car from the 1967 movie, and the booking fingerprints of 1970s serial killer Ted Bundy, to the modern-day educational aspects that include a CSI room where you can solve a crime from identifying the suspect to determining the cause of death of the victim through forensic techniques. Delving deeply into all the types of crimes perpetrated by Americans over the years from pirates to mobsters to computer hackers, the museum doesn't forget to leave in that with crime comes consequences. It details infamous prisons such as Alcatraz and Sing Sing, allows you to take a lie detector test, and delves into the capital punishment debate by showing various electric chairs, noting that Texas by far and away leads the states in executions. You can even participate via computer simulations in pulling over a speeding suspect or shooting a criminal in an ambush, among other activities that range from those for children such as riding a policeman's motorcycle to the adult such as listening to autopsy results on a very realistic dummy. And finally it honors police and other law men who put criminals behind bars, leading you at the end to Walsh's TV set where he does his weekly broadcast.
The museum really doesn't leave anything out, satisfying the mind and the senses as you make your way through room after room on a tour that takes a good two hours to finish. One of my favorite sections was the one devoted to pirates, a life-size wax figure of Edward "Blackbeard" Teach (1680-1718) included. Highlighted in that section are the two best-known female pirates, Ireland-born Anne Bonny (1700-1782) and Britain-born Mary Read (1690-1721) who together disguised themselves as men to sail the Caribbean Sea searching for plunder. They were spared execution by claiming they were pregnant, which apparently they both were, having been no doubt attractive to lifelong sea-bound men once discovered. In many ways, they were the first feminists, or at least, early proof that being a career criminal is not only for men and the fairer sex could indeed be pretty wicked. Also interesting was another exhibit dedicated to Bonnie Parker (1910-1934), who along with her boyfriend Clyde Barrow were notorious outlaws and bank robbers during the Great Depression. Never accused of killing anyone, Bonnie was nevertheless along for the ride, helping to keep her love out of jail to the bitter end when she took a hail of bullets alongside him during an ambush in Louisiana. She grew up an honor roll student and was a lauded creative writer, using that skill to pen a poem about her and Clyde's life on the lam together--"They don't think they're too smart or desperate, they know that the law always wins, they've been shot at before, but they do not ignore, that death is the wages of sin." Whether pirate or outlaw, these women underscore how the seduction of freely doing what you want regardless of what civil society accepts can overwhelm a person, taking them down a path that inevitably ends badly and usually with blood spilled.
Another way the museum looked at the psychology of criminals was by expanding their range of artifacts from guns and other weapons to include artwork from some of the worst American killers on record. John Wayne Gacy (1942-1994) was a sexual sadist, raping and murdering over 30 teenage boys and young men in Illinois in the 1970s and putting many of them in his house's crawlspace. While sitting on death row, Gacy became a prolific oil painter, depicting himself often as happy "Pogo the Clown," an alter ego he used in public when he hosted children's parties. The museum had on display a painting he did entitled "Hollywood Monsters," depicting Frankenstein, the Werewolf, Dracula, Jason and Freddy Krueger, drawn with similar skill to a 15-year old boy, which considering Gacy's perversion for boys makes sense in a sick way. The museum noted that Gacy's artwork is a collectible "murderabilia" item, with some going for as much as $9,500 (one website offered originals up to $3,500), raising the question of whether it's right to allow a professed killer or anyone to profit from ill-gained fame. The museum also had a drawing by Charles Manson, head of the Manson family that killed a slew of people in the summer of 1969 and who still resides at San Quentin prison in California. Manson's drawing shows a wolf gazing at a grasshopper, surprisingly well done in pen and ink.
Looking at the two drawings, I realized that their inclusion in the museum has far less to do with their value in the art world and far more to do with understanding the truly complex criminal mind. We think of criminals as almost Neanderthal, not fully formed or developed in emotion or intelligence. They can't and shouldn't be pidgeonholed into that lesser-human corner, however, a lesson underscored throughout the museum. They can focus their thoughts on a detailed task as seen in the drawings when Manson outlines the eyes of the wolf or when Gacy colors in a vampire's face. They can clearly conceptual a scene and complete a time-consuming task. These men aren't crazy, drooling fools with single-digit IQs. What also comes out is Manson's control-focused personality as the dominant wolf sites prey and Gacy's highly social nature that enabled him to appear childlessly innocent to gain trust with his victims. Criminologists have crime scenes to suss out who did the dirty deed but the why can remain elusive, especially when dealing with serial killers who kill for reasons beyond comprehension to many. The drawings in this sense are invaluable in understanding more about Gacy, Manson and criminals in general.
What I took most from the drawings was the chilling understanding that these men easily disassociated themselves from the reality of their crimes and were happy living on without any guilt tied to taking life. Would I like a reminder of that hanging in my living room? I think not. Yet the fascination with these people lingers on for me as it does for others, keeping our attention long after their acts and punishment are complete. It isn't that they are just evil. Going into the darkest depths of humanity, we are reminded that we are often only a fine line away from being them, so fine that we could easily be pulled over to the dark side. How often is it that neighbors or relatives of criminals describe them as normal, no signs at all that they were raping women or holding up banks? Whether Walsh intended it or not, the museum is a stark reminder of the fact that these people are around us and will always be. So we must remember, most of all, to be vigilant in fostering compassion and respect for our fellow man in order to keep the vicious wolves of our psyche at bay and in doing so, we honor the lives of Adam and the other victims who left us too soon.
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