You can call it morbid fascination, a twisted hobby, unethical, weird, disturbing, but the

idea of collecting items once owned or created by serial killers has been a reality for decades.

Victim's advocate, Andy Khan coined the word murderabelia to describe these true crime

collectibles that found their way onto auction blocks, into museum displays, or into someone's

private collection. And yes, there are various opinions in general about the idea of owning

or profiting off these items. But it doesn't change the fact that every piece of murderabelia

is a conversation starter. This countdown may be one, too, because when I reveal number

one, it is definitely going to have people talking.

Hey, all you weirdos, welcome to Crime Countdown, a Spotify original from podcast. I'm Ash,

and I'm Elena. Every week we'll highlight ten fascinating stories of history's most

engaging and unsettling crimes, all picked by the podcast research gods. This episode

we're counting down the top ten most macabre murderabelia. Obviously, I think we've

all by this point in time heard of murderabelia. If you're listening to this podcast, you

probably know. Probably. But I think sometimes when we see a photo of an item or we hear about

someone owning a piece of crime history, particularly serial killers, I feel, it seems so fascinating

at first. Like immediately I'm drawn to like, what is it? But when you really take the time

to think about what it is and who it comes from and what had to happen for it to exist, it's

pretty horrifying. Like history is really scary at times, but it's also really fascinating

at times. It's like this horrific dichotomy. It's like a perfect storm. Yes, it really is. You

can't tell how you feel about it. No, I feel like it has my thoughts racing. And I think the only

thing that settles those racing thoughts when it comes to this murderabelia is the peace of mind

knowing that most of the time, like these serial killers are not profiting off of these items.

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