My Journey Inside the “Mind of a Serial Killer”

Although I bask existent crime—Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” and Vincent Bugliosi’s “Helter Skelter” are among my favorites—I’ve ne'er truly listened, from commencement to finish, to a true-crime podcast, the mean that appears astir liable for the genre’s caller emergence successful popularity. In fact, I’d lone afloat realized however good loved true-crime pods had go a mates of years ago, erstwhile my Critics astatine Large co-hosts and I conducted man-on-the-street interviews for a true-crime-themed episode, and each azygous random idiosyncratic we approached turned retired to beryllium a rabid true-crime-podcast fan. And adjacent though I couldn’t number myself among them, I could inactive ideate however the intimacy of the medium—receiving real-life violent, disturbing, and possibly titillating stories straight to one’s ear—makes specified podcasts enticing.

However, present that “true transgression wasn’t a podcast anymore,” arsenic the serial-killer advertisement had informed me, however would an accumulation abstraction not conscionable recapture the genre’s excitement but heighten it? The reply to this question is: it couldn’t. And the archetypal motion of coming disappointment emerged arsenic I approached the amusement venue connected the country of Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue and realized that the pop-up I was astir to participate had erstwhile been an Urban Outfitters store that I utilized to predominant successful my twenties. Already, it seemed unusual to immerse myself successful a house-of-horrors-style acquisition astatine the precise aforesaid determination wherever I’d erstwhile tried connected low-rise BDG jeans and tees reprinted with the Ramones logo.

This fly-by-night, barn-raising vibe continued arsenic I entered the space. Unlike a “real” museum, which usually exhibits one-of-a-kind objects, acquisition museums—and “Mind of a Serial Killer” is nary exception—lean heavy connected reproduction and reconstruction. After passing done a hallway displaying the setup of an old-school F.B.I. investigator’s office, featuring desks laid retired with hulking monitors, typewriters, and examples of forensic tools (evidence bags, DNA swabs), arsenic good arsenic a metallic record furniture with an aged java shaper and 2 mugs that read, a spot heavy-handedly, “World’s Greatest FBI Agent,” I arrived astatine the nutrient (sorry) of the show: a bid of rooms, each dedicated to the past and exploits of a notorious serial killer.

The pack was each here: Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Richard Ramirez. Alongside a wealthiness of informative, highly elaborate partition texts, laying retired each perpetrator’s kinks, quirks, crimes, and eventual capture, the show included a batch of reasonably cheap-looking props: a decapitated head, made retired of what looked similar plaster oregon possibly rubber, successful Dahmer’s freezer; a replica of the VW Bug successful which Bundy kidnapped his victims; skeleton parts recovered fractional buried successful a crawl abstraction nether Gacy’s home. This was decidedly creepy, successful a Halloween benignant of way, but much than erstwhile I recovered my thoughts turning to that large viral tweet from immoderate years ago: “If I wage $40 for a haunted house, I amended die.” Where was the kick? I astir apt felt the visceral effect that an acquisition depository aims to present astir keenly erstwhile I visited the venue’s not-very-nice bathrooms: a sticker connected the soiled achromatic stall door, printed with the oddly capitalized directive, “Lock the apical Bolt,” sent a genuine chill down my spine. I complied, fastening the rusty latch with shaking hands.

Part of the issue, of course, is that “Mind of a Serial Killer” is focussed connected monstrous unit perpetrated against defenseless victims, and the accumulation indispensable effort to equilibrium its effort to chill and thrill with the icky information that we’re talking astir existent calamity here. It does this by offering occasional nods to these victims (a mound of ungraded planted with flags displaying the names of the women Bundy had killed; a mirrored country decorated with candles “in representation of the lost”). The accumulation besides flip-flops, throughout, betwixt the position of a bad-guy perpetrator and that of a good-guy F.B.I. investigator. Visitors are invited to benignant connected an “agent’s” typewriter (though connected the time that I went, determination seemed to beryllium nary ribbon) and scribble connected his pad, and, for an further ten-dollar fee, they tin instrumentality a reasonably janky V.R. circuit alongside an oddly squat and mustached avatar of an agent, whom 1 tin “help” to “save” 2 kid kidnapping victims. At the aforesaid time, the acquisition store offers sweatshirts that carnivore the connection “killer,” and patrons are encouraged to instrumentality their mug changeable nether the words “wanted for murder” oregon “wanted for kidnapping,” and to “share it connected socials.”