Interest in Manson isn’t heightened at the Museum of Death for the golden anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders, because it’s never really gone away.
There are morgue photos of the Black Dahlia, aka Elizabeth Short, the lower half of her body separated from the upper by a foot or so of empty air. Two toddler-size white caskets. Serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s “authentic clown shoes.” A suicide suit and Nikes taken from the body of a Heaven’s Gate cult member who died along with 38 others. The shrunken heads of half a dozen men — well, as far as anyone can tell, they’re men.
In case you’re wondering why the museum is here on Hollywood Boulevard near Gower Street — and in New Orleans’ French Quarter and soon to be in Seattle’s Pioneer Square — Healy has a sober-sided answer: to make our death-averse culture think about our collective destination.Manson and his cruel clan already have a place of honor in the 3,000-square-foot collection, where they claim more prominent real estate than nearly any other deathly display.
People in the United States, Kay said, like to be scared. And when Life magazine featured a wild-eyed Manson on its Dec. 19, 1969, cover — an image that is famous to this day — U.S. audiences were handed their perfect boogeyman. One of the first rooms visitors encounter displays antiques and artifacts of the funeral and mortuary trades. There’s a wicker casket, a style museum manager Erek Obrist says came to prominence during the Civil War, when bodies were shipped home by train. It is lined with tin and could be packed with ice for replenishing at each depot.
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