One of the world’s leading experts in the realm of serial killers grew up on the Northwest Side of the city and now lives in Lincoln Square. His name is John Borowski and he looks very much like a normal person and expresses himself with passion and intelligence, even though much of his working life is filled with some of the darkest and most deadly acts of mankind.
I was talking to him to prepare for a visit to “Serial Killer: The Exhibition,” currently settled into 40,000 square feet of 40-some handsomely designed rooms at Cinespace, the massive television and film production facility in North Lawndale.
“Even into the 1990s, I am not sure there could have been an exhibition like this,” Borowski said. “This stuff was still extremely taboo. You wouldn’t get away with this exhibition back then. But then there was this show called ‘Mind Hunter’ and that brought killers into greater public awareness and into pop culture.”
He knows what he is talking about. An accomplished writer and filmmaker, he is one of the many people (academics, writers, criminologists, psychologists, and others) responsible for what I can now tell you is a rather extraordinary, enlightening, spooky, sad and thought-provoking presentation.
It arrived in early September and one recent sunny morning I was standing in a line with 40 other people waiting for the doors to open. A few of these people were locals, others from as far away as Tennessee.
Why?
I once put it like this: “Evil fascinates.”
But there are many theories about why people are attracted to true crime, with serial killers being the stars of that world. You will hear that it has to do with a human desire to “understand” evil; to know how so-called normal human beings can commit unthinkable acts; that media sensationalism, a steady stream of true crime TV and podcasting feed insatiable appetites.
This show continues into January. It might last longer. It attracted big crowds earlier this year when it visited London, Rome, Paris, Milan and Berlin. It was such a hit in Atlanta that it had to extend its planned stay.
Again, why?
As author Bill Kimberlin writes in the exhibition’s catalog, “Where do the lines cross from healthy fascination to unhealthy obsessions when it comes to true crime?” He later wrote that while he thinks that the show “raises ethical questions and concerns, it also presents an opportunity to delve into the complexities of criminal behavior and psychology,” believing that it “can contribute to a much deeper understanding of criminal behavior, promote public awareness and help us better understand why serial killers do what they do, kill!”
Not sure I really want to know. But Borowski says, “I think people are increasingly drawn to true crime content over fictional horror.” He will tell you that real-life horror and death and murder are more powerful. He was at Columbia College when he made his first film about H.H. Holmes. It won awards, and he aspires to one day make a three-part series of three-hour shows about that same man.
“Well, I’m just going to continue making these documentaries,” he says. “It is reality horror. It’s true life. And when I do these conventions and meet some of these kids, as young as 12 years old, they know all these serial killers. So, I think future generations are going to be more interested in true crime like Holmes, of course, being among the most fascinating killers that I have ever encountered.”
And so, into the belly of the beast I walked.
A couple of hours later, I emerged into the sunlight, slightly dazed but knowing a great deal about some of the evil that has peppered history.
I saw many familiar faces, the unusual suspects, so to speak: Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, and others. I also met such new characters and nicknames as Leonarda Cianciulli, the “soap-maker of Correggio”; Fritz Haarmann, the “Butcher of Hanover”; Nicolas Claux, the “Vampire of Paris”; Issei Sagawa, “the Japanese Cannibal”; Béla Kiss, the “Monster of Czinkota” and John George Haigh, the “Acid Bath Murderer.”
If you notice a lack of female names, you are correct. There are only a few, among them the “Blood Countess,” a Hungarian noblewoman named Elizabeth Báthory; Belle Gunness, a Norwegian; Dorothea Puente, the “Death House Lady”; Aileen Wuornos, most famous because Charlize Theron played her and won a best actress Oscar in the 2003 movie “Monster.”
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This being Chicago, it is understandable that much space was given to such local “luminaries” as Holmes (Borowski has a terrific story in the exhibition’s catalogue), Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy.
I was surprised to see Richard Speck, who was surely a monster, but murdering eight nurses in 1966 makes him, I guess, an “honorary” serial killer. (Perhaps the same applies to Charles Manson and his pack, also in the exhibit.)
I got a look at Dahmer’s glasses and at three never-before-seen paintings given by Gacy to his attorney, Karen Conti, who was one of his lawyers before his 1994 execution by lethal injection. She recently published a book about that. I called “Killing Time with John Wayne Gacy: Defending America’s Most Evil Serial Killer on Death Row.”
The book is available for sale at the exhibition, as are dozens of other items, but one can hope that the Gacy paintings will never be seen after this show, since they are so ugly you can understand why Conti has kept them face down in a closet all these years.
Okay then, I saw a gas chamber and an electric chair, Wuornos’s gym shoes (LA Gear), and some “torture screwdrivers.” I watched a couple of videos and did a virtual reality thing. I counted, as best I could, about 150 killers and, sadly, many victims, photographically displayed. I saw a couple of thousand artifacts but neglected to take an “Are You a Potential Serial Killer?” test and was reminded, seeing the faces of killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole, that Chicago filmmaker John McNaughton based a brilliant (and terrifying) 1986 film on these two, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.”
The organizers of this exhibit suggest that 90 minutes is enough to digest it all. I suppose that’s about right. It all depends on what you’re after. I don’t even want to consider that some person might visit seeking advice or tips, but I did talk to one college kid from Michigan, who put it pragmatically: “I’m hoping I can find some inspiration for a good Halloween costume.”
If you go
“Serial Killer: The Exhibition” runs through Jan. 24, 2027, inside the Cinespace Chicago Film Studios, 2428 W. 15th St.; tickets and more information at serialkillerexhibit.com