Inmates Investigated in Plan to Sell Manson Memorabilia

Seventeen Corcoran State Prison inmates apparently were collecting photographs and autographs of Charles Manson to sell on the outside, state prison officials said Tuesday.

“There’s a whole market on the outside for these macabre kinds of memorabilia,” said Corrections Department spokesman Tip Kindel. “[For] almost anybody that’s a mass murderer, there’s a market outside of prison.”

The 17 inmates have been segregated while prison officials investigate what they believe was an unauthorized planned commercial enterprise, Kindel said.

Manson, who is in the same protective housing unit as the 17 convicts, was not involved in the scheme “as best as we can tell,” Kindel said. Prison officials think none of the Manson items had yet made their way into collectors’ hands.

Corcoran, about 170 miles north of Los Angeles, holds about three dozen of the state’s most notorious inmates--including Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy--in its protective housing unit.