Poison pen pals

Salon Books interviews a serial killer groupie who corresponded with Gacy, Ramirez, Manson and Dahmer.

By Craig Offman

April 29, 1999 | Serial killers often have groupies -- usually women who write them mash notes and faithfully attend their trials, like the bevy that followed the "Night Stalker," Richard Ramirez. Few serial killer buffs, though, have been quite as successful as Jason Moss. At the age of 18 and while living with his parents in Las Vegas, Moss struck up correspondences with Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson and, most extensively, John Wayne Gacy. Ostensibly, Moss was working on a college assignment, but he was also acting on a lifelong fascination with gruesome murders and the people who commit them. In his new book, "The Last Victim: A True-Life Journey Into the Mind of the Serial Killer," Moss reviews his successes and explains his technique: suss out the particular leanings of the psycho in question (Gacy played controlling mind games, Dahmer "just didn't want to be alone," Manson distrusts anything that smacks of elitism) and craft a letter that seems to be written by the killer's "perfect victim." He interviewed a gay hustler so that he could pretend to Gacy that he'd been one, and he boned up on Satanism in order to bond with Ramirez.

"Even as these predators disgusted me, I found myself admiring the artful way many of them stalked their prey and eluded detection," Moss writes. "Eventually, as a kind of self-dare -- one intended to relieve teenage tedium more than anything -- I began pretending to be the person I was reading about. I know that sounds weird, but I really wanted to figure out why and how these people could do what they do."

Moss' experiment soon got out of hand. He went to visit Gacy, who was on death row at the Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Ill., and the killer suddenly turned vicious and threatened to rape him. He also visited Gacy's pen pal, Andrew "Koko" Kokoralies, who'd murdered eight women, and who talked wistfully of how he would like to meet Moss' family. Salon Books recently spoke with Moss about the trajectory of his strange obsession.

In one memory you describe from your childhood, you're 13 years old, and you and your mother take a trip to the library. She proceeds to show you a book that describes a man who made a belt of human nipples. You ask, "Why can't my mother read cookbooks or something?" To what extent did her fascination influence you?

It's ironic -- she's such a good mother, and she's so protective, and because I was so protected, it's what made my fascination grow so much. She'd give me those tidbits and that would be it.

The book quotes the actual letters that you wrote to the serial killers. What made you think then that you had to keep copies of those letters?

Like with Gacy, I had to remember the stories I told him. You know, I told him that I prostituted myself on Las Vegas Boulevard, but after a while, when it soon led to phone calls, he'd be like, "Tell me what happened that night again, when you mowed that guy, what shirt were you wearing? Did he hit you on the head?" or "Where did you say he hit you again?" He wanted to hear the fantasy so that he could masturbate to it, but in a way he was also testing me. He kept a huge logbook -- which I saw when I met him -- of details of everything that went on.

What steps could you take to distance yourself from Gacy and the others? It seemed as though you were so enveloped in it that you couldn't get out.

Looking back now I can see the mess I created for myself. At the time, I was like, "I got a letter from Ramirez!" I'm just sitting there thinking I've got to finish this book on Satanism. And I gotta finish this book on the occult. I'm straight, but I had to present myself as bi. So I had to finish this novel I was reading about two gay men having sex so that I could change the story around and include me getting beat up by some guys or something. I got so engulfed in it. But you got to think about it. Every letter I got I felt that I was one step closer to [Jeffrey] Dahmer. Yes. One step closer to Manson. Yes. That only incited me to read more about them.

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