I’m assuming this is a joke but just to be clear: Bartek Frykowski (the son of Manson victim Wojciech Frykowski) is collecting the royalties from Manson’s music and Fred Goldman (the father of Simpson victim Ron Goldman) is collecting the royalties from Simpson’s book.
The problem, as I mentioned previously, is - where does it stop? If Son of Sam writes a murder mystery, is it automatically considered profiting from his crime? (notoriety of his name?) If Hurricane Carter writes a memoir, does his stay in prison automatically mean the whole book’s profits are seized? What about any rock star who had a run-in with the law over drugs? Can profits from any subsequent songs with drug allusions be seized? (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?)
As I said, what about “Orange is the New Black”? It’s about her time in prison, now a major Netflix series as well as a bestseller. Her initial drug-running money laundering crimes a decade before are only peripherally dealt with, and the TV series is “fiction” loosely based on her book. Is that considered “profiting” from her crime?
It’s a slippery slope when you try to limit what someone can or cannot say or do. It’s difficult to write a precise law.
Arguments like this are a big part of why the original, naive, Son of Sam laws got overturned and newer laws are far less specific.
After Ann Rule wrote “Small Sacrifices” about Diane Downs’s shooting of her children, Downs responded with Best Kept Secrets.
Just happened upon this today - a publication that includes articles written by people in prison.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_G._Santos
Santos is an interesting cat. Saw him speak recently. He made a very conscious decision early in his sentence to redeem himself, and he’s very explicit about how he recognized the necessity of making life choices that would be appealing to upstanding citizens.
Anyway, he published several books while inside and also got his BA and MA.