Lady the Afghan hound rests peacefully, curled up on the floorlike any dog would be. There’s just one difference.
“Lady’s dead. She’s been dead since 1971,” Cathee Schultz said.”You can touch her, but please, don’t kick her.”
Schultz, along with artist J.D. Healy, display Lady, along withmany other deathly artifacts in their Museum of Death, located in thebasement of a former mortuary in the Gaslamp District.
Halloween night will be the last time this gallery of horrorsopens its doors. The Museum of Death has lost its lease and isleaving San Diego after four years of exhibiting ghastly art foundnowhere else, including celebrity murder photos, death videos andserial killer artwork.
Healy and Schultz began the museum as an art gallery and bookstorein 1993 where Healy displayed his artwork. Together, they amassed acollection of death-related photos, letters and artwork.
The death museum came two years later. The two solicited artworkfrom many of the nation’s best-known serial killers including JohnWayne Gacy — whose artwork is on display there along with a letterfrom him.
The purpose of the museum is to show people death is a naturaloccurrence, Schultz said. It sometimes shocks people not accustomedto seeing such graphic displays of a real phenomenon like dying, shesaid.
“We think of ourselves as historians,” she said.
Newspaper headlines touting the nation’s most tragic deaths covera wall of one room. The next room has pictures of the dead bodies ofSharon Tate and the Black Dahlia.
Another wall cases the Manson chronicles with a baseballautographed by Charles Manson.
Another area displays the artwork of the Nightstalker RichardRamirez who drew a picture of a refrigerator with a severed bodyinside. Houston mass murder Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. has a pencildrawing of a nude Betty Page on display.
“I learned a lot about serial killers by reading the letters onthe wall from David ‘Son of Sam’ Berkowitz and Richard Ramirez,” saidJimmy Jazz, a museum employee.
Schultz and Healy were informed their four-year lease would not berenewed and were given an eviction notice in September. The buildingowner is selling the building that the museum is located in.
Potential buyers want the Museum of Death out. John Day, generalpartner with SND Associates, the company that owns the building wherethe museum is located, said buyers do not feel the Museum of Death isin their best interest.
“We have a potential buyer who doesn’t want them as a tenant,” Daysaid.
However, he said the eviction is “nothing personal. The owners aregood people.”
The museum is relocating to Hollywood in January or February.
The Museum of Death is located at 548 Fifth Ave. in the GaslampDistrict. Hours are from noon to 10 p.m. daily; noon until midnightFriday through Sunday. Admission is $5.
