Coffin Conversations - by dementia

The family of 21-year-old Stephanie Gach, who was abducted and murdered in 1992, thought they had stopped her killer from continuing to hurt the family when they filed a lawsuit in 2004 over essays about the crime that convicted murderer Jack Trawick had posted on the Internet.

But Trawick, on death row at Holman Prison in Atmore, is back on the Internet -- this time offering for sale sketches of the mutilated corpse of a young woman on an Internet auction site.

"Just the thought of it makes me sick," victims' rights advocate Carol Melon told The Birmingham News. She was speaking on behalf of Stephanie Gach's mother, Mary Kate Gach, who was too upset to comment.


Attorney General Troy King said Tuesday his investigators are looking for ways to force Web Site operators to remove sketches by Trawick.

King said he believes the Internet postings may be a violation of a state law that prohibits convicted criminals from profiting from their crimes.

"We expect to send a letter to operators demanding they stop providing a forum for this art work," said King, who called the postings "atrocious."

Stephanie Gach was abducted Oct. 9, 1992, from the parking lot of her apartment complex after being followed by Trawick from a Birmingham shopping mall. Gach was strangled, stabbed through the heart and her body was thrown from an embankment. Trawick was also convicted of killing Aileen Pruitt, 27, about four months before Gach's murder,

Mary Kate Gach filed a lawsuit in Montgomery in 2004 seeking to force the Alabama Department of Corrections to stop Trawick from sending material to the Web sites. Her attorney, George Jones of Selma, said Tuesday that lawsuit is still pending, but that the postings appeared to stop after the suit was filed.


"We may have to file something new," Jones said.

Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections, said prison officials are powerless to stop inmates from having their paintings and sketches sold on the Web sites.

"They're horrific," Corbett said of the images. "We don't condone them. But the DOC does not control the Internet."

via montgomery advertiser