In 1976 and 1977, New York City was terrorized by one of America’s most infamous serial killers. Before being captured in front of his Yonkers home, David Berkowitz killed six victims, and wounded seven others. Berkowitz claimed he was following the orders of his neighbour’s dog, whom he described as being connected to a demonic figure named Sam. “I am a monster,” Berkowitz wrote in one of the notes he left for police. “I am the ‘Son of Sam.’”

Berkowitz was sentenced to six life sentences, and remains in jail to this day. His legacy includes not only the horrific crimes he committed, but also a special kind of legislation inspired by fears that the killer would sell his lurid and sensational story to a publisher or studio. The “Son of Sam” law created by New York State in 1977, which exists in modified form to this day, required that revenues from a criminal’s descriptions of his crimes be deposited in escrow and disbursed to his victims. And while Berkowitz’s crimes were especially horrific, these laws can apply to all crimes—including the sexual abusers now being outed in the wake of #MeToo. As one of the original statute’s authors explained, “it is abhorrent to one’s sense of justice and decency that [such] individual[s] can expect to receive large sums of money for [their] story.”

Over the summer, an art show in New York City prompted us to ask whether this same moral logic applies when the facts are reversed. Specifically: How should we feel about a false accuser turning her story into a commercially successful art project—even as the target of her claims hovers on the brink of suicide and bankruptcy?