PUBLISHER SAYS DEBATE OVER CARDS THIN

Catherine Yronwode's company publishes informational trading cards, including sets about the savings and loan scandal, Medal of Honor winners, the history of communism in Russia.

One set, True Crime trading cards, has angered many people who say the cards violate the privacy and feelings of victims' families by glamorizing murderers.

In a telephone interview from Eclipse Enterprises in Forestville, Calif., Yronwode defended the cards, which are a cross between a baseball card and a flash card. They have artwork of the criminal on the front, a biography on the back and information about the law-enforcement agents responsible for the criminal's capture.

"We don't glorify it at all," said Yronwode, Eclipse's editor in chief. "In fact, if anything, we try to point out what can be done to try to prevent these kind of crimes, by making people's childhoods better. . . . Often it's what happens to someone in childhood that ruins them for the rest of their life.

"What we write is: `He was a sad child who was beaten up by his alcoholic father, abandoned by his mother who was a prostitute, he drifted in and out of reform schools, he was rejected by the army because he was psychologically unfit to serve, he was jailed for petty crimes, and then began killing."

How society goes wrong

She argued that the cards, which also depict prominent law-enforcement officers like the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, teach "people something about how society goes wrong." In fact, Yronwode said, a police psychologist in California uses the cards to teach rookie cops about different kinds of criminals.

If there's a message in the True Crime cards, Yronwode said, it's to warn people how to avoid becoming a victim.

"In many many of these crimes, we explain how the person got their victims. And in many cases, the victim meets the criminal . . . at a bar and goes home with the (killer). Well, after you read 110 cards about this, you go, `Gosh, I guess I won't meet a guy at a bar and go home with him.' "

She denied that the cards are insensitive to victims' families. "I will say to the victim that we are not naming the victims, we are not dwelling on the victims' suffering and we are certainly not drawing any conclusions about the victims' personalities, whether they deserved it and whether they were innocent. None of that goes into the cards," she said.

"On the front page of the newspaper, you find the world news, so we did Dictators of the World. Also on the front page, you find national news about the president. So we've done cards about George Bush's administration.

"Of course on the front page, you always find the crimes. So we decided to do a crime set."

Eclipse doesn't pay criminals for their likenesses because newspapers and magazines don't have to pay for information about public figures with known crimes.

In a quick survey of a few local card shops, we found that True Crime trading cards are available for $1 a pack or $36 for the series. The cards can also by purchased by calling the company and using a credit card.

"We have an 800 number and you can place an order with a credit card, which also, by the way, must show you that we're not selling primarily to children. Because children don't usually have credit cards," she says.

While she doesn't believe the cards should be off limits to children, she did say that younger children might not understand them because the language is geared to college-level readers.

Yronwode doesn't believe the cards will encourage anyone to kill.

"The cards are not about `this is a great thing to do,' " she said. "The people who commit these crimes are usually so far gone for other reasons, that the cards are not gonna push them over the edge."

Many groups have sent petitions and letters to Eclipse Enterprises trying to stop them from making the cards. Yronwode said the company has been targeted by right-wing political groups who have mailed computer-generated form letters with up to 300 names on them.

"The funny thing is, we have mailed back replies to many of these people who have sent us the forms, and those replies (have) come back (to the company) stamped `No such person, no such address,' " Yronwode said. "So we know that a lot of what they're sending us is fake names and fake addresses."

First Amendment issue

Although there have been attempts to ban the cards in various counties and cities, most bans have been overturned because they violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech.

Only one county _ Nassau County, New York _ has passed a law prohibiting minors from buying the cards, Yronwode said. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued to overturn that ban on grounds that it violates the First Amendment.

Despite the opposition, the cards have been very popular.

"We've made more money on these cards than anything else we've ever done. And we've been in business for 15 years," Yronwode said.

Eclipse has just released True Crimes II, which features cards on professional criminals from 1935-59 as well as cards about "strange crimes," such as a woman's plot to kill the girl next door because she made the cheerleading team and her daughter didn't, Yronwode said.

"We try to stay in business by publishing things that people will buy," she said.

Recovering from tragedy

For people who think the cards are insensitive, Yronwode makes this analogy:

"The greatest tragedy of loss in my life was when my first child died. She was my daughter, Cicely, and she died when she was very young . . .

"I can talk about it now _ you have to understand, this was 23 years ago. But for many years I couldn't talk about it, I couldn't even have said her name without crying . . ..

"Now, I didn't expect Oprah never to have women whose children had died on her show. I didn't expect no books ever to mention babies who died of diseases. I didn't expect the world to stop or have my hurt and pain become the center of the world, and for no one to ever mention that babies die.

"I was able to see myself in a larger continuum of people whose children have died. ... Yes, I was very sad. And yes, I protected myself. I myself turned off that TV. I myself said, `Oh, I'm not going to read this newspaper story, it's going to make me upset.'

"My statement to the relatives of the victims of violent crime is: You will have to protect yourself, because the world will not stop. . . . The subject matter of the way in which your relative died, it's not going to be censored from all newspapers, all magazines, all television, all movies, from now on."

EDITOR'S NOTE: Eclipse is coming out with AIDS trading cards in February. About half of the cards have pictures of people who have AIDS and stories about their lives. The other half contain medical information about AIDS, such as how to avoid getting AIDS, how to get a test and how to volunteer to help people who have AIDS.