Environmental news publication Grist spoke to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Caroline Fraser about her new book, Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust In The Time of Serial Killers. They specifically asked about an idea Fraser posits in her book: what if infamous serial killers who haunted the Pacific Northwest were made that way not because of nature or nurture, but because of something as mundane and seemingly out of left field as air pollution?
Fraser grew up near Seattle, not too far from Tacoma, where the Asarco smelter spent nearly 100 years spewing lead and arsenic into the air. She basically had a front row seat to a massive public health disaster. And one, she posits, that might have rewired the brains of future serial killers like Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer.
Her neighborhood had a front-row seat to one of the country’s biggest public health disasters. She traced crime scenes and the childhood homes of Pacific Northwest serial killers. A pattern emerged: a lot of them grew up near toxic plumes.
What If Lead Poisoning Could Explain The Origins Of Some Serial Killers?
Lead exposure in childhood has been linked to aggression, impulsivity, and psychopathy. It erodes brain volume, particularly in men, and turns the capacity to turn kids into cruel little demons.
Fraser is only suggesting that there may be a link. She seems more than aware that correlation does not equal causation. But she does argue that toxic chemical exposure is a critical ingredient in the creation of serial killers.
It’s often ignored when, for instance, the true crime community obsesses over these bizarre concepts of serial killers being misunderstood geniuses on some level. Nah, it could just be that their brains were quite literally poisoned by the toxic chemicals spewing from the factories and refineries that poisoned the air they were breathing in from the second they were born into this world.
Fraser contends that serial killers aren’t created in a vacuum. You could debate whether their upbringing or a variety of sociopolitical factors were at play in the formation of their bloodlust, but a valid and likely integral part of the conversation going forward must include environmental factors.
It could just be a coincidence that four notorious Pacific Northwest serial killers grew up in the shadow of four toxic plumes spit out by companies that might share some responsibility for the murders. Or, the toxic chemicals they breathed in, the ones that are known to twist and warp brains, could have been a major underlying factor in creating some of the most dangerous men in America.
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