Murderland by Caroline Fraser
Reminder:
These posts are largely for me. I love reading, and I also love remembering why I loved a particular book. I wanted a place where I could keep track of the books I loved, and I opted to go this route. If you end up reading the books I post about, and you love them? Hell yeah, fucking right! But please, don’t power through if you actually don’t like it. Life is far too short to use it reading books out of spite. Ideally this space makes you smile, and calls you back to reading and remembering. Not every book will be a banger, but I read to be able to better evaluate books and to have exposure to more ways of writing. I am literally doing this shit for the love of the game.
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I enjoy true crime books (financial crimes and regular interpersonal crimes), but mostly from an academic standpoint. I do not enjoy books that like to flatten the victims of violence (blaming them for their own deaths), or that mythologize police officers (because cops are broadly incompetent). I also am not so naive to believe that if I consume enough true crime content, I can insulate myself from said crimes. Life is full of mysteries and I have resigned myself to that. All said, I don’t even remember what drew me to this book originally. it started slow and I remember almost returning it on Libby, but I powered through. I am so glad I did. As with all the books that will be featured here? I absolutely loved it.
Caroline Fraser does a phenomenal job of answering a question I had never articulated. “Why were there so many serial killers that hailed from the PNW in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s?” Because truly, what the fuck was going on? Turns out the answer is corporate malfeasance and environmental neglect! Caroline expertly lays out the history of smelting in the late 1880s and how the Guggenheims (yes, them) were able to become as wealthy as the Rockefellers through copper, arsenic, and lead smelting. She covers how the companies owned by the Guggenheims busted unions, prioritized profits over human health, and enriched themselves while literally poisoning the community. Tons and tons of ARSENIC was in the water, the air and the soil! She covers how as time progressed, scientists owned by these companies were their talking heads. Knowing that the smelting was killing workers and the people around and refusing to let that get in the way of making money. It should be inconceivable that people would accept “arsenic on your skin, in your streams, on your crops, and in your body is perfectly safe” as a placation lmfao. She hones in on lead though, as there is plenty of science to back up the connection between lead exposure and various forms of violence.
I did not realize that they really just let lead be in every fucking thing? Smelters were putting it into the sky, water, and soil. While they were making money hand over fist putting it in fuel! Not to mention lining every fucking pipe with it and putting it in paint? No fucking wonder there was so much crime. People were being fucking poisoned at every turn! She tells the story of various serial killers and makes a point to mention how they often grew up close to places where smelting and lead poising were constantly happening. She focuses on PNW killers but acknowledges the fact that cities like Philadelphia were under similar exposure and the crime there can be attributed to it. She spends a lot of time on Ted Bundy and the thing that blew me was how ordinary he was. So many people were charmed by him but ultimately he was just white and lead poisoned. The descriptions of violence were rough but she really highlighted the humanity of these victims (who were overwhelmingly women). Sometimes true crime authors, especially the white ones, just do racism in their books. Caroline did a great job of calling out racism and homophobia, which I appreciated. She juxtaposed her own life with the history of these killers and it was very enjoyable.
I learned so much! It also made it so I will be watching the EPA very closely, since they are planning to reopen one of these poisonous smelting sites up again. The drop in serial killers is aligned with the previous restrictions on how much lead can be in things, so it is worth keeping an eye on. The book was well researched and clearly well thought out. I look forward to telling all my friends about lead poisoning lol. If you give it a read, lemme know,
With much love and in the Spirit of further, faster, stronger, and sillier:
Iya Ifawuyi