Caroline Fraser discusses Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

 

Recently we’ve been genuinely disturbed by a remarkable publication, ostensibly a true crime work, but it’s far more than that. It’s a literary examination of the environmental impact of industrial pollution (of the diffusion of toxins) and their possible linkage to the darkest horrors of human behaviour. It’s also part ‘coming-of-age’ narrative painted against the backdrop of a changing America – during a time of serial killers.

Written by award-winning writer Caroline Fraser, ‘Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers’ published by FLEET [an imprint of Little Brown UK / Hachette] is a powerful book, one that disturbs as it provokes deep, deep thought and reflection.

We wrote at the time of its recent publication -

This book is most unusual. Ostensibly a true-crime narrative that investigates the serial killer Ted Bundy and others such as the Green River Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, Zodiac, Charles Manson [et. al.] - linked in terms of their murderous activity to –

[a] The geography of the Pacific North West of America., both natural as in the Olympic-Wallowa Lineament [OWL] fault line, as well as man-made  structures like the regional “floating bridges” with their problematic ‘reversible car lanes’.

[b] The events and socio-political turmoil of America in the 1970s to the 1980s.

[c] Heavy industry and the chemical poisoning that resulted from the smelters [metal extraction and purification from molten ores] before environmental safeguards came into being with the E.P.A.

And [d] the authors’ own ‘coming of age’ in that region and age.

The title has inserted “Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers “as a suffix of sorts which acts as a warning - because this is a disturbing [and at times distressing] work, but one that provokes deep-thought amidst the revelations and the revulsion that the author knits from.

Read our full review HERE

We had a few questions for the author and were delighted when Caroline Fraser agreed to discuss her book.

Ali: Welcome to Great Britain’s Shots Magazine.

Caroline:  Thanks so much--I'm glad to join you. 

AK: We’re excited to introduce you and this extraordinary narrative “Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers” to our readers, but first the most obvious question, what attracted you to write Murderland?

CF:  I'd been thinking on and off for years about the question of why there were so many serial killers in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s and 1980s.  I was thirteen in 1974, living in a suburb of Seattle, when Ted Bundy began abducting and killing women there (although his crimes may have begun earlier).  So I remember the strange sense that there was a predator out there, combing the streets and beaches for victims, entering women's rooms in the middle of the night and taking them.  Nobody knew where they were for months.

And I'd always wondered why there was so many incidents of bizarre and violent crime during the '70s in particular, even on Mercer Island, the fairly sedate and wealthy suburb where I lived:  arson, bombings, the guy who lived down the street who blew up his house and killed himself (nearly taking his family with him).  A serial killer who grew up down the street from me.  During Covid, all this finally came together when I had some time to do more research on that era and what might have caused such mayhem.

AK: “….a light dusting from the periodic table on top of all that trauma….” Was an interesting line that made me sit up to attention realising that there could be a credible link between the cruel violence [particularly of serial killers] and Lead, S02, heavy metals and other industrial pollutants poisoning the environment, and affecting behaviour – what led you to see this link?

CF:  Oddly, what led me to this link was a real estate advertisement. About ten years ago, I was looking at ads for undeveloped property on Vashon Island in Puget Sound.  One ad that said something about "Arsenic remediation needed," and I had no idea what that could mean.  Vashon Island is directly across from the city of Tacoma, and I quickly discovered that the southern end of the island was heavily polluted with both Lead and Arsenic by a smelter, the ASARCO Copper smelter that had been operating in Commencement Bay in Tacoma for about a century, from the 1890s to the 1980s. 

The more I read about Lead exposure and its association with violent crime, the more intrigued I was.  And when I saw on a map the proximity between Charles Manson, incarcerated on McNeil Island a few miles off of Tacoma; Ted Bundy, growing up in Tacoma in the worst part of the smelter plume; and Gary Ridgway, growing up north of Tacoma, with multiple exposures from the plume, SeaTac airport, and his job painting trucks, I felt there was a story to tell about these connections and the history of violent crime in Tacoma.  Eventually, I began looking at other places in the American West that were beset by smelter pollution.

AK: You grew up in the Pacific Northwest, what made you incorporate your own early life [including some very personal details] into the narrative?

CF:  In terms of pacing and structure, I felt that the narrative needed some lighter moments to relieve the truly grim recitations of murder.  I came to feel that the memoir sections served different purposes, including offering examples of the naiveté of young girls and women at that time, a naiveté that did not serve them well.  Which is not to say that any of the girls and women involved were responsible for their attacks, not at all.   Instead, I was trying to show how the culture set up an environment that enabled these assaults.

The memoir passages also introduced another kind of crime that was far more common than serial murder (and not unrelated):  domestic violence. 

AK: Of the many serial killers you detail, why did you focus on Ted Bundy the most?

CF:  Bundy is in a class by himself in some ways, both in terms of our extensive knowledge about his movements and activities, and in terms of what he revealed about himself.  Some serial killers have little or nothing to say for themselves (Robert Lee Yates, Jr. is an example), whereas with others, we have audio and/or video recordings, such as Ed Kemper, Denis Rader (BTK), and Israel Keyes.  Bundy spoke extensively, if hypothetically, to several interviewers, from both law enforcement and media.  And while most serial killers lack insight and are deceitful in what they say, Bundy did occasionally touch on issues of motivation and behaviour that I consider extremely revealing.

Also, since Bundy has been so glamorized in film and TV, I felt it could be corrective to take a stark, unvarnished look at the grotesque nature of what he did. 

Most importantly, and more than anybody else in Murderland, Bundy provides a startling example of somebody who was exposed to a significant amount of lead growing up, first in Philadelphia, then in Tacoma.  Thanks to the GIS maps of the Tacoma smelter plume, we can see exactly how much lead and arsenic were in in his front yard and his back yard.  What you make of that is up to you, but these are undeniable facts.

AK: I found the linkages to the literary world fascinating with mentions of Dashiell Hammett, Frank Herbert and even Stephen King, would you care to comment?

CF:  I loved delving into those connections.  Hammett's noir depiction of Tacoma and Herbert's ecological take on the overwhelming despoliation of his hometown provide real depth to the historical portrait of a place that had been suffering intensive ruination for decades.

As for Stephen King, the fact that he began his career by publishing Carrie, a classic masterpiece of horror based on a young woman's systematic degradation, in 1974, the year of the rise of serial killers, was too good to pass up.

AK: The book has a vast appendix which illustrates the incredible research behind “Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers” so can you let us know a little about the process in writing this book.

CF:  I knew that the research would be intensive, so I began keeping detailed timelines of the narrative of the book.  The timelines were tied to notes confirming where I'd found certain details.  Ancestry.com and newspapers.com were resources that I used heavily, and I archived many of these sources to keep track of them. 

AK: The book is a very dark and terrifying narrative so what were you [as a person] like during the writing?

CF:  Everybody asks me some version of this question.  I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that Michelle McNamara, the author of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, her book about the search for the Golden State Killer, died, sadly, of a drug overdose, while she was reporting it. 

I don't think working on this made me any more gloomy or pessimistic than I already am!  To be sure, parts of this book were difficult to write, but not more difficult, probably, than any of the books that Ann Rule wrote over her long career as a crime writer.  Because so much of the material was historical, it was removed in time, and I think that may make a difference as well.  Not that it wasn't horrifying.  It was.

AK: So what’s next up for Caroline Fraser, more journalism or more non-fiction or even fiction [as Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers reads almost like a SF-thriller novel in places…]?

CF:   Ha!  That's lovely to hear, but I'm not really contemplating fiction.  There are a couple of biographies I'm thinking about, but I haven't made my mind up yet.  I think I'll be taking a little time off and trying to decide.

AK: And finally, are you a true-crime reader – and what books have you read both fiction and non-fiction?

CF:  I re-read some classics while working on this book, including Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Robert Graysmith's Zodiac, and Curt Gentry & Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter.  I re-read a lot of gothic horror, including Bram Stoker's Dracula (which I love) and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which turns up in my book.

Over the years, I've read a lot of true-crime, beginning with Ann Rule's famous The Stranger Beside Me and many of her others.  While writing Murderland, I acquired a stack of old True Detective magazines that she'd written for in the 1970s under a pseudonym.  I'll Be Gone in the Dark, mentioned above, was inspirational, and Maureen Callahan's American Predator offered valuable reporting on Israel Keyes.

AK: Thank you for your time and insight, very much appreciated.

CF: Thank you!

About Caroline Fraser

Caroline Fraser was born in Seattle and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University in English and American literature. Formerly on the editorial staff of The New Yorker, she is the author of three nonfiction books, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church, and Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution, all published by Metropolitan Books. She served as editor of the Library of America edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books and has written for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, Outside Magazine, and The London Review of Books, among other publications.

She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, Hal Espen.

For more information Click HERE

Shots Magazine would like to thank Caroline Fraser for her time and to Zoe Hood of Fleet / Little Brown UK / Hachette publishing for helping to organise this interview.  

Author Photo © Hal Epsen all other graphics provided by Fleet Publishing, Google Maps, Federal Bureau of Investigation or as credited.