Review: "Murderland," Caroline Fraser

There were 669 serial killers at large in the 1990s in the U.S. The number dropped to 371 in the 2000s, and to 117 from 2010-2020.

Could stricter environmental regulations be the reason?

Gasoline used in cars contained lead from the 1920s until 1996, when it was banned. Lead-based paint wasn’t recognized as a threat to children’s health until the 1970s; it was outlawed in 1978.

Meanwhile, throughout most of the 20th century, industrial smelters spewed lead, arsenic, copper and other toxins into the skies of numerous cities, including Tacoma, Washington—where Ted Bundy grew up.

He’s not the only serial killer the Pacific Northwest has produced.

Is there a connection?

Caroline Fraser makes a strong case for one in “Murderland,” an astonishing mélange of scientific data, true crime, memoir and sociological analysis.

Fraser grew up on Mercer Island, in the Seattle Metro area. She was born in 1961 into a dysfunctional family and weaves the bizarre and sometimes frightening events of the latter half of the 20th century into her narrative.

As I grew up in the same period, I vividly remember the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy; the Manson murders; Chappaquiddick; Patty Hearst; and Three Mile Island. 

It did feel sometimes like the world was spinning out of control.

In Fraser’s own back yard, the Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge (connecting Seattle and Mercer Island) provides another backdrop of confusion and death. It was the scene of frequent bizarre accidents until it finally sank in 1990.

Fraser paints a horrifying picture of the pollution she believes contributed to the derangement of serial killers like Bundy, Israel Keyes, Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker), Gary Ridgway (the Green River Killer) and Randy Woodfield (the I-5 Killer). The smell of Washington state’s third most populous city was known as “the aroma of Tacoma.” Fraser writes. “Gardens fail; crops die; bees die. Strange spots appear on the laundry hung out to dry on the line.” Ash from the smelter falls onto the streets; children develop breathing problems.

Workers got sick, had disfiguring accidents. It’s not easy reading—it is compelling reading.

Then there are the serial killers and their unspeakable crimes. Sometimes, when I’m watching a crime drama that features a lunatic torturer, I think, “Really?” Well, yes. Really. Again, not easy reading.

And yet, I was glued to the pages of this book. Fraser is a fine writer, and she is angry about a lot of things—the toxins, the Rockefellers and Guggenheims who financed the industries, her father…the list goes on. But the book is not a rant. It is well-researched, passionate and even poetic at times. 

I wondered about my well-being when I was about in the middle of “Murderland,” when the dismembered body parts (both murder victims and smelter workers) were piling up. Maybe I really needed to be reading a cozy mystery set in a quaint Southern town with a fabulous bookstore.

Nah. “Murderland” was worth the angst. Besides, I needed to see Bundy executed, and the smelters shut down.

Review: "Midnight in Peking," by Paul French

My fascination with true crime stories perplexes those who see me as the shy, retiring type. So I am always quick to point out that I only read sophisticated treatments of serial killers and ax murderers. Midnight in Peking, Paul French’s new contribution to the genre, certainly fits that bill.

The murder at the heart of this tale is suitably horrific--in 1937, an English schoolgirl is killed, her body mutilated, in the fabled Chinese city.

The setting is exotic--expat Brits and Americans mingle with traditional Chinese (the men in blue gowns, strolling with their cages of songbirds) and exiled White Russians. The Japanese are advancing on the old capital. Rickshaw drivers ply streets lined with dive bars, opium dens and brothels.

Most of the Westerners live in a gated community called “The Legation” where they enjoy all the comforts of home--and probably more, considering this was the era of the Great Depression.

The cast of characters is fascinating. The girl’s father is a renowned scholar of Chinese culture--but also a failed diplomat with a closet full of secrets. There’s also a smarmy American dentist, a Scotland Yard-trained copper, and a Canadian tramp with interesting connections.

Add to this a botched and hamstrung investigation that is all but over when the Japanese arrive, brandishing their own peculiar forms of cruelty, and you have the makings of a page turner.

French tells the story as it unfolded, so the reader follows the investigators as they consider suspects: Pamela Werner’s boyfriends, her headmaster, and even her father. Red herrings abound.

The case almost disappears into the maelstrom of the times. But E.T.C. Werner, Pamela’s father, doggedly pursues all leads, hires private eyes, hounds British authorities and ultimately reconstructs the terrible story. In the end, like a well-done fictional murder mystery, it all makes perfect, awful sense.

French writes that he encountered the case in a footnote in a book about the rise of communism in China. He then painstakingly pieced together the story--of one girl’s gruesome death, of the end of old China, and of the destruction of one outpost of colonialism, with all its attendant evils.