Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

Although Fraser narrates the stories of multiple serial killers in Murderland, the book’s primary focus is Ted Bundy (1946-1989), a Tacoma-based serial killer who was active while Fraser was growing up in the Seattle area. Between 1974 and 1978, Bundy killed dozens of women, and Murderland is one of many books attempting to explain or shed new light on his murders. Fraser addresses major theories, such as abandonment and sexual abuse, before suggesting that, like many serial killers in the 1970s and 1980s, he grew violent as a result of exposure to toxic chemicals. However, Fraser differentiates Bundy from the others by suggesting that he was uniquely influenced by violent stories of true crime in detective magazines. This theory supports Bundy’s own insistence that the urge to kill came from beyond him.

In introducing Bundy, Fraser points to two major theories about his childhood: that his violence was influenced by either his early abandonment issues or sexual abuse. In her description of Bundy’s teenage mother making the anguished decision to bow to societal pressure and place her newborn son for adoption, Fraser writes that she “[left] him, like a package at the train station, like lost luggage” (29). Bundy and his mother eventually reunited, but Fraser suggests that he lost her again when she remarried, and the former only child was “displaced by Bundy babies” (49). These passages recall the familiar theory that Bundy’s violence stemmed from his newborn abandonment, suggesting that his mother treated him as an object rather than offering him love. In the same passage, Fraser briefly mentions that, at a young age, Bundy was “found undressed in a tent with a Scoutmaster” (49), hinting at the popular theory that Bundy’s sexualized violence stemmed from his own sexual abuse.

Ultimately, Fraser concludes that Bundy was one of thousands of US citizens who became violent after exposure to toxic chemicals, noting that Bundy spent most of his childhood downwind of the Ruston smelter. However, she attributes his specifically sexualized violence to his affinity for detective magazines, pulp publications that offered lurid accounts of violent crimes. Fraser implies that such fiction influenced Bundy’s murder of Shelley Robertson, whose body was found in an abandoned mine shaft. Shortly before her disappearance, True Detective featured “a graphic article about Robert Garrow, a pedophile, rapist, and murderer” who killed a woman and “hid the body in an abandoned mine shaft” (231). Fraser grimly notes that “True Detective has always been one of his favorite magazines” (231). Elsewhere, Fraser explicitly connects Bundy’s violence to these magazines, claiming that his murder sprees were “reenacting the treasured detective magazine images” (138).

Fraser quotes Bundy at length throughout Murderland, and his confessions reveal that he, too, believed that his violence had an external source. Bundy claimed that he was afflicted by “‘an acute onset of a desire that resulted in the pattern of […] killing young girls’” (187), speculating that “‘it was some sort of genetic or even congenital condition whose time had come’” (187). Thus, Bundy explicitly compared his violent streak to a medical condition, suggesting paradoxically that it was both out of his control and innate, stemming from within his body. Later, he clarified that an external source triggered this “‘predisposition,’” claiming that “‘absent certain stresses and certain environmental conditions’” (187), his violent behavior would never have occurred. Although Fraser’s goal is not to exonerate Bundy for his crimes, her argument that environmental toxins and detective magazines were contributing factors aligns with his assertion that external factors triggered his violence.