48 pages • 1-hour read
Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
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Part 1, Chapter 5-InterludeChapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, illness or death, sexual violence, child abuse, child sexual abuse, and child death.
Part 1: “Little Domesday”
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “The Devil’s Business”
Fraser uses the stories of young people in the late 1960s and early 1970s to show that personal and structural violence marked the era. In the mid-1960s, teenagers Rodger Jones and Bill Baarsma worked dangerous jobs in Tacoma’s smelters, where, along with thousands of other workers, they were exposed to hazardous materials such as lead and arsenic. Jones was forced to resign his position in 1967 when he was seriously injured trying to prevent a chemical spill. When he returned to the smelters, it was with a union’s backing, and he began publishing The Smelterworker, an internal newsletter highlighting the issues that workers faced.
Despite having clear evidence of the dangers of long-term exposure to these types of chemicals (thanks to the work of scientists like Dr. Herbert Needleman), ASARCO officials redirected blame for health problems to other sources, like car pollution or dirty living spaces. In 1970, major additions to the Clean Air Act and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency signaled an apparent victory against smelters. However, ASARCO executives correctly predicted that most cities lacked the resources to enforce the new laws, and large-scale industrial work continued. ASARCO executives explicitly chose to pursue profits over the health of their workers and the surrounding communities, believing that they could still make a profit even if they had to pay millions in lawsuits.
Meanwhile, serial killers like Ted Bundy, Jerry Brudos, Warren Leslie Forrest, and the unidentified murderer known as the Zodiac killer grew more active. In 1966, Bundy graduated from high school in Tacoma and bought a car, granting him independence for the first time. Two months later, two young female flight attendants were murdered in their home in Seattle. Fraser implies that Bundy was responsible. The following year, Bundy relocated to the East Coast, where in 1969, he likely murdered two women in Ocean Beach, New Jersey.
Upon returning to Washington state, Bundy enrolled as a pre-law student at the University of Washington. Fraser connects Bundy to the murder of Bonnie Jo Freeman, who disappeared in Spokane, Washington, on the day Bundy was rejected from law school. Bundy’s travels across the state of Washington repeatedly brought him through the small town of Cle Elum, an important junction on the Olympic-Wallowa Lineament. Around the same time, Bundy became involved in local politics, ironically focusing on criminal psychology and efforts to stop violent crimes. When he was exposed for secretly taping political opponents, he stepped down and began law classes at the University of Tacoma, where he continued to murder women.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “The Daylight Basement”
Fraser identifies 1974 as a particularly violent year. As ASARCO celebrated its 75th anniversary, the company began selling slag, the highly toxic black-rock by-product of smelting, for use in industrial projects like paving and trenches. Meanwhile, Rodger Jones’s newsletter The Smelterworker became an enormous source of pressure for the industry, highlighting injuries and ailments related to working in smelters and publicly tallying workers’ grievances.
In January 1974, Ted Bundy entered the basement bedroom of Karen Sparks and brutally attacked her, sexually assaulting her and leaving her for dead. Sparks survived but experienced lasting physical and emotional effects. A few weeks later, Bundy snuck into the basement bedroom of Lynda Ann Healy, strangling and raping her before driving her unconscious body to the woods and killing her. Although the police originally dismissed Healy as a runaway, Seattle media picked up the story and published a lurid account of her disappearance. In May, Bundy took a position in Washington’s Department of Emergency Services, which was responsible for organizing searches for Healy and other missing women.
That same month, Warren Leslie Forrest, who was raised just five miles from a smelter, began a murder spree in his hometown of Vancouver, Washington. His first target was 14-year-old Diane Gilchrist, who disappeared from her home and was never seen again. Weeks later, high school senior Gloria Knutson disappeared while hitchhiking outside of Vancouver. In July, 19-year-old Krista Kay Blake disappeared after getting into a van matching the description of one owned by Forrest.
While Bundy and Forrest were active in Washington, Dennis Rader was on a spree of his own in Wichita, Kansas. In January 1974, Air Force veteran Rader, later known as the BTK killer, murdered Joseph Otero, his wife (Julie), and their children, Joey and Josephine, after weeks of stalking Julie and Josephine. Less than three months later, Rader attacked again, killing 21-year-old Kathy Bright, whom he had stalked for weeks, and severely injuring her 19-year-old brother, Kevin. Wichita police did not connect the two attacks.
On July 19, Bundy kidnapped Janice Ott from Lake Sammamish, raping her and leaving her unconscious in the mountains before returning to the lake and kidnapping a second woman, Denise Naslund. Witnesses who overheard Bundy introduce himself as Ted helped the police develop a composite sketch of the kidnapper. The sketch and media frenzy led many people in his life, including his girlfriend Liz Kloepfer and future biographer Ann Rule, to suspect his guilt. Neither Kloepfer nor Rule reported their suspicions.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “The Bird’s Nest”
In September 1974, Dr. James Bax published research showing that communities near the Bunker Hill smelter outside Kellogg, Idaho, had higher levels of lead in their bodies than anywhere else in the country. One infant in the community, Arlene Yoss, had higher lead levels than any living person on Earth. Bunker Hill officials denied responsibility, but later agreed to halt production for two weeks to investigate. Despite their promises, production did not stop.
That same month, hunters in King County, Washington, found evidence of human remains in the woods. Although investigators initially misidentified the remains, detective Bob Keppel correctly identified them as those of Denise Naslund and Janice Ott. From the beginning of the investigation, Keppel was disturbed by how nature interfered in the crime scene, as animals took hair and flesh from the corpses.
In October, Warren Leslie Forrest lured Daria Wightman into his van and raped her at knifepoint before beating her and leaving her for dead. Wightman survived the attack and identified the van as belonging to the Clark County Parks Department, leading to Forrest’s arrest.
Hours after Forrest’s arrest, Bundy kidnapped 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox as she walked to her home in Holladay, Utah. The suburbs and mountains surrounding Salt Lake City, where Bundy had recently located for law school, were dotted with ASARCO smelters, leaching toxic chemicals into groundwater and soil. A week after Wilcox’s murder, Bundy kidnapped and killed 17-year-old Melissa Smith, keeping her body in his apartment for nearly a week. When her body was found, the ensuing media frenzy was so intense that Liz Kloepfer called the local police to identify Bundy as a potential suspect. However, the police assured her that he had been investigated and cleared.
In late October, Bundy stalked and killed Laure Aime, a 17-year-old who repeatedly spurned his advances. The next month, he attempted to kidnap 18-year-old Carol DaRonch while dressed as a security officer. When she escaped, Bundy drove to a local high school and kidnapped 17-year-old Debi Kent from the parking lot.
In Wichita, Dennis Rader identified himself as the BTK killer (a reference to his desire to bind, torture, and kill) in a letter to the police. He described the desire to kill as an external force that he could not control. In interviews after his final arrest, Bundy later claimed that a person could be afflicted with the desire to murder just as with any illness.
Interlude Summary: “From Alamein to Zem Zem”
During World War II, British and American soldiers were exposed to a wide variety of heavy metals as part of their service overseas. In particular, the reuse of gasoline containers to boil and serve tea for British soldiers likely exposed them to extremely high levels of toxic lead. Soldiers were also exposed to heavy metals in the form of shrapnel, gunfire, and explosives on the battlefield. At home, the US government funded the production of these wartime metals by investing heavily in industrial production, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Fraser suggests that years of wartime exposure to heavy metals at home and abroad may have contributed to the number of serial killers born during the years 1941-1949.
Part 1, Chapter 5-Interlude Analysis
The chapters in this section of Murderland highlight the book’s thematic interest in The Effects of Corporate Greed. Fraser argues that industrial corporations like the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) and the Bunker Hill Company prioritize profits over workers’ and communities’ health. Taking on the voice of ASARCO executives, she writes that the metals and by-products these companies sell are “worth more than individual lives” of the workers who produce them, and that “their luster is more precious than life” (90). Fraser points to the industrial executives’ behavior as evidence of this greed. When confronted with proof that the company’s Idaho smelting facilities were poisoning local communities, Bunker Hill executives continued production, reasoning that they would “come out $10 million or $11 million ahead, even if compelled to pay an inflated $12,000 per child” (120). Later, Bunker Hill executives wrote to the manager of an Idaho plant, “warning against spending too much time on environmental issues” (195), and urging him to instead spend time on financial planning. These examples suggest that corporations like ASARCO and Bunker Hill chose to pursue profits with full knowledge that their industrial activities were damaging the health of their employees and local communities.
In addition, Fraser shows that these corporations actively resisted attempts to investigate and regulate their activities by sabotaging research and misleading the surrounding communities. One researcher studying lead levels near an ASARCO smelter was “approached by men from the factory” and told to “‘get the hell out of here’” (100). Fraser also uncovers a letter in which an ASARCO executive suggested that the Tacoma smelter forgo crucial environmental improvements to avoid public scrutiny: “[I]t seems to me we would stir up a lot of bad publicity if we tried to replace the soil […] and I am inclined to let the ‘sleeping dog lie’ unless some Agency calls the matter to our attention” (109). These anecdotes suggest that ASARCO executives repeatedly sought to sabotage or obscure the results of research into the environmental harm of their industrial activities so that they could continue to make money.
The structure of Murderland merges true crime reporting, environmental research, and personal narrative. Through these narrative styles, the book identifies three different forms of violence: personal violence (violence enacted between individuals), structural violence (violence enacted on individuals by an institution or organization), and environmental violence (violence enacted on or by environmental forces). Fraser draws explicit connections between these types of violence, suggesting that they are inextricably linked.
In Chapter 5, Fraser repeatedly uses the active verb “smother” to establish the connection between structural, environmental, and personal violence. She describes how, in 1965, “a mass of warm, stable air [settled] atop Tacoma like a smothering quilt, capturing and concentrating smelter fumes” (92) released by the nearby ASARCO smelter. When residents began speaking out against the smelter, ASARCO executives assigned “company men” to address the public and “smother these concerns” (93). The repeated use of “smother” in these passages draws an explicit connection between the environmental violence of toxic gases being released as an environmental abnormality and the structural violence of executives intentionally suppressing dissent. Later in the chapter, the word appears again when Fraser describes how serial killer Jerry Brudos said that he “[could] not help himself” (100) from kidnapping four women and “strangling, smothering, or choking them” (100). The use of the word “smother” connects Brudos’s violent impulses with the environmental and structural violence described earlier in the passage.
At certain points, Fraser explicitly compares these types of violence. In Chapter 5, she argues that the Bunker Hill smelter, by knowingly pumping dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere, was “doing the devil’s business, which is no different from what Ted [Bundy] [did]. Like Ted, Bunker Hill [had] been killing people for years” (120). She reinforces this comparison in the next chapter, writing that “on the same day that Ted murder[ed] Nancy Wilcox, the Bunker Hill Company [held] a public meeting in front of a hundred concerned citizens to announce that it [would] shut down operations for two weeks” (181), a promise the company later broke. These comparisons suggest that the structural violence that the Bunker Hill Company enacted on surrounding communities by emitting toxic chemicals is as significant as the violence that Ted Bundy enacted on women.
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