Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers (2025) is the fourth book by Pulitzer Prize-winning US author Caroline Fraser. Weaving together true crime journalism, environmental research, and personal narrative, Fraser argues that the violence of the 1970s is in large part attributable to passive exposure to toxic chemicals like lead and arsenic through groundwater and air pollution. Major themes in the book include The Dangers of Environmental Toxins, The Effects of Corporate Greed, and The Violent Nature of the Planet and Weather Phenomena.

This guide refers to the 2025 Penguin Press e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of graphic violence, illness or death, sexual violence, child abuse, child sexual abuse, child death, and death by suicide.

Summary

Fraser suggests that the history of serial killers of the Pacific Northwest can be mapped to the Olympic-Wallowa Lineament (OWL), a dangerously unstable line of geographical formations stretching diagonally from northwest Washington to southeast Oregon. She argues that the Pacific Northwest is a fundamentally dangerous landscape in which volcanoes and fault lines threaten cities up and down the coast. Fraser points to the fatal history of the Mercer Island Floating Bridge, on which nearly 300 accidents occurred before it sank in 1990, as evidence of the impossibility of managing these landscapes.

As a result of geographical formations like the OWL, the Pacific Northwest is rich in natural resources, and from the 1930s on, mining and metal production were important parts of the local economy. From the beginning, however, this industry had a significant impact on the environment, releasing hundreds of tons of lead and arsenic into the air and water each year. Chief among these industrial corporations was the American Smelting and Refining Company, known as ASARCO. Fraser argues that ASARCO’s executives had long been aware of the effects of the company’s industrial by-products on nearby communities. Despite the efforts of ASARCO scientists like Robert A. Kehoe, growing evidence in the 1960s and early 1970s showed the dangers of exposing communities to lead and arsenic. In 1970, the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and major additions to the Clean Air Act of 1963 signaled a potential change in industry practices. However, ASARCO executives correctly predicted that individual municipalities lacked the funds to enforce the act and decided that the profits from smelting were worth the cost of future lawsuits.

In 1975, environmental activists and health experts began to connect industrial smelting and chemical exposure to health problems in workers and surrounding communities, urging the smelters to clean up their practices. ASARCO repeatedly denied any connection or culpability. In 1983, the EPA bowed to pressure and gave Tacoma residents the power to decide the fate of ASARCO’s Ruston smelter. ASARCO hired a powerful public relations firm to muddy the debate, and the city ultimately opted to let operations continue. However, a sharp drop in the cost of metal in the mid-1980s led to the plant’s closure in 1986. In 1993, the plant was demolished, ending a painful chapter in Tacoma’s history. ASARCO filed for bankruptcy in 2005 and agreed to a landmark $1.79 billion settlement paid out to 19 states, the bulk going to Idaho and Washington. Despite this settlement, ASARCO ultimately failed to clear waste from the Ruston smelter site.

Fraser argues that exposure to toxic chemicals as a result of industrial activity damaged the physical and mental health of people living in and around smelters, including Ted Bundy, who was raised near the Ruston smelter in Tacoma and became one of the most notorious serial killers of the 1970s. Fraser identifies 1974 as an especially violent year for Bundy, culminating in the murder of two women on the same day, both kidnapped from Lake Sammamish near Tacoma. Eyewitnesses recalled a young man introducing himself to the missing girls as “Ted,” sparking a nationwide media frenzy.

When Washington investigators uncovered the bodies of the Lake Sammamish women, Bundy relocated to Utah to pursue law school. The mountains around Salt Lake City (which was dotted with smelters) became his new hunting ground, and in October and November 1974, he killed four teenage girls. In January 1975, he grew more reckless, moving beyond his home in Salt Lake City to kill in Colorado and Idaho. In August that year, he was arrested in Salt Lake City after acting suspiciously during a traffic stop. He was transferred to Seattle, where a woman whom he had attempted to kidnap positively identified him.

In February, Bundy was found guilty of the kidnapping and attempted murder of two women in Washington State and sentenced to one to 15 years in prison. While in prison in Washington, he was charged with the murder of two women in Colorado. He briefly escaped custody during extradition to Colorado, but was recaptured. While awaiting transfer, he managed to escape again on December 30, 1976.

Bundy fled from Colorado to Tallahassee, Florida. Just a week later, he snuck into the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University and brutally attacked five young women, killing two. Three weeks later, he killed a 12-year-old girl in nearby Lake City, Florida. On February 15, 1977, he was arrested and charged with murder. He rejected a plea deal, stood as his own lawyer, and was convicted of all three murders, receiving two death sentences. After several failed appeals, Bundy was executed in 1989.

In addition to Bundy, Fraser highlights several other serial killers who lived near industrial smelters, including Gary Ridgway, Richard Ramirez, Warren Leslie Forrest, Dennis Rader, Jack Owen Spillman III, Robert Lee Yates Jr., and Israel Keyes. Each of these men lived near an industrial smelting facility at some point in their lives, and Fraser partially attributes their violence to their exposure to toxic chemicals.

The book maps the sensationalized violence of serial killers onto a larger pattern of violence nationwide. In 1966, violent murders made national news: two flight attendants in Seattle, eight nursing students in Seattle, and nearly 20 on the campus of the University of Texas. Fraser intertwines these stories of violence with details from her own life. In 1969, Fraser’s best friend’s brother was killed in Vietnam, devastating his family and bringing the violence of the war home. The same year, a classmate’s father killed himself after failing to set his house on fire and kill his family. Meanwhile, Fraser fantasized about killing her own abusive father, whose strict Christian Scientist beliefs made him a dictatorial, abusive presence. Even after leaving for college, Fraser begged her mother to leave him.

The book ends with an “incantation” cursing the structural forces that caused the environmental ruin and failed to protect women since the 1970s. She imagines that the incantation will help bring about a world in which the landscapes that natural disasters have destroyed and the targets of brutal murder are restored to vibrant life.