Besides being sick fucking freaks what do Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway, Dennis “BTK” Rader, and Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez have in common? They grew up in areas polluted by lead and arsenic from industrial smelting facilities – many concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, where the first two – and plenty of other psychopaths – got their starts, author Caroline Fraser argues in her new book titled “Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers,” previewed by Grist.
“Recipes for making a serial killer may vary, including such ingredients as poverty, crude forceps deliveries, poor diet, physical and sexual abuse, brain damage, and neglect,” Fraser, a Pulitzer Prize winner, writes in the book. “Many horrors play a role in warping these tortured souls, but what happens if we add a light dusting from the periodic table on top of all that trauma?”
Damn that’s snappy. Could be an indicator that the book contains more valuable insights than the vast majority of the “content” produced by the true crime TikTokers and podcasters out there.