In the 1970s and 1980s, America's Pacific Northwest was home to a remarkable number of serial killers, said Dorian Lynskey in The Guardian. The "charming, extremely intelligent" Ted Bundy grew up in the port city of Tacoma, Washington. Gary Ridgway (aka the Green River Killer) lived there too, and Charles Manson spent five years in jail in the city before "starting his Family" in California. Meanwhile, Randall Woodfield, the I-5 Killer, lived not far away in Oregon.
In her "hauntingly compulsive" book, journalist Caroline Fraser (herself a native of Tacoma) argues that this cluster was more than pure accident. Just outside Tacoma was the notorious Asarco smelting facility, which for decades pumped out lead and other chemicals, contaminating air and water. (It was responsible for the infamous "Aroma of Tacoma".) Exposure to these toxins, Fraser suggests, increased the population's propensity for violence. Washington's murder rate in the mid-1970s was "almost six times the national average"; Tacoma's was higher still. Mixing memoir, biography and history, "Murderland" is a book that "gets into your blood".
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