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Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

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Speaker 2: The actual corporate serial killers who just deliberately went out

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Speaker 2: and poisoned generations of children deliberately.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor

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Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the

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Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,

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Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken

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Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down

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Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,

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Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true

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Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers mate, both

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Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the

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Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. This week's author grew up

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Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest with the memories of notorious serial

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Speaker 1: killers like Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer who

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Speaker 1: also lived there. But the region wasn't just home to

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Speaker 1: those two murderers. There were many more. Was there a

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Speaker 1: connection between the Pacific Northwest's most infamous killers and its

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Speaker 1: incredible amounts of pollution? Caroline Fraser thinks so, and she

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Speaker 1: explains why in her book Murderland, Crime and Bloodlust in

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Speaker 1: the Time of serial Killers. First, let's talk about the

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Speaker 1: book where our listeners might have heard of you from,

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Speaker 1: like the real big book, which I think is just amazing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my previous book, Prairie Fires, which was

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Speaker 2: a biography of Laura Engelswilder. And one of the things

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Speaker 2: that I I was able to do in that book

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Speaker 2: was able to talk about with the crazy ecological history

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Speaker 2: of the Great Planes and what happened to the Ingles family,

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Speaker 2: who were very you know, typical of pioneers who went

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Speaker 2: out there and kind of found themselves ruined, but were

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Speaker 2: themselves also ruining the Great Planes and so so that

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Speaker 2: you know, had ramifications that would last for decades and

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Speaker 2: end up in the you know, des Bowl and so forth.

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Speaker 2: So that was, you know, the ecological history is something

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Speaker 2: that I've always really been interested in.

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Speaker 1: Do you have a background in that? Is that something

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Speaker 1: you might have studied in college.

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Speaker 2: I remember as a kid reading Ranger Rick magazine and

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Speaker 2: learning about Rachel Carson, and you know, so I've always

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Speaker 2: been really really interested in conservation and the environment. And

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Speaker 2: my second book, which was called Rewilding the World was

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Speaker 2: about conservation projects. So I do have some background as

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Speaker 2: a you know, enthusiast. I'm really sort of an amateur.

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Speaker 2: I'm not you know, professional, I'm not a biologist, but

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Speaker 2: it's something I've always been interested in writing about.

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Speaker 1: So my very first book was called Death in the

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Speaker 1: Air and it was about the nineteen fifty two air

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Speaker 1: pollution disaster that happened in London. And I remember pitching

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Speaker 1: that first. I don't even think it made it to

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Speaker 1: my editor. I think my agent said, I don't know

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Speaker 1: if this is going to make it as a book,

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Speaker 1: because I didn't know how many people were that were

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Speaker 1: going to be that interested in the systemic issue of

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Speaker 1: pollution and you know, the all of the sulfi dioxide

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Speaker 1: and all of the talk I had to get into.

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Speaker 1: But when you make it collide with a serial killer

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Speaker 1: and of so many dramatic stories that comes with stories

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Speaker 1: about pollution and people dying and government cover up and everything,

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Speaker 1: then then it made it sort of a mainstream story.

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Speaker 1: Have you found that too? Was it the environmental part

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Speaker 1: first for you or was it the story first and

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Speaker 1: you discovered there was this ecological connection?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, well, just first I know that book and

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Speaker 2: I have it, and I love it. I think it's

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Speaker 2: a really great contribution to the whole sort of air

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Speaker 2: pollution thank you thing, which sounds so technical, but it's

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Speaker 2: really so fascinating. And I think I first heard about

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Speaker 2: that whole thing through The Crown, you know, that episode

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Speaker 2: of The Crown, and then I kind of went looking

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Speaker 2: for more stuff about it and found your book, which

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Speaker 2: is just so fascinating. The first thing that came along

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Speaker 2: for me was was really the whole serial killer aspect

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Speaker 2: of this. I grew up in the Northwest in the

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Speaker 2: nineteen seventies near Seattle, so I was around, you know,

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Speaker 2: I was like thirteen in nineteen seventy four when the

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Speaker 2: whole Ted Bundy thing started happening and all these women

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Speaker 2: began disappearing from the area and from the region, and

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Speaker 2: so that was kind of very much.

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Speaker 1: In my mind.

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Speaker 2: And all the time in the Northwest, you're reading these

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Speaker 2: headlines about, you know, why are there so many serial

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Speaker 2: killers here? And I'd always wondered about that, like was

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Speaker 2: this just a urban myths or legend? Was there really

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Speaker 2: something to it? And I was always curious about that.

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Speaker 2: So that was kind of the first piece in my mind.

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Speaker 2: But I never really envisioned writing a book about it.

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Speaker 2: It was just kind of something I was interested in.

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Speaker 2: But a few years ago it did happen. Upon some

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Speaker 2: additional information about where these guys came from. Ted Bundy

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Speaker 2: grew up in Tacoma. Gary Ridgeway, who would later be

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Speaker 2: the Green River Killer, he grew up quite close to

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Speaker 2: SeaTac Airport, which is between Tacoma and Seattle, so he

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Speaker 2: was right in that. Rea and I also read a

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Speaker 2: biography of Charles Manson and learned that he was in

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Speaker 2: the area at the same time as those guys were

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Speaker 2: growing up. He was on McNeil Island, incarcerated in the

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Speaker 2: federal prison just off Tacoma. And I just thought, Wow,

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Speaker 2: that's a really weird coincidence, Like, how did these guys

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Speaker 2: all spring from this one sort of obscure city. And

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Speaker 2: as I was kind of pondering that, I learned about

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Speaker 2: the smelter that was in Tacoma, the Osarco Smelter, sort

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Speaker 2: of by accident. I mean, Tacoma has always been known

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Speaker 2: as this really heavily industrialized city and it smelled terrible.

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Speaker 2: I mean, up until just a few years ago, there

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Speaker 2: was something called the Aroma of Tacoma, and Beddy, who

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Speaker 2: had been there, knew about that, and a lot of

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Speaker 2: it was from a pulp mill. But there were so

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Speaker 2: many you know, smelters and plants and refining plants and factories,

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Speaker 2: and you know, you didn't even really know what was

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Speaker 2: doing what. But I did learn about the smelter actually

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Speaker 2: by reading a real estate ad for a nearby place

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Speaker 2: on Vashion Island that said something about arsenic remediation. I mean,

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Speaker 2: I know Vashon Island because we used to have friends there,

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Speaker 2: and it's a beautiful, you know, rural spot just off

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Speaker 2: West Seattle in Puget Sound, and I just couldn't fathom, like,

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Speaker 2: how did they get arsenic and Fashion Island And so

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Speaker 2: you know, started googling that, and like five minutes later,

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Speaker 2: I'm deeply into the history of smelting.

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Speaker 1: Well, what is smelting? Is that melting down and creating

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Speaker 1: something else with them? Is that what that is? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: And I think a lot of people I don't think

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Speaker 2: I really understood what it was when I first started

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Speaker 2: reading about it. I think it's such a sort of

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Speaker 2: specific to the era of the you know, eighteen hundreds

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Speaker 2: and nineteen hundreds, because that's when all this stuff really

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Speaker 2: needed to be made. We needed metal, and so these

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Speaker 2: these smelters sprang up. And yes, they were taking in

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Speaker 2: rocks or ores that had metal in them from mines

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Speaker 2: and then essentially heating them and smelting them, which means

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Speaker 2: just taking apart, you know, the different components, the metallic

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Speaker 2: components that are in those ores and separating the silver

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Speaker 2: and the gold and the arsenic and the lead and

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Speaker 2: copper really became the chief metal that was being smelted

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Speaker 2: in a lot of these places. But since all these

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Speaker 2: other metals existed, they were also finding ways to monetize,

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Speaker 2: as we would now say, and arsenic was used to

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Speaker 2: create pesticides and insecticides that were used in the forties

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Speaker 2: and fifties, and you know they were actually used in

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Speaker 2: eastern Washington on the apple orchards and so forth. So

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Speaker 2: it was a huge industry at one time. It no

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Speaker 2: longer is. I mean, most of the smelters in this

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Speaker 2: country have cloths due to EPA regulations. But at the

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Speaker 2: time that I was growing up, and when Ted Bundy

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Speaker 2: and Carrie Ridgeway were growing up in the Northwest, that

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Speaker 2: plant was putting tons of lead and arsenic into the air.

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Speaker 1: Were there lawsuits happening in this time period at all?

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Speaker 1: Is this the height of smelting and pollution in the

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Speaker 1: seventies when Bundy and and were there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there were, you know, beginning in the sixties, communities

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Speaker 2: started waking up to the hazards of this stuff, which

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Speaker 2: were kind of hard to ignore because like you could

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Speaker 2: hang out laundry and Tacoma for example, and it would

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Speaker 2: get all these weird spots on it because of the arsenic.

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Speaker 2: Pets would die, you know after walking in it. You know,

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Speaker 2: people were finding the paint on their cars and their

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Speaker 2: boats was being eaten away by the acids that were

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Speaker 2: coming out of the smokestack. So people were just starting

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Speaker 2: to kind of freak out about it. But Asarco was

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Speaker 2: very controlling about the information that they let out. And

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Speaker 2: of course they were also a huge, huge employer in

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Speaker 2: the North Dakoma area, and so people didn't want to

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Speaker 2: sue a Sarco because you know, those jobs were at stake,

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Speaker 2: and there was always this fear that the plant would

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Speaker 2: close down.

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Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking about the time in London,

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Speaker 1: you know, I had to do all this research on

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Speaker 1: pollution in London that there was a period where you know,

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Speaker 1: everybody's burning trees, right, and then the trees go and

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Speaker 1: that's when coal comes and then you see all of

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Speaker 1: this pollution. So you said, what eighteen hundred seventeen hundreds

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Speaker 1: is really when this started? And this must have just

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Speaker 1: built up. It has to be in the soil, is

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Speaker 1: it in the water?

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Speaker 2: Oh?

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Speaker 1: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: And you know Puget Sound, there's there's quite a lot

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Speaker 2: of lead and copper and other things at the bottom

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Speaker 2: of Puget Sound. There are issues. They did quite a

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Speaker 2: lot of cleanup during the superfund era because the Sarca

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Speaker 2: smelter and Tacoma eventually closed in eighty six then became

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Speaker 2: a huge superfund site, and they did a lot of

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Speaker 2: cleanup in the neighborhood around the smokestack and in North Dakoma.

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Speaker 2: But you know, like a lot of these super fun things,

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Speaker 2: they run out of money eventually, and so even though

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Speaker 2: the most important parts of the cleanup were accomplished, there's

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Speaker 2: a lot of areas around the fringes that I think

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Speaker 2: never got the treatment that they should have.

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Speaker 1: So we've had so far. I've written down Bundy and

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Speaker 1: Manson and Gary Ridgeway. Did you include BTK in that

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Speaker 1: Dennis Raider also in that group.

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Speaker 2: No, he was actually in Wichita, Kansas. That's where he

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Speaker 2: committed the majority of his murders. Although there I think

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Speaker 2: they're now finding out that he may have gotten over

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Speaker 2: into Oklahoma at one point and killed a couple of

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Speaker 2: women there. But yeah, he was down in Kansas and

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Speaker 2: in an area that became known for its own smelter,

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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, in the nineteen hundreds. That whole south

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Speaker 2: east east corner of Kansas has a lot of coal

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Speaker 2: in it, and so there were a lot of open

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Speaker 2: pit mines and a zinc smelter in the town where

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Speaker 2: he was born, I think, and he spent a lot

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Speaker 2: of time with his grandparents who had farms in that

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Speaker 2: region and may or may not have been exposed to lead.

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Speaker 2: We certainly know that that Ted Bundy and Ridgway were

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Speaker 2: pretty heavily exposed to lead, both from where they lived

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Speaker 2: and Ridgway worked most of his life painting trucks, and

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Speaker 2: the paint for big trucks is exempt from lead restrictions,

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Speaker 2: So I think he was getting it from a number

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Speaker 2: of different sources. But yeah, I think Raider, Denis Rader,

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Speaker 2: the BTK killer, is just so interesting because he kind

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Speaker 2: of represents like Ridgeway, the mentally limited serial killer who

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Speaker 2: just kind of does the same thing over and over

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Speaker 2: and over again and seems to have the mentality of

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Speaker 2: like a you know, about a sixth grader or something.

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Speaker 2: I mean, whereas you also see people who are exposed

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Speaker 2: to lead who are quite smart, like Bundy, because I

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Speaker 2: think it really affects people at different times and different

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Speaker 2: in their development and in different ways, and so there's

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Speaker 2: a whole range of effects that you can see in

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Speaker 2: the individual.

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Speaker 1: Is this brand new thinking? And actually in a way,

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Speaker 1: I don't even know where to start, because we could

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Speaker 1: start with how do these pollutants if we just take

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Speaker 1: you know, the Tacoma area, how do they affect everyone?

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Speaker 1: Just in general? Is there with arsenic? I mean, I

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Speaker 1: know the normal way I could see with arsenic, you know,

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Speaker 1: blackening of organs, sometimes the blackening of a face. But

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Speaker 1: that's for me the eighteen hundreds. I don't know what

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Speaker 1: it would be like coming out of a smeltering plant.

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Speaker 1: So can we talk in general just about what everybody

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Speaker 1: was experiencing?

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Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, I mean they eventually were able to demonstrate

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Speaker 2: that the guys who were working in the plants where

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Speaker 2: arsenic was produced had a higher level of lung cancer specifically,

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Speaker 2: or respiratory diseases, so that was a specific thing that

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Speaker 2: was tied to their exposure. I think in the community

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Speaker 2: it was much harder to establish a connection to health

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Speaker 2: because OSARGO did everything that they could to quash any

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Speaker 2: kind of research that was being done. So eventually they

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Speaker 2: did come up with some, you know, just some very

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Speaker 2: basic readings on how much arsenic the kids were being

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Speaker 2: exposed to, which was a lot. But the thing that

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Speaker 2: I was really interested in was the lead because lead

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Speaker 2: has been shown to have, as I said, a whole

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Speaker 2: range of effects, but one of them is that if

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Speaker 2: you're exposed to lead as a child while your brain

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Speaker 2: is still developing, it can lead to a really profound

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Speaker 2: effect in the development of the frontal cortex and the

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Speaker 2: things that we our brain uses to control our behavior.

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Speaker 2: And so people who have had serious let exposure can

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Speaker 2: show a lot of aggression, their higher rates of juvenile

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Speaker 2: delinquency as these kids get older, and higher rates of

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Speaker 2: violent crime. Those associations are pretty well established at this point.

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Speaker 2: It's only in very recent years that scientists have also

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Speaker 2: begun to link let exposure to psychopathy and to psychopaths

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Speaker 2: who have been caught and have been you know, who

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Speaker 2: have agreed to be interviewed or studied or whatever. There

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Speaker 2: is no they're now showing a link to that.

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Speaker 1: So there is a definitive link between lead and aggressive behavior,

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Speaker 1: not with everybody. But is that an MRI or how

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Speaker 1: does that show up?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, they have done MRIs. There's a guy, a biologist

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Speaker 2: in England, Adriane Raine, who did a whole book about

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Speaker 2: this where he looked at all these different contributing factors,

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Speaker 2: including you know, lead and Cadmium is another heavy metal

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Speaker 2: that's often mentioned in this regard, which seems to operate

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Speaker 2: a lot like lead if you get it in your system.

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Speaker 2: There was a mass shooter, one of the first mass

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Speaker 2: shooters in California in the eighties, who killed some people

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Speaker 2: in a McDonald's near San Diego. He worked with cadmium

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Speaker 2: and was shown to have an enormous amount of academium

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Speaker 2: in his body after autopsy. So Rain looked at all

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Speaker 2: of this. He looked at diet, he looked at I

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Speaker 2: think head trauma. But he has he reproduces a lot

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Speaker 2: of MRIs in his book and one of the interesting

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Speaker 2: things that has come along more recently. I'm not quite

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Speaker 2: sure whether he talked about it or not. I think

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Speaker 2: it's more recent, but there appears to be kind of

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Speaker 2: a real gender difference in how men and women respond

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Speaker 2: to lead exposure. That men seem to be much more

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Speaker 2: profoundly affected in the whole frontal cortex than women, Which

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Speaker 2: is not to say that women don't share some of

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Speaker 2: the impulsivity. That's another thing that's caused by lead. And

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Speaker 2: they've done these graphs that show, you know, because of

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Speaker 2: course there was leaded gas between nineteen fifties in the

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Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, and so you can show the rise and

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Speaker 2: violent crime on these graphs really tracks quite closely to

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Speaker 2: the availability and use of letted gas, and then it

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Speaker 2: falls off quite sharply in the nineties once leaded gas

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Speaker 2: had been withdrawn from the market and once smelters started

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Speaker 2: closing as well. So, yeah, with women, it tended to

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Speaker 2: be I mean, I don't know if you remember, but

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Speaker 2: in the seventies and eighties there was this big rise

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Speaker 2: in teen pregnancies, and so that's been used as a

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Speaker 2: kind of metric to look at what happened with women

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Speaker 2: in that period.

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Speaker 1: Is this argument an argument that environmentalists have made in

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Speaker 1: order to say no to leaded gas in the past,

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Speaker 1: no to smelters. I mean, it seems like, you know,

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Speaker 1: save the environment, Yeah, lower crime, I mean, or is

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Speaker 1: that just too far out there for Congress to wrap

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Speaker 1: its head around. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I think medical doctors have been arguing since the nineteen

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Speaker 2: twenties that putting this much lead into the environment was

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Speaker 2: an incredibly dangerous thing to do, and they're not focusing

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Speaker 2: so much, you know, on it as an environmental issue,

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Speaker 2: but as a human health issue, and saying that this

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Speaker 2: is going to have terrible effects on human health generally,

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Speaker 2: because lead doesn't just you know, cause crazy behavior, it

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Speaker 2: also causes all kinds of other diseases, you know, respiratory

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Speaker 2: diseases and heart disease. I think als has now been

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Speaker 2: linked to lead. So there's a whole range of just

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Speaker 2: really terrible facts and the fact that you know, industry

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Speaker 2: just took those recommendations in the twenties and thirties and said, oh,

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Speaker 2: this isn't going to be a problem, yeah, you know,

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Speaker 2: and just did this experiment on the entire population of

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Speaker 2: the country and of course around the world. Because lighted

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Speaker 2: gas was sold everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about the industrialists who profited off of this.

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Speaker 1: I know this is another part of your book. Where

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Speaker 1: does that fit in for you? Is that the history

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Speaker 1: and sort of the craven, selfishness and money hungry industrialists

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Speaker 1: that are causing this, or where does that fit for you? Well?

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Speaker 2: That was to me the critical piece that made me

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Speaker 2: feel like there was a book in this material, because

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Speaker 2: I didn't want to just write about serial killers, fascinating

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Speaker 2: though they are.

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Speaker 1: My audience would disagree with you, I think that, okay,

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Speaker 1: But I.

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Speaker 2: Just I wasn't really moved to write an entire book

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Speaker 2: about that phenomenon. But when I learned about the environmental

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Speaker 2: link to this, that to me was just huge because

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Speaker 2: it was a really overwhelmingly emotional thing to learn about

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Speaker 2: what these people did to places that I really care about.

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Speaker 2: You know, Puget Sound is one of the most beautiful

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Speaker 2: places in the country, and the fact that these people

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Speaker 2: just deliberately did the most incredible damage to it without caring,

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Speaker 2: without caring about the community, without caring about the long

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Speaker 2: term effects, was just amazing to me. And I think

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Speaker 2: that as people read the book, I hope that they

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Speaker 2: start to see the link between you know, the actual

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Speaker 2: individual serial killers and their behavior, their constant lying, their

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Speaker 2: you know, lack of empathy, and the corporate serial killers

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Speaker 2: who just deliberately went out and poisoned generations of children deliberately.

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Speaker 1: Did this begin with the building of the railroads? Is

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Speaker 1: that sort of where all of this started in the

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Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest? What was them? I know we took about smelting,

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Speaker 1: but was that really the beginning is getting all of

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Speaker 1: these minerals or was it building things? Well?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that the railroads, the development of the

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Speaker 2: railroads and mining went hand in hand because the railroads

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Speaker 2: were designed to shift the ores, the rocks from the

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Speaker 2: mines to Tacoma. I mean, the last piece of the

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Speaker 2: railroad that ends in Tacoma. That's why it was built,

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Speaker 2: essentially was to do that service. And for a long

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Speaker 2: time there was this terrible smelter in Idaho which was

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Speaker 2: connected to the Tacoma smelter, which also, I mean just

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Speaker 2: into the nineteen seventies was poisoning kids in an interior

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Speaker 2: valley in Killogg, Idaho.

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Speaker 1: If we shift back momentarily to the serial killers, I

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Speaker 1: was thinking about the brain defense with all of this

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Speaker 1: with the air pollution, which to me, when someone says

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Speaker 1: the brain defense in court, which usually what has been

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Speaker 1: explained to me is CTE or another kind of head trauma,

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Speaker 1: and it's not to get somebody out, it's usually a

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Speaker 1: mitigating circumstance to maybe get them knocked down from the

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Speaker 1: death penalty to life or something. I know that the

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Speaker 1: cases vary. Has anyone ever used sort of environmental pollution

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Speaker 1: or anything like that as part of mitigating circumstances in

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Speaker 1: a criminal trial? Has any of this evidence come up

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Speaker 1: in a criminal trial, not that.

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Speaker 2: I'm aware of. Bundy, of course did his lawyer's death

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Speaker 2: row attorneys did attempt and then insanity you know defense.

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Speaker 2: They tried to go back and say that he he

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Speaker 2: wasn't fit to stand drial, which he may not have been. Actually,

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Speaker 2: I actually find their arguments pretty compelling at this point.

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Speaker 2: But of course that didn't you know, I think that

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Speaker 2: the bar for that is set so high and is

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Speaker 2: so rarely you know, superseded, that it just certainly didn't

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Speaker 2: work for him. But yeah, I'm not aware of anybody

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Speaker 2: using doesn't mean it hasn't happened, but certainly not lead

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Speaker 2: or cadmium or something like that. And I guess this

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Speaker 2: is a good moment to say that. I think that

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Speaker 2: there are always lots of factors that probably produce a

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Speaker 2: serial killer. It's not just lead exposure. I mean you

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Speaker 2: mentioned CTE, the head trauma, which is surely a factor

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Speaker 2: with some of these guys, you know that who have

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Speaker 2: had brain damage, maybe caused by physical abuse. There's also

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Speaker 2: you know, sexual abuse, there's poor diet a lot. If

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Speaker 2: you look at the history of a lot of these guys,

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Speaker 2: they were raised and often in pretty extreme poverty. People

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Speaker 2: have also talked about, you know, the whole period in

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Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties when doctors used fourceeps to deliver babies

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Speaker 2: and you know, possibly cause brain damage with forceps. So,

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Speaker 2: you know, I think there's just a whole range of

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Speaker 2: things that can go into this, and you have to

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Speaker 2: consider all of that as well.

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Speaker 1: I do get asked, do you believe that people are

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Speaker 1: inherently evil like a Ted Bundy or a Jeffrey Dahmer,

400
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Speaker 1: you know, do you think they're born evil or predisposed

401
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Speaker 1: to do things like this? What do you think?

402
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Speaker 2: To me? That question seems rooted in a kind of

403
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Speaker 2: religious understanding of good and evil, which I do not

404
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:52,879
Speaker 2: kind of that's not the way I see things, so

405
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Speaker 2: I don't really interpret them that way. Of course, their

406
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Speaker 2: actions are evil, I mean, yea, their actions are are

407
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Speaker 2: just horrific to the extreme, and so I certainly understand

408
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Speaker 2: why people want to say that. But as to somebody

409
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Speaker 2: being born evil, I mean, again, we've been talking about

410
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Speaker 2: all these things that can cause brain damage, which, yeah,

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Speaker 2: you can have brain damage just from being born. It happens.

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Speaker 2: But in terms of, like, you know, the whole issue

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Speaker 2: of just you know, somebody being sort of imbued with

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Speaker 2: the devil or being a Satanic or something, that's just

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Speaker 2: not really how I think about things.

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Speaker 1: Nor do I, but I do ask quite a bit.

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Speaker 1: But listen, I understand that, and I always preface it

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Speaker 1: when I answer the question you know, and I answer

419
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Speaker 1: it by saying, no, it's the same thing you did,

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Speaker 1: which is I think that people do evil acts. I

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Speaker 1: think that oftentimes there are things that are happening that

422
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Speaker 1: we don't know, or maybe we don't want to know

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Speaker 1: because the acts are so evil you don't want to

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Speaker 1: have any kind of sympathy for these people. And there's

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Speaker 1: always the argument, well, the guy right sitting on the

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Speaker 1: other side of us has the exact same brain damage

427
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Speaker 1: or whatever it is, and he hasn't gone and done anything.

428
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Speaker 1: But I really feel like there's so many factors that

429
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Speaker 1: go into it, and true crime in general gets a

430
00:28:14,840 --> 00:28:17,600
Speaker 1: lot of bad flag of glorifying the killer. And I

431
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Speaker 1: think that this is really different what we're talking about,

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Speaker 1: because this is not saying how interesting Bundy was and

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Speaker 1: how brilliant Dennis Raider was or anybody else. This is

434
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 1: looking at literally the things that affect everybody and how

435
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:35,080
Speaker 1: they might affect somebody who has these, you know, experiencing

436
00:28:35,080 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 1: these added circumstances all on top of that. It's a

437
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,880
Speaker 1: tapestry that causes someone to become an attorney versus somebody

438
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 1: to become a state at home father and somebody to

439
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: go out and kill twelve people.

440
00:28:46,760 --> 00:28:49,200
Speaker 2: Right, you know, the last thing I want to do

441
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 2: is and in fact, I think I tried to explain

442
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 2: what these guys did in a way that would not

443
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 2: only not glamorize them, but would kind of take them

444
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:01,239
Speaker 2: out of that genre, because you know, we're now so

445
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:07,080
Speaker 2: used to this conception of the serial killer as a genius,

446
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 2: you know, somebody who is sort of devilishly clever at

447
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 2: evading detection and coming up with these very bizarre, elaborate crimes.

448
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:22,479
Speaker 2: I don't really think that much of that is true.

449
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:26,160
Speaker 2: You know, Ted Bundy was not a genius. He was

450
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 2: somebody who was who was clever at evading detection at

451
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 2: a time when there was no DNA, you know. And

452
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:35,959
Speaker 2: that's true of most of the rest of the guys

453
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:40,800
Speaker 2: that I'm talking about here, Dennis Rader in Kansas and

454
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:45,719
Speaker 2: Richard Ramirez who grew up in El Paso. These guys

455
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 2: clearly had something wrong with them, whether it was all

456
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:52,760
Speaker 2: led or whether it was lead and a whole bunch

457
00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 2: of other stuff added in, which I think is probably

458
00:29:55,160 --> 00:29:58,400
Speaker 2: the case. I think we need to start thinking about

459
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 2: them differently than we have based on you know, Hollywood tropes,

460
00:30:05,280 --> 00:30:08,160
Speaker 2: you know, the whole Silence of the Lambs and the

461
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 2: Hannibal Lecter and all of that stuff. I mean, those

462
00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 2: things are entertaining, but I don't think they really capture

463
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:22,080
Speaker 2: the real sort of debased quality of the thinking of

464
00:30:22,120 --> 00:30:22,760
Speaker 2: these guys.

465
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 1: I agree. So I think, you know, that's why your

466
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: book is really interesting. As you're taking the what I

467
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 1: would say, these are killers who all have this weird

468
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:35,480
Speaker 1: mystique around them, and you sort of dispel it and say,

469
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 1: part of this is lad. There's a lot that happens

470
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:41,520
Speaker 1: here that is the sexiness is not the right word.

471
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:45,840
Speaker 1: But for the people who really really are into the

472
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: serial killers and who glorify them, reading about their exposure

473
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,480
Speaker 1: to lead is going to kind of take down that fantasy.

474
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 1: And there are quite a lot of people who think

475
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,800
Speaker 1: like that that take that fantasy down a notch. So

476
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:03,520
Speaker 1: you're really revealing the person behind the murders that are happening.

477
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:05,240
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people don't want that.

478
00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:08,040
Speaker 1: I don't think they want to know about the awful

479
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:11,640
Speaker 1: childhood's or you know, Bundy feeling like he was a bastard,

480
00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:15,480
Speaker 1: you know, and rejection and all of that stuff. I

481
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: don't think that they want that. I think they want

482
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:18,800
Speaker 1: that kind of image.

483
00:31:19,080 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 2: Yeah.

484
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:21,600
Speaker 1: So yeah, So it's interesting what you're doing in the book.

485
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 2: We do, of course, have to recognize how rare this is.

486
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 2: But the whole argument that like, oh, you know, if

487
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:34,000
Speaker 2: lead causes this kind of behavior, why wasn't everybody in

488
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 2: Tacoma a serial killer?

489
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 1: I just don't.

490
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 2: I think that's the wrong question, because you know, it's

491
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 2: like with cigarettes or tobacco. You know, there are people

492
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 2: who smoke until they're ninety years old and they don't

493
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:49,920
Speaker 2: die of lung cancer. But does that mean it doesn't

494
00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 2: cause lung I mean, of course tobacco causes lung cancer,

495
00:31:54,440 --> 00:32:00,120
Speaker 2: and arsenic and lead do have specific effects, and they

496
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 2: have raised the violent crime rate into com up, which

497
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 2: was very high. I'm looking at serial killers because that's

498
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:11,120
Speaker 2: a way to tell this story in a way that

499
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:15,320
Speaker 2: I think people will comprehend. But there were I think

500
00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:21,760
Speaker 2: real world consequences and costs to you know, blanketing an

501
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 2: entire populated city with these substances.

502
00:32:25,600 --> 00:32:30,360
Speaker 1: Now where do the smelters across the United States stand today?

503
00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: Do we have a lot of them still? And I

504
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:34,200
Speaker 1: know that you talk more that it's not just smelters,

505
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 1: it's fertilizer and so many other things. But that's one

506
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:38,040
Speaker 1: of the big subjects.

507
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:42,480
Speaker 2: What I'm talking about were what's called primary smelters, where

508
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:46,400
Speaker 2: they actually brought them rocks from mines and melted them

509
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 2: and separated the metals and created you know, pure copper

510
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 2: and lead and so forth. Those have largely disappeared from

511
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 2: this country because of EPA regulations and because it just

512
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 2: became far tooensive to operate them, partly because of regulations

513
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:08,200
Speaker 2: and partly because of you know, commodities, that these commodities

514
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 2: were readily available and being produced in other countries where

515
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:15,920
Speaker 2: it was cheaper to do so. And so now you

516
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 2: find primary smelters largely in places like China and Russia

517
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:24,960
Speaker 2: and South America and in places that don't have the

518
00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 2: regulations that we enacted. The thing that we do still

519
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:34,680
Speaker 2: have are recycling plants where you know, you take your

520
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:39,680
Speaker 2: lead car battery for example, when it's used up, and

521
00:33:39,800 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 2: those recycling plants are themselves kind of a secondary smelter

522
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 2: that is separating out the valuable metals from these batteries

523
00:33:51,760 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 2: and other things, and they can be quite polluting as well.

524
00:33:56,800 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 2: And PR did a piece recently about a you know,

525
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 2: a recycling plant in Florida that was emitting a lot

526
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:08,440
Speaker 2: of lead and that was also exposing its workers to

527
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 2: incredible amounts of lead.

528
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:14,840
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you, I did not know a

529
00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 1: lot about radio isotopes until maybe a year or two ago.

530
00:34:18,840 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 1: Is that something that they can study? You know, when

531
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:24,279
Speaker 1: you can pull somebody's hair, I assume you could do

532
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:25,799
Speaker 1: it with blood too, and just sort of see the

533
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: different regions where they came from. Can we find out pollution?

534
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:33,439
Speaker 1: I think we can right from studying what blood hair,

535
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 1: what would it be?

536
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:38,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. In fact, in al Paso, somebody did do a

537
00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:44,040
Speaker 2: study because an al Pasa, the a Sarco smelter there

538
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:48,360
Speaker 2: had been denying for years that they were the source

539
00:34:48,640 --> 00:34:51,520
Speaker 2: of so much of the lead that was being deposited

540
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:53,719
Speaker 2: in the city. They kept saying, oh, it comes from

541
00:34:53,800 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 2: traffic and you know cars and trucks because I ten

542
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:01,880
Speaker 2: goes through El Paso, for example. So they kept pointing

543
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:05,759
Speaker 2: to other places that might have been producing the lead poisoning.

544
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:09,759
Speaker 2: So a scientist did a study of exactly that and

545
00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:13,800
Speaker 2: was able to kind of nail them on this because

546
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:18,040
Speaker 2: you can tie the lead chemically to where it came

547
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:21,880
Speaker 2: from and how it was being produced. Don't ask me

548
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 2: to explain how, because I'm not a chemist and I

549
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:31,280
Speaker 2: can't speak to that, but yeah, it has been done.

550
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 1: I wonder if there's ever been a thought of, you know,

551
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:38,000
Speaker 1: not exooming bodies, but moving forward. You have a Jeffrey

552
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:40,759
Speaker 1: Dalmer who says, please study my brain and figure out

553
00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:43,120
Speaker 1: why I did this. I wonder if there would be

554
00:35:43,160 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 1: a way or if there would be an interest in

555
00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 1: testing you know, these people. I know it's only a

556
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:50,800
Speaker 1: handful of people that these, I mean the man accuse

557
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:54,360
Speaker 1: of the Long Island serial murders for example, and seeing

558
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:58,080
Speaker 1: you know, what the what the pollution levels are as

559
00:35:58,160 --> 00:35:59,600
Speaker 1: just part of a study. I think that would be

560
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:00,200
Speaker 1: so interest.

561
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:05,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are ways to do that, perhaps at autopsy.

562
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 2: The issue with testing people for lead is that they're

563
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 2: very inexpensive and readily available blood tests for lead that

564
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:20,239
Speaker 2: capture a picture of how much you currently you know,

565
00:36:20,440 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 2: is circulating in your blood stream, but that has to

566
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:28,400
Speaker 2: have been very recent exposure. So you know, say you

567
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 2: were in an area that had some lead in the air,

568
00:36:33,280 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 2: or you ate something, or a child ate some paint chips.

569
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:39,759
Speaker 2: You know, they can find that out if it's a

570
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:43,879
Speaker 2: very recent exposure. The trickier thing is to do a

571
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:47,840
Speaker 2: study or a test that shows how much lead exposure

572
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:51,440
Speaker 2: you've had over your lifetime, because lead in the body

573
00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 2: is deposited in the bones and the teeth, and those

574
00:36:57,040 --> 00:37:00,840
Speaker 2: are harder too. You know, there are, in fact, I

575
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:04,239
Speaker 2: think these very kind of elaborate tests that can be

576
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:08,280
Speaker 2: done to show what's happening with lead in the bones,

577
00:37:08,320 --> 00:37:12,319
Speaker 2: But those machines are few and far between, and those

578
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:17,400
Speaker 2: are very expensive tests to run. So it's a complicated issue.

579
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:21,040
Speaker 2: And I don't know that anybody's ever gonna say, oh,

580
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:24,239
Speaker 2: we need to do a study of serial killers and

581
00:37:24,520 --> 00:37:27,920
Speaker 2: find out about their their lead exposure. I kind of

582
00:37:28,000 --> 00:37:28,359
Speaker 2: doubt it.

583
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:30,959
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I didn't know, you know, I've never really

584
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:33,759
Speaker 1: dealt with lead before, but I knew that carbon monoxide

585
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,440
Speaker 1: stays in your body for a very long time, and

586
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:38,799
Speaker 1: because I remember from death in the air, they were

587
00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: able to test from bodies that had been buried for

588
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,200
Speaker 1: a very long time to figure out really Yeah, okay,

589
00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:48,440
Speaker 1: So when you talk about Bundy and you talk about

590
00:37:49,120 --> 00:37:52,600
Speaker 1: you know, Manson, I guess I'm thinking particularly of Gary

591
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:55,799
Speaker 1: Ridgeway and Bundy. In the book, you do get into

592
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:58,920
Speaker 1: their crimes. Did you feel like you wanted to do

593
00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: that that it's just kind of you can't just name

594
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 1: these people. You have to be able to explain what

595
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 1: happened with them. Or was it an illustration for you

596
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 1: of sort of the cause and effect in a way,

597
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:13,479
Speaker 1: not just of the pollution, but of everything that goes

598
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:15,719
Speaker 1: into what happens in their backgrounds.

599
00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:23,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that their behavior becomes so robotic almost

600
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:26,920
Speaker 2: kind of they're kind of like automatons, you know. One point,

601
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:29,880
Speaker 2: I talked a little bit about doctor Jackyl and mister

602
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:34,239
Speaker 2: Hyde because it almost has that quality of like, you know,

603
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 2: and Ted Bundykins seem to be a normal law student

604
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 2: one moment, and then two hours later he's driving around

605
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 2: picking up some woman or attacking a woman on the

606
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:51,359
Speaker 2: street and seizing her. And you know, the repetitiveness of

607
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 2: their crimes I thought was important, and also the similarity

608
00:38:57,280 --> 00:39:00,279
Speaker 2: between these guys the things that they do. I mean,

609
00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:03,400
Speaker 2: Bundy is sort of the chief example of this, but

610
00:39:03,440 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 2: when you look at his crimes next to other Tacoma

611
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 2: rapists and murderers and raider in a different part of

612
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:19,480
Speaker 2: the country and Ramirez, who you know, his crimes are

613
00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:26,680
Speaker 2: so completely off the wall. I mean, there's something so

614
00:39:27,120 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 2: aberrant about their behavior that eventually, you know, I think

615
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:35,319
Speaker 2: you can see the similarities between them, which to me

616
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:40,920
Speaker 2: speaks to some similarity in what's gone wrong with them.

617
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:46,080
Speaker 2: Whether it's a whole constellation of things that includes let exposure,

618
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 2: that's the question. But I think it's important to see

619
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 2: that for the reader to understand this isn't Hannibal Lecter,

620
00:39:55,400 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 2: you know, plotting some incredibly clever thing. These are sexual

621
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:06,320
Speaker 2: crimes overwhelmingly, and that I think was part of why

622
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:08,800
Speaker 2: I wanted to kind of tell a little bit of

623
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:13,080
Speaker 2: the story of the nineteen seventies from my perspective, because

624
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:15,400
Speaker 2: I think people may have forgotten what it was like

625
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:19,239
Speaker 2: or didn't ever, you know, because they were younger. They

626
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:21,160
Speaker 2: didn't know what it was like to be live during

627
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:25,399
Speaker 2: the seventies and how different differently rape was perceived at

628
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:25,960
Speaker 2: that time.

629
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 1: Now I'm wondering about everybody, and I know you didn't

630
00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:30,800
Speaker 1: probably study any of these folks, but like in Israel,

631
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:33,880
Speaker 1: keys who came from Alaska, isn't that kind of a

632
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: heavily polluted area.

633
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 2: Also, he is one of the last people that I

634
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:45,680
Speaker 2: talk about. Yeah, he he was born in Utah and

635
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:49,880
Speaker 2: then moved to Washington State and the area where he

636
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:56,400
Speaker 2: grew up was incredibly remote in the northeast part of

637
00:40:56,440 --> 00:40:59,600
Speaker 2: the state. But the one thing that was out there

638
00:40:59,840 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 2: was the lead smelter he lived. You know, he was

639
00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:07,799
Speaker 2: living with these crazy his parents were crazy, you know,

640
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 2: white nationalists, and they were living this completely isolated you know,

641
00:41:15,560 --> 00:41:19,160
Speaker 2: in a kind of a log cabin out in the wilderness,

642
00:41:19,640 --> 00:41:22,440
Speaker 2: and I think there was a lot of hunger in

643
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:25,759
Speaker 2: that family. The mother kept having kids. It was a

644
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 2: very large family. I think he was one of the

645
00:41:29,120 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 2: He was the second oldest, and constantly went out, I think,

646
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:37,200
Speaker 2: to fish in the Columbia River, which was heavily heavily

647
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:41,239
Speaker 2: polluted by the smelter, which is right up in British Columbia,

648
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 2: and shoot game like deer. I mean, who knows what

649
00:41:46,680 --> 00:41:50,840
Speaker 2: I mean. Obviously he grew up in an environment in

650
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:56,880
Speaker 2: which there was a incredible poverty and privation and hated

651
00:41:57,040 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 2: his parents, who he became strange trum at the age

652
00:42:01,920 --> 00:42:06,680
Speaker 2: of sixteen. But you know, you wonder what different elements

653
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:12,160
Speaker 2: went into creating this person who was so so.

654
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,600
Speaker 1: Lethal Golden State Killer. Did you look at all him

655
00:42:15,640 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 1: Northern California?

656
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I actually did look at him and

657
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:23,719
Speaker 2: was really interested in him, but took him out just

658
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:27,480
Speaker 2: because there was was getting to be too many serial

659
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:31,319
Speaker 2: kills the book and we didn't want it to read

660
00:42:31,360 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 2: like an encyclopedia. But yeah, fascinating again, the poverty of

661
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:42,400
Speaker 2: his background. I think he was abused, physically abused. Hard

662
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 2: to say what you know, he might have been exposed to.

663
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:49,359
Speaker 2: But he was running around, you know, gigging frogs, which

664
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 2: he apparently ate out of this oh boy river which

665
00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:56,720
Speaker 2: was next to a raytheon plant. So I mean, he

666
00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 2: needs his own book, which of course he got with

667
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:03,520
Speaker 2: Michelle mac Because he committed so many different crimes over

668
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:07,880
Speaker 2: such a long period of time, you almost can't summarize

669
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 2: what he did.

670
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:10,520
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to tell you, you know, my other

671
00:43:10,560 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 1: show Buried Bones with Paul Holes, who of course studied

672
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:16,279
Speaker 1: the Golden worked in the Golden State killer case. We

673
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:22,359
Speaker 1: did an episode from Australia nineteen sixty three and it

674
00:43:22,719 --> 00:43:26,880
Speaker 1: was a murder investigation of a couple who were cheating

675
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:29,879
Speaker 1: on their spouses and went down to a river bank

676
00:43:30,680 --> 00:43:34,320
Speaker 1: and we're having sex and the next day somebody finds

677
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 1: them dead and they're trying to figure out did the

678
00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:37,759
Speaker 1: spouses do it? And it was under all of these

679
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:42,279
Speaker 1: odd circumstances. Decades later, they did studies and found out

680
00:43:42,320 --> 00:43:45,280
Speaker 1: that during that time period that river was so heavily

681
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:49,839
Speaker 1: polluted that when they were on the ground, it killed them,

682
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:54,719
Speaker 1: both of them. Oh, it's so fascinating. Paul almost didn't

683
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: believe it, and I actually I think I had to

684
00:43:56,360 --> 00:43:59,560
Speaker 1: send him to study. And there was a couple to

685
00:43:59,760 --> 00:44:03,040
Speaker 1: win men who in the sixties in Australia in the sixties,

686
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:04,839
Speaker 1: it would have been no no for them to get

687
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:07,839
Speaker 1: caught together. But they were having a makeout session they

688
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,560
Speaker 1: heard the other couple come in. They had to crouch

689
00:44:10,600 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: into the bushes, not to spy on the couple, the

690
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:17,160
Speaker 1: first couple, but because one of them left the purse nearby,

691
00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 1: so they were crouching and they were low enough so

692
00:44:20,440 --> 00:44:22,360
Speaker 1: they weren't on the ground where the river with the

693
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:24,759
Speaker 1: pollution was coming off on the river, but they were

694
00:44:24,880 --> 00:44:27,359
Speaker 1: squatting down low enough where they both felt sick, like

695
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:29,480
Speaker 1: they both thought they were going to pass out, I know,

696
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:31,680
Speaker 1: and then they ended up leaving. They said that that

697
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 1: river was so polluted that was bubbling up and it

698
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 1: was some nearby plant and it had been known as

699
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 1: being an awful polluter. And so you know, they ran

700
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:42,799
Speaker 1: all these tests on these two bodies and that's what

701
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 1: they found out. So you know, when I unraveled these

702
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:48,960
Speaker 1: stories for Paul Holes, he never knows where it's going,

703
00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:51,759
Speaker 1: and he was really convinced this was murder, and I said, no,

704
00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:56,400
Speaker 1: talk to the industrialists who created this plant nearby, and

705
00:44:56,440 --> 00:44:58,359
Speaker 1: I had never heard. I just didn't know that that

706
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:01,759
Speaker 1: pollution would do that. I knew from death in the air.

707
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 1: But they've done animal testing, I'm assuming with lead and arsenic.

708
00:45:06,560 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, obviously you can't test those on people deliberately.

709
00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 2: Some of the more interesting tests are early in the fifties,

710
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:19,320
Speaker 2: who were done with kids looking at their teeth because

711
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 2: they could measure you know, what they call the indigenous

712
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 2: teeth or something, you know, because they lose their kids

713
00:45:25,680 --> 00:45:28,840
Speaker 2: lose their teeth, and so you can take those teeth

714
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 2: and then test them for lead. And yeah, that was

715
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:38,759
Speaker 2: showing significant aspects of aggression in people's behavior. But do

716
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:42,600
Speaker 2: you know what kind of pollution the Australia case.

717
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:47,280
Speaker 1: Was, or let me see high concentrations of hydrogen sulfate

718
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 1: from a nearby flour mill that had been dumping waste

719
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:54,640
Speaker 1: into the river for sixty years and in an area

720
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:57,800
Speaker 1: of the river that was dammed right where this couple

721
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 1: was found, so the gas was built up and the

722
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 1: river bottom could suddenly release large amounts of hydrogen soul fight.

723
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:08,600
Speaker 1: Can you imagine that? I mean, oh my goodness.

724
00:46:08,480 --> 00:46:12,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's incredible. It reminds me of the you know

725
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:16,240
Speaker 2: the descriptions I read about coming out of the Bunker

726
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 2: Hill mines and smelter in Idaho, because kids used to

727
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 2: be afraid that their balls would fall in the stream

728
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 2: that went through town because they would melt. You know,

729
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 2: if you had like a big rubber ball and it

730
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 2: fell in, it would melt. And there was you know,

731
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 2: in that town. There was an elementary school directly across

732
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:43,360
Speaker 2: the street from the smelter smoke stack, and the teachers

733
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 2: would sometimes say, you know, they would be afraid that

734
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 2: the building was on fire because there was so much

735
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:53,680
Speaker 2: smoke in the building. So yeah, that whole thing of

736
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 2: the incredibly polluted rivers. I mean when you think back

737
00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:00,879
Speaker 2: to the seventies and the you know kay Oga River

738
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:03,880
Speaker 2: that caught on fire, which was sort of one of

739
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 2: the reasons why we now have you know, the Clean

740
00:47:07,760 --> 00:47:11,160
Speaker 2: Water Act and the EPA and so forth. But yeah,

741
00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:16,360
Speaker 2: Australia is full of stories about you know, mining pollution

742
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 2: like that because they had so many mines. My husband

743
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:25,439
Speaker 2: and I once were driving through a place in Tasmania

744
00:47:25,480 --> 00:47:28,839
Speaker 2: where we're driving to a national park. Of course I'd

745
00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:31,759
Speaker 2: never been there before, and we ended up driving through

746
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:37,360
Speaker 2: this town and a hillside that was so heavily polluted

747
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:43,320
Speaker 2: by copper mines that it was orange. Like the whole

748
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:49,279
Speaker 2: hillside behind this town was the most unnatural shade of orange.

749
00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:51,840
Speaker 2: And I mean I was afraid to get out of

750
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 2: the car, you know. And there are a lot of

751
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 2: places in this country where you can drive in Arizona,

752
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:01,279
Speaker 2: for example, if you get off the beaten track, you'll

753
00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:06,480
Speaker 2: find yourself, you know, driving through open pit mines. I

754
00:48:06,480 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 2: think there are three remaining primary smelters in this country,

755
00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:12,120
Speaker 2: and two of them are in Arizona.

756
00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:15,920
Speaker 1: Well, you probably know this answer just from your own experience.

757
00:48:16,000 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 1: But when I was doing interviews for Death in the

758
00:48:18,600 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: Air of the people who were alive during the smog

759
00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:24,799
Speaker 1: in fifty two, I asked Holly, six of them gave

760
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:26,799
Speaker 1: me the exact same response. I said, what did it

761
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:28,960
Speaker 1: smell like? What did it feel like to you? The

762
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: air pollution? And I was wondering if you had sort

763
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: of this way that you could respond as far as

764
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 1: lead and viscerally, how it feels. They said it smelled

765
00:48:38,680 --> 00:48:41,799
Speaker 1: when the small came five day smog, it smelled like

766
00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:45,279
Speaker 1: rotten eggs in a barrel. And then one of the

767
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 1: women who everybody agreed with said that when you would

768
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: breathe it in, it was if you can imagine metal

769
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 1: shavings and swallowing metal shavings, That's what it felt like.

770
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:00,440
Speaker 2: A lot of people and to come out remember that

771
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:05,400
Speaker 2: and associated it with arsenic. They remembered the metal taste

772
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 2: in their mouth. There was one guy who said it

773
00:49:08,680 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 2: was like playing tennis with a lighted match in your mouth.

774
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:17,720
Speaker 2: Oh but yeah, which that was such a weird image.

775
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:23,440
Speaker 2: And there's another guy I talked about who worked briefly

776
00:49:23,600 --> 00:49:27,040
Speaker 2: at the smelter as a college kid during the summer,

777
00:49:27,280 --> 00:49:31,480
Speaker 2: but his father worked there for years as a foreman,

778
00:49:32,120 --> 00:49:35,759
Speaker 2: and he had what they called smelter nose, which he

779
00:49:35,920 --> 00:49:39,480
Speaker 2: had a septum that inside his nose there was just

780
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:42,600
Speaker 2: this hole and he could put his finger through the

781
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:46,280
Speaker 2: hole in his nose because it had just been eaten away.

782
00:49:46,719 --> 00:49:49,680
Speaker 2: So yeah, there were a lot of stories about that,

783
00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:52,759
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure how you separate whether that was

784
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:58,440
Speaker 2: arsenic or lead. I certainly remember, not that I was

785
00:49:58,480 --> 00:50:03,319
Speaker 2: too far away to have experienced the taste sensation, but

786
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:08,280
Speaker 2: I do remember the nineteen seventies in the Northwest having

787
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:11,799
Speaker 2: more smog, and I think some of that must have

788
00:50:11,920 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 2: been from the the asarca smelter.

789
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: If there is one thing that you want people to

790
00:50:18,120 --> 00:50:20,759
Speaker 1: walk away from when they read your book, not a

791
00:50:20,880 --> 00:50:24,319
Speaker 1: theme necessarily, or a question that they would like an

792
00:50:24,320 --> 00:50:26,120
Speaker 1: answer to, what do you think that would be? What

793
00:50:26,239 --> 00:50:29,839
Speaker 1: is the point? At a dinner party you say that

794
00:50:29,880 --> 00:50:30,719
Speaker 1: you wrote the book for.

795
00:50:31,520 --> 00:50:34,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I don't think the book is intended

796
00:50:34,080 --> 00:50:38,480
Speaker 2: as a public service announcement, and I hope that people

797
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 2: find it compelling and entertaining and a good story, good

798
00:50:44,640 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 2: narrative about this subject. But yeah, I mean, I do

799
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:53,200
Speaker 2: think that people need to know more about the incredible

800
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 2: sort of dangers of legacy pollution that are still out there.

801
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:02,040
Speaker 2: I think people because we don't see it, you know,

802
00:51:02,080 --> 00:51:05,520
Speaker 2: because we don't see the lead in our environment, we

803
00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:09,560
Speaker 2: don't realize how dangerous it is. I mean, every once

804
00:51:09,560 --> 00:51:12,960
Speaker 2: in a while there's a story that comes along, like flint,

805
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:16,880
Speaker 2: you know, Michigan, the lead and the pipes, or lead

806
00:51:17,200 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 2: and paint in older housing. But I think we have

807
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 2: to realize that everybody can be exposed to this. It

808
00:51:25,640 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 2: can be in crops, it can be in toothpaste, it

809
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 2: can be in baby food, in rice. It's something that

810
00:51:33,719 --> 00:51:37,040
Speaker 2: is so dangerous that we really have to get a

811
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:41,880
Speaker 2: handle on how to get it out of our environment,

812
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:46,680
Speaker 2: and if we don't, we're going to live with the consequences.

813
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:49,319
Speaker 2: I mean, I just don't know how us to say it,

814
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:52,960
Speaker 2: but it's out there and we have to figure out

815
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:57,799
Speaker 2: a way to deal with environmental issues that's not political.

816
00:52:09,440 --> 00:52:12,320
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the

817
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:15,239
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That

818
00:52:15,360 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget There are

819
00:52:18,680 --> 00:52:22,440
Speaker 1: twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast Tenfold More

820
00:52:22,480 --> 00:52:26,120
Speaker 1: Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and

821
00:52:26,160 --> 00:52:28,920
Speaker 1: give them a listen if you haven't already. This has

822
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:33,480
Speaker 1: been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi.

823
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:38,320
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed

824
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:42,200
Speaker 1: by John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer, artwork by

825
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:46,759
Speaker 1: Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and

826
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:51,000
Speaker 1: Danielle Kramer. Listen to Wicked Words on the iHeartRadio app,

827
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Wicked

828
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Speaker 1: Words on Instagram at tenfold more Wicked and on Facebook

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Speaker 1: at Wicked war birds Pod