Murderland

When you live in the country not all your mail is in the mailbox. Laying flung into the tall grass was a book I had ordered just a few days ago. The timing couldn’t have been better. I was experiencing a great deal of shoulder pain and the PA instructed me to rest to not further complicate the injury. So, with those instructions, I dove into Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser. It’s been a long time since I picked up a book and took a whole weekend reading it to the end.

The book explores the relationship to exposures to heavy metals like lead to criminal behavior, and with a deep dive connecting the author’s own neighborhood with the industrial practices that might have explained her own father’s behavior, though perhaps not criminal, but irrational and harsh.

Fraser wove history, science, criminal atrocities throughout the book, detailing the serial killers, their victims and the circumstances of their encounters with the killers. She began with some of the most notorious, all who had their origins near where she grew up.

I became familiar with lead poisoning in the mid-1990’s when our own Indian children first and then many Ottawa County children were found to be lead poisoned. I researched the writings of the most renown scientists and found the nerve to actually call some of them on the phone. The first I called was Dr. Herbert Nettleman, who had connected lead and criminal behavior in the 1960’s. I remember he listened closely and was patient to hear our story. But as I look back now, wondering just how many other concerned people had also made their calls to him. Lead was such a part of many of our lives, but more so to the communities where it was raised up out of the earth, ground up and processed on site, or those places where the raw material was brought to be smelted. But other exposures overlaid every road vehicles using leaded gas passed by through cities and neighborhoods. Overlay this then with all the lead paint that covered homes inside and outside and how long it could persist and harm those most vulnerable living inside.

Only last week I had an opportunity to work with the Audubon group in Grove, where we put together “fishing kits” complete with safe “sinkers” made out of tin and not LEAD! There were so many times fishermen used those lead sinkers and when doing so actually had them in between your back teeth to clamp them down on your fishing line to keep securely. Many people melted lead in their garages or backyards and made their own, contaminating those spaces and adding to their risks.

I remember my first day at Will Rogers Junior High. I had worked in other places. But I was not prepared for the chaos and abrupt behaviors seen in the wide hallways. That was the fall of ’77 and it would be 15 years later when we learned some of that behavior could have been caused by exposures to lead. The day before all the new employees had been called together and there were a great deal of us. After that first day, I wondered if the behavior of some of the students might have been why there was such a turnover of employees at that school.

Lead can do a lot to a person since it can harm every organ in the body. It can impact the brain and cause learning difficulties and change the way information is processed. I saw how managing the contents of their locker was a great complication to some. There were many tears with young people who tried to learn and couldn’t, many who got in trouble because they were unable to SIT STILL. Their bodies in motion, distracting others from learning. There were decades when there were many who had emotional diagnosis and needed those special services.

For most of 15 years at Will Rogers, I had an office that looked like a bowling alley near the cafeteria. I think back now to the author’s description of some of the serial killers and how they were as youths. It reminded me of a time I felt the need to have a panic button installed for me to use. It was a comfort to know there was a way to reach out after hours since I often stayed long after the halls were quiet and few people remained.

I couldn’t help thinking about our Welch girls and the people who were responsible for their deaths and then other unsolved murders came to mind. And common way people referred to mine shafts as a hiding place for missing people.

The author connected the rise in serial killers with the war effort and young men who were born in the later part of the 40’s and the expanded use of leaded gas that kept the exposures current. Then the abrupt decline in serial killers corresponds to the end of the war effort, mine and smelter closures around the country and removing leaded gas from use.

The numbers are stark: Throughout the 1990’s there were 669 serial killers, 2000s: 371 and from 2010 to 2020: 117.

The new rush to mine essential elements and the number of smelters being vetted across the nation may change these numbers. We don’t want to go back to Murderland again.

Respectfully submitted,

Rebecca Jim