Murderland
Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
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Murderland
Narrated by:
Patty Nieman
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Narrated by:
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Patty Nieman
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By:
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Caroline Fraser
About this listen
'Caroline Fraser [is] lyrically luminescent . . . reading her prose can be like skiing powder snow on a perfect day, one lovely turn after another' NEW YORK TIMES
A terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires
Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and 80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?
As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem - the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson - Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma, stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was only one among many that dotted the area.
As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of western smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives, but also warped young minds, spawning a generation of serial killers. A propulsive non-fiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.
'In this brooding and often brave book, the author finds evil afoot, but the worst monsters aren't who you'd guess' BOSTON GLOBE
'A strange and compelling tale . . . Fraser, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has the skills to pull it off' WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS©2025 Caroline Fraser (P)2025 Penguin Audio
Editorial Review
Is lead the ultimate serial killer?
Caroline Fraser’s new book is quite a topic swerve from her Pulitzer Prize-winning
Prairie Fires. This one is for the true crime heads, the rabbit-holers familiar with the strange 20th-century spike in serial killers from the Pacific Northwest. Such obsessives, myself included, might know about the lead-crime hypothesis, which links exposure from leaded gasoline and pollution to fluctuations in violent crime. But we’ve never heard it quite like this, in Fraser’s heady blend of reporting, lyricism, and memoir—she grew up on Seattle’s Mercer Island, where a perilous bridge and her volatile father competed with the local maniacs to wreak terror in her young life.
Murderland, which Fraser likens to a detective’s “crazy wall,” combines the chilling exploits of Ted Bundy, Jerry Brudos, Richard Ramirez (who grew up in the plume of an El Paso smelter), Dennis Rader (same, but in Kansas’s “lead belt”), and others with the rage-inducing environmental and human destruction of the smelting industry. While it’s just one piece of a complex puzzle,
Murderland left me fascinated, saddened, and hungry for more information. —Kat J., Audible Editor
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