Dorian Lynskey in The Guardian:
“Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who almost went out with Ted Bundy.”
Bundy was one of at least half a dozen serial killers active in Washington in 1974. Within a few years, the state would produce the similarly prolific Randall Woodfield, known as the I-5 Killer, and Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. Its murder rate rose by more than 30% in 1974 – almost six times the national average. In Tacoma, the city where Bundy grew up, Ridgway lived and Charles Manson was incarcerated for five years before starting his Family, murder was up 62%. It was as if a malevolent cloud had enveloped the region.
Fraser argues that the epidemic was related to a real cloud, containing sulphur dioxide, arsenic and lead, which emanated from the smokestack of a smelting facility in Ruston, outside Tacoma. Nobody knows what cursed constellation of genes, upbringing, social circumstances, brain chemistry and plain old evil makes serial killers do what they do, but Fraser advances the lead-crime hypothesis. Lead in the blood has been shown to deplete brain volume in the part of the prefrontal cortex that regulates behaviour, especially in men.
More here.
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