#2360 - Caroline Fraser

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Joe Rogan Podcast, checking out The Joe Rogan Experience.

Caroline Fraser (0:06)

Shrain by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

Thanks for doing this.

Caroline Fraser (0:13)

Thank you for having me.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

So I've read about the premise of your book online, and immediately I'm like, I got to talk to this lady. That sounds crazy.

Please tell people what the premise is, just to get started with this. Yeah.

Caroline Fraser (0:29)

Well, I started thinking about this a long time ago.

Joe Rogan (0:32)

The book's called Murderland.

Caroline Fraser (0:33)

Yeah. The book is Murderland. And I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, around the time when there were a lot of serial killers beginning to pop up. And there always had been this question, why are there so many serial killers in the Pacific Northwest? And so that was the question I was really thinking about. And the premise, as it emerged from the research that I did and from some of the facts that I learned about what was happening in the Northwest in this run up to the 1970s, is that there may be a connection between the lead pollution that was prevalent in the area because of smelters and leaded gas and serial killers. Because lead, of course, as we, I think, most people now know, has a connection to heightened aggression and violence in the people who have been exposed to it. So that was, you know, what emerged to me gradually over the years. I mean, I didn't know a lot about this when I started. I knew about the serial killers, but I didn't really know about the whole lead story. And that came about, you know, I learned about it in part because of some murders. I mean, I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a lovely place. Unfortunately, New Mexico has a high rate of homicides. In part, it's because it's a poor state and doesn't have a big tax base and has, you know, some issues with drug and alcohol addiction. And a few years ago, maybe 2008 or something like that, some people, a couple of people were murdered down the street from me. And I live in a very peaceful neighborhood, you know, very. And that was something that really made me start thinking about the issue of maybe, you know, it might be a good idea to think of moving back to the Pacific Northwest, which I wanted to do anyway, because I have family up there.

And a few years later, because of that, I was up in the Northwest and looking at real estate ads. And at this point, I didn't really know anything about the smelter or the lead issues. But I was looking at property on Vashon Island, which, if you know anything about the Pacific Northwest, is in Puget Sound. It's right across from West Seattle. Beautiful little, it was quite rural when I was growing up there, beautiful place. And I came across a real estate ad that said, and this is just for undeveloped property. And it said, arsenic remediation may be necessary. And I thought, wow, what could possibly have caused so much arsenic pollution on Vashon Island that you would have to get it remediated? I mean, that just seemed crazy to me. And I was so curious about that, and I looked it up online, and you know, within minutes discovered that there had been an infamous lead and copper smelter in the city of Tacoma, which is just south of Vashon Island. And so Vashon received a lot of the pollution from that smelter. And so that began a whole process of kind of learning about what happened here, you know, what happened in this region. And I also knew, because I'm sort of really interested in serial killers, as I mentioned, and had been for a long time, reading about them, and reading about Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway.

And I knew that both Bundy and Gary Ridgway, who was the Green River killer, had grown up in Tacoma at the same time that this smelter is, you know, the smelter had been operating there since the 1880s, 1890s, so for a very long time. And I could see that a lot of news media had been devoted to looking at what had happened in this region. You know, there was a whole map, a GIS map, geographic, you know, information systems that allowed you to look up individual houses, you know, residential homes in Tacoma and see how much arsenic and lead pollution was in the yards. So I discovered that you could actually look up the house where Ted Bundy grew up and see how much lead was in his front yard and his backyard. And the more I read about lead pollution and lead, the association with aggression and violence, the more I wondered, is there a story to be told here about this issue?