What creates a serial killer? Caroline Fraser, author of “Murderland,” has linked toxic fumes to the brain development of some of the most notorious criminals.
Fraser told “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio Thursday that the Asarco Company’s Tacoma copper smelter—which released arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals into the air, according to the Washington Department of Ecology—may have been a culprit. The smelter, once the tallest smokestack in the world, ran for nearly 100 years before it was demolished in 1993, Northwest Public Broadcasting reported.
Scientists came up with the lead-crime hypothesis, Fraser explained, which suggests children who are exposed to lead can develop aggression, instability, neurosis, and even violent tendencies.
2 serial killers grew up next to toxic Tacoma plumes
Where did Ted Bundy, one of the most infamous serial killers, grow up? In Philadelphia—known then as the “City of Smelters”—before he moved to Tacoma and lived just across the bay from the smokestack…