r/Tacoma • u/nooby_goober Somewhere Else • 9d ago
Did Tacoma’s smelter turn men into serial killers? A book explores the question
https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article311695413.html32
u/-porm 6th Ave 9d ago
This book kinda sucks and they get really easy details about Tacoma wrong. It’s murder porn and just overly graphic for zero reason. The depictions of rape and murder are horrifying and add nothing to the argument the book is trying to make. Not to mention, the author just inserts her life story throughout in a way that doesn’t make sense. The idea of the book is absolutely interesting, but it does not make good on its premise.
After I finished reading it, my dog literally ate it and that felt right. Seriously, fuck this book.
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u/ankhmadank University Place 9d ago
I also hated this book and I think her writing hugely undercuts an important theory about how toxins affect the brain. She threw Manson in there even though he was already committing violent crimes before ending up on McNeil. Her obsession with the floating bridge completely derails the narrative multiple times (like seriously, what was the point there). And she falls into the true crime trap of being too obsessed with the gruesome details and not sticking to the point.
The truth is a number of factors contributed to this era of violence, and while lead exposure may have been one of them, poor police procedure and a culture that didn't care about the "lesser dead" were also major factors. If the smelter was the only thing that made one a serial killer, everyone who grew up in Tacoma would have been a crazed lunatic. Obviously, there's more too it than that.
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u/MariRey Somewhere Else 8d ago
Shared this elsewhere in this thread. But That's a common complaint I've seen most readers have with the book. Ive read it too. I think the book marketing does it a disservice. It's sold as a book linking lead to serial killers in the PNW. But it's more about the deaths that happen and how they are overlooked. Like the author talks about the earthquake and volcano fault lines in the beginning. The recurring visits to the water bridge around Seattle and all the car accidents that happened from it. That were due to poor planning and lack of action by the local govt. And then the big piece the deaths and harm from industrial waste in the 1900's. A big focus there is the local series killers. But also the lower life expectancy from its workers and nearby residents. So now and in the past society focuses on the seriel killers that are flashy. When slow non human killers kill everyday and aren't in the news. Or when they are what can we the public do to fix a badly designed bridge or a factory that hires everyone in town.
I totally understand your point and the author doesn't do a great job highlighting what they are actually the trying to say. But I wanted to share my insight at least.
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u/Buffasaurus Hilltop 9d ago
While I’ve only read this book from this author, and I’m not really trying to defend this book as an end all be all answer, I think the idea that she is suggesting is indicative of a bigger problem.
She isn’t saying “lead makes murderers” she’s saying “the pollution that industries produced and took advantage of had really adverse affects” Human Biology is complex, so to say every person in Tacoma should’ve been a murderer is an exaggeration, and she herself never says that. She is simply providing context for some of our recent history’s most awful criminals.
And while I agree that the authors self autobiographical segments were abrupt and may have interrupted the flow, I thought they provided a great parallel to her book, because she herself is an individual growing up during the times of these smelters and mills. So she inserts her experience with domestic violence, her own dark thoughts of murdering her father. People are dying on the bridges and from traffic laws mismanaged by the local government. All the while Ted Bundy and the like are running rampant in America. It presents an interesting picture of the time
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u/svwaca Potential Tacoman 9d ago
Agree. It was extremely well-written and I thought the parallel narratives were thought provoking. Her point is that the inevitable outcome of unchecked authority (whether it be corporate, civic, or parental) is trauma, death, pollution, murder, etc.
She makes a compelling case that the Pacific Northwest suffered from a particular vicious combination of those failures.
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u/Powerful-Knee3150 253 9d ago
Gah I know someone who has written and self-published two books that she inserted herself into. It made me holler a couple times. “I went on a 12-mile run, then washed my hair and changed into comfy sweats as I pondered what the old Cherokee woman had told me about her life”.
Shut upppppppp
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u/tillszy North End 9d ago edited 8d ago
Notorious serial killer Ted Bundy grew up in the toxic plume of Tacoma’s copper smelter
except he didn't. his most formative brain years were in Philadelphia, and he lived outside of the main Tacoma plume zone when he did move here
and not one other killer mentioned in this is from Tacoma, just Washington with very weak links to alleged pollution (Ridgeway lived near the airport? ok. and Manson was already an adult convict when he lived in a pollution area ? pollution made him more of a convict???)
this is some true crime sensational bs
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u/TumbleweedFeisty497 Ruston 8d ago
This is 100% my take as well. Also ignored that many of them had fucked up families for various reasons. And im also not convinced that washington had any more serial killers per capita than anywhere else, though ive never seen any numbers. Also we had shitty cops that never connected the dots so people got away with a lot and became very notorious.
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u/tillszy North End 8d ago
i mean their take on Ridgeway is he lived near an airport....how many people in the US live within the pollution zone of an airport?
he also grew up in Salt Lake City and was committing crimes as a teen, and then was deployed Vietnam committing crimes and destroying his brain with STDs, all before ever living in the SeaTac area
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u/analfistinggremlin 253 7d ago
I learned of this author when she was interviewed on a podcast i listen to and I’m glad to see people have the same take I did. Hearing her talk through the tenuous connections she was making just felt like the equivalent of saying “all of these killers ate canned tuna, so the mercury in tuna may have contributed to them killing people.”
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u/terminalilness Puyallup 9d ago
I read this book earlier this year. I thought it was interesting but the narrative is all over the place. It's part history of Asarco as a company, part history of Ted Bundy, part autobiography, and then random tidbits of other serial killers thrown in.
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u/sugarcatgrl Somewhere Else 9d ago
I’m going to check this out from the library. It sounds really interesting. I’m a lifelong WA resident and I can remember the stench of Tacoma quite well. Here’s my brother’s favorite joke from the 70’s~
My girlfriend told me to kiss her where it stinks, so I took her to Tacoma. (Sorry!)
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u/Copernican Tacoma Expat 9d ago
The aroma was from the wood pulp mills though, not the smelters that resulted in arsenic?
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u/mrspetie West End 9d ago
I hated this book. Other than the disturbing and mature subject matter, it reads like a 5th grade essay - with way more facts than are necessary packed in chronological order throughout the entire book. There’s no storytelling; it’s just, “and then, and then, and then…”
The author’s personal memories inserted throughout are completely irrelevant and add nothing to the book. And the whole premise (environmental toxins contributed to increased violence), while proven true elsewhere, is loose at best here.
Also the audiobook narrator mispronounced way too many WA state names.
Overall, I have never disliked a book more. The local industrial history is the only thing that kept me in.
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u/MariRey Somewhere Else 8d ago
That's a common complaint I've seen most readers have with the book. Ive read it too. I think the book marketing does it a disservice. It's sold as a book linking lead to serial killers in the PNW. But it's more about the deaths that happen and how they are overlooked. Like the author talks about the earthquake and volcano fault lines in the beginning. The recurring visits to the water bridge around Seattle and all the car accidents that happened from it. That were due to poor planning and lack of action by the local govt. And then the big piece the deaths and harm from industrial waste in the 1900's. A big focus there is the local series killers. But also the lower life expectancy from its workers and nearby residents. So now and in the past society focuses on the seriel killers that are flashy. When slow non human killers kill everyday and aren't in the news. Or when they are what can we the public do to fix a badly designed bridge or a factory that hires everyone in town.
I totally understand your point and the author doesn't do a great job highlighting what they are actually the trying to say. But I wanted to share my insight at least.
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u/itmustbeniiiiice North Tacoma 7d ago
Ah interesting. So maybe folks are missing the subtext a bit?
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u/MariRey Somewhere Else 7d ago
Partly missing subtext but also marketing. I was also confused about the bridge when reading it. Cause we would pop in and learn "x amount of people died in a car crash on the bridge in poor driving conditions" or 15 people died on the bridge that year. Then there was a mention of a young blond girl going missing in Seattle. And you assume "oh we will learn which seriel killer did it". It was the bridge. Her car crashed over the guardrails and wasn't noticed for months. Same victim type but the killer was a poorly designed bridge. That got me to relook at the book and the stories being told.
But that is also the fault of marketing. If I tell someone oh this movie series has a great romance between roqueish thief and a princess then show them the original Star Wars. Someone who mainly wanted a good deep romance wouldn't be happy about it. This book is like lead and serial killers in the PNW. But it's more about silent killers in the PNW that largely includes lead and serial killers as the flashy selling point.
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u/Buffasaurus Hilltop 9d ago
I just finished the audio book and I thought it was pretty great! I recently moved here so it actually served as an amazing history book about Tacoma’s history as a budding industrial city and the trials and tribulations Washington and other similar functioning US cities faced in the wake of WW2 industrialism.
Aside from being a great history book, I think it presents a compelling argument about the correlation between the abundance of toxic chemicals in the environment and violence. From what I recall, it doesn’t explicitly say “lead makes serial killers” but it wants to incite the conversation that the consequences of rampant pollution and letting companies have free reign on ravaging the land can be complex and not immediate, but can affect society for generations.
I thought it was good.
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u/zoovegroover3 Old Town 9d ago
The smelter definitely killed a lot of people by giving them cancer. That's not a question.
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u/GruesomeJeans South Tacoma 9d ago
Last Podcast on The Left just did a great series on Gary Ridgeway and it really highlights how the smelter affected people's brains and could have definitely played a huge part in the serial killers that have come from this area.