Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers | Hacker News Reader

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

newyorker.com

59 pointsrbanffy83 comments

The headline reminds me of the (debunked) theory that ergot-contaminated grain was what incited the Salem witch trials - which was just as ridiculous

https://salemwitchmuseum.com/2023/05/17/debunking-the-moldy-...

My vote: yes. Things like policing are reactive controls.

Crime has been dropping for a long time, and it isn’t because of increased professionalism and effectiveness of police or better governance.

And definitely not because there is better access to education and basic resources.

I don’t see it. We poisoned marginal people who became serial killers. Now we create spree killers through other means.

I think Kevin Drum (R.I.P.) covered this better than the author of this piece.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...

And, addressing the meta-analysis the New Yorker author places so much weight on:

https://jabberwocking.com/yet-another-look-at-that-lead-crim...

The clincher is that competing hypotheses are almost exclusively concerned with phenomena in the U.S. and fall apart as explanations for the same cresting and subsidence of the crime wave in other countries, or even simply in other cities in the U.S. One city does broken-windows policing. Another doesn't. Both experience the same decline in the murder rate.

Tetraethyllead was introduced into gasoline in 1922, and lasted about 70 years. The effect would have been greater after WW2 due to there were more cars and a larger population with greater desire for mobility and closer proximity to cars.

During the Depression there were fewer cars for economic reasons, and during WW2 fewer for reasons of rationing and recycling, raw material went to the war effort.

Lead may not have had as strong of an effect on adults as it did on developing brains. Post-war timelines fit for baby boomers, as they would be in young adulthood at the peak of these crimes.

Wasn't a substantial amount of lead used to solder tinned food for like 150 years? That's like two generations where lead leeched into foods. Was there a bump in serial killers from 1810's onward?

150 years is more like 5-7 generations.

I saw a court case where a mom testified against her adult child and said she drank while she was pregnant, resulting in undermining all of the child defendants decision making process resulting in the defendant’s conviction

To be honest this felt like one of those “too poor for appeal’s court” things

But a ridiculous way of treating a defendant

Imagine if we could tell someone had a mental alteration

> I saw a court case where a mom testified against her adult child and said she drank while she was pregnant

How could that even be relevant to a criminal case?

Because it affects the growth of the fetus, including development of the brain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_spectrum_disorde...

To reemphasize the parent's question, how is that relevant to the prosecution of a criminal trial? "The defendant is mentally ill / has a propensity to commit crimes" isn't admissible, in general.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_evidence#Criminal_tr...

Isn't this called "diminished responsbility" in the US system? There's apparently also something called "settled insanity." If you want to plead one of those, you have to provide a reason.

mentally ill is a plea and changes how the case is handled. if found guilty you go to a very different prison system where real doctors care for your issuse and then releas you when treated. It isn't easy to get this plea - many try thinking it is a fast track out of prison so the courts are onto that and put a lot of effort into checking if you really are. I doubt mom's testimony has much weight in that, though she would still be allowed to testify and that would be in the record maving it apear that it mattered

Someone having drunk while pregnant is not strong evidence that it had a meaningful impact. You have to drink heavily to even risk it, and to have an impact on a court case why not get medical evidence on whether or not meaningful damage has occurred.

Lead "Twinkie" defense.

I think it’s safe to say the boomers were exposed to lead the most out of anyone especially if they grew up in heavy traffic areas. That said, that’s no excuse since the Romans were probably exposed at a significantly higher rate and they churned out some ingenious projects. Or was lead introduced to Rome toward tail end?

Ancient Rome wasn’t exactly known to be a land of peaceful tranquility. We also don’t necessarily know alot about daily life.

Also, Romans were aware of the toxicity of lead, and we don’t really know if or how that knowledge was applied. Lead pipes aren’t necessarily a problem depending on the water chemistry. The Flint issue was a direct result of criminally negligent action.

Betteridge’s Law applies here.

Very much so, and even though the article answers its own question with a no, they know many people will read the headline and only remember the link, and rumour will spread.

I can’t believe we’re _still_ allowing headlines like this in this day and age. I might even report it, because even though technically speaking the article content doesn’t spread misinformation, the title does.

This made me chuckle have you seen the YouTube titles and thumbs?

It is getting SO outrageous that some creators shadow their own channels with the same videos but with normal titles saying they need the main channel with the stupid titles "for the algorithm".

This is the end of the race to the bottom to grab the scraps of our attention.

This is from the New Yorker - you’d expect media businesses to be held to higher standards than random YouTubers

But what is alternative to titles and thumbnails?

By following the work of authors that you trust and getting recommendations from people you trust, you can reduce your need for recommendations from machines and companies. Then you won't need to rely on clickbait images and headlines to decide if you want to read or watch something.

This requires effort, so it's not free, but I think it's a better way to engage with media.

But that doesn't scale or it does, oldschool Facebook was like that before algorithmic feed took over. Enshittification is real.

The law: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

In Europe lead was used just as much in pipes and exhaust. We also have countries with broad gun availability.

We do not have the serial killers of the US level by far.

I think culture is key.

True, but Europe does show a decline in crime in a time period corresponding to the banning of leaded gasoline.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/02/violent-crime...

Why are any of you even arguing about this? The article itself doesn’t even agree lead played a role. It’s like everyone in here just read the headline only.

Because there is a lot of evidence from other sources strongly suggesting that lead does play a role.

I don’t know about the use of the word strongly, it’s one theory that is so very far from being considered fact by the scientific community at this point in time that “strongly” seems disingenuous.

Regardless, it’s a weird effect of articles where even a negative article can cause positive belief. I.e. an article debunking a myth can sometimes spread the misinformation of the myth, because some people will go from no opinion on it to disagreeing with the article’s conclusion. Common with articles debunking conspiracies.

I feel like I could be watching this in real time ;)

Not everyone agrees that lead did cause a drop in violence. It’s one theory

> Not everyone agrees that lead did cause a drop in violence. It’s one theory

Obviously. That's what we're discussing. I am simply presenting evidence to contradict the GP comment, which claims (falsely) that Europe did not see a drop in crime similar to the US's. The fact that Europe did see a drop a crime is not conclusive evidence of the lead-crime theory, but it leaves that possibility open.

If you have another theory, you are welcome to share it.

Not completely ruling lead out.

The decline in crime across both the US and Europe does align with the phaseout of lead.

Other things were happening at the same time such as changes in policing, incarceration, economic conditions, and access to mental health care.

It is hard to know how much each carries in weight.

This isn't a really counter-argument.

It could be (and IMHO likely is) multi-causal, with several contributing factors, including lack of social welfare (leading to people with rough childhoods), gun availability and also lead exposure in childhood.

The question at hand is how to weight the last factor. IMHO it's not zero, but I don't know enough to say just how much.

You are right it is multi casual.

The hard part is untangling how much each factor contributes.

Why are you even arguing like the article made a point about lead? The headline might sound that way but the article came to the conclusion that lead wasn’t likely.

Pickleball was invented in Washington too. Probably another side effect of lead exposure and breathing in leaded gasoline fumes. Or at least, that's what tennis players like to believe :)

I can't remember the last time I went out of my way to look at who authored something because I disliked it on a visceral level.

The writing here goes from too much punctuation to grad students book review to quasi political rant. And the criticism might be valid but I simply can't get past the horrid delivery.

Prelapsarian... yay I learned a new word. It did not help with the delivery of the conclusion.

> too much punctuation

I thought you were joking. ... After a while, I started expecting a comma after each and every word.

“Critics had long disdained the appetite for sanguinary entertainment as a symptom of decadence.”

Perhaps but I would argue that the most likely reason is genetics plus traumatic childhood. Manson had traumatic childhood; living on the streets, committing crime and spending half of his life in prison and in state institutions. When you add drugs and hippie flower power music scene to that you get Manson.

Bundy also had traumatic childhood not knowing who his real father is and believing his mother is his older sister while being raised by his grandparents. He was violent sex addict always craving for more and more. Imo his genetics played the key part in his deviant violent behavior.

I’ve watched movies on and read about countless serial killers. Almost always they came from horrible families, with abuse, neglect, different types of punishment. Also it seems there never is any type of psychological follow up of them as kids when they started to act “weird”. So most are just forgotten people who were never looked at mentally. At least I the 70s, I don’t know today.

I think there a couple cases where that’s not true but rare exceptions.

For example John Wayne Gacy underwent psychiatric evaluation and "Two doctors concluded he had an antisocial personality disorder (the clinical term for sociopathy and/or psychopathy), was unlikely to benefit from treatment, and that his behavior pattern was likely to bring him into repeated conflict with society. The doctors concluded Gacy was mentally competent to stand trial[0]."

After that he was granted parole and released from prison and in the following years he murdered more than 30 young boys. So yea, the system failed us all. Although it is hard to evaluate and predict who will turn out to be maniac killer out of thousands and thousands of psychiatric cases health system deals with.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy#:~:text=Two%20...

Gacy is a good example of failure of the judicial system. He also came from a broken family and his father was violent and drunk. He was imprisoned but homosexual sex crimes weren’t taken seriously even against minors. This allowed him to leave prison with almost no time served. I wouldn’t blame the psychiatrists here.

We see that same pattern with Dahmer where the police literally released one of his victims into his custody and joked about the young teen being Dahmer’s “boyfriend”.

I'd be careful about associating a genetic cause with high-level behaviors. I don't have a good argument either way, but it seems to come close to a political third rail where you can ascribe patterns of behavior to genetically defined(-ish) groups like "race".

It's not about race, it is about personality, even cats have different personalities which are shaped by their genes[0].

Evolution uses variation so you can adapt and survive but variation is experimental meaning its results are nor perfect nor conclusive.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250626-how-loud-a-cat-m...

This article was on HN frontpage 2 days ago.

I'm always suspicious of people who advocate this kind of caution - I can never trust if you are saying or withholding information in case it might lead to outcomes you don't like. Reality should take precedence. If X does Y, let's find out how to help X, not pretend X doesn't exist.

You may have misunderstood, I'm advocating caution on the basis that naive discussion of this kind of topic can attract attention from people who associate it with outcomes they don't like, and specifically you can end up being accused of having an ulterior motive

But maybe you underood that and think I'm arguing in bad faith. From your perspective, that may well appear to be the case, I don't think I can demonstrate otherwise.

Because it's rarely ever as simple as X causes Y, yet it will be taken out of context and concluded out of context that X in fact causes Y, thus we must round up everyone exhibiting X to prevent Y.

And that's how you make it worse for everyone, because now some X still cause Y, but Z doesn't trust you anymore and will start hurting random X anyway.

Did you read the article or are you just responding to the headline? The article argues that no lead probably didn’t matter. I agree that the headline is terrible because - as you’ve shown - the headline gets taken as the fact despite the question mark at the end… but we should still be better than this.

Parents may have been affected by lead as well.

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