Honoring Evil?: The slippery Tightrope of Mass Murder in Popular Culture Part II

Part 2: A Troubling Focus

The notoriety these true crime films continue to provide is troubling. For example, since the 1970s anyone on the street can tell you who Bundy was. But if you ask this same person to name one of Bundy’s victims, you’d likely get a blank stare.

Lynda Ann Healy was just 21, had been a good student at the UW and was on the verge of graduating in 1974 when she disappeared, leaving behind only a bloodstained mattress. Healy worked part time for Western Ski Promotions and did daily radio broadcasts of conditions in the mountain passes. My mother and grandparents used to listen to her reports.

Georgann Hawkins was just 18 years old when she disappeared only steps from her sorority house at the UW in 1974. Hawkins’ family was from my hometown of Lakewood and she went to Lakes High School, the same high school I later attended. From all accounts she had a bright future ahead of her. Then she vanished into thin air in an incident that would become one of the most haunting aspects of the Bundy case. Just before his execution in 1989, Bundy would finally confess to Hawkins’ murder and detail how he had done it. While Bundy did provide details on where he had dumped the body, Hawkins’ remains were never recovered.

Another victim, Susan Rancourt, had a 4.0 GPA at Central Washington University. She disappeared after attending a meeting at CWU. Soon after, other students came forward, saying that a handsome man with his arm in a sling had been walking around campus. After Rancourt disappeared, the campus went on high alert. Women no longer walked the area at night and people in this tiny farming town began locking their doors.

Recently, I gave a speech about Robert Hayward, the Utah State Patrolman who arrested Ted Bundy in 1975. Afterward, a woman who heard my speech came up to me and said that she had been hitchhiking in Washington when she was a young woman and had been picked up by man in a VW bug. When she told him where to drop her off, he drove by it without a word and at the next stop began getting physical with her. She pulled off one of her high heeled shoes, struck him in the groin, then jumped out and ran from the car. Much later, when she saw his face on television news reports of his crimes, she realized the man had been Ted Bundy.

If we are to take away any lessons from infamous murders they should be lessons similar to those we glean from a natural disaster. After every major hurricane, blizzard or earthquake, at some point there is a meeting where people sit down as say, “What can we do better next time?” and, “How can we lesson the damage in the future?” Law enforcement can always learn something about better information sharing and more patrols to certain high-risk areas, but much like the best-intentioned city and state planners who see yet another storm about to make landfall, they can only learn from hindsight, and can never predict something they’ve yet to experience.

Perhaps the best solution in this media driven age is to not remember the killer at all. Why should a school shooter’s face be plastered on TV for hundreds of hours? Why should someone be able to immediately name Bundy, Ridgway and Dahmer, but not the name of one of their victims? Aside from honoring the killer and hurting the victims’ families, the families of the killers are constantly reminded of what their relative did. Ted Bundy’s daughter and Gary Ridgway’s son will have to live with the fact that their fathers did something that was unforgivable and forever cast a pall over their names. Hollywood writers and directors and news outlets need to seriously consider what they are trying to accomplish when they make a criminal famous. I would never call for government censorship of the media, but people within in the industry need to independently decide not to show a killer’s face or say his name after his arrest and conviction. Let them die in obscurity and be forgotten.

If museums would like to have things like Bundy’s car. Rather than mention him, they should talk about Robert Hayward instead and how a wrong turn and a hunch led to his capture. The faces and names of the victims who met their end via that car also need to be part of the display. The lessons that the exhibitors want visitors to take away should also be carefully structured and presented.

Being riveted with the macabre is nothing new, but American media and museums need to present criminal stories with a sensitivity that does not glorify the killer or enhance their legacy. In an age when audiences seem to have become desensitized to everything, it is important to not blur the line between harmless fantasy and heinous acts that had very real, tragic consequences. I wish more people knew about Lynda Ann Healy, Georgann Hawkins and Robert Hayward and less people knew about Bundy.

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Honoring Evil?: The Slippery Tightrope of Mass Murder in Popular Culture Part I

Part 1: Villainous Heroes?

In the summer of 2014, I was in Washington D.C. at the National Crime Museum. One of the main attractions there was a tan Volkswagen Beetle used by serial killer Ted Bundy. One did not have to wait long to see it, as the vehicle had been placed just steps from the entrance and the admissions desk. I stopped and asked my parents to take my picture next to it. Almost as soon as I did this, I had a funny feeling. Thinking back now to all the local connections we have to the Bundy case, I get the same sort of chill about standing next to his car that I felt at the National Holocaust Museum when I stood in a train car that was the same type that took people to the Nazi death camps and when I viewed a rusty bed frame used during the T4 program. 

The whole purpose of museum artifacts is to have the visitor see something and immediately have them imagine the event around it. In 2003, I had gone to the Smithsonian and saw the tiny portable desk that Thomas Jefferson had used when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. As I stood there, I thought of that hot summer in Philadelphia in 1776 and pictured a young Jefferson bent over the desk in a cramped boarding house room painstakingly writing one of the most important documents in history. That same day, I saw the first computer ever built by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Again, I pictured two long haired, college aged men working in a garage, assembling this half wood, half electronic contraption that would soon change the world.

When I stood in front of Ted Bundy’s car, all I could think about was the women who had been hurt on those seats, on this floor. This was the car that had transported Debra Kent to her death, along with several others. Later I learned that the August night in 1975 that Bundy was captured, he had actually parked that same car outside a house where two young girls were staying home alone. Only a wrong turn by Utah State Patrolman Robert Hayward spooked Bundy into fleeing. And it strikes me, aren’t places like the National Crime Museum, and any other museum that enshrines the photos and stories of criminals, more monuments to evil than memorial to the victims?

I understand that this type of criminal fame is nothing new. After all. American and British readers were horrified and intrigued by the “Jack the Ripper” murders of 1888. Several times during the 20^th century, the press touted criminal proceedings to be the “Trial of the Century.” Authors like Truman Capote and Anne Rule made millions from their books containing grisly accounts of murder, and lavish details about the murderers.

I don’t begrudge Capote and Rule the money they made; indeed, their accounts are some of the most factual and informative ever written in the True Crime genre. However, while there is a clearly established public fascination with crime, I feel like there is a cost to that fascination. In the years, since their heinous acts, the fame and historic legacy of men like Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and Jeffrey Dahmer who would have been forgotten without the crimes they committed, has been inflated and sustained by recurring media accounts that focus on the morbid details of their crimes for shock value alone. In all the things that we see on TV or read in books, little time is devoted to what the victims’ families have gone through as a result of losing their loved ones. As I write this, four movies have already been made about Ted Bundy and five have been made about Manson. A a film about Bundy, and at least two more films about Manson are slated for release later this year. In addition to this, a new documentary about the Bundy killings has just been released on Netflix.

Often directors and writers say that they are creating these adaptations for the purpose of discovering “Why they did it.” But with a man like Ted Bundy, the answer is darkly simple. Bundy had a compulsion to rape and murder women, and Manson believed a Beatles record was compelling him to start a race war. Nothing more in their later disjointed ramblings will ever serve to give people a better answer. Bundy didn’t murder people because he had a bad childhood or because his girlfriend dumped him in college, Bundy was just evil, as was Manson, as was Dahmer, as was Gary Ridgeway, and there is nothing that can explain away the loss of the people they took. Indeed, the continuing production of such True Crime movies seems to be trying to anesthetize people into viewing them more like the latest fictional slasher movie. But as the families of these people who suffered and died know only too well, their loved ones won’t jump up after the scene is shot, scrape off the prosthetic gore and wash off the fake blood.

***

The Immigration Debate and the Danger of Political Extremes: What History Tells Us

On January 28, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting immigration from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia for 120 days as well as putting an indefinite stoppage of all Syrian refugees coming to America. As word of the order spread over the media, confusion began to be seen at several of the nation’s major airports. Immigration agents began stopping hundreds of foreigners from these countries, even those who had valid visas and Green Cards. Protesters began demanding that those detained immediately be released and local officials seeing a resourceful sound bite and a chance to embarrass the Trump Administration denounced the order in the strongest terms they could.

For the past week, the many conservatives have supported the spirit of the order, if not the way it was done. In contrast the media has denounced Trump’s order and people have repeated the oft quoted “Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses” and held up signs that simply say “No Ban.” No one, either from the conservatives, media, the protesters or the Democrats who have come out in support of them have offered any cohesive alternative to a halt on immigration. When people say “build a wall” are they prepared to spend the billions of dollars that it would take? For the people that shout “No Ban,” do they literally mean that that there should be no borders at all? No border fence with Mexico? No checkpoints on the Canadian border? No need to show ID at the airport?

The history of U.S. immigration is complex and would take too long to discuss, but two examples from that history show the dangers of either total deportation or total acceptance and hold an important lesson for both sides of the debate.  

“Operation Wetback” (Seriously, that’s what it was officially called)

By the early 20^th century, Mexico was still struggling to recover from the loss of half its territory to the United States in the 1840s and decades of upheaval that followed. In 1884, Porfirio Díaz seized dictatorial powers in Mexico City and soon began a program of economic development. Mexican cites soon had modern buildings, roads and street lights. But this came at the price of the largest benefits going to European and American businesses and a handful of Mexican officials. In 1911, Díaz was overthrown and the country split into different warring factions. With new governments constantly falling apart, common Mexican citizens decided to look for safety and new job opportunities. 

By the 1920s, the continued exodus to the United States had become an embarrassment to the Mexican government. Officials attempted to increase the number of border officers and get people to immigrate legally in smaller numbers. However, in order to go to the United States with official approval, Mexicans had to pay expensive fees, which they often could not afford and show they had sign work contracts in the United States. Unable to pay or get to the U.S. to sign contracts, families in depressed farming regions simply left under cover of darkness and went across the lightly guarded U.S. border.

This all changed in 1929 when the U.S. Stock Market crashed, sending economic shockwaves around the world.  In places like Tacoma, Washington, over 40% of Americans were suddenly out of work. Without badly-needed bank loans, farms across the southwest failed, leading many families to pack up and drive or ride the rails across the country in search of work. Mexican immigrants were no longer welcome. America had already passed a new immigration law in 1924 that strictly limited numbers of all immigrants and created the U.S. Border Patrol. While these new rules were impossible to enforce on either side of the border, many Mexican migrant families, seeing a sudden lack of opportunity and hearing calls to come home, voluntarily returned to Mexico. Politicians jumped on the bandwagon, calling on citizen groups to help organize and transport Mexicans back to the border.

With the outbreak of World War II, hundreds of thousands of Americans left their jobs to go off and fight in Europe and the Pacific. With the loss of their preferred labor source, factory owners and large-scale farmers had to suddenly make up for this loss, hiring women, blacks and Mexican migrant workers. At the same time as the U.S. loosened restrictions, Mexican farmers and factory owners saw a drop in their labor resources. Reports poured into Mexico City that fields along the border were being left unharvested and factories were emptying out. Meanwhile, legal immigrants in places like Texas and California began writing angry letters home that the increase of cheap illegal immigrant workers were causing American owners to fire their more expensive legal immigrant workers.

Seeking to stop the unchecked flow to north, the Mexican government called a meeting of American officials from the Justice Department and Immigration Services. Mexico demanded that in return for the legal labor Mexico was providing the U.S, Americans had to get serious about stopping illegal immigration. The key to this was to shift the vast majority of existing border agents along the Canadian border to the porous southern border. On top of this, they demanded budgets for immigration be increased and the number of agents doubled. In return for these changes, Mexico would increase its police presence along the border, allowing more suspicious travelers to be stopped on both sides. American officers would be directed to launch raids aimed at rounding up Mexican immigrants across the Midwest. The results of these changes were dramatic: overnight, arrests at the border tripled from 11,000 in 1943 to 28,000 in 1944. With the end of World War II one year later, pressure for deportation increased. Over the next eight years, thousands of suspected illegal immigrants were caught, thrown on a train, plane or bus, and physically shoved into the arms of Mexican officers.

By the 1950s, over 800,000 illegal immigrants were being captured each year. Yet, despite increased enforcement on both sides of the border, thousands more slipped across, taking up jobs as basic laborers and farmhands. Again, people started complaining on both sides of the border. Mexican fields were again empty and businessmen were unable to find employees. American workers were also growing increasingly frustrated. Many of them were still trying to find their footing after the war. How could the rest of America prosper, they objected, when they saw their own jobs going to people who would work under unbearable circumstances for far less money? 

In early in 1954, U.S. officials announced that, starting in May, they would begin an unprecedented law enforcement sweep. Hundreds of agents, backed by local and federal officers, would begin patrolling the main avenues along the border and launch a series of fast moving raids on suspected illegal hideouts, and anyone attempting to cross the border would have to first be inspected at one of numerous checkpoints and roadblocks. At the same time, the Mexican government announced that it too would have checkpoints and increased border security. 

On the first day of what was officially called “Operation Wetback,” agents from California to Texas, followed closely by media cameras, hit a series of locations, dragging off “illegals.” Soon, Mexicans in the hundreds were forced aboard  buses and driven straight to the Mexican border. Others were grabbed as they came over the fence and immediately handed back to Mexican police officers. All through the summer, Greyhound buses loaded with Mexican immigrants and with roofs piled high with belongings journeyed south as intense raids along the border continued to take place. At the end of August, U.S. officials reported that 1.8 million illegals had been sent back to Mexico and the success of the operation was portrayed by the media as a victory for the America worker.

Since the summer of 1954, historians have increasingly criticized Operation Wetback. A careful history of the operation by Kelly Lytle Hernández found that there was almost no basis for the 1.8 million number and that, in fact, examination of deportation reports before and after Operation Wetback show that only about 250,000 Mexicans were actually moved. Other sources have pointed out that among those deported were hundreds of legal American citizens swept up by law enforcement and not allowed the chance to appeal. Rather than finding out where native Mexicans lived, local authorities dropped them wherever it was convenient, even if it meant that the illegals were now hundreds of miles from their homes in Mexico. Finally, the absolute failure of Operation Wetback can be seen in the fact that for years afterward, statisticians found that at least 20% of those who had been arrested and driven to Mexico returned to their old jobs in the U.S.  Hernández writes that the point of the operation actually had not been to stop illegal immigration, but to convince the press and the American public that something was being done when it really wasn’t.

The Mariel Boatlift

If Operation Wetback illustrates the shortcoming of the “throw them all out” mentality of Donald Trump and his most ardent supporters, the Mariel Boatlift in the spring and summer of 1980 clearly shows the dangers of unchecked immigration that many appear to support today.

In 1959, communist guerrilla leader Fidel Castro overthrew the U.S.-backed government on the island of Cuba, ninety miles off the coast of Florida. While the U.S. was initially friendly to the new Cuban leader, as Castro’s ties to communist Russia and his repression of the Cuban people became more apparent, the U.S. decided to cut all political and economic ties with the country.

By the 1960s, Castro had officially closed off Cuba and sharply limited the movement of the people in it. As political opponents were rounded up, their friends and family, fearing for their own safety, began fleeing to the United States. Soon a large community of Cuban exiles formed in Miami, Florida. Throughout the two decades that followed, the United States was sympathetic to Cuban refugees fleeing the evils of communism, but the police state in Cuba kept the flow of immigration at a relative trickle.

Then on April 1, 1980, a bus hijacked by Cuban locals smashed through the gates of the Peruvian embassy in Havana and demanded alyssum. Cuban soldiers immediately surrounded the complex and demanded the Cubans inside be handed over. When the Peruvians refused, word spread across the city and more Cubans showed up to try and get through the line of soldiers blocking the way in. On the morning of April 3, residents awoke to find that the soldiers in front of the embassy had left. Within hours, thousands of Cubans fill the small courtyard and continued to climb over the walls.

Just as quickly as they had disappeared, Cuban soldiers came back and stopped more people from coming in. By now there were as many as 10,000 inside the embassy. With little food or water, the refugees began falling ill as the standoff stretched into days and then weeks. In the United States, President Jimmy Carter announced it was America’s moral responsibility to do something for the Cubans and announced that the U.S. would take 3,500 people. Hearing this, Castro turned to his brother and said "They want them, then they can have them. I will flush my toilets."

Castro quietly released an order saying that if Cubans could get the required travel permits and go to the port of Mariel, they could then make their way to Florida. 

When the first Cuban vessels arrived in Miami and word got out that the border was suddenly open, Cuban exiles in the U.S. began buying up small fishing and sport boats that were not all seaworthy and paying disreputable captains to make the dangerous voyage to Mariel to pick up family members they had left behind. The number of boats going into and out of Florida soon overwhelmed the Coast Guard, who reported that far more than the 3,500 refugees were coming in. Florida state officials were soon bitter about Carter’s decision, believing that they had been largely left alone to carry the burden of this unexpected human flood into southern Florida ports.

Among all the people who were merely trying to reunite their families, Coast Guard and Florida officials began to notice something strange about many of the people on the boats. Some babbled incessantly and otherwise showed signs of mental illness. Others exhibited symptoms of severe alcoholism. Worse yet, many sported gang tattoos and prison uniforms. It would later turn out that Castro had ordered prisons and insane asylums emptied and the streets cleared of the homeless.

After only a few weeks, President Carter announced that the U.S. would no longer take Cuban refugees. Castro continued sending boats overloaded with people from Mariel. The Coast Guard could do little but escort them to Florida. Throughout the summer, thousands of Cubans kept coming. Two giant tent cities sprang up in the vast parking lot of Miami's Orange Bowl and along I-95. Still other large camps filled on Miami’s South Beach. 

Miami residents began complaining that there were more people than houses. Apartment managers who had opened their doors to refugees began to openly fear that they would never see a dime in rent. Widespread abuse of the Food Stamp program began being reported in Florida and the unemployment rate skyrocketed from 5.7% to 13%. Crimes involving Mariel refugees involved in murder and rape doubled.  

In late September 1980, Castro abruptly closed the port of Mariel to any further emmigration and re-implemented strict travel laws. In all, 125,000 Cubans had found their way to the United States. Of these, Immigration and Naturalization Services would later determine that up to 24,000 were criminals and 5,000 of these had been among Cuba’s worst.

The Boatlift was over and in November Jimmy Carter lost the Presidential Election to Ronald Reagan. For the residents of Florida, the consequences of the mass immigration were just beginning.  Charlie Seraydar would later tell journalist Gerald Posner, “We went from being a seasonal tourist town to suddenly dealing with seasoned criminals who had nothing to lose," Seraydar continued, "No matter how badly we treated them, no matter how low they lived, it was better than the jails they called home in Cuba. That first year, our crime rate went up 600 percent. Our entire police force was smaller than a single New York City precinct. It felt like we had been invaded and were losing the battle."

The next year it was reported that Miami, already suffering from a growing cocaine trafficking industry in the late 70s, had become the murder capital of the world. 48% of those murdered were refugees from Mariel. 

For the next decade, local and federal officers would investigate and hunt down the drug networks that emerged in the 1980s. It would take a serious crackdown on drug dealers and re-investment in Florida real estate and tourism before the state began to recover in the 1990s.

Were the Mariel people to blame for all that followed? Certainly not. The cocaine industry had been emerging in Latin American countries in the 1970s. However, the Cuban refugee crisis in the summer of 1980 allowed for bad people to be spirited in with regular people and overworked immigration officers could do nothing, short of stopping them as they got off the boat.

While we will continue to debate Trump’s developing policy on immigration, the lessons of Operation Wetback and the Mariel Boatlift should serve as stark reminders to both Republicans and Democrats. You cannot simply stop people from going over the southern border, no matter how much money or time you invest in it. But neither can you simply open the gates and allow everyone to come in simply because of moral responsibility. Rather, both sides need to work on a middle ground solution that strengthens border security everywhere and sets up an adequate vetting process that ensures, as much as humanely possible, that good people come in.