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Discovering America
Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate
Starting in the 1950s, Americans eagerly built the planet’s largest public the 42,795-mile National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Before the concrete was dry on the new roads, however, a specter began haunting them—the highway killer. He went by many the “Hitcher,” the “Freeway Killer,” the “Killer on the Road,” the “I-5 Strangler,” and the “Beltway Sniper.” Some of these criminals were imagined, but many were real. The nation’s murder rate shot up as its expressways were built. America became more violent and more mobile at the same time. Killer on the Road tells the entwined stories of America’s highways and its highway killers. There’s the hot-rodding juvenile delinquent who led the National Guard on a multistate manhunt; the wannabe highway patrolman who murdered hitchhiking coeds; the record promoter who preyed on “ghetto kids” in a city reshaped by freeways; the nondescript married man who stalked the interstates seeking women with car trouble; and the trucker who delivered death with his cargo. Thudding away behind these grisly crime sprees is the story of the interstates—how they were sold, how they were built, how they reshaped the nation, and how we came to equate them with violence. Through the stories of highway killers, we see how the “killer on the road,” like the train robber, the gangster, and the mobster, entered the cast of American outlaws, and how the freeway—conceived as a road to utopia—came to be feared as a highway to hell.
264 pages, Hardcover
First published April 4, 2012
41 people are currently reading
1370 people want to read
About the author
Ginger Strand
14 books13 followersGinger Strand is an American essayist, novelist, environmental writer, and historian. Her 2005 debut novel Flight was adapted from several of her short stories. Her published books of non-fiction include Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies in May 2008 and Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate in 2012.
Ginger Strand grew up mostly on a farm in Michigan. Her family moved often while her father served in the Air National Guard. Throughout her childhood, she lived in Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Her father later worked as a commercial airline pilot for TWA for 35 years. Strand is a 1992 graduate from Princeton University. She has a daughter and lives in New York City. She teaches environmental criticism at Fordham University, and teaches writing at the 92nd Street Y.
Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Believer, Harper's, The Iowa Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Carolina Quarterly. Strand has received residency grants from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the American Antiquarian Society, as well as a Tennessee Williams scholarship in fiction from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She is a contributing editor at Orion. Strand is also a former fellow in the Behrman Center for the Humanities at Princeton University.
Strand is also an environmental writer. She has been critical of Google’s environmental policies. In a November 2006 New York Times story, she talks about her personal difficulty in being eco-conscious.
She lists her obsessions as water, ancient Rome, infrastructure, SuperFund, airplanes, silent film, panopticons, P. T. Barnum, photography, lies, the 1930s, Niagara Falls, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Edward Wormley, consumerism and rhinoceroses, especially one named Clara who lived in the 18th century.
(from Wikipedia)
Ginger Strand grew up mostly on a farm in Michigan. Her family moved often while her father served in the Air National Guard. Throughout her childhood, she lived in Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Her father later worked as a commercial airline pilot for TWA for 35 years. Strand is a 1992 graduate from Princeton University. She has a daughter and lives in New York City. She teaches environmental criticism at Fordham University, and teaches writing at the 92nd Street Y.
Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Believer, Harper's, The Iowa Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Carolina Quarterly. Strand has received residency grants from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the American Antiquarian Society, as well as a Tennessee Williams scholarship in fiction from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She is a contributing editor at Orion. Strand is also a former fellow in the Behrman Center for the Humanities at Princeton University.
Strand is also an environmental writer. She has been critical of Google’s environmental policies. In a November 2006 New York Times story, she talks about her personal difficulty in being eco-conscious.
She lists her obsessions as water, ancient Rome, infrastructure, SuperFund, airplanes, silent film, panopticons, P. T. Barnum, photography, lies, the 1930s, Niagara Falls, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Edward Wormley, consumerism and rhinoceroses, especially one named Clara who lived in the 18th century.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
May 24, 2023
This excellent book asks the question ”did the building of the American interstate highway system inadvertently create the perfect conditions for a whole bunch of disgusting serial killers?” and the answer is yes, of course it did. All those victims dumped at the side of the I-5 ! So this book is where true crime meets urban geography.
The magnificent highway system is a tremendous feat of engineering, but its blank sameness and its anonymous encounters provide the necessary backdrop to hundreds of murders. Commonest victims : no prizes for guessing, hitchhikers and truck stop sex workers. Because of all the murdering done in the 70s and 80s nobody would think of hitching now. Sex working at truck stops has not died out, however, according to the author. Quite the reverse.
(note – first it was the hitcher who was the killer but that quickly flipped round)
Ginger Strand (great name) kicks off with the well-known Charles Starkweather in 1958 who drove around with his 14 year old girlfriend shooting people.
Reporter : Do you regret throwing your life away?
Charlie : I throwed away nothin’ cause I didn’t have nothin’.
Ginger is not one of these deskbound academics. She attends trials and like any true crime fan she wants to see the precise locations of the murders:
Charles gave such a complete account of their flight that when I visited Lincoln I was able to follow the pair’s exact route.
But it doesn’t always work out like that. When later Ginger drives to Atlanta to see the locations of the famous 1981 child murders there’s only disappointment :
The Hollywood Shopping Plaza, where Clifford Jones was found in a dumpster: razed. Hollywood Courts, where Terry Pue lived : a pile of cement chunks. Hillcrest Apartments where Latonya Wilson lived and died : boarded up and abandoned. Thomasville Heights, home to at least three of the victims: scheduled for demolition
But she finds the home of Wayne Williams still intact and well-maintained, and includes her own photo of it on p122.
There’s a chapter on Edmund Kemper III, who is now pretty famous from Mindhunter. I only mention this because Ed provides us with an example of psychiatry at its finest:
Two days later, with Aiko Koo’s head in his trunk, he drove to Fresno for a psychiatric examination. Based on the interview, the psychiatrists determined that Kemper was no longer a threat to society and that his juvenile murder record should be sealed.
Moving on to Bundy, Ginger takes the time to skewer some fake news:
Bundy fascination spawned a number of false myths about serial killers: that they are predominantly white, middleclass men who prey on beautiful young coeds; that they are intelligent, even brilliant, capable of eluding and tricking the police…[these myths] serve to make serial killers more likeable
And here ’s my favourite paragraph, where Ginger simply can’t hold back her feelings about the interstate highway system anymore:
A number of things had become apparent about the interstate highway program. It had mowed down mountains, plowed through communities, and divided up farms with little regard for the opinions of affected citizens. It had cost at least three times what it was expected to cost. It had accelerated white flight from cities, contributed to urban blight, and abetted the spread of environmentally destructive, aesthetically awful suburbia. It had spawned a monotonous national landscape of homogeneous franchise businesses, ticky-tacky homes, eyesore shopping malls and hideous commercial strips.
Ginger is bang-on also about the curious pickiness of the American press and public about serial killers. They are fascinated by some (Dahmer, Bundy, you know them all) and they ignore a whole string whose awful murders were just as bad – who has heard of William Bonin, Patrick Kearney and Randy Kraft? Ginger thinks that they were ignored because they were dull : “Like the highways themselves, they were bland, unappealing and lacking in taste”.
The best chapter in this jargon-free, compelling, eccentric and borderline-essential book is the one most based on Ginger’s own research – called "Drive By Truckers", it’s all about long distance truckers murdering truckstop hookers – a very ghastly subject which may be why hardly anyone has written about it.
The US national average for all homicides in 2009 : 5 per 100,000. The homicide rate for prostitutes is 229 out of every 100,000
**
I could go on extracting grisly little-known facts from this book but this review is long enough. For true crime fans this is totally recommended.
The magnificent highway system is a tremendous feat of engineering, but its blank sameness and its anonymous encounters provide the necessary backdrop to hundreds of murders. Commonest victims : no prizes for guessing, hitchhikers and truck stop sex workers. Because of all the murdering done in the 70s and 80s nobody would think of hitching now. Sex working at truck stops has not died out, however, according to the author. Quite the reverse.
(note – first it was the hitcher who was the killer but that quickly flipped round)
Ginger Strand (great name) kicks off with the well-known Charles Starkweather in 1958 who drove around with his 14 year old girlfriend shooting people.
Reporter : Do you regret throwing your life away?
Charlie : I throwed away nothin’ cause I didn’t have nothin’.
Ginger is not one of these deskbound academics. She attends trials and like any true crime fan she wants to see the precise locations of the murders:
Charles gave such a complete account of their flight that when I visited Lincoln I was able to follow the pair’s exact route.
But it doesn’t always work out like that. When later Ginger drives to Atlanta to see the locations of the famous 1981 child murders there’s only disappointment :
The Hollywood Shopping Plaza, where Clifford Jones was found in a dumpster: razed. Hollywood Courts, where Terry Pue lived : a pile of cement chunks. Hillcrest Apartments where Latonya Wilson lived and died : boarded up and abandoned. Thomasville Heights, home to at least three of the victims: scheduled for demolition
But she finds the home of Wayne Williams still intact and well-maintained, and includes her own photo of it on p122.
There’s a chapter on Edmund Kemper III, who is now pretty famous from Mindhunter. I only mention this because Ed provides us with an example of psychiatry at its finest:
Two days later, with Aiko Koo’s head in his trunk, he drove to Fresno for a psychiatric examination. Based on the interview, the psychiatrists determined that Kemper was no longer a threat to society and that his juvenile murder record should be sealed.
Moving on to Bundy, Ginger takes the time to skewer some fake news:
Bundy fascination spawned a number of false myths about serial killers: that they are predominantly white, middleclass men who prey on beautiful young coeds; that they are intelligent, even brilliant, capable of eluding and tricking the police…[these myths] serve to make serial killers more likeable
And here ’s my favourite paragraph, where Ginger simply can’t hold back her feelings about the interstate highway system anymore:
A number of things had become apparent about the interstate highway program. It had mowed down mountains, plowed through communities, and divided up farms with little regard for the opinions of affected citizens. It had cost at least three times what it was expected to cost. It had accelerated white flight from cities, contributed to urban blight, and abetted the spread of environmentally destructive, aesthetically awful suburbia. It had spawned a monotonous national landscape of homogeneous franchise businesses, ticky-tacky homes, eyesore shopping malls and hideous commercial strips.
Ginger is bang-on also about the curious pickiness of the American press and public about serial killers. They are fascinated by some (Dahmer, Bundy, you know them all) and they ignore a whole string whose awful murders were just as bad – who has heard of William Bonin, Patrick Kearney and Randy Kraft? Ginger thinks that they were ignored because they were dull : “Like the highways themselves, they were bland, unappealing and lacking in taste”.
The best chapter in this jargon-free, compelling, eccentric and borderline-essential book is the one most based on Ginger’s own research – called "Drive By Truckers", it’s all about long distance truckers murdering truckstop hookers – a very ghastly subject which may be why hardly anyone has written about it.
The US national average for all homicides in 2009 : 5 per 100,000. The homicide rate for prostitutes is 229 out of every 100,000
**
I could go on extracting grisly little-known facts from this book but this review is long enough. For true crime fans this is totally recommended.
June 3, 2021
This is a book about the mentality of America; our obsession with mobility, infinite growth and progress as much as it is a history of the highway system and the serial killers who exploited it. Americas tend to look on our highways as a great achievement, but far from the enthusiasm with which it was sold to us by construction companies and car manufacturers, the history is more muddled; often one of corruption, waste, fraud and ultimately some terrifying, unforeseen consequences.
The issue of class runs throughout this book. The building of highways wasn't a question of "trade-offs" -- it's simply that the suffering of the voiceless is easily ignored and the rest of us can salve our low-level, nagging anxiety. But those "externalities" still seep into our subconscious and make the road an uneasy place. The highways and car culture most obviously reflect our materialism, but less obviously a certain rootlessness and lack of human connection.
Having studied the Atlanta Child Murders obsessively I didn't expect to learn a lot from Strand's chapter on the topic. I've collected about a thousand articles on Newspapers.com, sifted through hours of old news reports and watched several documentaries, but Strand provides context and makes connections which are very compelling. The highways carved through Atlanta, displacing and corralling poor black populations, creating the milieu for what followed. It's an infuriating read, but I can tell that Strand did her research.
I mentioned earlier about the suffering of the voiceless, Strand makes the point that after the conviction of Wayne Williams for the murder of two adults (in what was a case of nearly 30 murdered children over the course of two years) the city was ready to move on. "...the Williams conviction allowed the city to refocus blame not on social failings but on a sick individual [...] Most people were eager to put it all behind them, letting the larger forces at work slip into the dark once more." If we can ignore structural problems, we will, especially if those structures are seen as indispensable.
In a country focused on mobility, "progress" and the Devil take the hindmost -- Atlanta is the perfect embodiment of this. "The city too busy to hate" was "the city too busy to care," and in the last fifteen years I've lived here I've often found it to be "the city too busy to think."
If the chapter on Atlanta is enraging, the following chapter on serial killer Roger Reece Kibbe is downright depressing. Strand explores America's obsession with serial killers which took off in the 80's as we turned away from any wise and hard-won pangs of conscience we felt in the 70's and embraced materialism anew. But not all victims or their killers proved worthy of our attention. Killers like Kibbe, Lucas, Bonin and others who prowled the freeways are virtually unknown, while the "dashing" Bundy was practically celebrated:
Like the highways and their soulless sprawlscape of big-box stores, parking lots, strip malls, and ground cover, highway killers have become a part of life in America—one that is ugly, unpleasant, and no fun to think about. It’s much more fun to ignore them in favor of their glamorous fictional counterparts. The nation adores Hannibal Lecter, not Roger Kibbe.
Below the fold killers and throwaway victims...
America came to see the serial killer as "mobile" -- but this was an exception, not the rule when it came to serial murder. This would seem to be a knock against Strand's own thesis, but our fears of the highways were manipulated, as were our hopes for the promise of the highways decades before. It's not that killers were more mobile -- it's what the highways did to the most vulnerable of society in terms of displacement, destabilized families and anonymity.
The penultimate chapter on trucker serial killers is one of the most interesting. Her thesis is that the trucking industry attracts, perhaps in some rare cases even creates serial killers by bringing out those tendencies which wouldn't otherwise emerge. I especially liked the theories about how certain spaces create crime, and how truck stops have all the right ingredients. Strand acknowledges that most truckers aren't criminals of course, while discussing the grueling aspect of the job which is lonely, stressful and destructive to physical and mental health.
The final chapter shows how the spread of mobility and growth in developing countries has led to a rise in serial murder, particularly in the crime-riddled Juarez. At one point she throws this at us; The widely accepted consensus is that development decreases homicide -- up to a point. That point is the point of extreme income inequality. When income disparity creates an underclass, homicide rates begin to rise again... I cannot help but think of American Millennials, indebted, unable to build wealth, buy homes or start families -- the term "underclass" gets thrown around a lot. If there's further disinvestment in social spending and police are stretched thin, we could see serial murder rise again here at home. America seems to be in a managed decline, so I don't doubt it.
The issue of class runs throughout this book. The building of highways wasn't a question of "trade-offs" -- it's simply that the suffering of the voiceless is easily ignored and the rest of us can salve our low-level, nagging anxiety. But those "externalities" still seep into our subconscious and make the road an uneasy place. The highways and car culture most obviously reflect our materialism, but less obviously a certain rootlessness and lack of human connection.
Having studied the Atlanta Child Murders obsessively I didn't expect to learn a lot from Strand's chapter on the topic. I've collected about a thousand articles on Newspapers.com, sifted through hours of old news reports and watched several documentaries, but Strand provides context and makes connections which are very compelling. The highways carved through Atlanta, displacing and corralling poor black populations, creating the milieu for what followed. It's an infuriating read, but I can tell that Strand did her research.
I mentioned earlier about the suffering of the voiceless, Strand makes the point that after the conviction of Wayne Williams for the murder of two adults (in what was a case of nearly 30 murdered children over the course of two years) the city was ready to move on. "...the Williams conviction allowed the city to refocus blame not on social failings but on a sick individual [...] Most people were eager to put it all behind them, letting the larger forces at work slip into the dark once more." If we can ignore structural problems, we will, especially if those structures are seen as indispensable.
In a country focused on mobility, "progress" and the Devil take the hindmost -- Atlanta is the perfect embodiment of this. "The city too busy to hate" was "the city too busy to care," and in the last fifteen years I've lived here I've often found it to be "the city too busy to think."
If the chapter on Atlanta is enraging, the following chapter on serial killer Roger Reece Kibbe is downright depressing. Strand explores America's obsession with serial killers which took off in the 80's as we turned away from any wise and hard-won pangs of conscience we felt in the 70's and embraced materialism anew. But not all victims or their killers proved worthy of our attention. Killers like Kibbe, Lucas, Bonin and others who prowled the freeways are virtually unknown, while the "dashing" Bundy was practically celebrated:
Like the highways and their soulless sprawlscape of big-box stores, parking lots, strip malls, and ground cover, highway killers have become a part of life in America—one that is ugly, unpleasant, and no fun to think about. It’s much more fun to ignore them in favor of their glamorous fictional counterparts. The nation adores Hannibal Lecter, not Roger Kibbe.
Below the fold killers and throwaway victims...
America came to see the serial killer as "mobile" -- but this was an exception, not the rule when it came to serial murder. This would seem to be a knock against Strand's own thesis, but our fears of the highways were manipulated, as were our hopes for the promise of the highways decades before. It's not that killers were more mobile -- it's what the highways did to the most vulnerable of society in terms of displacement, destabilized families and anonymity.
The penultimate chapter on trucker serial killers is one of the most interesting. Her thesis is that the trucking industry attracts, perhaps in some rare cases even creates serial killers by bringing out those tendencies which wouldn't otherwise emerge. I especially liked the theories about how certain spaces create crime, and how truck stops have all the right ingredients. Strand acknowledges that most truckers aren't criminals of course, while discussing the grueling aspect of the job which is lonely, stressful and destructive to physical and mental health.
The final chapter shows how the spread of mobility and growth in developing countries has led to a rise in serial murder, particularly in the crime-riddled Juarez. At one point she throws this at us; The widely accepted consensus is that development decreases homicide -- up to a point. That point is the point of extreme income inequality. When income disparity creates an underclass, homicide rates begin to rise again... I cannot help but think of American Millennials, indebted, unable to build wealth, buy homes or start families -- the term "underclass" gets thrown around a lot. If there's further disinvestment in social spending and police are stretched thin, we could see serial murder rise again here at home. America seems to be in a managed decline, so I don't doubt it.
August 4, 2016
I'm not alone in being hypnotized by "Riders on the Storm" (spooky piano rain by Ray Manzarek), thrilled by Badlands and Silence of the Lambs, wildly entertained by Freeway and the dark fiction of James Ellroy. (However, I may be alone in actually enjoying The Hitcher with C. Thomas Howell, Rutger Hauer and an ominous soundtrack by Mark Isham.) I moved to Chicago not long after evil clown John Wayne Gacy had been sentenced to death, and was there during the years of Larry Eyler and Jeffrey Dahmer. I was a fan of Dennis Cooper's early poetry and fiction (but lost interest as the boy-killer obsession repeated itself).
All of this may explain the impulse that led me to buy this book yesterday at Green Apple. Maybe I was hoping for something in the mood of Morrison's HWY: An American Pastoral.
Unfortunately, Killer on the Road doesn't live up to its precedents. Ginger Strand builds a mildly interesting case around the connection between serial killers and the US interstate system, a connection she undermines 3/4 way through.
In fact there's not much depth to any of the tales. I'd guess true crime fans (which despite my list above, I am not*) would be disappointed with the cursory details of America's worst. The stories are interspersed with an equally cursory history of the Eisenhower's autobahn. The most informative chapter is on truck drivers. "It seems our interstate highway system has become our Whitechapel, with truckers its roving rippers." But these killers are not the dashing psychopaths beloved of pulp and screen. They're mostly loners and losers, as are their victims – truck stop prostitutes, aka "lot lizards." Grim.
Strand concludes with a rushed chapter on the globalization of serial killing in Mexico, India and China. "Where economic development and modernization go, serial killing frequently follows." As do ten thousand other things. This isn't 2666.
______________
* Exception. One of the most unsettling essays I read last year was titled I Met A Convicted Serial Killer, And He Made Me Feel More Loved Than Anyone Else In My Life, by Jay Roberts. Brilliant.
All of this may explain the impulse that led me to buy this book yesterday at Green Apple. Maybe I was hoping for something in the mood of Morrison's HWY: An American Pastoral.
Unfortunately, Killer on the Road doesn't live up to its precedents. Ginger Strand builds a mildly interesting case around the connection between serial killers and the US interstate system, a connection she undermines 3/4 way through.
The nation had created a panic over mobile serial killers. But the most-talked-about-killers – John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Son of Sam, even Ted Bundy – were mostly geographically focused. With the exception of Bundy, they weren't mobile at all.That isn't quite true: Dahmer preyed in Chicago and lived in Milwaukee. Andrew Cunanan gets no mention at all.
In fact there's not much depth to any of the tales. I'd guess true crime fans (which despite my list above, I am not*) would be disappointed with the cursory details of America's worst. The stories are interspersed with an equally cursory history of the Eisenhower's autobahn. The most informative chapter is on truck drivers. "It seems our interstate highway system has become our Whitechapel, with truckers its roving rippers." But these killers are not the dashing psychopaths beloved of pulp and screen. They're mostly loners and losers, as are their victims – truck stop prostitutes, aka "lot lizards." Grim.
Strand concludes with a rushed chapter on the globalization of serial killing in Mexico, India and China. "Where economic development and modernization go, serial killing frequently follows." As do ten thousand other things. This isn't 2666.
______________
* Exception. One of the most unsettling essays I read last year was titled I Met A Convicted Serial Killer, And He Made Me Feel More Loved Than Anyone Else In My Life, by Jay Roberts. Brilliant.
Read
June 21, 2021DNF
The premise of this book seems to be that Americans fear the interstate highway system, so let’s look at which famous serial killers actually used it.
I thought the book was going to be about how lack of inter-agency and inter-state law enforcement cooperation made it easier for serial killers to escape justice by crossing jurisdictions via the highway.
It’s not. And that’s not the book’s fault, so I’m not rating it.
As someone who doesn’t fear the highway system (is that really A Thing?), I didn’t need to be reassured that most serial killers don’t use it, so I took a quick exit.
The premise of this book seems to be that Americans fear the interstate highway system, so let’s look at which famous serial killers actually used it.
I thought the book was going to be about how lack of inter-agency and inter-state law enforcement cooperation made it easier for serial killers to escape justice by crossing jurisdictions via the highway.
It’s not. And that’s not the book’s fault, so I’m not rating it.
As someone who doesn’t fear the highway system (is that really A Thing?), I didn’t need to be reassured that most serial killers don’t use it, so I took a quick exit.
June 19, 2013
I read a review of this book (can't remember where) and thought it sounded intriguing. I'm not a big fan of the true-crime genre, but this really doesn't fall into that category. Starting more or less chronologically from the beginnings of the Interstate Highway system, Strand takes actual cases of highway-related violence, and uses them to illustrate how our increased mobility has nurtured an increase in sociopathic and psychopathic crimes.
These crimes aren't just limited to serial killings. She also explores how highway construction has destroyed communities in places like inner-city Atlanta and Juarez, Mexico and contributed to their poverty, racial segregation and income inequality. She doesn't mention my own city of Austin, but we have a prime example in IH35, which has long divided the city by race and class.
Strand writes thoughtfully on this topic without being too heavy-handed. I've always admired the Interstate Highway system and from childhood was fascinated with which roads linked up varoius cities. I'll never look at a map of that system in the same way again. And I'll have a very different outlook the next time I take a long road trip, that's for sure.
I might look into some of the other titles from the Discovering America series by the University of Texas Press. If they are all as well-written as this one, they should be worth it.
These crimes aren't just limited to serial killings. She also explores how highway construction has destroyed communities in places like inner-city Atlanta and Juarez, Mexico and contributed to their poverty, racial segregation and income inequality. She doesn't mention my own city of Austin, but we have a prime example in IH35, which has long divided the city by race and class.
Strand writes thoughtfully on this topic without being too heavy-handed. I've always admired the Interstate Highway system and from childhood was fascinated with which roads linked up varoius cities. I'll never look at a map of that system in the same way again. And I'll have a very different outlook the next time I take a long road trip, that's for sure.
I might look into some of the other titles from the Discovering America series by the University of Texas Press. If they are all as well-written as this one, they should be worth it.
February 20, 2016
This was a good read, analyzing the way the changing American landscape changes the crimes being committed there. The author writes pretty well and the book moves right along. This was a little more about the history of the interstate highways than it is about the crimes; she picked out just a few representative cases, talking about why this one came to be iconic in the American imagination while that one was never noticed at all and how the highway system made it possible for the killers discussed to do what they did. Very interestingly, she also discussed how similar changes in other countries are causing similar changes in the crimes committed around the world. Well worth your time if you are interested in social change, American history, or serial murder.
June 8, 2021
Subject would've been more interesting if not written like a college essay. A lot of history, a lot of serial killers clumped up that have nothing in common besides using a car and driving it. A point has been made about truck drivers that could be used better to emphasize the point of this book, but it also didn't carry the desired message. Overall - boring and doesn't give any new insights into the subject. Two stars because author didn't make up facts and stuck to what is known and confirmed.
June 1, 2019
"Killers on the Road" is yet another example in that unfortunate category of "an interesting premise squandered in the hands of the wrong writer." The premise of the book is that the rise of the serial killer paralleled the rise of the interstate highway system. The automobile and interstate highway system allowed Americans to move about the country with freedom and speed that would have been almost unimaginable to the previous generation.
Unfortunately, Strand can barely keep the wheels on the road. The book reads more like a screed against highways and the urban renewal efforts that remade many cities in the 70s than a book on killers wandering the highways. The lack of focus on the original premise gets worse as the book proceeds. The author spends pages going on and on about the child murders in Atlanta and the young women murders of Juarez in the 90s which have almost nothing to do with highways. In contrast, she makes passing mention to the 3 men independently killing along California highways that were thought to be a single freeway killer.
It'd be great to see a more capable author take a pass at this subject. I'm not sure how this one even made it past an editor.
Unfortunately, Strand can barely keep the wheels on the road. The book reads more like a screed against highways and the urban renewal efforts that remade many cities in the 70s than a book on killers wandering the highways. The lack of focus on the original premise gets worse as the book proceeds. The author spends pages going on and on about the child murders in Atlanta and the young women murders of Juarez in the 90s which have almost nothing to do with highways. In contrast, she makes passing mention to the 3 men independently killing along California highways that were thought to be a single freeway killer.
It'd be great to see a more capable author take a pass at this subject. I'm not sure how this one even made it past an editor.
November 17, 2023
True Crime Tales Built on a Writer's Intriguing Thesis
Just how dangerous is America's sprawling network of highways, beyond the annual reports summing up deaths and injuries in accidents involving motor vehicles? Well, if those annual statistics weren't enough to make you nervous about long-range driving, then read Ginger Strand's book in which she argues that many serial killers are especially drawn to our highway system—and, in fact, at least some long-haul truckers wind up becoming serial killers because of the strains of the open road.
What!?!
I know. I know. Anyone who knows truckers—and our extended circle of family and friends includes truckers—will object loudly the moment they realize the case Strand is making. At one point, she writes, "at least 25 former truckers are serving time in America's prisons for serial murder."
If you do the math based on data from the American Trucking Association, that means the rate of serial killers behind the wheel of big trucks is 0.000007 percent—and that's 5 zeroes before that 7 pops up. In other words, it's a minuscule number of grisly aberrations among these hard-working men and women who are the life's blood of our economy. As a point of comparison, I can't even begin to calculate the percentages of serial killers among America's doctors, nurses, school teachers, auto workers, etc. But, trust me as a journalist: Strand's case is full of big holes.
As a lifelong journalist, this book simply doesn't pass my Common-Sense-O-Meter. After reading her book and giving her case a careful consideration, I do not think she has made solid sense of one of her most basic arguments in this book.
Nevertheless, she paints a very creepy picture of truckers, rest stops and prostitutes who frequent places where truckers stop along the road. Overall, she tries to make her case more through the emotion of her narration than any serious science.
Of course, this idea already has appealed to lots of other creative people. For example, I'm a life-long fan of James Ellroy, who specializes in hard-boiled fiction "torn from the headlines" and who wrote a novel of the same title, Killer on the Road, back in the 1980s based loosely on the infamous Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris case. (In her book, by the way, Strand never mentions those killers or Ellroy.)
Strand is much more interested in Charles Starkweather, whose case runs throughout her book. And, of course, that powerful narrative also attracted director Terrence Malick and actors Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek to make Badlands in 1973. Bruce Springsteen sang about Starkweather in 1973's haunting Nebraska.
In other words, the basic tales woven through Strand's book already have been explored elsewhere by other writers and artists. Her main innovation in this book is her argument that America's vast network of interstates somehow is driving many serial killers in both literal and emotional ways. And, given that she's not a scientist, this book becomes more of a magazine-style meditation on a thesis rather than convincing data.
If you enjoy creepy true-crime reading, you might give this book more stars. But for me, I felt disappointed and eventually felt I was wasting my time.
Just how dangerous is America's sprawling network of highways, beyond the annual reports summing up deaths and injuries in accidents involving motor vehicles? Well, if those annual statistics weren't enough to make you nervous about long-range driving, then read Ginger Strand's book in which she argues that many serial killers are especially drawn to our highway system—and, in fact, at least some long-haul truckers wind up becoming serial killers because of the strains of the open road.
What!?!
I know. I know. Anyone who knows truckers—and our extended circle of family and friends includes truckers—will object loudly the moment they realize the case Strand is making. At one point, she writes, "at least 25 former truckers are serving time in America's prisons for serial murder."
If you do the math based on data from the American Trucking Association, that means the rate of serial killers behind the wheel of big trucks is 0.000007 percent—and that's 5 zeroes before that 7 pops up. In other words, it's a minuscule number of grisly aberrations among these hard-working men and women who are the life's blood of our economy. As a point of comparison, I can't even begin to calculate the percentages of serial killers among America's doctors, nurses, school teachers, auto workers, etc. But, trust me as a journalist: Strand's case is full of big holes.
As a lifelong journalist, this book simply doesn't pass my Common-Sense-O-Meter. After reading her book and giving her case a careful consideration, I do not think she has made solid sense of one of her most basic arguments in this book.
Nevertheless, she paints a very creepy picture of truckers, rest stops and prostitutes who frequent places where truckers stop along the road. Overall, she tries to make her case more through the emotion of her narration than any serious science.
Of course, this idea already has appealed to lots of other creative people. For example, I'm a life-long fan of James Ellroy, who specializes in hard-boiled fiction "torn from the headlines" and who wrote a novel of the same title, Killer on the Road, back in the 1980s based loosely on the infamous Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris case. (In her book, by the way, Strand never mentions those killers or Ellroy.)
Strand is much more interested in Charles Starkweather, whose case runs throughout her book. And, of course, that powerful narrative also attracted director Terrence Malick and actors Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek to make Badlands in 1973. Bruce Springsteen sang about Starkweather in 1973's haunting Nebraska.
In other words, the basic tales woven through Strand's book already have been explored elsewhere by other writers and artists. Her main innovation in this book is her argument that America's vast network of interstates somehow is driving many serial killers in both literal and emotional ways. And, given that she's not a scientist, this book becomes more of a magazine-style meditation on a thesis rather than convincing data.
If you enjoy creepy true-crime reading, you might give this book more stars. But for me, I felt disappointed and eventually felt I was wasting my time.
May 25, 2020
Review title: Numbered for the bottom
By a happy catholic coincidence, two books on my wish list that were both in stock at my local Half Price Books fit together so perfectly that I read and reviewed them together.
First is Ginger Strand's history of violence along America's highways, which she begins with Charles Starkweather's 1950s killing spree across two states. His pointed, poignant, prophetic, and self-fulfilled assessment of his life situation that I have borrowed for my review title is quoted by Strand on p. 22 as she frames her retelling of the Starkweather story within the cultural, economic, and ultimately political context of the Interstate Highway System that was debated and began building at the same time. While Charles and his young teenage girlfriend (Sissy Spacek to Martin Sheen's Starkweather in the movie version Badlands) killed their 11 victims on the two lane roads of Nebraska (the title of Springsteen's song retelling) and Wyoming, the question then debated in the newspapers and researched by Strand here is whether Starkweather's rootlessness was rooted in the unique dangers of teen life of the time: the violent comics twisting young minds, James Dean's teen angst dividing generations, the Cold War seemingly lost to Russia's Sputnik, and most telling of all, the new mobility of the automobile culture and the new superhighway spans of concrete that delivered that heady cocktail of speed with anonymity.
Strand progresses through the rest of the 20th century devoting each chapter to a new decade and a new cause--or symptom--of this killer-on-the-road mentality: hitchhiking in the 60s (with hitchhikers as both killers but increasingly victims), inner-city community destruction by road construction in the 70s, the mobile "serial killer" (a new term coined for the decade) who found his victims and committed his crimes along interstate exits and roadsides in the 80s and 90s, and finally the morally ambiguous murders of truckstop prostitutes: sure they didn't really deserve to die in such horrible ways, but just as surely society can't be blamed for their bad choices--or can it? Strand tackles the question of cause or symptom as she provides statistics on highway construction, crime patterns, criminal justice techniques and tactics, and economic and cultural factors like poverty and community. Did the American dream of car ownership and the mobility of interstate highway lead to the rise of the killer on the road?
When Strand asked if truckers are mentally predisposed to the profession as sociopaths or physically propelled to become sociopaths by their experience in the profession, I turned to The Long Haul, Finn Murphy's funny, thoughtful, and fascinating memoir of a trucker. Murphy--yes he is 100% Irish as the first name suggests and yes he tackles Strand's question head on--is a college dropout who became a long haul mover and admits that he got into the profession because of his personality that might be termed sociopathic:
But despite his personality truck driving did not turn Murphy into a serial killer. Far from it in fact. He is smart, funny, articulate, well-read, listens to NPR (as do many long haul truckers, surprisingly, because there is always an NPR station in range on the dial as they travel cross country)--and doesn't listen to country music. He also isn't a freight hauler but drives a moving van, early on for one of the major moving company franchises and later, after returning to the business after years away as an older and possibly wiser man, for a high end corporate moving company. We learn that in the world of trucking and truck stops this makes him a pariah, looked down on by freight drivers in ways that play out on the road, on the two-way radio chatter, and even in service at the truck stop. Not to worry though, reports Murphy, as he describes the economics of his business that make him more money than the freight haulers even as he refutes the myth of the free-ranging "modern cowboy" truck drivers driven to hard choices (lower income or insane workload) by the stresses of the deregulated trucking industry of recent decades.
Murphy puts his personality and intelligence to good use as he describes how the long haul mover must not just drive the truck but load and unload it, pack and unpack the furniture and move it into the new house, and work closely with the "shipper" who is moving at a time when that person is usually not at their best because of the pressures of the career, family, and financial pressures that typically go with cross-country moves.
Some of his best stories describe those who treat the "movers" (as a class and not by personal names, a pet peeve of Murphy's) as second-class or invisible, and the occasional happy stories of shippers who break the mold.
As a memoir, Murphy's doesn't directly address Strand's academic questions although his anecdotes and descriptions of live on the highway and at the truckstop corroborate Strand's observations and statistics. He doesn't include an index, while Strand includes both an index, sources by chapter and footnoting of specific quotes and statistical references. Strand is insightful and thought-provoking, Murphy is thought-provoking and funny. Both are good writers with tight prose, which is pleasant to read and often conspicuous by its absence in both the academic and memoir genres, and deserve to be read and shelved in your collection together. They will go on my shelf next to The Big Roads, a recent history of the Interstate Highway System which is a good foundational text to start on the topic.
By a happy catholic coincidence, two books on my wish list that were both in stock at my local Half Price Books fit together so perfectly that I read and reviewed them together.
First is Ginger Strand's history of violence along America's highways, which she begins with Charles Starkweather's 1950s killing spree across two states. His pointed, poignant, prophetic, and self-fulfilled assessment of his life situation that I have borrowed for my review title is quoted by Strand on p. 22 as she frames her retelling of the Starkweather story within the cultural, economic, and ultimately political context of the Interstate Highway System that was debated and began building at the same time. While Charles and his young teenage girlfriend (Sissy Spacek to Martin Sheen's Starkweather in the movie version Badlands) killed their 11 victims on the two lane roads of Nebraska (the title of Springsteen's song retelling) and Wyoming, the question then debated in the newspapers and researched by Strand here is whether Starkweather's rootlessness was rooted in the unique dangers of teen life of the time: the violent comics twisting young minds, James Dean's teen angst dividing generations, the Cold War seemingly lost to Russia's Sputnik, and most telling of all, the new mobility of the automobile culture and the new superhighway spans of concrete that delivered that heady cocktail of speed with anonymity.
Strand progresses through the rest of the 20th century devoting each chapter to a new decade and a new cause--or symptom--of this killer-on-the-road mentality: hitchhiking in the 60s (with hitchhikers as both killers but increasingly victims), inner-city community destruction by road construction in the 70s, the mobile "serial killer" (a new term coined for the decade) who found his victims and committed his crimes along interstate exits and roadsides in the 80s and 90s, and finally the morally ambiguous murders of truckstop prostitutes: sure they didn't really deserve to die in such horrible ways, but just as surely society can't be blamed for their bad choices--or can it? Strand tackles the question of cause or symptom as she provides statistics on highway construction, crime patterns, criminal justice techniques and tactics, and economic and cultural factors like poverty and community. Did the American dream of car ownership and the mobility of interstate highway lead to the rise of the killer on the road?
Those devalued lives, like the truckers’, are unimaginable outside the landscapes highway federalism built: the anonymous world of exit ramps, right-of-ways, and travel plazas Where places are numbers, people are anonymous, and human interaction is entirely mediated by commerce. Lot lizards [truck-stop prostitutes] are the by-products of a global economy built on the easy flow of cheap goods and cheap labor, people numbered for the bottom in a world that has grown comfortable assigning dollar values to human beings. When they are discovered in truck stop dumpsters, or discarded like litter in the interstate right-of-way, their relative value is being totted up. (p. 200)
When Strand asked if truckers are mentally predisposed to the profession as sociopaths or physically propelled to become sociopaths by their experience in the profession, I turned to The Long Haul, Finn Murphy's funny, thoughtful, and fascinating memoir of a trucker. Murphy--yes he is 100% Irish as the first name suggests and yes he tackles Strand's question head on--is a college dropout who became a long haul mover and admits that he got into the profession because of his personality that might be termed sociopathic:
They say a well-balanced Irishman is a man with a chip on both shoulders. . . . what I had in abundance, was anger. I had it when I started out as a mover and I had it when I became a driver. I had brilliantly managed to select a career where frustration was the norm. That allowed me to to justify remaining angry all the time. The truck broke down, the traffic sucked, my helpers were lazy, the shippers were paranoid, and my van line exploited me. In my rare leisure moments, which mostly took place in pool halls and truckstops, everyone around me was angry too. Something didn’t feel right about that but as long as I had loads I didn’t have to think about it. I’d been angry so long I didn’t know how to feel any other way. (P. 81)
But despite his personality truck driving did not turn Murphy into a serial killer. Far from it in fact. He is smart, funny, articulate, well-read, listens to NPR (as do many long haul truckers, surprisingly, because there is always an NPR station in range on the dial as they travel cross country)--and doesn't listen to country music. He also isn't a freight hauler but drives a moving van, early on for one of the major moving company franchises and later, after returning to the business after years away as an older and possibly wiser man, for a high end corporate moving company. We learn that in the world of trucking and truck stops this makes him a pariah, looked down on by freight drivers in ways that play out on the road, on the two-way radio chatter, and even in service at the truck stop. Not to worry though, reports Murphy, as he describes the economics of his business that make him more money than the freight haulers even as he refutes the myth of the free-ranging "modern cowboy" truck drivers driven to hard choices (lower income or insane workload) by the stresses of the deregulated trucking industry of recent decades.
Murphy puts his personality and intelligence to good use as he describes how the long haul mover must not just drive the truck but load and unload it, pack and unpack the furniture and move it into the new house, and work closely with the "shipper" who is moving at a time when that person is usually not at their best because of the pressures of the career, family, and financial pressures that typically go with cross-country moves.
I try to keep things smooth and easygoing. This is partly selfish, partly pride, and partly compassion. It’s selfish because all of my workdays are hard days, usually a minimum of twelve hours doing physical work--and I don’t need mental stress on top of that. It’s pride because I know what I’m doing; managing a large move has a lot of interrelated parts, and all the components need to come together at the right time. And it’s compassion because I understand that people’s identity and security get unhinged by moving. I’ve worked long and hard to refine my conduct in order to put shippers at their case, and yet after three thousand or so moves, I’m resigned to the reality that movers are widely viewed as antagonists. P. 128
Some of his best stories describe those who treat the "movers" (as a class and not by personal names, a pet peeve of Murphy's) as second-class or invisible, and the occasional happy stories of shippers who break the mold.
As a memoir, Murphy's doesn't directly address Strand's academic questions although his anecdotes and descriptions of live on the highway and at the truckstop corroborate Strand's observations and statistics. He doesn't include an index, while Strand includes both an index, sources by chapter and footnoting of specific quotes and statistical references. Strand is insightful and thought-provoking, Murphy is thought-provoking and funny. Both are good writers with tight prose, which is pleasant to read and often conspicuous by its absence in both the academic and memoir genres, and deserve to be read and shelved in your collection together. They will go on my shelf next to The Big Roads, a recent history of the Interstate Highway System which is a good foundational text to start on the topic.
September 24, 2012
A really interesting and somewhat chilling book about the connections between the U.S. interstate highway system and violence, particularly serial killings. Some of the sociological and cultural connections made between the highways and some of the more infamous serial killers in U.S. history struck me as a bit thin when they veered much beyond the convenience of highways as places to find victims or make a getaway, but it was a fascinating attempt. The latter part of the book, that deals largely with truck drivers, prostitutes and truck stops was particularly creepy. The statistics invoked about the number of murders of prostitutes at truck stops were gut wrenching. The book seems like it was written by an academic, but by one of the all too few who can actually string together sentences and paragraphs and chapters in a way that is a joy to read.
January 2, 2016
I thought this was well-researched and fairly well-written, although it's beyond obvious that many of the chapters should be their own books. Strand does a decent job of intermingling the stories of highway violence and serial killers with the growth of the interstate system without straying into overblown descriptions of said violence. Each chapter touches on a topic that wider-reaching than one could address in a single chapter, and it's too her credit that she is both focused enough to tell most of each story, while not losing sight of the larger cultural picture.
February 7, 2019
I absolutely love Ginger Strand. I can't think of another contemporary writer of non-fiction who is able to weave so many threads of humanity together to paint a picture larger than you imagined could be painted. I'd always been fascinated by Niagara Falls but could never explain why. Even after visiting and experiencing this strange version of Wall Drug meets Walt Disney meets Family Vegas I couldn't figure out was so compelling to me. It wasn't until I read Strand's book Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power and Lies that I was able to put the pieces together. From the physical geography to the first exploiters of the physical geography, from Olmstead's design to Hooker Chemical's disaster, from Annie Edison to the Red Hat Society, she was able to thread this tapestry of the WHY on seventeen-thousand interconnected high-rise levels. Admittedly I was hoping she'd devote cavernous space to the daredevils, but instead she taught me how the daredevils are a symptom of the socio-economic tumult of certain generations. She's an incredible writer.
When I learned she'd turned her typewriter toward true crime vis-a-vis the American Interstate system I couldn't wait to dive in. I should have known, though, that this wouldn't be a simple true crime exploration peppered with highway maps. Instead, she conjures a complicated and fascinating history of post-WWII America that is as real as anything to anyone who has ever used an automobile to get from one place to another. The lure and fear of the open road is most definitely a tired trope at this point, but Strand is able to deftly explain the wherefore by reminding us that the Interstate System was initially presented as a gleaming symbol of American ingenuity, the modern version of manifest destiny, the spoils of kicking the globe's ass in the '40s. She whomps you upside the head with the history of the auto industry and how it intertwined with the Interstate development as part of the larger (and ultimately proven false) post-war endless growth model. And then she stabs you in the stomach with the inevitable result of endless growth, the horrific way the Interstate system was used to create and then liquidate the urban ghettos, to divide and carve up the natural way humans organize themselves civilly. Finally, she shows how the American Interstate model is being replicated globally now, with similar horrific results. And all the while, she crochets these rich true crime stories, both the psychotic serial killers you've heard about but even more interestingly the sociopathsic serial killers you haven't.
Ginger Strand's 'Killer on the Road' is an ingenious and encyclopedic snap of our country and how we've evolved and devolved since the end of WWII. It will appeal to true crime buffs, students of history, and anyone interested in socio-economic matters. It will also appeal to anyone who has ever found themselves barreling down a highway with music blaring under dark of night, contemplating how they got there, how it's even possible to drive coast-to-coast in relative anonymity. The duality of freedom and fear in a rich tapestry of WHY.
When I learned she'd turned her typewriter toward true crime vis-a-vis the American Interstate system I couldn't wait to dive in. I should have known, though, that this wouldn't be a simple true crime exploration peppered with highway maps. Instead, she conjures a complicated and fascinating history of post-WWII America that is as real as anything to anyone who has ever used an automobile to get from one place to another. The lure and fear of the open road is most definitely a tired trope at this point, but Strand is able to deftly explain the wherefore by reminding us that the Interstate System was initially presented as a gleaming symbol of American ingenuity, the modern version of manifest destiny, the spoils of kicking the globe's ass in the '40s. She whomps you upside the head with the history of the auto industry and how it intertwined with the Interstate development as part of the larger (and ultimately proven false) post-war endless growth model. And then she stabs you in the stomach with the inevitable result of endless growth, the horrific way the Interstate system was used to create and then liquidate the urban ghettos, to divide and carve up the natural way humans organize themselves civilly. Finally, she shows how the American Interstate model is being replicated globally now, with similar horrific results. And all the while, she crochets these rich true crime stories, both the psychotic serial killers you've heard about but even more interestingly the sociopathsic serial killers you haven't.
Ginger Strand's 'Killer on the Road' is an ingenious and encyclopedic snap of our country and how we've evolved and devolved since the end of WWII. It will appeal to true crime buffs, students of history, and anyone interested in socio-economic matters. It will also appeal to anyone who has ever found themselves barreling down a highway with music blaring under dark of night, contemplating how they got there, how it's even possible to drive coast-to-coast in relative anonymity. The duality of freedom and fear in a rich tapestry of WHY.
December 31, 2020
So this book is about interstate highways and serial killers and the horrible ways in which they combine. Reading it was acutely unpleasant, because Strand shows so clearly how the interstates got us to where we are today, in the collision of climate change and consumer capitalism, with urban sprawl and the ghetto-ization of minority communities, and all the other terrible effects the interstates have had on America and American culture. And, as Strand notices, the interstates and the serial killers spread hand in hand. She talks about Charles Starkweather, Ed Kemper, Wayne Williams (or the Atlanta child murders, since it looks pretty clear that Williams was not responsible for all of them, or even most of them), Roger Reece Kibbe and a bunch of other highway serial killers you've never heard of, the phenomenon of the long-haul trucker/serial killer, and she finishes by talking about Juarez and Mexican modernization and the creepy correlation between a nation's highways and its murders.
Strand suffers from the true crime writer's weird compulsion to distance herself from the people who are interested in her subject matter (true crime writers seem to believe that their audience's interest is low brow, vulgar, and vaguely distasteful, while their OWN interest is, you know, none of those things) and I caught her out on some minor factual things, but she writes well and deals with her material cogently. Her argument is both horrifying and persuasive.
Strand suffers from the true crime writer's weird compulsion to distance herself from the people who are interested in her subject matter (true crime writers seem to believe that their audience's interest is low brow, vulgar, and vaguely distasteful, while their OWN interest is, you know, none of those things) and I caught her out on some minor factual things, but she writes well and deals with her material cogently. Her argument is both horrifying and persuasive.
April 24, 2023
man door hand hook car door?
yeah. man door hand hook car door!
This story is half true crime accounts from the past 70 years of American history, but specifically following criminals that utilized the interstate highway systems in their killings. The other half of the book makes the case that the highways actually cultivated the social and economic mindset these sorts of killers wouldn't have had otherwise. That by building highways America ensured anonymity and the chance to get away fast if needed. As someone who doesn't love true crime books too much this was a good balance for me. I think the author did do a good job of following the changing perspectives on the highway system over time, starting with blind optimism, tracking its affect on city centers (causing white flight to the suburbs), and into the modern day fear/disdain towards highways.
yeah. man door hand hook car door!
This story is half true crime accounts from the past 70 years of American history, but specifically following criminals that utilized the interstate highway systems in their killings. The other half of the book makes the case that the highways actually cultivated the social and economic mindset these sorts of killers wouldn't have had otherwise. That by building highways America ensured anonymity and the chance to get away fast if needed. As someone who doesn't love true crime books too much this was a good balance for me. I think the author did do a good job of following the changing perspectives on the highway system over time, starting with blind optimism, tracking its affect on city centers (causing white flight to the suburbs), and into the modern day fear/disdain towards highways.
September 22, 2015
Review originally appeared at http://tonyatawana.typepad.com/books_/
Got this one from the library as an e-book. Heard about it from a book podcast I listen to and just decided, "I gotta read this one!" and luckily, fate agreed by having it at my little local library in ebook form! (I love our local library, but that's a post for another day!)
The first thing that I should point out about Killer on the Road is that it is a history heavy book, but not in a bad way. It's a short book, a book you can read in a day or so (it took me about a day and a half). I was reading it any time I had a second-- such are the joys when you have a good book on your phone-- because I found it a compelling read.
Strand lays the book out in a chronological fashion which makes sense when dealing with this particular subject matter. Beginning with the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950's, the author takes a close look at some of the myths about highway killers (for one, in the past most serial killers were not so mobile as people imagined) and the reality of how the interstate system changed America and altered patterns of trade, travel, and media.
The author begins with the construction of the Interstates, moves through the murders of Charles Starkweather, the Atlanta Child Murders, Ted Bundy, and comes into our modern day issue-- namely, that in the last 30 years, over 500 bodies and remains have been found along the interstate system. These cases are unsolved murders, largely of women who were prostitutes, and while there has been some progress made (a man named Bruce Mendenhall was convicted as the Rest Stop Killer for a murder outside Nashville and will likely be tried for several other murders as well) there is something inherently wrong with a system that creates and atmosphere where 500 lives are lost and the killers are virtually untraceable.
Strand does an excellent job pointing out some of the issues with Interstates. For example, she does a great job of explaining how putting interstates through major metropolitan areas was a way to ghetto-ize the poor and minorities of those cities. By running major roadways through poor neighborhoods, this allowed the poorest and most vulnerable to be placed in projects. I never considered the inherent racism that would come from the construction of these roadways, but Strand makes a compelling case-- in particular in the chapter where she talks about the Atlanta Child Murders.
Another issue that Strand really excels at is pointing out that while the FBI was raising alarm in the 60's and 70's trying to warn of killers on the road and the danger of hitchhiking they really were, in many ways, crying wolf. There was absolutely no statistical data that supported the idea that the roads were filled with danger. However, as we reach the last thirty years and see the bar lowered repeatedly on the sorts of people who are trained to be truckers the instances of murders begins to rise.
Strand points out that the truckers who commit these crimes are different than killers like Bundy. They aren't easily classified and are perhaps even encouraged into this sort of behavior by the unhealthy aspects of the job. Often being committed of a crime will not bar you from employment as a trucker, the wages are lousy, truckers are exploited by the companies who train and hire them. Trucking isn't the sort of work it once was-- that had rigorous standards for drivers and paid them well.
Strand points out that not only is it hard, depressing, and lonely work, but it's work that is not supported by anything resembling a healthy lifestyle. Truck stops often have unhealthy food, no avenue for exercise, and are generally places where the worst aspects of modern society (think twinkies and hot dogs and milkshakes all while sitting in a massage chair after hours of sitting and driving) converge into an environment that makes the stress of driving hundreds of miles a day unbearable.
All this is not to say Strand is justifying the spate of modern killings, but she makes a compelling case that the environment which truckers now work is at best unhealthy and at worst, downright deadly. I'm not sure more salad bars at truck stops would stop prostitute murders, but she does make some valid points about the lowering of standards and pay. It's also worth considering that having healthy options for truckers might not stop murders but it might make them more productive and could result in SOME positive change. Certainly, finding out that truckers can have criminal records (even DUIs) doesn't make me feel very good about the state of affairs in the world of trucking.
If you enjoy Criminal Minds, you'd enjoy this book. If you have an interest in the intersection of race, class, and city planning, you also would enjoy this book. I think Killer on the Road is a book that would appeal to many audiences and I would recommend it.
Got this one from the library as an e-book. Heard about it from a book podcast I listen to and just decided, "I gotta read this one!" and luckily, fate agreed by having it at my little local library in ebook form! (I love our local library, but that's a post for another day!)
The first thing that I should point out about Killer on the Road is that it is a history heavy book, but not in a bad way. It's a short book, a book you can read in a day or so (it took me about a day and a half). I was reading it any time I had a second-- such are the joys when you have a good book on your phone-- because I found it a compelling read.
Strand lays the book out in a chronological fashion which makes sense when dealing with this particular subject matter. Beginning with the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950's, the author takes a close look at some of the myths about highway killers (for one, in the past most serial killers were not so mobile as people imagined) and the reality of how the interstate system changed America and altered patterns of trade, travel, and media.
The author begins with the construction of the Interstates, moves through the murders of Charles Starkweather, the Atlanta Child Murders, Ted Bundy, and comes into our modern day issue-- namely, that in the last 30 years, over 500 bodies and remains have been found along the interstate system. These cases are unsolved murders, largely of women who were prostitutes, and while there has been some progress made (a man named Bruce Mendenhall was convicted as the Rest Stop Killer for a murder outside Nashville and will likely be tried for several other murders as well) there is something inherently wrong with a system that creates and atmosphere where 500 lives are lost and the killers are virtually untraceable.
Strand does an excellent job pointing out some of the issues with Interstates. For example, she does a great job of explaining how putting interstates through major metropolitan areas was a way to ghetto-ize the poor and minorities of those cities. By running major roadways through poor neighborhoods, this allowed the poorest and most vulnerable to be placed in projects. I never considered the inherent racism that would come from the construction of these roadways, but Strand makes a compelling case-- in particular in the chapter where she talks about the Atlanta Child Murders.
Another issue that Strand really excels at is pointing out that while the FBI was raising alarm in the 60's and 70's trying to warn of killers on the road and the danger of hitchhiking they really were, in many ways, crying wolf. There was absolutely no statistical data that supported the idea that the roads were filled with danger. However, as we reach the last thirty years and see the bar lowered repeatedly on the sorts of people who are trained to be truckers the instances of murders begins to rise.
Strand points out that the truckers who commit these crimes are different than killers like Bundy. They aren't easily classified and are perhaps even encouraged into this sort of behavior by the unhealthy aspects of the job. Often being committed of a crime will not bar you from employment as a trucker, the wages are lousy, truckers are exploited by the companies who train and hire them. Trucking isn't the sort of work it once was-- that had rigorous standards for drivers and paid them well.
Strand points out that not only is it hard, depressing, and lonely work, but it's work that is not supported by anything resembling a healthy lifestyle. Truck stops often have unhealthy food, no avenue for exercise, and are generally places where the worst aspects of modern society (think twinkies and hot dogs and milkshakes all while sitting in a massage chair after hours of sitting and driving) converge into an environment that makes the stress of driving hundreds of miles a day unbearable.
All this is not to say Strand is justifying the spate of modern killings, but she makes a compelling case that the environment which truckers now work is at best unhealthy and at worst, downright deadly. I'm not sure more salad bars at truck stops would stop prostitute murders, but she does make some valid points about the lowering of standards and pay. It's also worth considering that having healthy options for truckers might not stop murders but it might make them more productive and could result in SOME positive change. Certainly, finding out that truckers can have criminal records (even DUIs) doesn't make me feel very good about the state of affairs in the world of trucking.
If you enjoy Criminal Minds, you'd enjoy this book. If you have an interest in the intersection of race, class, and city planning, you also would enjoy this book. I think Killer on the Road is a book that would appeal to many audiences and I would recommend it.
February 24, 2013
Serial killers are our modern bogeymen, since the 1950’s not a decade has gone by without the name of a serial killer marking both the literal and psychic landscape, their rage has become our voyeuristic rage. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The highway system is the ligature that connects this country and has hastened the advent of mass travel, communication and delivery of goods across the country, it was proposed and built during Eisenhower administration of the 50’s. Do you see the connection between the rise of era of serial killers and the highway system? Ginger Strand does and in “Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate” she explains that one of the unintended consequences of the highway system was to abet serial killers and isolate the most at risk groups on whom serial killers prey.
Strand juxtaposes the building and expansion of the interstate highway system and some of the more sensational serial killers of the past 50 years and how the interstate system helped in their crimes. Starting in the 1950’s Strand starts with the spree killings of Charles Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugate, who didn’t technically use the interstate system, were the first highly mobile killers, committing their murders and jumping into their car or stealing an available one they would take off on the country roads to their next crime, it was shocking on a number of levels and caught the attention and frightened the nation.
Reading “Killer on the Road” ones become aware of the long litany of names of serial killers that have affected our culture and why. She identifies three reasons the interstate highway system has abetted serial killers in their ability to find victims. The first of course is mobility, for some serial killers it was as easy as getting on the highway and looking for hitchhiker. Wayne Williams, the Atlanta Child Killer, made his escape by being sure he committed his crimes only minutes away from a highway on-ramp and was out of the vicinity of the murder of his victims within minutes of his crimes. The second reason is the placement of the highways. With the rise of desegregation and the civil rights movement the highway system was used as a tool to isolate and close off minority neighborhoods from the rest of the city, black areas that had heretofore been segregated areas became ghettos with the highways virtually walling those areas off. This was not one of the intended goals of the Eisenhower administration but when local politicians and contractors were awarded funding they were also given the ability of placing the highway where they wanted and they used those contracts to their own political goals. The last reason is related to the second, the isolation of different socio-economic groups from each other. With the highways separating the well-off white areas from the poorer black communities, it became easier to not associate with people of a different economic status and that breeds a contempt for those of a “lower status” that goes along with not understanding them as human beings.
Are highways and serial killers America’s final export and westernization of the rest of the world? Since NAFTA was enacted serial killings have risen in Mexico, and now India and China are expanding their highway systems and they too are seeing a rise in serial killers.
“Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate” is not an entertaining read but it is interesting and doesn’t bury you in boring technical details of the planning of the highway system. It also doesn’t glorify the serial killer and their crimes and where possible Ms. Strand recognizes the victims and doesn’t treat them as statistics but as real human beings with names, and lives they wanted to complete.
Strand juxtaposes the building and expansion of the interstate highway system and some of the more sensational serial killers of the past 50 years and how the interstate system helped in their crimes. Starting in the 1950’s Strand starts with the spree killings of Charles Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugate, who didn’t technically use the interstate system, were the first highly mobile killers, committing their murders and jumping into their car or stealing an available one they would take off on the country roads to their next crime, it was shocking on a number of levels and caught the attention and frightened the nation.
Reading “Killer on the Road” ones become aware of the long litany of names of serial killers that have affected our culture and why. She identifies three reasons the interstate highway system has abetted serial killers in their ability to find victims. The first of course is mobility, for some serial killers it was as easy as getting on the highway and looking for hitchhiker. Wayne Williams, the Atlanta Child Killer, made his escape by being sure he committed his crimes only minutes away from a highway on-ramp and was out of the vicinity of the murder of his victims within minutes of his crimes. The second reason is the placement of the highways. With the rise of desegregation and the civil rights movement the highway system was used as a tool to isolate and close off minority neighborhoods from the rest of the city, black areas that had heretofore been segregated areas became ghettos with the highways virtually walling those areas off. This was not one of the intended goals of the Eisenhower administration but when local politicians and contractors were awarded funding they were also given the ability of placing the highway where they wanted and they used those contracts to their own political goals. The last reason is related to the second, the isolation of different socio-economic groups from each other. With the highways separating the well-off white areas from the poorer black communities, it became easier to not associate with people of a different economic status and that breeds a contempt for those of a “lower status” that goes along with not understanding them as human beings.
Are highways and serial killers America’s final export and westernization of the rest of the world? Since NAFTA was enacted serial killings have risen in Mexico, and now India and China are expanding their highway systems and they too are seeing a rise in serial killers.
“Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate” is not an entertaining read but it is interesting and doesn’t bury you in boring technical details of the planning of the highway system. It also doesn’t glorify the serial killer and their crimes and where possible Ms. Strand recognizes the victims and doesn’t treat them as statistics but as real human beings with names, and lives they wanted to complete.
December 30, 2019
This book seemed to want to draw a relationship between the advent of the Interstate and serial killers but it didn't quite click with me. There's not much here in the way of criminal forensics or character study. In fact, the murders in this detailed history of the highway system were more distracting than indicative of a pattern. Strand made some interesting observations about the link between race and income disparity and the placement of freeways in neighborhoods. Many of the serial killers were poor and so were many of their victims. Some of the killings described happened within concentrated areas, which kinda blows the theory of them being tied to the presence of Interstate highways. (Highways, perhaps, but the interstate aspect of them is irrelevant.) The first killer described in the book knew most of his victims, so there doesn't appear to be any relationship to highways there at all to either the motivation or opportunity for killing.
Strand observes that prostitutes in truck stops might be safer from being victimized if they were allowed to conduct their business more openly. Part of their vulnerability comes from them being relatively unknown to each other and the people operating the truck stops where they congregate. It's easier to get away with killing someone that no one will miss. The killing of truck stop prostitutes is probably the strongest case the book has for tying the Interstate to serial killers, but Strand does admit that homicide is the number one cause of death for all prostitutes -- and not necessarily by a serial killer. Conversely, Strand also mentions that people who hitchhike on the Interstate have not been documented to have a significantly greater risk of being murdered than the general population.
The premise of the book is intriguing to me and Strand's writing flows, which is pretty remarkable considering how much of it is devoted to the history of building the Interstate. Not exactly a juicy subject but one I might have enjoyed more if it hadn't been interrupted with these brief synopses of killings.
Strand observes that prostitutes in truck stops might be safer from being victimized if they were allowed to conduct their business more openly. Part of their vulnerability comes from them being relatively unknown to each other and the people operating the truck stops where they congregate. It's easier to get away with killing someone that no one will miss. The killing of truck stop prostitutes is probably the strongest case the book has for tying the Interstate to serial killers, but Strand does admit that homicide is the number one cause of death for all prostitutes -- and not necessarily by a serial killer. Conversely, Strand also mentions that people who hitchhike on the Interstate have not been documented to have a significantly greater risk of being murdered than the general population.
The premise of the book is intriguing to me and Strand's writing flows, which is pretty remarkable considering how much of it is devoted to the history of building the Interstate. Not exactly a juicy subject but one I might have enjoyed more if it hadn't been interrupted with these brief synopses of killings.
November 8, 2012
Thie book is absolutely fascinating...it straddles a strange area somewhere that is not quite academic, but more than simply popular history of odd serial killers connected to the US interstate.
While lacking the deep theoretical, referenced and systematic approach of a true academic work - - the book as a whole is seriously thought provoking.
Strand recounts the dramatic social transformation that the development of the interstate system brought, as well as the fears. The highways connected communities like never before and provoked much anxiety about the "unknown" "anonymous" and "uprooted" transient life.
Sound familiar? The parallel is so obvious that she doesn't not event mention the Internet once in the work, something I applaud as a deep respect for the reader. But nevertheless - the book is really a perspective on the modern world of technology, drawing us back historically and pointing to the deep socio-economic impact and motivations of change.
The actual recounting of serial violence is also interesting and there were many cases I had not even known. The human capacity for savagery knows no age.
I highly recommend this book as a great rainy-day read that well seriously stimulate your brain.
While lacking the deep theoretical, referenced and systematic approach of a true academic work - - the book as a whole is seriously thought provoking.
Strand recounts the dramatic social transformation that the development of the interstate system brought, as well as the fears. The highways connected communities like never before and provoked much anxiety about the "unknown" "anonymous" and "uprooted" transient life.
Sound familiar? The parallel is so obvious that she doesn't not event mention the Internet once in the work, something I applaud as a deep respect for the reader. But nevertheless - the book is really a perspective on the modern world of technology, drawing us back historically and pointing to the deep socio-economic impact and motivations of change.
The actual recounting of serial violence is also interesting and there were many cases I had not even known. The human capacity for savagery knows no age.
I highly recommend this book as a great rainy-day read that well seriously stimulate your brain.
May 18, 2014
This is an overview of the construction of the US Interstate system and its link to serial killers who have made national headlines over the past several decades, beginning with Charles Starkweather.
Portraying several of our most infamous serial killers the author describes how the Interstate system destroyed communities and isolated our most vulnerable and "invisible" people. Thus, allowing serial killers to go about doing their thing in obscurity for quite some time before law enforcement, and others, began to notice a pattern to the killings or missing persons.
Early in the book, Ms Strand points out that the Interstate system was a jobs creation program that did little to created jobs, and had very little to do with National Defense. I've read the same before, but it is made abundantly clear here. Also, she does a good job of dispelling the myth that most serial killers use the Interstate to "roam" for victims. If one enjoys this book, I'd also recommend "Divided Highways" by Tom Lewis which is a more detailed look into the creation and design of America's Interstate system.
Portraying several of our most infamous serial killers the author describes how the Interstate system destroyed communities and isolated our most vulnerable and "invisible" people. Thus, allowing serial killers to go about doing their thing in obscurity for quite some time before law enforcement, and others, began to notice a pattern to the killings or missing persons.
Early in the book, Ms Strand points out that the Interstate system was a jobs creation program that did little to created jobs, and had very little to do with National Defense. I've read the same before, but it is made abundantly clear here. Also, she does a good job of dispelling the myth that most serial killers use the Interstate to "roam" for victims. If one enjoys this book, I'd also recommend "Divided Highways" by Tom Lewis which is a more detailed look into the creation and design of America's Interstate system.
July 15, 2012
Still reading this but find it fascinating. I've never read a book that combines a history of the US Interstate system with a socio-cultural analysis of the Interstate's impact on our country cross-referenced with the growth of automobility, Cold War angst, juvenile delinquency, serial killers, and cultural icons like James Dean and Jack Kerouac.
One example among many: in 1963 the California Department of Highways and Santa Fe Railway proposed using 22 nuclear bombs to blast a path through the Bristol Mountains near Amboy, CA., for the nascent I-40.
Crazy, man, crazy!
-------
Now that I'm finished with the book I have to say that it is an excellent read! The author touches on the "Killers on the Road" not in some kind of lurid homage to murder but in the context of how the highway has, perhaps, facilitated such behavior if not created it all together.
It certainly provided me a new perspective on the automobile and its infrastructure and how they have had deep and troubling effects on ourselves. I highly recommend reading this work.
One example among many: in 1963 the California Department of Highways and Santa Fe Railway proposed using 22 nuclear bombs to blast a path through the Bristol Mountains near Amboy, CA., for the nascent I-40.
Crazy, man, crazy!
-------
Now that I'm finished with the book I have to say that it is an excellent read! The author touches on the "Killers on the Road" not in some kind of lurid homage to murder but in the context of how the highway has, perhaps, facilitated such behavior if not created it all together.
It certainly provided me a new perspective on the automobile and its infrastructure and how they have had deep and troubling effects on ourselves. I highly recommend reading this work.
March 4, 2017
Ginger Strand's book is not meant to be an in-depth or salacious study of specific serial killers. Instead, she uses infamous cases to support her thesis that American serial killers are, in large part, driven by a sense of inferiority born of being lower class. The result is that they usually choose victims who are either of the social class one step higher or one step lower than themselves in order to assert control and achieve a sense of superiority. She also posits that the United States Highway system, a means of simultaneous connection and fragmentation, has contributed to the recent increase of unsolved serial killings by giving killers fast and easy access to not only victims but also unlimited dumping grounds for bodies and a quick, untraceable means of escape. She paints serial killers such as Wayne Williams and Charles Starkweather not as isolatos--"individuals who are spiritually isolated or out of sympathy with their times"--but as Gatsby-like products of a society obsessed with image, wealth, status, violence and motion.
July 13, 2014
Other than the misspelling of Ottis Toole, this book is an excellent read. The parallel lines of commerce, loss of individuality, and the inescapable branding of class are present in the narratives of murderers. I appreciate that Strand doesn't reinforce the cult of personality with these truly pathetic forerunners of MRAs. The gender disparity of victim/perpetrator further reinforces the curious definition of equality and to what lengths we will pursue cheap goods.
November 23, 2013
Think Jane Jacobs crossed with Stephen King....this book was a really interesting look at the unintended consequences of large cultural changes and an examination of the ways that the built environment can facilitate certain social behaviors. It seemed a little vague in it's conclusions sometimes, but the overarching theme was very thought provoking.
January 11, 2020
I'm equally excited to read more of these Discovering America niche topic books and Strand's book on the Vonneguts. I love cars, I love driving, I love the open road, and thanks to a childhood of long distance road trips, I have a weirdly patriotic love of interstates. I'm also in the midst of my annual True Crime kick, so obviously this satisfied on that front, too.
I loved this book--academic but readable, deep and broad at once. Strand explores a handful of well-known cases (the Atlanta child murders, Ed Kemper, Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate) and a wealth of topics around them, making connections between American infrastructure and crime. I love Strand's writing, as well--personable and poetic but focused and direct.
"American had undertaken something it didn't understand, but there was no stopping it. The nation was being remade in the name of automobility and the limitless economic growth it promised. Charles Starkweather's violent acting out suggested the disconnection that was the dark side of mobility, and how it might play out for the frustrated and voiceless minority left out of the promised boom. But the nation was in love with movement. It was in love with Elvis Presley's swinging suits and hangdog hair, and with the speed lines and raked tailfins of its cars. It was in love with its new Boeing 707 passenger jets and the rockets that launched its satellites. And it was in love with its interstate highways, roads like I-80, which Lauer Ward helped launch in Nebraska, a ribbon of Portland Cement that would eventually bypass all those small towns that Caril Ann Fugate circled on the map as she and Charles Starkweather passed through, headed toward some dimly imagined Utopia of their own."
And, as someone whose driven cross-country solo and probably spent something like a solid week of my life alone in my car, this chilled me:
"This is the world we have made. It's worth asking what effect it might have on people who spend a long time in it. In the late nineties, an outbreak of interest in 'road rage' and aggressive driving led scientists to research what happens to people at the wheel. Driving, they reported, has psychological--even physiological--effects on drivers. This is your brain on the road: being at the wheel--especially if you are alone--noticeably changes human responses to stimuli. It renders us anonymous and deprives us of verbal interaction, body language, eye contact. Sociologists call this 'asymmetry of communication': we are rendered mute, our identity reduced to a make and model. Frustrated in our innate desire to be perceived as humans, we become paranoid. We attribute hostile motives to oblivious others. How many times have you found yourself screaming something in your car that you couldn't imagine saying to a live human being? Deprived of the human reciprocity we are hardwired to crave, we may begin to see other people as objects. Behind the wheel, we are all psychopaths."
I loved this book--academic but readable, deep and broad at once. Strand explores a handful of well-known cases (the Atlanta child murders, Ed Kemper, Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate) and a wealth of topics around them, making connections between American infrastructure and crime. I love Strand's writing, as well--personable and poetic but focused and direct.
"American had undertaken something it didn't understand, but there was no stopping it. The nation was being remade in the name of automobility and the limitless economic growth it promised. Charles Starkweather's violent acting out suggested the disconnection that was the dark side of mobility, and how it might play out for the frustrated and voiceless minority left out of the promised boom. But the nation was in love with movement. It was in love with Elvis Presley's swinging suits and hangdog hair, and with the speed lines and raked tailfins of its cars. It was in love with its new Boeing 707 passenger jets and the rockets that launched its satellites. And it was in love with its interstate highways, roads like I-80, which Lauer Ward helped launch in Nebraska, a ribbon of Portland Cement that would eventually bypass all those small towns that Caril Ann Fugate circled on the map as she and Charles Starkweather passed through, headed toward some dimly imagined Utopia of their own."
And, as someone whose driven cross-country solo and probably spent something like a solid week of my life alone in my car, this chilled me:
"This is the world we have made. It's worth asking what effect it might have on people who spend a long time in it. In the late nineties, an outbreak of interest in 'road rage' and aggressive driving led scientists to research what happens to people at the wheel. Driving, they reported, has psychological--even physiological--effects on drivers. This is your brain on the road: being at the wheel--especially if you are alone--noticeably changes human responses to stimuli. It renders us anonymous and deprives us of verbal interaction, body language, eye contact. Sociologists call this 'asymmetry of communication': we are rendered mute, our identity reduced to a make and model. Frustrated in our innate desire to be perceived as humans, we become paranoid. We attribute hostile motives to oblivious others. How many times have you found yourself screaming something in your car that you couldn't imagine saying to a live human being? Deprived of the human reciprocity we are hardwired to crave, we may begin to see other people as objects. Behind the wheel, we are all psychopaths."
December 23, 2020
Killer on the Road is a thin little book with a lot packed into it. This book examines the construction of America's interstates and the ways - directly and indirectly - that the highways have led to an increase in violence, particular of the serial killing variety. Despite the fact that Ben mocked me for reading a book about how the highway system came to be, I actually found the book informative, thought provoking and well-written, and the history of the highways was the most interesting to me. (I was most amused by the fact that the PA Turnpike was considered a "dreamway" when it was built and cars waited for hours for the opportunity to drive it. My experiences on this road usually run closer to nightmare than dream, but I guess it was a different world.)
My complaint with Killer centers on the fact that it often had a bit of split personality, frequently feeling like Strand had written two separate books - one on the construction of the interstate and one one serial killers - and smushed them together. In places, particularly the first chapter, this was done exceedingly well, while in others the connection between highways and murder appeared tenuous at best.
I found her last chapter, where Strand examines the correlations between growth in highways and growth in murder rates in developing countries, to be especially intriguing. This book runs the gamut from urbanization and globalization to truck stop prostitution, 1950s' angst over juvenile delinquency and the military-industrial complex of the Cold War era.
My complaint with Killer centers on the fact that it often had a bit of split personality, frequently feeling like Strand had written two separate books - one on the construction of the interstate and one one serial killers - and smushed them together. In places, particularly the first chapter, this was done exceedingly well, while in others the connection between highways and murder appeared tenuous at best.
I found her last chapter, where Strand examines the correlations between growth in highways and growth in murder rates in developing countries, to be especially intriguing. This book runs the gamut from urbanization and globalization to truck stop prostitution, 1950s' angst over juvenile delinquency and the military-industrial complex of the Cold War era.
August 3, 2021
Ginger Strand blends a history of the construction of the interstate highway system with the birth of the modern day serial killer. Charles Starkweather is number one with a bullet. In 1959, the James Dean wannabe killed eleven with his fourteen year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate. They used Highway 87 from Nebraska to Wyoming where they were captured. Chuck was put to death and Fugate was paroled in 1976. Ed Kemper, at six foot nine and 280 pounds was to big to join the police force. Instead, big Ed abducted hitchhikers and took the heads home and befriended local cops. He presently is a guest of Vacaville Prison. Wayne Williams was convicted of two murders and a suspect of twenty-seven more in Atlanta. Many, including James Baldwin, raised serious doubts on the case. Strand calls Ted Bundy the undisputed superstar of all serial killers. I need not add anything to her assessment. One surprise to me was the fact that at least twenty-five truckers were presently in jail for serial killings. The victims are mostly truck stop hookers, or, as Strand calls them, Lot Lizards. They are throwaway people murdered at a rate almost fifty times the rate of the general population. I was familiar with most of the killers and I feel that Strands term "hack writer" to describe Ann Rule was a cheap shot and inaccurate description of the prolific true crime writer. The Stranger Beside Me remains a classic in the genre. Killer on the Road is a decent read.
October 30, 2019
I enjoyed this book, although I'm not sure that I'm 100% behind every argument made. Ginger Strand gives a lot of good information about the development of America's highway system, and it's certainly interesting to think about a time before America had all these sections of concrete dividing our cities and circling around our towns. For someone who grew up with interstate highways, it's almost absurd to conceive of a time they didn't exist. Strand picks prominent killers whose crimes were made possible - or more likely - by the interstates we drive without a thought: Charles Starkweather, Wayne Williams, Ted Bundy, Randall Woodfield, etc., and then uses their stories to illustrate a point about the our highways. I learned a lot about trucking and truck stops, racism and use of roads to divide "good" and "bad" parts of town, the pluses and minuses of progress, and thought a lot about things I used to take for granted. Strand even delves into the impact of highway development in Mexico, China and India. This book is not going to be for everyone. But for the curious, those interested in how modern conveniences can make it easier for murders to find a target, this is a fascinating and nicely written tome.
August 12, 2025
Im glad I read this book, the whole idea of american mobility perpetuating crime is fascinating. I just wish she would have stayed in that lane. The part about Atlanta was great, but didnt this happen in a lot of other major cities as well? Touching briefly on all the cities where interstates destroyed neighborhoods and any subsequent murders directly related to that would have been far more compelling than deep diving Atlanta.
I am not a scholar in any way, but the first thing that comes to mind when I think about crime and freeways, is "getting away." I understand this book had more to do with murder but if the book is going to be classified under Social-Aspects then do the damn thing and tell us how much easier it is to flee the scene with freeways everywhere!!! And maybe a lot less fuckery happened back when getting away wasnt an option? I was really surprised that this angle got zero mention. I liked this book very much.....but there was just too many unnecessary exits. I've seen Silence of the Lambs a million times, I did not need need Strand to quote it. And oh my God it is not a SLASHER film its a PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER!!!
One more thing, Ted Bundy is in this book because why?
I am not a scholar in any way, but the first thing that comes to mind when I think about crime and freeways, is "getting away." I understand this book had more to do with murder but if the book is going to be classified under Social-Aspects then do the damn thing and tell us how much easier it is to flee the scene with freeways everywhere!!! And maybe a lot less fuckery happened back when getting away wasnt an option? I was really surprised that this angle got zero mention. I liked this book very much.....but there was just too many unnecessary exits. I've seen Silence of the Lambs a million times, I did not need need Strand to quote it. And oh my God it is not a SLASHER film its a PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER!!!
One more thing, Ted Bundy is in this book because why?
August 28, 2018
As others have written, not quite what I expected - sort of thought it would be focused primarily on trucking in general and trucker related crimes (which I think was discussed much more thoroughly in the book about the Long Island murders - Lost Girls, I think? Or actually, that may have been a tv show or podcast about those murders...anyway...). As others wrote, just one chapter on truckers. Wasn’t expecting to see Bundy in here, but I suppose it made sense. In that sense, book was definitely simplistic when it came to selecting the serial killers - however, I still found it really interesting and easy to read. That’s part of the downfall - she thanks so many FBI agents, etc but the book is extremely surface and I couldn’t help thinking , all that time interviewing people with so much information for a few sentences that we all know about from watching Mindhunter? However, that does make the book easy to read and digest. The history of the construction of the interstates is really interesting and I placed several books from her bibliography on a “to read” list. Pretty good book.
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