Oregon Public Broadcasting

A Northwest art photographer has spent the last two years of his life capturing images of the places where serial killers dumped their victims.

He traveled California, Washington and Oregon to visit nearly 300 sites. You’ll recognize the names of killers like Ted Bundy or Robert Lee Yates. The victims won’t be as familiar, nor the places they were found.

Richland correspondent Anna King has this artist profile.

In a Pasco art gallery Stephen Chalmers is getting ready for a new showing of his work. He thumbs through his master list of titles.

A tether ball post was placed on the site where Debra Estes skull was found.

The only creepy thing about these titles is that they are the names of serial killers’ victims.

Stephen Chalmers: "You would never know that those were sites where a body was disposed of as if garbage. And so I like that interplay between these highly aestheticized, or very pretty images, and the darker subject matter."

Chalmers is right. Most of his photos look like they should appear in some hiking magazine or Sunset. There’s saturated green forest landscapes, grassy hills with an antique barn in the background and a peaceful looking tree with bare branches.

Stephen Chalmers: "A mental exercise that I give people when I give lectures on this body of work is to name serial killers. Name five serial killers, name three serial killers."

Not surprisingly everyone can rattle off the names of three serial killers. But few can name even one victim. Even in a case as recent at the mass murders at Virginia Tech.

Stephen Chalmers: "We can all recall his name but we can’t recall the three dozen of his victims’ bodies."

A tree was the sole witness when Brian Whitcher’s body was dumped here.

Chalmers says photographing such spooky subject matter didn’t bother him most of the time. He’s a former EMT. But the 38-year-old, with squarish retro glasses, says one particular photo outing gave him the creeps. It was the site where Anne Alderson’s body had been dumped in a park just north of San Francisco.

Stephen Chalmers: "It was becoming dusk, the fog was rolling in. And I parked at the trail head and I hiked out the two miles to the location where Ms. Alderson’s body was found. And I thought I heard voices in the trees. And right after that one photograph I kind of gathered up my equipment and ran to my car. Which is the only time I’ve had a sort of gut reaction to the site."

Chalmers combs through police records and photos to get the exact locations of the bodies.

He keeps all of it in thick, highly-organized binders. He also uses GIS and other mapping programs to aid his search. But he does keep his serial murder books and binders out of sight. Because, not everyone would understand.

Stephen Chalmers: "I started dating my partner about the same time as I started this project. Which is obviously when you are meeting a girl it’s not the best thing that you want to inform them that you are doing on the side."

Chalmers next project isn’t a whole lot lighter. It’s about drug addiction.

Online:
View the Dump Sites project

More about artist Stephen Chalmers