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96 – Ted Bundy
47 Plays20 days ago
Sam shares the chilling story of Ted Bundy, one of the most infamous serial killers in American history.
Operating during the 1970s, Bundy was responsible for the abduction and murder of numerous young women across multiple states. Known for his intelligence, charm, and ability to blend in, he used manipulation and deception to gain the trust of his victims—making his crimes all the more disturbing.
This episode explores not only the timeline of Bundy’s murders, but also the psychology behind them. Drawing from criminal analysis and mental health research, Sam dives into how Bundy’s behavior challenged assumptions about what a killer “looks like,” and how investigators—including those who would later pursue other serial killers—learned from his case.
From courtroom theatrics to shocking confessions, Bundy’s story remains one of the most studied and haunting in true crime history.
Visit us on Linktree for the collection of links, Instagram, or email us at jeffandsamshow@gmail.com.
Sources
- Seattle Times – Obituary of Bob Keppel
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/obituaries/bob-keppel-the-cop-who-spent-his-life-chasing-serial-killers-including-ted-bundy-dies-at-76/ - HistoryLink.org
https://historylink.org/File/23480 - Wikipedia – Ted Bundy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy - The Last Podcast on the Left – Episodes 99 & 100 (Bundy Parts 1 & 2)
- University of Kentucky – Psychology Research on Ted Bundy
https://psychology.as.uky.edu/psychology-researcher-unravels-serial-killer-ted-bundys-mental-health - Encyclopaedia Britannica – Ted Bundy
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ted-Bundy - Crime Museum – Ted Bundy
https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/serial-killers/ted-bundy/ - EBSCO Research Starter – Ted Bundy
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/ted-bundy - Florida Sheriffs Association – Chi Omega Murders
https://flsheriffs.org/blog/entry/remembering-ted-bundy-and-the-chi-omega-murders/ - All That’s Interesting – Ted Bundy
https://allthatsinteresting.com/ted-bundy - Biography.com – Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer Investigation
https://www.biography.com/crime/a65603336/ted-bundy-green-river-killer-investigation - Netflix – Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Jeff and show. I'm Jeff. And I'm Sam. Hey, Sam. Hi.
00:00:23
Speaker
um to the jeff andam show i'm jeff and i'm sam hey sam hi yeah How are you on this fucking beautiful Saturday? Fan fucking tabulous Saturday. It's amazing. And I'm fan tabulous. And you know that just,
00:00:39
Speaker
There's a difference between the sun being out and the sun being out and the weather being sun weather, right? 70. Yesterday was perfect. Today was perfect. And i i worked at a wee short shift yesterday, right? Yeah. And as soon as I got home, I was like, fuck it. I have things that I have to do, but I'm not going to do them. I sat outside and I just lizarded.
00:01:02
Speaker
And then i did the same thing today. Perfect. I went, I woke up, I voted. And then i Just like, We were supposed to vote. Well, no, well no.
00:01:14
Speaker
I'm 12, 12. Cause I'm like a die hard voter. I'm 10 days early. So it's, it's for the, I don't know actually if Alexandria is having it. They have to. Okay.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's for the Virginia redistricting. Oh. Remember? Yeah. No, not remember. We didn't talk about this yet. it's This isn't a remember. don't remember. It's just me in a conversation. Yeah, of course I remember. But, um yes, so it's about the redistricting plans. Okay. Yeah. So put that on my to-do list because I love to vote. Before the 21st. I like the little sticker.
00:01:46
Speaker
Yo vote. Yo vote. Right? Yeah. hey let's open our drinks and let's say Cheers Queers. Why are we saying Cheers You know, we're saying Cheers Queers because this is... um A gay podcast. Is it? Yeah, a little bit. Are you gay? I'm a little gay. Are you a little gay? I'm whole lot gay. Same Zs, and we're a true crime. We're history. We're sometimes accidentally funny, so we're kind of a comedy podcast. But mostly we're just a vortex of fuckery. We're a lot of a vortex of fuckery. And we have our own Hall of Flames. Yeah, we do. So, with that being said, we're popping open our drinks. We're going to pour our... I'm drinking a recess raspberry lemon.
00:02:28
Speaker
Okay, these cans are just stunning. Mine is a recessed tropical bliss, and I just need to say, damn. i You know, i go through the grocery store. You just buy the prettiest looking thing. And I start to look for sodas I've never, our water or water, or soda, I guess. I don't know, whatever. Sparkling things. Something I've never seen before.
00:02:48
Speaker
and You see something, oh, that smells that's most delicious. Cheers, Quirz. It's like raspberry. It's like schnaz. Cheers, Quirz. Nozzberries. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt.
00:03:04
Speaker
It's good. I need this writing to be a little bit bigger, though. I have my contacts in right now, so I don't know if you've noticed, but I can't see shit. i think that that's a problem. You can't see with your contacts. I can see better than I can see without anything. You should see me without my contacts.
00:03:19
Speaker
I don't think that that's a good idea. I would know that that is you right there. This general blob of me. Wouldn't know what you're holding. um Oh, so that would be a really good time to attack you with a weapon.
00:03:32
Speaker
when i don't whenever if you find me under time when I don't have anything on my eyes to kill me. yeah okay Put me out of my misery.
00:03:42
Speaker
Not murder. it's um We just talk about it. We wouldn't do it. Ever.
00:03:49
Speaker
So, she just said she definitely would. Nah. Okay. It's beautiful day. Yesterday was equally beautiful. We've talked about that. um We did dinner with Vince and Kathy. We did. And I just want to tell Vince, if you are listening to this show, I'm thinking about you. I've got something coming for you that you will really, really fucking enjoy, Vince. That seems like I just learned like i learned a little bit something about Vince last night. A little bit of something about Vince last night and what he really likes, the things he enjoys to read about. and
00:04:29
Speaker
I've got something coming in his way. Also, we're going to do an Astronomy on Tap podcast. What? and You weren't part of that conversation last night, were you? No, clearly. Was that when Kathy was trying to distract me? Yeah.
00:04:44
Speaker
Well, no, we talked about it at dinner, too. But like in D.C., they have this thing where they do astronomy on tap. So it's people from NASA, astronomers from other places that come together. You go to the bar, and you sit, and you listen to them talk about what they've learned from space and...
00:05:02
Speaker
Like photos that come from the Hubble or whatever the picture-takey thingy out there is. That's technical terms. What's called? Satellites. Yeah, that thing. um So you know that Dan and Kristen have to be a part of that because they're both space space nerds like me too, so... Well, I'm not. Did I just call myself a nerd? You did. I'm not a space nerd. I like things. Just conversation. I'm not a space nerd. We just say stuff sometimes. I'm not.
00:05:26
Speaker
You kind of are. yeah No, but so it's all around, and they'll have these from time to time. And I went with Jess like two years ago, or maybe a little longer than two years ago.
00:05:38
Speaker
And honest to God, you are in the room with some nerds. I mean, don't doubt it. Hardcore nerds. And they're taking notes about what these people on stage are saying because there's trivia throughout the night. Oh, love that. Based what you've heard.
00:05:54
Speaker
and I can get on board with that. It's so much fun. And I know nothing about space. Not even a little bit. Okay. And I told Jess at the beginning, I was like, look. I need to start paying attention right now because if I'm not paying attention right now, in two minutes, I will be like gone.
00:06:10
Speaker
I will not know what's going on. Look at that pretty ceiling. Yeah. Amazing. And I think Vince will like that. I know Dan will like that. Dan and Kristen are both space sky friends like me.
00:06:24
Speaker
Space nerd. Yeah, a lot of fun, so we're going to do that. We're going to put that on our list okay of stuff to do. Okay. I'm going to, listen. i'm Unlike you, I'm not a space nerd. I'm not space nerd. Take that shit back. No takesies, backsies.
00:06:40
Speaker
There's a lot of... Can't even argue. So after our dinner last night, which was fun, we had a fun time. We did. I came home and I was just beat. I don't know. The sunny weather's coming. I'm about to have more energy. can tell, you know? It's just vibrating. It's like I need some sun and some warmth, right? Just... So, but I came home last night and I started a show called Narcos and I know you've heard of it. Have you seen it? Mm-mm.
00:07:11
Speaker
So Rupert has been telling me to watch this forever. And so I started on season one last night. Are they still running it or is it? i think it's over with. Okay, you know I can get on board with a completed series. Fuck.
00:07:23
Speaker
It is, so the first season and I think maybe the second season is sort of about Pablo Escobar's cartel. We've done some stuff about him. Sort of.
00:07:34
Speaker
Not directly. He was insane. I mean, like, um brutal. So, yeah, I watched that last night, and I really enjoy it. It's a lot little bit violent.
00:07:45
Speaker
little bit? little bit violent. but Just a wee touch. Just wee, just a wee violent, yeah. a wee bit. So I'm going to continue on with that tonight after we have dinner with Mo people. Mo, we are we're so, so short. Listen, Summer's out, Sam's out, Sun's out, Jeff's out. Which, let me tell you, people who are listening right now, we...
00:08:06
Speaker
This show, we recorded half of it last week, and we sat down and ah we were like, we had no personality. it was as flat. It was basically, hi, Sam.
00:08:18
Speaker
hi joe Hi, Jeff. Hi, Jeff. How are you? Dead inside. And we were like, we can't, like, honestly, we love to do this show, and it's a lot of fun, and when we come to it with that kind of energy, we immediately were like, we've got to re-record that intro. Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:35
Speaker
we're more We're back to normal now. I think it's the sun. You're never going to catch me disagreeing with that. Never. But I will tell you. Let me tell let me tell you. let me tell you what Virginia is doing to me right now. Tell me.
00:08:46
Speaker
Tell me more.
00:08:52
Speaker
So one of these days, first of all, I'm going to put a pin in what I was going to say. I might not remember it, but one of these days we are going to start video recording, and I think that you guys going to just lose your minds because a lot of me and Jeff is...
00:09:07
Speaker
the The faces that we make at each other. It's ridiculous. And so that moment, I just wish that I could capture all of these on like photo. The funny thing is the tell me more is I've never seen whatever that movie is. What is that movie? Grease. I've never seen it.
00:09:24
Speaker
And so anytime I say something from that movie, I immediately now, Sam has me trained to be like, oh shit, i fucked up. I said something from the movie. But he does like the, the, the hand in front of the mouth and they're like, I can't believe I just did that.
00:09:38
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So that's what he just did. try not to do it, but then and sometimes it just, you know, kind of comes out. You can't repress all the gay. It's in there. Even if you don't want to acknowledge It's just right there on the surface. oh, um,
00:09:51
Speaker
oh ah um This isn't for the show, but for you to remind me to remind you that I need to show you the things. It's a little bit like the astronomy and space where you went there.
00:10:04
Speaker
For you to run in remind me to remind you to remind. But now I've said it out loud, so you are in charge of this. What things? The places, the stays for oh July trip. Oh.
00:10:16
Speaker
Oh my God, we're going to see Alanis Morissette. Yes, we are. is Boston. not oh i I can't wait to go to Boston. like I love it. I love it.
00:10:26
Speaker
But, so you know, 1995. Jeff here was a senior in high school when Alanis Morissette's first album came out. So I've never seen her before.
00:10:38
Speaker
i don't really care for concerts, especially festivals. Yeah. Gonna suck it up. well Well, we will only go for her. As it gets closer, they should release like actual times and ah and a schedule now that we have you because you have the tickets. you should get a list of the actual timing and everything. So we don't have to go to any of the other stuff. We will spend the day doing whatever we want, enjoying Boston. i'm going to take you on the duck boats. I love it.
00:11:07
Speaker
It's going to be grand. Boston. It's no, no, that's very New York. It's Boston. Boston. It's Boston. It's not Boston. think Boston. Think the Kennedys. Think of the Kennedys. Boston. The Kennedys. They park the cars. They park the cars. Oh yeah.
00:11:20
Speaker
Love that accent. They don't park their cars or park. Okay. They pack. They pack. I had neighbors from New Orleans, and they said that everybody always thought they had a Boston accent.
00:11:35
Speaker
Really? There's some similarities there. I don't think I've ever maybe heard. Yeah. I guess someone from, i didn't, first of all, didn't know that people were from New Orleans. Yeah, these people were. You're from, like, the Bayou. they're Bayou.
00:11:49
Speaker
I think born and raised. I don't know. I don't know them that way. I mean, they were my neighbors. But, like, they they would say, like, pecan. They would do that. Pork. I don't know. they kind of But they get it all the time. They would say, are you from Boston? I was like, what do you mean, are they from Boston? They speak so slowly.
00:12:08
Speaker
Boston or Orleans? No, the New Orleans people. Oh. Yeah. Don't know where we went with that conversation. Atlantis. Atlantis, Marseille. Yeah, we're going to see Atlantis. So, yeah. So have to show you the places that are our options to stay. And then you and Kim, we can narrow down and then you and Kim can pick. Because we can choose. We can either be on the South Shore. We can be P-Town or we can be in Boston proper. But I think that P-Town or the South Shore will be...
00:12:37
Speaker
South Shore, I think. Okay. That's close to the festival and close enough to Boston. But this is a very private conversation that we're having on a microphone.
00:12:47
Speaker
For the whole world to hear. and That's what they're getting. Okay. So are you ready to do your show? Yes. because this So normally, we would flip a coin. One of us would tell a story, then the other one would tell the story. But, you know, time crunch, we're only human.
00:13:03
Speaker
You're getting one story this week, and that's Sam's. Only human. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. We're only human. So, anywho, that's it.
00:13:14
Speaker
But here's Sam. Alright, so yeah, I have a story this week because haven't had one for a little bit. So this is one.
00:13:25
Speaker
You heard me at work telling you how it was driving me insane. It was really pissing me off to do it. um You know this story and there's a lot of information out there about it. Okay.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah, I know that I know the story. I don't know what it is, but I know what you've told me I know it. I want to know when you, like... Okay. So, like, i don't know.
00:13:49
Speaker
Make a face, raise your hand. i don't know. I feel like it'll be instantly. Okay. The 1970s. It was a time.
00:13:58
Speaker
It was a time for the United States. Inflation. little close to home right now, right? Vietnam. Vietnam. Hippies, Watergate, Iran tensions, who riots, demonstrations, the Manson madness.
00:14:14
Speaker
And if that wasn't enough, this decade has commonly been referred to, and by commonly, i don't know who's commonly referring to this, okay, because that's...
00:14:27
Speaker
Commonly referred to as the golden age for murderers and psychos because... In this 10-year span alone, guess how many known active serial killers there were? 100. 300. 300 active in one decade.
00:14:49
Speaker
Like, that to me is just... And then you you look at it and you're like, oh oh, yes, indeed. Because that was the big hitters, right? i wonder if there were more in the 80s.
00:15:00
Speaker
No, it actually went down a bit. It peaked in the 70s. um There's so many of them in the 70s too. 300, and they were bad. yeah The 70s was not a good time to be the target of a serial killer. Is this Richard Ramirez? No.
00:15:19
Speaker
So. um just That was just off the top. Just a guess. Close. No. um Okay, so. um The term serial killer, although it didn't actually exist, it was, that's what these people were. Okay, so in the 1970s, they were mass killers. They were, You know, it was multiple murderers. They they did not have the term serial killer. Right, right. um but this idea of absolutely random and motiveless just killing because we wanted to and we could, that was that was coming about. And the the whole country was terrified.
00:15:59
Speaker
During the first half of 1974...
00:16:03
Speaker
Women throughout Washington state and Oregon lived in increasing terror of an unidentified threat. Don't say the name out loud. Okay. Just if you know it.
00:16:14
Speaker
um Law enforcement was floundering and they had no idea what was happening in their jurisdictions. Was it witchcraft? Also a big kind of thing, right? Was it the occult? Was it Satanism?
00:16:26
Speaker
Is there a pattern to it? Can we stop it? Unbeknownst to them, they were fumbling and stumbling their way into a part of our darkest history in the United States.
00:16:41
Speaker
This story is oldie.
00:16:44
Speaker
I don't know if classics is a word that we can use for this. I think that it is. That makes it sound kind of good, right? It's been beaten into the ground. Everybody fucking knows it, okay? The story of a young man described repeatedly and by many as charismatic, charming, incredibly handsome, and highly intelligent.
00:17:04
Speaker
He became notorious for his manipulation and how he presented himself as a model citizen. Decades after his reign of terror and death, his case still intrigues and remains a topic of disturbing conversation amongst law enforcement, criminal psychologists, and the general public.
00:17:23
Speaker
After his crimes were found out, he was also called deceptive, cunning, and a diabolical genius. That being said, this is the irritating part. Because there is so much information out there on every different type of source you can imagine, okay?
00:17:41
Speaker
It was really hard to get down to like the nitty gritty and what was fact, what was fiction. um There was a lot of speculation, even though there's a lot of people who know exactly what happened or who this person was, what how they were raised, et cetera.
00:18:02
Speaker
If you really try and dive into it, you know, if you look at one source, you're like, ah, there it is. But then you go and you look at other very repable reputable sources, you're like, wait a second, that says a complete...
00:18:15
Speaker
Opposite. but So, and it's not like you could trust this individual themselves to tell it straight because they were cunning, manipulative, and incredibly intelligent. And they were fueled by the attention. So saying one thing on a Tuesday and the next thing on a Wednesday is completely contradictory. That was just more fuel.
00:18:36
Speaker
Okay? So who fucking knows? Not i but I'm going to give you what I got. All right. On January 4th, 1974, 18-year-old University of Washington student Karen Sparks was asleep in her bed in Seattle's University District when a stranger slipped into her basement apartment in a house that she shared with five other co-eds.
00:18:58
Speaker
He broke a metal rod off of her bed frame and violently attacked her. She was sexually assaulted, beaten unconscious, and then sexually assaulted with the rod that had been used to beat her. When police found her, she was alive, but the piece of bed frame was still inserted inside her.
00:19:15
Speaker
She was taken to the hospital where they found severe and massive internal injuries, including a ruptured bladder and significant head trauma. She remained in a coma for 10 days, and although she technically survived, she was left with permanent brain damage and a significant impairment of her vision and hearing.
00:19:31
Speaker
On February 4th, 21-year-old University of Washington student and morning weather radio broadcaster, Linda Healy, disappeared right out of her basement apartment.
00:19:42
Speaker
When she didn't show up for work, some people believed she was sick, but then the second day she didn't show up for work and her roommates couldn't find her, they realized that something was wrong. She was not the type to just get up and go. She didn't take anything with her.
00:19:54
Speaker
It was just her missing. Investigators were allowed into her apartment to investigate and they found what they called no signs of foul play except for a small amount of blood on her pillow and the mattress.
00:20:09
Speaker
which is concerning in itself, right? Like... Might be a sign of foul play. Right? Yeah. That might be. In the 70s. Yeah. March 12th, 19-year-old Evergreen State College Donna Gale Manson never arrived at a concert that she was supposed to be attending with her friends in Olympia.
00:20:29
Speaker
April 17th, in Ellensburg, 18-year-old Central Washington State College student Susan Rancourt left her school counselor's office, walked back towards her dor dorm, but she never made it.
00:20:42
Speaker
Shortly after her disappearance was posted, two female witnesses reported two separate incidents, one three days before Rancourt's disappearance and one the day of, that a man approached them wearing a sling and asking for help carrying his stack of books back to his tan, maybe brown, Volkswagen Beetle. Mm-hmm.
00:21:03
Speaker
May 6th, 22-year-old Roberta Parks, a student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, never arrived at the coffee coffee shop to meet her friends. June 1st, 22-year-old Brenda Ball disappeared from the parking lot next to the bar near Sea-Tac Airport.
00:21:18
Speaker
She was last seen talking to a brown-haired man wearing a sling. Just days later on June 11th, 18-year-old University of Washington student Georgianne Hawkins was walking down a well-lit alley that stretched like something like 200 yards between her boyfriend's apartment and her sorority house when she just vanished.
00:21:38
Speaker
The police conducted an extensive search of the alley the following day, reportedly, combing for evidence on their hands and knees, which, you know, maybe they were. They found nothing, but little did they know, yards away from them and their crime scene, in a parking lot still in view of the alley where all of these cops were, a man stopped by that lot to pick up earrings and a single shoe that belonged to Georgianne and had been lost in a struggle the night before.
00:22:10
Speaker
Drove in, saw the cops, oh pulled into the lot, picked up the stuff, drove away. When it was discovered later that this had occurred, Detective Robert Keppel said, it was so brazen that it astonishes police even today.
00:22:26
Speaker
Upon hearing the news of her disappearance, witnesses came forward stating that they recalled seeing a brown-haired man on crutches with a leg cast carrying a briefcase near that same alley. One woman reported that he had even approached her asking for help to get his bag back to his brown VW bug.
00:22:45
Speaker
Only in the 70s. Just go back into the crime scene, take what you forgot or what was going to make you look guilty. And I think
00:22:58
Speaker
that's like the first inkling of um who this person was that we that we get to see, you know? Yeah.
00:23:08
Speaker
Because, I mean, fuck. This guy was a cocky bastard. So after months of mysterious disappearances, like these women... were just up and disappearing out of the blue. Okay. The authorities were nowhere close to being able determined and to being able to determine what happened to any of them or who was doing it.
00:23:29
Speaker
um There was little to no physical evidence at any of the sites of disappearance or at the scene of Karen Sparks' brutal assault. Fear was spreading. And in the 70s, it was like, that time after like women's rights really like took off. So at this time, before this was happening, women were feeling more open about being themselves, being in the workforce, hitchhiking, being free to just be out and about.
00:23:55
Speaker
But with this happening, hitchhiking rights plummeted. So they had seen a spike in the early 70s, and then here, it's basically in the Northwest, it just completely stopped. um They were being told...
00:24:07
Speaker
we don't know who's doing this, but don't go anywhere alone. Use only the front doors. like Don't be in dark places. Don't be out at night, e etc. But they weren't told, oh, avoid these types of people because the police didn't know. right The only details that the cops did have, they were not releasing to the public or the media.
00:24:29
Speaker
And so they had a few points. The disappearances all took place at night. The women had very little in common except pretty much their physical appearance. They were all young, objectively attractive, white college students with long brown hair parted down the middle.
00:24:45
Speaker
They also shared some traits like they were always referred to as courteous and respectful, communicative and responsible. None of these women were ever thought to pick up and go, you know, not your typical... which you think of as like easy targets, right? right they They didn't live high-risk lifestyles. They were good students. They were good friends, family members, etc.
00:25:07
Speaker
um Each of the areas where a victim was last seen happened to be close to active construction sites. The disappearances all occurred within one week of either midterms or final exams.
00:25:19
Speaker
Every victim was wearing slacks or blue jeans of some sort, and many of the women were last seen in an area where a brown-haired man who drove either a brown or tan VW Bug was seen with a sling, cast, or crutches of some sort.
00:25:34
Speaker
The first break for the authorities came on July 14th at Lake Samomish State Park. A group of four young women were approached by an attractive brown-haired young man wearing a white tennis outfit and a sling on his left arm, which i just, I'm trying to picture this, and like for some reason when you say tennis outfit, I picture like what ladies wear to play tennis. So I don't really know what a man wears playing tennis, but all I see is him wearing a skirt, and that doesn't fit. I see him in short white shorts. Oh, oh. a polo shirt. Oh, that makes sense. Basically, you know I'm the sports expert here. You are yeah all sports expert. Thank you for that. You're welcome.
00:26:09
Speaker
Because all I could see was a skirt and i was like, I don't get it. Nope. Short white shorts and a polo shirt. Okay. All right. so attractive guy comes up to him wearing short white shorts and a polo.
00:26:20
Speaker
In my mind. I don't know if that's the case, though. you know It works for me. It's better than skirt. um He's got a sling on his left arm. He approaches them and says, hey, I got to get this sailboat off of my car. Would you mind helping me?
00:26:33
Speaker
He had a little bit of an accent maybe, and they described it as either British or Canadian, which I'm trying to figure out how those two are the same and they're not. But 70s. And he introduced himself as Ted.
00:26:47
Speaker
Three of these women immediately declined to go with him. They were like, I'm out. Mind you, the statistics on how many people were at the park this weekend, there were 40,000 people at the park this weekend. Okay?
00:27:01
Speaker
That's a lot of fucking people. The fourth woman said, sure, I'll help. But then as she got closer to the car, she didn't see a boat. She was like, I'm out. She ran away.
00:27:12
Speaker
Three additional witnesses that same day watched the man who called himself Ted approach 23-year-old Janice Ott. She was last seen leaving the beach with him. Just a few hours later, 19-year-old Denise Naslund told her friends that she had to go to the bathroom. She walked 60 feet away from where they were and never returned.
00:27:34
Speaker
The police now had a detailed physical description of a suspect and the description of his vehicle. They created a composite sketch that was distributed widely on flyers, TV broadcasts, and the newspaper.
00:27:45
Speaker
Shortly after the description was released, the police were receiving nearly 200 calls per day with tips. Again, the details of how many people drove VW Bugs of that one of those colors in that time. It was like 50,000 people, which again is a lot of people for police who don't have access to what we have today. Right. right The people who fit the the description of like your average handsome brown haired man, like needle in haystack. Right.
00:28:17
Speaker
And then they were looking for anybody named Ted, but they were like, oh, well, let's look for criminal records, et cetera. Couldn't find anything. However, included in some of the calls that they received, there was one from a Miss Anne Rule, Miss Elizabeth Klepfer, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, and an employee at the Department of Emergency Services.
00:28:43
Speaker
They all recognized the man in the sketch and told police that they believed him to be Ted Bundy. He was a friend, a boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend, a co-worker, a lover, a student.
00:28:55
Speaker
I think Anne Rule like knew him. And she kind of... Okay. Yes, Anne Rule knew him. So did Elizabeth Klepfer.
00:29:09
Speaker
But... she wrote no She wrote a whole book about him. The Stranger Beside Me or something like that. And she even was like, um I don't think this is him, but check him out anyway.
00:29:20
Speaker
Maybe. Or something like that. Yeah. yeah So that that's one of the things is the only person
00:29:29
Speaker
of all of the interviews that were conducted trying to pin down if this Ted Bundy was the Ted that was on the beach and many things after.
00:29:41
Speaker
Everyone said the same thing with the exception of like maybe a ah smattering of people. No way. That couldn't be Ted Bundy. He's so kind. He's so great. He's so respectful. He's so he's just absolutely there's no way it could be him.
00:30:23
Speaker
This is where a lot of the murkiness comes in. Theodore Robert Bundy was born Theodore Cowell in 1946 to Eleanor Louise in Burlington, Vermont at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers. hu Scandal.
00:30:39
Speaker
Ooh. The identity of his biological father remains unconfirmed. Okay, there is a copy of his birth certificate certificate float floating around that says a guy named Lloyd Marshall, who was a salesman and an Air Force veteran. There's another copy that lists it as unknown.
00:30:57
Speaker
Louise claimed that another veteran named Jack Worthington was the father, so hu we don't know. There was a lot of speculation um and a lot of,
00:31:10
Speaker
accusations from family members that maybe Louise's own father Samuel Cowell was Ted's father. Again, we don't know. And a lot of people like to use all of that as like reasons why. yeah You know, oh he's fucked up because his granddad's actually his dad.
00:31:30
Speaker
We don't know that. So until the age of three, Ted was raised by his maternal grandparents in Philadelphia. They raised him as their own son to avoid the embarrassment of Louise having a child out of wedlock. She was initially going to give him up, but then Daddy Cowell was like, hell no, go get that kid. We're going raise him. It's going fine. And then he was also told that his mom, his biological mother, was his sister. Okay.
00:31:55
Speaker
Um... He grew up believing that his family was okay. um There were some reports, again, some, that painted Sam Cowell as a violent alcoholic bully who used to torture neighborhood animals. um And grandma Grandma Eleanor was this timid kind of broken woman who was receiving ECT therapy for depression. And then in her later years grew so afraid
00:32:26
Speaker
um that she never left her house. um However, they didn't. Dove deep into that to investigate more and they were those details were all questioned extensively because plenty of the people in the neighborhood who had grown up with the cows their entire lives said that they were completely inaccurate. um Ted's cousins said that.
00:32:48
Speaker
The characterization that Sam was a raging alcoholic and an animal abuser was a convenient characterization used to make people justify why Ted was the way he was. But nothing could be farther from the truth.
00:33:00
Speaker
And Louise's younger sister clarified that the reason that Eleanor didn't leave the house wasn't because she was afraid or depressed or anything like that. It was because she had had a debilitating stroke that left her unable to leave the house. So fact checks, you know. Yeah.
00:33:15
Speaker
People like to pinpoint, right? We we talk about it all the time. Oh, he had a messed up childhood. Oh, he was abused. Oh, he was whatever. That made him into this. We don't know. We don't know. yeah And there are even things that were said later by Ted that don't point to that. This does not point to some battered child thing.
00:33:38
Speaker
You know, he acknowledges like, no, there's there's no reason for me to be like this. Um, It's crazy.
00:33:47
Speaker
He was wild and horrible.
00:33:51
Speaker
So in 1950, Louise changed her name from Cowell to Nelson. She left Philly, took her son. They went to live with family on Tacoma, Washington. In 1951, at a church singles event, Louise met a Mr. Johnny Culpepper Bundy.
00:34:09
Speaker
The two married later that year, and Johnny formally adopted Ted. Together, Louise and Johnny had four additional children, um but he never treated Ted differently. He always tried to include him. He like wanted Ted to be a part of his life, so they tried fishing and and camping and all that kind of stuff.
00:34:35
Speaker
um Again, stories about his childhood, very contradictory. There's a lot of interviews after his capture where he tells of his boyhood, um again, in this tortured child turned madman monster kind of thing. And then other times where he says, no it was just an average childhood. um And then this boy maybe was born with a bit of evil.
00:34:58
Speaker
So he stated that his childhood was not unpleasant and he remembered his friends and his adventures fondly. Other times he describes himself as a loner and claims that he went on frequent like alcohol binges, then wandered the streets looking for, ah like looking through trash cans for porn or open blinds through which he could watch women undress.
00:35:18
Speaker
Again, none of this is corroborated and it changes from day to day. um He did at one point claim that he engaged in animal torture and fire setting, but there's no proof of any of this. And then later he says that he never did any of that.
00:35:35
Speaker
So again, it goes back to this like manipulation thing, right? Where why why why is he saying both of these things? um one childhood neighbor because they were kind of a small close-knit community. um They just described it as like there was this four block radius in the neighborhood and all of the kids that were around the same-ish age would all hang out kind of like what we grew up with. Like you know um they were all really close. Ted was the same age as her older brother um and the Bundys were described as the perfect Beaver Cleaver family. Okay.
00:36:14
Speaker
Come on. Damn. Yeah. They went to church every Sunday. Luis and Johnny were very involved and couldn't have been more wonderful parents. um But she did mention that despite this loving and clearly adoring family, there was never like There was never like animal torture and like all that kind of stuff that she witnessed, but she did say that Ted was kind of always on like the periphery. right you know
00:36:46
Speaker
He would go to Boy Scout camp. He would go to church camps. He would go to all of these things, but he just never was the best at anything. He was never good at the stuff that he wanted to be.
00:36:57
Speaker
um
00:36:59
Speaker
so Does that, I wonder if that's how he became so calculating and manipulative. He had to learn how to be that because he never was the best at anything. So he had to, you know what I mean?
00:37:14
Speaker
Well, and I mean, is that enough to make you into, you know, like, okay, so you weren't the best at everything, but you were loved by your parents, by your siblings. You had friends.
00:37:28
Speaker
I wonder what... But you not being the best, is that what makes you... Yeah, I know. I mean, a lot of people aren't the best. And a lot of people don't do what he does, you know? I mean, I'm the best at everything. But if I wasn't, I would definitely be a serial killer.
00:37:39
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. um
00:37:45
Speaker
Sometimes he was referred to as a shy young boy, but then they said that he was still very active and playful and kind. He blossomed into a successful and charming high school student who was, quote, well-known and well-liked.
00:37:59
Speaker
Okay. During high school, he found joy in downhill skiing and hiking, frequently going to places like Taylor Mountain. um Again, kind of spotty. There are some reports that say that he did have some ah arrest records for petty theft because he stole steam like skiing equipment and would forge lift tickets, um but unclear if that's actually true or not.
00:38:26
Speaker
However, whatever it was, by the time he turned 18, all of that was expunged from any record if he did have it, so he entered adulthood with a clean slate. me college years. um Big points would be the fact that he met and began a relationship with the only woman he ever truly loved. Reportedly. i don't know if someone like this is capable of love, so we're going to use that as a loose term, right? Right.
00:38:53
Speaker
Diane Edwards. And, you know, he refers, hearing him talk about the things that he felt for her, it's not normal. I've never heard it. I don't know what you're talking about.
00:39:06
Speaker
So, A lot of psychologists like to refer to him as kind of an enigma in the serial killer world, because we like to think of serial killers as not being able to have empathy. a lot of them, most of them, right? Whereas Ted, they say that he was such a huge empath, and he felt so much.
00:39:29
Speaker
And hearing him talk about his relationship with Diane, and then later his relationship with Liz,
00:39:37
Speaker
It's not normal. The words that he uses to describe his quote-unquote love for them, it's like he's trying to fit it into a into a um an accepted definition, right? And he's like, I just loved them so hard, and I was just debilitated by them, and I was, and you're like... It's off. It's off. Yeah. So sure. It's It's just weird, yeah.
00:40:05
Speaker
and But maybe he did feel just a lot, and he didn't know how to express it. He was too smart. No, he it's just all. He tried too hard. Too hard. Yeah, too hard. A lot of this. Yeah. So... um In college, he got really, really involved in politics. He was known as, like, the good American boy, the the great Republican. um He really leaned into it. And he thrived in politics.
00:40:34
Speaker
He was liked by everyone that he met. He was called the kind of guy you'd want your sister to marry. Okay? is Yeah. He played the part well because...
00:40:47
Speaker
Even from childhood, he had like grandiose ideas of becoming somebody important. He met influial influential people. he fit in at all of the events. He knew how to talk and act the right way. He took part in campaigns. He spoke out against anti-liberal or against liberal agendas in the anti-war radicals.
00:41:07
Speaker
Diane, the love of his life, was described as classy, powerful, connected, rich, motivated, and beautiful. She had long brown hair that she always wore parted down the middle.
00:41:22
Speaker
She was the whole package. um Throughout undergrad, he was an honor student. He was well-liked by his professors, and his academic potential was obvious. In 1971, he took a job at the Seattle Suicide Hotline Crisis Center.
00:41:37
Speaker
While working there, he met and worked closely with Ann Rule. She was a former police officer and aspiring crime writer who, little did she know, this guy was going to be her like tickets of fame. Right.
00:41:50
Speaker
Um, she later recalled that she had no idea what he was as they worked for months side by side. He never gave off a vibe.
00:42:01
Speaker
Um, and um I would like to think that people, women maybe have like a radar and then also police officers, like in their core, they have something they can like sense that. Right. He never targeted or triggered anything.
00:42:14
Speaker
She said of him, Ted was wonderful on the phone. He sounded caring and he was interested in people. He played this perfectly. He was very sweet and kind to her. He frequently expressed concerns about her safety. He would walk her to her car after shifts and never once like tried to assault her or anything.
00:42:34
Speaker
um He stayed active in the politics. He was gaining respect and support of significant figures like Governor Daniel Evans and the chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, Ross Davis. um He had some hands in kind of like spying almost on Dan Evans' um political,
00:42:59
Speaker
what's the word, not ally. An opponent. Opponent, yeah. So he like went undercover in that and was there and was taking notes on all of these things and then would go back to the Evans campaign and be like, here, this is what he's doing his speeches on. Like, you just need to Wow. Yeah. So he actually got caught for that. And in the interviews about that, he's like, oh, a little old me. Like, I can't imagine what I did was worth publicity. Like, I just, I want nothing to do with it. But he's like smiling through the whole thing and
00:43:33
Speaker
His friends and, you know, coworkers mentioned, like, he just ate it up. He loved that he was the center of attention, all that kind of stuff. And that just holds through.
00:43:47
Speaker
um You know, he, again, had these grand ideas of what he wanted to be. So he graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology, and he wanted to go to law school.
00:43:58
Speaker
But his LSATs were mediocre. Mm-hmm. That's a kick in the dick, right? Like, you think you're hot shit. Anyway, so um he was kind of devastated. In 1973, he was accepted into the law school at the University of the Puget Sound, which didn't even realize i had a university there.
00:44:20
Speaker
He attended the night school at UPS. They called it UPS. Come on. Yeah.
00:44:28
Speaker
I love the Puget Sound. I love Washington State. God. It's the best. But the University of Puget Sound. UPS. UPS. Come on. go to UPS. Where go? Night school. a Night law school at UPS.
00:44:41
Speaker
I mean, you know, maybe it's a great school. Maybe they still have it. i don't know. You're right. You're right. Yes. Yay. I don't even know what their mascot is. What was their mascot?
00:44:53
Speaker
No, I don't. What would their mascot be? It's the UPS. Trucks. Trucks. Yeah. Go trucks. Go sports. Not planes. They tend to crash. Yeah. Anyway. um so Here he is, he's he's graduated, undergraduate, where he was kind of a hotshot. And then he has these plans, he wants to go to law school, he wants to be big time.
00:45:18
Speaker
He goes into the night school at UPS. So it was devastating to his ego. um He had such high hopes for himself, when he realized that this was not what he deemed as an an impressive thing.
00:45:31
Speaker
ok He thought that this was beneath him. He said later that he felt completely out of control of his life. He started to spiral. His relationship with Diane crumbled as well. um He started getting jealous of her. He started getting um uncomfortable because they were, she had moved back to California where she was from. he was in Washington State going to UPS. Mm-hmm.
00:45:57
Speaker
That summer the the relationship started to really, really crumble and fizzle out. Then she just stopped responding to him. He was increasingly angry and self-conscious. And these were all things that he acknowledged after the fact in interviews. um He started to harbor anger and resentment against Diane. He claimed that he, this was when he started realizing that he had this kind of burning desire to get revenge on her.
00:46:20
Speaker
For what? We don't really know. Like, what was there to get revenge on? Her being successful and him not? Right. um
00:46:28
Speaker
just I just almost don't believe anything this man says. Well, and that's why it's so hard, right? Because... i think he I think he's saying what he needs to say to make people think he has feelings and emotions. You know what i mean? That he's not. was just... Being so good to Anne Rule and helping her to the car after the job. Like, he needs her to say later on down the line.
00:46:51
Speaker
He was lovely. he was great. That a politician guy, he needs these people as, you know, character references. He's smart. He knows this.
00:47:01
Speaker
And he is stacking the deck, man. Yeah. So, despite his personal problems and self-doubt, ah self-doubt Governor Evans appointed to Ted to the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission.
00:47:18
Speaker
wonder Glorious. I wonder Governor Evans ever thought about what he did there. whoo Okay, so... This committee, it was the year before the disappearance had started, okay?
00:47:31
Speaker
It was in charge of disseminating information on how to stay safe and prevent sexual assault for women, primarily rape, okay? During the work with the committee, he learned all of the pitfalls between jurisdictional communication. He learned crime statistics and reporting, and he learned how police...
00:47:52
Speaker
investigated. right You know, like he got to read all of these things and and process them. And then he made flyers and then he made things to pass out to women to avoid. And like, that's just yuck. Yuck. Right? Yeah. Oh, he's so gross. Okay. Um, so he knew what the police patterns were and he how,
00:48:20
Speaker
how An individual, let's say, that is intelligent, could take advantage of chaos by committing crimes in different places. And he learned that if you did this, then this wouldn't be picked up on or whatever.
00:48:37
Speaker
So this was, he met, um, Liz, Elizabeth Klipfer, uh, while he was working here. Um, they met at a bar, they fell hard for each other. he was a smooth talker. He was a confident man. Uh, he hit his troubles very well.
00:48:52
Speaker
Um, she had a daughter, she was a single mom. And so then he basically like enveloped himself into this tiny little duo and they made a makeshift family.
00:49:05
Speaker
Um, Their relationship was tumultuous, again, because he just loved her so much, according to him. He just he just wanted her to understand, okay? Yeah.
00:49:18
Speaker
It's fucking weird. um So a few months later, he began then working for a government agency called the Department of Emergency Services, which was involved in the search for the missing women.
00:49:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:36
Speaker
What a dick. yeah But also a mastermind. Diabolical genius. But also don't want to give him that much credit. You know, he was just he was just playing the game right.
00:49:49
Speaker
Yeah, I see what you're saying. yeah Can't give him credit, but like he was smart. God, you hate it. You hate to see it. yeah um So then, just in time for the fall semester, Ted decided to act on an acceptance that he had received to the University of Utah Law School, so he moved to Utah.
00:50:12
Speaker
While living in Utah, Ted became interested in the Church of the Latter-day Saints. He got baptized into the church and became a member of his local branch.
00:50:25
Speaker
Turn it off.
00:50:28
Speaker
That's insane. Do you think he went around the doors and was like, hi, do you have time to talk about our christ and save or our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? guarantee you did. Oh, my God. Just to make himself look whatever.
00:50:40
Speaker
Yeah. Like the good altar boy. The good altar boy. Absolutely. they have altars? I don't know. That was very Catholic of me. Yeah, sorry. um So he was a member of his local branch. The president of the branch actually became a good friend of his and recalled that he really liked Ted. He was kind, he was handsome, he was articulate, and he fit right in. And the whole congregation just adored him. Yeah. Okay.
00:51:02
Speaker
Of course, of course they did. We're not shocked. He did that on purpose. Everything he does is on purpose. Everything. It's just perfect. So Anne and Elizabeth and those two employees had reached out to the cops and they were like, that kind of might be Ted maybe. But none of that information that I just went through was accessible to them. So they were like, wait second.
00:51:25
Speaker
No way. No way that this clean cut well-to-do, highly successful, well-liked law student with no adult criminal record could be capable of such things. There's no way.
00:51:42
Speaker
Of course it was like, it was the 70s though, you know? I mean, this was kind of new coming onto the radar. I mean, yeah. So he didn't fit the picture of a monster.
00:51:53
Speaker
He didn't because, and that's what they say repeatedly, is they people wanted to think that a monster was very easily spotted. Right. Like, if you turned and you looked, you could see the evil, like, emanating out of them or their dark, beady little eyes. Like, this man was not. He had bright blue piercing eyes. He had a smile that led up the room. He was smooth. And he Ted actually mentions that in later interviews where he's like, people didn't want to know it, you know but what they don't realize is that people like me
00:52:26
Speaker
We don't just come out at night where we've got fangs all out and dripping saliva like war walking among you. And you're just like, oh, it's gross.
00:52:38
Speaker
um So the cops don't move forward on him at all in Seattle. Unfortunately, in the fall of 1974, strange things start happening in Utah, Idaho and Colorado.
00:52:49
Speaker
Who's in Utah in the fall of 74? Good old Ted. So um a hitchhiker goes missing in early September, but then on September six Back in Washington State, two miles east of Samomish State Park, hunters came across skeletal remains.
00:53:06
Speaker
Two of the bodies were identified as the remains of Janis Ott and Denise Naslund. Additional bones were found. A femur and several vertebrae were later identified as belonging to George Ann Hawkins. On October 2nd, 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox was abducted out of Holiday, Utah. Her name remains were never discovered.
00:53:26
Speaker
Wow. Wow.
00:53:29
Speaker
daughter of midvale police chief left a pizza shopp about nine thirty pm and vanished her naked body was found nine days later in the mountains the autopsy revealed that she was possibly alive for seven days after her disappearance On Halloween night, 17-year-old Laura Amy disappeared after leaving a party in Lehigh, Utah, around midnight. She was last seen trying to hitchhike. Her naked body was found almost a month later on Thanksgiving Day by hikers approximately nine miles northeast of American Fort Canyon.
00:53:59
Speaker
The medical examiner determined that Laura had died on November 20th, which meant she had been alive for nearly 20 days after she disappeared. Wow. Both Melissa and Laura had been brutally beaten, raped, sodomized, and strangled with nylon stockings.
00:54:12
Speaker
on November 8th 18 year old Carol de Ranch was at Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Utah. It's just really weird though like going back through this because I lived out in Utah for a little while and so all of these places are very familiar to me and um it's just and one of my friends that I made while I was out there her mom actually fled from Ted Bundy. Holy shit.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah. So anyway, Carol DeRanche, Fashion Place Mall. um It was one mile away from the Midvale restaurant where Melissa Smith had last been seen.
00:54:50
Speaker
A man approached Carol and told her that he was Officer Roseland. He claimed that he needed her to come to the station and file a complaint because somebody had tried to break into her car. While they were in the car heading to the police station, and she was smart. She asked for his identification. He showed it to her easily. So she was like, okay.
00:55:07
Speaker
So they get in the vehicle and she's like, huh, he drives a VW Bug. That's a little weird. But then she was like, maybe he's undercover. Whatever. So they get in and she's like, wait a second, you're driving down back alley. This is not the way to the police station. She points this out. He pulls over. He attempts to handcuff her, but he only gets one cuff on. um She struggles, struggles, struggles. She gets out of the car.
00:55:28
Speaker
He um chases her out of the vehicle. He's swinging a crowbar at her and brandishing a gun. She runs towards an oncoming car, but when she turned around, he was gone.
00:55:39
Speaker
Less than four hours later, 17-year-old Deborah Kent left a theater production at Viewmont High School in Bountiful, Utah. She was supposed to be heading to pick up her little brother, but she never arrived. Mm-hmm.
00:55:51
Speaker
When police investigated, the drama teacher and a classmate of Deborah's said that she that they saw a stranger asking them to go to the parking lot to identify a vehicle. He was seen by another student pacing in the back of the auditorium just before the play ended. Outside that auditorium, police found a key that unlocked the handcuffs that had been removed from Carol DeRanche's wrist.
00:56:10
Speaker
Deborah's body was never found. That same month, Elizabeth Klepfer called the King County Police in Washington for the second time, said that she had seen the news about the disappearing young women in and around Salt Lake City. She reiterated her concerns about Ted Bundy. After a thorough interview with Major Crimes Detective Randy Hergsmeyer, Bundy did move up on the list of suspicion. Unfortunately, the Lake Sammamish witnesses were unable to pick him out of a photo lineup.
00:56:39
Speaker
In December, Klopfer reached out to the Salt Lake City County Sheriff's Office. She shared her concerns and suspicions with them. They added him to their list of suspects, but there was no forensic evidence to link him, so they couldn't go any further.
00:56:54
Speaker
On January 12th, 1975, 23-year-old Karen Campbell, a registered nurse, disappeared from a well-lit hallway. She was going up to her room at the Wildwood Inn.
00:57:05
Speaker
She got off the elevator to go get her book, and she was going to go right back down She never returned. Her body was found a month later on a road just outside of the resort. Her death was caused by repeated blunt force strikes to the head that left distinctive linear groove of depressions on her skull. Her left earlobe had been cut off and she had multiple deep cuts from sharp instruments all over her body.
00:57:30
Speaker
On March 5th, a group of Forrester students, nerds, who had been marking trees on Taylor Mountain, found a skull. The police arrived with a team of dogs.
00:57:41
Speaker
Over the next few days, they continued to find more and more bones. Their remains belonged to Linda Healy, Brenda Ball, Susan Rancourt, and Roberta Parks. They were found just two miles away from where Janice otland janice Ott and Denise Naslin's bodies had been found.
00:57:57
Speaker
um In his later interview with journalist Stephen Machad, Bundy spoke of this and said, We can make a reasonable guess that this individual was clearly trying to cover up his crimes. When a body was left there, the animals would do his work for him, and he would continue going back there because he had his own garbage disposal.
00:58:17
Speaker
We can make a reasonable request, a reasonable assumption. assumption ah The police were able to to, like, not definitively say, but confidently say that because all of these women had gone missing from Widely different locations at different times the fact that all of their bodies have been put in the same general location on Taylor mountain They were pretty sure that they had been killed by the same person, right?
00:58:47
Speaker
Yeah, we can't say it confidently but we can we can bet we can you know It's reasonable to assume to assume we can make a reasonable assumption um
00:59:01
Speaker
So, by this time, a reporter who had previously been based in Seattle and had been covering the missing women up there got a job down in Denver, Colorado.
00:59:13
Speaker
Ward Lucas, um when he arrived in Colorado, kind of realized, wait and a second, wait a second, they're also dealing with missing and murdered women.
00:59:26
Speaker
I wonder if it's connected. But again, this is un untouched territory before. This is multi-state stuff, not just jurisdictions. It's state lines. So Ward's kind of keeping track of all of this.
00:59:43
Speaker
On March 15th, 26-year-old Julie Cunningham, she was a ski instructor in Vail, Colorado, never made it to her scheduled dinner date. Her body was never found. April 6th, 25-year-old Denise Olive...
00:59:58
Speaker
Oliverson. Oliverson. I don't know how to say word.
01:00:04
Speaker
Oliverson? Is that right? Doesn't sound right, but... Oliverson. i don't know. Denise. Another one. She vanished, riding her bike from her home to her parents' home in Grand Junction. Her shoes and bicycle were found near a railroad bridge, but they never recovered her remains.
01:00:22
Speaker
May 6th. 12-year-old Lynette Culver vanished off the street. Her body was never found. God damn. June 28th, 15-year-old Susan Curtis disappeared from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
01:00:34
Speaker
Her murder was Ted Bundy's last confession and was recorded moments before he walked into the execution chamber. So there was a lot of doubt that he had anything to do with Lynette Culver because she was so young. But then when he admitted to Susan Curtis, it was like his age was changing now. It was no longer like co-eds.
01:00:55
Speaker
In the early morning hours of August 16th, 1975, Utah hiiro Highway Patrol Officer Bob Hayward noticed a VW bug cruising through residential neighborhoods without headlights on.
01:01:06
Speaker
And at this point, again, Utah's in the same place as that Seattle was. They have no fucking idea what's going on. So police are out and they're just doing kind of like regular tours of neighborhoods.
01:01:21
Speaker
The police officer goes to pull the vehicle over, and when the driver caught sight of the car pulling out behind him, they took off at high speed. They tried to evade, the driver was caught, they struggled a little bit, and they were arrested. On initial inspection of the car,
01:01:34
Speaker
The officer noticed that the front passenger seat had been taken out and like laid in the back. So there was basically like a divot where a person could be placed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But like it was kind of hidey hole-ish.
01:01:54
Speaker
ah He was like, that's weird. But because he had evaded capture, they were able to look further and more closely into his car. They found some fucking weird shit. Okay.
01:02:08
Speaker
In the vehicle, they found a ski mask. Maybe not so weird. Okay. People ski. But it was a ski mask that looked like kind of like a rapey ski mask. Okay. Like there's a difference.
01:02:21
Speaker
They also found other masks made from pantyhose, lots of nylon pantyhose, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, coils of rope, an ice pick, and strips of like ripped sheets almost.
01:02:36
Speaker
It's the mask of pantyhose. is the creepiest. The handcuffs? Yeah. Really? The coils of rope? I feel like all of it. Yeah, oh I mean all of it is, but like... Like one thing at a time, you'd be like, okay.
01:02:47
Speaker
But then you put it all together and you're like, oh oh. We got a problem. oh oh So the driver, of course, had an explanation for everything. But the car and the physical description of this guy that they pulled over triggered a detective, Jerry Thompson, to remember the Duranche kidnapping from the previous year.
01:03:08
Speaker
He also went, wait a second. We got a call from a Liz Klepfer about her boyfriend, Ted.
01:03:21
Speaker
So, they hold him in an attempt to on the charges of attempting to evade law, okay? Which is very minor minor charges. But...
01:03:35
Speaker
They were able to search his apartment and they found guides for the Colorado ski resorts in Snowmass, Wildwood Inn, which is where the nurse had disappeared from, that had check marks over them and a brochure for the theater production at Viewmont High School.
01:03:52
Speaker
Unfortunately, they couldn't gather sufficient evidence. um So he was placed on 24 hours surveillance twenty four hour surveillance before he was set to actually go to trial for this. His lawyers were like, it's misdemeanor, it's no big deal.
01:04:07
Speaker
They didn't know what was cooking underneath. So they were like, yeah, this would get off. And Ted's confident, he's like, yeah, this is no big deal. this is I'm gonna get off, this is gonna be fine, I'm gonna go back to law school, I'm gonna become a great lawyer, it's gonna be awesome. And he's smiling through all these interviews.
01:04:26
Speaker
He's cocky motherfucker. So he's under the assumption that this is just, it'll be fine. They believed me. They didn't find anything. So Detective Thompson flies to Seattle to interview Liz Klepfer more in depth.
01:04:44
Speaker
She's like, hey, yeah, so here's some other things that I happen to find throughout the time, either at my place or at Ted's house, like crutches, even though he was never injured, a bag of cast plaster,
01:04:58
Speaker
a meat cleaver damn that she'd ever saw him use for cooking, surgical gloves, ah an oriental knife in a special case, and a sack full of women's clothing and underwear.
01:05:12
Speaker
then So in September 1975, Ted Bundy decides he's got to cut and run. So he sells his VW to a teen who lives in Midville. The Utah police are instantly impounding the vehicle because they're aren they're still watching him. During a forensic search, they found hairs matching Karen Campbell, Melissa Smith, and Carol DeRange.
01:05:33
Speaker
And there's not a single thing that connects to these women at all except for the presence of their hairs in this vehicle. And so an FBI lab specialist, Robert Neal, said that the presence of hair strands in one car matching three victims who had no connection to each other was a coincidence of mind-boggling rarity.
01:05:50
Speaker
Right. Ted was put into a lineup on October 2nd. He was immediately identified by Carol DeRange as the man claiming to be Officer Rusland. Even though when, so he was under the impression that he was just going to be tried for the attempt to evade. But then he was notified that he had to stand for a lineup.
01:06:10
Speaker
So he immediately realized that somebody was coming to identify him. So He's like, let me completely change my physical appearance. So in like the two day, three day span, he cuts his hair a little bit shorter, parts it the opposite way. Cause you know, that completely changes the way you look and like tried to change his dress and everything about him. So hearing the, his lawyers talk, they're like, yeah, when I saw him the next time, he looked completely different. was.
01:06:42
Speaker
Did he really look that different? Do think that was, like, on purpose? Right. i mean, did anybody say, you can't do that? So, the police had to scramble because they were like, well, shit, now he he looks, he doesn't look like the other men that we, so I don't know what he did to truly change his appearance, but, like, based on the before and after, he didn't look that different to me.
01:07:05
Speaker
But... they had to completely change up their lineup. So they had to get all new people to come in that like matched his new hairstyle and whatever. So despite his master of disguise behavior, Carol DeRange immediately recognized him and was like, that's him.
01:07:25
Speaker
So then he was charged. Also the fact that he just completely changed the way he looked, even a little bit. I mean, Sketchy as fuck, right? Yeah.
01:07:37
Speaker
Well, yeah, so... And then the other witnesses from Bountiful identified him as the stranger ah the stranger that was in the school auditorium. um So they couldn't tie him to Debbie Kent's disappearance, unfortunately. Even though the handcuff key was there, they didn't have enough to... Whatever. So he was charged with the aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault for Carol DeRodge. So...
01:08:02
Speaker
He goes from, i'm i'm confident, I'm sure, like this is just a silly little thing, to like, in interviews he's like,
01:08:12
Speaker
yeah that officer hayward like really got lucky like talk about his and then he's just again he's saying these things like that guy got real lucky stroke of luck to be able to pull me over for some bullshit so then they go to they go to trial and in trial he is calm as a cucumber he again, arrogant. He's sitting on the side of the, or he's sitting on the table, like feet up on the, he's just ah smiling, laughing, like making jokes.
01:08:44
Speaker
His name hits the papers in Utah, but then there's also, because Ward Lucas had been involved, he's also like reporting back and forth, right? So he's trying to figure out, is this Ted Bundy from Utah who tried to kidnap Carol DeRanche, is that the same mysterious Ted that was killing people or that was possibly associated with the disappearances up in Seattle. So then his news but his name is all of the papers. So Ted's getting more and more publicity.
01:09:14
Speaker
He's angry in the court during his Carol de Raunch hearings. He stands up in the middle of the court and he like points at her. He points to the judge and he's like, she's lying. She's a liar. And he gets angry.
01:09:27
Speaker
So kind of a flash into like who he really is. But then he goes back into like the smooth mask, okay? His parents, his friends, his exes, everyone, his whole church congregation is mortified. They absolutely don't believe that this guy is possibly involved. They're they're speaking out for him. They're sending like...
01:09:53
Speaker
cards of support where it's like pictures of like the whole congregation supporting him and they're it's just it's gross neighbors are like going up to carol and they're like are you sure you got the right guy like there's no way it's ted you know just ick he found the whole thing entertaining uh again laughing and smiling through camera interviews and just saying, I'll be fine.
01:10:20
Speaker
Like, I have no doubt that I'm going to get out of this and to go back to law school and I'll be okay. so in for the first time ever in history, in November of 1975, detectives Jerry Thompson from Utah, Robert Keppel from Washington, and Michael Fisher from Colorado met up in Aspen to exchange information on their cases. Together with an additional 30 detectives and prosecutors from five different states, they pulled all of their data, all of their evidence, all of the circumstantial facts, all that circumstantial details, and they concluded that Theodore Bundy was undeniably their killer and their kidnapper.
01:10:57
Speaker
But they needed more concrete proof before they went after him. In February 1976, Ted Bundy stood trial for the charges against Carol DeRange again. um He was rude. His lawyer suggested waiving the right to a jury, which he accepted. So there was a bench trial weekend deliberation. The judge found him guilty. That was a big slap in the face for Ted. He was confident that he was getting out of this. So he was sentenced to 1 to 15 years in the Utah State Prison. In October of that year, he was found hiding in a bush in the prison yard with road maps, airline schedules, and a social social security card.
01:11:35
Speaker
Later that same month, while he was in solitary confinement for his apparent attempted escape plan, I don't know if that's what that was, I guess, ah officers from Colorado showed up in the Utah jail and charged him with the mytle ah murder of Karen Campbell.
01:11:53
Speaker
He was like, oh, this isn't looking great. Utah typically would not have extradited him. However, because the charge in Utah was worse than the charge in, or the charge in Colorado was worse than the charge Utah, they did. He resisted extradition, but then he waived it and was like, I'll be fine.
01:12:11
Speaker
This will be great. So he was transferd to transferred to Aspen in 1977, January. The few months between when he was extradited and when then when his trial took place,
01:12:23
Speaker
saw a change in Ted and his demeanor. His lawyers realized that when he got to Aspen, he was different. He was notably less arrogant, notably less controlled and well-maintained. ah He tried to maintain his attitude of superiority, but he was becoming a angrier and more aggressive because he was not being treated with the kind of respect or higher value that he expected.
01:12:50
Speaker
It set him off. He said, i didn't like being treated like an animal. animal He said he truly never thought um that he would be in this position. He was better than the rest of the inmates and he thought he was smarter and more important.
01:13:05
Speaker
In June 1977, while in Aspen, Colorado, for a preliminary hearing for the murder of Karen Campbell, Bundy, who decided to represent himself in addition to the five court-appointed lawyers that he had, he was not required to wear handcuffs or leg shackles. So during the first recess, he went to the library to continue researching.
01:13:24
Speaker
He jumped out of the second story window. Mind you, in interviews, he talked about He had been training himself. This was not a spontaneous thing. He had measured every time he had gone to the courthouse. He had estimated with his eyes the distance from the second story window down to the ground and the distance from the base like the base of the window to the street to the riverbed, et cetera, to the wood line, okay?
01:13:55
Speaker
He was practicing in his jail cell. He would jump, off of the top bunk to get his legs and his knees prepared for the impact. Like, so he was training for this escape plan.
01:14:08
Speaker
He would run laps in his small little jail cell. Sounds like it would drive me insane. But anyway, jumps out of the window, jogs down Main Street and disappears. um His days on the run, because he was gone for six days, and it's fucking bonkers. Like,
01:14:27
Speaker
The news coverage of this, people couldn't believe it happened. They were like, oh shit, oh shit. This guy wasn't under watch. Nobody was paying attention to him because of like how he presented himself. He was suave, he was cool, he was he was working to his own defense. So like they didn't have him under constant surveillance. He wasn't shackled at all.
01:14:52
Speaker
The windows were able to open and they just left him in the library by himself. Dumb. Even his um his attorneys were like, ooh.
01:15:05
Speaker
Yikes. Oh, stupid. Yeah. um So he was out on the run for a few days. He hoofed it. He changed his clothes. He found a cabin in the woods. He stayed there, ate, and then...
01:15:18
Speaker
He was planning on taking off and continuing going. However, he had injured his ankle when he had jumped out of the window and then there was this big sleet rainstorm and the cold temperature dropped and he said that he was delirious.
01:15:31
Speaker
um The FBI did get involved because now he was a multi-state um
01:15:38
Speaker
possible murderer. So the FBI was finally involved. They started disseminating information. They offered $100,000 reward. searches were extensive. Um, so on day seven, he walked back into town, tried to steal a car, made it just over the state line or just over the, uh, the town line before he was pulled over for reckless driving. When they apprehended him, he was smiling. He was laughing. He was 25 pounds lighter. He was barefoot and he looked haggard.
01:16:16
Speaker
He just doesn't give up. It's just the fact that he keeps fucking smiling. It drives me nuts. That's what I mean.
01:16:25
Speaker
He spent the next few months in jail gathering supplies for another escape plan. People would come to visit him. and bring him things. Bring him things. I don't know how this was happening. I mean, I get it's the 70s. It's not the same, but like he was getting money. He was getting tools. He would use the money. He would buy other things. So he was taking a hacksaw.
01:16:50
Speaker
and he was cutting through the ceiling tiles in his cell because he realized that the warden's office was up above his cell. So he cut through the ceiling and then in the final days of 1977, he escaped through from the Colorado prison on New Year's Eve. He climbed through the opening he had cut in the ceiling of his cell. He snuck down, ah a little crawl space into the jailer's apartment that he had cut into. He stole some clothes and then he walked out the front door.
01:17:25
Speaker
Because of the reduced holiday staffing, his absence wasn't noted until 17 hours later. By that time, he had already made his way to Chicago. bebopped around, made his way down to Florida by way of trains, buses, and stolen cars. In February 1978, he made it on the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitive list. He lasted five days after the FBI tagged him.
01:17:48
Speaker
He was captured by a police officer in Florida. and So, unfortunately, between his escape and the recapture, he continued his normal murderous behaviors. On January 15th, 1978, He broke into the Florida State University Chi Omega Sorority House. He murdered 21-year-old Margaret Bowman. He bluned bludgeoned her with firewood, which is just kind of fucked, right? And, like, you see it it's just like, never mind. And then he ah strangled her with nylon stocking. um
01:18:19
Speaker
Then he moved into another room and he killed 20-year-old Lisa Levy. He beat her unconscious. He strangled her. And this is all like the same.
01:18:30
Speaker
In the same sorority house. It's the same. Same evening. Right. Yeah. Like he he went he went from Bowman's room to Lisa's room. And then. um So he. He.
01:18:41
Speaker
Beat. He beat Bowman with the firewood. Strangled her with the nylon stocking. Then he went to Lisa's room. He beat her. um Strangled her.
01:18:52
Speaker
Tore off one of her nipples. And then. bit so deeply into her buttocks that he obviously left full full dental impressions. And then he sexually assaulted her with a hairspray can.
01:19:04
Speaker
And then he moved to another room in the sorority house where two women, 21-year-olds Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, both shared a room. um ah Chandler suffered a concussion, a broken jaw, lost multiple teeth, and she had crushed fingers. Kleiner also suffered a broken draw jaw, had deep lacerations to her shoulder, Um, during that attack though, he was kind of thwarted, I guess, because headlights came down the, down the way and I guess it scared him off. So he left, um, and leaves it. So those two Kleiner and Chandler survived, uh, leaves the sorority house. He breaks into basement same night.
01:19:43
Speaker
Just kind of keeps on moving. Same night, breaks into the house of 21-year-old Cheryl Thomas, who also survived, but she was so badly wounded, he dislocated her shoulder, broke her jaw and skull in so many places that she was left with permanent deafness and equilibrium dysfunction. She had been a like career dancer, and so her dance career was gone.
01:20:06
Speaker
Um, so February 8th, so the next month, uh, Bundy ends up in Jacksonville. Uh, he's driving a van that he had stolen from the FSU campus during those attacks. He approaches 14 year old Leslie Parmenter, who happens to be the daughter of Jacksonville police department's chief of detectives, which he had already done that before. You know, he had killed another in Midvale, Utah, um, police chief's daughter.
01:20:36
Speaker
He identified himself to her as Richard Burton from the fire department, but was thwarted when Leslie's older brother came back to the car and scared him off. So he escapes, I guess, runs away. Maybe he doesn't run away. it's not it's not It's not obvious enough that they're like, hey, 911, there was this weird dude ran off.
01:20:57
Speaker
Same day, he drives to Lake City where he abducts 12-year-old Kimberly Leach from a junior high school. Her partially mummified remains were found seven weeks later in a pig farrowing shed 30 miles north of the city.
01:21:11
Speaker
The medical examiner concluded that she had been sexually assaulted, that her throat had been cut and her genitals had been mutilated with a knife. couple days later, February 12th, Bundy had no more money and he was growing paranoid that the police were closing in. He steals a car and he leaves Tallahassee. 1.30 in the morning on February 15th, a Pensacola police officer, David Lee,
01:21:34
Speaker
He noted a stolen car, a VW Bug, which we know he had been driving. Like, steal something else, my man. i get it. It's the 70s, but like, said there's got to be like a ah the Honda Civic somewhere. Somebody that's so smart.
01:21:52
Speaker
He is. He's very intelligent, but he's so dumb. Um, so he notes the bug and he starts to not pursue cause it's not a pursuit yet, but he gets in behind the car and he orders the driver to pull over. The driver resisted, um, and then pulls over the police officer and him. he they get into a fight. Shots are fired. Um, the police officer had no idea that he had just stumbled upon. one of the most prolific serial killers in history and the current member of the FBI's most wanted list.
01:22:26
Speaker
um Bundy was identified while in custody. I think it was like two hours later in Florida. I wonder what went through the cop's mind when he realized.
01:22:36
Speaker
This is Ted Bundy. Yeah. yeah Yikes. You know, that's interesting. Right. I would have to see. A few months later, in May of 1978, a Florida grand jury indicted him on the charges of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder,
01:22:54
Speaker
and burglary for the Chi Omega killings and assaults. His trial was in June 1979. The trial, covered by 250 reporters from five continents. That's insane. Five continents. I mean, there's no fucking penguins here, right? So everyone else is pretty much represented.
01:23:16
Speaker
um Was the first to be nationally televised in the States. Wow. Ted was, as we expect, confident and laid back as the world watched. He smiled, he chatted, he laughed, he sat on the edge of the um defendant's table. Is that what it's called?
01:23:34
Speaker
um And he told the reporters that he had every intention of completing his law degree and becoming a successful and great lawyer. He was confident.
01:23:46
Speaker
He had five court-appointed attorneys present, but his arrogance and his narcissism created his like deep-seated need to be seen as in charge. And one of his attorneys, Attorney Nelson, stated he sabotaged the entire off defense out of spite, distrust, and a grandiose delusion, which we know he had since childhood. He always wanted to be the best. He had these great plans for himself.
01:24:10
Speaker
He was offered a plea deal that would have locked him into a 75-year sentence, which initially they thought Ted was going to take, and he was like kind of waffling back and forth whether or not he was going to do it. But at the last minute, he refuses the plea and risks capital capital punishment, right? um And it was simply because he could not bring himself to openly admit guilt.
01:24:35
Speaker
He thought that he could be this. So on July 1979, The jury deliberated for less than seven hours before finding him guilty of the murders of Bowman and Levy and the attempted murders of Kleiner, Chandler, and Thomas and the burglary.
01:24:51
Speaker
Judge Edward Cowart imposed the death penalty for the murder charges. Bundy appealed to convention conviction and the sentence to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court affirmed it. They were like, fuck this guy. Mm-hmm.
01:25:04
Speaker
Six months later, a trial was held in Orlando for the abduction and murder of Kimberly Leach. He was again found guilty. So he's in jail in Colorado. No, he was in jail in Utah.
01:25:16
Speaker
The Colorado cops come and they're like, hey, by the way, you're also getting charged with these crimes. So he goes there, he escapes. Now he's in Florida. He's guilty of this stuff in and Colorado. Now he is found guilty of even worse charges in Florida. Right. um It is, and they found him guilty again, just a few hours of deliberation. um cut i don't know how I feel about it. It's kind of silly, right? You're already charged and convicted and sentenced to death for certain murders, right? So what's the point of this whole trial thing, right? I don't know.
01:25:55
Speaker
The trial for the other... For Kimberly Leach. He was already sentenced to death in Florida. Here's the thing about that. The family of Kimberly, it's... It's more for the family. They deserve that. So I guess they could... I don't know. I guess it's a whole fair trial thing. If you kill 10 people, you need to be... It doesn't matter if you get life for every one of them or death or whatever. You've got to be charged for every single one
01:26:21
Speaker
You know, basically, I'm a lawyer. Yeah. yeah Well, I'm basically a serial killer, so. There we go. I've watched enough shows. I'm also a cop. And a profiler.
01:26:34
Speaker
It's unknown when or where he actually killed for the first time. Obviously, this dude has had countless psychological profiles done on him. But you can't trust any of them because he is so impressively manipulative. um And one moment, like 2 a.m. on Tuesday, he'll be like, ah, yes, I murdered when I was 12 and it was lovely. And he will give you all these details. And then 2.05, he's like, never did that.
01:27:01
Speaker
And you you can't take, you can't take, yeah. And he he kind of laughs through all of it. um poof w ah Did you watch any of the footage of him? Yeah. yeah If you haven't watched the Netflix series, hearing his voice on those tapes and hearing and seeing those interviews with him,
01:27:24
Speaker
i think it's almost made worse by... like, Ed Gein has that voice that just immediately sets you on edge. Like, you you hear it and you're already like, this guy's a creep, right? And then there's other things. Like, you know, you had Gacy. He dresses a clown. Of course he's fucking weird. Like, that's not okay. No offense to clowns, but yeah. um But with him...
01:27:51
Speaker
He's just a normal dude. He's sitting there and he's talking and it's just horrifying yeah because he is, he's wild, was wildly intelligent. Um, so, uh, a lot of contradictory facts in his or statements in his psychological profiles, in his own interviews, et cetera. So throughout his career, is that the right choice for words there? I guess. Yeah.
01:28:14
Speaker
um as one of the most infamous serial killers in history, he accumulated at least 36 identified victims across seven states. Many people, and I would be one of them, believe that he killed way more. um There are some that say that he has at least 100, probably more, um and I don't doubt it. I mean, he was very skillful and he moved very rapidly. Mm-hmm.
01:28:39
Speaker
So some interviews do indicate that he did start killing long before his first linked killing in 74 because he referred to that 74 to 78 spree as the time when he was like no longer an amateur. He wasn't learning how to do what he liked. um Oh, so it started before that. But again, like, can you trust that?
01:29:01
Speaker
Because he he talked about it. The way he described it was like, oh, yeah, by then I was, I like knew exactly what I was doing. And but So did he admit to all of these by the time he died?
01:29:13
Speaker
Yes and no. Yeah. Watch the Netflix Ted Bundy tapes, the interviews with the killer. um Because it was very interesting. Because again, he was not willing to openly admit guilt. um So he he repeatedly managed to evade capture simply because he did not fit the profile um that authorities expected of such a violent and and disturbed killer. Because again, he was a law student, he was clean cut, he had no adult criminal record, he was well-liked by co-workers, friends, family, his mom and his stepdad like talked very well about him, his childhood friends, like everything, okay? The crimes and the murders he committed were incredibly tragic and brutal. He succeeded in luring the women away, even in the midst of the fear circulating, because again, Throughout the Northwest, there was this this period of time where nobody knew what was happening. Nobody knew anything about where these women were going, but they were just disappearing. So there was fear everywhere. Women stopped hitchhiking. And yet he was still able to continue doing what he was doing. Wow. He preyed on their trust in authority figures, dressed up as a cop, identified himself as a firefighter, or he manipulated like their morality and humanity by pretending to be injured and struggling, right? Because how else are you going to lure a young co-ed woman
01:30:38
Speaker
you're a handsome, very articulate, well-dressed man who happens to have a sling on. Like, of course I'll help you. um So he even admitted um that the police officer who pulled him over that first time in Utah got very lucky. And the way he says it is,
01:30:58
Speaker
Like what a stroke of luck that guy had, you know, and it's, I mean, you all of we have ah we have a kind of trail of serial killers in our history that, that was kind of how it happened. Right. Son of Sam, like everything, like yeah these ones that otherwise would not have been found. Right.
01:31:20
Speaker
um So after he was found guilty of the few the few murders that he was tried for, he and his lawyers attempted every single possible avenue to get him out of his death sentence. They appealed repeatedly at every single level of the system. They were successful in some ways because his execution was repeatedly delayed just hours before he was set to die. Okay.
01:31:41
Speaker
Eventually they ran out of the options and time. When it became clear that he had no more actual appeal opportunities, the whole fucking Bundy fan club, like all those fucking freaks and weirdos, because that's what they are. I'm sorry. I have no respect for you. you fawn over these murderers and you fall in love with them. you That's weird. That's fucking weird.
01:32:02
Speaker
Right? He had this one woman who stood beside him, right? Carol Ann Boone. Yeah. He had this one woman who not only stood beside him. Yeah. Yeah. but married him, everyone, so that's one of the things is like, he was denied the privileges to go and get married, right?
01:32:22
Speaker
But he was so smart and he was so manipulative that he knew that if he proposed to her in the presence of a judge in the courtroom, that they could not deny it Is that how he did it? So he fucking did it on the stand.
01:32:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Fucking diabolical. Yeah. Anyway. And then she had a kid, actually. They're not entirely sure because he did not reportedly have conjugal visits. Right. Because he's on fucking death row. But there are fucking pictures of him and his wife and his newborn fucking child in jail.
01:32:56
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a lot of speculation about how she got pregnant, right? did chi There's something about like I wonder if it's his. Why would you claim that it was if it wasn't? Right.
01:33:09
Speaker
Because that she she eventually like fucked off and was like, the who this isn't for me. So, yeah. Um, but yeah, so the crazy fan club, uh, the only other thing they had was that they lobbied for something called executive clemency, where basically they try and appeal to the victim's families, right? Where they're like, don't you want to know, don't you want to know if your daughter or your sister or your family member was one of these victims? The only way you're going find that out is if he survives, if he lives and he continues to be able to help the police and blah, blah, blah. Right.
01:33:48
Speaker
but
01:33:50
Speaker
Eventually this fucker, right? He died. Right. So again, we'll never know the true extent of his viciousness or his exact number of victims. Um, after he was apprehended for good, he basked in the fame. He was the topic of many books and shows and research pieces frequently managed to change his stories and add more information that hadn't been previously known, whether or not it was fact, who knows?
01:34:14
Speaker
Um, some women he admitted to killing have still not been found, uh, despite the fact that he was only found guilty of a few guilty of and charged with, uh, those final three murders, Lisa Levy, Margaret Bowman, and Kimberly Leach. His interview confessions and death row ramblings exposed wildly, horribly fucked up shit, obviously. Um, in 1980, uh, nine years before his execution,
01:34:43
Speaker
Bundy reached out from death row stating that he was willing to speak exclusively with a specific journalist in exchange for a re-examination of every single case against him. He claimed that once they reinvestigated, he would be proven innocent in the process.
01:34:58
Speaker
So Stephen Michaud was that journalist. He acknowledged that he was still early in his career and he knew that Bundy was probably looking to manipulate him, but he couldn't pass up on the opportunity.
01:35:09
Speaker
he doesn't He didn't really know what he was going to find out. um He wanted to know why Ted claimed to be innocent and why, if he was innocent, why would someone set him up? And how would they set him up for all of these, like, right?
01:35:23
Speaker
Either way the story went, he wanted to be a part of it. So he reached out to his former mentor, Hugh Ainsworth, to go out and be the one investigating the cases while he interviewed Ted. He spent six months interviewing him.
01:35:37
Speaker
recorded more than 100 hours of conversations. Okay. Are these are the tapes you hear on Netflix? Mm-hmm. Oh, shit. It's like the John Wayne Gacy ones. Yeah. But it's worse, I'm telling you. I don't know.
01:35:50
Speaker
So many weeks many weeks into the interview, Machad was very frustrated because Ted was still like, he He still wouldn't address what they were there to talk about, okay? ah He was coy. He was humble. He wasn't providing any actual information. So any questions Ms. Shaw had tried to ask about the abductions or the murders were kind of answered with non-answers, vague, obscure responses.
01:36:13
Speaker
um any try Anytime he tried to direct the kind conversation towards revealing anything helpful or truthful, Ted sidestepped. Or he would shut down and he would just go elsewhere. um So eventually, Michaud came up with the idea to use Ted's background in psychology and get him to talk about the cases as if he were an expert witness and assess the type of person who would commit these types of crimes.
01:36:39
Speaker
And this is where it's very weird to hear him because the initial interviews and all of those like first few weeks are bullshit. And Ted's talking about himself and his childhood and blah, blah, blah, this kind of shit.
01:36:52
Speaker
But you can tell he's not actually talking about anything. He's saying a whole bunch, but he's not saying anything. But when Michaud suggested this, there's a, there's a notable change in Ted.
01:37:05
Speaker
Um, He, according to Michaud, he sat up sat straight up, grabbed the tape recorder, and then became a totally different person. He relaxed in the chair. He held the tape recorder to his chest, and he starts talking like Michaud's not even in the room.
01:37:21
Speaker
Because there comes about a third person. Right? It's not him. And so he then spends weeks talking about this person, this killer, this suspect, this...
01:37:37
Speaker
the type of person who... Dot, dot, dot. um And the things that he said were just heinous. And this is one of those things where you could you can put so many quotes in here, but one of them that really stuck was um Ted said, quote, perhaps this person hoped that through violence, through this violent series of acts, that with every murder leaving a person of this type,
01:38:06
Speaker
hungry, unfulfilled, but also leave him with the obviously irrational belief that the next time he did it, he would be fulfilled. And the next time he did it, he would be fulfilled.
01:38:17
Speaker
Or the next time he did it, he would be fulfilled. And there's also, i didn't want to put it in here because i don't want to put his words about women in here, but what he said about women,
01:38:29
Speaker
um just like the female gender overall, That's one of those quotes that you should definitely hear. It's horrible. um He proceeded to tell Machat all about how an individual who was influenced by what he called the entity began as an interest in pornographic images and then became overwhelmed with an interest in violence and specialized grotesque imagery. The violent thoughts then were acted upon and then a quote, reached a point where the anger, the frustration, the anxiety, the poor self-image
01:39:03
Speaker
feeling cheated, wronged, insecure. insecure He decides upon young, attractive women being his victims. So hearing him talk about everything that he did and he gives details and he dissects the mind of this person himself, obviously, and explains the reasoning behind everything, but he doesn't take ownership still. He never fucking admits to it.
01:39:32
Speaker
He managed to basically fully confess to being this horrendous fucking monster, but none of it was admissible in court either. Wow.
01:39:43
Speaker
Yeah. Again, wildly intelligent. So before his execution in 1989, Ted Bundy did, I would say he did one good thing.
01:39:55
Speaker
but like it's it's not actually a good thing. um He didn't do it because he wanted to do the right thing, but he wanted to insert himself into um another prolific killer's investigation.
01:40:07
Speaker
Do you know which one? 89? So his his execution was in 89, but this was in 82. Oh.
01:40:17
Speaker
Dahmer? Back in Kings County, Washington State, where he had started his little rampage. The Green River killer. Young women began disappearing and winding up dead along the Green River. In 1986, the FBI had no leads and didn't know where to begin. um So they made a decision to use like this unexpected source that could maybe peek into the mind of this newest serial killer that was taking up Washington state press papers. So after six years in the Florida prison awaiting his execution, Ted Bundy, um, had been following the case and reached out to the detective working it. He wrote quote, don't ask me why I believe I'm an expert in this area. Just accept that I am. And we'll start from there. Hmm.
01:41:08
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. So throughout the days, uh, spent interviewing Bundy, uh, Sheriff Reichert and then detective Keppel who had worked on his case and been one of the primary ones to catch him in the Washington state stuff. Um, they interviewed him and they saw the similarities between Bundy and the Green River killer.
01:41:30
Speaker
Bundy helped get inside the Green River Killer's mind in such an easy way that they were like, oh, this is just so fucked. um And they realized that the things that he was saying he expected, actions of the Green River Killer, were just veiled confessions about his own atrocities and his own motivations. ah Bundy... Takes one to know one. Yeah.
01:41:54
Speaker
Yeah. And so Reichert and Keppel both said that as they were interviewing him, he was, you could see that he was becoming jealous of the attention that the Green River Killer was receiving. He said the interviews were enlightening, horrific, and slimy, um but enlightening nonetheless. 12 years after ted Theodore Robert Bundy was executed, law enforcement was able to identify the Green River Killer as Gary Ridgway using DNA.
01:42:22
Speaker
pleading to Pleading guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder launched Gary to the most prolific spot until he was booted by none other than Samuel Little that I have done a story on before.
01:42:36
Speaker
um So the flawless objections, the brutal sexual assaults and the torture and the killings weren't the end of his depravity. You know where i'm going with this? Maybe.
01:42:47
Speaker
So to add insult to injury, ah the bodies... He would dump them somewhere. We know a lot of them were on Taylor Mountain. He would dump them somewhere semi-ish secluded that he was comfortable with.
01:43:04
Speaker
And he would go back frequently. Again, earlier he said that it was like a a comfortable place for him. Like nature was doing the job for him. It was his own garbage disposal, right? Or sorry, this person's garbage disposal. um He would spend time with the corpses. He was frequently known to apply cosmetics and then engage in necrophilia up until the bodies had become too decomposed or desiccated by animal activity.
01:43:32
Speaker
Which we have take a pause here because I would like to say yeah that yeah there is no threshold for that because a dead body at all is too decomposed or desiccated to be doing anything with.
01:43:50
Speaker
But this guy... He had standards, right? He would keep going back until it was too much. So, fucking weirdo, at least he knew what he wanted these bodies to look and feel and smell like while he was being fucking didn't know didn't know that about him.
01:44:09
Speaker
Uh-huh. He fooled everybody with his looks, his backstory, and his demeanor. He played the role of the promising student, the caring and concerned community member.
01:44:20
Speaker
the political activist, the husband, and the father. In the end, he was nothing more than a monster of the highest order. His lawyer even described him as, quote, the very definition of heartless evil.
01:44:35
Speaker
Although Ted said of himself, quote, I'm not an animal, I'm not crazy, I don't have split personality, I'm just a normal individual, he was later describing himself as, quote, the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet.
01:44:50
Speaker
Wow. And that's the story of one of our most prolific and infamous serial killers. there's a There's a... When he's representing himself on trial, there was this one scene I mean, you know all of it's a facade.
01:45:10
Speaker
Everything he says, everything he does, it's all manipulation to get you to like him. But there's like some moments that you can see that... You can see who he really is when he gets angry about something.
01:45:23
Speaker
It comes out. So that was, yeah, when he was the kidnapping victim, um Carol DeRange, when she was on the witness stand, he like went after her and you could see him get like lose his mind. That's the fascinating part to me. That's fascinating to watch, I think. I think that you should 100% watch the Netflix thing. It's only four-ish episodes. um But again, when he switches into that third person where he's like psychoanalyzing this this killer, quote unquote, right?
01:46:02
Speaker
He reveals so much about how much he hated himself. And... the the jealousy and the anger and the the um self-doubt and the insecurities that he had, especially when he started realizing, like when he was dating Debbie, or um Edwards, I don't know, I can't remember what her name was, but the only love of his life, whatever. God,
01:46:30
Speaker
yeah horrible, horrible. But he fooled everyone for a long time, and he would have kept doing it. fooled and rule because even though she turned him in she was like you know I don't think it's him exactly but like let's take a look at this man well and that was the thing is that a a lot of the people that like said oh well it might it might be him the only one who ever really admitted that there was his other side to him was Elizabeth Klepfer.
01:47:02
Speaker
And even still, after she had called the cops multiple times and been like, hello, now these women are all missing in Utah. Like, have you looked into Ted at all? Um, she still dated him. I mean, he went back on his, um, on his winter break in between terms and he stayed with her in Washington state. Like,
01:47:24
Speaker
It's crazy. There was something about him. wonder if he has a kid out there. He does. i know. But like if they're still alive, if they're... So, good job. Yeah.
01:47:36
Speaker
That's crazy story. Horrible. Side note, speaking of kids... Do you have one? Pablo Escobar yeah does. Yes. And he is going by a different name. Understandably. In Argentina. Wouldn't you?
01:47:49
Speaker
Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. yeah Well, good job. Thanks. It's always so good to get myself a pound on the back when I talk about serial killers. but You did good, though. I don't want to watch that show.
01:48:02
Speaker
You should watch it. It's... Oh, God, it's fucking horrible. And I'm telling you, I think I personally think it's worse than the Ed Gein. It's worse than the the John Wayne Gacy. Again, because he's a master. Yeah.
01:48:19
Speaker
Oh. All right. Let's wrap it up. Okay. Anything else? Are we good? No, I think that's it. Write us, review us, follow us, subscribe. Five stars, stars, five stars, with stars.
01:48:33
Speaker
And we're here for a good time. Not a long time. Goodbye.