During his interrogation in February, 1978,Theodore Robert Bundy described himself this way to the north Florida police: "I'm the most cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch you'll ever meet."
This is an accurate description of the man who terrorized the nation from 1974 through 1979. He killed women in four states: Washington, Utah, Colorado and Florida. Although Bundy confessed to 28 murders, the FBI suspects that there might have been over 100 victims. There is also police speculation that he killed an 8 year old girl when he was 14. The girl lived in his neighborhood and suddenly disappeared, never to be found.
Ann Rule
After reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Rule wished that if she could only learn how a killer thinks--to get inside his head and read his thoughts--she could possibly gain some sort of understanding about the crime and the mind-set of the murderer. As a former Seattle Policewoman and case worker for the Washington State Department of Public Assistance, and a student intern at the Oregon State Training School For Girls, Ann Rule had a background of working with and observing many forms of disturbed behavior. She became a crime writer who wanted to write and educate others. Rule got her wish in a bone-chilling way.
Working in a crisis hotline center in Seattle, Rule befriended an attractive, articulate, and charming young man named Ted Bundy, who was working for the Republican Party and seeking a future in law and politics. However, over the coming years, he gained fame as a notorious serial killer.
Ann Rule has the distinction of knowing a serial killer personally before, during and after his crimes. She regarded him as a younger brother and a young man working hard toward a future in law. She followed his trial and communicated with him up to his eventual execution in the Florida electric chair at Starke, Florida. Her book, The Stranger Beside Me, reveals much about the mentality of a serial killer.
Ted Bundy was her partner for the late night shift, and she reported that he was an excellent counselor, listening attentively and offering comfort and advice to those calling in for help. The killings of local women began during the nights that Rule and Bundy worked together at the crisis hotline. At the time she was working toward discovering the identity of that murderer, never knowing that she worked and talked with him almost on a daily basis.
Rule found it hard to believe that Bundy was the killer, but as the relentless accusations and overwhelming circumstantial evidence developed, she tried to understand the man and his horrific crimes.
Bundy's Crimes
The most frightening thing about Bundy was his appearance of charisma and normalcy. He charmed and laughed with his victims until they fell into his net. Once trapped and killed, his procedure was extremely organized. He raped and sodomized their bodies and kept them hidden in the mountain forests where he returned time and time again for sex with the dead bodies.
Necrophilia fascinated him, and he kept make-up on hand so that he could apply it to their cold, blue faces so that they had some semblance of life. Usually he stored several bodies at a location, sometimes decapitating them with a hacksaw and taking the heads with him. At one point, he noted that he had several heads in his apartment at one time and even burned one in the fireplace at a friend's home while she was away. When the police began closing in on him in Washington, he fled to Utah. He was a Mormon and felt comfortable in that culture, but eventually the crimes caught up with him, and he moved on to Colorado and finally to Florida where he was forced to end his crime spree when the law caught up to him once more.
Bundy's Trial and Execution
He seemed to glow under the light of his trial and notorious fame. But up to the very end he declared his innocence. Bundy was arrogant enough to think he could beat a guilty verdict when he turned down a plea bargain offer of three 25 year prison sentences to defeat his looming execution in the electric chair.
When he realized what his future held, he tried to save his own life by continuously stalling for more time with legal technicalities. Finally he resorted to offering to tell where he had buried more of his victims' bodies. As he grew more and more desperate, the world got glimpses of the true evil in the man as revealed in his eyes and his temper tantrums. Bundy even offered to help authorities solve the maze of the Green River Killer's mind. At one point he offered to donate his brain for scientific study upon his death if the State of Florida would let him live out his days naturally in prison. Eventually the authorities grew tired of his histrionics and refused to give him any more time and set the date of the execution.
Bundy's final words at his execution were, "I'd like you to give my love to my family and friends." On January 24, 1989, he took his seat in "Old Sparky," the Florida Electric Chair, and a black-hooded executioner pulled the switch. After the declaration of his death at 7:16 AM, witnesses to the execution saw the executioner remove her hood and shake out her long, dark hair. In the end, women got a bit of satisfaction.
As the hearse containing his body pulled away from the prison, crowds waiting outside breathed sighs of relief and cheered that Bundy had finally been brought down.
Serial Killer
The term "serial killer" was not developed until the early 1980s when the FBI began to study and characterize criminal profiles. Ted Bundy was the first criminal classified by the FBI as a "serial killer."
Ann Rule did get her wish to learn how a serial killer thinks. She served both as an author and adviser to the team that set up VICAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program). This a unit that works under the FBI umbrella to solve homicides, sexual assaults, missing persons and unidentified persons.
Rule suggested a series of criteria useful in profiling serial killers. Among these are the following:
- Serial killers are predominantly male. However it has been shown that 10 to 15 percent of known killers are women.
- They are more likely to be Caucasian than black, Native American or Oriental.
- They are charismatic, attractive, and very smart, but not genius-level.
- These killers prefer to use their hands as weapons to commit the murder by bludgeoning, choking, and strangling the victim.
- They often travel around the country or the city where they live. Murderers actively search for victims and put a lot of mileage on their vehicles during the quest. The killers look for victims that have a certain physical type or are vulnerable. Bundy's victims usually had long dark hair parted in the center, as had his former fiancee who terminated their engagement in the 60s. The aggressors may use a trick or lure to attract potential victims. Bundy often wore a fake plaster cast to appear helpless to women as he asked them to assist him in some way.
- Fascinated by police work, they spend time hanging out around the police station and may serve as policemen themselves.
- Serial killers are angry, full of rage and addicted to murder. During his murderous spree, Bundy killed his fiancee over and over again symbolically. The act gives them a different kind of high that drugs or alcohol don't provide. However they may be involved in substance abuse and are often drunk when they commit the crime. They may also be involved in pornography.
- The murderers often suffered from some kind of child abuse when they were less than five years old.
Many serial killers claim that they cannot stop the murders. They enjoy humiliating their victims and watching them die, and don't believe they can stop unless they are apprehended.
Ted Bundy's Ghost
Bundy enjoyed a dubious fame in life, and it seems that possibly criminal folklore will remember him as a ghost who haunts death row at the Florida State Prison where he was executed. Reports leaked from the prison guards insist that Bundy's ghost appears in the cell he occupied in the last hours before his execution.
More rumors have surfaced that the Warden at the prison has threatened to fire the guards if they spread the story of the haunting. Other rumors claim that some terrified guards have even quit their jobs. It seems that the evil in Ted Bundy may live on.
Sources:
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule, Warner, London, 1994
Serial Killers; The Growing Menace by Joel Norris, Arrow, London, 1988
Diane Evans - I am a retired civil engineer as well as a member of Sisters in Crime and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
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