Ted Bundy

by Stephen G. Michaud

  But it does offer variety and different kinds of literature, and a certain percentage of it is devoted toward literature that explores situations where a man, in the context of sexual encounter, in one way or another, engages in some sort of violence toward a woman – or the victim. There are, of course, a whole host of subsituations that could come under that particular heading. Your girlfriend, your wife, a stranger, children, whatever. A whole host of victims are found in this kind of literature. And in this kind of literature, they are treated as victims.

  (Bundy described that part of him that was fascinated by sexual violence as “the entity,” or “the disordered self.” It was the “Ted” that fantasized schemes, at first purely as an exercise in imagination, for isolating victims. He “posited” that “the entity” led “this personality” to experiment with disabling automobile distributor caps or letting the air out of tires. Then the girl or woman would be alone and in need of help, grateful for the appearance of a friendly stranger. Apparently, Bundy actually went so far as to attempt these approaches but discovered “that instantly one or more others always showed up to help her.” At this stage, he said, the hunting was all mental, a game. Then he started to describe an actual attack and stopped. For some reason, he wanted to skip over this stage in the development of “this personality.” Instead, he went on to explain voyeurism.)

  TB: Say he was walking down the street on one occasion, one evening, and just totally, uh, by chance looked up into the window of a house and saw a woman undressing.

  And it just occurred to him that, perhaps not in terribly dramatic terms but as if in a revelation, that there was a viable alternative to this nonsense of the flat tires and distributor caps. Certainly a less, a more acceptable one, one that put everybody in less jeopardy – would. . . might be realized by indulging in a form of voyeurism.

  And he began, with some regularity, with increasing regularity, to, uh, canvass, as it were, the community he lived in. By peeping in windows, as it were, and watching a woman undress, or watching whatever could be seen, you know, during the evening, and approaching it almost like a project, throwing himself into it, uh, literally for years.

  These occasions when he would, uh, travel about the neighborhoods that adjoined his and search out candidates for. . . search out places where he could see the things he wanted to see. . . uh, more or less these occasions were dictated. . . still being dictated by this person’s normal life.

  So he wouldn’t break a date or postpone an important, uh, event or whatever. Wouldn’t rearrange his life in any significant way to accommodate his, uh, indulgence in this voyeuristic behavior.

  He gained, you’d say, a terrific amount of. . . at times. . . a great amount of gratification from it. And he became increasingly adept at it – as anyone becomes adept at anything they do over and over and over again.

  SM: It sounds to me like he wouldn’t get enough sleep; that he’d be continuously exhausted.

  TB: Oh yes, I think this is fair to say. . . but what I think we can say. . . what began to happen was that, uh, important matters were not being rearranged or otherwise interfered with by his voyeuristic behavior, but with increasing regularity, things that were postponable were postponed or otherwise rescheduled to, uh, work around, uh, hours and hours spent on the street, at night and during the early morning hours.

  SM: A while ago you envisioned that one night this person was walking by this bar. He sees a girl coming out of a bar or walking down the street from a bar. Could this have been a crystallization? Or something snapped at this point?

  TB: Well, I think that’s overdramatizing it. I think this personality we’re talking about. . . uh, what’s happening is that we’re building up the condition and what may have been a predisposition for violence becomes a disposition. And as the condition develops and its purposes or its characteristics become more well defined, it begins to demand more of the attention and time of the individual.

  There’s a certain amount of tension, uh, struggle between the normal personality and this, this, uh, psychopathological, uh, entity.

  There are all kinds of words. Malignancy is not exactly a proper metaphor, though I suppose that if malignancy means sickness of a serious sort, it would be apt.

  SM: In the sense that tumors sometimes grow and expand and. . .

  TB: Yeah, certainly that’s an analogy that could be used here. Although it’s not satisfactory in that one has no control over, uh, over a malign tumor, and yet, one would think that an individual would have control over the development of something purely psychological. It develops very, very slowly – and the person’s aware of it, and, uh, essentially, the only steps that are taken are to, uh, initially conceal it and not let it interfere with normal things.

  But basically, however, as this condition develops and becomes more distinct, there’s pressure, a sort of contest, as it were. The tension between normal individual, uh, normal consciousness of this individual and those demands being submitted to him via this competing. . . this condition inside him seems to be competing for more attention. Okay? And it’s not, it’s not an independent thing. One doesn’t switch on and the other doesn’t switch off. They’re more or less active at the same time. Sometimes one is more active, you know.

  SM: What about that attack?

  TB (sighing): Oh, I wasn’t going to comment on that. What I was going to do was just to agree that there was a point where, probably. . . agree that a point would be reached where we’d had all this, this reservoir of tension building. Building and building. Finally, inevitably, this force – this entity – would make a breakthrough.

  Maybe not a major breakthrough, but a significant breakthrough would be achieved – where the tension would be too great, the pressure would be too great and the demands and expectations of this entity would reach a point where they could not be controlled. And where the consequences would really be seen for the first time.

  SM: How would this personality, having seen a woman that night in the neighborhood and having been aroused by her, have reacted? Would he have returned again and again to the house until there came a time when he saw her there alone?

  TB: I think you could make a little more sense of much of this if you take into account the effect of alcohol. It’s important. It’s very important as a trigger. When this person drank a good deal, his inhibitions were significantly diminished. He would find that his urge to engage in voyeuristic behavior or trips to the book store would become more prevalent, more urgent. On every occasion when he engaged in such behavior, he was intoxicated.

  SM: There was no alarm on the part of the dominant (personality)?

  TB: It was as though the dominant personality was sedated. Not, now, to the point of unconsciousness, but to the point of being unable to fully control.

  SM: (This self) was somewhat less arbitrary in its demands?

  TB: Less domineering; still very vigilant. Anybody. . . the more they become intoxicated, the less cautious they become.

  SM: What was it you found objectionable or unsatisfactory about the scene we started to discuss?

  TB: Well, I’m not. I don’t find it unsatisfactory. I just thought it necessary in thinking of. . . describing such an incident. . . it might make more sense to describe the state of the individual – by indicating that on every occasion when he engaged in such behavior, he was intoxicated.

  SM: Right.

  TB (long pause): And we can say that the, the. . . on one particular evening, when he had been drinking a great deal. . . and as he was passing a bar, he saw a woman leaving the bar and walk up a fairly dark side street. And for no, uh, we’d say that, something seemed to seize him! I was going to say something crystallized, but that’s another way of looking at it. But the urge to do something to that person seized him – in a way he’d never been affected before.

  And it seized him strongly. And to the point where, uh, without giving a great deal of thought, he searched around for some instrumentality to uh, uh, attack t
his woman with. He found a piece of two-by-four in a lot somewhere and proceeded to follow and track this girl.

  SM: How great a distance?

  TB: Oh, I don’t know. Several blocks (pause). And when he reached the point where he was almost, uh, driven to do something – there was really no control at this point.

  SM: Uh huh.

  TB: And the situation’s novel because while he may have toyed around with fantasies before and made several abortive attempts to, uh, act out a fantasy, it never reached the point where actually he was, uh, confronted with harming another individual, or taking possession or abducting or whatever – which really is ultimate, I suppose; one of the ultimate antisocial acts, as it were.

  And so it reached a point where he. . . he’d gotten ahead of this quarry, this girl, and was lying in wait for her, as they say. But, uh, before she reached the point where he was concealed, she turned and went into her house!

  SM: Uh huh.

  TB: Okay? And yet the. . . the sort of revelation of that experience and the frenzied desire that seized him, uh, really seemed to usher in a new dimension to the, that part of himself that was obsessed with, or otherwise enamored with, violence and women and sexual activity – a composite kind of thing. Not terribly well defined, but more well defined as time went on.

  This particular incident spurred him on to, uh, on succeeding evenings, to, uh, hunt this neighborhood, uh, searching (for others).

  I mean, he had, in the months and years previous to this, frequently passed women in alleys, women in dark streets, women alone on any number of occasions, as he was making his rounds and looking in windows. But it never occurred to him, ever at any point, to use this as an opportunity to do anything. It just never occurred to him.

  For some reason, this particular – the sight of that woman under those circumstances on that evening and given the condition he was in – sort of signaled a breakthrough. The, the breaking of the tension – making a hole in the dam.

  Not bursting it down, but again, we begin to see the cracks, as it were.

  On succeeding evenings he began to, uh, scurry around this same neighborhood, obsessed with the image he’d seen on the evening before. And on occasion, on one particular occasion, he saw a woman park her car and walk up to her door and fumble for her keys. He walked up behind her and struck her with a. . . a piece of wood he was carrying. And she fell down and began screaming, and he panicked and ran.

  What he had done terrified him. Purely terrified him. And he was full of remorse and remonstrating with himself for the suicidal, uh, nature of that activity – the ugliness of it all – and, you know, he quickly sobered up, as it were.

  SM: Fear of discovery, too.

  TB: Fear of discovery, sure. Fear of a number of things. He was horrified by the realization that he had the capacity to do such a thing, or even attempt – that’s a better word – this kind of thing. He was terribly fearful that for one reason or another he might be apprehended.

  The sobering effect of that was to. . . for some time, close up the cracks again. And not do anything. For the first time, he sat back and swore to himself that he wouldn’t do something like that again. . . or even, anything that would lead to it.

  And he did everything he should have done. He stayed away from. . . he didn’t go out at night. And when he was drinking, he stayed around friends. For a period of months, the enormity of what he did stuck with him, and he watched his behavior and reinforced the desire to overcome what he had begun to perceive were some problems that were probably more severe than he would have liked to believe they were.

  SM: Yeah.

  TB: Uh, he had. . . within a matter of months, slowly but surely, the impact of this event lost its, uh, deterrent value. And within months he was back, uh, uh, peeping in windows again and slipping back into that old routine.

  It was clear to him, I think, that the course of conduct that he had engaged in on that first, monstrous, occasion, as it were, was totally inappropriate. Fraught with danger, badly thought out. And so, the repulsion that had seized him at the moment he knew what he had done, that repulsion began to recede. As he slipped back into his old routine, something did stick with him. That was the incredible danger: by allowing himself to fall into spontaneous, unplanned acts of violence.

  It took six months or so, until he was back thinking of alternative means of engaging in similar activity, but not. . . not something that would be likely (to) result in apprehension. . . or failure of one sort or another. And, uh, as I said, this took place over a period of months.

  Then on another night he saw a woman walking home – late at night, or early in the morning. He followed her home, looked in the window, and watched her get ready for bed. And he did this on several occasions, for this was a regular kind of thing.

  Eventually he created a plan where he would attack her, in the house. And early one morning, uh, he sneaked into the house, through a door he knew was open, and entered the bedroom. And implementing a plan based somewhat on fantasy – based, you know, on anything but personal knowledge – uh, uh, he jumped on the woman’s bed and attempted to restrain her. But all he succeeded in doing was waking her up and, uh, causing her to panic and scream. He left very rapidly.

  And then he was seized with the same kind of disgust, repulsion, and fear and wonder at why he was allowing himself to attempt such extraordinary violence.

  But the significance of this particular occasion was that while he did the same thing he did before – (he) stayed off the streets, vowed he’d never do it again, and recognized the horror of what he’d done, and certainly was frightened by what he saw happening – it only took him three months this time to get over it.

  SM: The urge became more and more persistent.

  TB: Uh huh, and then the next incident. . . he was over it in a month – until it didn’t take him any time at all to recover from what always was the horror and repulsion and disgust. Whether it was, you know, fervent desire and a serious attempt to suppress this kind of behavior. Whatever. But now what happened was that the, the, this entity inside him was not capable of being controlled any longer – at least not for any considerable period of time!

  SM: Can you describe the mood as it would come over this person? Is it predominantly like anger?

  TB: No.

  SM: Lust?

  TB: No. It is going to be difficult to describe. I don’t know how you describe the taste of a, uh. . . how do you describe what a quiche tastes like? Or what the juice of bouillabaisse is like or why it tastes the way it does? Some people taste clams and some people taste the, uh, mullet and the mussels and whatever else is in there. And so it’s difficult for me to sit here and perceive what the mood would be like. It wouldn’t be anger necessarily. It would definitely, at a given point, I think, well. . . let me regroup here. I said that initially the spark that was there that ignited the subliminal juices was not one born of anger or hostility toward women or anything of that particular nature.

  It somehow evolved basically along. . . was stimulated, you know, by cultural kinds of mechanisms, but a point was reached where this entity – this condition, as it were – began to try to justify itself, to create rationalizations for what it was doing, perhaps to satisfy the rational, normal part of the individual. One element that came into play there was anger, hostility – what have you. It would be hard to describe it, but I don’t think that. . . it was not an overriding emotion or feeling that was present when he would go looking or hunting, or however you would describe it.

  Let’s say it was more of a (long pause). . . on most occasions it was a high degree of anticipation, of excitement, of arousal. It was like an adventuristic kind of thing. Perhaps people who go out deer hunting or fly fishing have the same feeling when they get up in the morning, you know? But it was that kind of thing – if you’re following.

  SM: Uh huh.

  TB: However, with increasing regularity, what was once just a high state of arousal, of anticipation, became an a
lmost frenzied desire to be, uh. . . to receive the kind of gratification that was being sought. And it was just an escalation of the desire to fulfill.

  SM: Was this vengefulness. . . because the most important prerequisite was. . .

  TB: We’re talking about images. . . and it’s a terrible thing to say. Sure we’re talking about images. We’re talking about anonymous, abstracted, living and breathing people. . . but the person, uh, they were not known. They were just, uh, uh, symbols. To a point they were symbols, uh, but once a certain point in the encounter had been crossed, they ceased being individuals and became, well, uh (sighs), you could say problems – that’s not the word either.

  Threats. Now, once a certain point in the encounter was passed, they ceased to have any symbolic value at all. And they ceased also to have. . . at that point, once they’d, once they became flesh and blood and once they ceased being an image or a dehumanized symbol, uh, that’s when the rational self – the normal self – would surface and, and, react with fear and horror, and so on. But, recognizing the state of affairs, would sort of conspire with this other part of himself to conceal the act.

  The survival took precedence over the remorse. . . with increasing effectiveness. When, in fact, it would almost seem this individual, recognizing the emotional trauma. . . the guilt and remorse he had. . . on it and on the normal individual, began to condition mentally, condition out guilt; using a variety of mechanisms. Saying it was justifiable, it was, uh, acceptable, it was necessary, and on and on.

  SM: Necessary?

  TB: Attempt. . . using really false mechanisms to condition out guilt.

  SM: Would the violence generally be very quick or prolonged?

  TB: He received no pleasure from harming or causing pain to the person he attacked. He received absolutely no gratification from causing pain and did everything possible, within reason – considering the unreasonableness of the situation – not to torture these individuals, at least physically.