TB: (He’d) be acting a role. Talking about the weather, reinforcing the ruse, just chit-chat. He had a house somewhere in the area and took them there, one girl to the house, and came back and got the other one. In order to do that, the person had to be very secure that no one would enter the house or disturb it – or that no one else lived there or would be expected to come there.
That’s one hypothesis. Another would be that he killed the first girl and returned later to search out a second individual.
SM: Right. So you regard it as unlikely they would have been killed at the spot where they were later found. (Bundy nodded.)
I see. The house, would it have been where people were on vacation or something like that? Was he aware this house was empty?
TB: That’s possible.
SM: In this instance of the first girl (Janice Ott), how does he press ahead with his plan to insure she does not become a personality to him?
TB: I think we discussed before that we’d expect this kind of person wouldn’t want to engage in a great deal of serious conversation. We talked about the role playing, the reacting, the kind of dialogue, the pitter-patter used to pacify or otherwise gain the confidence of the person. But once the individual would have her in a spot where he had, you know, security over her, then there would be a minimum amount of conversation which would be, you know, to avoid developing some kind of a relationship.
SM: What would be the method you’d expect him to use to incapacitate her?
TB: Fear. I suppose in such circumstances we could expect some sort of fear factor – a knife, a gun, anything to gain the attention of the individual.
SM: So the weapon is drawn or brandished. Then what?
TB: You could tie her up and try to calm her down. It’s really hard to say. Once that point had been reached, he could sexually assault her, tie her up, or whatever.
SM: Would she be gagged?
TB: Well, she might be. If the surroundings he chose were secluded enough, then it wouldn’t make any difference.
SM: How would he kill her?
TB (agitated): I don’t know. Strangle her. Stab her. . . something.
SM: Did he anticipate getting more than one victim at the start of that day?
TB: Well, again, this Lake Sammamish incident would mark an extraordinary departure from the previous crimes attributed to this person. So then we would probably assume a number of departures.
In all likelihood, this individual knew about the criminal investigation process. If he had been acting more rationally, he would have realized that the disappearance of two girls in this fashion would yield a tremendous amount more interest and activity on the part of the police. So, normally, he would not want to generate this additional attention.
SM: But it’s obvious he did.
TB: Yeah. It’s possible he felt the first one wasn’t satisfactory. Or, again, assuming this was an extraordinary departure – he’s acting in a much less restrained manner – we might also suspect that whatever desires drove him seemed to be stronger than usual.
SM: Why did he go to the lake that day?
TB: It’s hard to explain everything. There may have been other factors that had an impact on his condition that day – his need for gratification, the degree of it.
We talked about stress and the way passage of time would build up tension, but also he would suffer from periodic fluctuations that were more biologically or biochemically based than from any environmental explanation or psychological reasoning. It came as a rise in intensity, and these periods had no regularity.
SM: Would this have been the first instance of double murder?
TB: It would probably be.
SM: Would this second self. . . or other self. . . by this time be totally integrated into the person’s being?
TB: The overexcited, overaroused, driven, compulsive state this person was in. . . could in no way be integrated with what we characterize as the moral, ethical, law-abiding part of the individual.
We’d probably be more accurate if we stated that this normal self had been repressed. . . to such a degree that even the encounter with the first victim did not sufficiently arouse it. . . so it could take predominance.
SM: How would this occasion, with its unusual and seemingly bizarre departures, affect the development of this unusual entity?
TB: Well, we would see. . . because of the drastic departure from the previous pattern, a resulting intense barrage of publicity and investigation. And, combined with his realization that he had taken excessive risks, we’d see the normal portion of him, again, making an even greater commitment – resolve, if you will – to never let it happen again. The absorption, the normal activity, and so forth.
SM: So there would be a moderate period of remission, inactivity, after this?
TB: Somewhat longer. But we’re not talking of more than a month or so. That reminds me, a while back you were interested in his fantasies. I just remem. . . just came across in my mind some thoughts on it.
The fantasy phase is somewhat unworkable when applied directly to real situations. In his reading and his observations and what have you – in his fantasy world – he’d imagined, for some reason, people disappearing all the time. And he was aware of how people dropped out and became runaways and what not.
In devising his scheme or plan, he had taken this somewhat unrealistic conclusion that under the correct circumstances, he could select any person as a victim. And that there would be virtually no attention paid to that person’s disappearance. Because people disappear every day! It happens all the time.
Of course, a lot of his activities were predicated on minimizing publicity, the tension, and what not. And he was always amazed and chagrined by the publicity generated by the disappearances he thought would go almost totally unnoticed. Of course, this was an unrealistic expectation.
SM: He was always amazed?
TB: Yes. And still, he would cling to that belief – that there would be virtually no furor over it. This was something that would cling to him for long periods of time, notwithstanding the fact that, based on reactions to the disappearances, he had been proven totally wrong. For some reason, it was a necessary way of looking at things. To say that perhaps this person won’t be missed. I mean, there are so many people. This person will never be missed. It shouldn’t be a problem.
SM: What is the affect of newspaper and TV accounts on this kind of personality?
TB: He studied the papers and watched the TV accounts – in addition to reading all the other material he’d read in the past. He concluded that the police and/or the news media publicized too much information about a case. That is, from the perpetrator’s standpoint. That didn’t always hold true, but more often than not it was the case.
This individual would read news accounts of that kind of official speculation with a critical eye. He knew more than the police. He knew when they were right. He also knew when they were wrong. The police, through the news media, would enter into speculation or advance conclusions that convinced this person, either, one, that they were on the wrong track, or two, they didn’t know anything. More often than not, they didn’t know much of anything. Often they were comparing apples and oranges.
Speculation about the progress of a police investigation is like anything – mostly inaccurate. Sometimes the correct theme comes through. But most of the time, it showed the police were flopping around, unsure, kind of lost, hoping for a lucky break.
SM: Do you think the speculation was inaccurate or that the police were just going the wrong way?
TB: Probably all of the above. The one thing that offers some insights is the conflict between various people and different agencies, along with the lack of skills some of the investigators displayed. Those on the front line started running every which way. That, you know, probably gave a better insight into what was going on at the time, especially from the murderer’s viewpoint.
Since my name came before the police within a matter of weeks after th
e Lake Sammamish thing, I suppose they can be faulted for not actually coming out to talk to me. But on the other hand, they can’t be faulted because they were working from a huge list. They had hundreds and hundreds of leads.
Which one do they pick? Do they pick the law student with no criminal background, who was probably even known by some of the prosecutors working the case? Or are they going to go after the types, you know, the guys in the files. . . the real weirdos? The guys going around exposing themselves or whizzing around in a Volkswagen saying, “Hey baby, you want to go for a ride up in the mountains with me?”
Perhaps the (lack of) manpower limits them. But for that kind of case, they would probably need a thousand investigators.
SM: Would the M.O. be the same with the second victim?
TB: Since published reports indicate that a number of women were approached in the same manner that day, and since the first one worked – since he wasn’t acting with much restraint, I’d guess he’d figure a similar approach would also be successful.
SM: Would he change clothes?
TB: Probably not.
SM: Would there be any alteration in his appearance?
TB: Probably not.
SM: Would the second be taken to the same place as the first?
TB: Well, we’re figuring this person had fallen into a kind of routine or pattern, and so we’d assume he took her to the same place. We can assume that because apparently, the bodies were found in close proximity to each other.
SM: Would the second victim see the first victim?
TB: Oh yeah, probably. In all probability.
SM: Would the other individual still be alive, or not?
TB: Well, had he been cautious, he would’ve probably killed the first individual before leaving to get the second girl, but in this instance since we’ve agreed he wasn’t acting cautiously, he hadn’t killed the first girl when he abducted the second.
SM: Would there have been any unique thrill or excitement from having the two of them there together?
TB: In all probability we’re talking about an aberration here, a unique circumstance.
SM: Would the first victim be conscious?
TB: In all probability.
SM: What happened when they encountered each other?
TB: It seems there would be little importance attached to the arrival of the second individual. It seems the person would be more acutely interested in her own welfare and well being.
I suppose if you took two such individuals and kept them confined for days or months, they would certainly establish a rapport and be very concerned about each other’s welfare. Here there was a good amount of fear and panic – most of us freeze under those circumstances.
We might surmise that in this case there was little interaction, as such. This individual would not want any interaction, as he did not want interaction on a one-to-one basis.
SM: What happens then?
TB: He’d follow the same pattern with the second girl as the first.
SM: In view of the other girl?
TB: In all probability, yes.
SM: After the sexual assault, he has two bound victims. What does he do now?
TB: Well, by this time his frenzied compulsive activity of that day has run its course. Then he realized the jeopardy he was in. Then the normal self would begin to reemerge and, realizing the greater danger involved, would suffer panic and begin to think of ways to conceal the acts – or at least his part of them. So he’d kill the two girls, place them in his car, and take them to a secluded area and leave them.
SM: Right away?
TB: Within a matter of hours.
SM: Would the killings be quick and as painless as possible? Or. . .
TB: The actual act of killing the victims was just a necessity. He would not linger or relish the killing, since it was only a means to an end, to avoid detection.
SM: There was speculation heads had been severed in some of the cases. . .
TB: Anyone knowledgeable about murder investigations knows you can determine a victim’s identity easily from a head, so it’s unlikely he would have decapitated them. Animals would have disposed of their remains. (We didn’t know it then, but Bundy was masking his degeneracy again: He beheaded at least a dozen of his victims.)
SM: What would be the emotional aftermath?
TB: Well, later in the day this person would be exhausted. After going through what he went through, he wouldn’t be in the mood to do much of anything.
SM: Sleep or eat, huh?
TB: Sleep.
April 30
My last one-on-one interview with Ted. We had decided to let him slip further back into the anonymous third person on the theory that what he might say, although impossible for us to connect to his crimes as we knew them, could reveal as much, or more, as his “speculations” on known murders and assaults.
SM: Would this killer ever pick up a girl and decide not to murder her, for whatever reason?
TB: We can posit that he was driving down a road one evening and saw an attractive teenaged girl hitchhiking. He picked her up and they engaged in conversation and, uh, she agreed to go to his house. And they spent the evening.
She got very, very drunk. They both got drunk. Throughout the evening they engaged in voluntary sexual activity, and throughout the evening he felt himself being tested, debating with himself whether to kill her or to just let the situation run its course normally.
SM: Would he keep her at arm’s length? (a particularly poorly phrased question.)
TB: Well, not necessarily. He was in one of his reformation periods, (a laugh). He’d sworn to himself that he’d never engage in that kind of conduct again. That he wouldn’t let himself be carried away like that. But when he was faced with this very attractive girl hitchhiking, it kind of presented a challenge.
He didn’t look on it as a challenge but as an opportunity; it was sort of an ambiguous situation.
SM: It seems as if his normal self was responding positively to her.
TB: Uh huh. That would be fair to say. The sexual activity was very responsive and very energetic. Uh, at certain parts of the evening he felt himself on the edge of taking her life, just, just out of the desire to do so. But the justifications were not there. Nor was that malignant condition that active at that time. It was active, but not at high strength. But when morning came around and they dressed and he took the girl back to the area where she lived, he felt like he’d accomplished something.
He deluded himself at that point into thinking that he had really conquered those impulses. But within a period of time he discovered that that was an inaccurate conclusion. He didn’t recognize then, or perhaps he did not want to recognize, that just the matter of a week or two later he probably would have killed her.
SM: What happens when the malignant part cannot be controlled or insists on gratification? At Lake Sammamish, for instance, there were great risks taken. But what if the urge is there and it can’t, for some reason, be met?
TB (pause): In the wake of a particular crime, he was not in a state of remission. That is, he actively wanted to go out and seek a victim. But he knew that he could not afford to do so without creating an intolerable amount of more public frenzy and panic, as well as police activity.
But while driving one day, he saw a young girl walking along a deserted area. It was just too good an opportunity to pass up. So he exited his car and approached the girl and shoved her into a bushy field. Without any preparation. No planning. Without any disguise. Just an impulsive kind of thing. And then he was faced with the prospect:
What should he do with her? He’d have to debate a considerable amount. There had been an illegal act of rape. Yet he refrained from harming her physically and left the scene and returned to his car and drove home. Had it occurred a few weeks later, he wouldn’t have acted in the same way. Or a few days later. But he did not want to create a great amount of public furor because it would reduce the opportunity for victims later on and
it would increase the possibility of eyewitness reports. And he knew enough about these circumstances that, in all likelihood, it wouldn’t be reported. Or if it was reported, nothing much would be done about it. They wouldn’t necessarily link it to the other crimes. It would have been a simple act of rape of the type that is fairly common.
(Bundy said that the act of rape alone did not satisfy “the entity.” But during the last segment of this last interview, he described another scene in which, he maintained, the object was rape. Two days before his execution, Ted told Dennis Couch of the Salt Lake County sheriff’s office how he had murdered sixteen-year-old Nancy Wilcox in October of 1974. According to Couch, the account Bundy gave of the crime matches this story, almost verbatim.)
TB: As we’ve discussed before, frequently after this individual, uh, committed a murder, he would lapse, uh, into a period of sorrow, remorse, et cetera. And for a period of time he would do everything to overcome and otherwise repress the, uh, the overt behavior. Indeed, on one particular occasion he went to extraordinary lengths to do this following a crime, and he felt that he had succeeded, that the abnormal course of conduct had just sort of, uh, extinguished itself. He became somewhat satisfied and secure with the feeling that he had accomplished this.
But in this instance, the cracks in the facade, as it were, began to appear. He then would attempt to channel the desire within him into a different area, into something which was still, uh, improper, immoral or illegal, but something that was less serious, less severe.
Uh, and so he, in sort of a, uh, a compromise decided that rather than go out and inflict this mortal injury on a someone he would search out a victim in such a way that there would be no possibility of detection and he would not be forced into a position of having to kill. In essence he compromised into just going out and performing an act of rape, as it were.
So, he, uh, began to just go out driving around the suburbs, uh, in this city, uh, that he was living in, and one particular evening he’s driving down a fairly dark street and saw a girl walking along the street. Okay?
SM: Uh huh.
TB: Because the area was dark and she was alone, he decided to select her as the victim for this intended act of sexual assault. He parked his car down the street, and, uh, then ran up behind the girl.
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