Ted Bundy

by Stephen G. Michaud

  There are some things that can be done to prevent crime, but by and large society is extremely vulnerable. Absent the police state, there’s very little (the cops) can do. No matter how many police cars they have and how much and how sophisticated their equipment and how big their computers.

  Now, as to whether or not this fellow would leave clues or write letters, I don’t think so. This person did not want to get caught or take any chances to get caught. So why? Leaving even false clues is a problem. A false clue might turn out, somehow, almost by chance, to lead the police in the right direction. So no clues are better than false clues.

  HA: But he has thought about leaving false clues, hasn’t he?

  TB: I can’t imagine any person planning a crime not thinking a little bit about false clues, misleading the cops. If they’re thinking about clues. . . about evidence.

  HA: What about clothes? Where are all those clothes?

  TB: What clothes?

  HA: The clothes from the victims who were found without clothes.

  TB: Oh, I see.

  HA: C’mon now, Ted, do you think I think you didn’t understand? Many of these girls were found without clothes. Predators might have destroyed some of the remains, but what about the clothes?

  TB: Hmmm. Well, I couldn’t tell you. He could have had a clothing fetish or something. But we’ve postulated. . . we’ve created the model of a criminal who, uh. . . whose prime interest was not leaving clues. So, on the one hand, he wouldn’t expect to take the clothes and keep them, because that constituted evidence.

  On the other hand, we wouldn’t expect him to leave clothing with the victims, because clothing has. . . is, a collector of trace materials. So I assume he burned the clothing or threw it away.

  HA: Probably whatever was expeditious at the time – to make damn sure it wasn’t there. Would he ever have a reason, ever, to let someone know where some of the bodies of the victims were? To “account” for them? If they couldn’t be traced back to him?

  TB (long pause): Well, my understanding is that several. . . I don’t know how many – “several” is the only term I could use to describe the number – several persons still missing in the northwest. . . and in Utah. . . pretty much prove that he didn’t tell or show anybody.

  HA: Now let’s delve into an area that makes you cringe every time I get close – the numbers. When Stephen and I get this book moving – and it should be soon now – we have to deal in a straightforward way with the enormity of this crime. We are writing about Ted Bundy primarily; and though honestly we cannot say you killed twenty, thirty, or fifty girls, we have to have some kind of reference point to work from.

  You told me your story was more important than the Boston Strangler’s. Unless you give us something to explain the numbers – and thus, the relative importance – I cannot see your logic. He killed, how many? Thirteen? What makes you so important? A guy who stole credit cards and cars and says he didn’t kill anybody.

  If you sincerely want this book to be of some value, we’ve got to know what kind of a league we’re playing in here. I know, generally, what you’ve done, but maybe I only know a third of it. We’re not going to quote you; I realize that legally you have appeals that may last several more years, but. . .

  TB (ignoring again the intentional use of the pronoun “you”): People who read this book will get some insight into how a particular kind of mentality that contributed to a multiple – may be responsible for a multiple-murder situation. They’ll see how he got to think that way. . . and what makes. . . what factors in our society facilitate this kind of behavior.

  And what is it about the human mind that makes this kind of behavior. . . to, to. . . carry it out – and if there’s anything that can be done to reduce the possibility of a person who’d been predispositioned to this kind of behavior, uh, of actually engaging in it. . .

  Now, as far as facts, figures, body counts that’s absolutely the furthest thing from my mind. I realize, uh, the interest you’ve attached to it.

  HA: And the interest of the reader.

  TB: And the reader, oh sure. I agree, but what can I say?

  HA: Well, we’d like to be able to be as correct as possible. Realistically, we’re going to have to say something about the numbers that have been bandied about.

  TB: Well then, you’re going to have to. . . I, I think. . . I’m fairly sure that with the information you have at your disposal and the understanding you have about how the mind we’re talking about works, you can separate the wheat from the chaff and come up with an accurate figure.

  I’m not going to commit myself on that. It’s an impossibility. Well, what we might do is. . . you bring me the names, dates, and places of all the alleged victims. . . (long pause). And that won’t work because they are attributed to me and I’m not going to sit here and say which ones are, probably are, and which ones aren’t (laughs). That isn’t going to get me anywhere.

  On the other hand, I’m not going to strain this fiction to the limit, saying, “Well, the person like the one we’re talking about is probably responsible for X number.” I mean, how can a “personality type” be responsible for murder? That’s impossible. I mean, it’s just illustrative of a class of people.

  HA: Then from another direction. . . this type person. . . there’s a possibility, I presume, that he has killed others that, so far, have not been discovered.

  TB: Probably. That’s a distinct possibility – because of the movability, the freedom people have, the hitchhiking, so, uh. . . I just hate to. . .

  You can go as high as you want. The higher the number, the better. The more horrified people will be. The more they will read and the more interested they’ll be in finding out what makes a person like this tick. And the more they pay attention. If you’re truly interested in pointing out the facets in society that are concerned with this, then you. . . you make it up.

  I’m not going to do it. I can’t, you know, not. . . But you can. I don’t know how you’re going to try to do it, but you can sit there and go through it somehow – the list. This does and that doesn’t, you know. I’ve never seen the names, photographs, and data on thirty-six, forty-two – whatever it is the respective police agencies are talking about.

  When people come to me and say, “What about the Washington cases?” how many Washington cases are they talking about? I don’t know. They’re talking about Healy and Ball – I don’t know how many others. And the Utah ones – and Campbell? These are the ones that always tend to be associated with me. . . I don’t know.

  But I can figure the description, how the man operates, the M.O., planning, the strict need for secrecy, and so on. For every one that’s publicized, there could be one that was not. It could be. Thousands of people are reported missing and are never heard from again.

  HA: Would you remember. . . you say you can fill in the needed holes of motivation, planning, and detailed M.O. . . would you recall every one, publicized or not?

  TB: Speaking of this entity, despite your eager phraseology, I imagine every one would stand out for some reason – perhaps, uh, oh, most certainly, for different reasons. As for myself, I remember everything I have ever done, right down to the nth degree!

  HA: I don’t have a firm feel for what kind of release, what kind of need, what kind of gratification is expected. Can you give me an idea of the expectations? Now, I realize that this is not rational. . . it is still something that can be stated.

  TB (lengthy pause): Well, I don’t know how to say it any more clearly than I’ve tried before. I mean, it doesn’t. . .

  HA: When you go out on a date, say, you go to a ball game, you know what to expect. If you go to a party, you know what to expect – usually. You plan to have sex, or you have sex, and you know pretty well what to expect. Well now, while his. . .

  TB: What do you expect?

  HA: Well, I mean, you know. . .

  TB (laughing): I don’t either.

  HA: Well, you expect a nice feeling. You go somew
here where you’re alone with a girl. You expect to give and receive pleasure. . . have a climax. . . after which you feel greatly relieved. You feel tender. You know. You know; you’ve had normal sex.

  Uh, sometimes the factors are not right – things are not right – and it isn’t as enjoyable. But what I’m asking: What would this person expect? What kind of feeling? What would he expect to do? That’s what I don’t understand.

  TB: Well, I don’t know. . . but I can, you know, speculate. They’re all very difficult. I mean, when you get down to a certain level of trying to understand why people behave the way they do, there’s just no explanation.

  Now, why do people watch baseball games? It’s a stupid thing, you know, watching somebody hit a ball and run around a diamond. But why do people watch that? What complicated explanation – knowing that any explanation at this level trying to explain human nature is not going to be totally understandable to everyone.

  We can only say again, as I’ve said before, I believe that in the beginning – the act of killing – we would not expect it to be the goal. Remember, it was the possession of this desired thing, which was, in itself – the very act of assuming possession was a very antisocial act – was giving expression to this person’s need to seize something that was. . . uh, uh, highly valued, at least on the surface, by society. Uh, sought after, uh, a material possession, as it were.

  I mean, had he been raised in a different background, maybe he would have taken to, uh, stealing Porches and Rolls-Royces. As we said, the killing was probably as much of a necessity as it was a part of the attempt to gratify. . . the urge he had. The necessity of covering. . . of removing the witness.

  HA: Well, that’s partly what I meant. Further, I can understand wanting something that seems unattainable. But I’m trying to understand how you feel. Is this something that is always carried around? Or is it something that only comes up via some stimulus?

  TB: When people have – are – unable to cope with some part of their life, the feelings of discontent, loneliness, alienation, self-esteem, or whatever it is, they usually attribute their state of mind to one degree or another to society at large. And they finally choose some way of venting what they have inside.

  Or suppressing what they feel. I suppose they’re either making an affirmative statement or they’re just striking out blindly – and really didn’t have an individual style. But you’re right, you’re right, it’s. . . there is not that fulfillment there. I’m not saying there is. I’ve never said that!

  HA: That’s true.

  TB: I’ve said over and over that there was this need to satiate the urge to possess in this particular fashion. These kinds of victims would drive this kind of individual on, hoping or looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow kind of thing.

  HA: But I guess what I was getting to, also, Ted, was that, in essence, we’re saying that this person was “showing” society – that is, taking something that society valued.

  TB: Uh huh, right.

  HA: Well, surely Lee Harvey Oswald felt that way to some extent in killing President Kennedy, striking out at society, killing a beloved leader. But there’s more of a sexual thing to a man who goes around killing young ladies. Uh, why not kill the Pope? Or the President? Or somebody like that?

  TB (laughs): That’s what I’ve been telling you! There’s no reason why. It’s just that you have an incident looking for a place to happen. There’s no reason why. Nobody. . . there’s no. . . that’s where we err when we try to analyze human behavior. We cannot explain it. We can’t explain every facet of it.

  At some point we act the way we do because of the stimuli we’re exposed to and the environment we live in. There’s no one else in the history of this planet or living on the face of this earth who has seen and heard exactly, and felt exactly, the way you have or the way I have. And for that very reason, we can only predict, in gross ways, how people are going to respond. That’s exactly what this, why this happens.

  Why would somebody strike out in this way and not that way? Why wouldn’t they go talk to their mother or a therapist or a girlfriend to try to find some resolutions? Why, why, why? You get to a point where you can’t. . . there’s just no answer to the question.

  It just happened. It was there. You had a person, a type of individual who was not coping with some things. The natural tendency would be to express them, to release them in some way to try to resolve this conflict, this tremendous discomfort. And then. . . it certainly wasn’t. . . we can’t say that anyone has it programmed in his genetic material that he’s going to sit down and read the newspaper and be affected by stories about violent crime.

  Or it probably isn’t part of our genetic makeup that pornography shops down in a particular part of town beckon. And individuals may go down there to see the, uh, those kinds of things. These chance happenings, those offerings that are out there in the environment. We can’t say what. . . we can’t say why a person might find them, in most cases, very attractive. He just does.

  HA: I just looked at a few of my notes here and wanted to ask you: Did you or did you not go back to Pennsylvania a few years ago to try to find your father?

  TB: I didn’t.

  HA: Haven’t you ever wondered if he’s alive?

  TB: I’ve had that. Sure I’ve wondered, but it’s not something that lingers on and that I think about much. I’m happy to be alive. My mother has never made the attempt – when I was growing up, never made the attempt to tell me. If she had wanted to, she would have. Since she didn’t, I figured she didn’t want to and there was good reason for it. It didn’t bother me one way or the other. So, uh, it was never a source of any kind of problem.

  HA: Aren’t you curious?

  TB: I couldn’t say there’s no curiosity, but on the other hand, there’s a lot more, there are a lot more things that are more worthy of my curiosity. I mean, he didn’t raise me. And I guess my particular view of the world is that, uh, we’re probably 95 percent the way we are because of the way we were raised and where we were raised. That whatever genetic material we’re carrying along with us, well, you know. . . It’s just too hard to tell. Maybe it would be interesting to know if there was cancer in the family. Or about a rare blood disease. I mean, the way I am and the way I view society didn’t emanate from my natural father. It’s just not reflected in me in any way – so I’m not looking for anything.

  I mean, I certainly wouldn’t be looking for him to show him what kind of a person I was going to become, because I’m not going to be that kind of person. No way. He contributed absolutely nothing, substantially, to my, uh, development. So it’s never been a problem to me.

  HA: As I recall, you told Stephen that your mother at one time had volunteered information.

  TB: I believe that’s what she was trying to do. I don’t know for sure. I, uh. . . This was after my arrest in Salt Lake City, back in 1975. I’d been in jail and was out on bond. There had been all kinds of published reports; they had, you know, pried into my background. And it had been the source of some public comment that I was illegitimate, blah, blah, blah.

  I’m sure this topic had not been discussed by my mother and I. And so, it was sort of taboo, and I’m not sure, but I have a feeling that even my brothers and sisters weren’t made aware of it – even though they may have, if they thought about how I could have been their natural brother when my parents were married when I was four years old. But it, it. . . we never talked about it, my brothers and sisters and I.

  So anyway, I get out of jail in Utah – and this would be the first time I had seen my mother since all this publicity had come out – uh, I can’t remember the exact context, but my mother said. . . and she had this real concern in her voice. . . something in her tone indicated to me that she had something real serious to talk to me about. She wanted us to talk alone. I was just out of jail, you know, and I was knee deep in a lot of trouble. I didn’t need anything more right then. I didn’t. . . I didn’t. . . I couldn’t. . .
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br />   HA: Why would that have been troublesome?

  TB: Well, obviously it was something that had troubled my mother very deeply, or she would have told me long before that.

  HA: Perhaps it might have helped her to have told you.

  TB: It wouldn’t help me. I was, I mean, I had a lot to deal with then. I had, uh, court the next day. I was in a lot of trouble, and I still didn’t give a shit. I didn’t need any more burdens. Right then, I had enough to carry. Now, we’ve seen each other since then, and if my mother wanted to tell me, that’s fine. But under those circumstances, at that time, no. The last thing I wanted to think about was any more deep, dark secrets, problems.

  I was fresh out of jail – and had a horror of jail. You just cannot – no one who has not been in there on a serious charge for several months can imagine how hard it is for those first few months. Once you. . . those first six months. . . after that, jail doesn’t have any more effect on a person.

  HA: You mean from a mental aspect?

  TB: That’s it. I mean, I’m used to jail. After the first six months, jail was no sweat. One of these days the criminal justice system is going to realize that. If you keep a man in prison past a certain point and he learns to adapt to prison, learns how to satisfy most of his needs, then the prisoner, in effect, becomes almost prison-proof. That’s why, I think, there are so many recidivists. I don’t care how harsh the prison is, past a certain point, incarceration dulls the sensitivities of the individual in such a way that in the future – when he’s on the streets prison is less fearful, as a consequence, to criminal behavior.

  HA: The inmate doesn’t have to make the decisions. He’s got safety, food, and doesn’t have to fight for it, generally.

  TB: It’s no longer that horrible, unknown, threatening place. But anyway, getting back to the other thing, that was the occasion I mentioned to Steve. . . that maybe Mom was going to talk to me about it – and I don’t know for sure.

  HA: Your uncle, the college music professor. . . We have discovered that you were very close to him. It seems to me this man represented a sort of culture, sort of a style, a classy man. You were sort of reaching out to him in some way.