Ted Bundy

by Stephen G. Michaud

TB: Well, I. . . I’m glad you are able to feel that way about me – not that it makes me feel better, necessarily, but that it makes me feel better about you. You know, you’ve been able to see some things that maybe other people can’t see. There are a lot of people out there that for one reason or another are going haywire!

  And when they do, they don’t go haywire like, uh (pause). . . some of the guys in here. They may require a psychiatrist. They may get a divorce, they may take up drinking. But no matter what, they are less effective people. God help ’em if they go all the way!

  HA: I can’t even imagine.

  TB: Some malfunctions, you know, are more spectacular than others. And we’re seeing more and more of the spectacular. And, as time goes on, with increasing ferocity, you’re going to see more of it.

  HA: What about you? Are you going to be all right?

  TB (pause): Oh, yeah. Yeah. I’m all right.

  HA: You say that rather flippantly.

  TB: Well, I try not to struggle with it. I don’t mean to be flippant. Actually, where I am right now. . . I’m in the best possible shape I could be. Well, I mean, uh, for someone here in prison and living on Death Row.

  I’m always making improvements – and you can put that in quotations. I feel good about me. I feel that I’m doing the right things and moving in the right direction. I’m doing as well as I could’ve ever imagined myself doing. I look back, a few years back, when I was in prison in Utah or jail in Colorado, and I shake my head and I just felt like I was sort of engulfed by my plight. And the jail life was threatening my well-being.

  But I no longer have this angst. I’m not, of course, at the mercy of outside influences – at least not like I once was. I’m still jeopardized, but I don’t let that have a negative effect on what’s going on inside me. I recognize it and know it’s not good, but you know, I realize what my situation is and I’m minimizing the effect on me. It just doesn’t mean as much as it once did.

  HA: But you must feel it. Outside influences decide whether you live or die. . . when, where, how. . .

  TB: Yeah, but for me, right now, I can’t even describe. . . I don’t know if I ever could have reached the point to have seen things as clearly as I can now, Hugh.

  If all this hadn’t happened – let’s say something else happened and I went on to become an attorney. If I were to have a dream tonight and it would come true – that I graduated and became a lawyer, married Liz, and had a perfectly miserable life for the remainder of my days. . . got totally caught up in the law and all the politics and controversy, the mortgages and marital discord, the alcohol and all that stuff. . .

  I’ll be serious with you right now. I would not trade where I am, in this year, right now. . . for a new shot at my old existence. It would be too painful.

  HA: Not even if you had today’s ability to sort things out?

  TB: Well, that’d be a different matter. Carole and I were discussing this the other day. And I said that if somebody came to me and promised that if I went back and I was assured that everything would be peachy, if I became a lawyer, I’d go on out there and the day after tomorrow I’d resign from the firm. And I’d go live a different life, completely.

  HA: Unfortunately, we don’t ever have those chances. In your new-found serenity, how do you react to others who don’t understand this convenient rebirth, as it were? For instance, I’m sure the prison officials don’t think of you as some Gandhi-like philosopher who just dropped by the Florida prison to help inmates find inner peace. And how do you feel about people like me? I sit here and say, “I think you’re a murderer. I think you’re guilty.” I mean, how does that make you feel? Do you care?

  TB: It’s not a matter of caring. It doesn’t have any meaning for me.

  HA: You don’t have any animosity, do you?

  TB: No, absolutely none. I mean, I may have in the past. I may have acted defensively in the past or manifested that kind of need to defend myself. That’s, you know, the nature of the ego. One of the things wrong with this society is that everyone is trying to protect or nurture egos; our little false beliefs of having an identity that is separate from everything and everyone else.

  That which separates you from me is our egos. And so I would have felt the need to preserve that – that false sense of separateness, by becoming hostile. But there’s no such need now. What you say just doesn’t even register with me; I care nothing about it.

  And what I try to feel toward you is, you know, the best possible feelings. Certainly we’re locked in – in one of those arrangements which, unfortunately, are part of these artificial obstructions in our society. The book. The guilt or innocence – all those things that are really meaningless.

  But they brought about unpleasant, you know, clashes between you and I (sic). But I now have positive protection against that. It really doesn’t matter to me what you think.

  HA: Well, I’ve enjoyed visiting with you. Sometimes I have! Sometimes I haven’t. To be very frank about it, it’s often been quite a strain.

  TB: It’s unpleasant (pause). I reached a point, in May or June of 1979. . . or was it 1980? I’m trying to figure all this out. Yeah, it was ‘80, after the Lake City trial in Orlando. Steve had been coming around for a few weeks, then there was a delay of several weeks, and then here he came again.

  And I noticed, I started running down, unconsciously making my way down through the path which I see more clearly now. That is, trying to disengage myself from that way of thinking which so severely influenced me before and trying to see things as they really are.

  When I was in jail in Lake City, or Leon County, and then off to trial in Miami, and then I was here and then on trial in Orlando, I was locked into that struggle, struggle, struggle, fight, fight, fight. . . think like a lawyer, talk like a lawyer, play the game. And the whole thing reached a point where just thinking about this business became totally disdainful to me. Not just because it involved me; that was obviously a major part, I’ll admit, but it was just so senseless. So meaningless. Such an absurd exercise.

  And then, every time I was forced to talk with you and Steve, it moved me along. I cannot say I didn’t enjoy some of the sessions, for they brought back good and decent memories, but you never gave me a full day, even, of that. It was always back to the slime, back to the allegations, back to what I’d been fighting in the system for years.

  HA: But, in fairness, it was your actions that set the tone of our relationship. And I’ll have to admit that while I did react with furor on a few occasions at your lack of remorse or inability to relate to others’ pain, I handled many questions with as much gentleness as I could muster, because I full well realize you are a human being, also.

  I often felt touched by your situation. But before long, reality always had to return. . . and my pity – yes, I guess it was pity – for you, became tempered with the knowledge that there were many parents whose lives will never be the same because of you.

  TB: I guess I was arrogant, at least in your eyes. But I always knew – you see, I am able to understand the outside world, too – I always knew there was this tremendous interest. Not in me, particularly, but in that monumental question, “What is a Ted Bundy?”

  HA: I think the compelling factor was that you are not an ordinary fellow. You’re not the kind of person society envisions as doing these things. That’s the main thing, don’t you think?

  TB: I think so. It’s not because I’m different from most of the men back there on Death Row. It’s in large part because I got so much publicity and so I have a very high profile. And people tend to think about me a lot more than the others back there. . . those who are virtually nameless, without publicity.

  And people are fascinated by anyone who kills, especially anyone who is attributed to have killed frequently.

  HA: Right.

  TB: I have guards who ask me questions – like they expect me to answer. One of them’ll say, “Why, you’re such a nice, intelligent guy!” Blah, blah, blah. “And what I
can’t figure out. . .” I can understand the interest, why that interest is there. And I can understand how important it would be for some people if I said I’d done it all.

  If I could, you know, get out in front. . . and answer the questions you and everybody else have asked me, it would titillate everyone’s imagination and, maybe, temporarily satisfy the need to do it. But it wouldn’t broaden their consciousness of really what is the matter!

  I know there is that great interest out there to see Ted Bundy. Partially because the crimes are unusual. Well, they are and they aren’t. As your editor put it, there are a lot of men back there on Death Row whose stories aren’t that much different than mine.

  I understand that. I mean, the story has been told before, again and again. The really scary thing is that there are a lot of people who are not in prison, a lot of people who are not in prison, who are far more successful than I.

  HA: How do you know that? It’s just a gut feeling. You don’t know that.

  TB: Every day I know it. The Atlanta (Wayne Williams case) situation is just an aberration.

  HA: I don’t believe that’s just one person over there.

  TB: That’s not just one person – but you see, someone is being so obvious or some group of people is being so obvious about it, and they are still getting away with it.

  There’s a case now down in southern Florida, where a man – they’re digging up bodies on this man’s farm! One girl disappeared in 1975. The man’s in his fifties, okay? So he’s now in prison on sex offenses. They’re trying to put all sorts of other cases on him. They say his property is just full of bodies. Not the ultimate skeleton in the closet situation.

  And this guy’s in his fifties! And in all probability, they don’t have anything to link him up to these crimes – and probably won’t, because all they have is skeletons. So what! But (in) all probability, from what little I know about things like this, he’s been at it for twenty or thirty years, and has never been caught – until now.

  HA: How do you know that? How do you know when a man starts? That’s a hard thing to determine, isn’t it?

  TB: I think a man starts early. The problems. . . are with him early on. The problems may not manifest themselves until the twenties. But I think more often than not such a person – now, I’m not talking about the kind of thing where a man secretly goes around abducting girls and disposing of them secretly. A guy who abducts girls like that, that comes from some incident that manifests itself very early in his life. In every case that I’ve read about, without exception, Hugh, that behavior started somewhere in the twenties.

  HA: That would mean this guy operated for thirty years. Damn!

  TB: There’s no exception I’ve ever seen where a man has been known to have started in his forties and fifties.

  HA: Well, what about John Gacy? He didn’t start in his twenties.

  TB: I don’t know. I haven’t read much about him but my impressions are that he was in trouble for a long, long time. I mean, on the fringes of trouble, anyway. I understand he had been arrested and confined for this type thing before.

  What may have changed him into a more dangerous individual is that he saw the act of murder and concealment as a way of avoiding detection for the, uh, sex crime.

  We have a man in back – that’s what happened to him. He was in and out of mental hospitals in Maryland ever since he was a teenager. He first started beating up little kids. Then he started molesting young boys. They kept putting him in these institutions and he kept escaping. And they kept releasing him.

  Finally, it got to the point where they got real serious with him. They told him that – he was in his early twenties – they said if he got in trouble again, he would be treated as an adult. And this kid just walked away from an institution and picked up a young boy and molested him. When it clicked in his mind that they were going to throw the book at him, he killed the kid. Killed him to conceal the crime. And kept on doing that until, several years later, they caught him.

  HA: Well, in effect, that’s one of the biggest points you made: Killing wasn’t the big thing. It was often just a necessity.

  TB: It would seem so. That would seem to be the case. Uh, let me finish a little bit here and I’ll let you get on your way.

  HA: Yeah, I guess I’d better get over to Jacksonville and see if I can get a flight out tonight (long pause). I just saw Watson (the assistant superintendent) go by with some people. I guess they have a lot of people who just want to look.

  TB: There are. They all want to see Bundy. A lot of ’em do. “Where’s Bundy?” I’ll hear. “Let’s go see Bundy.” They’ll drift by. There’ve been a lot of ‘em.

  HA: Well, if you get tired of that, you could just expose yourself to them and maybe they wouldn’t come back.

  TB: Well, what I generally do is confound them. “Hi, how are you doin’ there? Isn’t this a nice cell?” You know, my cell is always clean and neat – and I’m not afraid of them. And I know their little secret: They’re afraid of Ted Bundy!

  HA: What makes you think people are afraid of you? I’m not afraid of you. I don’t understand.

  TB: I know you’re not afraid of me. You’ve been around me a lot. You’re not responding exclusively to that old belief that says that anybody who has been accused of doing what I’ve done is some kind of crazed, malicious, tyrant monster.

  I had this one guy who put his arm around this woman and walked her toward my cell. She was just scared to death! Other people show their fascination other ways. Some just stand to one side and look at me. I can see them mirrored in my television. They all cluster around in groups of four or five. . . and I’ll whip around. . . and they’ll scatter (laughs)!

  HA: Oh, (laughs) that’s good.

  TB: Some of them have this morbid curiosity. I mean, it’s like looking at the great white shark. I’m not creating this because I get a big thrill out of it, but this is really the way people act around me. I don’t want people to be afraid of me. To the contrary. . . but I even try to pacify them to an extent. That’s why I say, “C’mon in. How are you? What are you up to today?” I give them a little spiel about something, you know, and they’ll sometimes say, “Well, I read a lot about you.”

  Then I do my “You haven’t read a lot about me. You’ve been reading about somebody. . . somebody named Ted Bundy.” Then they’ll whisper, “Boy, he must really be crazy!”

  I’m not. . . I’m just not. . . the Ted Bundy they’re reading about. They don’t know me. They don’t understand what I’m getting at. They think I’m crazy. They have no idea what I’m like. I don’t care. I really don’t care.

  HA: They haven’t had any more trouble down there lately, have they?

  TB: What’s that?

  HA: Any more guard trouble.

  TB: Not since we had that stabbing in October. Since then, they’ve had us locked down so tight, there hasn’t been any trouble, but conditions have deteriorated considerably.

  HA: You’re still handcuffed everywhere you go – every time you’re out of your cell.

  TB: Every time the cell door is open.

  HA: Did they cut back on your exercising?

  TB: They cut back from three times a week to once a week. In fact, for a while they cut back to once a month. Then it was once every couple of weeks and, finally, to once a week.

  We’re in a phase right now – and I think the Reagan assassination attempt (the previous day) might galvanize it to a large degree. I can see the prisons becoming what they were in the 30s and 40s.

  Whether in fact the wave of. . . the anti-crime wave is real or not. . . the FBI statistics came out yesterday and they said there was a 13 percent rise in crime. In Florida it went up 18 percent – all in violent crime.

  There’s going to be a incredible public reaction to that, in general. . . and to Reagan in particular. It’s not going to (be) healthy, either; it’s going to get oppressive.

  HA: And they’re going to start executing people.

  T
B: Oh, yes, there’s no question about that! And not just executing one now and then. The theory is that if they kill criminals, the criminals can’t commit crimes anymore.

  The anti-death penalty people are prone to say, “See, the death penalty doesn’t work.” Those in favor of it say, “It’s because we haven’t exercised it enough.”

  And, of course, that kind of mentality – it’s logical conclusion is that we execute anybody who commits a crime. I think it’s a deterrent – to the person who commits the crime. So if you execute everybody who commits a crime, from, let’s say, armed robbery up to murder, you’re not only going to get rid of the criminals but reduce the populations of the prisons. And, thereby, the budget.

  It’s going to happen. Rather dramatically in the next decade.

  HA: Does that worry you a lot?

  TB: Me? I don’t sit around and worry about it, no. If it’s going to happen it’s going to happen. I’ve always had the death penalty. It’s just a matter of knowing when you’re going to die.

  HA: Well, here’s a good sign: Two men were scheduled to be executed in Louisiana last week and both got stays.

  TB: Well, that may last for a while, but they’re eventually going to get Congress to pass legislation whereby state prisoners have limited access to federal habeas corpus. It’s coming, but it doesn’t worry me that much. Not like being on a plane. Does the thought of, you know, crashing on an airliner worry you? It’s in the back of your mind, but. . .

  HA: Yeah, but when you board a plane you haven’t already been told that you are going to die – maybe not this year or this month, but soon.

  TB: Yeah.

  HA: But I guess if you knew, it would make you not enjoy your remaining days.

  TB: Sure. Or to take advantage of them. That’s precisely what I’d like to do. Well, thanks for coming by, Hugh, and. . .

  HA: Yeah, I’ve enjoyed visiting with you more today than ever before. I hope to see you again, but I don’t know if I ever will or not.

  TB: Yeah, uh, the pressure, that element of pressure always separated us because you always felt you had to get something from me and I felt that your interests were not my interests, so we floundered a bit all the way.