WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.279 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening 00:00:03.279 --> 00:00:07.099 a dossier that is honestly difficult to look 00:00:07.099 --> 00:00:10.099 at. We are staring into the abyss of American 00:00:10.099 --> 00:00:12.140 criminal history. We're talking about Ted Bundy. 00:00:12.179 --> 00:00:15.599 Yeah. But before you think, oh, I know this story. 00:00:15.699 --> 00:00:19.019 He's the handsome law student killer. I really 00:00:19.019 --> 00:00:22.190 want to stop you right there. Because the source 00:00:22.190 --> 00:00:24.429 material we're digging into today, the comprehensive 00:00:24.429 --> 00:00:28.089 timeline, the psych profiles, the court transcripts, 00:00:28.089 --> 00:00:30.789 it tells a much, much more complex story. It 00:00:30.789 --> 00:00:33.189 really does. The pop culture version of Bundy 00:00:33.189 --> 00:00:35.570 is this sort of evil genius, a master criminal. 00:00:35.810 --> 00:00:37.990 But the real Bundy, the one you find when you 00:00:37.990 --> 00:00:39.950 dig into the source material, he's actually a 00:00:39.950 --> 00:00:41.729 study in contradiction. That's a good way to 00:00:41.729 --> 00:00:44.780 put it. He's a study in inadequacy. And most 00:00:44.780 --> 00:00:47.359 importantly, he's a mirror for the systemic failures 00:00:47.359 --> 00:00:49.700 of law enforcement in the 1970s. That's the mission 00:00:49.700 --> 00:00:51.600 for today, right? We aren't just here to recount 00:00:51.600 --> 00:00:54.280 the timeline of 30 plus murders, although we 00:00:54.280 --> 00:00:56.439 have to look at it because the sheer scope is 00:00:56.439 --> 00:00:58.679 baffling. It is. We're trying to understand the 00:00:58.679 --> 00:01:01.399 mechanics of the deception. I mean, how does 00:01:01.399 --> 00:01:04.459 a man. who is so clearly falling apart inside, 00:01:04.859 --> 00:01:07.260 convince the entire world he's put together? 00:01:07.359 --> 00:01:10.480 How can you be a crisis hotline worker, literally 00:01:10.480 --> 00:01:13.700 saving lives one minute? And a necrophile the 00:01:13.700 --> 00:01:17.230 next. It doesn't compute. Exactly. It's the study 00:01:17.230 --> 00:01:18.769 of the chameleon. That's the word that keeps 00:01:18.769 --> 00:01:20.569 coming up again and again in the research. It's 00:01:20.569 --> 00:01:23.069 a changeling. That's what some of the psychiatrists 00:01:23.069 --> 00:01:25.150 who interviewed him called him. Someone who didn't 00:01:25.150 --> 00:01:27.230 just hide in the shadows. He hid in the light. 00:01:27.349 --> 00:01:29.810 He hid in plain sight. Completely. I mean, this 00:01:29.810 --> 00:01:31.969 is a guy who volunteered for the Republican Party. 00:01:32.090 --> 00:01:34.069 He's rubbing elbows with governors. And at the 00:01:34.069 --> 00:01:36.790 same time, he has a burglary kit in the passenger 00:01:36.790 --> 00:01:39.510 seat of his Volkswagen. So let's orient ourselves 00:01:39.510 --> 00:01:42.370 for this deep dive. We are talking about a timeline 00:01:42.370 --> 00:01:45.590 that stretches primarily from... 1974 to 1978. 00:01:46.170 --> 00:01:50.510 It covers Washington, Utah, Colorado, and finally 00:01:50.510 --> 00:01:53.790 Florida. A huge geographic footprint. He confessed 00:01:53.790 --> 00:01:57.030 to 30 murders. But, and we'll get into this, 00:01:57.150 --> 00:02:00.370 he is suspected of many, many more. But to understand 00:02:00.370 --> 00:02:03.349 the how, we have to start with the who. And that 00:02:03.349 --> 00:02:06.209 takes us way back. Burlington, Vermont, 1946. 00:02:06.870 --> 00:02:09.969 The origins of Theodore Robert Cowell. And right 00:02:09.969 --> 00:02:12.110 out of the gate, his life is built on a lie. 00:02:12.289 --> 00:02:14.300 The sister lie? I mean, it sounds like something 00:02:14.300 --> 00:02:16.419 out of a Gothic novel. It's just so bizarre. 00:02:16.599 --> 00:02:19.560 It really is. So he's born to Eleanor Louise 00:02:19.560 --> 00:02:22.479 Cowell. She's not married. And he's born at a 00:02:22.479 --> 00:02:25.240 home for unwed mothers. Now, you have to put 00:02:25.240 --> 00:02:29.060 yourself in that time period, 1946. The stigma 00:02:29.060 --> 00:02:31.960 of illegitimacy was massive. It was career ending, 00:02:32.060 --> 00:02:34.699 life ending socially. It was social suicide for 00:02:34.699 --> 00:02:37.000 the whole family. So his grandparents, Samuel 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:38.939 and Eleanor Cowell, they take him in. They bring 00:02:38.939 --> 00:02:41.080 him to their home in Philadelphia and they make 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:42.860 a decision. They are going to raise him as their 00:02:42.860 --> 00:02:44.599 son. Which means they have to tell him that his 00:02:44.599 --> 00:02:47.000 own mother, Louise, is actually his older sister. 00:02:47.139 --> 00:02:49.909 Correct. And he grows up believing this for years. 00:02:50.150 --> 00:02:53.150 Just try to imagine the daily reality of that. 00:02:53.189 --> 00:02:54.889 The people you trust most in the world, your 00:02:54.889 --> 00:02:58.129 entire family, they are performing a play 24 00:02:58.129 --> 00:03:00.629 hours a day. And you're the only one who doesn't 00:03:00.629 --> 00:03:03.210 have the script. And the source material has 00:03:03.210 --> 00:03:06.150 these conflicting accounts on when he actually 00:03:06.150 --> 00:03:08.530 found out the truth. It does. There's one story 00:03:08.530 --> 00:03:11.069 that a cousin taunted him with it when he was 00:03:11.069 --> 00:03:13.729 young, maybe showed him a copy of his birth certificate. 00:03:14.129 --> 00:03:17.939 But his biographer, Ann Rule. who knew him personally, 00:03:18.139 --> 00:03:20.560 and we will absolutely get to that insane connection 00:03:20.560 --> 00:03:23.199 later, she believed he didn't find the actual 00:03:23.199 --> 00:03:25.759 birth certificate until 1969 when he was in his 00:03:25.759 --> 00:03:28.520 20s. But regardless of when the final reveal 00:03:28.520 --> 00:03:30.379 happened, think about the psychological crater 00:03:30.379 --> 00:03:32.840 that leaves. I mean, if your own identity, the 00:03:32.840 --> 00:03:35.740 very foundation of who you are, is a fabrication 00:03:35.740 --> 00:03:38.159 created by the people who are supposed to love 00:03:38.159 --> 00:03:41.219 you. What do you learn from that? You learn that 00:03:41.219 --> 00:03:44.000 reality is malleable. Exactly. You learn that 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:46.419 if you lie convincingly enough, it just becomes 00:03:46.419 --> 00:03:48.620 the truth. It destroys the entire concept of 00:03:48.620 --> 00:03:51.120 objective truth for you. It's like his whole 00:03:51.120 --> 00:03:53.460 life was a lesson in deception. Psychologists 00:03:53.460 --> 00:03:56.300 have a term for it, a defect in object relations. 00:03:56.740 --> 00:03:59.560 He learned that people aren't really people. 00:03:59.639 --> 00:04:02.259 They're just props. They're characters to be 00:04:02.259 --> 00:04:04.460 moved around to maintain whatever narrative you're 00:04:04.460 --> 00:04:07.490 trying to sell. So he wasn't just lying to hide 00:04:07.490 --> 00:04:10.430 crames later in life. Lying was his native language. 00:04:10.669 --> 00:04:12.490 It was his first language. And there's all this 00:04:12.490 --> 00:04:14.930 ambiguity about his biological father, too. It's 00:04:14.930 --> 00:04:17.089 not just the mother -sister thing. Right. Another 00:04:17.089 --> 00:04:20.449 layer of deception and mystery. His birth certificate 00:04:20.449 --> 00:04:24.029 lists a salesman named Lloyd Marshall. But his 00:04:24.029 --> 00:04:27.250 mother, Louise, later claimed it was a war veteran 00:04:27.250 --> 00:04:29.870 named Jack Worthington. But then there were even 00:04:29.870 --> 00:04:32.050 darker rumors, right? The ones that implicated 00:04:32.050 --> 00:04:34.069 his own grandfather. That was a longstanding 00:04:34.069 --> 00:04:36.500 theory, yeah. The idea that his grandfather, 00:04:36.779 --> 00:04:39.180 Samuel Cowell, the man who was raising him as 00:04:39.180 --> 00:04:40.920 a father, might have actually been his biological 00:04:40.920 --> 00:04:44.000 father. Implying incest. Correct. Now, it is 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:46.720 worth noting that much later, Dr. Dorothy Otnell 00:04:46.720 --> 00:04:49.240 Lewis, a psychiatrist who studied Bundy extensively, 00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:52.680 she claimed that DNA eventually disproved that 00:04:52.680 --> 00:04:55.500 specific incest theory. So that may not be true. 00:04:55.699 --> 00:04:58.759 However, the grandfather, Samuel Cowell, he's 00:04:58.759 --> 00:05:00.379 a character we really need to look at closely. 00:05:01.050 --> 00:05:03.149 Because he's central to the story Bundy tells 00:05:03.149 --> 00:05:05.230 about himself. Yeah, because for a long time, 00:05:05.250 --> 00:05:07.769 the narrative that Bundy himself pushed was that 00:05:07.769 --> 00:05:10.470 this guy was an absolute tyrant. Right, a monster. 00:05:11.230 --> 00:05:13.550 Bundy and other family members, they told attorneys 00:05:13.550 --> 00:05:15.930 and biographers that Samuel was a violent bully, 00:05:16.110 --> 00:05:19.449 that he would swing cats by their tails, that 00:05:19.449 --> 00:05:21.709 he threw his own daughter, Bundy's mother, down 00:05:21.709 --> 00:05:24.310 a flight of stairs, that he would speak to unseen 00:05:24.310 --> 00:05:26.949 presences in the house. So he's painting this 00:05:26.949 --> 00:05:29.800 picture of a violent, unstable... Frankly terrifying 00:05:29.800 --> 00:05:32.600 household. The perfect origin story for a future 00:05:32.600 --> 00:05:35.379 serial killer, right? It provides a neat explanation. 00:05:35.879 --> 00:05:38.759 But I hear a but coming. But later investigations 00:05:38.759 --> 00:05:41.639 really call that into question. People who knew 00:05:41.639 --> 00:05:43.959 the family, neighbors in their Philadelphia neighborhood, 00:05:44.279 --> 00:05:47.019 they remembered Samuel Cowell as a fine man, 00:05:47.180 --> 00:05:50.319 a quiet, respectable person. Another cousin said 00:05:50.319 --> 00:05:53.120 the whole raging animal abuser story was a convenient 00:05:53.120 --> 00:05:56.620 fabrication. The fabrication to do what? To explain 00:05:56.620 --> 00:05:59.129 why Ted turned out the way he did. to garner 00:05:59.129 --> 00:06:02.709 sympathy, to create a trauma narrative that might 00:06:02.709 --> 00:06:05.490 explain his own deviations. It's possibly one 00:06:05.490 --> 00:06:07.810 of the earliest examples of him manipulating 00:06:07.810 --> 00:06:11.189 his own history to fit the audience. Wow. So 00:06:11.189 --> 00:06:12.750 even his trauma might have been a performance. 00:06:13.170 --> 00:06:15.329 It's entirely possible, and it shows you the 00:06:15.329 --> 00:06:16.930 manipulator was there from the very beginning. 00:06:17.110 --> 00:06:20.029 But speaking of early signs, even if the grandfather 00:06:20.029 --> 00:06:23.129 wasn't the monster Bundy claimed he was, young 00:06:23.129 --> 00:06:26.920 Ted had some... Some serious red flags. The knife 00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:28.980 incident? The knife incident. It's chilling. 00:06:29.100 --> 00:06:31.120 Let's paint the scene for you because it's really 00:06:31.120 --> 00:06:33.759 disturbing. So his aunt, Julia, is taking a nap 00:06:33.759 --> 00:06:36.079 in the house. She wakes up and she feels something 00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:38.000 is wrong. You know that feeling. She opens her 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:41.480 eyes and she is surrounded by knives from the 00:06:41.480 --> 00:06:44.279 kitchen. Just laid out around her. Tucked into 00:06:44.279 --> 00:06:46.319 the covers, laid out on the pillow next to her 00:06:46.319 --> 00:06:49.079 head. And there, standing by the bed, is three 00:06:49.079 --> 00:06:52.629 -year -old Ted just smiling at her. Three. Years. 00:06:52.990 --> 00:06:56.089 Old. That's not normal toddler mischief. That 00:06:56.089 --> 00:06:59.410 is something else entirely. No. That suggests 00:06:59.410 --> 00:07:03.750 a fascination with power, with fear, with control 00:07:03.750 --> 00:07:07.709 at a very, very early age. And it wasn't an isolated 00:07:07.709 --> 00:07:09.810 incident. There are other accounts from neighbors 00:07:09.810 --> 00:07:12.149 of him, you know, allegedly torturing animals, 00:07:12.370 --> 00:07:15.949 burning a cat, building punji traps in the woods, 00:07:15.970 --> 00:07:18.050 these pits with sharpened sticks to try and injure 00:07:18.050 --> 00:07:20.319 people. So we have this. Really dark undercurrent. 00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:22.860 But then his mother moves them away from all 00:07:22.860 --> 00:07:25.639 that. She moves them to Tacoma, Washington. She 00:07:25.639 --> 00:07:29.279 marries a man named Johnny Bundy. And Ted gets 00:07:29.279 --> 00:07:32.199 adopted. He becomes Ted Bundy. And on the surface, 00:07:32.339 --> 00:07:35.560 things seem to settle down. Okay. He becomes 00:07:35.560 --> 00:07:38.220 what one classmate called a medium -sized fish 00:07:38.220 --> 00:07:41.279 in a large pond. He wasn't a total outcast, but 00:07:41.279 --> 00:07:43.879 he wasn't popular either. He was awkward. He 00:07:43.879 --> 00:07:45.860 felt awkward. He later claimed he just didn't 00:07:45.860 --> 00:07:48.139 understand social interactions. He said he didn't 00:07:48.139 --> 00:07:49.879 know what made people want to be friends. It's 00:07:49.879 --> 00:07:51.699 like he was observing humans rather than being 00:07:51.699 --> 00:07:53.800 one. Precisely. He was an anthropologist from 00:07:53.800 --> 00:07:56.079 another planet. He talked about window peeping 00:07:56.079 --> 00:07:58.220 late at night, going out and looking into windows 00:07:58.220 --> 00:08:00.779 to see women undressing, sure, but also just 00:08:00.779 --> 00:08:02.660 to see how normal people lived, how families 00:08:02.660 --> 00:08:05.000 interacted. He was studying. He was studying. 00:08:05.279 --> 00:08:07.959 He was mimicking politicians he heard on the 00:08:07.959 --> 00:08:10.170 radio to learn how to... to speak persuasively. 00:08:10.470 --> 00:08:13.029 He was consciously building what psychiatrists 00:08:13.029 --> 00:08:15.709 call the mask of sanity. He learned that if you 00:08:15.709 --> 00:08:17.910 smile at the right time and you say the right 00:08:17.910 --> 00:08:19.970 things and you look presentable, people will 00:08:19.970 --> 00:08:22.029 accept you. They won't look any deeper. And he 00:08:22.029 --> 00:08:24.110 builds that mask well enough to get into the 00:08:24.110 --> 00:08:26.290 University of Puget Sound and in the University 00:08:26.290 --> 00:08:28.910 of Washington. And this is where we meet the 00:08:28.910 --> 00:08:32.399 first pivotal figure in his adult life. The sources 00:08:32.399 --> 00:08:35.559 call her Diane Edwards, though she's often known 00:08:35.559 --> 00:08:38.159 by the pseudonym Stephanie Brooks in movies and 00:08:38.159 --> 00:08:41.379 books. Right, the one that got away. In the narrative 00:08:41.379 --> 00:08:44.120 of his life that he constructs, she is the catalyst 00:08:44.120 --> 00:08:46.820 for everything. But it wasn't just a bad breakup, 00:08:46.960 --> 00:08:48.919 was it? I mean, we've all had bad breakups. We 00:08:48.919 --> 00:08:51.440 don't all go on to commit 30 homicides. What 00:08:51.440 --> 00:08:53.679 was so unique about this dynamic with her? It 00:08:53.679 --> 00:08:57.370 was about class and status. That's the key. Diane 00:08:57.370 --> 00:09:00.789 was wealthy, sophisticated, beautiful. She was 00:09:00.789 --> 00:09:03.309 from a world that Bundy desperately, desperately 00:09:03.309 --> 00:09:05.649 wanted to belong to, but felt he never could. 00:09:05.950 --> 00:09:08.909 He felt inadequate. Deeply inadequate. He didn't 00:09:08.909 --> 00:09:11.370 have the money or the social pedigree. He called 00:09:11.370 --> 00:09:13.750 her the only woman he ever really loved, but 00:09:13.750 --> 00:09:16.330 it was an aspirational love. He wanted to possess 00:09:16.330 --> 00:09:19.809 what she represented. And she dumps him. 1968. 00:09:20.649 --> 00:09:24.730 She ends it because he lacks ambition. He's directionless. 00:09:24.809 --> 00:09:28.769 He's not going anywhere. And for Bundy, this 00:09:28.769 --> 00:09:31.570 devastation seems to trigger something very specific. 00:09:31.750 --> 00:09:34.429 It wasn't just heartbreak. It was what psychologists 00:09:34.429 --> 00:09:37.549 call a narcissistic injury. What does that mean 00:09:37.549 --> 00:09:40.309 exactly? It means she validated his deepest, 00:09:40.350 --> 00:09:43.070 most terrifying insecurity, that he wasn't good 00:09:43.070 --> 00:09:45.370 enough, that he was a fraud. It was a rejection 00:09:45.370 --> 00:09:48.429 of his very self. And he couldn't handle it. 00:09:48.549 --> 00:09:51.149 So he drops out of school. travels a bit, dabbles 00:09:51.149 --> 00:09:53.850 in politics, but then he reconstructs himself. 00:09:54.129 --> 00:09:55.590 This is the part of the story that just feels 00:09:55.590 --> 00:09:57.850 like a movie script. He doesn't just get over 00:09:57.850 --> 00:10:00.350 it. He reinvents himself with the specific goal 00:10:00.350 --> 00:10:02.629 of getting her back. It's a calculated act of 00:10:02.629 --> 00:10:04.850 revenge. He goes back to the University of Washington, 00:10:05.009 --> 00:10:07.490 and this time he becomes an honor student in 00:10:07.490 --> 00:10:09.750 psychology. He gets glowing recommendations. 00:10:09.889 --> 00:10:12.190 He starts working for the Republican Party. Right, 00:10:12.269 --> 00:10:14.429 for big campaigns. Yeah. Nelson Rockefeller, 00:10:14.509 --> 00:10:17.019 Arthur Fletcher. Yeah, he's creating this perfect 00:10:17.019 --> 00:10:19.980 facade of the rising young political and legal 00:10:19.980 --> 00:10:22.559 star. He's building the man he thinks she wants. 00:10:22.700 --> 00:10:26.639 And in 1973, he contacts her again. He rekindles 00:10:26.639 --> 00:10:28.639 the relationship. And she falls for it completely. 00:10:28.799 --> 00:10:31.279 She thinks, wow, he's changed. He's become the 00:10:31.279 --> 00:10:33.220 man I always wanted him to be. They're talking 00:10:33.220 --> 00:10:35.919 about marriage. She's totally invested. And then 00:10:35.919 --> 00:10:40.279 in January 1974, he goes completely cold. total 00:10:40.279 --> 00:10:42.820 silence ghosts her when she finally gets him 00:10:42.820 --> 00:10:44.519 on the phone and asks why he cut her off what 00:10:44.519 --> 00:10:47.360 happened he just says diane i have no idea what 00:10:47.360 --> 00:10:49.059 you mean and hangs up the phone it was a long 00:10:49.059 --> 00:10:50.840 con the whole thing was a performance it was 00:10:50.840 --> 00:10:53.259 pure revenge he said later he just wanted to 00:10:53.259 --> 00:10:55.360 prove that he could have her and once he possessed 00:10:55.360 --> 00:10:57.720 her psychologically once he knew she was his 00:10:57.720 --> 00:11:00.679 for the taking she was useless to him he discarded 00:11:00.679 --> 00:11:03.039 her and here's the terrifying correlation yeah 00:11:03.419 --> 00:11:05.600 The thing that makes your blood run cold. The 00:11:05.600 --> 00:11:09.419 very next month, February 1974, the murders begin. 00:11:09.659 --> 00:11:11.799 It's like breaking her spirit was the dry run. 00:11:11.960 --> 00:11:14.559 It was the psychological warm -up for destroying 00:11:14.559 --> 00:11:17.019 women physically. Many criminal psychologists, 00:11:17.340 --> 00:11:20.279 and Ann Rule herself, they believe that his simmering 00:11:20.279 --> 00:11:23.440 rage toward Diane Edwards directly fueled the 00:11:23.440 --> 00:11:26.139 victim profile. Absolutely. So many of his victims 00:11:26.139 --> 00:11:29.100 looked just like her. Long, dark hair, parted 00:11:29.100 --> 00:11:31.690 in the middle. They were often bright. Confident 00:11:31.690 --> 00:11:34.370 college students, the very type of woman who 00:11:34.370 --> 00:11:37.049 represented the class that he felt had rejected 00:11:37.049 --> 00:11:40.269 him. He was killing her over and over and over 00:11:40.269 --> 00:11:44.330 again. So let's move to that year, 1974, the 00:11:44.330 --> 00:11:47.269 Pacific Northwest. This is where the nightmare 00:11:47.269 --> 00:11:49.549 starts in earnest. It starts with incredible 00:11:49.549 --> 00:11:53.440 brutality. January 4th, Karen sparks. He breaks 00:11:53.440 --> 00:11:55.120 into her basement apartment while she's sleeping. 00:11:55.279 --> 00:11:58.059 He bludgeons her with a metal rod that he takes 00:11:58.059 --> 00:12:01.019 from her own bed frame. She survives, miraculously. 00:12:01.120 --> 00:12:03.480 She survives, but with terrible permanent brain 00:12:03.480 --> 00:12:05.580 damage and other injuries. It's an important 00:12:05.580 --> 00:12:08.039 case because it shows the raw rage. This wasn't 00:12:08.039 --> 00:12:10.500 a seduction crime. This was a violent, predatory 00:12:10.500 --> 00:12:13.580 ambush. But after Karen sparks, the pattern changes, 00:12:13.659 --> 00:12:16.080 doesn't it? The women, they start disappearing. 00:12:16.399 --> 00:12:19.480 Yes. He gets smarter. He gets cleaner. And they 00:12:19.480 --> 00:12:22.080 disappear like clockwork. Almost monthly. It's 00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:24.779 a terrifying rhythm. Linda Ann Healy, a student, 00:12:24.899 --> 00:12:26.940 disappears from her basement room in February. 00:12:27.720 --> 00:12:30.279 Donna Gail Manson, another student, vanishes 00:12:30.279 --> 00:12:32.980 in March on her way to a jazz concert. Susan 00:12:32.980 --> 00:12:36.179 Elaine Rancourt in April. He's escalating. He's 00:12:36.179 --> 00:12:38.580 getting more confident. And he's refining his 00:12:38.580 --> 00:12:40.820 method. This is where we see the Ted persona 00:12:40.820 --> 00:12:45.120 emerge. The cast. The crutches, the slaying. 00:12:45.120 --> 00:12:47.500 This is absolutely crucial to understand. Why 00:12:47.500 --> 00:12:50.500 did these smart, capable women go with him? It's 00:12:50.500 --> 00:12:53.419 a masterclass in weaponizing sympathy. It's just 00:12:53.419 --> 00:12:56.159 diabolical. He realized that our social norms 00:12:56.159 --> 00:12:58.919 make it incredibly difficult for a person, especially 00:12:58.919 --> 00:13:02.100 a woman in the 1970s, to say no to a handsome, 00:13:02.240 --> 00:13:04.580 well -dressed man who appears to be injured and 00:13:04.580 --> 00:13:06.879 is asking for help. So you'd wear a fake plaster 00:13:06.879 --> 00:13:09.039 cast on his arm or use crutches and then he'd 00:13:09.039 --> 00:13:11.279 like drop his books near a woman he'd targeted. 00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:13.659 Exactly. And he asks for help. Excuse me, I'm 00:13:13.659 --> 00:13:15.620 having trouble with these. Could you possibly 00:13:15.620 --> 00:13:18.379 help me carry them to my car? He prayed on their 00:13:18.379 --> 00:13:20.679 kindness. He turned their instinct to be a good 00:13:20.679 --> 00:13:23.080 person into their death sentence. It's so evil 00:13:23.080 --> 00:13:26.059 because it subverts the social contract. We are 00:13:26.059 --> 00:13:27.940 taught from childhood to help people who are 00:13:27.940 --> 00:13:30.559 injured. He turned a virtue into a vulnerability. 00:13:30.960 --> 00:13:34.440 He did, and he was so, so bold. We have to talk 00:13:34.440 --> 00:13:38.279 about Lake Sammamish. July 14, 1974. This is 00:13:38.279 --> 00:13:39.779 the one that blows my mind every time I read 00:13:39.779 --> 00:13:42.639 about it. Broad daylight. A crowded state park 00:13:42.639 --> 00:13:45.279 on a hot summer day. Thousands of people around. 00:13:45.690 --> 00:13:47.570 He approaches a young woman named Janice Ann 00:13:47.570 --> 00:13:50.690 Ott. Multiple witnesses see him. He's wearing 00:13:50.690 --> 00:13:53.049 a white tennis outfit. His arm is in a sling. 00:13:53.210 --> 00:13:55.750 He asks for her help with a sailboat on his car. 00:13:55.929 --> 00:13:58.389 She goes with him. She disappears. And that would 00:13:58.389 --> 00:14:01.230 be brazen enough. But he comes back. Four hours 00:14:01.230 --> 00:14:04.029 later, he returns to the same beach, and he does 00:14:04.029 --> 00:14:06.090 it again. He approaches another young woman, 00:14:06.250 --> 00:14:08.570 Denise Marie Naslund, and she too disappears. 00:14:08.950 --> 00:14:11.409 He abducted two women from the same crowded beach 00:14:11.409 --> 00:14:14.580 in a single afternoon. While people were barbecuing 00:14:14.580 --> 00:14:17.200 and swimming just yards away. That is the level 00:14:17.200 --> 00:14:19.519 of compulsion and the staggering arrogance we 00:14:19.519 --> 00:14:21.480 were dealing with. He felt invisible. He felt 00:14:21.480 --> 00:14:23.639 untouchable. And witnesses at the beach, they 00:14:23.639 --> 00:14:26.539 heard him introduce himself as Ted. They saw 00:14:26.539 --> 00:14:29.179 the bronze Volkswagen Beetle. So the police have 00:14:29.179 --> 00:14:31.659 a first name, a car description, and a composite 00:14:31.659 --> 00:14:34.379 sketch. How did they not catch him then? This 00:14:34.379 --> 00:14:36.600 is the chameleon effect we talked about. The 00:14:36.600 --> 00:14:38.360 witnesses couldn't agree on what he looked like. 00:14:38.480 --> 00:14:40.720 One said he had an accent. Another said he didn't. 00:14:40.740 --> 00:14:42.799 They gave different heights, different weights. 00:14:42.960 --> 00:14:45.179 And if you look at photos of Bundy, it's true. 00:14:45.340 --> 00:14:48.019 He looks different in almost every single shot. 00:14:48.259 --> 00:14:50.220 It's uncanny. He would change his hair, grow 00:14:50.220 --> 00:14:54.039 a mustache, shave it off. He was generically 00:14:54.039 --> 00:14:55.879 handsome in a way that made him forgettable. 00:14:55.899 --> 00:14:57.960 He looked like... everyone and no one at the 00:14:57.960 --> 00:15:00.639 same time and he was clean Yeah. Forensically 00:15:00.639 --> 00:15:03.279 clean. Incredibly so for that era. Remember, 00:15:03.399 --> 00:15:05.899 this is before DNA profiling really exists as 00:15:05.899 --> 00:15:08.440 a tool. But he knew enough from, you know, his 00:15:08.440 --> 00:15:10.679 own studies to check for fingerprints. He kept 00:15:10.679 --> 00:15:13.059 his car tidy. And the source material details 00:15:13.059 --> 00:15:15.299 how he would sometimes wash the victim's hair 00:15:15.299 --> 00:15:17.320 or apply makeup to them after they were dead. 00:15:17.500 --> 00:15:19.919 Which is, it's a part of the necrophilia and 00:15:19.919 --> 00:15:22.379 the possession ritual, but it also served a practical 00:15:22.379 --> 00:15:24.539 purpose. It destroyed evidence. It was all part 00:15:24.539 --> 00:15:27.809 of his process. And during all of this. And I 00:15:27.809 --> 00:15:30.769 find this irony absolutely suffocating. He is 00:15:30.769 --> 00:15:32.889 working at the Department of Emergency Services 00:15:32.889 --> 00:15:36.990 in Olympia on a suicide hotline alongside Ann 00:15:36.990 --> 00:15:39.879 Rule. The true crime writer. It's unbelievable. 00:15:40.019 --> 00:15:41.860 It's one of those details that if you put it 00:15:41.860 --> 00:15:43.860 in a novel, people would say it's too unrealistic. 00:15:44.399 --> 00:15:48.200 Ann Rule is literally writing articles for magazines 00:15:48.200 --> 00:15:51.399 about the Ted murders, warning women in the Pacific 00:15:51.399 --> 00:15:53.759 Northwest to be careful. And the guy sitting 00:15:53.759 --> 00:15:56.440 next to her at the crisis hotline, the one she 00:15:56.440 --> 00:15:59.159 considered a kind, empathetic friend, the one 00:15:59.159 --> 00:16:01.100 who would walk her to her car at night to make 00:16:01.100 --> 00:16:04.580 sure she was safe, is Ted. She described him 00:16:04.580 --> 00:16:07.639 as kind, solicitous, professional. She had absolutely 00:16:07.639 --> 00:16:10.059 no idea. It just hammers home the perfection 00:16:10.059 --> 00:16:13.019 of that mask of sanity. He could turn the empathy 00:16:13.019 --> 00:16:15.179 on and off like a light switch. But the heat 00:16:15.179 --> 00:16:17.299 is starting to turn up in Washington. The sketches 00:16:17.299 --> 00:16:19.460 are everywhere. The Ted name is out there. So 00:16:19.460 --> 00:16:21.940 what does he do? He runs. But he doesn't just 00:16:21.940 --> 00:16:24.639 run. He runs towards respectability. He goes 00:16:24.639 --> 00:16:26.740 to law school. He gets accepted to the University 00:16:26.740 --> 00:16:29.379 of Utah Law School in Salt Lake City. And he 00:16:29.379 --> 00:16:32.679 moves. He's literally studying criminal procedure 00:16:32.679 --> 00:16:34.960 and evidence law during the day while kidnapping 00:16:34.960 --> 00:16:37.240 and murdering women at night. He is learning 00:16:37.240 --> 00:16:39.519 how to beat the system from inside the system. 00:16:39.740 --> 00:16:42.539 This move to Utah brings us to a really crucial 00:16:42.539 --> 00:16:46.759 turning point, a mistake, and a survivor, Carol 00:16:46.759 --> 00:16:50.879 Duranche. November 8th, 1974. This is a huge 00:16:50.879 --> 00:16:53.980 moment. He tries a new ruse this time. He's evolving 00:16:53.980 --> 00:16:56.139 his methods. He approaches her at a shopping 00:16:56.139 --> 00:16:59.460 mall. But this time he's posing as Officer Roseland 00:16:59.460 --> 00:17:01.419 of the police department. He's using authority 00:17:01.419 --> 00:17:04.460 instead of sympathy. Exactly. He tells her someone 00:17:04.460 --> 00:17:06.660 tried to break into her car and she needs to 00:17:06.660 --> 00:17:08.500 come with him to the station to file a report. 00:17:09.500 --> 00:17:11.599 He's playing on her trust and authority figures. 00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:14.160 And she gets in the car. She does. But she's 00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:17.140 suspicious. He smells of alcohol. The car, a 00:17:17.140 --> 00:17:19.799 VW bug, doesn't look like a police car. And when 00:17:19.799 --> 00:17:21.759 he pulls over and tries to slap a handcuff on 00:17:21.759 --> 00:17:24.039 her wrist, he bungles it. He gets one cuff on, 00:17:24.099 --> 00:17:25.940 but he can't get the other. And she fights. She 00:17:25.940 --> 00:17:27.680 fights like hell. She gets the door open. She 00:17:27.680 --> 00:17:29.900 bails out of the moving car and flags down a 00:17:29.900 --> 00:17:32.559 passing driver. She escapes. She survives. And 00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:35.019 now for the first time. There is a living witness 00:17:35.019 --> 00:17:37.880 who has seen his face up close, been inside his 00:17:37.880 --> 00:17:41.039 car, and seen the actual handcuffs. The ruse 00:17:41.039 --> 00:17:45.039 failed. It did. And yet, on that exact same night, 00:17:45.200 --> 00:17:47.960 he drives to a nearby town and abducts Debra 00:17:47.960 --> 00:17:50.859 Jean Kent from a high school play. He failed 00:17:50.859 --> 00:17:53.220 with Carol, so he immediately went hunting again 00:17:53.220 --> 00:17:55.460 to satisfy the urge. The compulsion was that 00:17:55.460 --> 00:17:58.380 strong. There was no cooling off period. None. 00:17:58.640 --> 00:18:01.200 He later described it to the FBI as an entity. 00:18:01.819 --> 00:18:04.839 A possession. A dark personality that took over 00:18:04.839 --> 00:18:07.619 and had these needs. He needed to possess the 00:18:07.619 --> 00:18:10.400 victim totally. First their life, then their 00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:13.180 body. The failure with Carol just made the entity 00:18:13.180 --> 00:18:15.460 angrier, more determined. Let's fast forward 00:18:15.460 --> 00:18:17.519 to the arrest. Because for all his planning, 00:18:17.700 --> 00:18:20.339 for all his supposed genius, he gets caught in 00:18:20.339 --> 00:18:24.519 a very, very mundane way. August 1975. A simple 00:18:24.519 --> 00:18:26.880 traffic stop. He's cruising a residential area 00:18:26.880 --> 00:18:29.589 in a suburb of Salt Lake City at dawn. A patrol 00:18:29.589 --> 00:18:32.369 officer, Bob Hayward, sees the VW driving slow, 00:18:32.490 --> 00:18:34.809 turning off its lights, and thinks it's suspicious. 00:18:35.029 --> 00:18:37.329 He pulls him over. And Bundy has the kit in his 00:18:37.329 --> 00:18:39.490 car. Oh, yeah. The front passenger seat has been 00:18:39.490 --> 00:18:41.750 removed. There's a ski mask on the floor, a crowbar, 00:18:41.849 --> 00:18:43.710 a pair of handcuffs, trash bags, and ice pick. 00:18:43.869 --> 00:18:45.829 It is, for all intents and purposes, a murder 00:18:45.829 --> 00:18:47.670 kit. But he talks his way out of it initially. 00:18:47.910 --> 00:18:50.910 He tries. He gives this plausible story. Oh, 00:18:51.049 --> 00:18:53.150 I'm a law student. I was just looking for a friend's 00:18:53.150 --> 00:18:56.390 address. I used the mask for skiing. I found 00:18:56.390 --> 00:18:59.569 the handcuffs in a dumpster. He's smooth. And 00:18:59.569 --> 00:19:02.809 because it's 1975 and he's this clean -cut law 00:19:02.809 --> 00:19:04.809 student, they let him go. They don't have enough 00:19:04.809 --> 00:19:07.349 to hold him on the spot. But the officer is suspicious. 00:19:07.730 --> 00:19:11.349 He notes the name. And then the detectives start 00:19:11.349 --> 00:19:13.829 connecting the dots. They have the Durant identification. 00:19:14.009 --> 00:19:16.829 They have the make of the car. And here is where 00:19:16.829 --> 00:19:20.089 the primitive technology of the time actually 00:19:20.089 --> 00:19:23.029 worked in their favor. They used a payroll computer 00:19:23.029 --> 00:19:26.019 to cross -reference lists. I want to pause on 00:19:26.019 --> 00:19:27.900 this because it's such a great little nugget 00:19:27.900 --> 00:19:29.960 for any tech history buffs listening. This isn't 00:19:29.960 --> 00:19:31.859 a Google search. This is not sophisticated AI. 00:19:32.099 --> 00:19:33.980 Paint the picture for us. What does it actually 00:19:33.980 --> 00:19:36.680 look like? It was incredibly tedious manual work 00:19:36.680 --> 00:19:39.319 feeding into a very basic machine. They had a 00:19:39.319 --> 00:19:41.740 witness description of a man named Ted. They 00:19:41.740 --> 00:19:44.099 had a description of a Volkswagen Beetle. And 00:19:44.099 --> 00:19:46.859 they had lists, huge physical stacks of paper. 00:19:46.980 --> 00:19:49.440 What kind of lists? A list of every student at 00:19:49.440 --> 00:19:51.980 the University of Utah Law School. A list of 00:19:51.980 --> 00:19:54.920 every registered owner of a bronze or tan Volkswagen 00:19:54.920 --> 00:19:58.619 in the county. A list of known local sex offenders. 00:19:58.940 --> 00:20:00.680 And they had to manually cross -reference all 00:20:00.680 --> 00:20:03.500 these huge lists. They fed the data from these 00:20:03.500 --> 00:20:06.299 lists into the main county payroll computer, 00:20:06.519 --> 00:20:09.339 a massive mainframe machine that took up a whole 00:20:09.339 --> 00:20:12.259 room. And they basically asked it to run a program 00:20:12.259 --> 00:20:14.579 to print out any names that appeared on all of 00:20:14.579 --> 00:20:16.660 those lists. It's like looking for a needle in 00:20:16.660 --> 00:20:19.430 a haystack. but using a giant rudimentary magnet. 00:20:19.650 --> 00:20:21.970 That's a perfect analogy. And out of thousands 00:20:21.970 --> 00:20:24.509 and thousands of potential suspects, the computer 00:20:24.509 --> 00:20:27.710 spits out a very short list. And at the top of 00:20:27.710 --> 00:20:31.109 that list, Theodore Robert Bundy. It's incredible 00:20:31.109 --> 00:20:33.190 to think that a punch card mainframe in 1975 00:20:33.190 --> 00:20:36.329 did what human intuition couldn't do for over 00:20:36.329 --> 00:20:38.609 a year. It just cut through all the chameleon 00:20:38.609 --> 00:20:41.210 camouflage and looked at the cold, hard data 00:20:41.210 --> 00:20:43.930 points. The net finally tightens. They get a 00:20:43.930 --> 00:20:45.529 warrant to search his car more thoroughly this 00:20:45.529 --> 00:20:47.529 time. And in the carpeting, they find hairs. 00:20:48.279 --> 00:20:51.319 Hairs that, through microscopic comparison, are 00:20:51.319 --> 00:20:53.759 matched to three different victims from two different 00:20:53.759 --> 00:20:56.400 states. Three victims. The FBI forensic expert 00:20:56.400 --> 00:20:58.880 who testified at the trial called it a coincidence 00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:02.640 of mind -boggling rarity. So he's caught. He's 00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:05.079 convicted of the Carol Durange kidnapping. He's 00:21:05.079 --> 00:21:07.160 in extradited Colorado to face murder charges 00:21:07.160 --> 00:21:09.519 for Karen Campbell. He's in a jail in Aspen. 00:21:09.759 --> 00:21:12.420 And this is where the story goes from a straightforward 00:21:12.420 --> 00:21:15.500 true crime narrative into something from an action 00:21:15.500 --> 00:21:20.180 movie. The Aspen Jump. June 1977. This is his 00:21:20.180 --> 00:21:22.900 first escape. He decides he's going to act as 00:21:22.900 --> 00:21:26.210 his own attorney. The legal term is pro se. And 00:21:26.210 --> 00:21:28.089 that's a key decision because it gives him certain 00:21:28.089 --> 00:21:30.349 privileges, right? It does. It means he doesn't 00:21:30.349 --> 00:21:32.369 have to wear handcuffs or leg irons when he's 00:21:32.369 --> 00:21:33.789 in the courthouse because he needs to be able 00:21:33.789 --> 00:21:35.650 to move around and access his legal materials. 00:21:36.009 --> 00:21:38.269 He's using the law to escape the law. Precisely. 00:21:38.430 --> 00:21:42.049 And he has access to the law library in the courthouse. 00:21:42.130 --> 00:21:45.150 So during a recess in a pretrial hearing, he 00:21:45.150 --> 00:21:48.049 asks to go to the library to do research. The 00:21:48.049 --> 00:21:50.910 guard is outside the door. Bundy goes to a window 00:21:50.910 --> 00:21:54.009 on the second story, opens it, and just... Jumps 00:21:54.009 --> 00:21:56.990 out a second story window. He lands, hurts his 00:21:56.990 --> 00:21:59.170 ankle pretty badly, but the adrenaline is pumping. 00:21:59.369 --> 00:22:01.910 He gets up and takes off into the mountains surrounding 00:22:01.910 --> 00:22:05.210 Aspen. He's gone for six days, wandering the 00:22:05.210 --> 00:22:08.029 wilderness, breaking into empty cabins for food 00:22:08.029 --> 00:22:10.849 and supplies. But he's not a survivalist. He 00:22:10.849 --> 00:22:13.150 gets lost. He gets weak. He eventually steals 00:22:13.150 --> 00:22:16.130 a car and in a moment of just terrible judgment, 00:22:16.190 --> 00:22:19.880 he drives back into Aspen. exhausted, sleep deprived, 00:22:20.319 --> 00:22:23.099 maybe even hallucinating. And a cop pulls him 00:22:23.099 --> 00:22:25.480 over for weaving in traffic. You would think 00:22:25.480 --> 00:22:27.500 after an escape like that, they would lock him 00:22:27.500 --> 00:22:29.380 down in a fortress. You'd think they would never 00:22:29.380 --> 00:22:31.119 take their eyes off him again. You would think. 00:22:31.380 --> 00:22:33.799 But he's sent to the Garfield County Jail in 00:22:33.799 --> 00:22:36.839 Glenwood Springs, Colorado. And the security 00:22:36.839 --> 00:22:39.920 there, well, let's just say it was lacking. This 00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:43.140 is where he plots his second and much more spectacular 00:22:43.140 --> 00:22:46.460 escape. This is the ceiling crawl. This one really 00:22:46.460 --> 00:22:49.759 just exposes the systemic negligence and on his 00:22:49.759 --> 00:22:52.619 part, the sheer force of will he had. He gets 00:22:52.619 --> 00:22:54.880 a hacksaw blade, probably smuggled in by another 00:22:54.880 --> 00:22:57.380 inmate. And over the course of weeks, he starts 00:22:57.380 --> 00:22:59.779 sawing a hole in the ceiling of his cell. It's 00:22:59.779 --> 00:23:02.019 in the corner above his bunk. And the hole is 00:23:02.019 --> 00:23:04.519 tiny. It's about one square foot. He's a grown 00:23:04.519 --> 00:23:07.140 man. I mean, he's over six feet tall. How does 00:23:07.140 --> 00:23:09.839 he fit through a one square foot hole? He starves 00:23:09.839 --> 00:23:12.000 himself. He would hoard his food to make it look 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:13.700 like he was eating, and then he would flush it 00:23:13.700 --> 00:23:16.180 down the toilet late at night. He dropped 35 00:23:16.180 --> 00:23:19.200 pounds. He became skeletal. He was literally 00:23:19.200 --> 00:23:22.180 reshaping his own body to fit through a hole 00:23:22.180 --> 00:23:24.720 in the architecture of his prison. The dedication 00:23:24.720 --> 00:23:27.880 is just, it's horrifying. And he plans the timing 00:23:27.880 --> 00:23:32.329 perfectly. December 30, 1977. Why that date? 00:23:32.529 --> 00:23:34.529 Because it was the middle of the Christmas holidays. 00:23:34.809 --> 00:23:37.990 The main staff is off. It's a skeleton crew at 00:23:37.990 --> 00:23:39.750 the jail. Most of the other prisoners have been 00:23:39.750 --> 00:23:42.349 transferred. The building is quiet and empty. 00:23:42.650 --> 00:23:45.920 So he makes his move. That night, he piles books 00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:47.900 and files under his blanket to make it look like 00:23:47.900 --> 00:23:50.500 he's sleeping. He climbs up, squeezes through 00:23:50.500 --> 00:23:52.980 that tiny hole into the dusty crawlspace above 00:23:52.980 --> 00:23:55.299 the cells. He navigates through the pipes and 00:23:55.299 --> 00:23:58.279 wiring and drops down into the chief jailer's 00:23:58.279 --> 00:24:00.980 apartment, which was connected to the jail. The 00:24:00.980 --> 00:24:03.079 jailer who is conveniently out for the night 00:24:03.079 --> 00:24:06.400 with his wife. Exactly. Bundy raids his closet, 00:24:06.599 --> 00:24:09.460 changes into the jailer's street clothes, and 00:24:09.460 --> 00:24:11.180 just walks out the front door of the building. 00:24:11.720 --> 00:24:15.200 A free man. And it takes them how long to notice 00:24:15.200 --> 00:24:18.140 he's gone? An unbelievable 17 hours. By the time 00:24:18.140 --> 00:24:20.000 they do a head count the next afternoon and realize 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:23.079 Ted Bundy is gone, he's already on a bus to Chicago. 00:24:23.380 --> 00:24:24.960 This is the part of the story that just makes 00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:27.279 you want to scream at the history books. He was 00:24:27.279 --> 00:24:29.700 in custody. He was identified. They had him. 00:24:30.140 --> 00:24:33.480 And he just walked out the front door. And that 00:24:33.480 --> 00:24:35.880 failure, that systemic catastrophic failure, 00:24:36.019 --> 00:24:39.079 it leads directly to the final and perhaps most 00:24:39.079 --> 00:24:42.769 brutal. chapter of his crimes, the rampage in 00:24:42.769 --> 00:24:45.410 Florida. Because he doesn't go into hiding to 00:24:45.410 --> 00:24:47.670 live a quiet life. Yeah. He goes hunting again. 00:24:47.809 --> 00:24:50.170 He makes his way down to Tallahassee. It's January 00:24:50.170 --> 00:24:52.789 1978. He rents a room near the Florida State 00:24:52.789 --> 00:24:54.890 University campus under the name Chris Hagan. 00:24:55.269 --> 00:24:57.410 He claims he tried to get a legitimate job, right? 00:24:57.549 --> 00:24:59.009 Yeah, there's a story that he tried to get a 00:24:59.009 --> 00:25:01.089 job as a security guard or something. But he 00:25:01.089 --> 00:25:03.210 couldn't produce any ID, so he couldn't get hired, 00:25:03.309 --> 00:25:06.390 so he reverts to what he knows. Petty crime. 00:25:07.259 --> 00:25:10.180 Shoplifting food, stealing credit cards. But 00:25:10.180 --> 00:25:12.640 the entity, as he called it, was hungry, and 00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:15.539 he was unraveling fast. That leads directly to 00:25:15.539 --> 00:25:18.819 the Chi Omega sorority house, January 15, 1978. 00:25:19.700 --> 00:25:21.619 This attack is different from all the others. 00:25:21.680 --> 00:25:23.720 This wasn't a calculated one -on -one abduction 00:25:23.720 --> 00:25:26.240 with a ruse. This was a frenzy, a blitz attack. 00:25:26.440 --> 00:25:29.119 It was a berserker rage. Describe the timeline 00:25:29.119 --> 00:25:31.180 here, because the speed is what's so terrifying. 00:25:31.609 --> 00:25:34.990 He breaks in around 2 .45 a .m. In the space 00:25:34.990 --> 00:25:38.329 of just 15 minutes, that's it, 15 minutes, he 00:25:38.329 --> 00:25:39.910 moves through the darkened house and attacks 00:25:39.910 --> 00:25:42.750 four women in their sleep. Margaret Bowman and 00:25:42.750 --> 00:25:45.210 Lisa Levy are bludgeoned and strangled to death. 00:25:45.410 --> 00:25:47.769 Two others, Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler, 00:25:47.789 --> 00:25:50.309 are brutally beaten but survive. 15 minutes. 00:25:50.509 --> 00:25:52.849 See? The silence and the efficiency of that violence 00:25:52.849 --> 00:25:55.420 is just... unimaginable. And he wasn't done. 00:25:55.539 --> 00:25:57.559 He leaves the Channel Mega house, walks a few 00:25:57.559 --> 00:25:59.299 blocks away, breaks into a basement apartment, 00:25:59.440 --> 00:26:02.200 and attacks a fifth woman, Cheryl Thomas. He 00:26:02.200 --> 00:26:04.619 leaves her for dead too. She also survives, but 00:26:04.619 --> 00:26:07.380 with devastating injuries. This is the de -evolution 00:26:07.380 --> 00:26:09.319 you mentioned earlier. He's not the careful Ted 00:26:09.319 --> 00:26:11.519 with the cast anymore. This is a wild animal. 00:26:11.680 --> 00:26:14.440 He's completely unraveling. He's drunk, he's 00:26:14.440 --> 00:26:17.019 desperate, and the violence is just exploding 00:26:17.019 --> 00:26:20.039 out of him. But in his haste, he leaves something 00:26:20.039 --> 00:26:23.420 behind this time. A crucial piece of physical 00:26:23.420 --> 00:26:26.759 evidence, a bite mark. On Lisa Levy's body. Yes. 00:26:26.839 --> 00:26:30.200 A very distinct double bite mark. And that physical 00:26:30.200 --> 00:26:33.359 evidence, that human signature, becomes the forensic 00:26:33.359 --> 00:26:36.559 nail in his coffin later on. But he's still loose. 00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:39.339 He steals a university van. He drives east to 00:26:39.339 --> 00:26:41.859 Lake City. And this is where he commits the crime 00:26:41.859 --> 00:26:44.119 that, for many people, is the most heartbreaking 00:26:44.119 --> 00:26:47.819 of all. Kimberly Leach. She was 12. 12 years 00:26:47.819 --> 00:26:50.200 old. He abducted her from outside her junior 00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:52.569 high school in broad daylight. This completely 00:26:52.569 --> 00:26:55.029 broke his established pattern of college -aged 00:26:55.029 --> 00:26:57.750 women. It showed he had no boundaries left. He 00:26:57.750 --> 00:26:59.650 had no victim type anymore. He was just taking 00:26:59.650 --> 00:27:01.670 whatever opportunity he could find. And finally, 00:27:01.690 --> 00:27:03.789 the law catches up to him. But again, it's not 00:27:03.789 --> 00:27:06.549 some big FBI dragnet that gets him. It's a patrolman 00:27:06.549 --> 00:27:10.210 on a routine stop. Pensacola, Florida. An officer 00:27:10.210 --> 00:27:12.829 named David Lee is on patrol, and he runs the 00:27:12.829 --> 00:27:15.589 license plates on an orange Volkswagen Beetle 00:27:15.589 --> 00:27:18.430 he sees parked suspiciously. It comes back stolen. 00:27:18.930 --> 00:27:21.809 When he approaches... Bundy tries to run. There's 00:27:21.809 --> 00:27:24.670 a struggle. A life or death struggle. Bundy kicks 00:27:24.670 --> 00:27:26.849 the officer. They fight for the officer's gun. 00:27:27.069 --> 00:27:30.470 It's a real brawl. And when he's finally subdued 00:27:30.470 --> 00:27:32.630 and in the back of the patrol car, Officer Lee 00:27:32.630 --> 00:27:34.750 has no idea who he's just arrested, right? No 00:27:34.750 --> 00:27:36.730 idea at all. He just thinks he has a particularly 00:27:36.730 --> 00:27:40.119 tough car thief. It's only later they identify 00:27:40.119 --> 00:27:42.920 him as one of the FBI's ten most wanted fugitives. 00:27:43.140 --> 00:27:45.920 And in that car, Bundy says to him, I wish you 00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:48.019 had killed me. He knew it was over. For good 00:27:48.019 --> 00:27:50.480 this time. He knew. So now we enter the final 00:27:50.480 --> 00:27:54.170 phase of his life. The media circus. The Florida 00:27:54.170 --> 00:27:56.789 trials. This was the first nationally televised 00:27:56.789 --> 00:27:58.710 trial in American history, wasn't it? It was. 00:27:58.809 --> 00:28:01.170 And Bundy loved the camera. He was a performer. 00:28:01.329 --> 00:28:03.430 He fired his defense attorneys and once again 00:28:03.430 --> 00:28:05.450 insisted on representing himself for large parts 00:28:05.450 --> 00:28:07.910 of the trial. He wore nice suits. He was articulate. 00:28:08.150 --> 00:28:10.529 He cross -examined witnesses. Can you just imagine 00:28:10.529 --> 00:28:13.130 being one of the survivors, like the women from 00:28:13.130 --> 00:28:15.329 the Chi Omega house, and having to get on the 00:28:15.329 --> 00:28:17.490 stand and have the man who tried to kill you 00:28:17.490 --> 00:28:20.029 be the one asking you questions? It was a form 00:28:20.029 --> 00:28:22.029 of psychological torture that the court system 00:28:22.029 --> 00:28:25.140 allowed. He was grandiose. He was delusional. 00:28:25.240 --> 00:28:28.200 He completely sabotaged his own legal team because 00:28:28.200 --> 00:28:30.000 he was convinced he was smarter than all of them. 00:28:30.119 --> 00:28:32.279 He even refused a plea deal that would have saved 00:28:32.279 --> 00:28:35.279 his life. Why? Why would he do that? Because 00:28:35.279 --> 00:28:37.640 the deal required him to stand up in court and 00:28:37.640 --> 00:28:41.200 plead guilty. And his narcissism, his ego, simply 00:28:41.200 --> 00:28:43.500 would not allow him to say the words, I am guilty. 00:28:43.759 --> 00:28:46.359 Even to save his own life? Even then. But the 00:28:46.359 --> 00:28:48.339 evidence this time was just overwhelming. The 00:28:48.339 --> 00:28:50.460 eyewitnesses who saw him near the sorority house, 00:28:50.680 --> 00:28:53.059 the fibers from his van that matched Kimberly 00:28:53.059 --> 00:28:56.480 Leach's clothing, and the odontologist, the forensic 00:28:56.480 --> 00:28:58.920 dental expert who came in and perfectly matched 00:28:58.920 --> 00:29:01.940 a cast of Bundy's teeth to the bite mark on Lisa 00:29:01.940 --> 00:29:04.500 Levy's body. And in the middle of this death 00:29:04.500 --> 00:29:08.160 penalty trial, he pulls a stunt that is just, 00:29:08.440 --> 00:29:11.940 it's beyond bizarre. He gets married. To Carol 00:29:11.940 --> 00:29:14.470 Ann Boone. a woman he had worked with back in 00:29:14.470 --> 00:29:17.069 Washington years earlier. She had remained loyal 00:29:17.069 --> 00:29:19.509 to him, convinced he was innocent. She moved 00:29:19.509 --> 00:29:21.859 to Florida to support him during the trial. And 00:29:21.859 --> 00:29:24.119 he uses some obscure legal loophole to do it. 00:29:24.200 --> 00:29:26.480 Yeah. A strange old Florida law stated that a 00:29:26.480 --> 00:29:29.059 declaration of marriage made in open court in 00:29:29.059 --> 00:29:32.140 front of a judge constituted a legal marriage 00:29:32.140 --> 00:29:34.940 ceremony. So while he has her on the stand as 00:29:34.940 --> 00:29:36.819 a character witness during the penalty phase 00:29:36.819 --> 00:29:40.019 of his trial, he asks her, will you marry me? 00:29:40.140 --> 00:29:42.940 She says, yes. He says, I do declare in front 00:29:42.940 --> 00:29:45.339 of this court that we are married. And boom. 00:29:45.980 --> 00:29:48.500 They were legally married. While he is on trial 00:29:48.500 --> 00:29:51.299 for multiple brutal murders. And she later has 00:29:51.299 --> 00:29:53.240 his child while he's on death row. It just speaks 00:29:53.240 --> 00:29:56.339 to his incredible, almost hypnotic, manipulative 00:29:56.339 --> 00:29:59.220 power that he could convince someone so thoroughly 00:29:59.220 --> 00:30:01.359 of his innocence in the face of all that evidence. 00:30:01.539 --> 00:30:04.200 So he has the death penalty. Three times over. 00:30:04.380 --> 00:30:07.460 And he spends the next decade on death row. And 00:30:07.460 --> 00:30:09.000 this is where we finally get into the confessions. 00:30:09.180 --> 00:30:12.099 For years and years, he denied everything. Total 00:30:12.099 --> 00:30:14.839 innocence. Then, as the electric chair got closer 00:30:14.839 --> 00:30:16.799 and closer, he started talking to the journalists 00:30:16.799 --> 00:30:19.500 Stephen Michaud and Hugh Ainsworth. But he played 00:30:19.500 --> 00:30:21.759 the strange game with them. He wouldn't say, 00:30:21.839 --> 00:30:24.740 I did this. He would speculate. He'd say, let's 00:30:24.740 --> 00:30:26.599 hypothesize what a killer might have done in 00:30:26.599 --> 00:30:28.720 this situation. Talking in the third person. 00:30:28.920 --> 00:30:32.799 The killer. The individual. It was a way to disassociate. 00:30:33.130 --> 00:30:35.509 To talk about the crimes without taking on the 00:30:35.509 --> 00:30:38.430 personal guilt or responsibility. In those tapes, 00:30:38.549 --> 00:30:41.309 he described the motive not as lust or anger, 00:30:41.430 --> 00:30:44.410 but as possession. He said the ultimate possession 00:30:44.410 --> 00:30:47.250 was taking the life and then possessing the physical 00:30:47.250 --> 00:30:49.789 remains. He admitted to revisiting the bodies, 00:30:49.930 --> 00:30:52.710 to necrophilia. He viewed the victims not as 00:30:52.710 --> 00:30:56.009 people, but as objects, as cargo. It's stomach 00:30:56.009 --> 00:30:58.410 turning. And then right at the very end, 1989, 00:30:58.789 --> 00:31:01.130 time is running out. And he tries one last scam, 00:31:01.309 --> 00:31:03.900 the bones for time scheme. With his execution 00:31:03.900 --> 00:31:07.700 just days away, he starts confessing to unsolved 00:31:07.700 --> 00:31:10.319 murders all over the country. Washington, Oregon, 00:31:10.640 --> 00:31:14.160 Idaho, Utah. But he dribbles the information 00:31:14.160 --> 00:31:15.960 out. He says, I can tell you where the bodies 00:31:15.960 --> 00:31:18.259 are. I can help you close these cold cases, but 00:31:18.259 --> 00:31:20.960 I need more time. You have to delay the execution. 00:31:21.359 --> 00:31:23.319 He's using the grief of the victim's families 00:31:23.319 --> 00:31:25.940 as his final bargaining chip. It was absolutely 00:31:25.940 --> 00:31:29.240 despicable, his final act of manipulation. He 00:31:29.240 --> 00:31:32.980 officially confessed to 30 murders. But detectives 00:31:32.980 --> 00:31:35.099 like Bob Keppel, who spent years on the case, 00:31:35.240 --> 00:31:38.160 believe the true number was at least 50, maybe 00:31:38.160 --> 00:31:40.799 75, maybe even triple digits. We'll never know. 00:31:41.180 --> 00:31:43.140 But the governor of Florida at the time, Bob 00:31:43.140 --> 00:31:45.579 Martinez, held the line. He said, we are not 00:31:45.579 --> 00:31:47.180 going to have the system manipulated by this 00:31:47.180 --> 00:31:49.720 man any longer. And then the day before he dies, 00:31:49.900 --> 00:31:52.339 he does that famous interview with James Dobson, 00:31:52.440 --> 00:31:54.920 the conservative religious leader. Right. And 00:31:54.920 --> 00:31:57.099 suddenly, after all these years of denial and 00:31:57.099 --> 00:31:59.480 third person speculation, Ted Bundy has a new, 00:31:59.599 --> 00:32:02.210 simple explanation for everything. It wasn't 00:32:02.210 --> 00:32:04.930 him. It was pornography. He blamed violent pornography 00:32:04.930 --> 00:32:07.809 for fueling his fantasies and warping his mind. 00:32:07.970 --> 00:32:10.150 And a lot of people, especially at the time, 00:32:10.170 --> 00:32:12.130 really latched onto that. It was a simple answer 00:32:12.130 --> 00:32:14.589 to an impossible question. But the expert consensus 00:32:14.589 --> 00:32:16.849 from virtually every biographer and psychologist 00:32:16.849 --> 00:32:20.150 who studied him is that it was one last desperate 00:32:20.150 --> 00:32:23.509 manipulation. He knew James Dobson was a fierce 00:32:23.509 --> 00:32:26.029 opponent of pornography, so Bundy gave him exactly 00:32:26.029 --> 00:32:28.430 what he wanted to hear. Hoping for what? A last 00:32:28.430 --> 00:32:31.480 -minute stay of execution? Maybe. Or at the very 00:32:31.480 --> 00:32:34.319 least, it would allow him to die reframing himself 00:32:34.319 --> 00:32:36.940 as a victim of society rather than the predator 00:32:36.940 --> 00:32:40.019 he was. It was a final attempt to shift the blame. 00:32:40.279 --> 00:32:42.599 Dr. Dorothy Otnell -Lewis, the psychiatrist we 00:32:42.599 --> 00:32:44.359 mentioned earlier, she said she had searched 00:32:44.359 --> 00:32:47.200 for a true psychopath her entire career. And 00:32:47.200 --> 00:32:49.259 when she interviewed Bundy, she said she finally 00:32:49.259 --> 00:32:52.910 found one. Zero empathy. Zero remorse. A complete 00:32:52.910 --> 00:32:55.589 void where a conscience should be. She described 00:32:55.589 --> 00:32:58.329 him as a changeling. She said when he would talk 00:32:58.329 --> 00:33:00.369 about the crimes, when the entity, as he called 00:33:00.369 --> 00:33:02.589 it, took over, his face physically seemed to 00:33:02.589 --> 00:33:05.529 change. His whole demeanor would transform. January 00:33:05.529 --> 00:33:09.210 24th, 1989. The execution of the electric chair. 00:33:09.369 --> 00:33:12.400 Old Sparky. The crowds outside the prison were 00:33:12.400 --> 00:33:14.579 shearing. They were setting off fireworks. It 00:33:14.579 --> 00:33:17.400 was a public celebration. Which feels dark in 00:33:17.400 --> 00:33:19.640 its own way, but you can absolutely understand 00:33:19.640 --> 00:33:21.640 the collective relief. It was the end of an era 00:33:21.640 --> 00:33:23.980 of terror that had stretched across the entire 00:33:23.980 --> 00:33:26.819 country. So let's try to wrap this up. We've 00:33:26.819 --> 00:33:29.099 walked through the horror. We've seen the manipulation, 00:33:29.319 --> 00:33:32.839 the escapes, the failures. Why does Ted Bundy 00:33:32.839 --> 00:33:35.799 still haunt the American imagination? What is 00:33:35.799 --> 00:33:37.960 his legacy? I think it's because he shattered 00:33:37.960 --> 00:33:41.200 the safety of the known. Before Bundy, the cultural 00:33:41.200 --> 00:33:43.680 idea of a monster was someone who looked like 00:33:43.680 --> 00:33:46.339 a monster, a creepy stranger in a dark alley. 00:33:47.220 --> 00:33:50.640 Bundy taught America and the world that the monster 00:33:50.640 --> 00:33:52.500 could be the handsome guy in the white tennis 00:33:52.500 --> 00:33:55.240 outfit, the guy with the cast on his arm asking 00:33:55.240 --> 00:33:58.000 for help, the charming, educated law student. 00:33:58.099 --> 00:34:00.960 He weaponized our trust, our decency. He did. 00:34:01.039 --> 00:34:03.400 And he had this quote. He claimed that everyone 00:34:03.400 --> 00:34:06.119 is invisible to everyone else, that we don't 00:34:06.119 --> 00:34:07.940 really see each other. And that's why he could 00:34:07.940 --> 00:34:10.409 get away with it for so long. That's a profoundly 00:34:10.409 --> 00:34:12.969 terrifying thought. It is. And here's the question 00:34:12.969 --> 00:34:14.449 I kind of want to leave you with, the thing to 00:34:14.449 --> 00:34:18.030 really mull over. We live in a world now that 00:34:18.030 --> 00:34:20.610 is hyper -surveilled. There are cameras everywhere. 00:34:20.789 --> 00:34:24.869 We have DNA databases, digital footprints. A 00:34:24.869 --> 00:34:27.869 Ted Bundy operating today using the methods of 00:34:27.869 --> 00:34:30.929 1974 would likely be caught much, much faster. 00:34:31.110 --> 00:34:33.769 Probably. Almost certainly. If Bundy was a chameleon 00:34:33.769 --> 00:34:36.869 who evolved his camouflage to perfectly fit his 00:34:36.869 --> 00:34:40.110 environment, Would a modern predator look like 00:34:40.110 --> 00:34:43.909 the Ted Bundy of 1974? Or would he have evolved 00:34:43.909 --> 00:34:47.010 a new kind of camouflage for our time? Is the 00:34:47.010 --> 00:34:49.449 modern monster hiding in plain sight on social 00:34:49.449 --> 00:34:52.510 media, on dating apps, in a way we haven't even 00:34:52.510 --> 00:34:54.989 learned to recognize yet? That is a thought that 00:34:54.989 --> 00:34:56.969 is going to keep me up tonight. Me too. Thank 00:34:56.969 --> 00:34:58.570 you for joining us on this deep dive. I know 00:34:58.570 --> 00:35:00.289 it wasn't easy, but sometimes it's necessary 00:35:00.289 --> 00:35:02.349 to look into the abyss. Knowledge is the only 00:35:02.349 --> 00:35:03.949 real defense we have. We'll see you next time.