The Seventies (2015): Season 1, Episode 4 - Crimes & Cults - full transcript
Tonight, our topic will be murder
as a growth industry.
Murder has become
an epidemic in America.
In the last ten years, the homicide rate
has increased by leaps and bounds.
My God, somebody fired a shot!
These tragedies keep getting
closer and closer to home.
I'm afraid to
let my kids walk out the door.
Each urban crime wave will touch off
a new round of gun buying.
- Step out, Mr. Bundy.
- I'll plead not guilty right now.
There has been a disturbing growth
in cult phenomenon in this country.
I shall be God.
There shall be no other.
All the elements are present for one of the most
sensational murder trials in American history.
Seven people brutally murdered
in the glare of Hollywood publicity.
Young girls supposedly
under the spell of a bearded Svengali
who allegedly masterminded
the seven murders.
The '70s was a decade
of just brutal violence
on every front and anywhere
that you look in America.
At the time of a mass murder,
there is a lot of media coverage,
but usually after
a brief period of time,
the identity of the perpetrator tends to
fade from the public's consciousness.
But not so with the Manson case.
It was the biggest publicity case
the DA's office had ever had.
The Manson trial begins the 1970s
on such an evil sadistic note.
Seven innocent people died.
Steve Parent, a teenager.
Abigail Folger, Folger Coffee.
Jay Sebring.
Wojciech Frykowski.
The LaBiancas and Sharon Tate.
All of you know
how beautiful she was,
but only few of you know
how good she was.
And you had Charles Manson himself,
the charismatic leader of the family
who didn't show any remorse
or any respect for the system.
- Are you all happy with your court?
- Yeah.
- Good. It's funny.
- Are you happy with it?
Am I happy? It's your court.
I wouldn't accept it.
The problem was that he did not
physically participate in these murders.
But only Manson had a motive
to commit these murders,
and that motive was Helter Skelter.
Manson envisioned that white people
would turn against the black man
if they thought the black man
had committed these seven murders.
And ultimately there would be
a civil war between blacks and whites.
Manson foresaw that
the black man would win this war,
But later on he said the black man,
because of inexperience,
would simply not be able to
handle the reins of power,
so he would have to look around
at those white people who had survived,
who had escaped from Helter Skelter.
In other words, turn over the reins of power
to Charles Manson and his family.
When the words "Helter Skelter"
were found printed in blood,
I argued to the jury
this was tantamount
to Manson's fingerprints
being found at the murder scene.
Manson sat through all this
saying nothing.
But today he had an "X"
scratched in his forehead.
It is his way of saying that he has
exed himself out of society.
Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel,
and Leslie Van Houten
sang as the went
to and from court today,
as if to show they are with Manson
and he is with them.
The three women were coached
by Charlie every morning.
"Here's things I want you to do."
So they would do everything
from sing mocking songs to the judge
to when Charlie is making
one of his impassioned speeches,
mouthing the words
along with him.
I don't have any guilt.
I know what I've done.
And no man can judge me.
I judge me.
- Are you bitter?
- Bitter? No. No.
You've paid some price so far.
Price? You have eyes?
Open them.
Charlie Manson is a great presenter.
But Vincent Bugliosi was better.
And when you put
these two antagonists into a courtroom,
America thought
this is entertainment.
People who are curious
about the Tate murders
go to the Los Angeles Hall of Justice,
where they wait in long lines.
Some people are so interested that
they get to the courthouse at 4:00 AM.
Something else this trial has done
is gather together again
those members of Manson's family
who are not in jail.
The world is getting crazy.
One read part of a letter
that Manson wrote to the District Attorney.
I am writing to you because
I don't think I am getting a fair trial.
I am an individual.
One man standing alone, defending myself.
Contrast this with the facilities
you have available to you.
I noted, for example,
the coverage of the Charles Manson case.
Here was a man who was guilty,
directly or indirectly,
of eight murders without reason.
Here was a man yet,
who as far as the coverage is concerned,
who appeared to be
rather a glamorous figure.
The LA Times next morning,
"Manson guilty, Nixon declares."
Manson got a hold of the paper,
stands up in front of the jury
with a silly little smile on his face,
and he shows the jury the headline.
A tight ring of security
surrounds the Hall of Justice today
as the Manson jury deliberates.
Meanwhile,
members of the Manson clan
continue their vigil
outside the Hall of Justice.
They've been there
since the start of the trial.
If Charlie were
convicted of these charges,
what happens to the rest
of the members of the family?
There's no "if."
Charlie will get out.
All the people in jail will get out
and we'll all go to the desert together.
The jury hearing the charges
against Charles Manson
and three girl members
of his so-called "family"
brought in its verdict
this afternoon.
And outside the court,
Manson's girl followers got the news by radio.
Uh, they've convicted these people
and you are next, all of you.
There's a revolution coming very soon.
Today the judge formally passed sentence
of Charles Manson and his girls.
The death penalty he said,
"for seven senseless murders."
He said not only was the sentence appropriate,
but almost compelled in this case.
So death in the gas chamber, he said.
The very name Manson
has become a metaphor for evil,
catapulting him to almost
mythological proportions.
And there's a side to human nature,
for whatever reason,
that is fascinated
by pure unalloyed evil.
But if the death penalty is to
mean anything in the state of California,
other than two empty words,
this unquestionably was a proper case
for the imposition of the death penalty.
The California Supreme Court ruled today
that the death penalty is unconstitutional.
That will save five women
and 102 men,
including Charles Manson,
from the gas chamber.
Should there be a supreme penalty
for committing a crime?
What do you think?
I'm the one who's asking you.
Yeah, but if I don't give you
the answer that you want...
- Doesn't matter to me.
- Doesn't matter.
- It's your opinion.
- Well, uh...
I don't have the authority
to say anything like that.
You have the authority to believe.
I believe what I'm told to believe.
Don't you?
The boy was shot
right at the side of the car.
The girl apparently tried to run.
She was shot
and found 28 feet further on.
Do you have any idea what the possible
motive might be for this killing?
We have no motive at this time.
The Zodiac Killer,
this unknown person,
committed dozens of murders
in the 1960s and the 1970s.
We really don't know
the full dimensions of the case.
But we know he's the Zodiac
because he started writing to the police,
claiming credit in great detail,
articulating and explaining
what he did to these victims.
The Chronicle received two letters.
They notified us immediately.
The criminologist was sent over to
the newspaper, as were inspectors,
and the two letters
were examined and opened.
The Zodiac's reaching out to the police,
repeatedly, and in great length,
was something new.
The psychotic killer
has already murdered five.
One at a lovers' lane near a lake
just north of San Francisco.
Three others in nearby Vallejo.
The latest,
a taxi driver in San Francisco.
The Zodiac Killer
seems to crave publicity.
He's sent letters and cryptograms
to newspapers and the police,
recounting his crimes,
threatening more murders,
and making Bay Area residents
very edgy.
In the '70s
there was a certain kind of killer
who had the skill
to get away with murder
long enough to
assemble a body count
where they would
be classified a serial killer.
In Los Angeles, a killer the police
are calling the Hillside Strangler
has murdered ten young women
and left their bodies on the hillsides
along the highways.
Today the police found another.
Number eleven, they think.
Two young paper boys discovered
what appeared to be the latest victim.
The body had been dumped 15 feet down
an embankment in a residential neighborhood.
The victim was a woman about 20 years old,
and the body was nude.
This series of murders has had a chilling
effect among the people in the city.
In Los Angeles, more women than ever before
are learning how to defend themselves.
Susan Ball skipped night school for a week.
She says she can't sleep because of the murders.
I guess I just want to learn how to maybe
give myself a few seconds so I can live.
There have been enough bodies
found over a wide enough area
to strongly suggest
more than one killer.
But police say they really don't know.
Today the Los Angeles Police
say they have a suspect.
A man in jail in another state.
Los Angeles Police say
they have enough evidence
to charge 27-year-old Kenneth Bianchi
with ten of the hillside stranglings.
Police focused on Bianchi only after
he was arrested last January
for the murder of two college students
in Washington state.
What the police did not know was that
there was not one Strangler, but two.
Today in a Bellingham, Washington courtroom
Kenneth Bianchi,
in the hope of avoiding a death sentence,
confessed to participation in
the Los Angeles hillside stranglings
and went on to accuse his cousin,
Angelo Buono, of being his accomplice.
Kenneth Bianchi told us
that he was motivated
because he was trying
to show his older cousin,
who he revered,
that he was tough.
And for Angelo Buono,
he enjoyed the fact that he had
his younger cousin listening to him.
He saw him as a mentee.
And we saw this time and time again.
Pairs of killers who urge each other on.
And together they are
extremely vicious and violent.
Is there any doubt that
this is a body?
No doubt. There's a skull
and tailbone and everything.
When did you first get word that
there might be some bodies buried here?
This morning.
Had you had any indication before?
The man behind the killings was Dean Corll.
He's 33 years old.
Or was. He was shot and killed
Wednesday evening
by Wayne Henley, 17 years old.
Henley was one of two teenagers
who lured young boys to Corll's home.
Dean Corll would pick up kids
and once he had them in his house,
he would incapacitate them and put them
on what he called his "death board,"
and rape and kill them.
The Texas sex and torture killings
now have become the worst mass murders
in American history.
Four more bodies of young boys
were dug up today.
That brings to 27 the number
of bodies discovered so far.
Some people trying to make
it appear that the police department
has not done all that it could or
should have done in these cases.
This police department feels that
these parents
are not exactly discharging
their own responsibility,
so far as raising
and disciplining their children.
These shocking murders finally focus
national attention on a major problem,
that of runaway children
and what can happen to them.
The children who
run away from home today
are not the children that we had
running away in the '60s.
In the '60s we had
what we called then "flower children,"
and they ran away basically
for sociopolitical reasons.
Today children are running from a
situation rather than to a situation.
Kids were disappearing and the police would
say, "well, they probably ran away."
It was to the demise of many
who in fact were picked up
by sexual sadists like John Wayne Gacy.
In Des Plains, Illinois,
near Chicago,
a man who served time in prison
for sex crimes was let out.
Today they found the bodies
of at least three young boys
buried under his house.
Police today found six more bodies
under the John Gacy house.
Illinois authorities today
made their first positive identification
of the 28 bodies
unearthed so far.
This grisly search ended tonight
and will be resumed after Christmas.
Prior to his arrest,
Gacy was well known in the community.
He frequently dressed in a clown outfit
for the benefit of youngsters.
He was generally seen as a man
young people liked.
The coroner of this county
has seen nothing like it.
It's frightening.
That's the only word I can use.
Frightening, frightening.
From New York, this is ABC News.
Good evening.
The Supreme Court ruled today
that there is nothing unconstitutional
in the death penalty.
The court says the death penalty
is an expression
of society's moral outrage
at particular crimes.
In the 1970s, we had a four-year
moratorium on the death penalty.
The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled the death penalty unconstitutional.
Eventually in 1976,
with new statutes,
the U.S. Supreme Court
said it's constitutional,
and then we started seeing
the death penalty back in place.
Death row was repopulated
with new criminals like Gary Gilmore.
It seems that the people of Utah,
they want the death penalty,
but they don't want executions.
Well I took it literal and serious
when they sentenced me to death.
His crimes were not especially extreme.
It was two robbery-murders.
But when he was convicted, he wanted to die.
He wanted to go out
in a blaze of glory.
So two years later,
he was put to death by a firing squad,
and became the very first
person in America
in this new era, to be executed.
And his words were,
"let's do it."
The order of the 4th Judicial District
Court of the State of Utah has been carried out.
Gary Mark Gilmore is dead.
Tonight, our topic will be murder
as a growth industry.
These are the national homicide figures.
For the past ten years,
every year has set a new high
for murder in America.
The statistics were stupendous.
Violent crime of all kinds were soaring.
The spectacles that people
were seeing on their TV screen
were unlike anything
they'd had to absorb before.
A small grocery store has been robbed.
The owner of the grocery store,
Nathan Kurt,
has been shot and killed.
What happened yesterday?
As I understand,
a man came into the store,
and had a gun,
and asked for the money.
And my grandfather reached for
a gun that he had,
and grabbed the man's gun
and it went off.
He shot him twice
and my grandfather fell to the floor.
Why did he feel
he had to have a gun?
Because there were
so many robberies in this area.
And he just thought
he needed it for protection.
Today, ordinary citizens who would not
otherwise dream of having a gun
are buying one because
they are scared out of their wits.
William Rubiak is a Ukrainian immigrant
who owns a store outside Washington, D.C.
He has been robbed at gunpoint
four times in the past two years.
Now William Rubiak has bought a gun,
and he says next time,
he will use it.
I will shoot,
and I will shoot to kill.
Fear is the biggest seller of guns.
Studies has shown each urban crime wave
has touched off a new round of gun buying.
He have German Lugers, derringers,
small revolvers, Magnums,
Some of these Saturday night specials are small.
They can be palmed in your hand.
It was shortly after 10:00
California time
when the President
left his hotel.
Not seen by the following cameras,
but spotted by
Secret Service Agent Larry Buendorf
was a hand with a gun in it
coming through the crowd.
The commotion erupted.
Secret Service agents forced the assailant
to the ground and then handcuffed her.
She was identified as 27-year-old
Lynette Alice Fromme,
one of the earliest followers
of Charles Manson
who was involved in the Tate/LaBianca
murders of 1969.
About the same time
Gerald Ford becomes President,
Charlie, in prison,
writes to Squeaky that he's got new rules.
They want to do one big thing that's going to
get the nation's attention back on Charlie.
So Squeaky, wearing a red robe,
comes up to the President of the
United States with a big gun,
points the gun in his face. The Secret
Service men wrestle her to the ground,
and Squeaky's first words were,
"can you believe the gun didn't go off?"
Following your own close brush with death
in Sacramento a couple of weeks ago,
I wonder if this
has convinced you at all
that we need tough gun control
legislation in this country?
I prefer to go after the person who uses the
gun for an illegal or criminal purpose.
That, to me, is a far better approach
than the one where you require
registration of the individual or the gun.
Just minutes after making those statements,
Gerald Ford walked into the street
and heard the sound of gunfire.
My God! My God,
there's been a shot.
There's been a shot!
We're being pushed back
by the police.
Somebody has fired a shot here.
We don't know if anybody's been hit.
My God.
Somebody fired a shot!
The President was not hit.
Witnesses heard the sound
and saw a puff of smoke.
The woman,
identified by police as Sara Jane Moore,
was immediately seized.
Sara Jane Moore jumped out of the crowd,
fired off a weapon,
and was tackled by another citizen.
Her background, it turned out, was as a sort
of eccentric lower-rung political figure.
She was kind of an odd duck.
When Gerald Ford became President,
within the space of one month
were two attempts on his life.
Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore
both tried to shoot him.
It's like, "what's going on?
Why can't this be stopped?"
So once again this nation has narrowly
escaped the tragedy, the trauma,
of assassination of our President.
Above all else, this points out
the need for some additional measures,
some additional precautions
to protect the life
of the highest elected official
in the country.
Will it take another assassination in our
lifetime to finally force some action?
In the '70s,
New York was really in danger.
The whole social fabric
seemed to have been torn in half
and crime was just one of the many
indications that we were lost.
I would say in the last ten years, the homicide
rate has increased by leaps and bounds.
We hit our peak probably in 1972,
when the Bronx had 430 homicides.
In the '70s the Bronx looked
like Berlin after World War II.
Literally looked like Berlin.
1.5 million people live in this borough.
Once that smoke on the horizon
signified industry, progress, jobs.
Now it means someone is
burning down a building.
It has become
the arson capitol of the world.
It happens 30 times a day,
and the flames are the signal
of a national disaster.
Is there anything
that can change the situation?
The Bronx, in my own estimation,
is doomed with a capital D.
A lot of gritty stuff
went down in New York.
And when you think of New York in the '70s,
you of course think of the Son of Sam murders.
Christine Freund, 26 years old,
soon to be married, is dead today.
Dead in a shooting
that has no apparent motive.
In the end of 1976,
they transfer me to Queens homicide.
And the first victim that I came across
was a woman named Christine Freund,
who was sitting in a parked car with her
boyfriend after coming from a movie.
She got her head blown off.
There was a series of
these random shootings,
and the ballistics comparison
determined that there was indeed
the same killer using the same gun,
a 0.44 caliber weapon, on these homicides.
Therefore the police nicknamed it
the 0.44 Caliber Killer.
He struck again on April 17th
at 3:00 in the morning,
killing 18-year-old Valentina Suriani
and her fiance, 20-year-old Alexander Esau,
as they sat in a parked car
in the Baychester section of the Bronx.
We get the shooting back in the Bronx.
A girl named Valentina Suriani.
But at that scene where that shooting occurred
left a note addressed to my supervisor.
And he called himself
the Son of Sam.
Well he talked about being possessed
by a man he refers to as Sam,
the man he refers to as his father.
And he says that
his father requires blood.
This got people's attention. I think it
was just the sheer randomness of it.
The fact that you could be doing something as
simple as sitting in a car talking to a friend
and someone would come behind you
and open fire.
It was pretty terrifying.
It was frightening.
I was in charge of the
nighttime operations.
I was one of the task force
that wanted to shoot him on sight.
That was our job,
take him out on the street.
We flooded the streets of New York.
All these people are dying
and we're trying to stop it.
It's everybody. It's not you, it's everybody.
That's all we're trying to do.
In terms of the victim count,
that doesn't place him at the top of the list,
in terms of the most deadly serial killers.
But it was New York City,
and what happens in New York City,
well, that's international news.
Good evening. Harry is on vacation.
Here are our top stories.
100 more police join the hunt
for the Son of Sam killer in New York.
The search continues
for the 0.44 Caliber Killer
who has come to be known
as the Son of Sam.
He warned in one of his sick and threatening
letters to the press and to the police,
"Sam's a thirsty lad
and he won't let me stop killing
until he's had his fill of blood."
It was a really
miserably hot summer in New York.
And everything went dark.
I heard someone on the street go,
"oh, it's a blackout!"
The looters were out
almost instantly.
And it felt apocalyptic.
I remember going to bed that night
thinking it was the end of the world.
New York City in the early morning
after a night of no electric power.
What it did have in the dark streets
was a wild outburst of crime.
When the greatest city in the world goes black,
it showed a crumbling America.
Then you have the Son of Sam
on the loose.
We always look
for patterns in victims,
and there was this belief that he was
only killing women with long dark hair.
I know the 0.44 Killer's
after girls with long brown hair,
so when me and my friends go out at night,
we put our hair up.
My hair was about down to my shoulder.
It was about this length. I cut it short
because of the 0.44 Caliber Killer.
Well, his last victim
was actually a blonde.
A 20-year-old New York City girl
died this evening
a day and a half after she and her
companion were shot by the Son of Sam.
He's a nighttime killer who has stalked
New York residential boroughs for a year.
A postal worker walked out of
his Yonkers apartment last night,
turned the ignition key in his car,
and found himself surrounded by police.
"Well," he said, "you got me."
Police say those words ended the biggest
manhunt in New York City history
with the capture of Son of Sam.
And this is what they say
tripped up the 0.44 Caliber Killer.
A parking ticket.
David Berkowitz drove
this cream-colored Ford Galaxy
from his home in Yonkers
to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
Then police say he went
to stalk his 12th and 13th victims.
But in the place he parked
was this fire hydrant,
and police had the lead they needed.
Well, we get him,
and I interrogate him.
My attitude at this time... I want to
take him and throw him out the window.
This guy was so pathetic.
It was like talking to a zucchini.
Never blinked.
Constant smile on his face.
So after a while,
I start to feel sorry for the guy.
You know he's gone, right?
I feel great. I think the people
of our city will feel great relief.
Praise the Lord, it's over.
We're very, very happy. That was the
first thing I heard this morning.
It was fantastic.
It was great.
Serial killers tend to be cunning.
That allows them to stay at large.
And when they get caught,
it's usually because of luck.
Good luck for us. Bad luck for them.
When we caught him,
we searched his car.
In the bag on the seat is the 0.44
caliber gun that did all the shootings.
What more do you need?
Then we found a machine gun,
fully loaded, in the back seat.
And the night of the interrogation
that I directed
I said, "well what were you
going to do with the machine gun?"
He says,
"I was on my way to the Hamptons,
and I was going to spray the place
and kill as many people as I could."
There are so many
miracles in this church
that it's hard to tell about one
without telling about two or three
because they blend together.
They make a beautiful flow of miracles.
And you know,
for 30 years I prayed to the sky God
and I got nothing but
disappointment and heartache.
And now we have a father
who loves each one of us so much.
How thankful we are for him.
Thank you.
The '70s were a very fertile period
for these new religious movements.
What was so interesting about
the rise of cults in our country
is how many people
wanted to align themselves
with these stigmatized
and fanatical organizations.
And I must say it is
a great effort to be God.
I'd wish it upon another,
but no one else has the faculty that I do.
When they do, I will be glad to hold their coat.
In the meantime, I shall be God.
And this I be.
There shall be no other.
Jim Jones was an extraordinary figure.
He was a community leader,
a social worker, and then a minister.
He carried his ministry to California.
♪ Walk with me, walk with me... ♪
What was particularly distinctive
about him at that time
is that he created a community
that was united between whites and blacks.
And this came at a time when
the country was still very racially divided
and churches were not integrated.
Some leading scientists say
we have to have euthanasia.
Oh, no. Oh, no.
Who is going to decide who and when
a person is going to die?
We must never allow that,
because this is the kind of thing that
ushers in the terror of a Hitler's Germany.
We must not allow these kind of things
to enter our consciousness.
I wanted to write a story very much about
this guy and his power and the reach he had.
So I began to contact ex-members,
and they said that all was
not so good inside,
that there were beatings if you got out
of line. There was a lot of sex abuse.
And the story took on a new life
at that point.
Very soon afterward,
the church members began
leaving San Francisco for Guyana.
He figures if I'm in Guyana,
it really doesn't matter
what's said or written.
Nobody is going to get me here.
♪ We're a happy family.
We're a happy family, yes we are... ♪
It was an escapade
that's almost unparalleled
in the history of religious movements.
They had very little communication
with their loved ones at home,
and naturally there was concern
about where they had gone and what was
happening out there in the jungle.
I think that Jim Jones
took his group down there
because he was afraid to face publicity
and answer the questions
that are here in this country.
He was talking integration.
He was talking helping people.
He was talking better this
and better that.
What about now?
What's your impression now?
My impression now is that
those are fronts for him.
I think he's gone crazy.
Congressman Leo Ryan started hearing
the name Jim Jones more regularly.
And he wanted to expose
what he believed was going on down there
that was wrong.
And he thought it was certainly worth
inviting members of the press to join him.
Very glad to be here.
This is a Congressional inquiry.
I can tell you right now that
whatever the comments are
there's some people here who believe that this is the
best thing that ever happened in their whole life.
So it's towards the end of the evening.
Don Harris, who was the NBC reporter,
had been walking around the pavilion.
And two people slipped him a note.
And he hands the notes over
to Congressman Ryan who opens them
and says, "oh my God, it's true.
Everything we've been told is true."
And then the word spread
and more and more people wanted to leave.
And then I remember seeing this couple
with a child between them.
Don't break us! Get back here!
You bring him back!
Don't you take my kid!
You could feel the tension.
Last night, someone came
and passed me this note.
People play games, friend.
They lie. They lie.
What can I do about liars?
And you people going to...
Leave us. I just can't. Please leave us.
Instead of just letting that plane take off
with minimal damage to his movement,
Jones snapped.
Good evening.
For about the last 30 hours
we here at NBC News
have been trying to establish
what happened last night at the airstrip
at a place called Port Kaituma.
We do have a particular interest in the two
NBC newsmen who were shot to death there.
Don Harris was killed.
Bob Brown was killed.
Congressman Ryan was shot 45 times.
Every time somebody would
fall down wounded,
they would walk over
and shoot them in the head with a shotgun.
I was shot five times.
I was lying on my side with my head down
pretending I was dead.
And then all of a sudden
they just came
and shot me at point blank range.
They're shooting.
People die, including Leo Ryan.
And back in Jonestown, Jim Jones is
calling for a revolutionary suicide,
where we're all going to kill ourselves
and make a statement to the world.
I first went to Jonestown
last evening around sunset.
There was absolute silence.
Nothing living was around.
Jonestown last evening
was the city of the dead.
They found tremendous quantities
of potassium cyanide poison.
It had been mixed with Kool-Aid.
It killed quickly,
within five minutes.
We will never know how many people
voluntarily drank the poison.
But other people were either coerced,
brainwashed or took it against their will.
They were murdered.
I was lifted into this Medevac plane
and I was so grateful.
Good evening. The searching American soldiers have
finished counting the bodies in Jonestown, Guyana.
910 died in the poison ritual
of the Peoples Temple last week.
This was Americans
killing other Americans and themselves.
In its own interest,
for its own well-being,
this nation will have to find out why.
There were a lot of strange people who committed
a lot of strange crimes in the 1970s.
But none of them was as
mediagenic as Ted Bundy.
- You said you were surprised to be going to jail.
- Surprised? I don't know.
I didn't know what to expect. Never been to
jail before. Never been arrested before.
Theodore Bundy was a
prolific serial killer.
We don't know exactly how many he killed.
We know it's dozens.
He was handsome, very involved with
politics, he was in law school.
He didn't seem like the glassy-eyed lunatic that
many Americans believed a serial killer would be.
We still don't believe it.
This can't be.
I keep shaking my head day after day
saying, "how can this be?"
Our son is the best son in the world.
What the press wrote about
Bundy and his crimes
wasn't the full details,
the full extent of the barbarism...
The fact that he would have sex with
their corpses, mutilate the victims...
That didn't quite fit with his
image of this boy next door.
You issued a statement saying you feel
that everything will turn out all right.
That you are innocent.
Do you still feel that?
Yeah. Yeah. More than ever.
Do you think about getting out of here?
Well, legally, sure.
Bundy was to stand trial on the charge
of murdering a young woman in Aspen.
That trial never completed.
During a court hearing break,
he was left alone in a law library.
Bundy bailed out of a second
floor window and escaped.
He high-tailed it up into the hills where
they chased him around for nearly a week.
He got lost out there and he probably would have
died of exposure if they hadn't have arrested him.
So they caught him
and he was put back in jail.
And in Christmastime 1977,
he escaped again.
Bundy, starved down to
less than 140 pounds,
slipped through a hole in the ceiling
of his cell and was free again.
The FBI responded by putting Bundy
on its Ten Most Wanted list.
Posters with the picture of Ted Bundy
were circulated throughout the nation.
Ted did not have a plan
when he escaped.
He just wanted to get as far away from
where he might be identified as he could.
So he stole a car and went to Florida.
His new quarters are cramped.
He is under 24-hour guard
and he faces intense questioning.
He is Theodore Bundy and
he's jailed in Florida.
Bundy was living in Tallahassee
at the time when five Florida State University
co-eds were attacked on or near the campus.
Two of the young women died
as a result of the attacks.
The police in Pensacola, Florida
stopped a man driving a stolen car
and found to their surprise and
perhaps pleasure, it was Bundy.
Step out, Mr. Bundy.
What do we have here?
Let's see. Oh, it's an indictment.
All right.
Why don't you read it to me?
You're about due for election,
aren't you?
Mr. Bundy?
You told me that you were going to get me.
He said he was going to get me.
Okay, you've got the indictment.
It's all you're going to get.
Bundy, having had some law training
and a great deal of arrogance,
decided to represent himself.
For him, he was the star in the courtroom.
As I am living in Dade County...
Don't shake your finger at me, young man.
Inside the courtroom,
the trial will be covered
by a still photographer
and one television camera.
Upstairs there are some 250 reporters and
television technicians from around the country.
Bundy's personality is
fascinating to a lot of people.
He doesn't fit the usual
profile of a criminal.
When he defends himself in court it's
fascinating for people to watch.
Each day the courtroom is
filled with spectators
drawn by a fascination with
Theodore Bundy himself,
or by the gruesome details of the crimes.
What is unusual to see is that many of
the onlookers are women. Young women.
- You're fascinated by him?
- Very.
I'm not afraid of him. He just doesn't
look like the type to kill somebody.
You try to imagine yourself in his place,
see how he's feeling.
The bizarre spectacle of
Ted Bundy as a sex symbol
really bummed out feminists,
as you can imagine.
I mean, he became folk hero.
There were t-shirts because he was handsome.
But on the other hand, his violence
was so incredibly woman-hating.
And his enthusiasm about that...
We wound up being pretty depressed.
I had broken facial bones.
I had a broken arm and a crushed finger.
I had five skull fractures and
multiple contusions in my head.
Is that man in the courtroom today?
- Yes he is.
- Would you point him out for us, please?
Are you prepared for a guilty verdict?
I think so, but you never know.
I've never had to go through this before.
After 6 1/2 hours of deliberation,
the jury had a verdict.
32-year-old Theodore Bundy
remained composed as he listened.
Guilty of first degree murder in the strangling deaths of two
Florida State University sorority sisters 19 months ago.
It is therefore the sentence of this court that you
be sentenced to death by a current of electricity,
and such current of electricity shall continue
to pass through your body until you are dead.
In some ways Ted Bundy
is an icon of the '70s.
He mixed kind of showbiz and violence
in a way that had never been done before.
At the end of the '70s,
we'd had a destruction of our innocence
that we had at the beginning of the '70s.
It became an era when Americans
began to expect the worst.
America certainly had lost is way.
Criminals were lauded and
killers were romanticized.
It was the news media that helped carry this
message that America was a dangerous place.
Americans had a love affair
with violence.
Actually it was much more like a marriage.
And that marriage, for some people,
was till death do they part.
For a time social scientists described the
wave of violence that struck our cities
as an epidemic.
And they identified some of the causes.
Poverty, broken homes.
For some violence has become a
permanent part of the fabric of life.
Sociologists call it a
subculture of violence.
The current wave of violent crime
is well into its second decade.
While we have deplored violence,
we've not done much about it.
Perhaps this is because
confronting the problem of violence
forces us to confront the most
serious defects in our society.
as a growth industry.
Murder has become
an epidemic in America.
In the last ten years, the homicide rate
has increased by leaps and bounds.
My God, somebody fired a shot!
These tragedies keep getting
closer and closer to home.
I'm afraid to
let my kids walk out the door.
Each urban crime wave will touch off
a new round of gun buying.
- Step out, Mr. Bundy.
- I'll plead not guilty right now.
There has been a disturbing growth
in cult phenomenon in this country.
I shall be God.
There shall be no other.
All the elements are present for one of the most
sensational murder trials in American history.
Seven people brutally murdered
in the glare of Hollywood publicity.
Young girls supposedly
under the spell of a bearded Svengali
who allegedly masterminded
the seven murders.
The '70s was a decade
of just brutal violence
on every front and anywhere
that you look in America.
At the time of a mass murder,
there is a lot of media coverage,
but usually after
a brief period of time,
the identity of the perpetrator tends to
fade from the public's consciousness.
But not so with the Manson case.
It was the biggest publicity case
the DA's office had ever had.
The Manson trial begins the 1970s
on such an evil sadistic note.
Seven innocent people died.
Steve Parent, a teenager.
Abigail Folger, Folger Coffee.
Jay Sebring.
Wojciech Frykowski.
The LaBiancas and Sharon Tate.
All of you know
how beautiful she was,
but only few of you know
how good she was.
And you had Charles Manson himself,
the charismatic leader of the family
who didn't show any remorse
or any respect for the system.
- Are you all happy with your court?
- Yeah.
- Good. It's funny.
- Are you happy with it?
Am I happy? It's your court.
I wouldn't accept it.
The problem was that he did not
physically participate in these murders.
But only Manson had a motive
to commit these murders,
and that motive was Helter Skelter.
Manson envisioned that white people
would turn against the black man
if they thought the black man
had committed these seven murders.
And ultimately there would be
a civil war between blacks and whites.
Manson foresaw that
the black man would win this war,
But later on he said the black man,
because of inexperience,
would simply not be able to
handle the reins of power,
so he would have to look around
at those white people who had survived,
who had escaped from Helter Skelter.
In other words, turn over the reins of power
to Charles Manson and his family.
When the words "Helter Skelter"
were found printed in blood,
I argued to the jury
this was tantamount
to Manson's fingerprints
being found at the murder scene.
Manson sat through all this
saying nothing.
But today he had an "X"
scratched in his forehead.
It is his way of saying that he has
exed himself out of society.
Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel,
and Leslie Van Houten
sang as the went
to and from court today,
as if to show they are with Manson
and he is with them.
The three women were coached
by Charlie every morning.
"Here's things I want you to do."
So they would do everything
from sing mocking songs to the judge
to when Charlie is making
one of his impassioned speeches,
mouthing the words
along with him.
I don't have any guilt.
I know what I've done.
And no man can judge me.
I judge me.
- Are you bitter?
- Bitter? No. No.
You've paid some price so far.
Price? You have eyes?
Open them.
Charlie Manson is a great presenter.
But Vincent Bugliosi was better.
And when you put
these two antagonists into a courtroom,
America thought
this is entertainment.
People who are curious
about the Tate murders
go to the Los Angeles Hall of Justice,
where they wait in long lines.
Some people are so interested that
they get to the courthouse at 4:00 AM.
Something else this trial has done
is gather together again
those members of Manson's family
who are not in jail.
The world is getting crazy.
One read part of a letter
that Manson wrote to the District Attorney.
I am writing to you because
I don't think I am getting a fair trial.
I am an individual.
One man standing alone, defending myself.
Contrast this with the facilities
you have available to you.
I noted, for example,
the coverage of the Charles Manson case.
Here was a man who was guilty,
directly or indirectly,
of eight murders without reason.
Here was a man yet,
who as far as the coverage is concerned,
who appeared to be
rather a glamorous figure.
The LA Times next morning,
"Manson guilty, Nixon declares."
Manson got a hold of the paper,
stands up in front of the jury
with a silly little smile on his face,
and he shows the jury the headline.
A tight ring of security
surrounds the Hall of Justice today
as the Manson jury deliberates.
Meanwhile,
members of the Manson clan
continue their vigil
outside the Hall of Justice.
They've been there
since the start of the trial.
If Charlie were
convicted of these charges,
what happens to the rest
of the members of the family?
There's no "if."
Charlie will get out.
All the people in jail will get out
and we'll all go to the desert together.
The jury hearing the charges
against Charles Manson
and three girl members
of his so-called "family"
brought in its verdict
this afternoon.
And outside the court,
Manson's girl followers got the news by radio.
Uh, they've convicted these people
and you are next, all of you.
There's a revolution coming very soon.
Today the judge formally passed sentence
of Charles Manson and his girls.
The death penalty he said,
"for seven senseless murders."
He said not only was the sentence appropriate,
but almost compelled in this case.
So death in the gas chamber, he said.
The very name Manson
has become a metaphor for evil,
catapulting him to almost
mythological proportions.
And there's a side to human nature,
for whatever reason,
that is fascinated
by pure unalloyed evil.
But if the death penalty is to
mean anything in the state of California,
other than two empty words,
this unquestionably was a proper case
for the imposition of the death penalty.
The California Supreme Court ruled today
that the death penalty is unconstitutional.
That will save five women
and 102 men,
including Charles Manson,
from the gas chamber.
Should there be a supreme penalty
for committing a crime?
What do you think?
I'm the one who's asking you.
Yeah, but if I don't give you
the answer that you want...
- Doesn't matter to me.
- Doesn't matter.
- It's your opinion.
- Well, uh...
I don't have the authority
to say anything like that.
You have the authority to believe.
I believe what I'm told to believe.
Don't you?
The boy was shot
right at the side of the car.
The girl apparently tried to run.
She was shot
and found 28 feet further on.
Do you have any idea what the possible
motive might be for this killing?
We have no motive at this time.
The Zodiac Killer,
this unknown person,
committed dozens of murders
in the 1960s and the 1970s.
We really don't know
the full dimensions of the case.
But we know he's the Zodiac
because he started writing to the police,
claiming credit in great detail,
articulating and explaining
what he did to these victims.
The Chronicle received two letters.
They notified us immediately.
The criminologist was sent over to
the newspaper, as were inspectors,
and the two letters
were examined and opened.
The Zodiac's reaching out to the police,
repeatedly, and in great length,
was something new.
The psychotic killer
has already murdered five.
One at a lovers' lane near a lake
just north of San Francisco.
Three others in nearby Vallejo.
The latest,
a taxi driver in San Francisco.
The Zodiac Killer
seems to crave publicity.
He's sent letters and cryptograms
to newspapers and the police,
recounting his crimes,
threatening more murders,
and making Bay Area residents
very edgy.
In the '70s
there was a certain kind of killer
who had the skill
to get away with murder
long enough to
assemble a body count
where they would
be classified a serial killer.
In Los Angeles, a killer the police
are calling the Hillside Strangler
has murdered ten young women
and left their bodies on the hillsides
along the highways.
Today the police found another.
Number eleven, they think.
Two young paper boys discovered
what appeared to be the latest victim.
The body had been dumped 15 feet down
an embankment in a residential neighborhood.
The victim was a woman about 20 years old,
and the body was nude.
This series of murders has had a chilling
effect among the people in the city.
In Los Angeles, more women than ever before
are learning how to defend themselves.
Susan Ball skipped night school for a week.
She says she can't sleep because of the murders.
I guess I just want to learn how to maybe
give myself a few seconds so I can live.
There have been enough bodies
found over a wide enough area
to strongly suggest
more than one killer.
But police say they really don't know.
Today the Los Angeles Police
say they have a suspect.
A man in jail in another state.
Los Angeles Police say
they have enough evidence
to charge 27-year-old Kenneth Bianchi
with ten of the hillside stranglings.
Police focused on Bianchi only after
he was arrested last January
for the murder of two college students
in Washington state.
What the police did not know was that
there was not one Strangler, but two.
Today in a Bellingham, Washington courtroom
Kenneth Bianchi,
in the hope of avoiding a death sentence,
confessed to participation in
the Los Angeles hillside stranglings
and went on to accuse his cousin,
Angelo Buono, of being his accomplice.
Kenneth Bianchi told us
that he was motivated
because he was trying
to show his older cousin,
who he revered,
that he was tough.
And for Angelo Buono,
he enjoyed the fact that he had
his younger cousin listening to him.
He saw him as a mentee.
And we saw this time and time again.
Pairs of killers who urge each other on.
And together they are
extremely vicious and violent.
Is there any doubt that
this is a body?
No doubt. There's a skull
and tailbone and everything.
When did you first get word that
there might be some bodies buried here?
This morning.
Had you had any indication before?
The man behind the killings was Dean Corll.
He's 33 years old.
Or was. He was shot and killed
Wednesday evening
by Wayne Henley, 17 years old.
Henley was one of two teenagers
who lured young boys to Corll's home.
Dean Corll would pick up kids
and once he had them in his house,
he would incapacitate them and put them
on what he called his "death board,"
and rape and kill them.
The Texas sex and torture killings
now have become the worst mass murders
in American history.
Four more bodies of young boys
were dug up today.
That brings to 27 the number
of bodies discovered so far.
Some people trying to make
it appear that the police department
has not done all that it could or
should have done in these cases.
This police department feels that
these parents
are not exactly discharging
their own responsibility,
so far as raising
and disciplining their children.
These shocking murders finally focus
national attention on a major problem,
that of runaway children
and what can happen to them.
The children who
run away from home today
are not the children that we had
running away in the '60s.
In the '60s we had
what we called then "flower children,"
and they ran away basically
for sociopolitical reasons.
Today children are running from a
situation rather than to a situation.
Kids were disappearing and the police would
say, "well, they probably ran away."
It was to the demise of many
who in fact were picked up
by sexual sadists like John Wayne Gacy.
In Des Plains, Illinois,
near Chicago,
a man who served time in prison
for sex crimes was let out.
Today they found the bodies
of at least three young boys
buried under his house.
Police today found six more bodies
under the John Gacy house.
Illinois authorities today
made their first positive identification
of the 28 bodies
unearthed so far.
This grisly search ended tonight
and will be resumed after Christmas.
Prior to his arrest,
Gacy was well known in the community.
He frequently dressed in a clown outfit
for the benefit of youngsters.
He was generally seen as a man
young people liked.
The coroner of this county
has seen nothing like it.
It's frightening.
That's the only word I can use.
Frightening, frightening.
From New York, this is ABC News.
Good evening.
The Supreme Court ruled today
that there is nothing unconstitutional
in the death penalty.
The court says the death penalty
is an expression
of society's moral outrage
at particular crimes.
In the 1970s, we had a four-year
moratorium on the death penalty.
The U.S. Supreme Court
ruled the death penalty unconstitutional.
Eventually in 1976,
with new statutes,
the U.S. Supreme Court
said it's constitutional,
and then we started seeing
the death penalty back in place.
Death row was repopulated
with new criminals like Gary Gilmore.
It seems that the people of Utah,
they want the death penalty,
but they don't want executions.
Well I took it literal and serious
when they sentenced me to death.
His crimes were not especially extreme.
It was two robbery-murders.
But when he was convicted, he wanted to die.
He wanted to go out
in a blaze of glory.
So two years later,
he was put to death by a firing squad,
and became the very first
person in America
in this new era, to be executed.
And his words were,
"let's do it."
The order of the 4th Judicial District
Court of the State of Utah has been carried out.
Gary Mark Gilmore is dead.
Tonight, our topic will be murder
as a growth industry.
These are the national homicide figures.
For the past ten years,
every year has set a new high
for murder in America.
The statistics were stupendous.
Violent crime of all kinds were soaring.
The spectacles that people
were seeing on their TV screen
were unlike anything
they'd had to absorb before.
A small grocery store has been robbed.
The owner of the grocery store,
Nathan Kurt,
has been shot and killed.
What happened yesterday?
As I understand,
a man came into the store,
and had a gun,
and asked for the money.
And my grandfather reached for
a gun that he had,
and grabbed the man's gun
and it went off.
He shot him twice
and my grandfather fell to the floor.
Why did he feel
he had to have a gun?
Because there were
so many robberies in this area.
And he just thought
he needed it for protection.
Today, ordinary citizens who would not
otherwise dream of having a gun
are buying one because
they are scared out of their wits.
William Rubiak is a Ukrainian immigrant
who owns a store outside Washington, D.C.
He has been robbed at gunpoint
four times in the past two years.
Now William Rubiak has bought a gun,
and he says next time,
he will use it.
I will shoot,
and I will shoot to kill.
Fear is the biggest seller of guns.
Studies has shown each urban crime wave
has touched off a new round of gun buying.
He have German Lugers, derringers,
small revolvers, Magnums,
Some of these Saturday night specials are small.
They can be palmed in your hand.
It was shortly after 10:00
California time
when the President
left his hotel.
Not seen by the following cameras,
but spotted by
Secret Service Agent Larry Buendorf
was a hand with a gun in it
coming through the crowd.
The commotion erupted.
Secret Service agents forced the assailant
to the ground and then handcuffed her.
She was identified as 27-year-old
Lynette Alice Fromme,
one of the earliest followers
of Charles Manson
who was involved in the Tate/LaBianca
murders of 1969.
About the same time
Gerald Ford becomes President,
Charlie, in prison,
writes to Squeaky that he's got new rules.
They want to do one big thing that's going to
get the nation's attention back on Charlie.
So Squeaky, wearing a red robe,
comes up to the President of the
United States with a big gun,
points the gun in his face. The Secret
Service men wrestle her to the ground,
and Squeaky's first words were,
"can you believe the gun didn't go off?"
Following your own close brush with death
in Sacramento a couple of weeks ago,
I wonder if this
has convinced you at all
that we need tough gun control
legislation in this country?
I prefer to go after the person who uses the
gun for an illegal or criminal purpose.
That, to me, is a far better approach
than the one where you require
registration of the individual or the gun.
Just minutes after making those statements,
Gerald Ford walked into the street
and heard the sound of gunfire.
My God! My God,
there's been a shot.
There's been a shot!
We're being pushed back
by the police.
Somebody has fired a shot here.
We don't know if anybody's been hit.
My God.
Somebody fired a shot!
The President was not hit.
Witnesses heard the sound
and saw a puff of smoke.
The woman,
identified by police as Sara Jane Moore,
was immediately seized.
Sara Jane Moore jumped out of the crowd,
fired off a weapon,
and was tackled by another citizen.
Her background, it turned out, was as a sort
of eccentric lower-rung political figure.
She was kind of an odd duck.
When Gerald Ford became President,
within the space of one month
were two attempts on his life.
Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore
both tried to shoot him.
It's like, "what's going on?
Why can't this be stopped?"
So once again this nation has narrowly
escaped the tragedy, the trauma,
of assassination of our President.
Above all else, this points out
the need for some additional measures,
some additional precautions
to protect the life
of the highest elected official
in the country.
Will it take another assassination in our
lifetime to finally force some action?
In the '70s,
New York was really in danger.
The whole social fabric
seemed to have been torn in half
and crime was just one of the many
indications that we were lost.
I would say in the last ten years, the homicide
rate has increased by leaps and bounds.
We hit our peak probably in 1972,
when the Bronx had 430 homicides.
In the '70s the Bronx looked
like Berlin after World War II.
Literally looked like Berlin.
1.5 million people live in this borough.
Once that smoke on the horizon
signified industry, progress, jobs.
Now it means someone is
burning down a building.
It has become
the arson capitol of the world.
It happens 30 times a day,
and the flames are the signal
of a national disaster.
Is there anything
that can change the situation?
The Bronx, in my own estimation,
is doomed with a capital D.
A lot of gritty stuff
went down in New York.
And when you think of New York in the '70s,
you of course think of the Son of Sam murders.
Christine Freund, 26 years old,
soon to be married, is dead today.
Dead in a shooting
that has no apparent motive.
In the end of 1976,
they transfer me to Queens homicide.
And the first victim that I came across
was a woman named Christine Freund,
who was sitting in a parked car with her
boyfriend after coming from a movie.
She got her head blown off.
There was a series of
these random shootings,
and the ballistics comparison
determined that there was indeed
the same killer using the same gun,
a 0.44 caliber weapon, on these homicides.
Therefore the police nicknamed it
the 0.44 Caliber Killer.
He struck again on April 17th
at 3:00 in the morning,
killing 18-year-old Valentina Suriani
and her fiance, 20-year-old Alexander Esau,
as they sat in a parked car
in the Baychester section of the Bronx.
We get the shooting back in the Bronx.
A girl named Valentina Suriani.
But at that scene where that shooting occurred
left a note addressed to my supervisor.
And he called himself
the Son of Sam.
Well he talked about being possessed
by a man he refers to as Sam,
the man he refers to as his father.
And he says that
his father requires blood.
This got people's attention. I think it
was just the sheer randomness of it.
The fact that you could be doing something as
simple as sitting in a car talking to a friend
and someone would come behind you
and open fire.
It was pretty terrifying.
It was frightening.
I was in charge of the
nighttime operations.
I was one of the task force
that wanted to shoot him on sight.
That was our job,
take him out on the street.
We flooded the streets of New York.
All these people are dying
and we're trying to stop it.
It's everybody. It's not you, it's everybody.
That's all we're trying to do.
In terms of the victim count,
that doesn't place him at the top of the list,
in terms of the most deadly serial killers.
But it was New York City,
and what happens in New York City,
well, that's international news.
Good evening. Harry is on vacation.
Here are our top stories.
100 more police join the hunt
for the Son of Sam killer in New York.
The search continues
for the 0.44 Caliber Killer
who has come to be known
as the Son of Sam.
He warned in one of his sick and threatening
letters to the press and to the police,
"Sam's a thirsty lad
and he won't let me stop killing
until he's had his fill of blood."
It was a really
miserably hot summer in New York.
And everything went dark.
I heard someone on the street go,
"oh, it's a blackout!"
The looters were out
almost instantly.
And it felt apocalyptic.
I remember going to bed that night
thinking it was the end of the world.
New York City in the early morning
after a night of no electric power.
What it did have in the dark streets
was a wild outburst of crime.
When the greatest city in the world goes black,
it showed a crumbling America.
Then you have the Son of Sam
on the loose.
We always look
for patterns in victims,
and there was this belief that he was
only killing women with long dark hair.
I know the 0.44 Killer's
after girls with long brown hair,
so when me and my friends go out at night,
we put our hair up.
My hair was about down to my shoulder.
It was about this length. I cut it short
because of the 0.44 Caliber Killer.
Well, his last victim
was actually a blonde.
A 20-year-old New York City girl
died this evening
a day and a half after she and her
companion were shot by the Son of Sam.
He's a nighttime killer who has stalked
New York residential boroughs for a year.
A postal worker walked out of
his Yonkers apartment last night,
turned the ignition key in his car,
and found himself surrounded by police.
"Well," he said, "you got me."
Police say those words ended the biggest
manhunt in New York City history
with the capture of Son of Sam.
And this is what they say
tripped up the 0.44 Caliber Killer.
A parking ticket.
David Berkowitz drove
this cream-colored Ford Galaxy
from his home in Yonkers
to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
Then police say he went
to stalk his 12th and 13th victims.
But in the place he parked
was this fire hydrant,
and police had the lead they needed.
Well, we get him,
and I interrogate him.
My attitude at this time... I want to
take him and throw him out the window.
This guy was so pathetic.
It was like talking to a zucchini.
Never blinked.
Constant smile on his face.
So after a while,
I start to feel sorry for the guy.
You know he's gone, right?
I feel great. I think the people
of our city will feel great relief.
Praise the Lord, it's over.
We're very, very happy. That was the
first thing I heard this morning.
It was fantastic.
It was great.
Serial killers tend to be cunning.
That allows them to stay at large.
And when they get caught,
it's usually because of luck.
Good luck for us. Bad luck for them.
When we caught him,
we searched his car.
In the bag on the seat is the 0.44
caliber gun that did all the shootings.
What more do you need?
Then we found a machine gun,
fully loaded, in the back seat.
And the night of the interrogation
that I directed
I said, "well what were you
going to do with the machine gun?"
He says,
"I was on my way to the Hamptons,
and I was going to spray the place
and kill as many people as I could."
There are so many
miracles in this church
that it's hard to tell about one
without telling about two or three
because they blend together.
They make a beautiful flow of miracles.
And you know,
for 30 years I prayed to the sky God
and I got nothing but
disappointment and heartache.
And now we have a father
who loves each one of us so much.
How thankful we are for him.
Thank you.
The '70s were a very fertile period
for these new religious movements.
What was so interesting about
the rise of cults in our country
is how many people
wanted to align themselves
with these stigmatized
and fanatical organizations.
And I must say it is
a great effort to be God.
I'd wish it upon another,
but no one else has the faculty that I do.
When they do, I will be glad to hold their coat.
In the meantime, I shall be God.
And this I be.
There shall be no other.
Jim Jones was an extraordinary figure.
He was a community leader,
a social worker, and then a minister.
He carried his ministry to California.
♪ Walk with me, walk with me... ♪
What was particularly distinctive
about him at that time
is that he created a community
that was united between whites and blacks.
And this came at a time when
the country was still very racially divided
and churches were not integrated.
Some leading scientists say
we have to have euthanasia.
Oh, no. Oh, no.
Who is going to decide who and when
a person is going to die?
We must never allow that,
because this is the kind of thing that
ushers in the terror of a Hitler's Germany.
We must not allow these kind of things
to enter our consciousness.
I wanted to write a story very much about
this guy and his power and the reach he had.
So I began to contact ex-members,
and they said that all was
not so good inside,
that there were beatings if you got out
of line. There was a lot of sex abuse.
And the story took on a new life
at that point.
Very soon afterward,
the church members began
leaving San Francisco for Guyana.
He figures if I'm in Guyana,
it really doesn't matter
what's said or written.
Nobody is going to get me here.
♪ We're a happy family.
We're a happy family, yes we are... ♪
It was an escapade
that's almost unparalleled
in the history of religious movements.
They had very little communication
with their loved ones at home,
and naturally there was concern
about where they had gone and what was
happening out there in the jungle.
I think that Jim Jones
took his group down there
because he was afraid to face publicity
and answer the questions
that are here in this country.
He was talking integration.
He was talking helping people.
He was talking better this
and better that.
What about now?
What's your impression now?
My impression now is that
those are fronts for him.
I think he's gone crazy.
Congressman Leo Ryan started hearing
the name Jim Jones more regularly.
And he wanted to expose
what he believed was going on down there
that was wrong.
And he thought it was certainly worth
inviting members of the press to join him.
Very glad to be here.
This is a Congressional inquiry.
I can tell you right now that
whatever the comments are
there's some people here who believe that this is the
best thing that ever happened in their whole life.
So it's towards the end of the evening.
Don Harris, who was the NBC reporter,
had been walking around the pavilion.
And two people slipped him a note.
And he hands the notes over
to Congressman Ryan who opens them
and says, "oh my God, it's true.
Everything we've been told is true."
And then the word spread
and more and more people wanted to leave.
And then I remember seeing this couple
with a child between them.
Don't break us! Get back here!
You bring him back!
Don't you take my kid!
You could feel the tension.
Last night, someone came
and passed me this note.
People play games, friend.
They lie. They lie.
What can I do about liars?
And you people going to...
Leave us. I just can't. Please leave us.
Instead of just letting that plane take off
with minimal damage to his movement,
Jones snapped.
Good evening.
For about the last 30 hours
we here at NBC News
have been trying to establish
what happened last night at the airstrip
at a place called Port Kaituma.
We do have a particular interest in the two
NBC newsmen who were shot to death there.
Don Harris was killed.
Bob Brown was killed.
Congressman Ryan was shot 45 times.
Every time somebody would
fall down wounded,
they would walk over
and shoot them in the head with a shotgun.
I was shot five times.
I was lying on my side with my head down
pretending I was dead.
And then all of a sudden
they just came
and shot me at point blank range.
They're shooting.
People die, including Leo Ryan.
And back in Jonestown, Jim Jones is
calling for a revolutionary suicide,
where we're all going to kill ourselves
and make a statement to the world.
I first went to Jonestown
last evening around sunset.
There was absolute silence.
Nothing living was around.
Jonestown last evening
was the city of the dead.
They found tremendous quantities
of potassium cyanide poison.
It had been mixed with Kool-Aid.
It killed quickly,
within five minutes.
We will never know how many people
voluntarily drank the poison.
But other people were either coerced,
brainwashed or took it against their will.
They were murdered.
I was lifted into this Medevac plane
and I was so grateful.
Good evening. The searching American soldiers have
finished counting the bodies in Jonestown, Guyana.
910 died in the poison ritual
of the Peoples Temple last week.
This was Americans
killing other Americans and themselves.
In its own interest,
for its own well-being,
this nation will have to find out why.
There were a lot of strange people who committed
a lot of strange crimes in the 1970s.
But none of them was as
mediagenic as Ted Bundy.
- You said you were surprised to be going to jail.
- Surprised? I don't know.
I didn't know what to expect. Never been to
jail before. Never been arrested before.
Theodore Bundy was a
prolific serial killer.
We don't know exactly how many he killed.
We know it's dozens.
He was handsome, very involved with
politics, he was in law school.
He didn't seem like the glassy-eyed lunatic that
many Americans believed a serial killer would be.
We still don't believe it.
This can't be.
I keep shaking my head day after day
saying, "how can this be?"
Our son is the best son in the world.
What the press wrote about
Bundy and his crimes
wasn't the full details,
the full extent of the barbarism...
The fact that he would have sex with
their corpses, mutilate the victims...
That didn't quite fit with his
image of this boy next door.
You issued a statement saying you feel
that everything will turn out all right.
That you are innocent.
Do you still feel that?
Yeah. Yeah. More than ever.
Do you think about getting out of here?
Well, legally, sure.
Bundy was to stand trial on the charge
of murdering a young woman in Aspen.
That trial never completed.
During a court hearing break,
he was left alone in a law library.
Bundy bailed out of a second
floor window and escaped.
He high-tailed it up into the hills where
they chased him around for nearly a week.
He got lost out there and he probably would have
died of exposure if they hadn't have arrested him.
So they caught him
and he was put back in jail.
And in Christmastime 1977,
he escaped again.
Bundy, starved down to
less than 140 pounds,
slipped through a hole in the ceiling
of his cell and was free again.
The FBI responded by putting Bundy
on its Ten Most Wanted list.
Posters with the picture of Ted Bundy
were circulated throughout the nation.
Ted did not have a plan
when he escaped.
He just wanted to get as far away from
where he might be identified as he could.
So he stole a car and went to Florida.
His new quarters are cramped.
He is under 24-hour guard
and he faces intense questioning.
He is Theodore Bundy and
he's jailed in Florida.
Bundy was living in Tallahassee
at the time when five Florida State University
co-eds were attacked on or near the campus.
Two of the young women died
as a result of the attacks.
The police in Pensacola, Florida
stopped a man driving a stolen car
and found to their surprise and
perhaps pleasure, it was Bundy.
Step out, Mr. Bundy.
What do we have here?
Let's see. Oh, it's an indictment.
All right.
Why don't you read it to me?
You're about due for election,
aren't you?
Mr. Bundy?
You told me that you were going to get me.
He said he was going to get me.
Okay, you've got the indictment.
It's all you're going to get.
Bundy, having had some law training
and a great deal of arrogance,
decided to represent himself.
For him, he was the star in the courtroom.
As I am living in Dade County...
Don't shake your finger at me, young man.
Inside the courtroom,
the trial will be covered
by a still photographer
and one television camera.
Upstairs there are some 250 reporters and
television technicians from around the country.
Bundy's personality is
fascinating to a lot of people.
He doesn't fit the usual
profile of a criminal.
When he defends himself in court it's
fascinating for people to watch.
Each day the courtroom is
filled with spectators
drawn by a fascination with
Theodore Bundy himself,
or by the gruesome details of the crimes.
What is unusual to see is that many of
the onlookers are women. Young women.
- You're fascinated by him?
- Very.
I'm not afraid of him. He just doesn't
look like the type to kill somebody.
You try to imagine yourself in his place,
see how he's feeling.
The bizarre spectacle of
Ted Bundy as a sex symbol
really bummed out feminists,
as you can imagine.
I mean, he became folk hero.
There were t-shirts because he was handsome.
But on the other hand, his violence
was so incredibly woman-hating.
And his enthusiasm about that...
We wound up being pretty depressed.
I had broken facial bones.
I had a broken arm and a crushed finger.
I had five skull fractures and
multiple contusions in my head.
Is that man in the courtroom today?
- Yes he is.
- Would you point him out for us, please?
Are you prepared for a guilty verdict?
I think so, but you never know.
I've never had to go through this before.
After 6 1/2 hours of deliberation,
the jury had a verdict.
32-year-old Theodore Bundy
remained composed as he listened.
Guilty of first degree murder in the strangling deaths of two
Florida State University sorority sisters 19 months ago.
It is therefore the sentence of this court that you
be sentenced to death by a current of electricity,
and such current of electricity shall continue
to pass through your body until you are dead.
In some ways Ted Bundy
is an icon of the '70s.
He mixed kind of showbiz and violence
in a way that had never been done before.
At the end of the '70s,
we'd had a destruction of our innocence
that we had at the beginning of the '70s.
It became an era when Americans
began to expect the worst.
America certainly had lost is way.
Criminals were lauded and
killers were romanticized.
It was the news media that helped carry this
message that America was a dangerous place.
Americans had a love affair
with violence.
Actually it was much more like a marriage.
And that marriage, for some people,
was till death do they part.
For a time social scientists described the
wave of violence that struck our cities
as an epidemic.
And they identified some of the causes.
Poverty, broken homes.
For some violence has become a
permanent part of the fabric of life.
Sociologists call it a
subculture of violence.
The current wave of violent crime
is well into its second decade.
While we have deplored violence,
we've not done much about it.
Perhaps this is because
confronting the problem of violence
forces us to confront the most
serious defects in our society.