Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019): Season 1, Episode 2 - One of Us - full transcript
One of Us.
[male reporter]
Join us now. Sisterhood is powerful.
The battle cry
of the Women's Liberation Movement
brings out down New York's Fifth Avenue
as more than 10,000 militant feminists
stage a one-day strike for equal rights.
[woman] In the late '60s and '70s,
the women's movement opened up
a number of doors
for women to have choices
to be whatever they wanted to be.
Equal rights. Equal rights to have a job,
to have respect,
to not be viewed as a piece of meat.
[McChesney] There was
a lot more Independence,
a lot more empowerment.
[woman] This will continue
as a political coalition
to win the unfinished revolution
of women's equality.
[McChesney] Women were a lot freer.
Hitchhiking, for example,
was not a big deal.
But because there was
more of an open society,
new types of crimes against women
became more common.
And in the Pacific Northwest at the time,
there was someone...
evil out there...
doing really horrible things to women.
[Bundy] A person of this type
chooses his victims for a reason.
His victims are young attractive women.
Women are possessions.
Beings which are subservient,
more often than not, to males.
Women are merchandise.
From the pornographic, through Playboy,
right on up to the evening news.
So there is no denying
the sexual component.
However, sex has significance
only in the context
of a much broader scheme of things.
That is possession, control, violence.
[theme music playing]
[male reporter] Police are focused in
on their investigation into the cases
of missing women in Washington State.
[reporter #2] King County police launched
their investigation after Denise Naslund
and Janice Ott disappeared
from Lake Sammamish State Park.
A special 11-man task force
was flooded with calls from witnesses
who said they had seen the suspect:
a man who called himself Ted.
[man] Eight women disappeared
in and around Washington State
over six months.
As far as I was concerned,
it was new territory.
[man] All the girls
were between the ages of 18 and 21,
four of the girls attended,
were attending colleges.
Same hairstyle...
all very similar in appearance,
and when they disappeared,
they left their personal effects.
[Keppel] Everybody we could find,
anybody who'd call in, we talked to.
[man] Thank you very much for calling.
[man #2] Police were getting reports
that Ted was at Central State College
and at the Seattle Tavern,
where two other girls had disappeared.
And soon, Ted was being spotted
behind every tree, behind every bush.
[McChesney]
We were working 12, 14 hours a day
nearly every day of the week.
We weren't sure if we had a suspect
whose name was really Ted or not,
but that name
brought forth thousands of leads.
We looked through databases,
driver's licenses,
criminal records to see who we had
that might be Ted or Theodore.
Middle name, first name, uh, nickname.
We were also looking for someone
driving a light brown Volkswagen Bug.
[Keppel] I don't know
if you know how many Bugs
there were in the State of Washington
during that time.
You wanna guess?
Forty-two thousand.
That's what we were dealing with.
Masses of information.
[McChesney]
We started with literally 1,000 names.
Then we looked at suspects
who we had maybe of the name of Ted
who drove that kind of a car,
whom perhaps people had reported
as being a little strange.
We put all those things together
and we narrowed the number
of potential offenders down to 100.
But at that time,
we didn't have enough resources
to manage the data quickly.
Everything was slow.
[man] This is a little different
than, uh, most homicide cases.
We have witnesses that observed
our suspect, quote, "Ted."
I think one of these days we'll find him.
I don't--
I can't tell you when, but we will.
[man] After several weeks
of conversations with Ted on death row,
when he started
talking in the third person,
that was the breakthrough.
Our relationship changed
at that moment...
from me being
just another goddamn reporter
to me being the conduit for Ted
being able to finally tell this story.
[Bundy]
Now let's consider the possibility
that this person suffered
from some sort of acute onset
of a desire
that resulted in killing young women.
How do you account for it?
[Michaud]
Ted started laying out the history
of what he
would soon come to call "the entity."
At its start, it's just a feeling.
First, this individual,
as he called himself,
developed a pornography habit.
[Bundy] The early manifestations
of this condition,
which is an interest
concerning sexual images.
[Michaud] Mm-hmm.
[Bundy] Your standard fare
that you'd see in the movie house
or in Playboy magazine.
[Michaud] Gradually, this kind
of malign part of this individual
started connecting...
naked women with violence.
[Bundy] The interest becomes skewed
toward a more specialized literature--
some of it pretty grotesque,
which would preoccupy him
more and more.
I asked him,
"When does this individual first act out?"
[Bundy] It would reach a point
where the anger, the frustration,
the anxiety, the poor self-image
feeling cheated, wronged, insecure...
he decides upon young attractive women
being his victims.
The feeling grew and grew
until the entity controlled him,
and he would hear a voice
and he did as the entity told him to do.
[Bundy] One particular evening,
he was driving down a fairly dark street,
and saw a girl walking along the street.
And parked his car
and ran up behind the girl
and she heard him, she turned around,
and he brandished the knife,
and grabbed her by the arm,
and told her to do what wanted her to do.
When he really got going,
his eyes went absolutely black.
He had very blue eyes,
but his eyes would go black.
[Bundy] Let's say he placed his hands
around her throat
just to throttle her into unconsciousness
so that she wouldn't scream anymore.
When the need
of that malignant condition
had been satisfied
through sexual release,
he realized
that he couldn't let the girl go.
So killing, to a degree,
will become a way of destroying evidence.
But the act of killing
becomes an end in itself.
[indistinct chatter]
[man] Steven had got Ted
talking in the third person.
So we had a meeting, the three of us.
It was very strange, sitting...
a few feet...
three feet from a... guy like that.
He would not look me
in the eye very often.
I found myself,
and this sort of strange...
I would almost be mesmerized
for a few moments...
looking at his hands.
Thinking, "My God,
what did those hands do?"
[McChesney] After approximately a month,
there was nothing new really coming in.
[indistinct chatter]
Okay, what address does she have?
[McChesney] The big leap came
when we received a call from a woman
who said,
"I'm concerned about my boyfriend
named Ted Bundy,
whom you should look at."
[young Keppel] This will be an interview
with Elizabeth Kloepfer. K-L-O-E-P-F-E-R.
Are you aware
that this interview is being taped?
[Kloepfer] Yes.
-[Keppel] Is it taped with your approval?
-Yes.
[Michaud] Ted and Liz
had a very complex relationship.
Their relationship
had started rocking back and forth,
and it left Liz in a real mess.
There were these hints
that there was something deeper
and more complex about Ted
than she had previously suspected.
[Kloepfer] Uh, he... mentioned an incident
about following a sorority girl.
When he was out late at night,
he would follow people like that.
That he'd try not to, but--
but he just did it anyway.
[Michaud] She found a bag
of women's underclothing
in his apartment.
She found a bowl filled with house keys.
There was some plaster of Paris
and some bandages.
Another time she found a knife
under the right front seat of his car.
[Kloepfer] The night
that Brenda Ball... disappeared,
he'd been with me and my family,
and he left early in the evening
and then the next day was late to my...
daughter's baptism.
And then he said,
"It's pretty scary, isn't it?"
[McChesney] She reported
suspicious behavior on his part,
and she was, frankly, afraid.
But she was not certain.
[Kloepfer] In my own mind,
there were coincidences
that seemed to tie him in.
Yet when I would think
about our day-to-day relationship,
there was nothing there
that would lead me to think
that he was a violent man
capable of doing something like that.
[McChesney] We had a lot of women
who called and said,
"I'm concerned
that my boyfriend might be this offender."
Whether his name was Ted or not.
But this Ted was about the right age,
he was
about the right physical description.
He was familiar
with the University of Washington
because he lived
in the university district.
He did have that kind of a car.
So there were a lot of things
that started to add up.
[Keppel] We even found information
that this Ted had been
to Lake Sammamish State Park
the weekend before
the Lake Sammamish event happened.
[McChesney] So, where was Ted Bundy
on these various days
when those women went missing?
Was he anywhere where somebody
could provide an alibi for him?
As it turned out,
as we continued to look at his life,
there wasn't any alibi.
So Ted was a... absolutely prime suspect.
[Bundy] After Lake Sammamish,
they were working from a list
of hundreds upon hundreds of leads.
So the emphasis becomes
on don't get caught.
Then it becomes a matter
of disposing of the problem...
without leaving any, uh, evidence.
[man] They finally had
their first possible suspect.
At that point,
the captain of Seattle homicide,
he had me do some ride-alongs
with some of his detectives,
staking out a suspect
at the University of Washington.
I was in the back seat
of an undercover car
with two plain-clothed policemen
staking out somebody.
We just sat there all night long
on a radio, listening for...
any movement of his car,
and there never was.
And I didn't know at the time, in fact,
didn't realize until some time later,
it was Ted Bundy's car.
[McChesney] At that point,
we did have a photograph of Ted.
and we prepared photo lineups
and showed to witnesses
who had been
at Lake Sammamish Park.
[reporter] The photograph of Ted Bundy
was shown to at least eight witnesses
from Lake Sammamish.
Seven positively said
Ted Bundy was not the mysterious Ted.
[McChesney] It was a surprise
that they felt that it was not him.
So, we didn't have
definitive identification
that this indeed was the person
who had committed these crimes.
But I certainly wish that we had.
There were no fingerprints.
There were no eyewitnesses.
There was nothing physically
that would connect Ted to the crimes.
They had nothing to charge him with.
Ted was never brought in
for an official police interview.
[Bundy]
I suppose they could be faulted for not...
actually coming out and talking to me,
but on the other hand
they can't be faulted.
Which one are they gonna pick,
the law student
with no criminal background
or are they going to go after
the guy with the...
arrest record for robbery,
or you know, the types?
The real weirdos.
People don't realize that murderers
do not come out in the dark
with long teeth
and saliva dripping off their chin.
Everybody wanted this Ted
to be somebody you could pick out.
He wasn't that way.
[Keppel] We didn't have
any information at that time
that we could have charged Bundy
with murder.
That's what people don't understand.
[female reporter]
Where does this investigation now stand?
Police officials will not discuss
this King County investigation
because it is still an active case.
No one will or can confirm
that the investigation
continues on other suspects.
[McChesney] In any investigation,
you will reach some point
where you run out of leads.
So we stopped
the full task force at that point.
But there was also the fact
that the murders had seemed to stop.
So we didn't know
if the person had died,
had left the area, had just stopped...
committing these crimes on their own.
[male reporter]
What it was evident this spring
that the investigation
had reached a dead end,
police admitted
that they could only catch Ted
if he committed another crime
and got caught.
[Bundy] I loved Utah.
I decided that I was moving down there
in September of '74.
Hopped on the interstate
going south toward Provo.
All of a sudden I felt--
I felt almost euphoric.
I just looked out the window
and watched the scenery and...
dreamed and reminisced and...
generally maintained
a real good feeling I had
all the way into Utah.
Ted moved to Salt Lake City
to start law school
at the University of Utah.
I did not understand
why Ted went off to Utah for law school.
I advised him to go
to University of Puget Sound.
'Cause that was the school
I was going to.
But he was insistent
and I was surprised
that he went off to Utah.
[Bundy]
We are dealing with an individual
whose primary concern
is not to be detected.
The individual's modus operandi was
-moving large amounts of distance...
-Mm-hmm.
...in an attempt
to camouflage what he was doing.
And that he was also
able to take advantage
of the anonymity factor.
[Michaud] The Ted people saw in Utah
was pretty much the same
mild-mannered law student
that he projected
in the State of Washington.
And that's what Ted did,
he snowed people.
[man] Ted Bundy befriended me in 1974.
I was what we call a branch president
in the Mormon church.
One day, two members in our branch
had knocked on the door of, uh, Ted Bundy.
They got talking
and he expressed an interest.
Eventually,
he became a member of the church.
He was baptized...
and then he was placed in our branch.
♪ Put your shoulder to the wheel... ♪
[Bundy] He's probably so caught up
in living a dual life that...
he'd been enmeshed
in that continuing cycle
of trying to maintain a normal life.
He would modify his behavior
to make him a sound, stable,
law-abiding individual.
[Preece]
I felt that he was a handsome young man
that seemed to have his life
pretty much in order.
He came to the activities.
He came to the church meetings and, uh...
responded in a positive way.
So I thought that things were
good for him for the future.
[woman] Summer of '74 was just fun.
A fun summer.
I was 18.
Graduated from high school
and got a job at the local phone company.
I had gotten a car, '74 Camaro.
Maroon with black leather seats
and a black top.
[laughs]
And I just started dating a guy
who had a matching Camaro.
Everything was great.
I wasn't worried about anything.
And then I heard about a girl
in a city next door, Midvale.
She had been found murdered.
She was a police chief's daughter.
It was very alarming,
but there wasn't a lot of information
to cause me to be in a panic.
[reporter] Melissa Smith left her father
to meet a friend
at this Midvale restaurant.
They talked for a while
and then Melissa left.
She set for home. She never got there.
Nine days later, Melissa's body
was found in Summit County.
She had been beaten
and strangled with a nylon stocking.
I don't want another parent
to go through
what my wife and I went through.
I don't think that's right.
I want to know that--
that the young girls
are safe on the street.
[Michaud] In the Autumn of 1974,
there were two other disappearances
in the state of Utah.
Nancy Wilcox vanished
after leaving her house.
Her body was never found.
Another girl
by the name of Laura Aime
also vanished and was later found
in the Wasatch Mountains.
She had been bludgeoned and raped.
[man] People were very very worried.
I was the assistant prosecutor,
uh, for the Salt Lake County
Attorney's Office.
The number of missing and dead girls
was certainly an unusual occurrence.
We didn't connect our cases
to the missing girls in the Seattle area.
You wouldn't ever think
in your wildest dreams
there was a serial killer
in the community.
[DaRonch]
November 8, 1974. It was a Friday.
I didn't really have plans that night.
So I decided that I would get in my car
and head over for the mall.
I drove to the parking lot,
parked under a light,
and walked into the mall.
Started looking in a bookstore window.
And as I was looking in the window,
a man approached me.
He said he was a police officer.
He said, "Well, we found someone
trying to break into your car."
He was polite.
He asked me if I wanted
to come out to the car with him
and see if anything was missing.
So we got out to my car,
and I could see in the car
that nothing was missing.
And he kept leaning forward
like he wanted me
to look further in the car,
but I wouldn't.
I just said, "Nothing's missing."
And that's when he said,
"Well, they're holding this guy
down at the police station.
Do you have time
to come down there
and fill out a complaint against him?"
And then I said,
"Do you have some kind of identification?"
'Cause I-- I just was starting
to feel a little uneasy
and I thought I could smell alcohol.
And that's when he just promptly
pulled out his wallet
and showed me a badge,
and I went, "Oh, okay."
He drove a Volkswagen,
which I thought, "Well, that's
kind of odd, but maybe he's undercover."
And I got in.
He headed down a side street...
and then he suddenly pulled over
up on the side of a curb
by an elementary school.
And that's when I just started
freaking out, "What are we doing?"
And he grabbed my arm
and he got one handcuff on one wrist,
and he didn't get the other one on,
and the one was just dangling.
I had never been so frightened
in my entire life.
And I know this is cliché,
but my whole life went before my eyes.
I thought, "My God, my parents are
never gonna know what happened to me."
The next thing I knew,
he had pulled out a gun
and said, "I'll blow your head off."
I just thought, "Go ahead. Just go ahead.
Do it. Just kill me now."
But I just found the door,
jumped out of the car.
He came out after me,
and we struggled outside.
He had a crowbar.
He was trying to hit me over the head.
I had my hand on top.
I could feel it.
I just fought with all my might,
thrashing with him and fighting.
My fingers nails were all broken.
I remember
his beady, blank, lifeless eyes.
At that time, a car started coming
the other direction.
And that's when I broke loose
and ran to the car
I flew open their door
and jumped in on them,
and I said,
"Take me to the police station."
I was just hysterical.
I was very lucky and it was
really shocking to find out later
that he was so angry
that I had gotten away
he just drove somewhere else
and killed someone else.
[reporter] Debra Kent was attending a play
with Viewmont High School.
She left the play early
to pick up her brother.
Debbie never got to her car.
The same night
that Carol DaRonch was kidnapped,
Debbie Kent was abducted
in a parking lot north of Salt Lake.
Found in the parking lot
was a handcuff key.
And the key fit my handcuff
that I had had on me.
[reporter] Police believe the key
was from the same handcuffs
used to kidnap Carol DaRonch
four hours earlier, the same night
Debbie Kent disappeared.
[Michaud]
Now there's a witness and real evidence.
The police are starting
to make connections.
[McChesney]
It had been a number of months,
and we had run out of leads to pursue
for the missing women
in the State of Washington.
So, sometimes you have to rely
on people who might...
by circumstance,
find something.
[Lucas] I got a call from a friend
in the police department.
And he said,
"Get your butt up to Taylor Mountain."
I said, "What's going on?"
And he said, "Just go."
So I went up there with some
of the Seattle homicide detectives,
and, uh, they told me
that they had found bodies.
[Keppel]
It was a group of student foresters
marking trees on Taylor Mountain,
and they found the skull of Brenda Ball,
laying in the woods.
They called the Sheriff's Office
and we began a search ourselves
with our own search and rescue volunteers.
And we discovered, a hundred feet apart,
the remains of three other women.
It was pretty much of a nightmare.
[young Keppel]
We keep finding more and more everyday.
You get into that woods
and you just don't know what's in there.
It's so thick
and so overgrown with bushes...
that you could find anything,
you know...
uh, a couple of hours from now
or five minutes from now.
It doesn't matter.
[Michaud] What do you think
can be surmised about Taylor Mountain?
[Bundy]
About the Taylor Mountain crime scene?
We can make a reasonable guess...
that this individual was clearly trying
to cover up his crimes.
When a body was left there,
the animals in the area were doing,
you know,
his work for him.
And he would continue to go back there
simply because he had
his own garbage disposal.
[reporter] Remains of six missing girls
were found at the same site.
The skeletal remains
of 21-year-old Linda Ann Healy,
22-year-old Brenda Ball of Seattle,
18-year-old Susan Elaine Rancourt
of Anchorage, Alaska,
and 20-year-old Roberta Kathleen Parks
from Lafayette, California.
Just a few miles away from the place
where those four were found,
police identified
two other murdered girls.
These two disappeared from the same place,
Lake Sammamish State Park.
They were 23-year-old Janice Ott...
and 18-year-old Denise Naslund.
[McChesney] The women were abducted
from entirely different locations,
but were ultimately found
up at Taylor Mountain.
And so, at that point,
we were quite sure that...
the women who had been missing
and the women who had been found
were all killed by the same person.
I began reporting
that this person was a serial killer.
So-- I think we were the first station
that began making that assumption
on the air.
Other reporters
then began jumping on the story.
[reporter] And Mackie, the Taylor Mountain
is sort of known as a lover's lane.
There's evidence to indicate it
if you look around the ground.
-Can you be a bit more specific, please?
-Can you formulate any hypothesis--
Can you formulate an hypothesis
that maybe this-- the subject, uh,
was first a lover, then a killer?
Well...
you can conjecture all you want on that,
but the problem that we have
in this-- these cases, is--
is different than most homicide cases.
We don't know the way they were killed.
So it's pretty hard to make
any judgment on this at all...
of how they were killed,
because all we've found is bones.
[McChesney] The remains
were found scattered apart,
affected and impacted by animals.
We didn't have the technology
that we have now.
We didn't have the DNA capabilities.
[young Keppel] The evidence that we
had initially found on our bodies...
was almost non-existent
It kind of sounds morbid to say this,
but we were hoping for another body
with more evidence on it
than what we could produce
from the ones we had.
[McChesney]
We still didn't have an offender named,
and it was still quite a mystery.
[birds chirping]
[Lucas] After working in Seattle,
I got the job with the TV station
in Denver, Colorado.
When I got there,
I realized that, by coincidence,
there was also a problem
with missing and murdered women
throughout Colorado.
I felt that I was following
this trail of terror
from the northwest to Colorado.
On January 12th, 1975, Caryn Campbell
disappeared from the Wildwood Inn.
[man] Caryn Campbell was
a young woman on vacation
with her fiancé, I believe,
and his children.
[female reporter]
Caryn Campbell sat with her fiancé,
Dr. Raymond Gadowski,
in front of a fire in the lobby
of the Wildwood Inn.
They had just finished dinner
at a restaurant, The Stew Pot.
Miss Campbell
wanted a magazine from her room.
About eight o'clock in the evening,
she caught the elevator
to the second floor.
That was the last time
Gadowski saw her alive.
Thirty-six days later, her nude body
was found almost three miles away.
Though the body was partially
destroyed by animals,
the coroner was able to establish
that Miss Campbell had died
about two hours after the dinner
at The Stew Pot on January 12th.
[Leidner] Caryn Campbell's family
must have gone
through all kinds of anguish.
Her body was found...
and it had been out there
for the greater part of the winter.
I can't imagine how they dealt with it.
I cannot imagine.
It was a big deal, because murders
didn't happen in Aspen.
And then there were at least
two other killings in Colorado.
[male reporter]
Two more women have gone missing.
Julie Cunningham,
a 26-year-old woman from Vale,
and Denise Oliverson,
a 24-year-old from Grand Junction.
Their whereabouts are unknown.
They both vanished without a witness,
without a sign, without anything.
[reporter] Colorado authorities
now add to their growing list
of missing and murdered women.
A coroner's report concludes
that it is possible
the same person killed these women.
Somebody was getting away with murders.
Many murders.
It had all of the elements
of what we feared
was going on in the northwest.
That was a pattern that somebody
should have looked at.
But these various police departments...
they weren't sharing information
across state lines.
[Bundy] The inherent shortcomings
of law enforcement
make the detection of crime
and the solution of crime
an extremely difficult process.
Defects in our system of law enforcement
permit the individual to get away with it.
[Michaud] Ted had pride in what he did.
He really thought of himself as a hunter,
and he took big game,
and he felt that he had achieved
something really special...
that nobody else had done
because he was so damn good at it.
[DaRonch] Almost a year later,
the police had no suspect
in my kidnapping.
I thought about it all the time.
I thought, "Why can't they find this man?"
The police watched my house constantly,
drove past all the time.
My dad slept
with his deer hunting rifle under his bed.
I tried to move on with my life,
but it was always in the back of my mind,
"Where is this guy?
Why can't they catch him?"
[Yocom] One night,
a highway patrolman, Bob Hayward,
was in a residential area
around Salt Lake City.
And he saw this VW automobile
driving down the street
with its lights off.
He became very suspicious
and tried to stop the vehicle.
It ran from him and he chased it...
and finally stopped it and pulled it over.
[Bundy] It was a freak occurrence
that brought me in contact with Hayward
at two o'clock in the morning.
We're talking about luck.
[Yocom] The driver was arrested
for failing to stop
at the command a police officer.
He was identified as Ted Bundy.
[man] Mr. Bundy wanted to hire a lawyer,
so he called me and said,
"I've been arrested,
and I need to see a lawyer."
Made an appointment and came in.
John O'Connell was the other lawyer
and eventually became lead counsel.
Initially, it just seemed
like a minor matter.
Misdemeanor charges.
Seemed to be just a big mistake
in a series of coincidences.
Here's a guy
that was a college graduate.
He was joining the LDS Church.
My secretary at the time
was a young lady who had dated him.
He seemed like, uh,
one of us, if you will.
But shortly thereafter,
prosecutors got in touch with me
and said, "We'd like you to come in
and talk to you about this guy."
We think there may be more to this
than meets the eye.
[female reporter]
Police found a brown gym bag in his car,
containing a ski mask, an ice pick,
some strips of torn sheet.
[Yocom] The items found in his vehicle
were very suspicious.
There was a pry bar, pantyhose,
there were handcuffs.
He also matched the description
of the individual
that had attempted
to kidnap Carol DaRonch.
So the investigation of Ted Bundy
began in earnest.
The police called to say
they had a suspect
and they want to know
if I could come down
and look at him in a lineup.
It was a relief to think
that they had caught someone.
Ted called me unexpectedly at home
and said that he was upset.
He explained to me
that he had been arrested
and that he was scheduled
the following day to be in a lineup.
His demeanor at that time
was unlike him.
He was usually so well ordered,
so... calm.
But there was something
very upsetting in this to him.
I could tell.
That made me, uh, suspicious.
[Yocom]
When Ted was brought in for a lineup,
he had changed his appearance completely
from the few days before.
He had his hair cut off and he changed
his part from one side to the other,
and he made himself look
completely different.
So we had to scramble
to get other people in the lineup
to look like him at the time.
It so happened the only people available
were law enforcement officers.
[DaRonch] They brought me
into the police station and sat me down.
And they had them walk out
and turn around and talk.
And I recognized him immediately.
The minute he walked in,
when I saw him walk, I knew it was him.
[Bundy] People built a case
around a non-existent eyewitness.
Eyewitness identification
was built by the police.
But I kept it together,
because there's no point
in destroying myself.
I have got to keep myself together.
I've got to keep my presence of mind.
Because as long as I do that,
I am going to beat these people.
[Lubeck] After those identifications,
he was charged very quickly
with the kidnapping.
And things changed from there,
as we got to know more.
[Michaud] The front page
of the Seattle Post Intelligencer
has a headline which reads,
"Is 'Utah Ted' the 'Seattle Ted?'"
[McChesney]
From that moment on, we thought,
"This might be the 'Ted'
that we were looking for."
[reporter] Is Ted Bundy indeed a suspect
in your cases in King County?
Well, it-- it's--
It's common knowledge that he is.
[Michaud] That is when the states
start talking to one another.
[male reporter]
Investigators from multiple Western states
are convening in Aspen today
to compare notes
on missing women cases
that could be connected
to Theodore Robert Bundy.
It's the first multi-state conference
of its kind.
[Keppel] We were wondering
if what happened to the Colorado victim
looks like what happened
to the Utah victim
and looks like what happened
to the Washington State victim.
[Yocom] There were
similar characteristics to the homicides.
But at the time,
the kidnapping case of Carol DaRonch
was the best case against Ted Bundy.
The next step was to put the case
together and, uh, bring it to trial.
The responsibility that was placed
on my shoulders is the lead prosecutor.
[Preece] The reaction
of the people in our church branch
that had known Ted
was one of incredulity.
They just knew that he was innocent
of all charges.
That was-- That was their feeling.
Surely, this couldn't be true
of Ted Bundy.
[Vortman] Ted called me up,
told me he was in jail in Utah.
And I said, "Okay, I'll come down
and see you, hold your hand."
I flew down to Salt Lake
and put myself up.
[Preece] The branch members wondered,
"What can we do to make people know
that he's not guilty?"
And they flocked to his defense.
[DaRonch] I remember
running into a woman in my subdivision,
and she had said, you know, "Carol,
are you sure you have the right guy?"
She was questioning me
just because he was a college student
and... charming,
good-looking, smart...
and it was frustrating.
[Lubeck]
We went to trial in February of '76.
There was a lot of publicity.
Ted wanted to be involved.
He would look up cases
and come to us with ideas.
He said, "I didn't do anything.
I'm not worried about it."
It was pretty evident
that he relished the fight.
Ted presented himself
as a clean-cut, boy-next-door type
and he had a following in the courtroom
that gave him a lot of confidence.
[reporter] You mentioned that it was, uh,
an education for the justice system.
How do you feel
about the justice system in general
based on your experience?
Well, I'm sure it works
and you've gotta have faith it'll work
or else you'd be reduced
to some kind of, uh...
you know, mumbling idiot.
Does that mean, uh, ultimately
you want to get involved
-in the criminal justice system?
-Well... [chuckles]
Um, a funny thing happened to me
on the way to labor law class one morning.
I got two weeks in the spa
on the third floor up here.
And, yes, I intend to complete
my legal education to become a lawyer
and be a damn good lawyer.
Uh, I think things are going to work out.
That's about all I can say.
[Yocom] Prior to the trial,
Ted had waived his right to a jury trial
and decided to try the case
before Judge Hanson without a jury,
so the judge would make the decision
on guilt or innocence alone
without a jury there.
[Lubeck]
We felt pretty good about the trial.
Carol DaRonch was not strong.
She wasn't real certain of herself.
[DaRonch]
There were tons of people at the trial.
I had never done anything
like that before and I was frightened.
[man] Did he look different today
than as you remembered him to?
He's looked different every time.
He's changed his appearance.
[man] Different all the time?
[DaRonch] I was on the stand for hours.
They were always trying to confuse me
or trip me up...
but I didn't care.
[Bundy]
When Carol DaRonch came to testify,
I was beside myself with rage.
Uh, she is turning into a professional
witness as far as I'm concerned.
I pointed at him and said,
"He was the one.
He was the man that tried to kidnap me."
[Bundy]
When I heard her go through that routine,
I got very, very angry and indignant.
And I got up and I pointed at the judge
and pointed at her
and I said, "She's lying.
She's lied before, and she's lying now.
[DaRonch]
I just thought he was really arrogant
and always had a smirk on his face.
[Bundy]
There is no right way for me to act.
I showed emotion.
You know what people said?
"See? He really can
get violent and angry."
And I don't care
what people think about how I act.
I act according to the way I think
is right and best for me at the time.
I just think he thought
he was gonna get away with it.
[male news anchor]
Theodore Robert Bundy, at age 25,
a Republican campaign worker
in Seattle.
At 28, a University of Utah law student.
At 29, a convicted Utah kidnapper.
[man] I just heard this afternoon that...
the Salt Lake prosecutors
had obtained a conviction.
And I just think they did
a thoroughly professional,
outstanding job,
and I congratulate them
on having succeeded.
[Lubeck]
During the sentencing proceedings,
Ted was eventually given
what is called a 90-day evaluation,
where he went to the Utah State Prison
for an evaluation.
[man] I was a psychologist
doing evaluations for the judge
about whether he wants to send the person
to prison or be put on probation.
The question was not whether or not
he committed the crime.
He'd been found guilty.
The question was
whether or not is he violent.
There were so many people who said,
"He couldn't have done these things.
He just doesn't have the personality."
And so that's what was so fascinating--
It was a big mystery.
And I like mysteries.
My introduction to Ted:
He walks toward me
with a smile on his face,
looking very nice.
You know, his clothes were pressed.
And...
he extended his hand and says,
"Hi, I'm Ted Bundy.
You must be Dr. Carlisle."
[Bundy] The psychologist--
Well, he was an asshole,
but there must be, uh...
some better words to describe
that kind of mentality.
I-- I probably spoke to him more often
during the time
I was at the Utah State Prison
than any other prison official.
[Carlisle] In essence, I says,
"Okay, Ted, to understand you.
I wanna talk about your life."
Bundy always painted
a very positive picture...
of his mother, of his grandparents.
[Bundy] Most of my close friends,
we played pee wee football.
I later went out for the track team.
I did well in academics.
Never had any trouble.
Not even a suggestion of trouble.
I talked to the family.
They thought he was wonderful.
[Mrs. Bundy] We still don't believe it.
It just-- just can't be.
I keep shaking my head, saying,
"How can this be?"
Because he had lots of friends,
very good student in school,
was a very normal, active boy.
[voice wavering]
Our son is the best son in the world.
[Carlisle]
I talked to a few people in Salt Lake.
I talked to some girlfriends.
There were those who said,
"No, there's another side.
There's a dark side of him."
One girl told me
they went swimming together...
and he pushes her head underwater
and holds it there.
He lets her up,
takes a breath,
he pushes her down again.
And she's thinking,
"He's trying to kill me."
And I found out that there was this big...
event that occurred, which I think
was really something powerful.
When he was about 14 years old,
in an old trunk,
he found his birth certificate
and in the spot where it says, "father,"
it said, "unknown."
So that's how he found out
that he was illegitimate.
[Michaud]
Ted's mother, Louise, became pregnant
and had him in a home for unwed mothers.
Then she left. She went home.
She didn't intend to keep the child.
But her father,
Ted's grandfather, insisted,
"No, you go back and get that boy
and bring him home."
[Carlisle] When I ask him about that,
he says, "Oh, that was no problem.
That didn't bother me at all."
[Bundy] This, of course,
this illegitimacy issue is...
for the amateur psychologist
it's the thing.
I mean, it's so stupid.
It just bugs the shit out of me.
I don't know what to do about it.
How many people are in fact--
find out that they are illegitimate,
or even adopted, at a later age?
It's normal.
Denial, denial, denial, denial.
To me, that was a big red flag.
[Bundy]
The prison psychologist hoped so much
that he himself would be responsible
for opening Ted Bundy up
for the world to see...
what was ticking inside
Bundy's obviously devious mind.
[Michaud] It turns out that
Ted's grandfather had a violent streak.
And there was ample reason to suspect
that Ted suffered
some sort of abuse as a child,
psychological or physical.
[Carlisle] We were getting close
to the end of all this interviewing,
and Ted and I were standing
outside the office.
He says,
"Al, do you believe I killed those girls
that they suspect me of in the Northwest?"
And I hadn't mentioned them.
And I paused for just a moment.
What I said was,
"Ted, I don't know, but I think
if you did, you'll do it again."
He just looked at me for just a moment...
and then he went back
down the corridor to his cell.
And I submitted my report to the judge
saying that it was my opinion
that Ted had a violent side to him.
Judge Hanson sentenced him
to the Utah State Prison for,
under Utah law, what's called
an indeterminate term of one to 15 years.
After he was sentenced to prison,
I stayed in touch with him quite closely,
much, much more so than any other client.
And I went to see him frequently
at the prison.
[Bundy] I was in the visiting area
of maximum security
at the Utah State Prison
with Bruce Lubeck.
Bruce and I had been talking
for no more than 15 minutes
when the steel doors
to security slid open.
And into the room walked three men.
They approached me and said,
"Mr. Bundy, we have here...
the warrant for your arrest for the murder
of Caryn Campbell in Colorado.
Bundy became an interest to Colorado
because of good detective work.
There was circumstantial evidence
that put Bundy
in the Wildwood Inn, in Snowmass.
[Yocom]
We had found, through a search warrant,
in Ted's apartment in Salt Lake,
a brochure advertising the Wildwood Inn
where Caryn Campbell was staying.
We gave that over to Colorado.
[Michaud] Then the police in Colorado
got Ted's gas slips,
and they could place him
within a few miles of Caryn Campbell
on the night she disappeared.
[Yocom] A witness came forward
as seeing him in the elevator
on the very day that Caryn was missing.
[Leidner] He was, uh, charged
first-degree murder with premeditation,
which would have carried,
at that time, the death penalty.
Utah allowed him to be extradited back
to Colorado, which is very unusual.
But the Colorado case involved a murder,
so it was more serious.
[male news anchor] It was thought
Bundy would fight extradition,
but this morning he told a Utah judge
he was ready to go to Colorado.
[female reporter]
Why did Ted decide to wave extradition?
Well, he is confident
that he can win in Colorado.
He's confident that he can go
over there, stand trial, and win.
And that's what he's gonna do.
[Yocom] He was placed
in a jail in Aspen, awaiting trial there.
[Lubeck] When he went to Colorado,
we began to see a good deal of change
in Mr. Bundy, the way he...
reacted to the legal system.
I went over to visit him in county jail,
which was a trip back in history.
Down in the basement, low ceiling, bars--
Just the classic old jail.
Down there, he had gotten in a row
with one of the guards.
A very innocuous comment
was made by the guard,
but he got really, really angry.
Red face, teeth bared, shaking...
They were treating him
just like everyone else.
Like he was nothing special
and he couldn't endure it.
[Bundy] I don't like being locked up.
I don't like my liberty taken away,
and I don't like
being treated like an animal,
and I don't like
people walking around and ogling me
like I'm some sort of weirdo,
because I'm not.
Uh, being in prison...
going through a kind of hell...
matures a person, and I-- I think it's--
it's done good things for me.
[Leidner]
He wasn't one of my favorite clients.
He was very egocentric.
When I would go to visit him,
the only thing he would talk about
is himself.
He wouldn't talk about the case.
He wouldn't talk
about the cases in other states.
The conversations were completely vapid
and devoid of any content.
Yeah, I know more about the--
My class is graduating in about a month.
From law school.
I'll bet you I know more about law
than any of them.
[woman] How does it make you feel
that they are graduating?
That pisses me off. [chuckles]
Now, that does piss me off.
[female reporter] Bundy spends his life
inside this 16-cell county jail.
He gets up at 6:30 in the morning,
walks, he says,
about two miles a day, pacing his cell.
But he spends most of his time
preparing his defense.
First of all, I guess I should just ask
how are you doing up here.
It's a-- It's a--
short question
deserving a long answer. Uh...
I'm doing well. I feel good. Uh...
Working hard on my case.
Uh...
Need a lot more sun
and a lot more fresh air.
But other than that, I'm doing okay.
[woman] Do you get fresh air? Sun?
Do you get out at all?
Well, I get to go to the library.
[chuckles] It's a 50-yard walk from here
across the parking lot to the library.
That's my fresh air.
[reporter] Ted, when you left Salt Lake,
when you were extradited,
you issued a statement saying...
you feel that...
everything will turn out all right,
that you are innocent.
Do you still feel that?
You bet. Yeah, more than ever.
I feel good about it,
and yes, I feel that I'm right,
and yes, I feel I'm going to make it.
No doubt in my mind.
Gotta stick it up here more.
Let me ask just a question here now, okay?
You are not guilty?
No, I'm not guilty. [laughs]
Does that include the time I stole
a comic book when I was five years old?
[chuckles] I am not guilty of the charges
which have been filed against me.
And the allegations?
-And the allegations.
-And the rumors, and--
I don't know all of what
you're speaking about, Lucky.
It's too broad, and I can't
get into it in any detail.
Uh...
But I'm satisfied with-- with my...
blanket statement that I'm innocent.
Uh, no man is truly innocent.
I mean, we all transgressed
in some way in our lives.
And as I say I...
I've been, uh...
impolite and other things
I regret having done in my life,
uh, but...
nothing like the things
I think that you're referring to.
[female reporter] Have you ever
physically harmed anyone?
"Ever physically harmed anyone"?
No.
No.
You know, uh...
Again, not in the context
I think that you're speaking of.
You know? [inhales]
[male reporter]
Do you think about getting out of here?
Well... [chuckles]
Well, legally, sure. [chuckles]
[Bundy] As the months and weeks
wore on into spring,
I think that one opportunity
after another passed,
and I became more and more
impatient with myself.
I psyched, psyched, psyched
myself up for weeks.
And literally, it took-- it took weeks.
I began jumping off the top bunk
in my cell in the Garfield County jail.
Jumping again and again and again
off the top bunk to the floor
to strengthen my legs for the impact.
I measured,
mentally measured the distance
from the corner of the courthouse
to the alley
and from the alley to the riverbed
and from the riverbed to the mountains.
And I measured my cell
and I ran those distances.
I ran those distances again and again.
I practiced how rapidly
I could change my clothes
from my courtroom attire
to my shorts, and...
I, uh, got a haircut...
so that I had a different appearance.
Finally I stood right before it.
I hesitated.
You cannot believe the thoughts
that flipped through my mind.
I could be free.
The windows were open and the fresh air
is blowing through and the sky was blue.
And I said, "I'm ready to go,"
and I walked to the window and jumped out.
[laughs]
Join us now. Sisterhood is powerful.
The battle cry
of the Women's Liberation Movement
brings out down New York's Fifth Avenue
as more than 10,000 militant feminists
stage a one-day strike for equal rights.
[woman] In the late '60s and '70s,
the women's movement opened up
a number of doors
for women to have choices
to be whatever they wanted to be.
Equal rights. Equal rights to have a job,
to have respect,
to not be viewed as a piece of meat.
[McChesney] There was
a lot more Independence,
a lot more empowerment.
[woman] This will continue
as a political coalition
to win the unfinished revolution
of women's equality.
[McChesney] Women were a lot freer.
Hitchhiking, for example,
was not a big deal.
But because there was
more of an open society,
new types of crimes against women
became more common.
And in the Pacific Northwest at the time,
there was someone...
evil out there...
doing really horrible things to women.
[Bundy] A person of this type
chooses his victims for a reason.
His victims are young attractive women.
Women are possessions.
Beings which are subservient,
more often than not, to males.
Women are merchandise.
From the pornographic, through Playboy,
right on up to the evening news.
So there is no denying
the sexual component.
However, sex has significance
only in the context
of a much broader scheme of things.
That is possession, control, violence.
[theme music playing]
[male reporter] Police are focused in
on their investigation into the cases
of missing women in Washington State.
[reporter #2] King County police launched
their investigation after Denise Naslund
and Janice Ott disappeared
from Lake Sammamish State Park.
A special 11-man task force
was flooded with calls from witnesses
who said they had seen the suspect:
a man who called himself Ted.
[man] Eight women disappeared
in and around Washington State
over six months.
As far as I was concerned,
it was new territory.
[man] All the girls
were between the ages of 18 and 21,
four of the girls attended,
were attending colleges.
Same hairstyle...
all very similar in appearance,
and when they disappeared,
they left their personal effects.
[Keppel] Everybody we could find,
anybody who'd call in, we talked to.
[man] Thank you very much for calling.
[man #2] Police were getting reports
that Ted was at Central State College
and at the Seattle Tavern,
where two other girls had disappeared.
And soon, Ted was being spotted
behind every tree, behind every bush.
[McChesney]
We were working 12, 14 hours a day
nearly every day of the week.
We weren't sure if we had a suspect
whose name was really Ted or not,
but that name
brought forth thousands of leads.
We looked through databases,
driver's licenses,
criminal records to see who we had
that might be Ted or Theodore.
Middle name, first name, uh, nickname.
We were also looking for someone
driving a light brown Volkswagen Bug.
[Keppel] I don't know
if you know how many Bugs
there were in the State of Washington
during that time.
You wanna guess?
Forty-two thousand.
That's what we were dealing with.
Masses of information.
[McChesney]
We started with literally 1,000 names.
Then we looked at suspects
who we had maybe of the name of Ted
who drove that kind of a car,
whom perhaps people had reported
as being a little strange.
We put all those things together
and we narrowed the number
of potential offenders down to 100.
But at that time,
we didn't have enough resources
to manage the data quickly.
Everything was slow.
[man] This is a little different
than, uh, most homicide cases.
We have witnesses that observed
our suspect, quote, "Ted."
I think one of these days we'll find him.
I don't--
I can't tell you when, but we will.
[man] After several weeks
of conversations with Ted on death row,
when he started
talking in the third person,
that was the breakthrough.
Our relationship changed
at that moment...
from me being
just another goddamn reporter
to me being the conduit for Ted
being able to finally tell this story.
[Bundy]
Now let's consider the possibility
that this person suffered
from some sort of acute onset
of a desire
that resulted in killing young women.
How do you account for it?
[Michaud]
Ted started laying out the history
of what he
would soon come to call "the entity."
At its start, it's just a feeling.
First, this individual,
as he called himself,
developed a pornography habit.
[Bundy] The early manifestations
of this condition,
which is an interest
concerning sexual images.
[Michaud] Mm-hmm.
[Bundy] Your standard fare
that you'd see in the movie house
or in Playboy magazine.
[Michaud] Gradually, this kind
of malign part of this individual
started connecting...
naked women with violence.
[Bundy] The interest becomes skewed
toward a more specialized literature--
some of it pretty grotesque,
which would preoccupy him
more and more.
I asked him,
"When does this individual first act out?"
[Bundy] It would reach a point
where the anger, the frustration,
the anxiety, the poor self-image
feeling cheated, wronged, insecure...
he decides upon young attractive women
being his victims.
The feeling grew and grew
until the entity controlled him,
and he would hear a voice
and he did as the entity told him to do.
[Bundy] One particular evening,
he was driving down a fairly dark street,
and saw a girl walking along the street.
And parked his car
and ran up behind the girl
and she heard him, she turned around,
and he brandished the knife,
and grabbed her by the arm,
and told her to do what wanted her to do.
When he really got going,
his eyes went absolutely black.
He had very blue eyes,
but his eyes would go black.
[Bundy] Let's say he placed his hands
around her throat
just to throttle her into unconsciousness
so that she wouldn't scream anymore.
When the need
of that malignant condition
had been satisfied
through sexual release,
he realized
that he couldn't let the girl go.
So killing, to a degree,
will become a way of destroying evidence.
But the act of killing
becomes an end in itself.
[indistinct chatter]
[man] Steven had got Ted
talking in the third person.
So we had a meeting, the three of us.
It was very strange, sitting...
a few feet...
three feet from a... guy like that.
He would not look me
in the eye very often.
I found myself,
and this sort of strange...
I would almost be mesmerized
for a few moments...
looking at his hands.
Thinking, "My God,
what did those hands do?"
[McChesney] After approximately a month,
there was nothing new really coming in.
[indistinct chatter]
Okay, what address does she have?
[McChesney] The big leap came
when we received a call from a woman
who said,
"I'm concerned about my boyfriend
named Ted Bundy,
whom you should look at."
[young Keppel] This will be an interview
with Elizabeth Kloepfer. K-L-O-E-P-F-E-R.
Are you aware
that this interview is being taped?
[Kloepfer] Yes.
-[Keppel] Is it taped with your approval?
-Yes.
[Michaud] Ted and Liz
had a very complex relationship.
Their relationship
had started rocking back and forth,
and it left Liz in a real mess.
There were these hints
that there was something deeper
and more complex about Ted
than she had previously suspected.
[Kloepfer] Uh, he... mentioned an incident
about following a sorority girl.
When he was out late at night,
he would follow people like that.
That he'd try not to, but--
but he just did it anyway.
[Michaud] She found a bag
of women's underclothing
in his apartment.
She found a bowl filled with house keys.
There was some plaster of Paris
and some bandages.
Another time she found a knife
under the right front seat of his car.
[Kloepfer] The night
that Brenda Ball... disappeared,
he'd been with me and my family,
and he left early in the evening
and then the next day was late to my...
daughter's baptism.
And then he said,
"It's pretty scary, isn't it?"
[McChesney] She reported
suspicious behavior on his part,
and she was, frankly, afraid.
But she was not certain.
[Kloepfer] In my own mind,
there were coincidences
that seemed to tie him in.
Yet when I would think
about our day-to-day relationship,
there was nothing there
that would lead me to think
that he was a violent man
capable of doing something like that.
[McChesney] We had a lot of women
who called and said,
"I'm concerned
that my boyfriend might be this offender."
Whether his name was Ted or not.
But this Ted was about the right age,
he was
about the right physical description.
He was familiar
with the University of Washington
because he lived
in the university district.
He did have that kind of a car.
So there were a lot of things
that started to add up.
[Keppel] We even found information
that this Ted had been
to Lake Sammamish State Park
the weekend before
the Lake Sammamish event happened.
[McChesney] So, where was Ted Bundy
on these various days
when those women went missing?
Was he anywhere where somebody
could provide an alibi for him?
As it turned out,
as we continued to look at his life,
there wasn't any alibi.
So Ted was a... absolutely prime suspect.
[Bundy] After Lake Sammamish,
they were working from a list
of hundreds upon hundreds of leads.
So the emphasis becomes
on don't get caught.
Then it becomes a matter
of disposing of the problem...
without leaving any, uh, evidence.
[man] They finally had
their first possible suspect.
At that point,
the captain of Seattle homicide,
he had me do some ride-alongs
with some of his detectives,
staking out a suspect
at the University of Washington.
I was in the back seat
of an undercover car
with two plain-clothed policemen
staking out somebody.
We just sat there all night long
on a radio, listening for...
any movement of his car,
and there never was.
And I didn't know at the time, in fact,
didn't realize until some time later,
it was Ted Bundy's car.
[McChesney] At that point,
we did have a photograph of Ted.
and we prepared photo lineups
and showed to witnesses
who had been
at Lake Sammamish Park.
[reporter] The photograph of Ted Bundy
was shown to at least eight witnesses
from Lake Sammamish.
Seven positively said
Ted Bundy was not the mysterious Ted.
[McChesney] It was a surprise
that they felt that it was not him.
So, we didn't have
definitive identification
that this indeed was the person
who had committed these crimes.
But I certainly wish that we had.
There were no fingerprints.
There were no eyewitnesses.
There was nothing physically
that would connect Ted to the crimes.
They had nothing to charge him with.
Ted was never brought in
for an official police interview.
[Bundy]
I suppose they could be faulted for not...
actually coming out and talking to me,
but on the other hand
they can't be faulted.
Which one are they gonna pick,
the law student
with no criminal background
or are they going to go after
the guy with the...
arrest record for robbery,
or you know, the types?
The real weirdos.
People don't realize that murderers
do not come out in the dark
with long teeth
and saliva dripping off their chin.
Everybody wanted this Ted
to be somebody you could pick out.
He wasn't that way.
[Keppel] We didn't have
any information at that time
that we could have charged Bundy
with murder.
That's what people don't understand.
[female reporter]
Where does this investigation now stand?
Police officials will not discuss
this King County investigation
because it is still an active case.
No one will or can confirm
that the investigation
continues on other suspects.
[McChesney] In any investigation,
you will reach some point
where you run out of leads.
So we stopped
the full task force at that point.
But there was also the fact
that the murders had seemed to stop.
So we didn't know
if the person had died,
had left the area, had just stopped...
committing these crimes on their own.
[male reporter]
What it was evident this spring
that the investigation
had reached a dead end,
police admitted
that they could only catch Ted
if he committed another crime
and got caught.
[Bundy] I loved Utah.
I decided that I was moving down there
in September of '74.
Hopped on the interstate
going south toward Provo.
All of a sudden I felt--
I felt almost euphoric.
I just looked out the window
and watched the scenery and...
dreamed and reminisced and...
generally maintained
a real good feeling I had
all the way into Utah.
Ted moved to Salt Lake City
to start law school
at the University of Utah.
I did not understand
why Ted went off to Utah for law school.
I advised him to go
to University of Puget Sound.
'Cause that was the school
I was going to.
But he was insistent
and I was surprised
that he went off to Utah.
[Bundy]
We are dealing with an individual
whose primary concern
is not to be detected.
The individual's modus operandi was
-moving large amounts of distance...
-Mm-hmm.
...in an attempt
to camouflage what he was doing.
And that he was also
able to take advantage
of the anonymity factor.
[Michaud] The Ted people saw in Utah
was pretty much the same
mild-mannered law student
that he projected
in the State of Washington.
And that's what Ted did,
he snowed people.
[man] Ted Bundy befriended me in 1974.
I was what we call a branch president
in the Mormon church.
One day, two members in our branch
had knocked on the door of, uh, Ted Bundy.
They got talking
and he expressed an interest.
Eventually,
he became a member of the church.
He was baptized...
and then he was placed in our branch.
♪ Put your shoulder to the wheel... ♪
[Bundy] He's probably so caught up
in living a dual life that...
he'd been enmeshed
in that continuing cycle
of trying to maintain a normal life.
He would modify his behavior
to make him a sound, stable,
law-abiding individual.
[Preece]
I felt that he was a handsome young man
that seemed to have his life
pretty much in order.
He came to the activities.
He came to the church meetings and, uh...
responded in a positive way.
So I thought that things were
good for him for the future.
[woman] Summer of '74 was just fun.
A fun summer.
I was 18.
Graduated from high school
and got a job at the local phone company.
I had gotten a car, '74 Camaro.
Maroon with black leather seats
and a black top.
[laughs]
And I just started dating a guy
who had a matching Camaro.
Everything was great.
I wasn't worried about anything.
And then I heard about a girl
in a city next door, Midvale.
She had been found murdered.
She was a police chief's daughter.
It was very alarming,
but there wasn't a lot of information
to cause me to be in a panic.
[reporter] Melissa Smith left her father
to meet a friend
at this Midvale restaurant.
They talked for a while
and then Melissa left.
She set for home. She never got there.
Nine days later, Melissa's body
was found in Summit County.
She had been beaten
and strangled with a nylon stocking.
I don't want another parent
to go through
what my wife and I went through.
I don't think that's right.
I want to know that--
that the young girls
are safe on the street.
[Michaud] In the Autumn of 1974,
there were two other disappearances
in the state of Utah.
Nancy Wilcox vanished
after leaving her house.
Her body was never found.
Another girl
by the name of Laura Aime
also vanished and was later found
in the Wasatch Mountains.
She had been bludgeoned and raped.
[man] People were very very worried.
I was the assistant prosecutor,
uh, for the Salt Lake County
Attorney's Office.
The number of missing and dead girls
was certainly an unusual occurrence.
We didn't connect our cases
to the missing girls in the Seattle area.
You wouldn't ever think
in your wildest dreams
there was a serial killer
in the community.
[DaRonch]
November 8, 1974. It was a Friday.
I didn't really have plans that night.
So I decided that I would get in my car
and head over for the mall.
I drove to the parking lot,
parked under a light,
and walked into the mall.
Started looking in a bookstore window.
And as I was looking in the window,
a man approached me.
He said he was a police officer.
He said, "Well, we found someone
trying to break into your car."
He was polite.
He asked me if I wanted
to come out to the car with him
and see if anything was missing.
So we got out to my car,
and I could see in the car
that nothing was missing.
And he kept leaning forward
like he wanted me
to look further in the car,
but I wouldn't.
I just said, "Nothing's missing."
And that's when he said,
"Well, they're holding this guy
down at the police station.
Do you have time
to come down there
and fill out a complaint against him?"
And then I said,
"Do you have some kind of identification?"
'Cause I-- I just was starting
to feel a little uneasy
and I thought I could smell alcohol.
And that's when he just promptly
pulled out his wallet
and showed me a badge,
and I went, "Oh, okay."
He drove a Volkswagen,
which I thought, "Well, that's
kind of odd, but maybe he's undercover."
And I got in.
He headed down a side street...
and then he suddenly pulled over
up on the side of a curb
by an elementary school.
And that's when I just started
freaking out, "What are we doing?"
And he grabbed my arm
and he got one handcuff on one wrist,
and he didn't get the other one on,
and the one was just dangling.
I had never been so frightened
in my entire life.
And I know this is cliché,
but my whole life went before my eyes.
I thought, "My God, my parents are
never gonna know what happened to me."
The next thing I knew,
he had pulled out a gun
and said, "I'll blow your head off."
I just thought, "Go ahead. Just go ahead.
Do it. Just kill me now."
But I just found the door,
jumped out of the car.
He came out after me,
and we struggled outside.
He had a crowbar.
He was trying to hit me over the head.
I had my hand on top.
I could feel it.
I just fought with all my might,
thrashing with him and fighting.
My fingers nails were all broken.
I remember
his beady, blank, lifeless eyes.
At that time, a car started coming
the other direction.
And that's when I broke loose
and ran to the car
I flew open their door
and jumped in on them,
and I said,
"Take me to the police station."
I was just hysterical.
I was very lucky and it was
really shocking to find out later
that he was so angry
that I had gotten away
he just drove somewhere else
and killed someone else.
[reporter] Debra Kent was attending a play
with Viewmont High School.
She left the play early
to pick up her brother.
Debbie never got to her car.
The same night
that Carol DaRonch was kidnapped,
Debbie Kent was abducted
in a parking lot north of Salt Lake.
Found in the parking lot
was a handcuff key.
And the key fit my handcuff
that I had had on me.
[reporter] Police believe the key
was from the same handcuffs
used to kidnap Carol DaRonch
four hours earlier, the same night
Debbie Kent disappeared.
[Michaud]
Now there's a witness and real evidence.
The police are starting
to make connections.
[McChesney]
It had been a number of months,
and we had run out of leads to pursue
for the missing women
in the State of Washington.
So, sometimes you have to rely
on people who might...
by circumstance,
find something.
[Lucas] I got a call from a friend
in the police department.
And he said,
"Get your butt up to Taylor Mountain."
I said, "What's going on?"
And he said, "Just go."
So I went up there with some
of the Seattle homicide detectives,
and, uh, they told me
that they had found bodies.
[Keppel]
It was a group of student foresters
marking trees on Taylor Mountain,
and they found the skull of Brenda Ball,
laying in the woods.
They called the Sheriff's Office
and we began a search ourselves
with our own search and rescue volunteers.
And we discovered, a hundred feet apart,
the remains of three other women.
It was pretty much of a nightmare.
[young Keppel]
We keep finding more and more everyday.
You get into that woods
and you just don't know what's in there.
It's so thick
and so overgrown with bushes...
that you could find anything,
you know...
uh, a couple of hours from now
or five minutes from now.
It doesn't matter.
[Michaud] What do you think
can be surmised about Taylor Mountain?
[Bundy]
About the Taylor Mountain crime scene?
We can make a reasonable guess...
that this individual was clearly trying
to cover up his crimes.
When a body was left there,
the animals in the area were doing,
you know,
his work for him.
And he would continue to go back there
simply because he had
his own garbage disposal.
[reporter] Remains of six missing girls
were found at the same site.
The skeletal remains
of 21-year-old Linda Ann Healy,
22-year-old Brenda Ball of Seattle,
18-year-old Susan Elaine Rancourt
of Anchorage, Alaska,
and 20-year-old Roberta Kathleen Parks
from Lafayette, California.
Just a few miles away from the place
where those four were found,
police identified
two other murdered girls.
These two disappeared from the same place,
Lake Sammamish State Park.
They were 23-year-old Janice Ott...
and 18-year-old Denise Naslund.
[McChesney] The women were abducted
from entirely different locations,
but were ultimately found
up at Taylor Mountain.
And so, at that point,
we were quite sure that...
the women who had been missing
and the women who had been found
were all killed by the same person.
I began reporting
that this person was a serial killer.
So-- I think we were the first station
that began making that assumption
on the air.
Other reporters
then began jumping on the story.
[reporter] And Mackie, the Taylor Mountain
is sort of known as a lover's lane.
There's evidence to indicate it
if you look around the ground.
-Can you be a bit more specific, please?
-Can you formulate any hypothesis--
Can you formulate an hypothesis
that maybe this-- the subject, uh,
was first a lover, then a killer?
Well...
you can conjecture all you want on that,
but the problem that we have
in this-- these cases, is--
is different than most homicide cases.
We don't know the way they were killed.
So it's pretty hard to make
any judgment on this at all...
of how they were killed,
because all we've found is bones.
[McChesney] The remains
were found scattered apart,
affected and impacted by animals.
We didn't have the technology
that we have now.
We didn't have the DNA capabilities.
[young Keppel] The evidence that we
had initially found on our bodies...
was almost non-existent
It kind of sounds morbid to say this,
but we were hoping for another body
with more evidence on it
than what we could produce
from the ones we had.
[McChesney]
We still didn't have an offender named,
and it was still quite a mystery.
[birds chirping]
[Lucas] After working in Seattle,
I got the job with the TV station
in Denver, Colorado.
When I got there,
I realized that, by coincidence,
there was also a problem
with missing and murdered women
throughout Colorado.
I felt that I was following
this trail of terror
from the northwest to Colorado.
On January 12th, 1975, Caryn Campbell
disappeared from the Wildwood Inn.
[man] Caryn Campbell was
a young woman on vacation
with her fiancé, I believe,
and his children.
[female reporter]
Caryn Campbell sat with her fiancé,
Dr. Raymond Gadowski,
in front of a fire in the lobby
of the Wildwood Inn.
They had just finished dinner
at a restaurant, The Stew Pot.
Miss Campbell
wanted a magazine from her room.
About eight o'clock in the evening,
she caught the elevator
to the second floor.
That was the last time
Gadowski saw her alive.
Thirty-six days later, her nude body
was found almost three miles away.
Though the body was partially
destroyed by animals,
the coroner was able to establish
that Miss Campbell had died
about two hours after the dinner
at The Stew Pot on January 12th.
[Leidner] Caryn Campbell's family
must have gone
through all kinds of anguish.
Her body was found...
and it had been out there
for the greater part of the winter.
I can't imagine how they dealt with it.
I cannot imagine.
It was a big deal, because murders
didn't happen in Aspen.
And then there were at least
two other killings in Colorado.
[male reporter]
Two more women have gone missing.
Julie Cunningham,
a 26-year-old woman from Vale,
and Denise Oliverson,
a 24-year-old from Grand Junction.
Their whereabouts are unknown.
They both vanished without a witness,
without a sign, without anything.
[reporter] Colorado authorities
now add to their growing list
of missing and murdered women.
A coroner's report concludes
that it is possible
the same person killed these women.
Somebody was getting away with murders.
Many murders.
It had all of the elements
of what we feared
was going on in the northwest.
That was a pattern that somebody
should have looked at.
But these various police departments...
they weren't sharing information
across state lines.
[Bundy] The inherent shortcomings
of law enforcement
make the detection of crime
and the solution of crime
an extremely difficult process.
Defects in our system of law enforcement
permit the individual to get away with it.
[Michaud] Ted had pride in what he did.
He really thought of himself as a hunter,
and he took big game,
and he felt that he had achieved
something really special...
that nobody else had done
because he was so damn good at it.
[DaRonch] Almost a year later,
the police had no suspect
in my kidnapping.
I thought about it all the time.
I thought, "Why can't they find this man?"
The police watched my house constantly,
drove past all the time.
My dad slept
with his deer hunting rifle under his bed.
I tried to move on with my life,
but it was always in the back of my mind,
"Where is this guy?
Why can't they catch him?"
[Yocom] One night,
a highway patrolman, Bob Hayward,
was in a residential area
around Salt Lake City.
And he saw this VW automobile
driving down the street
with its lights off.
He became very suspicious
and tried to stop the vehicle.
It ran from him and he chased it...
and finally stopped it and pulled it over.
[Bundy] It was a freak occurrence
that brought me in contact with Hayward
at two o'clock in the morning.
We're talking about luck.
[Yocom] The driver was arrested
for failing to stop
at the command a police officer.
He was identified as Ted Bundy.
[man] Mr. Bundy wanted to hire a lawyer,
so he called me and said,
"I've been arrested,
and I need to see a lawyer."
Made an appointment and came in.
John O'Connell was the other lawyer
and eventually became lead counsel.
Initially, it just seemed
like a minor matter.
Misdemeanor charges.
Seemed to be just a big mistake
in a series of coincidences.
Here's a guy
that was a college graduate.
He was joining the LDS Church.
My secretary at the time
was a young lady who had dated him.
He seemed like, uh,
one of us, if you will.
But shortly thereafter,
prosecutors got in touch with me
and said, "We'd like you to come in
and talk to you about this guy."
We think there may be more to this
than meets the eye.
[female reporter]
Police found a brown gym bag in his car,
containing a ski mask, an ice pick,
some strips of torn sheet.
[Yocom] The items found in his vehicle
were very suspicious.
There was a pry bar, pantyhose,
there were handcuffs.
He also matched the description
of the individual
that had attempted
to kidnap Carol DaRonch.
So the investigation of Ted Bundy
began in earnest.
The police called to say
they had a suspect
and they want to know
if I could come down
and look at him in a lineup.
It was a relief to think
that they had caught someone.
Ted called me unexpectedly at home
and said that he was upset.
He explained to me
that he had been arrested
and that he was scheduled
the following day to be in a lineup.
His demeanor at that time
was unlike him.
He was usually so well ordered,
so... calm.
But there was something
very upsetting in this to him.
I could tell.
That made me, uh, suspicious.
[Yocom]
When Ted was brought in for a lineup,
he had changed his appearance completely
from the few days before.
He had his hair cut off and he changed
his part from one side to the other,
and he made himself look
completely different.
So we had to scramble
to get other people in the lineup
to look like him at the time.
It so happened the only people available
were law enforcement officers.
[DaRonch] They brought me
into the police station and sat me down.
And they had them walk out
and turn around and talk.
And I recognized him immediately.
The minute he walked in,
when I saw him walk, I knew it was him.
[Bundy] People built a case
around a non-existent eyewitness.
Eyewitness identification
was built by the police.
But I kept it together,
because there's no point
in destroying myself.
I have got to keep myself together.
I've got to keep my presence of mind.
Because as long as I do that,
I am going to beat these people.
[Lubeck] After those identifications,
he was charged very quickly
with the kidnapping.
And things changed from there,
as we got to know more.
[Michaud] The front page
of the Seattle Post Intelligencer
has a headline which reads,
"Is 'Utah Ted' the 'Seattle Ted?'"
[McChesney]
From that moment on, we thought,
"This might be the 'Ted'
that we were looking for."
[reporter] Is Ted Bundy indeed a suspect
in your cases in King County?
Well, it-- it's--
It's common knowledge that he is.
[Michaud] That is when the states
start talking to one another.
[male reporter]
Investigators from multiple Western states
are convening in Aspen today
to compare notes
on missing women cases
that could be connected
to Theodore Robert Bundy.
It's the first multi-state conference
of its kind.
[Keppel] We were wondering
if what happened to the Colorado victim
looks like what happened
to the Utah victim
and looks like what happened
to the Washington State victim.
[Yocom] There were
similar characteristics to the homicides.
But at the time,
the kidnapping case of Carol DaRonch
was the best case against Ted Bundy.
The next step was to put the case
together and, uh, bring it to trial.
The responsibility that was placed
on my shoulders is the lead prosecutor.
[Preece] The reaction
of the people in our church branch
that had known Ted
was one of incredulity.
They just knew that he was innocent
of all charges.
That was-- That was their feeling.
Surely, this couldn't be true
of Ted Bundy.
[Vortman] Ted called me up,
told me he was in jail in Utah.
And I said, "Okay, I'll come down
and see you, hold your hand."
I flew down to Salt Lake
and put myself up.
[Preece] The branch members wondered,
"What can we do to make people know
that he's not guilty?"
And they flocked to his defense.
[DaRonch] I remember
running into a woman in my subdivision,
and she had said, you know, "Carol,
are you sure you have the right guy?"
She was questioning me
just because he was a college student
and... charming,
good-looking, smart...
and it was frustrating.
[Lubeck]
We went to trial in February of '76.
There was a lot of publicity.
Ted wanted to be involved.
He would look up cases
and come to us with ideas.
He said, "I didn't do anything.
I'm not worried about it."
It was pretty evident
that he relished the fight.
Ted presented himself
as a clean-cut, boy-next-door type
and he had a following in the courtroom
that gave him a lot of confidence.
[reporter] You mentioned that it was, uh,
an education for the justice system.
How do you feel
about the justice system in general
based on your experience?
Well, I'm sure it works
and you've gotta have faith it'll work
or else you'd be reduced
to some kind of, uh...
you know, mumbling idiot.
Does that mean, uh, ultimately
you want to get involved
-in the criminal justice system?
-Well... [chuckles]
Um, a funny thing happened to me
on the way to labor law class one morning.
I got two weeks in the spa
on the third floor up here.
And, yes, I intend to complete
my legal education to become a lawyer
and be a damn good lawyer.
Uh, I think things are going to work out.
That's about all I can say.
[Yocom] Prior to the trial,
Ted had waived his right to a jury trial
and decided to try the case
before Judge Hanson without a jury,
so the judge would make the decision
on guilt or innocence alone
without a jury there.
[Lubeck]
We felt pretty good about the trial.
Carol DaRonch was not strong.
She wasn't real certain of herself.
[DaRonch]
There were tons of people at the trial.
I had never done anything
like that before and I was frightened.
[man] Did he look different today
than as you remembered him to?
He's looked different every time.
He's changed his appearance.
[man] Different all the time?
[DaRonch] I was on the stand for hours.
They were always trying to confuse me
or trip me up...
but I didn't care.
[Bundy]
When Carol DaRonch came to testify,
I was beside myself with rage.
Uh, she is turning into a professional
witness as far as I'm concerned.
I pointed at him and said,
"He was the one.
He was the man that tried to kidnap me."
[Bundy]
When I heard her go through that routine,
I got very, very angry and indignant.
And I got up and I pointed at the judge
and pointed at her
and I said, "She's lying.
She's lied before, and she's lying now.
[DaRonch]
I just thought he was really arrogant
and always had a smirk on his face.
[Bundy]
There is no right way for me to act.
I showed emotion.
You know what people said?
"See? He really can
get violent and angry."
And I don't care
what people think about how I act.
I act according to the way I think
is right and best for me at the time.
I just think he thought
he was gonna get away with it.
[male news anchor]
Theodore Robert Bundy, at age 25,
a Republican campaign worker
in Seattle.
At 28, a University of Utah law student.
At 29, a convicted Utah kidnapper.
[man] I just heard this afternoon that...
the Salt Lake prosecutors
had obtained a conviction.
And I just think they did
a thoroughly professional,
outstanding job,
and I congratulate them
on having succeeded.
[Lubeck]
During the sentencing proceedings,
Ted was eventually given
what is called a 90-day evaluation,
where he went to the Utah State Prison
for an evaluation.
[man] I was a psychologist
doing evaluations for the judge
about whether he wants to send the person
to prison or be put on probation.
The question was not whether or not
he committed the crime.
He'd been found guilty.
The question was
whether or not is he violent.
There were so many people who said,
"He couldn't have done these things.
He just doesn't have the personality."
And so that's what was so fascinating--
It was a big mystery.
And I like mysteries.
My introduction to Ted:
He walks toward me
with a smile on his face,
looking very nice.
You know, his clothes were pressed.
And...
he extended his hand and says,
"Hi, I'm Ted Bundy.
You must be Dr. Carlisle."
[Bundy] The psychologist--
Well, he was an asshole,
but there must be, uh...
some better words to describe
that kind of mentality.
I-- I probably spoke to him more often
during the time
I was at the Utah State Prison
than any other prison official.
[Carlisle] In essence, I says,
"Okay, Ted, to understand you.
I wanna talk about your life."
Bundy always painted
a very positive picture...
of his mother, of his grandparents.
[Bundy] Most of my close friends,
we played pee wee football.
I later went out for the track team.
I did well in academics.
Never had any trouble.
Not even a suggestion of trouble.
I talked to the family.
They thought he was wonderful.
[Mrs. Bundy] We still don't believe it.
It just-- just can't be.
I keep shaking my head, saying,
"How can this be?"
Because he had lots of friends,
very good student in school,
was a very normal, active boy.
[voice wavering]
Our son is the best son in the world.
[Carlisle]
I talked to a few people in Salt Lake.
I talked to some girlfriends.
There were those who said,
"No, there's another side.
There's a dark side of him."
One girl told me
they went swimming together...
and he pushes her head underwater
and holds it there.
He lets her up,
takes a breath,
he pushes her down again.
And she's thinking,
"He's trying to kill me."
And I found out that there was this big...
event that occurred, which I think
was really something powerful.
When he was about 14 years old,
in an old trunk,
he found his birth certificate
and in the spot where it says, "father,"
it said, "unknown."
So that's how he found out
that he was illegitimate.
[Michaud]
Ted's mother, Louise, became pregnant
and had him in a home for unwed mothers.
Then she left. She went home.
She didn't intend to keep the child.
But her father,
Ted's grandfather, insisted,
"No, you go back and get that boy
and bring him home."
[Carlisle] When I ask him about that,
he says, "Oh, that was no problem.
That didn't bother me at all."
[Bundy] This, of course,
this illegitimacy issue is...
for the amateur psychologist
it's the thing.
I mean, it's so stupid.
It just bugs the shit out of me.
I don't know what to do about it.
How many people are in fact--
find out that they are illegitimate,
or even adopted, at a later age?
It's normal.
Denial, denial, denial, denial.
To me, that was a big red flag.
[Bundy]
The prison psychologist hoped so much
that he himself would be responsible
for opening Ted Bundy up
for the world to see...
what was ticking inside
Bundy's obviously devious mind.
[Michaud] It turns out that
Ted's grandfather had a violent streak.
And there was ample reason to suspect
that Ted suffered
some sort of abuse as a child,
psychological or physical.
[Carlisle] We were getting close
to the end of all this interviewing,
and Ted and I were standing
outside the office.
He says,
"Al, do you believe I killed those girls
that they suspect me of in the Northwest?"
And I hadn't mentioned them.
And I paused for just a moment.
What I said was,
"Ted, I don't know, but I think
if you did, you'll do it again."
He just looked at me for just a moment...
and then he went back
down the corridor to his cell.
And I submitted my report to the judge
saying that it was my opinion
that Ted had a violent side to him.
Judge Hanson sentenced him
to the Utah State Prison for,
under Utah law, what's called
an indeterminate term of one to 15 years.
After he was sentenced to prison,
I stayed in touch with him quite closely,
much, much more so than any other client.
And I went to see him frequently
at the prison.
[Bundy] I was in the visiting area
of maximum security
at the Utah State Prison
with Bruce Lubeck.
Bruce and I had been talking
for no more than 15 minutes
when the steel doors
to security slid open.
And into the room walked three men.
They approached me and said,
"Mr. Bundy, we have here...
the warrant for your arrest for the murder
of Caryn Campbell in Colorado.
Bundy became an interest to Colorado
because of good detective work.
There was circumstantial evidence
that put Bundy
in the Wildwood Inn, in Snowmass.
[Yocom]
We had found, through a search warrant,
in Ted's apartment in Salt Lake,
a brochure advertising the Wildwood Inn
where Caryn Campbell was staying.
We gave that over to Colorado.
[Michaud] Then the police in Colorado
got Ted's gas slips,
and they could place him
within a few miles of Caryn Campbell
on the night she disappeared.
[Yocom] A witness came forward
as seeing him in the elevator
on the very day that Caryn was missing.
[Leidner] He was, uh, charged
first-degree murder with premeditation,
which would have carried,
at that time, the death penalty.
Utah allowed him to be extradited back
to Colorado, which is very unusual.
But the Colorado case involved a murder,
so it was more serious.
[male news anchor] It was thought
Bundy would fight extradition,
but this morning he told a Utah judge
he was ready to go to Colorado.
[female reporter]
Why did Ted decide to wave extradition?
Well, he is confident
that he can win in Colorado.
He's confident that he can go
over there, stand trial, and win.
And that's what he's gonna do.
[Yocom] He was placed
in a jail in Aspen, awaiting trial there.
[Lubeck] When he went to Colorado,
we began to see a good deal of change
in Mr. Bundy, the way he...
reacted to the legal system.
I went over to visit him in county jail,
which was a trip back in history.
Down in the basement, low ceiling, bars--
Just the classic old jail.
Down there, he had gotten in a row
with one of the guards.
A very innocuous comment
was made by the guard,
but he got really, really angry.
Red face, teeth bared, shaking...
They were treating him
just like everyone else.
Like he was nothing special
and he couldn't endure it.
[Bundy] I don't like being locked up.
I don't like my liberty taken away,
and I don't like
being treated like an animal,
and I don't like
people walking around and ogling me
like I'm some sort of weirdo,
because I'm not.
Uh, being in prison...
going through a kind of hell...
matures a person, and I-- I think it's--
it's done good things for me.
[Leidner]
He wasn't one of my favorite clients.
He was very egocentric.
When I would go to visit him,
the only thing he would talk about
is himself.
He wouldn't talk about the case.
He wouldn't talk
about the cases in other states.
The conversations were completely vapid
and devoid of any content.
Yeah, I know more about the--
My class is graduating in about a month.
From law school.
I'll bet you I know more about law
than any of them.
[woman] How does it make you feel
that they are graduating?
That pisses me off. [chuckles]
Now, that does piss me off.
[female reporter] Bundy spends his life
inside this 16-cell county jail.
He gets up at 6:30 in the morning,
walks, he says,
about two miles a day, pacing his cell.
But he spends most of his time
preparing his defense.
First of all, I guess I should just ask
how are you doing up here.
It's a-- It's a--
short question
deserving a long answer. Uh...
I'm doing well. I feel good. Uh...
Working hard on my case.
Uh...
Need a lot more sun
and a lot more fresh air.
But other than that, I'm doing okay.
[woman] Do you get fresh air? Sun?
Do you get out at all?
Well, I get to go to the library.
[chuckles] It's a 50-yard walk from here
across the parking lot to the library.
That's my fresh air.
[reporter] Ted, when you left Salt Lake,
when you were extradited,
you issued a statement saying...
you feel that...
everything will turn out all right,
that you are innocent.
Do you still feel that?
You bet. Yeah, more than ever.
I feel good about it,
and yes, I feel that I'm right,
and yes, I feel I'm going to make it.
No doubt in my mind.
Gotta stick it up here more.
Let me ask just a question here now, okay?
You are not guilty?
No, I'm not guilty. [laughs]
Does that include the time I stole
a comic book when I was five years old?
[chuckles] I am not guilty of the charges
which have been filed against me.
And the allegations?
-And the allegations.
-And the rumors, and--
I don't know all of what
you're speaking about, Lucky.
It's too broad, and I can't
get into it in any detail.
Uh...
But I'm satisfied with-- with my...
blanket statement that I'm innocent.
Uh, no man is truly innocent.
I mean, we all transgressed
in some way in our lives.
And as I say I...
I've been, uh...
impolite and other things
I regret having done in my life,
uh, but...
nothing like the things
I think that you're referring to.
[female reporter] Have you ever
physically harmed anyone?
"Ever physically harmed anyone"?
No.
No.
You know, uh...
Again, not in the context
I think that you're speaking of.
You know? [inhales]
[male reporter]
Do you think about getting out of here?
Well... [chuckles]
Well, legally, sure. [chuckles]
[Bundy] As the months and weeks
wore on into spring,
I think that one opportunity
after another passed,
and I became more and more
impatient with myself.
I psyched, psyched, psyched
myself up for weeks.
And literally, it took-- it took weeks.
I began jumping off the top bunk
in my cell in the Garfield County jail.
Jumping again and again and again
off the top bunk to the floor
to strengthen my legs for the impact.
I measured,
mentally measured the distance
from the corner of the courthouse
to the alley
and from the alley to the riverbed
and from the riverbed to the mountains.
And I measured my cell
and I ran those distances.
I ran those distances again and again.
I practiced how rapidly
I could change my clothes
from my courtroom attire
to my shorts, and...
I, uh, got a haircut...
so that I had a different appearance.
Finally I stood right before it.
I hesitated.
You cannot believe the thoughts
that flipped through my mind.
I could be free.
The windows were open and the fresh air
is blowing through and the sky was blue.
And I said, "I'm ready to go,"
and I walked to the window and jumped out.
[laughs]