The Stranger Beside Me

by Ann Rule

  “Reddy Communications of Akron, Ohio—owners of the popular Reddy Kilowatt logo—will prepare a special gold medallion for the event with the inscription, ‘Die Quicker Electrically.’ The medallions will be on sale … Proceeds will help defray the tremendous costs associated with Bundy’s prosecution, incarceration, and ultimate execution …”

  It was, of course, a macabre prank, and had not come from Graham’s office. Yet, it reflected the sentiment of Florida residents about Ted. Their feelings had not changed much since his Miami trial.

  As the March 4 date drew nearer, it seemed that Ted was going to die within the week.

  And then, on February 25, a Washington, D.C., law firm announced that it would represent Ted without payment. Polly J. Nelson, an attorney from the firm, however, said that they had not yet decided if they would request a stay of execution.

  “… We’re investigating whether it’s advisable …”

  On February 27th the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution—until April 11, 1986.

  Assistant State Attorney Jack Poitinger, who was chief of detectives in Leon County in January 1978 when the Chi Omega attack took place, predicted that it would be a long time before Ted was actually electrocuted. “Ted’s used to manipulating the system all along. He’ll do nothing until the eleventh hour and come forth with a flurry of things.”

  Inside Raiford Prison, the word was that Ted Bundy would probably be executed sometime in the fall of 1986. One week before the date listed on his final death warrant, the lights will dim in Raiford as the chair is tested. That is not a macabre rumor. It really happens.

  In the early morning of the date itself, whenever that date would be, Ted would be led down the long, long walk to “Old Sparky,” and a black rubber mask pulled down over his face. So that he would not see death coming? Or, more likely, so that witnesses would not glimpse his face as the electricity jolts through his body.

  It seems ironic that Ted Bundy is in such superb physical condition. He has become a vegetarian. Because Florida State Prison dieticians do not cater to individual requests, it was necessary for him to change his religious affiliation once again. Born and raised a Methodist, converted to Mormonism just before his first arrest, he is now an avowed Hindu. He admits that it is a pragmatic conversion. As a Hindu, he has the legal right to be served a vegetarian and fish diet.

  His muscles are defined, his lung capacity is excellent, and his vegetarian diet prevents atheromatous deposits from clogging his arteries. When he dies, Ted Bundy will be in perfect health.

  Ted touched so many lives, in one way or another. Since this book was published, I have met a hundred people who once knew him—in separate segments of his compartmentalized world. All of them look a little stunned still. Not one has confided that he seemed destined for a bad end. And I have met a hundred more people who knew the victims. As I bend my head to autograph a book, someone murmurs, “I knew her—Georgeann … or Lynda … or Denise.” Once someone said, “That was my sister,” and twice, “She was my daughter. …”

  I did not know what to say to them.

  Nor did I know what to say to Ted when I wrote to him for the first time in six years. I wasn’t even sure why I wrote, except that it seemed to me that we had unfinished business. I mailed my letter the day after his death sentence was announced. I have had no answer. He may have torn up my letter.

  People go on as best they can. Several of the parents of

  Ted’s victims have died early, succumbing to heart attacks. The remains of Denise Naslund and Janice Ott were lost when the King County Medical Examiner’s Office moved. Their bones were cremated mistakenly with those of the unidentified dead. For Eleanore Rose, Denise’s mother, it was only the last in a series of blows. She had waited years so that she could give her daughter a proper burial. Denise’s room and her car remain as they were on July 14, 1974. Shrines.

  One of my callers about Ted was the Mormon friend who persuaded Ted to join the church in Utah in 1975. Even though Ted had not obeyed the no-smoking/no-drinking/no-drugs tenets of the Mormons, he had seemed earnest and sincere and good. The Mormon missionary remembered how incensed they had both been over the murders of Melissa Smith and Laura Aime.

  “We sat there at my kitchen table, and the newspapers were spread out between us, with all the headlines about the dead girls. And I remember how angry Ted was. He kept telling me that he’d like to get his hands on the man that would do something like that—he’d see he never had a chance to do it again. …”

  —ANN RULE March 2, 1986

  THE LAST CHAPTER—

  1989

  WHEN I WROTE the foregoing update in 1986, I never expected to hear from Ted again. Shortly after I’d mailed my updated manuscript, the letter I had sent to Ted in prison was returned marked “Refused.” I was not surprised. I assumed that Ted was still very angry with me. By refusing to even open my letter, he was letting me know that he no longer had any interest in my opinions. So be it.

  I tossed the still unopened letter into a drawer. Ted certainly was within his rights to remain annoyed with me.

  I don’t know what made me pick up that letter, weeks later, and stare at it. As I did, I detected an almost invisible strip of cellophane tape along the top of the envelope. Curious, I looked closer. The letter had been opened, but then someone had obviously resealed it! Had Ted been curious to see what I had to say, only to reseal my letter and mark it “Refused”?

  I peeled the tape off and looked inside. There was an institutional form letter tucked into my stationery. It read, “Reason for refusal: Contraband. See item checked below.”

  What possible contraband could I have sent to Ted? I saw that “Cash/or Personal Check” had been marked. A notation stipulated that only money orders could be sent to prisoners. I had sent Ted a small check to buy cigarettes, along with some stamps. He was facing the electric chair in the immediate future, or so it seemed. Money for cigarettes seemed a humane gesture. But my check had made my letter unacceptable at Raiford Prison. Maybe they’d had too many bad checks in the Florida State Prison mail room, and the prison’s commissary had been stuck with them.

  The question of whether Ted would read my letter was still open. With nothing to lose, I tried one more time to reach him. Time was growing short. I replaced the check with a money order and re-sent the letter.

  He answered.

  Indeed, Ted answered my letter on March 5, 1986. He was to have died the day before. His life was measured now in such short increments of time.

  Although I am skeptical of what can be read into our handwriting (and—because of the sheer number of requests—have long ago had to stop sending samples of my subjects’ writing to graphoanalysts), I must admit that I could see a rather profound change in Ted’s writing. I had not had a letter from him since 1980. In six years, during which he was locked in a single cell on Death Row, Ted’s hand had become even more cramped than before, with letters pushed together like the shoulders of too many men scrunched tightly in a small space.

  The first letter of what would prove to be a handful was a classic study in passive-aggression. I had written to try to explain to Ted what I knew was unexplainable. I wanted him to know that his death would not go unnoticed, or completely unmourned, by me. I had tried to say all that, without really saying it, not writing the words that seemed apparent, “Now that you are about to die—”

  In Ted’s reply, he thanked me politely for the stamps I’d sent. He then set about putting me in my place, slapping me down verbally, while still appearing above it all.

  As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to be gained by trying to sort through a lot of faded memories about what did and did not transpire between us, about your book, about your numerous public statements on serial murder. That’s water under the bridge. I have other matters to deal with.

  In all candor, I must say this much to you, Ann. Judging from the statements I have heard and read about you making on serial murder, I sugg
est you seriously reevaluate the opinions and conclusions you’ve formed. For whatever reason, you seem to have adopted a number of oversimplified, overgeneralized and scientifically unsupportable views on the subject. The net result of this is that by disseminating such views, no matter how well-intentioned you are, you will only succeed in misleading people about the true nature of the problem and thereby make them less able to effectively deal with it.

  Ted continued by saying that he “wouldn’t mind” talking to me again, “for the sake of talking,” but that he would not contribute to “any more books about Ted Bundy.”

  He ended this first short letter:

  I have no animosity toward you. I know you to be an essentially good person. I wish you the best

  Take care.

  peace,

  ted

  His style had grown ponderous and self-conscious. Locked up, virtually powerless at last, it was desperately important for Ted’s self-esteem that he be the best at something. All he knew was serial murder, and I had trampled on his territory.

  Anyone interested in the problem of serial murder undoubtedly had heard my views on the subject. At the invitation of Pierce R. Brooks, former captain of Homicide in the Los Angeles Police Department, and the creative mind behind the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VI-CAP) Task Force, I had joined the group in 1982 as one of five civilian advisors. Ted was only one of many serial killers I had written about—but it was the Ted Bundy case that was slated to be the prototype for the VI-CAP program—the clever, charismatic, roving killer. I presented my four-hour slide seminar on Bundy to the Task Force at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.

  Brooks believed that a central computerized tracking system could cut short the killing careers of serial killers who stalked America. So did representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, and state, county, and local law enforcement agencies. After years of work and lobbying, VI-CAP became a reality in June 1985 in Quantico, Virginia, where it was linked to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center’s computers. No longer could killers such as Ted Bundy travel and kill with impunity. VI-CAP followed them as they left a scarlet trail across America. And VI-CAP would be instrumental in stopping them before that trail became tragically long and convoluted.

  I often spoke on the need for the VI-CAP system, testified before a U.S. Senate judiciary subcommittee on serial murder, and had become a certified instructor for law enforcement, probation, parole, and corrections officers in both Oregon and California. I spoke not only on serial murder but on victimology and on women who killed.

  • • •

  Ted and I were each so far removed from our nights at the Crisis Clinic, fifteen years behind us now. I thought I detected a faint sound of a gauntlet being thrown down. He fancied himself the definitive expert on serial murder, and he was telling me that I was simplistic and misinformed.

  I was perfectly willing for Ted to find me inept, if it meant that he might open up. Ted Bundy might well be the all-time champion expert on serial murder. I was more than happy to listen. I wrote him a letter on March 13, 1986. In it, I listed my assessment of characteristics serial killers appeared to have in common, noting that it was impossible to line up serial killers in a row like so many ducks. My overview was only a general guideline, I stressed, drawn from commonalities I had winnowed out of the life stories of a number of killers who seemed to fit. I asked him to point out the areas where he found my reasoning and conclusions off base.

  To Ted, I wrote that I found serial killers were:

   Exclusively male.

   More likely to be Caucasian than black, and very rarely Indian or Asian.

   Brilliant, charming, and charismatic.

   Physically attractive.

   Hands-on killers who used their hands as a weapon: to bludgeon, choke, strangle, or knife victims.

   Killers who seldom used a gun (with the exception of David Berkowitz and Randy Woodfield).

   Travelers—men who moved constantly either around the city where they lived, or around the country, trolling for victims, putting many times the mileage on their vehicles than ordinary men did.

   Men who were full of rage, who killed to take the edge off that rage, and who employed sex in their murder scenario principally to demean their victims.

   Men addicted to murder—as an addict is addicted to drugs or liquor.

   Men who are fascinated by police work—who either spend time hanging around the police station, or who actually work as reserve officers or commissioned policemen.

   Men who seek a particular type of victim: women, children, vagrants, the elderly, homosexuals. Vulnerable victims.

   Men who employed a ruse or a device to lure victims away from help.

   Men who had suffered from some kind of child abuse under the age of five. I believed serial killers were very bright, sensitive children who were abused, abandoned, humiliated, rejected—during the time when their consciences should have been developing.

  It was a risky ploy, and I knew that I was right on the edge of offending Ted, angering him to the point that he would not respond. I explained that I felt that serial killers could not voluntarily stop killing, and that they stopped only when they were no longer able to overpower victims or when they were in prison or dead. I was telling him exactly what I told classes I spoke to, and what I had said on television dozens of times.

  I was most curious to hear what Ted had to say about serial killers, just as other experts in this criminal aberration were. Ted Bundy was a gold mine of a sort. I had always believed that he had some cogent answers to the growing problem locked up inside him. If he chose to, he still had the capability to do a modicum of good in the world—if only by admitting his badness and offering help to criminologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who were trying to staunch the flow of more “Teds.”

  He was not ready to do that … yet.

  Once again, I waited for a response to my letter. There was none.

  Either I had finally alienated him, or he was too busy to reply.

  He was busy. And he could pick and choose whom he might favor with his knowledge and philosophy. Everyone from Connie Chung to 20/20 to People magazine to 60 Minutes and on down an endless media list had sought an audience with Ted. From his cell, Ted announced he would grant an interview to the most prestigious in his mind: The New York Times. While a Florida official commented that Ted was playing “a very dangerous game with his gambles to defeat the process. … Even a lot of anti-death penalty people don’t lose sleep over his case,” Ted calmly spoke to the Times.

  He was, as he was with me, above it all. “If anyone considers me a monster, that’s just something they’ll have to confront in themselves.

  “It has nothing to do with me because they don’t know me. If they really knew me, they would discover I am not a monster. For that matter, for people to condemn someone, to dehumanize someone like me, is a very popular and effective way of dealing with a fear and a threat that is just incomprehensible.

  “It’s sort of like the old cliché of the ostrich sticking its head in the sand. When people go to those cliché’s that someone is a monster beyond help, that he’s demented, that he’s got some kind of defect, then they’re sticking their heads in the ground out of ignorance. …”

  Like so many other serial killers, Ted needed to be considered a normal person. He did not want to be thought a pervert. So full of defect that one wondered how he kept his mind marginally intact, he certainly did not want to be seen as a monster. And like any number of sociopaths I have listened to, Ted so often spoke in cliches, even as he derided them. “Water under the bridge … stick its head in the sand.” The cliche seems to give a sociopath something to cling to—a verbal anchoring place that allows him to communicate, to speak the language of normal people.

  Ted did not want to be seen as a monster, and I strived, as I always had, to see Ted as something other than a monster.
That was the only way I could write to him. My intellect clung tenaciously to “monster,” but, working on sheer emotion, I wondered if there might not be some recessed part of him with a vestigial conscience.

  That was why I wanted the dialogue with him. As many times as I told myself Ted Bundy was a monster, as many times as I told others the same thing, it was still the hardest thing for me to believe. Not only about Ted. My work placed me next to so many “monsters.”

  After almost two decades of writing about sadistic sociopaths, I still found it well nigh impossible to grasp emotionally that there were those of my own species who truly felt no speck of compassion or empathy for another’s pain. I cannot step on a spider. I couldn’t swat a fly until I became a mother and one too many landed on my baby. How could someone torture and kill an innocent victim and not feel remorse?

  Was that what I wanted Ted Bundy to tell me? Did I want him to say, after so many years, that yes, he did feel bad—that he did spend sleepless nights thinking about his victims? And if he did say, or write, the words, could I believe him?

  It was Spring of 1986. In six months, Ted would be forty, if he lived that long.

  It looked as if he would. Polly Nelson took an appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ted was asking for a new trial in the Chi Omega cases, based, again, on the fact that eyewitness Nita Neary had been hypnotized to help her remember.

  On May 5, 1986, the Court turned down the appeal. The high court denied Ted’s appeal 7-2 with no comment. Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall dissented, adhering to their long held opposition to the death penalty. A spokesman for Florida Governor Bob Graham said that the governor would probably immediately sign a new warrant for Ted’s execution.

  The timing was all show-biz perfection. The Court’s answer was announced during a break in a two-part miniseries about Ted. Mark Harmon (People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive”) played Ted as Ted was portrayed in Richard Larsen’s book The Deliberate Stranger. Physically, Harmon was a good choice, but he played Ted Bundy as confident from the beginning, as a young Kennedy clone.