The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer

by Robert Keppel; William J. Birnes; Ann Rule

  “Unless he has a unique kind of vehicle—you know, a van, for instance, gives him a lot more control, as opposed to an automobile, where you can see any kind of struggle inside the windows. So, that’s just the first thing that comes to mind, but let me think about it, and that’s one of the things I’ll write back to you on.”

  Victim Pick-up Locations

  It was time to turn up the heat a little by confronting Ted about what he had delicately avoided up to that point. We at times wanted to see how Ted handled slightly antagonistic questions. I pressed by inquiring about the pick-up point. Ted had strayed away from talking about that in detail. Of course, he had a reason. He wanted us to show him photographs of dead bodies. We had predicted that crime scene photos would refuel him, but we weren’t yet ready to launch into that stage of the questioning. We wanted Ted to go through all the elements of the initial contact sites with us first.

  I asked, “You seem to concentrate on how important the dump sites are, but the pick-up points are too. The killer is there, he created activity, and he felt comfortable. And the pick-up points, quite frankly, are heavily patrolled. I mean, police contact at those locations routinely, not only with john patrols, where we’re trying to catch the johns, but there are police officers out there busting prostitutes all the time. And generally there’s a lot of police around there. How does he feel so good in there?” We wanted to know how the predatory killer knew how to act only when there was the least possibility of detection.

  Ted’s explanation involved how comfortable a long-term serial killer really was in his familiar surroundings. He was presumably also talking about his own high comfort levels on college campuses, ski resorts, beach parties, and anywhere coeds gathered. He, therefore, was more than confident in his answer. “The same way that Wayne Williams felt so good in Atlanta. He knew that scene inside and out and operated in spite of all the heat that was coming down in Atlanta. There was more heat in Atlanta than there was in any case, you know, maybe except for yours now. Because there were young black children disappearing, there was an incredible amount of pressure, as I’m sure you’re aware, and, yet, he was just doing his thing. Even after all that publicity and all that heat. Why? Because he knew that scene inside and out. He was a fish in water. And that’s why—in that last letter I wrote to you—even though I was sort of speculating, you know, rashly at times, my feeling was, even with what little I knew, that your man was a part of the sub-culture that these women found themselves in.”

  “A fish in water.” That was Ted in Seattle’s U-district and that was the Green River Killer on the Sea-Tac strip. Bundy continued along this same line. “Now, I don’t know if you can say there is a particular set of factors which characterize the subculture of prostitution, but I try to perceive it as a subculture that involves, you know, drugs and runaways and certain individuals just comfortable in dealing with that kind of scene, whether it be the bar scene or the drug scene and the prostitute and runaway scene. The person who’s doing it knows it very well. He knows these individuals. He knows how to manipulate them. He might not even be coming up to them as a john, even though that appears to be the most reasonable explanation.”

  The Approach

  It was as if a bell had gone off. Ted identified an approach to the prostitute-type victim that, up to this point, our investigators had not been able to pursue. Maybe a prospective john was not the abductor. Maybe it was someone coming in under completely different camouflage and was slipping right through our net. It was a disturbing realization since the proactive methods we were using to detect the killer were heavily focused on his being a frequent customer of prostitutes. Stubbornly, Dave said, “Well, he sure doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb, that’s for sure.”

  With the assurance of an expert, Ted proudly explained, “No! Sure, and he’s not your typical client. And my feeling about the guy is he’s very low-key and inoffensive. My guess is he’s got more than one approach to these girls.”

  Feeding Ted’s ego with his tone of voice while at the same time probing for some angle the killer may be using, Dave asked, “Have you thought about the approach at all?”

  Ted immediately responded, “I have. You know, what the hooker might be.”

  “What do you think he’s accomplishing then?” Dave asked.

  “If he were just some john driving in and snatching prostitutes,” Ted said, “I think you would have caught him by now. But, like I say, I think he knows what these girls are like and what they need. Whether he’s coming on as a john or, in fact, maybe offering them employment, money, or drugs, I’ve thought out the various ways he might approach them, even calling them on the phone. Let’s say somehow he was able to contact them by phone—some of them, not all of them. I’m not saying he has one technique. In fact, he may not be a wizard, but he’s bright enough to understand that he can’t be approaching the same way every time. He knows that those areas are under heavy surveillance, even under the best of times. But he was going back there after the heat was on. I continually was amazed by this guy’s balls. I mean, after all the victims he’d snatched from Pacific Highway South, it seems that they continued to disappear from there. My guess is that he just blends into that environment—he may be a familiar-type character to that area. He may feel so comfortable with these type of women and understand them so well, he knows how to manipulate them.”

  Ted was on a roll and needed to be brought back to our line of questioning, so, I asked, “How stable do you think he is in his occupation? Probably our number-one ruse is to pose as a cop, because that happens all the time. They show badges, flash badges. The city of Portland is going crazy right now. Cops can’t even go up and interview the prostitutes because there’s so many johns out there flashing badges at them. And just getting it for nothing.”

  Ted admitted, somewhat embarrassed because I’d mentioned the cop lure that he himself had used in Salt Lake City before he mentioned it, “Yeah, you’re right. I left out parts of my number-one ruse or lure. Well, I don’t think it’d be my number one, necessarily. Maybe number two would be the police badge. You know that commands a lot of power. At least initially, until the cover is blown. I mean, Bianchi and his cousin, the Hillside Stranglers, stretched that to the limits down in Los Angeles. That’s a good one, except, like you say, these girls, after a period of time, the prostitutes that are working Pacific Highway South, must have been very wary of something, even a cop flashing a badge. I don’t know what their reaction would be. But after a while, I think even that would scare them.”

  He continued along the same line, explaining the way the Green River Killer tentatively approached his victims, bouncing off the ones that seemed resistant, and luring the ones who went along with his ruse. “I’m sure you’ve interviewed them and asked if they’ve had people approach them flashing badges, and that’s probably another question you should ask. Again, I’m sure you’ve asked it. To all the prostitutes out there, have they been approached by anybody flashing badges, because my guess is if the guy is using that technique, sooner or later he’s going to run into somebody, flashes a badge on her, and something happens. She either backs away or somebody, some other event, intervenes, because he’s not getting everybody he approaches.”

  Undoubtedly, Ted was thinking of his attempted abduction of Carol DaRonch and how his use of a badge was not that convincing. Unlike other killers who had been successful in their ruses as cops, Ted was not only singularly unsuccessful in luring his victim, that victim turned out to be the lone living witness whose testimony landed Ted in jail in Utah and began, at least in his mind, the unraveling of his criminal career. Accordingly, in the same way that Ted didn’t get DaRonch, he predicted that the Green River Killer “[is] not getting everybody he approaches, whether he’s successful or not. Some of them he’d only make contact with. Using all his mental powers to assess the situation, and he’s in the progress of trying to convince her to go with him, something doesn’t feel right. She doesn’t appeal to hi
m for some reason. And you know that too. If he fails as Bono and Bianchi did—at least once that I know of—that’s going to be something to follow up on. And I don’t know if you have any reports like that or not in the Green River case. You say it’s happening in Portland. Because these prostitutes are so wary, I think the guy is coming on really low-key, [in a] nonthreatening manner. And he knows them so well and I don’t think he’s coming on as a cop. Because if he did, I think you’d know about it. You’d have a pretty good feeling about it. That’s not to say he’s never done it or hasn’t thought about doing it, or wouldn’t try it, you know.”

  Even more disturbing for proactive strategies, Ted gave us a picture of how serial killers invent new ways of approaching their victims and why they are so able to slip through defenses. “But if he’s always reading—I’ll bet you, like I say—some people—hundred—read Field and Stream, this guy’s reading True Detective. So he’s always thinking of new ways. My guess is he’s so nonthreatening, so low-key, he knows them so well, that either he’s coming on sometimes with a job or sometimes with something else. And what that something else might be is anybody’s guess.”

  Ted was intuitive about our interest in what he was saying. Our curiosity was probably written across our faces. Next, Ted wanted to know whether the victims were clothed. I pressed him for what significance that had to him. He eagerly responded, as if he were putting himself at the actual dump sites, by saying, “Well, let’s assume you had victims who were not prostitutes, and obviously he’s coming on to them—and this is what I feel—he has a method of approach. He has a lure or a ruse which applies to more than just prostitutes. He’s not walking up to them and saying, ‘Okay, hey, baby, you want to go for a ride?’You know, ‘Pay you fifty bucks or whatever to go.’ If you have victims who are not prostitutes, it says he has a ruse that’s more generalized. That he’s in fact not coming on all the time as a john. That he’s coming on as something else. Or offering them something else. See what I’m getting at?”

  We nodded. We were getting somewhere. He continued to draw us a picture of the Green River Killer at work as if he had teleported himself directly into the guy’s brain and was looking at victims through his eyes. “If he picked up a hitchhiker or somebody who’s in a bar who may have dressed like, acted like, or looked like a prostitute, but in fact was not, who may have appealed to this man for one reason or another—she would not have responded to an approach that a john would make to a prostitute. Then I would say you have a guy who’s obviously capable of using ruses that are not applicable only to prostitutes.”

  There were times when Ted would lose his focus or when he would seem to be ill at ease while talking to us. These lapses, our psychological research into Ted’s case told us, resulted from Ted’s very severe ego issues. We were prepared for this, of course, and had a variety of techniques to focus the interview back on Ted’s thought process, while at the same time getting to focus on our concerns. One of these was to repeat a phrase that Ted was using to bring him back to a point in the conversation that we wanted him to elaborate on. Specifically, our using Ted’s own words to frame a question made him feel comfortable and, in a way, obligated to answer. Words like this guy, his thing, get what I’m getting at, and you know were frequently part of Ted’s phraseology. So I asked, “What is this guy’s thing? Is he all wrapped up in the approach, wrapped up in the event, or wrapped up in postevent behavior? There’s three questions there. What is he like after each of these, you know, like he might be somebody’s neighbor or live-in boyfriend for a while. Is there something here that we could key on about his before or after behavior that somebody else might see? We have a lot of people that call in, and they give us indications there’s something wrong with this potential suspect, and I don’t know what it is. Something happened before, something happened after. Understand what I’m getting at?”

  Of course, Ted realized what I was getting at, and it was the last thing he wanted to talk about. We knew from the postmortem medical reports from Utah and from Florida that Ted had committed acts on his victims after death. In other words, he was a necrophiliac, and he knew we knew it. It was the one part of his criminal behavior that truly embarrassed him because it satisfied him sexually by going right to the center of his dysfunctional need for control. Bundy was so severe a sexual deviant that he was probably unable to reach an orgasm unless his victim was dead or unconscious. Women threatened him. He was petrified of his victims, which was why he had to take control of them and incapacitate them. Everything—his ruses, lures, traps, murders, and dump site—was secondary to his sexual satisfaction at having a dump site where his victims would wait for him in silent decay. Sitting there in that visitor’s death row reception room in the Florida State Penitentiary, Bundy knew that we knew his deepest and most intimate sexual desires, even though he pretended to be aloof and on a throne of superiority.

  He was not about to talk about postevent sexual gratification. “Yeah,” he said. “I see what you’re getting at. When I don’t know something, I’ll tell you. When I don’t have a feeling for something, I’ll tell you. And I don’t have a feeling for that. I don’t know what condition the bodies were in or anything and, you know, if you have any evidence if they were sexually assaulted or have been somewhat physically traumatized. And I think, quite frankly, in most of your cases there’s no evidence at all, that would help you on that. And I just don’t know. I can answer part of your question, or try to answer part of your question.”

  The Thrill of the Hunt

  Ted quickly turned to what he wanted to talk about. “I think that the hunt, the searching out, is always a big thing for him. He’s probably invested a lot of time and effort into it. And you asked another question earlier. Well, how would this affect his job? Well, I think, you know, especially in that period from July eighty-two until October of eighty-three, he was doing two and three a month, and some months he was doing four and five. And that takes an enormous amount of effort and concentration. And to be able to hold down any kind of serious job under those circumstances can be extremely difficult. And this is why I think his employment history might be somewhat uneven. And I would expect also that he’s not earning a lot of money. Or he would range further away, or that might be one of the reasons why he’s stuck around so long.”

  At the same time as Ted was describing the practical difficulties of being a serial killer and holding down a full-time job, he was also blowing his own horn. Ted was a superannuated perpetual graduate student whose lifestyle was campus-oriented. In order to live among his victim pool, Ted had worked out the logistics of attending classes, holding down jobs that would earn him a living, and killing full-time. Thus, he was well prepared to discuss the Riverman’s predicament. “Quite frankly, he might not have been able to afford to go further or take more time off from work. There are other explanations, but that one appeals to me. But as to what he might do to them once he gets them, that’s a big blank spot in my mind. I don’t know. I mean, I can’t even begin to guess. Boy. Although I think he probably is a good deal more interested in, or caught up in the hunt than the actual doing of the deed. But that’s only a guess.”

  Ted focused on the hunt because he was so intense about the hunt himself, which was part of the thrill of anticipating his exercising complete control of a victim’s body. Feeding off our previous discussion about the Riverman’s picking on less-sophisticated victims and wanting to pursue the profile of the killer that Ted had held out for us, I asked, “In the hunt, he’s initially picked on an easily approachable victim. If he is wrapped up in the hunt, comparatively speaking, to going into a bar and picking up somebody or stopping by a bus stop and seeing if somebody wants a ride, he doesn’t seem to be that skilled. And he’s picking on a very vulnerable population that’s right there.”

  Ted said, “That’s a good observation.” Even Reichert was amazed at Bundy’s bravado in complimenting me on simply repeating what Bundy himself had said just moments earlier. But I
wanted to make Ted feel superior. That was part of our strategy. I indirectly complimented Bundy in return by saying that the Riverman, unlike Bundy, “doesn’t have to work that hard, in my opinion. He’s a lazy son of a bitch. You know.”

  Ted jumped at the compliment. “That’s right!” he almost shouted. “That’s right! Although I think, again my guess is, he’s a little bit more skilled than we might think if, in fact, he’s picking on people who are not prostitutes, who are close to being prostitutes, who are vulnerable. Maybe ’cause they’re runaways, maybe ’cause they’re lonely, and on the run or need some drugs, or something. But you’re right. He is lazy, and I say not lazy. He’s pretty sharp in one respect. None of them have gotten away from him. He’s definitely thought a lot of this stuff out. He may not be very sophisticated in his approach, but given time, he’s working on it.” He truly believed that the Riverman picked up more than just prostitutes.

  “And if,” Bundy continued, “he ever feels like he has to change a class of victims, comes up with a more sophisticated approach, then you will find him. And you’re going to see that start to show up. But right now, he is picking on somebody that’s vulnerable. And it’s good for him in the sense he doesn’t have to work that hard. He also knows that it’s not just vulnerable victims, but police have a devil of a time investigating the disappearances precisely because of the kind of women they are. So it may not be easy because they’re vulnerable, but also because their murders and disappearances are difficult to investigate. But what really intrigues me is—and once again the fact that you don’t really have anybody other than prostitute types—you don’t have any other apparent nonprostitute cases in eighty-four that you discovered. And if you had a number of prostitutes who disappeared in eighty-four, they’d be on your list, I would suspect.”