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

by Robert Keppel; William J. Birnes; Ann Rule

  Screened Memories

  Ted approached some convicted killers who didn’t come to him first, just because he was curious about what they had been accused and/or convicted of. Ted said, “Of course, I would do so very, very discreetly, making sure they understood that I didn’t want to know any details. And that may be something, a technique that you could use. I don’t want to know the details. I don’t want to know names or places. I just want to know what happened. I don’t want to know names. That’s what I would do. I said, ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know dates, I don’t want to know names, I don’t want to know specific places.’” Ted believed it was important with some killers not to demand details about names or places. Give the killer a chance to talk around the murder instead of the specific details. This could prove somewhat frustrating for police management personnel, since they want to know specific details right away. They’ve got cases to clear for prosecutors who need to prepare complaints to go before a grand jury. The detectives have to go for the specifics so the killers can be put away.

  Investigators also interview murderers who claim to have black-outs or conveniently do not remember certain details. Ted revealed that the serial killers he talked to did not have real blackouts. If they claimed a blackout, he could take off on another line of questioning in order to identify events within the blackout period that the killer would unsuspectingly reveal. “I suspected that all of them really do remember, but they don’t know that they do. Sometimes it appears to them like remembering a dream.” The fact that serial killers remembered details of their murders was significant for me to consider in interviewing a Green River Killer who might claim a blackout at critical moments of his story. It was also important to hear from Ted that when a story of a blackout is encountered, it should be pursued with another line of questioning. Ted was also clearly giving me another hint on how to pursue his story as well.

  I asked Ted how much they could really remember about their crimes. Ted answered, “That’s a good question! The guys I’ve talked to—my feeling is that they remember. Now, whether or not they are going to tell me exactly what happened, for whatever reason, is another question. But I certainly haven’t encountered enough guys, anyone with a split personality, you know, like allegedly Bianchi is. I haven’t run across anybody who’s got that kind of dual personality or anything. I haven’t run across anybody who professes to have had amnesia or blackouts or anything like that. I think I’ve run across guys whose memories may be justifiably vague for reasons such as they were under the influence of alcohol or drugs or just the fear, the panic, the fright, the causes of that, of the violence that went on there, would somehow cloud their memories. But basically I think the guys I’ve talked to can remember when they talk to me.”

  Bundy brought out another important aspect of interviewing a killer—getting as familiar with them as possible. He said, “And again, I’ve had the luxury of when I talk to any of these men of having lived with them. So I see their normal side, their everyday side. You know, the guys that watch Let’s Make a Deal and how they root for the guy, I mean, the game shows they watch and the canteen items they buy and what they do in the yard. I see their everyday side and yet I know this other part of them, too. And it’s a great advantage in not being law enforcement and not being a psychologist and being viewed as who I am when I talk to them. On occasion, I think my status gives me insight into some of it. Three or four of these guys have been accused of serial murder. And I think they remember. I know they remember.”

  Without details, like names and places, how could I be a sympathetic interviewer? And on a more practical level, how did Ted verify that what they’re telling him was the truth? These were related issues, about which I questioned him. Ted answered, “That’s a good question! It’s hard to put into words. It’s just knowing when they tell you something, when they describe how something happened, whether it’s authentic or not. You know, after killing someone, what one experiences is not a common experience. You can read all the murder mysteries you want, and you know that as graphic as some of these detective novels may try to be, you just know they’re not for real because you can tell the guy’s never been there. He’s just making it up. Whether you watch some of these so-called slasher films or whatever—you know that’s just Hollywood. It doesn’t really happen that way. You just know. And so, if a guy’s making it up or if he’s read about it, I just have a sense that he’s not being straight with me. You can tell it. Certainly, one way of several ways is that—it’s a tried and true way—he doesn’t tell the same story the same way twice. And I always make them tell it to me two or three times. And I’ll say, ‘Hey, how about this? That doesn’t make sense.’”

  So he remembered the first version of the story and checked it against later versions for deviation. Sounded plausible, but the police still want to know times, dates, places, and details that only the killer would know. This is the only verification that will hold up in court. I posed this problem to Ted.

  Ted said, “Well, this is true. And yet that’s a way of opening somebody up. If a guy has, for whatever reason, insulated himself from the reality of what he did, but can discuss it in the third person or better yet, in the first person without getting specific, you’re getting gradually closer to the truth. I mean, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, including the names, dates, and places—everything he knows. But maybe the more circuitous route in some cases may be the better route, because some guys just can’t give it to you right straight. They can’t sit down and say, ‘Okay, on this night this is what I did, and this is what happened,’ and so on and so forth. You might be better to work them into it gradually, to the point where they sort of open themselves up by degrees.”

  This was the route Ted took during his debriefing in the days before his execution. He chose to reveal facts by slow degree, wanting to ratchet himself up to the vital statements everyone wanted to hear.

  Ted continued our conversation. “Certainly, you want to verify what they say, ultimately. You want to verify it by making sure they tell it to you the same way, and making sure what they tell you corresponds with the facts and maybe even … using sodium pentothal or polygraph, just to make absolutely sure.

  “Let’s say—in a big case like Green River, you’re obviously not going to believe anybody who comes forward and starts confessing these crimes, even if they get some of the names, dates, and places right, because so much of the information has been disseminated to the public. And I’m sure you’ve sat down and tried to figure out how you would identify things you know that have not been made public. But more than that—this guy’s memory might be so bad after all these years, he might not be able to remember some of these details that you know about and the public doesn’t know about. That’s another problem! Even if he wants to confess, he might not remember enough to satisfy you. Maybe, the only way to do it is … through a polygraph or sodium pentothal or something in a very careful debriefing technique.

  “One of the things that I’ve found just really appalling is how they handled Gerald Stano, who was for seven years out there doing this. He started with a double murder, according to his own admission, and confessed, allegedly confessed to some two dozen or so murders over that period of time. What bothered me was that the investigation was so sloppy and haphazard; they did the same thing to this guy that they did to Henry Lucas. You had one detective sergeant [of] this county police or sheriff’s department who was, more or less, the head honcho, and he was the guy that all these other agencies in Florida had to go through to get to this fellow. And they would come and plop their files down on the desk; he’d look through them, and they’d talk it over and he confessed to a lot of this stuff. And he was doing it because he likes to be viewed as a good guy. He liked the affirmation. ‘You’re doing the right thing.’ And he liked the special treatment he was getting in jail. He was getting off on all that. But they weren’t carefully screening his confessions and verifying them, making sure he was te
lling them the same thing, you know, day after day. And they didn’t bring in any specialists, any psychologists or psychiatrists. They didn’t use the behavioral science people of the FBI. And so Gerry Stano is just getting away with all kinds of stuff.”

  Serial Killer as Witness

  Insofar as his own case was concerned, Ted was critical of the quality of investigations and interrogations. But it was clear that Ted wasn’t speaking just for himself. The Green River Killer, still out there, perhaps, behind his camouflage and wall of denial had to know as much about the quality of detective work and investigation as Ted knew. They both read the same true-crime stories I read. What would be the point of telling the truth when a poor-quality investigation could affect the outside observer’s beliefs about whether a killer’s statement is truthful? If the facts aren’t known, it might be due to a substandard investigation and the fact that the police just haven’t found them when they were there to be found. Therefore, the police look bad and can’t begin to convince the killer of their concern for him and for the truth of what he did.

  To carry what seems like a ludicrous argument even further, if a killer’s impression of the investigators is key to the interview process, how can you make a good impression on him? Remembering, for example, that the serial killer might be the only witness and therefore vital to the case made against him and that his cooperation might be wholly dependent upon how he is interviewed, what, then, did Gerald Stano think of the detective who interviewed him?

  Ted was cautious. He really didn’t want to embarrass anyone. But he said, “Well, I don’t know what he thinks of him right now. I last was with Gerry—we were both on death watch, as a matter of fact, together, and we also lived in the same wing together for some time—and I read a very confidential report, a presentence report prepared by some state agency. It went into great detail about his confessions and his past life. And well, Gerry is a long subject. But Gerry liked the detective. I got the impression at least initially that he liked and trusted him. But my impression was that the authorities, I think down in Daytona—wherever—finally got tired of Gerry confessing and getting life sentences.

  “Gerry first confessed when he was arrested in February of 1980 for an assault on a prostitute, and I think Gerry is a case you might want to study from the standpoint of what you might be looking at with the Green River Killer. Because Gerry was out there for seven years, by his own admission, he did prey on a lot of prostitutes, and he was out there for so long, seven years, doing his thing. And so he was arrested for attempted murder when he attempted to stab a prostitute in a motel room. My understanding is that the record shows the day he was arrested, he not only admitted to attacking this prostitute, who lived and could have died, but he confessed to another murder and two other murders that same day. And that was all he admitted to. In fact, they didn’t press him any further.

  “And so, he came to prison, and he was here for a little over a year, and for reasons which Gerry has never satisfactorily explained to me, he got in touch with the detective. I guess it was said that he wanted to talk some more about this. And he admitted to a few more, maybe half a dozen more. And then he came back a year and a half later in nineteen eighty-three, and confessed to a whole bunch more murders in September and October of eighty-three. And they finally decided to give him the death sentence for some of those confessions.

  “And he wasn’t finished yet. I mean, it was just as plain as the nose on your face that he was taking a lot of time opening up. And he was doing so a little bit at a time. Perhaps it was maddening that—to the prosecutors involved—that he was dragging this out. Maybe they got impatient with him, but they ended up giving him a death sentence, three death sentences based upon his confession in eighty-three.

  “He stopped talking to them after that. And he won’t talk to them anymore. They scared him. They managed to set him up. But he was badly mishandled. If he was properly handled back in eighty, when he confessed to those two murders, if they’d known how to follow up on what he’d said and develop and inquire into his activities over the years, they’d have probably gotten more out of him then—instead of waiting for the next two and a half years for him to keep coming back to them.”

  When the Police Close In

  Suddenly I had an idea. I believed we had been close to the Green River Killer once or twice without knowing it. We had identified Bundy while he was still in Utah and would have picked him up ourselves had he not been caught by the trooper. Does the killer ever realize how close the police are to him? And if so, what does that do to his psyche? Does that make him more or less likely to open up when he finally does get caught? How close during the seven- or eight-year span had Stano come to being apprehended, I asked.

  Ted answered, “Well, yes, as a matter of fact. He was primarily preying on prostitutes, and again, in many ways Gerry is a classic situation. And it’s been a long time since I’ve reviewed this in my memory of everything he told me, and certainly since I’ve read his presentence report. But, I think it was in the late 1970s, seventy-seven, seventy-eight. He was arrested by a vice officer who was a woman police officer. Gerry was out looking for a prostitute to kill. This was in seventy-seven, three years before he was caught. He was caught in eighty. And he was arrested for soliciting. What do they call that? Whatever the appropriate charge is. And significantly enough, he was arrested in Daytona, and he was bonded and all that stuff. He was put in jail and he got out, and I think he got some sort of fine or probation. But the next week, instead of going back and looking for somebody else on the east coast of Florida, the record will show—and Gerry’s confessions will substantiate the fact—that he drove all the way across to the other side of the state, Tampa. He drove first to Orlando and then to Tampa, in succeeding weeks, after his arrest in Daytona, looking for victims and finding them. So, it’s logical, and in fact it did happen, that when Gerry was arrested in Daytona, where he’d been doing most of his hunting—on that prostitution charge—that shortly thereafter, he just drove to another part of the state to do the same thing.

  “That’s as close as he came to being caught. And, again, only part of the story is known of Gerry. And Gerry—as often as I try to get Gerry to open up to me, he wouldn’t. He would always try to bullshit me. And the thing that bothered Gerry to no end was that I had this extremely detailed report that someone else had given me. See, Gerry had allegedly confessed to a murder that somebody else on death row is convicted of committing. And so that person managed to get ahold of this report on Gerry. And so I had this report.

  “Gerry is a pathological liar. And one of the sweetest, nicest, most generous guys you’ll ever run across. You put him in a three-piece suit, and he’d look like an economist, a frumpy-haired college economist. And one of the most harmless, nice, happy-going, ‘good old Uncle Gerry’ guys you’d ever want to run across. And so getting to know Gerry was fascinating, ’cause he’d tell me stories about things that happened, and then I’d read that something else had happened in the police report.”

  I thought to myself as Ted finished, Can you imagine that type of guy—a college professor type—turning on a prostitute that he had under his control and killing her and then killing others for a seven-year period? Can you imagine this person, who obviously hates women with a vicious fury, being arrested by a female vice officer? That must have been part of his worst nightmare. Yet he knuckled right under to the law, which is what he had to do, took his punishment, and then drove across an entire state to go right back to killing. How many prostitutes paid for what Stano thought that female cop did to him?

  I told Ted that I had met that detective who’d interviewed Stano at a seminar in Atlanta. I said to him, “Gee, I don’t know why I’m up here talking. You should be up here telling your story.” And the detective said, “Look at me!” I didn’t know what he meant. It took me a while to figure out what he was talking about and why he was devastated. Evidently, he was considered an outcast by his department for what he’d
done in the Stano case. Instead of learning from it and being able to profit from that experience, his department blamed him for not tying it all up in a pretty bow. I know that’s impossible to do most of the time when you have a killer you have to get information out of bit by bit, month after month. To make your case, you have to go after what you can get and try for the most cooperation you can. Most police commanders don’t realize that and think all murderers are alike.

  Ted summed it up even better. “Well, it was a mess. He may have been subjected to all kinds of pressures, I’m sure. But the way Gerry was handled was just a mess. They didn’t call anybody who really knew what they were doing. And they were just talking to him haphazardly and piecemeal and running around the state and showing him all kinds of stuff. And so this thoroughly distorted and contaminated everything Gerry said, and it’s hard to say what Gerry’s responsible for now. And then end up giving—I mean, after being patient with him, while across the course of two and a half years, finally, the prosecuting authorities just got fed up with him. Instead of giving him these life sentences, they gave him three death sentences, and Gerry just stopped talking.

  “He wasn’t finished talking, believe me. I mean, he wasn’t finished giving and telling them all he knew, not by a long shot. They just had not thoroughly been able to sit him down and figure out how do we get this guy to tell us all he knows and make sure he’s telling us the truth. I mean, there are still a lot of question marks in my mind. But, I’ve always felt this.

  “If Gerry was telling the truth about the early murders that occurred in seventy-three, and there’s a lot more probably that he’s involved with, if he was telling the truth when he said he killed those two girls, two hitchhikers in seventy-three, then I know for a fact that he did a lot more than he’s talking about. Because there are huge gaps of twelve months where there’s nothing there. He’s told the police—and I can just look at his patterns and tell, you know, knowing what I know about Gerry and looking at his crime patterns, I mean, sometimes three or four a month, and then there’s periods of twelve, eighteen months in that seven-year period where there’s just nothing. Big blanks. Nothing he’s told the police. Nothing that the police got around to asking him about.”