HA: Your jailer in Tallahassee was telling me about the deal you cut – for a contact visit. Was that in an office or a cell?
TB: Well, actually it was the interview room they use for, uh, attorneys’ visits, on the first floor of the jail, behind the booking area. And it’s no holding cell. It has a regular door on it and a plexiglas shield – and no bars and a blank ceiling.
HA: Well, let’s get back to your expertise – on this so-called individual we’ve talked about. I’ve listened to tapes – we must have a hundred hours of ’em by now – until I’m blue in the face and I still can’t. . . You’ve said that the abductor, the killer, got no sexual satisfaction out of killing. And very little out of the actual possession itself. Where did the satisfaction come from?
TB (long pause, long sigh): We’ll have to go back through all the things I’ve. . . that we’ve said. . . and was postulated about this kind of an individual (sighs). I’m trying to think – to try to refresh my own memory as to what, uh, we’ve covered.
HA: Well, you said at one point the actual planning and the build-up process was the high point.
TB: Well, uh, er, certainly, I think that is the, in all part. . . it would seem that all parts of the planning and this “acting out” would serve some function. You know, I think that if I, in trying to be precise in describing this kind of individual to you, used the word “satisfaction” in that respect, I might have done so, you know, with precision because I think I also pointed out, you know, that we’d expect this kind of person to be a recidivist or to repeat these kinds of crimes.
Because he wasn’t satisfied – because he was, it was an illusion of some kind of ultimate, uh, satisfaction or resolution. . . whatever.
The complexities of whether it impelled him or compelled him to act in that way. . . The satisfaction was probably, uh, was distinguished by its absence, you might say.
HA: But where did the satisfaction come from? Why would you do it again, again, and again, if you got nothing out of it?
TB: Well, he, uh (long sigh), it’s quite possible that there was. . . you might call it. . . I don’t know that we’re talking about an individual who – at least in terms of the conventional idea of satisfaction – uh, was satisfied.
He, uh. . . what I’m saying, we may have a situation here where the individual is seeking to satisfy certain urges – unconsciously or whatever – but it’s the absence of this fulfillment, to use a different word, that, uh, we would expect to drive him to, in fact, out again and again in that kind of futile exercise.
HA: What about enjoyment from inflicting pain? You said you thought this person did not get any enjoyment – or anything – out of inflicting pain.
TB: Yeah.
HA: Why would he mutilate a young girl? Like sticking an instrument up her vagina or biting her breast or choking her after she was dead. That is mutilation. How would you explain that? We know that happened here.
TB (clears throat): Well, if something like that happened. . .
HA: You know damn well it did. And worse!
TB: It seems to me that that kind of behavior would be an exception as opposed to the rule here. If we have a person – given the type of hypothetical person we’re talking about – uh, I don’t, uh. . .
HA: Well, even if it’s an exception, what would cause it? Let’s say that happened three or four times. What would cause it?
TB: Well, you can only imagine that some kind of intense rage. . . of the kind that would perhaps be uncharacteristic. . . uh, built up – and that kind of individual might, uh (long pause), act out in an uncontrollable fashion, with the results you mentioned.
HA: Like the Chi Omega night? Right?
TB (softly): Possibly.
HA: Well, let’s go back a bit further. You told us you thought this person is refining his M.O., he had found. . . he had learned to live with it. He had gotten very adept at what he was doing and he got more in control in the planning of the situation, and yet – maybe later on – something like this completely blew up on him. It was an exception, but it showed he wasn’t really in control.
TB: Well, it’s, it’s, uh. . . if I didn’t make it clear before, I should make it clear now, that we’re talking about. . . If I made reference to this individual being under control, it would be only in the most superficial, uh, way. Uh, he is clearly ill.
The person obviously doesn’t have control over all of his life or else he would, in all likelihood, would not be acting out in that way. I mean, it’s clear. He is not in control of himself to the point where he knew, or would know that he was doing something that was, uh, not just illegal, but immoral.
There’s control. Yeah, you’re right. We can say there’s more control because the M.O., the modus operandi, became more familiar – but on the other hand, we see that with the greater incidence of. . . the greater success this person had – the more likely that part of him that required that sort of stimulation would be to want more of that kind of stimulation. And with the security of having, quote, successfully carried it off, there would be a greater, uh, uh, the urge to do it, we’d expect, would become more frequent. Perhaps even more, the feeling would be to become more bold, if that’s the word.
HA: Well, where this person might have dealt with only one or two persons at a time – usually one person at a time – then all of a sudden he decides to kill four, five, or six. . . whatever. How would that happen? Is this total rage or a controlled situation? I don’t understand how the change comes. That’s a radical change, it seems to me.
TB: I don’t understand, uh. . .
HA: Well, as he becomes more familiar with an M.O. that works – and this means greater success, partially because of his increased confidence – he still becomes more bold. Why would he change his M.O. from, say, a single victim to several? Why would he need this radical a departure?
TB: Well, uh, assuming that it was that kind of departure, then we’d just say that. . . the only thing to be said was that the, the need that he was hoping to fulfill for one reason or another became, uh, would not be filled by one. And perhaps he found himself in a situation where he could – in a situation where he could victimize more than one individual. . . or perhaps as a result of his contemplating or fantasizing about that kind of conduct, he just. . . It occurred to him at some point in time that he could involve more than one individual. There are any number of alternative explanations.
HA: In other words, several victims might have always been his ultimate fantasy, but he considered the risks too severe.
TB: Possibly.
HA: Well, it seems that if it happened all of a sudden, it might seem that he wouldn’t have time to really think it out. Right?
TB: Well, I don’t think anybody’s ruled out the emer. . . he wouldn’t evaluate the conduct at each step, saying, “Am I fulfilled?” I mean, it’s so. . . we can only imagine that, uh, that someone who is committing what is cold, calculating murder of someone is really not fully in control of his faculties, fully aware of himself.
He’s driven by whatever it is that’s driving him to commit that, so I don’t imagine that he has the normal ability to access, you know, the feedback he’s getting.
HA: What could cause the intensity of this person? Would it be a fear of being caught? Would it be the risk factor? What would make a person be this intense?
TB: Well, we talked again, about. . . we have to go back to the root causes of the person, the causes we can identify in trying to determine why any individual would undertake to kill persons in this way. And we said that this person was reacting inappropriately to stress from his own environment. We’re talking about stress as an umbrella label for any number of things.
Uh, stress in his personal life. Let’s say, a financial situation. . . uh, his own sense of self-esteem and fulfillment. The failures in his life. . . other forms of anxieties. You might be talking about conditions even after environmental stresses we’ve talked about. Sexual stimuli in the environment that he may be payi
ng attention to on TV, or even a highly violent, stimulating kind of movie.
But you see, if you hang up on an accentuation of this stressful. . . these stressful influences, we’d expect as a consequence the intensity, uh, of that condition – you’d expect that that condition would be exacerbated even further by intensification of those. . . those very stressful factors.
HA: You said that ordinarily this person would not inflict pain or mutilate; yet we know it happened in several cases. This is, as you explain it, a radical departure from the norm – if you can call any of this normal. Do you suppose you really understand this individual, or is it too hard for you to tell me?
TB: Well, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know for sure if I can give you an explanation for each and every facet of. . . for each and every. . . uh, hypothetical crime that you’ve asked about here.
HA: Well, when you stick an instrument up a person’s vagina or you cut a person or bite a person, that seems to indicate a certain amount of rage. That’s getting even or something. What would it be? I mean, that’s not normal sexual gratification. Can you dig a bit deeper?
TB (angrily): Well, we’ve said, when we. . . We’re not talking about normal sexual gratification. We’re not talking about normal anything! Okay? Certainly it’s abnormal. You aren’t suggesting and I’m not suggesting. . . certainly, that it’s normal. Uh, uh. . .
HA: Would he ever understand exactly what it was he was fighting and reaching out to attain?
TB: That’s a possibility. No one, I think. . . Can you really understand fully why you do everything you do?
HA: No, of course not.
TB: You know, a normal, everyday thing. . . so when there’s something done in rage, it’s an extraordinary kind of rage that, uh, is involved in the murder of innocent, unsuspecting persons. It’s a kind of curious puzzle that maybe you – maybe even normal people – have trouble understanding their actions.
And persons who are obsessed or possessed by that kind of destructive urge, uh, probably have less of a chance of fully comprehending why they act the way they do.
But, getting back to the question you asked earlier about mutilations, et cetera. . . and its relationship to pain, I think you’re also concerned about. I don’t know of any case, any real case, quite frankly, in the eases we’re concerned about here, that involved mutilation. . . in a, uh, premortem condition.
I think that even if we’re assuming that somehow Chi Omega can be explained by this hypothetical person, I think the documents were inconclusive as to whether, uh, whatever the girl’s name was, uh, was alive or dead when the Levy girl. . . when the injury was sustained. Or conscious or whatever.
HA: But the perpetrator of the act maybe wouldn’t know that either. So it really wouldn’t matter whether she was or not. He didn’t know, for sure, whether she was alive, I assume. Wouldn’t you assume that?
TB: I don’t, uh. . . I don’t know.
HA: Well, I mean, doesn’t that sort of knock out your argument? Obviously he did not know for certain. He didn’t wait around there, I’m sure – stand around and wait.
TB: I’m not sure, but there was evidence that. . . in the form of bark and certain bruises on Levy to suggest that she had been hit. And we know the other girls had been struck, uh, while they were sleeping. The two who lived were struck while they were sleeping. We can assume then that the two survivors were struck. And their testimony said they were not sexually molested before they were struck, so it would seem that this individual’s first act was to strike the victim while the victim was sleeping.
This seems to be true in the case of, uh, both the girls who died at Chi Omega – and so it’s quite possible that Levy would be unconscious. It’s hard to say. . . hard for me to. . .
One would assume that if, if the pain had been. . . if those injuries had been inflicted while she was awake, that other members of the sorority house would have heard her screaming or making some outcry. And there’s no testimony of that.
HA: Do you remember, getting back to Utah, the hairs that were found in your car? Are you saying that the police had to have put those hairs there – if they, indeed, were Melissa Smith’s? Is that essentially what you’re still claiming?
TB: Yeah. In the Utah situation, there’s no question in my mind that the hair of the respective victims had been placed there. And I say that for this reason. I mean that, you might say, “We’d expect Bundy to say that,” right? But, uh, we’re talking about. . .
Let’s talk about Carol DaRonch, for example. We had testimony from her as to what happened to her, and I believe what happened to her did happen to her – but she just got it mixed up as to who the attacker was she saw, or who she thought she saw. But she was in her abductor’s car for anywhere from five to fifteen minutes – depending on whose story you believe – in November of 1974. Now, in ten months, uh, eleven months later, my car is seized. Nearly a year later.
After a year’s worth of use – with people in and out of that car – the car itself was six years old, it was prepared to be sold by. . . I had taken everything completely out of the inside and I put in new carpets, put in, uh, new plastic carpets, uh, cleaned it from stem to stern. . . and, uh. . . I probably couldn’t prove this, so I never made a point of it, but allegedly the runner, or the item covering the floor. . . they said they found a hair from Carol DaRonch on. . . was something I had purchased from a junkyard.
HA: The floor mat?
TB: Floor mat. . . there you go. Purchased it from a junkyard, you know, in September of 1975. I mean, I knew that I was. . . I seriously doubted if any of Liz’s hairs could be found in that car. So many people had ridden in it. There was no telling how many people like Carol DaRonch had been in that car. Or Melissa Smith or any of the others.
But nevertheless, I knew there was not a grain of sand in that interior of that car, uh, uh, after I sold it, that had been there before September 1975. That’s how clean it was. New floor mats, new carpets, new side carpets, new seat.
HA: So you’re saying that that was a situation where the police made a case against you by planting hairs there?
TB: Well, it was also an explanation. Given the nature of hair, how do you think it could have remained there throughout such a thorough cleaning?
HA: In all our lengthy conversations, I have noticed that in every case you tend to blame others. They planted this evidence. They lied about this or that. She couldn’t have really seen me – and so on. Nowhere do I hear you saying, “I shouldn’t have been at the Fashion Place Mall when DaRonch was kidnapped. I shouldn’t have been seen in the Viewmont High School auditorium just before Debbie Kent disappeared. I shouldn’t have been at Lake Sammamish the day two girls disappeared and were killed.” What is Ted Bundy to blame for?
TB: Well now, Hugh, no matter how you approach it, you’re not going to get what you’re hoping for. And you know the reasons why. But, of course, I’m at fault for many things. It’s just that we’re far apart on what we’re both driving at here.
HA: It’s frustrating, Ted, to bounce up against this stone wall. What does it matter if you tell us the truth now? None of the crimes in Washington, Oregon, and Utah can ever be tried. And it’s obvious Colorado couldn’t keep you in jail long enough to try you for the Snowmass killing. I know what you’ve done; Stephen knows. I feel sure Carole knows. C’mon, let’s get moving in the right direction. Hell, it won’t cost you a thing to clear them all up, once and for all. Frankly, I don’t know how we’re going to finish this book unless you become a hell of a lot more receptive to telling us the truth.
TB: That’s your problem, not mine.
HA: Okay, but at least, will you try to work on the opening chapter – the Chi Omega thing? You suggested it. We all got excited about it, and now – nothing. When I come back, will you have some notes at least for me?
TB: I’ll try. Actually, as I said, I’ve been working, thinking. . . Will you take this (handing over a letter) and mail it to Carole for me?
&nbs
p; November 12
The conversation begins with Ted’s views on the insanity defense.
TB: If I took. . . if I ever decided to take that route, I’d just kinda sit back and smile. I’ve taken the opposite approach – absolutely opposite approach. I said I wouldn’t have anything to do with an insanity defense. I mean, I did everything I could to stay away. I was strongly opposed to even, you know, even considering the idea because I knew I wasn’t crazy. I know I’m not crazy! Insane, incompetent, or anything else. And I was insulted by even the suggestion by my attorneys that we should consider the defense. They knew damn well I wasn’t crazy.
HA: They also knew that it might be your best defense.
TB: They also knew it might be a viable defense. Well, that’s their job, but still I felt it would be – it should be clear, it should be clear to a jury that I wasn’t crazy. Then the best way to go was to go for, uh, a defense on the merits – the lack of reasonable doubt (sic) rather than going for insanity.
HA: Have you ever had second thoughts about it?
TB: Absolutely none, no. I can’t afford to. I couldn’t have gotten away with allowing myself to be a part of an insanity defense, just as I couldn’t allow myself to plead guilty.
HA: What do you mean, you couldn’t have gotten away with it?
TB: I wouldn’t have, personally. It didn’t fit!
HA: But you know there are those who say that anybody who gets into a whole lot of trouble – kills people – is somewhat crazy.
TB: That’s true, but everybody’s somewhat crazy.
HA: People have a view of you – very bright, articulate, handsome, and so on. They also think you killed a lot of people, and you must be a split personality, a madman, an animal or whatever. Some of these things you might be some not. How would you like people to recall Ted Bundy?
Ted Bundy Page 21