Latest / Legally Brunette / Killer Thriller: The Ted Bundy Mystery That Still Haunts People
Transcript
- 0:06Speaker 1: Amy Robock and TJ.
- 0:07Speaker 2: Holmes present Killer Thriller with your host Alisa Donovan.
- 0:15Speaker 3: Hey, everyone, Elisa Donovan here and this is Killer Thriller.
- 0:18Speaker 3: Long before today's wave of true crime documentaries and dramatizations,
- 0:23Speaker 3: one TV movie terrified America by bringing the story of
- 0:27Speaker 3: serial killer Ted Bundy into millions of living rooms. The
- 0:31Speaker 3: Deliberate Stranger aired on NBC in nineteen eighty six and
- 0:35Speaker 3: starred Mark Harmon. The two part mini series follows Bundy's murders, manipulations, escapes,
- 0:41Speaker 3: and eventual capture, helping turn him into one of the
- 0:44Speaker 3: first true crime figures to become a national media obsession.
- 0:49Speaker 1: Okay, so for those.
- 0:50Speaker 3: Who might not be as familiar with Ted Bundy, he
- 0:52Speaker 3: is one of the most notorious serial killers in American history,
- 0:57Speaker 3: and he admitted to murdering over thirty women, and they
- 1:03Speaker 3: do believe that it was more in the hundreds. One
- 1:06Speaker 3: of the ways that he was so disturbing is he
- 1:10Speaker 3: was known as being very charming, very articulate. He predominantly
- 1:13Speaker 3: approached women on college campuses and sometimes he would act
- 1:18Speaker 3: as though he was injured and need a little bit
- 1:21Speaker 3: of help, or he would ask for their assistance with
- 1:24Speaker 3: something and then he brutally, brutally raped and murdered these women.
- 1:29Speaker 3: Today we're joined by Emmy winning actress Bonnie Bartlett, who
- 1:33Speaker 3: played Bundy's mother, Louise, a woman forced to confront the
- 1:38Speaker 3: unimaginable truth about her own son. Bonnie, Welcome to Killer Thriller.
- 1:43Speaker 3: Thank you so much for being here.
- 1:46Speaker 4: Oh, thank you for having me.
- 1:48Speaker 3: I know there are a million things that we could
- 1:50Speaker 3: talk to you about because you have such a phenomenal career,
- 1:54Speaker 3: and this one takes us back quite a ways.
- 1:58Speaker 1: But I am really.
- 2:00Speaker 3: Excited to talk to you about the Deliberate Stranger. And
- 2:04Speaker 3: you know, this came out before a lot of people
- 2:06Speaker 3: even fully understood who Ted Bundy was. So did it
- 2:10Speaker 3: feel shocking at the time to make a movie about
- 2:13Speaker 3: someone that was so recent and so infamous.
- 2:17Speaker 5: I didn't feel shocking, No, not at all. I thought
- 2:20Speaker 5: it was a good idea and he was great.
- 2:22Speaker 4: Mark was. I was surprised that Mark at Yes, Oh
- 2:26Speaker 4: well he did.
- 2:27Speaker 5: I really was, because I knew him from say, elsewhere,
- 2:32Speaker 5: but he didn't you know, he didn't show a lot
- 2:35Speaker 5: of promises, but I could.
- 2:38Speaker 4: Think that on this he was just terrific. It was
- 2:43Speaker 4: like he really got into the character and stayed there scary.
- 2:48Speaker 1: Yes, well, that was one of the things.
- 2:49Speaker 3: You know, he was so everyone considered Ted to be
- 2:53Speaker 3: so you know, charming and Mark certainly his work in
- 2:57Speaker 3: this that is what is so eerie about it. He's
- 3:01Speaker 3: just so charming and so uh. I mean, I think
- 3:05Speaker 3: it just really is part of what upsets everyone so much.
- 3:09Speaker 5: Yeah, well, he he was kind of a covered guy
- 3:13Speaker 5: when I knew him, and saying elsewhere, I would call
- 3:15Speaker 5: him covered.
- 3:16Speaker 4: Do you know what I mean?
- 3:17Speaker 1: Oh interesting, Yeah.
- 3:18Speaker 4: Out there he was covered.
- 3:20Speaker 5: And so then you know, of course he's gone on
- 3:24Speaker 5: to do that great series and he's done everything.
- 3:29Speaker 2: Right right, yes on n cis Yes, the first year. Yeah,
- 3:37Speaker 2: so the you know, the thing about Ted is that
- 3:40Speaker 2: he he pray. I mean, there's a lot that's that's
- 3:44Speaker 2: to say about Ted money. But I think what was
- 3:47Speaker 2: so terrifying, as we said, is that he seemed so normal.
- 3:51Speaker 2: And do you think for you at the time, do you.
- 3:54Speaker 3: Did you fully grasp how calculated and predatory he was,
- 3:58Speaker 3: Like do you remember being alive at that time and
- 4:01Speaker 3: how you felt about the actual case.
- 4:07Speaker 5: It was something that I watched and you know, I
- 4:10Speaker 5: looked for and it was. It was incredibly scary. Yeah, incredible,
- 4:15Speaker 5: And because he was always at a university and young
- 4:20Speaker 5: girls and it was.
- 4:23Speaker 4: It's terrifying. You know.
- 4:25Speaker 5: I don't think it would happen today, but I don't know.
- 4:29Speaker 5: I mean, in a different way it might happen, but
- 4:31Speaker 5: not that way.
- 4:32Speaker 4: Yeah. When they asked me to play the mother, and so.
- 4:36Speaker 5: For I researched it, you know, and so I came
- 4:40Speaker 5: in already to play a woman who was a little
- 4:43Speaker 5: demented because she had a relationship with him that was
- 4:49Speaker 5: not good. And I thought it was important. But they
- 4:53Speaker 5: didn't want me to do it in the movie. They said, no, no, no,
- 4:56Speaker 5: don't go near that.
- 4:57Speaker 1: Oh wow, Really.
- 4:58Speaker 4: It was too soon.
- 5:00Speaker 5: I mean, it wasn't too soon for me, but it
- 5:02Speaker 5: was too soon for them to deal with that kind
- 5:05Speaker 5: of relationship in a film, do you know.
- 5:08Speaker 1: Oh wow, you're kidding. So they weren't aware of the.
- 5:11Speaker 5: Well, I was very aware of it, and because I
- 5:13Speaker 5: had researched it and I knew a lot about it,
- 5:17Speaker 5: and I was prepared to play a complicated woman. And
- 5:22Speaker 5: they said no, no, no, you mustn't do that. Just
- 5:25Speaker 5: a loving mother, Just play a sweet, loving mother.
- 5:29Speaker 1: Wow.
- 5:30Speaker 3: So what do you mean about the kind of demented
- 5:32Speaker 3: relationship they had? I think, what do you mean specifically
- 5:35Speaker 3: that you researched it found out it was.
- 5:39Speaker 5: I mean, she definitely it was some kind of abuse.
- 5:45Speaker 5: It was a definitely kind of abuse because she she
- 5:49Speaker 5: permitted it, she went along with it. She may have
- 5:51Speaker 5: even instigated it. We don't know that, you know what
- 5:54Speaker 5: I mean?
- 5:55Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I sure do.
- 5:58Speaker 4: I wanted to say that. They said, no, Oh my.
- 6:01Speaker 1: Gosh, that must have been wildly frustrating.
- 6:04Speaker 4: Well, that happened to be a lot Iisenhower.
- 6:06Speaker 5: I played Maimy, and of course everybody in the world
- 6:09Speaker 5: knew that Amy drank all right, right.
- 6:12Speaker 4: They said, no, no, no, you mustn't play any of that.
- 6:15Speaker 5: No, no, no, The Isena Eisenhower family does not want
- 6:19Speaker 5: you to portray her drinking. Wow, just a nice lady.
- 6:26Speaker 4: They don't want complications. Right.
- 6:28Speaker 3: That's so interesting because I do think you know it's
- 6:31Speaker 3: in watching this today and this this what we would
- 6:36Speaker 3: call this would be be considered a movie of the
- 6:38Speaker 3: week right at the time, and so you know, there
- 6:42Speaker 3: are some things that you know in some way, they're
- 6:46Speaker 3: far less explicit than things that we do today. But
- 6:50Speaker 3: also there's something almost more melodramatic. So it's so interesting
- 6:55Speaker 3: that they don't want to Actually they didn't want to
- 6:58Speaker 3: talk about the real nitty grit of things.
- 7:01Speaker 4: That's right, No, they didn't.
- 7:02Speaker 5: They were ready to get into you know, into that
- 7:06Speaker 5: kind of thing.
- 7:07Speaker 3: Yet oh wow, wow, Yeah, that's so unreal.
- 7:13Speaker 4: Allowed to do that.
- 7:15Speaker 1: Wow wow.
- 7:17Speaker 3: So this whole you know, uh, there's something that's happening
- 7:21Speaker 3: right now. I feel like this just happened in October
- 7:24Speaker 3: that you know, uh, Ted Bundy was known as doing
- 7:30Speaker 3: you know, kind of pretending to be injured. He would
- 7:32Speaker 3: wear fake casts and ask women to help him before
- 7:36Speaker 3: abducting him. And apparently there is someone that is doing
- 7:41Speaker 3: that again now as recently as in the fall. But
- 7:43Speaker 3: the the you know, the ironic part of this is that,
- 7:46Speaker 3: well it's not ironic. The interesting part of this is
- 7:48Speaker 3: that today this woman went on TikTok and told people
- 7:54Speaker 3: that there was a man that was doing this, and
- 7:57Speaker 3: then she sort of all of these other women came
- 7:59Speaker 3: out out and said he tried to do the same
- 8:01Speaker 3: thing to me.
- 8:02Speaker 1: So it's really interesting.
- 8:04Speaker 3: I mean, how far we've come, but that maybe you know,
- 8:07Speaker 3: when you're saying I don't think.
- 8:08Speaker 1: It would happen today. It's is it? Do you think
- 8:12Speaker 1: it's because we have so much information and so much
- 8:14Speaker 1: access to everyone?
- 8:16Speaker 5: Or probably probably Yeah, everybody's there before you are.
- 8:21Speaker 4: I mean right, I feel fast and so it's just
- 8:25Speaker 4: boom boom boom, and you know we know everything. Yeah,
- 8:28Speaker 4: you think we know everything?
- 8:30Speaker 1: Well, right, fair, Yeah, we think we know.
- 8:35Speaker 5: So.
- 8:35Speaker 1: I think that.
- 8:38Speaker 3: One of the reasons that the reasons that you know,
- 8:40Speaker 3: Ted Bundy terrified at people so much is because he
- 8:44Speaker 3: didn't fit that.
- 8:45Speaker 1: Stereotype of a serial killer. And I think that's a.
- 8:49Speaker 4: Lovely boy that you would welcome into your home. That's
- 8:53Speaker 4: what he was, right.
- 8:55Speaker 3: I heard someone one of the I think it was
- 8:58Speaker 3: one of the people that he was involved in politics,
- 9:00Speaker 3: who said something like, you know, he was the kind
- 9:02Speaker 3: of guy that you would want your sister to marry.
- 9:05Speaker 4: That's right, that's true.
- 9:09Speaker 3: That is just like that most terrifying thing ever, right, right,
- 9:15Speaker 3: So you played Louise Bundy obviously his his mom, and
- 9:18Speaker 3: she stood by Ted for years even after the evidence
- 9:22Speaker 3: just mounted and mounted against him. As the mother yourself,
- 9:26Speaker 3: could you emotionally understand Hallowise kept defending him.
- 9:30Speaker 4: That's a tough question.
- 9:32Speaker 5: I've never been put in that position, and I I
- 9:38Speaker 5: must say, if if the evidence was out there so much,
- 9:43Speaker 5: I would have retreated completely. I just would have retreated.
- 9:48Speaker 5: But I couldn't have defended the evidence was too much unless, as.
- 9:53Speaker 4: I say, but.
- 9:56Speaker 5: She's not me, she's I don't know what she was,
- 10:00Speaker 5: but she was off right off the radar.
- 10:03Speaker 4: She was.
- 10:04Speaker 1: She didn't write.
- 10:05Speaker 4: Boundaries, you know. She clearly had no boundaries.
- 10:09Speaker 1: Right right like your can't.
- 10:12Speaker 3: She's not operating from a no no the same place.
- 10:18Speaker 3: Did the set feel emotionally heavy knowing that many victims'
- 10:22Speaker 3: families were still alive and grieving while you were making it.
- 10:26Speaker 5: I can't imagine wanting to be part of it. So
- 10:29Speaker 5: I think that they must have been very protected, because
- 10:36Speaker 5: it wouldn't be right to put them out there, I
- 10:39Speaker 5: don't think.
- 10:40Speaker 4: But did they Did they put them all out there?
- 10:43Speaker 3: Many of the families had to. They testified, and they
- 10:46Speaker 3: were in the courtroom and things. But I don't know
- 10:48Speaker 3: what their feelings were about if they or if they
- 10:52Speaker 3: ever you know, commented on the actual miniserious because he
- 10:56Speaker 3: hadn't been executed yet by the time the miniseries came out.
- 11:01Speaker 1: He was still on death row.
- 11:04Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's a tough one because I'm certainly against that,
- 11:08Speaker 5: and you know, I'm against killing him, right, what do
- 11:14Speaker 5: you do?
- 11:14Speaker 4: You just have to keep him in chains or something.
- 11:17Speaker 1: Right, Well? That was also another part of the crazy
- 11:20Speaker 1: part of this.
- 11:21Speaker 3: Is that he escaped custody twice, which I mean, this
- 11:24Speaker 3: really sounds almost unbelievable today, But did those escapes make
- 11:29Speaker 3: it feel more frightening to the public at the time, Like,
- 11:32Speaker 3: do you remember that?
- 11:34Speaker 4: I can't remember how did he escape?
- 11:36Speaker 3: The first time he jumped out a window when he
- 11:40Speaker 3: was in like the court building, and then another time
- 11:42Speaker 3: he actually escaped from prison itself.
- 11:47Speaker 5: He must have had help, you see, he could he
- 11:49Speaker 5: could charm people. He could convince them that he was
- 11:53Speaker 5: pure and sweet.
- 11:55Speaker 3: Right, those you know shots of Mark with his tennis
- 11:59Speaker 3: racket and you know, skipping around.
- 12:03Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and Mark did it beautifully because he was
- 12:07Speaker 5: able to, you know, get into that thinking that that
- 12:12Speaker 5: kind of thing, and he did a beautiful job.
- 12:29Speaker 3: It's so crazy, you know, looking back since doing this podcast,
- 12:33Speaker 3: there are a lot of there are some things that
- 12:35Speaker 3: kind of recur no matter what the cases we're talking about,
- 12:39Speaker 3: And I feel like one of those things is that
- 12:43Speaker 3: the flaws in our system, in both our legal system
- 12:47Speaker 3: and in you know, police research and all those sorts
- 12:53Speaker 3: of things, and it just kind of really reveals how
- 12:55Speaker 3: we are all humans, and there is human error. People
- 12:58Speaker 3: don't escape as much today, let's put it that way.
- 13:01Speaker 1: So I feel like there's something.
- 13:03Speaker 4: That's the whole point. If he were.
- 13:06Speaker 5: A burly, scary looking guy, probably somebody would have shown
- 13:13Speaker 5: him right now.
- 13:15Speaker 4: But he's not.
- 13:17Speaker 5: So it's hard, too hard to shoot. You don't want
- 13:23Speaker 5: to kill a perfectly nice looking, lovely speaking young man.
- 13:28Speaker 3: Right, I mean even his longtime girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall, she
- 13:31Speaker 3: struggled for years to believe whether or not he was guilty,
- 13:35Speaker 3: which just seems like so outrageous, but it speaks to
- 13:40Speaker 3: how how influential and kind of diabolically charming he was.
- 13:46Speaker 4: That's something she never believed.
- 13:48Speaker 1: Unuh, yeah, well she really struggled with it.
- 13:51Speaker 3: I think in the end she might have, but she
- 13:54Speaker 3: also supported him for a very long time.
- 13:58Speaker 4: Wow, it was Claire.
- 14:00Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So there were all kinds of you. You
- 14:03Speaker 3: spoke by this a little bit, but there there are
- 14:05Speaker 3: There are a lot of rumors and confusion surrounding Ted
- 14:10Speaker 3: Bundy's upbringing, including questions about who his biological father was
- 14:14Speaker 3: and that he grew up believing his mother was his sister.
- 14:18Speaker 5: There have been a lot of people that that have
- 14:21Speaker 5: grown up believing their mother with his sister.
- 14:24Speaker 4: I've seen that a lot.
- 14:26Speaker 3: This is the this whole id I mean, we could
- 14:29Speaker 3: just do a whole other many episodes about this.
- 14:31Speaker 1: The un you know, the sort of home for unwed mothers. Uh,
- 14:35Speaker 1: there's sort.
- 14:36Speaker 3: Of an extreme, more extreme name for it, which is
- 14:39Speaker 3: really awful, where women who have to have children and
- 14:42Speaker 3: either the father is not around or in Ted's case,
- 14:47Speaker 3: I think they were saying he might have been at war,
- 14:49Speaker 3: he was a veteran and but either way, the women
- 14:52Speaker 3: are just blamed and they have to be kind of
- 14:53Speaker 3: sequestered away, and you know, it's like shameful.
- 14:57Speaker 1: To be having this child out of wedlock. And I
- 14:59Speaker 1: think that what was kind of going on at the time.
- 15:02Speaker 4: I believe that.
- 15:03Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, true crime is now everywhere, but
- 15:06Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty six, this kind of dramatization felt much
- 15:10Speaker 3: newer and more unsettling. And did it feel at the
- 15:13Speaker 3: time like people were uncomfortable even talking openly about crimes
- 15:17Speaker 3: like this.
- 15:18Speaker 5: No, never, No, because I mean I can remember some
- 15:23Speaker 5: of the old Hollywood stories.
- 15:28Speaker 4: Some girl got killed with a soda bottle or something.
- 15:33Speaker 4: I remember that.
- 15:34Speaker 5: So there were a lot of things like that that
- 15:36Speaker 5: were out there. There were very famous old stories, but
- 15:41Speaker 5: it was mostly with actors Hollywood people.
- 15:44Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah, a lot of that, a.
- 15:47Speaker 4: Lot of that stories, and of course I read them all.
- 15:50Speaker 5: And it was fascinated by all that because it presented
- 15:54Speaker 5: a picture of Hollywood that was very scary. That was
- 16:00Speaker 5: long ago, even before me and so and I'm ninety seven.
- 16:07Speaker 5: So but this kind of thing, Yeah, it was quite
- 16:14Speaker 5: quite believable. I mean, we knew it was there.
- 16:17Speaker 4: We knew it.
- 16:18Speaker 3: Did people you know, and this was happening in real time?
- 16:22Speaker 3: Did do you think did women genuinely move through the
- 16:25Speaker 3: world differently because of the fear of Bundy and others
- 16:29Speaker 3: perhaps like him.
- 16:30Speaker 4: No, I don't think so.
- 16:31Speaker 1: You don't think so.
- 16:33Speaker 5: I mean parents were always very protective of their children,
- 16:38Speaker 5: most parents, and they you know, so that they were
- 16:41Speaker 5: very protective. But I don't think that young women changed
- 16:46Speaker 5: their behavior because of it.
- 16:49Speaker 1: Wow.
- 16:49Speaker 3: So it's not like suddenly people were, you know, not
- 16:51Speaker 3: walking alone in the.
- 16:53Speaker 4: Well, wow, I don't think so.
- 16:57Speaker 3: Wow, It's like we're just immune or something. I mean,
- 16:59Speaker 3: I remember when I was growing up. It was the
- 17:01Speaker 3: son of Sam and I grew up on Long Island,
- 17:04Speaker 3: and I remember that moment of going.
- 17:08Speaker 1: Wait a second, is he could he be here? You know,
- 17:13Speaker 1: this kind of like terrible. There was like a moment.
- 17:16Speaker 3: Of oh my god, this is terrifying, and then talking
- 17:20Speaker 3: to my parents and them saying, you know, no, this
- 17:24Speaker 3: is you know, not happening. We live on Long Island,
- 17:27Speaker 3: we don't like but them having to like, you know,
- 17:30Speaker 3: tell me, you know, with with their own amount of certainty,
- 17:34Speaker 3: I suppose that he wasn't going to be you know,
- 17:36Speaker 3: coming through my window. I it was really scary, it was.
- 17:44Speaker 5: I didn't have any of that. But you were right
- 17:46Speaker 5: there near where he was, right.
- 17:48Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I mean it was close enough. Yes, Yeah,
- 17:51Speaker 3: that's probably why. Yeah, so many women in the seventies were,
- 18:09Speaker 3: you know, they were just starting to experience more independence,
- 18:13Speaker 3: like living alone and traveling and going to college. Do
- 18:16Speaker 3: you think that Bundy prayed on that cultural moment in
- 18:19Speaker 3: a really specific way?
- 18:22Speaker 4: Oh gosh, I don't.
- 18:24Speaker 5: I don't know. I was very careless. I was from
- 18:29Speaker 5: the Midwest. I was from a small town. And then
- 18:32Speaker 5: when I went to New York and I was on
- 18:34Speaker 5: a soap opera to lead that, I was very careless.
- 18:37Speaker 4: I wrote a book.
- 18:39Speaker 5: I have a book that I wrote when I was
- 18:42Speaker 5: about ninety and I did I outlined some of the
- 18:46Speaker 5: things that happened because I was very careless.
- 18:50Speaker 4: Didn't my doors, things like that, And.
- 18:55Speaker 5: I had a feeling of probably wrongly, but I mean
- 18:59Speaker 5: I had a feel of complete independence and complete freedom,
- 19:03Speaker 5: and I was fearless.
- 19:06Speaker 4: I was fearless.
- 19:07Speaker 3: I mean, that's why you've had an amazing life and career.
- 19:11Speaker 3: That's probably also partly what one like your spirit that
- 19:16Speaker 3: made you become an artist in the first place, but
- 19:18Speaker 3: also you know, being able to have that sort of
- 19:22Speaker 3: creativity and that spirit like it just does I suppose
- 19:26Speaker 3: lend itself to more freedom.
- 19:28Speaker 4: Well, I was an actress for this time.
- 19:30Speaker 5: I could remember, Yeah, my father had been an actor,
- 19:34Speaker 5: and I just it's what I.
- 19:36Speaker 3: Was so yeah, I mean, looking back now, do you
- 19:41Speaker 3: think does it surprise you that Ted is still one
- 19:45Speaker 3: of the most talked about killers in American history.
- 19:48Speaker 1: I mean, this is nearly fifty years later.
- 19:50Speaker 4: It doesn't surprise me because he was so.
- 19:55Speaker 5: The last person one of the you would never suspect
- 19:58Speaker 5: him Indian series, right, and as you would, and Mark
- 20:05Speaker 5: playing the part was able to do that. He was
- 20:09Speaker 5: the all American football player, you know, nice, hate family,
- 20:13Speaker 5: all that stuff. So it would be a shock, right, indeed,
- 20:18Speaker 5: indeed a major shock, right, he were like that.
- 20:23Speaker 4: So that that was good casting.
- 20:25Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole cast, all of you, everybody all.
- 20:29Speaker 3: It's a really strong, strong cast, so many well known
- 20:33Speaker 3: character actors in that serious like chalk full of very
- 20:38Speaker 3: familiar faces, you know, all of you just continuing to
- 20:41Speaker 3: go on to very big careers.
- 20:44Speaker 1: This has been such a pleasure.
- 20:46Speaker 3: I hope that, you know, I'll do another podcast where
- 20:48Speaker 3: I get to talk to you about the other roles
- 20:50Speaker 3: that you've played that I'm so enamored with. But I
- 20:55Speaker 3: really appreciate you taking this time to talk with me today, Bonnie,
- 20:58Speaker 3: your your lovely well.
- 21:00Speaker 4: Thank you very much and I was pleased to do it.
- 21:03Speaker 4: Good luck to you.
- 21:04Speaker 1: With everything great. Thank you so much, Bonnie,