Latest / Luke's English Podcast / The Psychologist Who Studied Ted Bundy _ What He Discovered

Transcript

The Psychologist Who Studied Ted Bundy _ What He Discovered · Luke's English Podcast

0:03
Speaker 1: Ted was very friendly. It's like he wanted to stop
0:09
Speaker 1: but he couldn't. But he knew there was something in him.
0:12
Speaker 2: That's the voice of doctor al Carlyle in nineteen seventy six.
0:17
Speaker 2: He was the prison psychologist assigned to evaluate Ted Bundy,
0:22
Speaker 2: not after the crimes were known, but while they were
0:25
Speaker 2: still happening. What Carlyle was looking at was in history.
0:30
Speaker 2: It was a threat that hadn't finished revealing itself.
0:34
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy is a very disturbed, intelligent person.
0:38
Speaker 2: At least say two more young women I'm missing tonight.
0:41
Speaker 2: Investigators are now reviewing whether the cases may be connected.
0:44
Speaker 1: How can you have such an urge, a habit, a
0:52
Speaker 1: set of behaviors to kill someone.
0:56
Speaker 2: Ted Bundy's crimes have been studied exhaustively, but what's often
1:00
Speaker 2: missed is how this man came to be. The question
1:04
Speaker 2: isn't what he did, it's when he crossed the line,
1:08
Speaker 2: and whether that line was already far behind him, long
1:11
Speaker 2: before anyone realized he was dangerous.
1:14
Speaker 1: When does it get to a point you've crossed over
1:17
Speaker 1: the line that you can't cross back again. That's that's
1:21
Speaker 1: the part.
1:22
Speaker 2: I like to understand. I'm James Buddy Day. This is unmarked.
1:32
Speaker 1: I remember he walked toward me in the hall and
1:36
Speaker 1: I was standing outside the room we're going to use
1:40
Speaker 1: for the interview, And as he walked towards me, smile
1:44
Speaker 1: on his face, brisk walk, stick out his hand and
1:48
Speaker 1: shook mine. Says doctor Carlisle, right, I'm Ted Bundy.
1:55
Speaker 2: Before anyone recognized Ted Bundy. He was arrested in Utah
2:00
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy five during a routine traffic stop. The
2:04
Speaker 2: subsequent investigation identified Bundy as a suspect in numerous unsolved
2:09
Speaker 2: homicides and the attempted kidnapping of a young woman. When
2:14
Speaker 2: that case went to trial, Bundy was convicted, and what
2:18
Speaker 2: came next was critical. Before sentencing and placement, Bundy was
2:24
Speaker 2: ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. The task fell to
2:28
Speaker 2: prison psychologist doctor Al Carlile.
2:32
Speaker 1: I thought, this is yeah, he's got a nice personality, Bill.
2:36
Speaker 1: What's he going to be like as we start really
2:38
Speaker 1: getting in the nitty gritty of.
2:40
Speaker 3: All of this.
2:41
Speaker 2: Doctor Carlile passed away in twenty eighteen. The interview you're
2:45
Speaker 2: hearing today was recorded shortly before his death, one of
2:49
Speaker 2: the last he ever gave. When he met Bundy in
2:53
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six, Carlile was no stranger to dangerous offenders.
2:58
Speaker 2: He would go on to spend more more than twenty
3:00
Speaker 2: years as a clinical psychologist in the Utah State Prison,
3:05
Speaker 2: eventually retiring in nineteen eighty nine as the head of
3:08
Speaker 2: the department.
3:09
Speaker 1: All the time he's with me, he's saying, I didn't
3:12
Speaker 1: do anything. I'm not guilty of these things they say
3:15
Speaker 1: I might have done up North, and I'm not guilty
3:18
Speaker 1: of Carol Durance.
3:19
Speaker 3: I just didn't do that. I didn't do any of that.
3:21
Speaker 2: Before we go any deeper, a brief step back, Ted
3:25
Speaker 2: Bundy is often described as one of the most prolific
3:29
Speaker 2: serial killers in American history, and you should know the
3:33
Speaker 2: full scope of his crimes remain unclear and will likely
3:37
Speaker 2: continue to be the subject of research and debate for
3:41
Speaker 2: years to come. To date, approximately only twenty of his
3:46
Speaker 2: victims have officially been confirmed, and nearly all of those
3:50
Speaker 2: murders occurred within a remarkably compressed period roughly four years
3:56
Speaker 2: between nineteen seventy four and nineteen seventy eight, though Bundy
4:01
Speaker 2: himself claimed responsibility for at least a dozen additional killings.
4:06
Speaker 2: But this episode isn't about how many people Ted Bundy killed.
4:11
Speaker 2: It's about how someone like this comes into existence.
4:17
Speaker 1: Here, you've got a guy who's come down Salt Lake,
4:19
Speaker 1: he's in law school, he has a political career ahead
4:25
Speaker 1: of him.
4:29
Speaker 2: When Al Carlisle and Ted Bundy sit down together, it's
4:33
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six, right in the middle of Bundy's most
4:37
Speaker 2: well documented killing spree. At the time, Bundy is thirty
4:42
Speaker 2: years old. You have to picture Ted Bundy as he
4:45
Speaker 2: appeared then, a perennial college student studying law, loosely involved
4:51
Speaker 2: in politics, presenting himself as someone hovering just on the
4:56
Speaker 2: edge of a respectable future.
4:58
Speaker 1: So here he is an he has the possibility of
5:01
Speaker 1: losing his whole career. And I said, Ted, you don't
5:05
Speaker 1: have any anxiety none her depression, you know, And he
5:10
Speaker 1: says no, things just don't bother me. I thought there's
5:13
Speaker 1: something wrong here.
5:16
Speaker 2: He's thin, tall, often smiling, bright blue eyes that hold
5:22
Speaker 2: contact just to be longer than necessary, the kind of
5:26
Speaker 2: man who seems eager to help. Nothing about him signals danger.
5:31
Speaker 1: I gave him some tests in the beginning, personality IQ
5:34
Speaker 1: tests and such as IQ was in the mid one
5:37
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty, so He's got superior IQ, and by
5:41
Speaker 1: his vocabulary, I knew he was very intelligent. On some
5:44
Speaker 1: of the other tests that measure anxiety depression, they came
5:48
Speaker 1: out extremely low.
5:50
Speaker 2: Bundy's high intelligence is unmoored from conscience. He doesn't internalize
5:56
Speaker 2: social or moral constraints. Rules are external obstacles, not internal guidelines.
6:02
Speaker 2: Ethics are something that other people believe in. What doctor
6:06
Speaker 2: Carlisle sees is a psychopath presenting with such grandiosity that
6:12
Speaker 2: he can't meaningfully imagine the inner lives of other people,
6:16
Speaker 2: their experiences, their fear, their suffering. None of it registers
6:21
Speaker 2: to Bundy as real.
6:23
Speaker 1: I talked to people he knew, girlfriends, friends, a few
6:29
Speaker 1: people in Salt Lake who knew him, and they were
6:34
Speaker 1: all impressed with him, except there was another side of
6:37
Speaker 1: the story that some got into. There's one side that
6:43
Speaker 1: most people see when he wants them to decide he
6:46
Speaker 1: wants to show, and then there's a dark side of him,
6:52
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to get to know the dark side.
6:55
Speaker 2: For Bundy, the dark side emerges as a young child.
7:00
Speaker 2: He's born in nineteen forty six to Eleanor Louise Cowell
7:04
Speaker 2: at the Elizabeth Lundhome for unwin mothers. Shortly after, Bundy
7:09
Speaker 2: is briefly abandoned by his mother. He's taken to Philadelphia,
7:14
Speaker 2: where he's raised by his maternal grandparents. For much of
7:18
Speaker 2: his early childhood, Bundy is led to believe that his
7:21
Speaker 2: mother is his sister and that his grandparents are his parents.
7:27
Speaker 2: The truth about his parentage is concealed from him, part
7:31
Speaker 2: of a family structure built on secrecy and misdirection.
7:35
Speaker 1: Back in those days, illegitimacy was a huge thing, and
7:42
Speaker 1: to ted he not only the oldest of a family
7:47
Speaker 1: doesn't fit in. He's very shy.
7:51
Speaker 2: The term illegitimate. It sounds outdated now, but in the
7:55
Speaker 2: early nineteen fifties it carried real weight. It meant to
8:00
Speaker 2: child born outside of marriage at a time when that
8:03
Speaker 2: distinction wasn't just social but moral. It's hard to imagine now,
8:08
Speaker 2: but it could affect how a family was viewed, where
8:11
Speaker 2: they could live, even how a child was treated in
8:15
Speaker 2: school or church. As a teenager, Bundy is told the
8:20
Speaker 2: truth about his parentage by a cousin. Later in life,
8:25
Speaker 2: Bundy would openly scoff at anyone who suggested that this
8:29
Speaker 2: revelation had any bearing on the man he became now.
8:33
Speaker 1: When I asked it about this, he says, oh, that
8:36
Speaker 1: was a big issue, But it really was.
8:39
Speaker 2: But that dismissal misses a larger point, one that often
8:43
Speaker 2: gets overlooked. Bundy's childhood isn't just marked by secrecy. It's unstable.
8:50
Speaker 2: His grandfather is a brutal disciplinarian. His birth mother moves
8:55
Speaker 2: through a series of relationships. At one point, Bundy is
8:58
Speaker 2: taken by his birth mother to live with an uncle,
9:01
Speaker 2: adding another rupture to an already fragile sense of home.
9:06
Speaker 2: You have to imagine this child early on, isolated, lonely
9:11
Speaker 2: and acutely aware of what he lacked. He envies the
9:15
Speaker 2: financial security and the emotional stability of the families around him,
9:21
Speaker 2: and that's when something important begins to take shape.
9:25
Speaker 1: He lived in a place where he could look out
9:28
Speaker 1: his window and down into the window of the next
9:31
Speaker 1: house and see whatever he could see there. And he
9:35
Speaker 1: went out and started window peeking and such. So he
9:39
Speaker 1: began this other life.
9:41
Speaker 2: Then, for Ted Bundy, this early behavior later escalates into stocking,
9:46
Speaker 2: but at the time it's a coping mechanism. Bundy is
9:51
Speaker 2: born with a mind that fixates inward. Add to this
9:55
Speaker 2: that his early environment is unstable, marked by secrecy and
9:59
Speaker 2: emotional distance. Bundy is never given a truthful account of
10:04
Speaker 2: who his father was, and that absence creates a vacuum
10:07
Speaker 2: when filled with shame, grievance, and envy of those who
10:11
Speaker 2: seem grounded.
10:13
Speaker 1: Ted to the other kids. And I talked to a
10:16
Speaker 1: couple of them who were in his neighborhood. They said, well,
10:21
Speaker 1: he wasn't really angry, he was just there, just Ted.
10:26
Speaker 1: He just seemed okay. He didn't stand out in any way.
10:30
Speaker 1: But he got into this fantasy and he was very lonely.
10:37
Speaker 2: Watching others. Let's Bundy study the life that was denied
10:41
Speaker 2: to him. In that space, he begins constructing a private fantasy.
10:47
Speaker 2: And in that fantasy, Bundy would become the man his
10:50
Speaker 2: non existent father never was, successful, respected and powerful.
10:58
Speaker 1: I said, Ted, what were you after this time in
11:01
Speaker 1: your life? He said, I wanted a beautiful co ed
11:07
Speaker 1: and I wanted a profession.
11:10
Speaker 2: By middle school, Ted Bundy's inner fantasy life only deepens
11:16
Speaker 2: his emerging psychopathic personality. Means social cues like discomfort, rejection,
11:22
Speaker 2: or indifference they don't register the way they do for
11:25
Speaker 2: other children. At this stage, he hasn't yet developed the
11:30
Speaker 2: charm or the mimicry that will later allow him to
11:33
Speaker 2: conceal himself.
11:34
Speaker 1: I think people stayed away from him not because they
11:37
Speaker 1: didn't like him, or that he was so unusual or
11:40
Speaker 1: that he was violent. They didn't like him because he
11:43
Speaker 1: was so shy and he didn't he really didn't speak
11:46
Speaker 1: up and talk, and he didn't seem to want to
11:49
Speaker 1: put himself in social situations.
11:52
Speaker 2: And that solitude doesn't interrupt the fantasy that's forming inside him,
11:57
Speaker 2: it feeds it. With fewer real relationships to correct or
12:02
Speaker 2: challenge his perceptions, Bundy's internal world grows more elaborate, more insulated,
12:08
Speaker 2: and more detached from what other people see.
12:12
Speaker 1: I ask him one time, because he was Wendy was
12:15
Speaker 1: in junior high. That's said, Ted, did you date have
12:21
Speaker 1: any girlfriends?
12:22
Speaker 2: Yeah?
12:22
Speaker 3: You said your three girlfriends? Okay. Did you do anything
12:26
Speaker 3: with him? Yeah? Did you kiss him? Yeah? Uh huh.
12:31
Speaker 2: The people who were there tell a different story over
12:34
Speaker 2: the years, family members, classmates, acquaintances. They've all spoken in
12:39
Speaker 2: numerous forums, and their accounts are strikingly consistent. They describe
12:45
Speaker 2: an introverted, withdrawn child, sad and lonely, unable to form
12:51
Speaker 2: attachments and confused about why he couldn't. At some point
12:55
Speaker 2: that isolation, fantasy, and grievance coalesce into violence. What we
13:01
Speaker 2: don't know, what we may never know, is exactly when
13:04
Speaker 2: the line was crossed.
13:06
Speaker 1: He was about fourteen, and there was this little girl
13:11
Speaker 1: named Anne.
13:13
Speaker 3: She was eight years.
13:14
Speaker 1: Old, and she was on his paper route, and he
13:20
Speaker 1: delivered papers over there, and so we likely knew her,
13:25
Speaker 1: and one day she went missing.
13:28
Speaker 2: In the early morning hours of August thirty first, nineteen
13:31
Speaker 2: sixty one, eight year old Anne Marie Burr is abducted
13:35
Speaker 2: from her home at approximately five point fifteen am. Her
13:40
Speaker 2: mother checks on the four sleeping children. Anne Marie's bed
13:45
Speaker 2: is empty. Downstairs, The signs are unmistakable. The living room window,
13:52
Speaker 2: normally kept cracked open, is wide open. The latch on
13:57
Speaker 2: the front door is undone. Anne Marie Burr is gone.
14:02
Speaker 1: Whoever it was talked around the house, so she knew
14:06
Speaker 1: the person.
14:08
Speaker 2: Her disappearance triggers a massive search effort and intense media coverage.
14:14
Speaker 2: Police recover a shoe print near the home and theorize
14:17
Speaker 2: that the abductor may be a teenager. No suspect is
14:22
Speaker 2: ever charged. Anne Mary Burr is never found. The Burr
14:26
Speaker 2: home is six blocks from where Ted Bundy lives.
14:29
Speaker 1: At the time, I asked Ted, I said, oh, what
14:35
Speaker 1: did you think about that? And he is who already
14:38
Speaker 1: didn't pay any attention to it. I don't think I
14:40
Speaker 1: really knew about it. And I said, how could you
14:44
Speaker 1: not know about it when everybody's talking about this over breakfast?
14:49
Speaker 1: He said, well, I think I must have just been
14:52
Speaker 1: involved in school and that was my main interest. You know,
14:56
Speaker 1: that's one of the red flags that go up. You think, whoops,
14:59
Speaker 1: what a minute, and caught him off guard. I think
15:02
Speaker 1: he killed her.
15:04
Speaker 2: Al Carlisle is not alone in that belief. Years later,
15:08
Speaker 2: while filming a documentary in Tacoma, I spent time with
15:12
Speaker 2: the investigators from the Tacoma Police Department off camera in
15:16
Speaker 2: candid conversations about the case. The view was consistent. They
15:20
Speaker 2: share the opinion that Ted Bundy was solely responsible. Now
15:27
Speaker 2: that assessment isn't presented as a formal finding, and it
15:30
Speaker 2: isn't a closed case declaration. It's the kind of conclusion
15:34
Speaker 2: investigators arrive at after decades of hindsight, but the truth
15:39
Speaker 2: remains elusive.
15:42
Speaker 1: All the way through high school, he was very very lonely,
15:44
Speaker 1: very shy. He couldn't ask a girl.
15:46
Speaker 3: For a date.
15:48
Speaker 1: He went to a dance, to a high school dance,
15:53
Speaker 1: but that didn't amount to anything. But a couple of
15:59
Speaker 1: guys asked him to go skiing. He had got a
16:04
Speaker 1: book on skiing and he had learned to ski, and
16:08
Speaker 1: so he went skiing with him. And when he was
16:10
Speaker 1: up on the slopes, he was one of the guys.
16:13
Speaker 1: And this was a big turning point because now he
16:17
Speaker 1: was it, He was in. He was one of them.
16:20
Speaker 2: For the first time in his life. Bundy discovers something
16:24
Speaker 2: that works. Skiing gives him a way in. It teaches
16:28
Speaker 2: him how to blend, how to mirror confidence, competence. He's
16:34
Speaker 2: on the slopes. Social rules are simple. Skill equals status.
16:39
Speaker 2: Silence reads as focus instead of awkwardness. For Bundy, it's
16:43
Speaker 2: not only a revelation. It introduces him to Taylor Mountain.
16:49
Speaker 2: Taylor Mountain is a rugged, wooded area that's largely undeveloped.
16:54
Speaker 2: Imagine dense forests cut by logging, roads and informal trails
17:00
Speaker 2: to town to be accessible, but isolated enough to disappear
17:04
Speaker 2: into Later it becomes something else.
17:08
Speaker 1: Entirely ted graduated high school. He went to University of
17:13
Speaker 1: Puget Sound for a year. He got a scholarship there.
17:20
Speaker 2: It's now nineteen sixty six and Bundy is developing the
17:24
Speaker 2: camouflage he'll use to hide his psychopathy a college student.
17:30
Speaker 2: If you listen to our episode on The Grim Sleeper,
17:33
Speaker 2: you've already heard me talk about geographic profiling. The idea
17:38
Speaker 2: is simple. Offenders choose locations. They know the corners, they watch,
17:43
Speaker 2: the places where they feel invisible. Victim encounters, attack sites,
17:48
Speaker 2: disposal points. They all cluster inside that small comfort zone.
17:53
Speaker 2: Research consistently shows that most serial killers operate close to home.
17:59
Speaker 2: In one major study of fifty four serial offenders, eighty
18:03
Speaker 2: seven percent of crime scenes fell within a five mile
18:06
Speaker 2: radius of the killer's residence. Ted Bundy follows this pattern precisely.
18:13
Speaker 2: He grows up in the university district. He understands these neighborhoods.
18:18
Speaker 2: He knows how to move through college campuses without drawing attention.
18:23
Speaker 2: He knows the rhythms, the class schedules, study halls, late nights,
18:29
Speaker 2: unlocked doors, campuses offer exactly what Bundy needs. Social trust
18:36
Speaker 2: and young people accustomed to strangers, and this camouflage doesn't
18:41
Speaker 2: just facilitate violence, it facilitates connection. While skiing, Bundy meets
18:48
Speaker 2: a fellow student named Diane Marjorie Jean Edwards.
18:53
Speaker 1: He wanted a politician's wife. He wanted someone who was beautiful,
18:57
Speaker 1: and she was. He wanted someone who was in intelligent,
19:01
Speaker 1: and she was. You know.
19:04
Speaker 3: Her father.
19:07
Speaker 1: Was the CEO of an international company, and so they
19:12
Speaker 1: were quite wealthy, you know, and Ted was very poor.
19:16
Speaker 1: He falls head over heels in love with her, and
19:21
Speaker 1: she is the major turning point in his whole life.
19:25
Speaker 2: While his first serious girlfriend continues her studies at the
19:29
Speaker 2: University of Washington, Bundy begins to move freely between institutions.
19:34
Speaker 2: He transfers from the University of Puget Sound to the
19:38
Speaker 2: University of Washington, and later spends time taking classes through
19:42
Speaker 2: Stanford University, including a brief summer session.
19:46
Speaker 1: He went to Stamford for this summer and he he
19:51
Speaker 1: took classes in Chinese studies and he really liked it. Boy,
19:56
Speaker 1: he was in his element.
19:57
Speaker 2: Then new campuses mean new faith, new routines, and no
20:02
Speaker 2: long term accountability. At the same time, something darker is unfolding.
20:08
Speaker 2: Bundy begins to follow female students. He breaks into dormitories,
20:14
Speaker 2: and these intrusions aren't random, they're exploratory rehearsals. This is
20:20
Speaker 2: where he finds exhilaration. By this point, it's almost certain
20:26
Speaker 2: that Bundy is already hurting people, though the specifics of
20:30
Speaker 2: when and how remain poorly understood even to this day.
20:34
Speaker 2: His movements during these years are fragmented, difficult to reconstruct,
20:38
Speaker 2: and largely self reported.
20:41
Speaker 1: There was one time that he had molested woman, possibly
20:46
Speaker 1: killed her, and he was driving away and he was
20:51
Speaker 1: crying because he felt he felt so bad about what
20:56
Speaker 1: the direction of life was going, you know, And he
21:00
Speaker 1: rolled down the window and started throwing some of the
21:02
Speaker 1: things out, and it seems like he didn't really understand
21:07
Speaker 1: why he did, and which may sound rather ridiculous.
21:15
Speaker 2: By nineteen sixty nine, Ted Bundy is twenty two years old,
21:19
Speaker 2: moving constantly, drifting between campuses, cities, and states. He's exploring
21:24
Speaker 2: universities the way other people explore neighborhoods. By his own admission,
21:31
Speaker 2: Bundy is passing through New Jersey over Memorial Day weekend
21:35
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty nine. One week later, on Monday, June second,
21:40
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, the bodies of two young women are
21:43
Speaker 2: discovered hidden beneath piles of leaves in dense woods near
21:48
Speaker 2: Summers Point, about two hundred yards from the Garden State
21:52
Speaker 2: Parkway and roughly one hundred and fifty yards from their
21:56
Speaker 2: abandoned car.
21:58
Speaker 1: Memorial Day, nineteen sixteen. He was going to drive a
22:03
Speaker 1: car back, he told me back with and he was
22:08
Speaker 1: out the New Jersey Beach and there were two girls
22:12
Speaker 1: out there, and he somehow got them to ride with him.
22:18
Speaker 1: He took him, he killed them both, you know, And
22:22
Speaker 1: I think that was a huge turning point.
22:25
Speaker 2: What matters here is the shift. The medical examiner later
22:29
Speaker 2: concludes that Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry, both nineteen years old,
22:35
Speaker 2: had been killed by stabbing several days earlier. The two
22:39
Speaker 2: women had been staying in Ocean City on vacation since
22:43
Speaker 2: the previous Tuesday. They were last seen leaving a diner
22:47
Speaker 2: together days before their bodies were discovered. But by this point,
22:51
Speaker 2: Bundy is fully engrossed in his fantasy world at the
22:55
Speaker 2: expense of the only real relationship he's ever managed to achieve.
23:01
Speaker 1: Marjorie was of the UW finishing out some classes, and
23:07
Speaker 1: she began cutting off the relationship little by little. Then
23:11
Speaker 1: Finally she said to him, you know, I'm I'm sorry, Ted,
23:15
Speaker 1: I'm not ready for a real serious relationship. Let's just
23:19
Speaker 1: be friends. And he you know, that was it. That
23:23
Speaker 1: was his whole world was absolutely destroyed at that point.
23:29
Speaker 2: Moving between campuses and cities gives him temporary trust and anonymity,
23:34
Speaker 2: but it also demands something that he can't sustain. His
23:38
Speaker 2: grades begin to slip. At one point he's forced to
23:42
Speaker 2: drop out.
23:43
Speaker 1: Now He's applied to law schools, and University of Utah
23:47
Speaker 1: was one of them. He applied to six of them.
23:49
Speaker 1: He got turned down by five, and he took the
23:52
Speaker 1: l set got failed at twice. It was about two
23:56
Speaker 1: days after that that you have the first attempted homicide.
24:08
Speaker 2: On January fourth, nineteen seventy four, Bundy targets a young
24:13
Speaker 2: woman who embodies what he feels he's lost, a female
24:17
Speaker 2: student attending the University of Washington. He breaks into an
24:22
Speaker 2: apartment in the University district of Seattle, where he assaults
24:26
Speaker 2: a sleeping student named Karen Sparks. Miraculously, she survives, though
24:33
Speaker 2: with lifelong disabilities. The geography here matters. Sparks's apartment is
24:39
Speaker 2: roughly one mile from the University of Washington close enough
24:43
Speaker 2: to sit firmly inside Bundy's comfort zone. It's an area
24:47
Speaker 2: he knows intimately, an area where he still presents himself
24:51
Speaker 2: as a student, even though in reality that identity is fractured.
24:56
Speaker 1: There's a feeling of possession, and so that's what he
25:02
Speaker 1: was after.
25:04
Speaker 2: That word possession. That's key. By this point, Ted Bundy
25:10
Speaker 2: isn't seeking connection, He isn't even seeking validation. What he
25:15
Speaker 2: wants is ownership control. Within weeks, the violence becomes unmistakable.
25:24
Speaker 2: On February first, Bundy abducts twenty two year old Linda
25:28
Speaker 2: Ann Healy from her basement bedroom near the University of Washington.
25:33
Speaker 2: On March twelfth, he kidnaps Donna Gail Manson, nineteen years old,
25:38
Speaker 2: as she walks to a concert at Evergreen State College.
25:42
Speaker 2: A month later, on April seventeenth, Bundy lewis Susan Elaine Rancourt, eighteen,
25:47
Speaker 2: from a meeting at Central Washington State College. On May sixth,
25:52
Speaker 2: he abducts ROBERTA. Kathleen Parks twenty two from Oregon State University,
25:58
Speaker 2: and on June first, Brenda Carroll Ball twenty two disappears
26:03
Speaker 2: after leaving the flame tavern in Buren.
26:06
Speaker 1: Ted's killing these people, and I think at that point
26:11
Speaker 1: he can't stop. He's crossed the line. He's so addicted.
26:15
Speaker 1: I don't think he likes what he's doing, but he
26:18
Speaker 1: can't stop.
26:19
Speaker 2: The pattern is crystal clear, even if some of the
26:22
Speaker 2: details are not. We don't know precisely what rus Bundy
26:27
Speaker 2: used in every case, but in some instances witnesses reports
26:31
Speaker 2: seeing him speaking with the women, often wearing a sling
26:35
Speaker 2: on his arm, sometimes asking for help. It's a performance
26:40
Speaker 2: designed to lower defenses, to appear harmless, to invite proximity.
26:45
Speaker 1: He goes into another, and another, and another and another,
26:48
Speaker 1: and each one of these you can see they're well planned.
26:52
Speaker 1: He has a lot of confidence in what he's doing.
26:56
Speaker 2: What forensic evidence later establishes is consistent. In each case.
27:01
Speaker 2: Bundy incapacitates the victim inside his vehicle, then transports them
27:06
Speaker 2: to Taylor Mountain, the remote wooded area he knows so well,
27:11
Speaker 2: a short drive from where he often goes skiing.
27:15
Speaker 1: He would go back to Taylor Mountain, you know, when
27:18
Speaker 1: he lived up there, and visit the the corpses.
27:24
Speaker 2: By the summer of nineteen seventy four, Ted Bundy's violence escalatees.
27:30
Speaker 2: On June eleventh, Bundy of ducks Georgia Ann Hawkins, eighteen
27:34
Speaker 2: years old, from the alley behind her sorority house near
27:37
Speaker 2: the University of Washington. This time the geography changes. Bundy
27:42
Speaker 2: transports Hawkins east to the Issaquoi area, into the forested
27:47
Speaker 2: foothills of the Cascades. It's wooded and remote, but it's
27:52
Speaker 2: not his original corridor. This isn't Taylor Mountain. This is
27:56
Speaker 2: outside his comfort zone, and that shift matters. It signals confidence,
28:02
Speaker 2: a willingness to travel farther, to manage greater risk, to
28:07
Speaker 2: operate beyond the spaces that he knows best. The fantasy
28:11
Speaker 2: is no longer contained. It's expanding.
28:14
Speaker 1: In the summer of seventy forty, two girls went missing
28:20
Speaker 1: at Lake Sammamish.
28:22
Speaker 2: On July fourteenth, nineteen seventy four, Ted Bundy is seen
28:26
Speaker 2: by dozens of people approaching young women at Lake Samamish.
28:32
Speaker 2: Lake Samamish is a sprawling state park east of Seattle,
28:36
Speaker 2: a summer gathering place with beaches, picnic areas, boat launches,
28:41
Speaker 2: and long sightlines. On warm weekends, it's crowded and loud,
28:46
Speaker 2: a place defined by visibility. That day, the park is packed.
28:52
Speaker 2: There are more than forty thousand people there. Family, students, couples, friends,
28:57
Speaker 2: It's the opposite of isolation. Early in the day, Bundy
29:03
Speaker 2: begins approaching young women in plain view of everyone around them.
29:08
Speaker 2: He introduces himself casually. His arm is in a sling.
29:13
Speaker 2: He asks for help unloading a sailboat.
29:16
Speaker 3: She went up to the parking lot with him.
29:18
Speaker 1: It wasn't there, Carver's the boat wasn't He says, Oh,
29:21
Speaker 1: it's up in this little town. I'm sorry, I've got
29:25
Speaker 1: someone coming. I can't help you.
29:27
Speaker 3: She went back.
29:29
Speaker 2: By this point, Ted Bundy has become so detached from
29:32
Speaker 2: other people that he believes he's effectively invisible. When an
29:37
Speaker 2: eyewitness later describes him, he's reportedly shocked. Despite committing these
29:42
Speaker 2: crimes in front of more than forty thousand people and
29:46
Speaker 2: using his real name, that matters. Bundy no longer feels
29:52
Speaker 2: the need to protect himself when his first approach fails.
29:56
Speaker 2: When one potential target escapes, Bundy doesn't even retreat. He
30:00
Speaker 2: escalates in broad daylight. Hib ducks Janie, and at twenty
30:06
Speaker 2: three years old, she's last seen leaving Lake Samamish with Bundy.
30:11
Speaker 1: He went back to virtually the same spot, close enough
30:15
Speaker 1: for her to hear, and said to another girl, Hi,
30:19
Speaker 1: my name is Ted, could you help me? And she
30:21
Speaker 1: went to help him, and she disappeared, and that's how
30:24
Speaker 1: they came up with the name Ted.
30:27
Speaker 2: Four hours later, he returns to the exact same spot,
30:31
Speaker 2: and he does it again, this time Hib Ducks Denise
30:36
Speaker 2: Marie Naslyn nineteen. Two abductions, same day, same location, same ruse.
30:43
Speaker 1: In Lake Sammamish. He kidnapped the one and then molested
30:48
Speaker 1: and killed her. Then he kidnapped the other.
30:50
Speaker 2: Bundy transports both women east into the forests near Issaquah.
30:56
Speaker 2: But in the weeks after Lake Samamish, something shifts. Witnesses
31:00
Speaker 2: are talking and investigators are converging. So Bundy does what
31:05
Speaker 2: he's done his entire adult life. He transfers to another school.
31:10
Speaker 2: Bundy leaves Washington and enrolls at the University of Utah
31:14
Speaker 2: College of Law. The move accomplishes several things at once. First,
31:20
Speaker 2: it puts physical distance between him and active investigations. It
31:25
Speaker 2: places him under a new institutional identity, a law student.
31:29
Speaker 2: He's ambitious and respectable once again. And second, it shifts
31:34
Speaker 2: him into an entirely different jurisdiction where no one is
31:37
Speaker 2: looking at him.
31:38
Speaker 1: Ted came down here to go to school, the University
31:41
Speaker 1: of Utah, at the law school, and they send a
31:45
Speaker 1: communicate from up in Washington down says, hey, you've got
31:50
Speaker 1: a Ted Bundy down there. There could possibly be a suspect.
31:56
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of girls had been disappearing.
32:00
Speaker 2: In Oregon and Utah. Ted Bundy continues. On October first,
32:04
Speaker 2: he abducts Nancy Wilcox, sixteen years old, from a shopping
32:08
Speaker 2: mall in Oregon. Seventeen days later, October eighteenth, Bundy intercepts
32:14
Speaker 2: Melissa and Smith, seventeen, outside of pizza parlor as she's
32:19
Speaker 2: walking home. On October thirty, first Halloween night, he kidnaps
32:25
Speaker 2: Laura and Amy, also seventeen, as she heads home from
32:29
Speaker 2: a party. The pace is shocking, the victims are younger,
32:35
Speaker 2: the confidence is growing. A week later, on November eighth,
32:41
Speaker 2: Bundy crosses another line outside a shopping mall in Utah.
32:46
Speaker 2: He poses as a police officer and targets Carol Deranch eighteen.
32:51
Speaker 1: He comes up and he identifies himself as a police
32:55
Speaker 1: officer from the Murray station, and he says, I think
32:59
Speaker 1: someone brought into your car.
33:01
Speaker 3: Do you have a kamaro y' I think someone broke
33:03
Speaker 3: into your car.
33:04
Speaker 1: Can you come and see if there's anything missing? Nothing's missing,
33:08
Speaker 1: he said, Well, let's drive over to the police station.
33:11
Speaker 1: He pulls out these handcuffs and you start slapping on it.
33:16
Speaker 2: She manages to escape, jumping from Bundy's vehicle after he
33:20
Speaker 2: mistakenly fastens a pair of handcuffs to the same wrist.
33:25
Speaker 2: It's a critical failure, a rare break in his control,
33:29
Speaker 2: but Bundy doesn't stop. Shortly afterward, he drives to a
33:34
Speaker 2: nearby middle school and abducts Deborah Jean Kent, seventeen from
33:39
Speaker 2: the parking lot.
33:40
Speaker 1: I had another killer, tell me, he says. When you're
33:46
Speaker 1: all worked up to do this type of thing and
33:52
Speaker 1: it doesn't go through, he says you you can't back off,
33:57
Speaker 1: you can't settle down, you can't let it go until
34:01
Speaker 1: you've done it.
34:03
Speaker 2: The victims are all left in wooded or remote areas.
34:07
Speaker 2: The methods are consistent. There's no serious question about who
34:13
Speaker 2: is responsible, but with each homicide, Bundy feels more invincible,
34:19
Speaker 2: confident than no one can stop him. By nineteen seventy five,
34:24
Speaker 2: he's moving constantly through Utah, Colorado, Idaho, leaving a widening
34:30
Speaker 2: trail of violence behind him. On January twelfth, nineteen seventy five,
34:36
Speaker 2: Bundy lures Karen Eileen Campbell twenty three from a hotel
34:41
Speaker 2: hallway in Snowmass Village, abducting her from the parking lot.
34:46
Speaker 2: Her body is later recovered a month later near a
34:49
Speaker 2: dirt road. On March fifteenth, he takes Julie Lyle Cunningham
34:53
Speaker 2: twenty six while she's walking from her apartment to a
34:57
Speaker 2: local pub. Less than a month later, on April sixth,
35:01
Speaker 2: Bundy stocks Denise Lynn oliverson twenty four as she cycles
35:06
Speaker 2: towards her parents' home in Grand Junction. Her body is
35:09
Speaker 2: never recovered. On May sixth, he abducts Lynette don Culver
35:14
Speaker 2: twelve from an Almida Junior High school during her lunch break. Then,
35:19
Speaker 2: on June twenty eighth, Bundy abducts Susan Curtis, fifteen during
35:23
Speaker 2: a youth conference at Brigham Young University after she leaves
35:27
Speaker 2: her friends to return to her dorm. The geography is expanding,
35:33
Speaker 2: the age range is narrowing, the frequency is accelerating, and
35:37
Speaker 2: still no arrest. That finally changes in August of nineteen
35:43
Speaker 2: seventy five. Bundy's first arrest doesn't come from a long
35:50
Speaker 2: investigation or a targeted manhunt. It comes completely by accident.
35:56
Speaker 2: Late one night in Murray, Utah, a patrol officer named
35:59
Speaker 2: Bob Hayward notices a Volkswagen Beetle driving erratically with its
36:04
Speaker 2: headlights off. He pulls the car over for a routine stop.
36:08
Speaker 1: Ted was off over here with his Volkswagen coming along
36:11
Speaker 1: with his lights off, smoking a joint, and as his
36:15
Speaker 1: Volkswang ha searched, they find an ice pick, They find
36:18
Speaker 1: a ski mask, they find a crowbar. They find some
36:21
Speaker 1: of these other things, and Ourward thinks, well, this looks
36:26
Speaker 1: like burglary tools, so he arrests them.
36:30
Speaker 2: Bundy gives evasive answers. He's arrested on suspicion of kidnapping,
36:35
Speaker 2: and within days Carol Deranch identifies Bundy as her attacker.
36:40
Speaker 2: And it's this identification that changes everything. For the first time.
36:45
Speaker 2: Investigators across Utah, Washington, and Colorado begin actively sharing information.
36:52
Speaker 2: The fragmented pieces, the witness statements, the vehicle descriptions, the
36:56
Speaker 2: survivor testimony. It all starts to align on one person.
37:01
Speaker 2: After a four day bench trial and a weekend of deliberation,
37:05
Speaker 2: a judge finds Bundy guilty of kidnapping an assault. With
37:10
Speaker 2: that conviction secured, Bundy is transferred to Colorado to face
37:14
Speaker 2: murder charges for the first time. Now, we could spend
37:18
Speaker 2: an entire episode talking about Ted Bundy's escapes and his
37:22
Speaker 2: legal maneuvering, but the important part is this. On June seventh,
37:27
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven, while preparing for trial, Bundy escapes by
37:32
Speaker 2: jumping from a second story window of the courthouse in Aspen, Colorado.
37:37
Speaker 2: He disappears into the surrounding mountains and remains at large
37:41
Speaker 2: for several days. Then something unexpected happens. Bundy walks himself
37:47
Speaker 2: back into town and turns himself in. But it's not
37:51
Speaker 2: because he couldn't escape. It's because he was hungry and tired. Remember,
37:57
Speaker 2: Bundy doesn't experience fear or guilt in a way that
38:00
Speaker 2: would drive surrender. What he feels instead is irritation at
38:05
Speaker 2: the inconvenience. The escape stops being rewarding once it becomes
38:09
Speaker 2: physically unpleasant. This is a key feature of psychopathy, short
38:15
Speaker 2: term dominance over long term planning.
38:18
Speaker 1: When he went to Colorado and he escaped and he
38:24
Speaker 1: was caught. Then he called me. We talked for about
38:27
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes on the phone, and he says, I just
38:30
Speaker 1: wanted to know what you thought of my escape.
38:33
Speaker 2: No, just like.
38:35
Speaker 1: Almost like someone calling their father and says, you know,
38:38
Speaker 1: I had a home run. I just want to know
38:40
Speaker 1: what you thought about it. And the very friendly talk.
38:43
Speaker 1: Then he escaped again shortly after that.
38:46
Speaker 2: The second time Bundy adapts. On December thirtieth, nineteen seventy seven,
38:52
Speaker 2: Ted Bundy slips out of the Garfield County jail, exploiting
38:56
Speaker 2: his own familiarity with the system. This time, he doesn't
39:00
Speaker 2: head into the wilderness. He heads towards something much more familiar.
39:04
Speaker 1: When you escape the second time from jail, his objective
39:09
Speaker 1: was to go to South America, start all over again,
39:12
Speaker 1: give up contact with everyone, get himself another perfecsion down there.
39:17
Speaker 3: Where'd he end up? Florida?
39:20
Speaker 2: After his second escape. Before he ever reaches Florida, Ted
39:24
Speaker 2: Bundy puts the camouflage back on. Bundy surfaces in ann Arbor,
39:29
Speaker 2: where he goes to a college bar and watches the
39:32
Speaker 2: Michigan Wolverines lose to the USC Trojans in the Rose Bowl.
39:37
Speaker 2: This matters. It tells us he isn't panicked, he isn't hiding.
39:42
Speaker 2: In fact, he almost gets in a bar fight while
39:45
Speaker 2: watching the game. He's doing what he's always done, placing
39:49
Speaker 2: himself in student environments where he knows how to blend,
39:54
Speaker 2: where his age and demeanor do not stand out, where
39:57
Speaker 2: no one asks questions. From there, he steals a car,
40:02
Speaker 2: He takes a bus, and eventually he arrives at Florida
40:06
Speaker 2: State University. Once again, he presents himself as a law student.
40:11
Speaker 2: Steals another car and breaks into dormitories. He takes valuables
40:17
Speaker 2: and credit cards.
40:18
Speaker 1: Ted said at one time, he says, you know, I
40:22
Speaker 1: can be here talking to you, and then I can
40:26
Speaker 1: be gone and you won't find me.
40:28
Speaker 2: One week later, Ted Bundy commits the act that finally
40:32
Speaker 2: shatters any remaining illusion of control. Shortly before three am,
40:38
Speaker 2: Bundy breaks into the Chiomega sorority house at Florida State
40:42
Speaker 2: University through a rear door. Once inside the house, he
40:47
Speaker 2: moves from room to room. Two young women, Margaret Elizabeth
40:52
Speaker 2: Bowman twenty one and Lisa Janet Levy, twenty are killed
40:57
Speaker 2: in their sleep. Two others, Kathleen Kleiner, and Karen Chandler,
41:02
Speaker 2: both twenty one, are brutally injured but survive. This attack
41:07
Speaker 2: is different from everything that came before. It's loud, it's chaotic,
41:13
Speaker 2: it leaves witnesses. About a month later, on February eighth,
41:19
Speaker 2: Bundy steals a Florida State University van and drives roughly
41:23
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty miles east to Jacksonville. In a
41:27
Speaker 2: parking lot, he approaches a fourteen year old girl, falsely
41:32
Speaker 2: identifying himself as a fire department official. The encounter ends
41:36
Speaker 2: abruptly when her older brother intervenes, but that same day,
41:41
Speaker 2: Bundy doubles back to Lake City, and the following morning,
41:45
Speaker 2: at Lake City Junior High School, he poses as a
41:48
Speaker 2: teacher and removes Kimberly Diane Leech, twelve years old, from
41:52
Speaker 2: her home room. Her remains are found in a rural
41:57
Speaker 2: area outside the city. This crime marks the final collapse.
42:03
Speaker 2: A week later, Bundy is arrested for the final time.
42:07
Speaker 2: Once again, it's not through a sweeping manhunt, but after
42:10
Speaker 2: being stopped for suspicious driving behavior.
42:13
Speaker 1: When he got picked up by the police, he wrote
42:17
Speaker 1: a letter and he said, what's happened to me is
42:22
Speaker 1: like an alcoholic He says, I would find myself following
42:27
Speaker 1: girls around campus that night and I didn't want to
42:32
Speaker 1: do it, but I couldn't not do it.
42:35
Speaker 3: I couldn't stop.
42:37
Speaker 1: No, So that just that that type, it gets to
42:41
Speaker 1: a point that a person say, Okay, how do I stop?
42:48
Speaker 3: Could I stop? Can I ever stop.
42:52
Speaker 2: Now?
42:52
Speaker 3: And if so, what do I have to do?
42:54
Speaker 2: After his final arrest in Florida in February of nineteen
42:58
Speaker 2: seventy eight, Ted by Undy is tried, convicted, and sentenced
43:03
Speaker 2: to death for multiple murders. His trials are highly publicized
43:08
Speaker 2: and marked by Bundy's insistence on representing himself by repeated
43:13
Speaker 2: attempts to manipulate the court. After years on death row
43:17
Speaker 2: and numerous appeals, Bundy is executed by the electric chair
43:22
Speaker 2: at Florida State Prison on January twenty fourth, nineteen eighty nine.
43:27
Speaker 2: But the takeaway from this man's life is that Ted
43:30
Speaker 2: Bundy didn't emerge fully formed psychologically. He was vulnerable, early,
43:36
Speaker 2: detached inward, struggling to regulate shame and envy. That vulnerability
43:42
Speaker 2: was compounded by an unstable childhood marked by secrecy, disruption,
43:48
Speaker 2: and emotional distance. Out of that mix came a reoccurrent
43:52
Speaker 2: fantasy success, admiration, and power, a version of himself that
43:58
Speaker 2: felt untouchable. But fantasy alone isn't dangerous. What changed is
44:04
Speaker 2: that the fantasy attached itself to what he could not
44:08
Speaker 2: have young women, college students, lives that symbolize status, belonging
44:15
Speaker 2: and choice. The scary truth is this, Bundy wasn't invisible
44:20
Speaker 2: because he was brilliant. He was invisible because the system
44:24
Speaker 2: wasn't built to see someone like him. And by the
44:27
Speaker 2: time anyone understood what they were looking at, the line
44:31
Speaker 2: Al Carlisle talked about, the one you can't cross back
44:35
Speaker 2: from was already far behind him.
44:38
Speaker 1: See with Ted, it's a feeling that there's a dark
44:42
Speaker 1: side which you've created over time, and it gets more
44:48
Speaker 1: and more and more powerful, that there's a competition, so
44:53
Speaker 1: to speak, between the dark side and the good side.
44:57
Speaker 1: Every time they're in it feeling a sense of power.
45:05
Speaker 2: Before we wrap up, a quick note. If this case
45:07
Speaker 2: pulled you in, if you're interested in the psychology behind
45:10
Speaker 2: someone like Bundy, then my book might interest you. It's
45:13
Speaker 2: called Charles Manson the last words. It goes deep into
45:17
Speaker 2: that world. It's built from years of research and direct
45:20
Speaker 2: interviews with members of the Manson family, including Manson himself.
45:25
Speaker 2: And if you want more beyond the episodes, there's a
45:27
Speaker 2: lot waiting for you inside Unmarked case Files. It's our
45:31
Speaker 2: research portal where you can go through documents, extended interviews,
45:35
Speaker 2: and the material behind these stories. Now. Unmarked takes a
45:39
Speaker 2: ton of work to produce. Every episode comes out of
45:42
Speaker 2: weeks of research, documents, interviews, and we're starting to work
45:46
Speaker 2: with advertisers to support that work. But if you'd rather
45:49
Speaker 2: listen without ads and get early access to all the episodes,
45:52
Speaker 2: you can join us inside Unmarked case Files. If you're
45:56
Speaker 2: already there, thank you. It genuinely helps keep this research going.
46:01
Speaker 2: This episode of Unmarked was produced by John Dedoe and
46:05
Speaker 2: edited by Dave Alderson. Our additional producer is Jesse Demiray.
46:10
Speaker 2: Until next week, this is Unmarked