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The Night a Bite Mark Sent Ted Bundy to Death Row · True Nightmare Stories

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Four women were attacked inside a locked sorority house in
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: the space of 15 minutes. Three survived. Two did not.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: The man responsible had already escaped from jail twice, crossed
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: six states, and been identified by name to law enforcement.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Years before that night, nobody stopped him. There is something
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: in this case that I have never been able to
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: fully let go of, not the violence itself, but the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: specific documentable moments when it could have ended and didn't.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: The only piece of physical evidence that put Theodore Bundy
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: on death row was a bite mark, not a fingerprint,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: not a witness who saw his face. A double impression
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: left on the body of a 20-year-old woman named Lisa
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: and a sheriff who had to go to court just
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: to look inside a suspect's mouth. That single detail, smaller
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: than a silver dollar, pressed into human skin, is what
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: closed a case spanning four years, 30 confessed murders, and
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: seven U.S. states. That detail... and the fact that Bundy
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: apparently could not help leaving it. He was born Theodore
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Robert Bundy on November 24th, 1946, at the Elizabeth Lund
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont. His mother, Eleanor,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: was 22 and unmarried. The family's solution was specific and
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: by the standards of the time, not unusual. Eleanor's parents
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: took the infant back to their home in Philadelphia. For
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: approximately four years, Ted was raised believing Eleanor was his sister,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and that his grandparents were his parents. The man described
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: as his grandfather had a reputation for violence. He kept
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: a short temper and a long reach. That is the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: environment where Bundy's first understanding of family was formed. Eleanor
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: eventually moved to Tacoma, Washington, and in 1951 married a
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: man named Johnny Bundy, who formally adopted Ted at age five.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: On the surface, that closed the story. A new name,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: a new city, a stepfather. but surfaces have never been
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the whole story in this case. Ted Bundy grew into
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: exactly the kind of young man people trusted on instinct.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: That is not a psychological abstraction. It is a documented
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: operational fact. He was articulate. He presented well in photographs
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and in person. He worked a suicide crisis hotline in Seattle.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: He was accepted to law school not once, but twice.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: When a woman named Elizabeth, his girlfriend in Seattle during
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: the mid-1970s, called police, and identified him by name as
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: a possible suspect. The tip was dismissed. He looked like
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: a law student. He behaved like a law student. The
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: lead went nowhere. At the University of Washington, he had
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: studied Chinese, then switched to psychology. He had a girlfriend
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: named Stephanie. Sharp, socially confident, the kind of woman who
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: moved easily through rooms. She ended the relationship around 1968,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: citing his lack of direction. Bundy spent the next several
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: years building the exact image of direction she had said
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: he lacked. He re-engaged her in 1973, after his acceptance
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: to law school and a position in Republican Party politics
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: in Washington state. She accepted. Then he dropped her, cleanly,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: without apparent grief. People who study this case have noted
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: the timing. He rebuilt himself into what she wanted. then
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: discarded her the moment the architecture was complete. By autumn
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: of 1974, Bundy had been accepted to the University of
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Utah Law School. He drove a tan Volkswagen Beetle. He
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: had been killing since January of that year. Linda Healy
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: was 21, a University of Washington student, when her skull
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: was caved in inside her own room in February of 1974.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Her body was later found dumped in Taylor Mountain Forest,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: a 30-minute drive from campus. In July of that year,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Janice Ott, 23, and Denise Nosland, 19, were abducted within
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: hours of each other from Lake Salmamish State Park, 15
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: miles southeast of the university. Multiple witnesses reported a man
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: with his arm in a sling asking for help with
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: a boat near a tan Volkswagen Beetle. Undy made one
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: of those women watch as he murdered the other. Their
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: bodies were found two miles from the park in November
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: of 1974. a 17-year-old named Deborah vanished after leaving a
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: theater production. She was never seen again. That same month,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: an 18-year-old telephone operator named Carol was approached in a
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Utah shopping mall by a man identifying himself as a
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: police officer. He guided her toward a car. She opened
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: the door and ran. She survived. In October of 1975,
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: she identified Bundy in a police lineup. Her hair was
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: later found in the recovered tan Volkswagen. Also in 1974,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: a University of Utah pharmacy student named Rhonda Stapley accepted
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: a ride from a man who said he was a
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: law student. He drove her into Big Cottonwood Canyon. He
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: told her he was going to kill her. He choked
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: her into unconsciousness. Repeatedly, she escaped when he was momentarily
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: distracted at the car, fell into a fast mountain river,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and made her way home on foot. She kept what
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: happened to her secret for more than 30 years, held
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: in place by shame and by the community expectations of
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: her faith. Her account, when she finally gave it, was
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: hers alone. No contemporary police record confirmed it, but the geography,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: the method, and the timing fit a pattern that was
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: already being drawn across the western United States. Bundy was
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: arrested for the first time in August of 1975 during
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: a routine traffic stop in Utah. Officers found burglary tools
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: in the car. It was not enough. Utah police had
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: no evidence to hold him on any murder charge. He
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: was convicted in 1976 of Carroll's aggravated kidnapping and assault,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: not murder, and transferred to Colorado to face charges there.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: He escaped from a Colorado jail by jumping from a
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: law library window. They recaptured him six days later. He
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: escaped again from the same facility by crawling through a
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: hole in the ceiling of his cell into the chief
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: jailer's apartment, then walked out the front door. He was
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: free for 46 days. On January 15th, 1978, at approximately 2.45
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: in the morning, he entered a sorority house at Florida
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: State University in Tallahassee. What happened in the next 15
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: minutes would change what investigators believed was possible in a
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: criminal case. Talk, and would hinge, in the end, on
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: a wound the size of a human mouth. By the
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: time Bundy crossed into Florida in January of 1978, Law
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: enforcement in four states had already let him walk, not
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: through negligence alone, through a failure of imagination. The man
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: they were looking for did not look like what they
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: thought a killer looked like, and that gap between what
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: they expected and what was standing in front of them
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: cost lives that can be counted. Start with what the
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: system knew and did nothing with. In 1974, Elizabeth Bundy's
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Seattle girlfriend called police and gave them his name. She
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: had seen the composite sketch. She recognized the car. She
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: knew the man. Investigators dismissed her tip because Bundy appeared
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: to be a clean-cut law student with no criminal record
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and bright career prospects. The call was logged. Nothing followed.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: That same year, the disappearances in Washington State were accelerating.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Linda Healy, already established in the prior section, was only
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the beginning. By July of 1974, two women vanished from
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Lake Sammamish State Park in a single afternoon. Janice Ott,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: 23 and Denise Noslin, 19, had been at the park separately.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Bundy approached Janice first, arm in a fake sling, asking
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: for help with a sailboat. She walked with him. He
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: came back. He approached Denise. Witnesses saw him. Multiple witnesses
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: gave police a name. Ted, Tan, VW Beetle. The description
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: matched Elizabeth's earlier tip exactly. Still, no arrest. The rational
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: explanation at every stage was the same. Insufficient evidence, no
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: prior convictions, nothing that would hold in court. That explanation
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: held until it didn't. In August of 1975, a Utah
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Highway Patrol officer pulled Bundy over during a routine traffic stop.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Inside the tan VW Beetle, officers found a ski mask, handcuffs, rope,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: an ice pick, and torn strips of cloth. Bundy said
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: they were burglary tools. He was not charged with murder.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: He was not held on suspicion of the women missing
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: across two states. Utah police did not have enough to
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: connect him to any killing at that point. The burglary
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: explanation was recorded. Bundy was released. Carol Duranch, 18 at
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the time of her attack and now identified in a lineup,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: gave police their first clean identification. She picked Bundy without
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: hesitation on October 2nd, 1975. He was convicted in 1976
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: of her aggravated kidnapping and assault. One count, no murder charge.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: He was sentenced and sent to a Colorado facility to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: await trial for a separate killing. The system believed it
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: had him contained. That belief was wrong twice. The first
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: escape came from Garfield County Jail in Colorado. Bundy had
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: been granted access to the law library, a courtesy extended
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: to defendants representing themselves. He jumped from a second story window.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: He was recaptured six days later, thinner but unhurt. The
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: jail reinforced security. Everyone exhaled. The second escape came through
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the ceiling. Bundy had discovered a gap in the crawlspace
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: above his cell. Over weeks, he worked at it quietly,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: losing weight until he could fit through the opening. On
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the night he chose to go, he crawled through the hole,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: emerged inside the chief jailer's apartment, and walked out the
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: front door. No alarm. No struggle. He had been loose
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: for 17 hours before morning count. By the time anyone
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: understood what had happened, he had been free for 46 days.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: He surfaced in Tallahassee under a false name, renting a
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: room near Florida State University. He told his landlady... he
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: was a student. He was charming. He paid on time.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: There is no version of this story where everything makes sense,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: because nothing about the 46 days between his escape and
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the Chi Omega attack has ever been fully accounted for.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Investigators believe he was not inactive during that time. What
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: he may have done in those weeks remains unconfirmed. and
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: in some cases unrecovered. The night of January 15th, 1978,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: arrived without warning for anyone inside the Chi Omega house.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: The sorority was a large residence, populated with women who
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: knew each other, who left doors unlocked for returning sisters,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: who moved between rooms at all hours the way people
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: do in places they consider safe. The air that night
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: was cold and still. Nothing felt different until it was
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: already over. Bundy entered sometime around 2.45 in the morning,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: He moved through the darkened house without a flashlight, which
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: means he had been there before. Or he moved slowly
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: enough that darkness itself was the plan. He carried a
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: piece of firewood from the bin near the entrance. He
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: chose a room. Margaret Bowman was 21 years old. She
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: was asleep. He struck her with the firewood, then strangled
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: her with a pair of her own nylons. The medical
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: examiner would later determine she never regained consciousness. Margaret did
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: not know he was there. Lisa Levy was 20 years old,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: asleep in another room. The attack on Lisa was different.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: More prolonged. More deliberate. In ways the investigation would later
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: identify as intentional, Bundy left a mark on her body
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: that was not incidental. A double bite impression pressed deep
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: into the flesh of her left buttock, with a force
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: that spoke of design, not frenzy. At the time, no
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: investigator in the house understood what they were looking at.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: That detail would sit in the evidence record for months
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: before someone understood what it meant. Two other women were
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: beaten severely that night and survived. Their survival was not
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: the result of anything they did or did not do.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Bundy left. The reason is not fully known. Six blocks away,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: within the same hour, he entered a different apartment and
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: beat another woman. So badly she was found lying in
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: a pool of her own blood. When the first investigator
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: arrived at the scene, Bundy exited through the back window
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: as the officer came through the front door. The margin
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: was measured in seconds, 15 minutes total. That is the
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: estimated duration of everything that happened inside the Chi Omega house.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Four women, two dead, two. I would carry what happened
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: to them for the rest of their lives. 15 minutes,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: and then the house was quiet again. And the night
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: looked exactly like it had before. and no one on
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: the street outside saw anything at all. Sheriff Ken Katsaris
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: of Leon County arrived at the investigation with a specific
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and unusual kind of attention. He was not only managing
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: a crime scene, he was studying a mind, and what
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: he noticed buried in the physical evidence from Lisa Levy's
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: body was something he could not immediately explain but could
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: not dismiss. The bite mark was too precise, too controlled.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: It was not the mark of panic. It was the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: mark of someone who understood that teeth are as individual
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: as fingerprints, and who had done it anyway. The rational
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: explanation stopped working here. A disorganized attacker does not leave
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a signature. This one had. After Bundy's arrest on February 15th, 1978,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: pulled over near the Alabama state line in a stolen
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: vehicle after a brief struggle and a warning shot, investigators
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: faced a problem that had no clean forensic solution. They
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: knew what they suspected. They could not prove it. The
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: case file on Chi Omega was full of horror, and
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: empty of physical evidence that could place a specific person
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: in that house, on that specific night. Katsaris returned to
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the bite mark. He became, by necessity, an expert in
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: something he had not been before. Forensic odontology, the discipline
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: of matching wounds to the teeth that made them. The
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: science was not new, but its use in criminal prosecution
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: was still being established in American courts. What Katsaris needed
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: was not just a match. He needed a warrant. The
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: first attempt to obtain a comparison impression used fruit. Katsaris
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: arranged for Bundy to have apples in his cell. Bundy
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: bit into one, and the resulting impression was measured. Then
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Bundy stopped eating fruit. He had noticed. He understood exactly
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: what was being attempted. Bundy sat in his cell and waited.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: And Katsaris sat outside it and waited, and the case
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: sat between them like a locked room where both men
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: knew what was inside. Katsaris went to court. He argued
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: that the human mouth is as singular as a fingerprint,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: that the wound on Lisa Levy's body bore a pattern
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: no other set of teeth in the world could have made,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and that the state had the right to verify or
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: eliminate Bundy as the source. The judge agreed. A court
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: order was issued for a dental impression, the first of
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: its kind, in a major murder prosecution in Florida. Katsaris
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: personally took Bundy to his own dentist to have the
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: mold made. There is something that has never fully settled
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: about the deliberateness of it. The bite was not incidental
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: to the attack. Bundy knew forensic odontology existed. He had
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: studied law. He had sat in courtrooms. He left that
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: mark anyway. Not in spite of the risk, but, some
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: investigators believe, because of it. The mark was a message
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: directed at whoever came afterward. The nature of that message
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: is the one thing Bundy never explained. Even in a
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: decade of death row confessions, he confessed to 30 murders.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Investigators believe the real number may be closer to 100.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Two of his confirmed victims were 12 years old. Multiple
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: bodies were never found. He died at 7.16 in the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: morning on January 24th, 1989 at Florida State Prison by
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: electric chair at the age of 42. He had spent
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: 10 years on death row knowing that the only thing
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: that sent him there was a mark he chose to leave.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: The trial opened in Miami on June 25th, 1979, and
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: it was unlike anything the American legal system had attempted before.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Every session was broadcast on national television, the first trial
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: in United States history to receive that treatment. Millions watched
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a man in a courtroom suit argue his own defense,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: file motions, question witnesses. He was polished. He smiled at
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the camera, and that, to anyone who had been paying attention,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: was the most chilling detail of all. The prosecution built
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: its case on a single piece of physical evidence, not fingerprints,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: not a weapon. A bite mark on Lisa Levy's left
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: buttock A double impression left with such deliberate pressure that
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: forensic odontologist Richard Sue Viren told the jury it was
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: not consistent with frenzy. It was consistent with intention. The
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: left upper jaw's slight misalignment matched Bundy's dental mold at
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: every measured point. Katsaras had gotten his warrant. He had
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: gotten his impression. And the mark that Bundy left because
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: he believed no one would ever connect it to him
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: became the only thing the state needed. On July 24th, 1979,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: The jury returned two counts of first-degree murder and three
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: counts of attempted murder. The judge sentenced him to death twice.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: There was a second sentencing, separate from Chi Omega for
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl abducted from
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Lake City, northern Florida, the last confirmed killing before his arrest.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: At that sentencing, standing before the court, Bundy proposed marriage
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: to Carol Boone, a supporter who had attended every session
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: of both trials. She accepted, under an obscure Florida statute
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: at the time, A verbal declaration in open court constituted
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: a legal marriage. In October of 1982, Caro gave birth
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to a daughter she said was Bundy's. How that happened
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: inside a maximum security facility where no physical contact between
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: prisoner and visitor was permitted has never been officially explained.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: He spent 10 years on death row. During that time,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: he confessed to 30 murders across seven states, spanning 1974
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: to 1978. Investigators believe the true number reaches 100. Two
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: of his confirmed victims were 12 years old. Multiple bodies
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: were never recovered, meaning multiple families never had a grave
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: to stand at. In the final days before his execution,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Bundy granted a series of interviews in which he attributed
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: his behavior to violent pornography, framing himself as a product
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of external forces. Analysts who reviewed those interviews noted the
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: pattern was consistent with his entire adult life, a constructed
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: explanation offered to an audience designed to produce a specific reaction.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Even at the end, the performance continued. At 7.16 in
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: the morning on January 24th, 1989, Theodore Robert Bundy was
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: executed by electric chair at Florida State Prison. He was
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: 42 years old. Outside the prison gates, a crowd had gathered.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Some held signs. Some cheered. A small group of women
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: stood silently holding photographs. Stephanie, the woman whose rejection he
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: had spent years trying to reverse and then destroy, was
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: not there. Elizabeth, the girlfriend who had called police in
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: 1974 and watched her tip get dismissed because he looked
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: too clean-cut to be dangerous, was not there either. Rhonda Stapley,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: who had carried 30 years of silence because shame felt
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: safer than the alternative, was still years away from speaking publicly. Carol,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: whose escape from a Utah parking lot in 1974 had
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: ultimately placed a strand of her hair in the recovered
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: VW Beetle, that hair a ghost thread connecting him to
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: the investigation that finally closed. She had moved on, in
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: ways that are not recorded. What stayed on the record
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: was this. The charm was real. That is what made
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: it work. It was not a mask over something monstrous.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: It was a tool built and refined over years, tested
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: on Stephanie, perfected on strangers, and deployed in parking lots,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: on ski slopes, and a lake on a Sunday afternoon,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: in a university sorority house at 2.45 in the morning.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: The people who trusted it were not fooled by something fake.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: They were harmed by something that had been made to function,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: exactly as it did. The bite mark that convicted him
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: had been left on purpose. He said so himself, through
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: a cell door, to the man who was already building
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: the case. The evidence is there. You just can't find it.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: He was wrong about the second part. He was right
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: about the first. Somewhere in the country, there are cases
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: without names attached to them. Open missing persons files. Unidentified remains.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Families who received no answer and were given no reason why.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Investigators have said carefully that 30 is a floor, not
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: a final count. The full number, whatever it is, went
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: with him. This show is made by Oba Media.