Ann Rule began volunteering at the Suicide Crisis Center after her brother committed suicide. She felt guilty for her death and she wanted to do something to help suicidal people. She answered the phone at night and into the wee hours of the morning. There were only two people on the night shift, her and a polite, kind and empathetic young man who discouraged people from committing suicide. His name was Ted Bundy, probably the worst serial killer in American history.
Working through the night, side by side, they became great friends, even though Ann Rule was 10 years older, had four children, and was married. Ted was a student at the University of Washington, a psychology major and an honor student. During quiet nights, they shared aspects of their lives as friends do.
Nobody saw Ted Bundy as a threat, as a murderer. What they saw was a charming, intelligent, helpful and friendly young man universally called “handsome”.
In 1971, Ann was a 35-year-old single mother of four, struggling with a divorce and an ailing husband. She had been a police officer briefly, but now she made a living writing true crime magazine articles. When college students began disappearing at the rate of one a month, Ann Rule received a publishing contract to write a full-length book on the killer of these young women. She told this to Bundy, not thinking that he might be the killer.
Bundy was a cunning predator who used different methods such as putting a fake leg cast on, pretending he couldn’t walk, and thus getting young women to help him get to his car. At that point, he would have a crowbar ready to attack them and push his unconscious body into his car, take them to a remote location and murder them, often after raping them. Other times he would pick up hitchhikers, or pretended to be a policeman telling a woman that someone had broken into his car and to accompany him to the police station.
Some women were saved; these women took action, doubted their stories and refused to go second, following their instincts, they were the ones who survived. Interestingly, the dogs seemed to sense that she was not a nice person and went on a rampage when she tried to go through the front door. In general, women believed in his charm, in his lies. Ann Rule found it hard to believe that he was the serial killer, even when she saw his Identikit sketch in the newspaper where she instantly recognized him as Bundy.
Bundy had multiple girlfriends, but was able to compartmentalize them so they were unaware of each other’s existence, even when he was engaged to two different women at the same time. While he was in prison, accused of the most evil and monstrous murders, he always had one or more women who loved him, supported him, believing in his innocence. And as the years passed, he acquired groupies who fought their way into his trials, overcome with joy if he smiled at them as they sat in the front row of the courtroom.
There is no doubt that this is a fascinating story of probably the worst American serial killer of all time. He murdered “at least 100 women.” On two occasions, he committed more than one murder on the same day. The women, in most cases, disappeared as if they had been taken by an alien. A woman had to walk 100 meters to her apartment, she saw two friends on the way, the final distance she had to walk was just 10 meters to her door. She disappeared without a trace, without a sound. This was common to many of the murdered women. Many bodies were not found for months or years, many were never found. There were no clues, no one saw or heard anything. And the killer, Ted Bundy, lived an exemplary life. He studied law at different universities, worked as a security guard, in a government department, volunteered for the Republican Party, was charming, kind and very persuasive.
This fact book is definitely creepy. But there are things to learn from him. In one case, two women walked to his car at night. One returned to his apartment, about 100 meters away, to retrieve a forgotten key. The other was waiting in the car. When the woman returned with the key, she saw a man dragging her friend away in a headlock. She let out an almighty scream, which was heard blocks away. The man, Ted Bundy, let her go and left.
There are parts of this book that are gruesome, the murders, thankfully the vilest parts, like the necrophilia, are not fully detailed. The book is largely a biography on Bundy’s life and a short autobiography of Ann Rules’ connection to Bundy. Much of the book is about his legal defense (he had been a law student and psychology graduate) and how he used every trick he could to stay alive. He had three different execution warrants waiting for him.
Ann Rule would have known Bundy better than anyone. After they parted ways, they continued to remain friends, through mail and phone calls. Ann Rule was highly suspicious of the Bundy murders, but found it difficult to reconcile the Bundy she knew with the hideous murderous Bundy. This was despite the fact that she had vast experience in law and gave seminars to police detectives on many criminal matters. During her lifetime she has written 33 books and 1,400 articles mainly on criminal cases, so she was not naive about murderers. She followed her case through the courts, through the detectives working on the murders, and through the phone calls and letters Bundy sent her.
As time passed, she became convinced of his guilt, even as he continued to skillfully deny it. In court, the evidence against her was never rock solid. There was no DNA, no fingerprints, he always wore gloves and rarely left even the slightest bit of evidence, even the bodies were not found for months, years, and in many cases never found. Her defense team managed to have some important police evidence removed from the trials. But members of the public, women who escaped death, were able to identify him. The teeth marks on a woman’s body matched her teeth exactly. The hairs found on a half mask matched her hair. In her possession were found weapons, a butcher knife, cast and crutches. The evidence was irrefutable.
It’s a fascinating book, detailing how he was ultimately caught, his escape from custody twice, the failure of the criminal justice system to coordinate information from other states. Bundy killed, not just in one state, but in Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, California, and probably more. There were many similarities in these kidnappings and murders, however each state mostly kept the information to themselves. If the information had been shared, he would have been caught years earlier.
It is not known how many women, mostly between the ages of 15 and 25, Bundy killed, but the best estimate is “at least 100”. Many bodies have never been found, dumped in remote places. On top of this, over the years, many credible witnesses have come forward to describe how Bundy stalked or tried to kidnap them.
There are many theories about his mental state. Was he crazy? After many mental examinations, the answer was always negative. The most likely description was sociopathic (psychopathic). He was normally lucid, intelligent, persuasive and charming. At times, he displayed a violent anger that frightened those who saw him. There is no consensus as to why he committed these murders, or what was his mental defect.
For ten years, Bundy argued that he was innocent, but even in his last hours after confessing to thirty murders, he did not take the blame. The fault, he said, was the pornography that distorted his mind and led him to commit the murders. However, many years before he had written to Ann Rule that no one looked at these pornographic books and that he certainly had no interest in them himself.
Ted Bundy was executed in Florida in 1989.