Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Evil Genius: Ted Bundy's decade of kidnapping, raping & killing across America

Episode Date: July 13, 2018

Ted Bundy, one of America's most notorious serial killers, was also a kidnapper, rapist, burglar, and necrophile who attacked dozens of young women and girls across the US in the 1970s. Bundy's killing spree was interrupted in 1977 when he was arrested for a Colorado murder, but he escaped while being transported to a court hearing. He was caught again in Florida in 1978, but only after a brutal raid on a Florida State University sorority house. Bundy confessed to 30 homicides, although it suspected his death toll was much higher. Bundy was executed by Florida in 1989. Grace's experts are serial killer historian Peter Vronksy, former SVU detective Steven Lampley, and Crime Stories co-host Alan Duke. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. today at P.I. Magazine dot com. Use this show's promotional code for your special discount at P.I. Magazine dot com. Subscribe today. Use promo code Nancy for your special discount. That's promo code Nancy. Crime stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. One of the most feared serial killers known to American history, whose name conjures up visions of terror, of kidnapping, of rape, of murder, even necrophilia. He's called an evil genius. It's hard to live in America unless you're living in a cave or under a rock and not know the name Ted Bundy. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Evil genius, is that how Ted Bundy should be described? Born Theodore Robert Cowell, the American serial killer, kidnapper, burglar, rapist, necrophile, who confessed to 30 homicides in seven different states, a true count of his victims is likely to be much greater.

Joining me, renowned serial killer historian, author of Sons of Cain, History of Serial Killers from Stone Age to Present, Peter Vronsky, also with me, Stephen Lampley, police veteran, former SVU detective and author of Outside Your Door, stories and cases of his police career, including the arrest of the Claremont killer. With me, of course, Alan the Duke, Duke joining me from LA. Alan, let me tell you a story about Ted Bundy. And I really cannot reveal my source. I had a very dear friend who was a rookie cop and Ted Bundy had to be transported. The rookie,

my friend, was with a veteran cop. The veteran cop was driving the car. Now remember, Ted Bundy had escaped the courthouse before. I believe escaped a jail before by losing so much weight he crawled through a vent. Although I may be confusing my serial killers. But they were transported the very slippery Ted Bundy. And Ted Bundy got to complaining about I guess the air conditioner or the heater or something in the car and the veteran cop pulls the car over, opens the car door, gets out, opens Bundy's door and says, get out. I want you to run. Go ahead. Try to escape. Bundy, of course, did not get out of the car and the veteran cop came to his senses shortly thereafter and slammed the door and got back in and continued transporting him so he could live Bundy, of course, did not get out of the car, and the veteran cop came to his senses shortly thereafter

and slammed the door and got back in and continued transporting him so he could live off the public dole for several more years. Everybody, thank you for being with us. We're talking about evil geniuses. First to Peter Vronsky, serial killer historian, author of Sons of Cain, History of Serial Killers, Stone Age to Present. It's on Amazon.com. Peter Vronsky, why do people insist on referring to Ted Bundy as a genius? I mean, that's certainly putting

perfume on the pig, isn't it? Well, he certainly tested high on intelligence, you know, IQ tests. He's a genius in that way, you know, which makes it, that's a myth that serial killers are genius, but he certainly challenges the myth. He's admitted into law school, although he doesn't do that well once he gets into law school, but indeed he's university educated. He's well-spoken, genius. I don't know, but certainly intelligent. Well, Stephen Lampley, police vet, author of Outside Your Door on Amazon also. Stephen Lampley, he managed to elude the police for quite a long time. I mean, he confessed to 30 murders of young women. That's just what he's confessed to.

You have to understand serial killers, for the most part, are pretty devious. You know, it takes a while for police officers to realize that indeed, that they do have a serial killer. And Ted, by his own admission, he was well versed in how police operate, well versed in forensics. And that made it even more difficult for police to round him up. And then on top of that, he was able to be a chameleon of sorts. He blended in. He could change his appearance pretty much at will. And then they had different descriptions of his car. Some said it was bronze. Some said it was tan.

So he had a lot of stuff, in lack of a better word, going for him to allow him to keep going on with this. Ted Bundy, the name alone strikes fear in the hearts of so many. Listen to Rhonda Stapley, a young college student who accepts a ride from a handsome stranger. Listen to what she tells Dr. Phil. This tan Volkswagen drove by very slowly. The cute driver kind of looked at me as he went past and then he stopped and backed up and leaned over and rolled down the passenger window and asked me where I was going.

I told him I was going up to the U and he said, me too, hop in. So I opened the door and got in. The first thing that I noticed was the inside passenger door handle was missing and he leaned over and pulled the door shut. But I wasn't alarmed. I figured college kid, college car, things fall off. He was dressed nice, had a green pullover sweater on, nice slacks. Lighthearted, we just had the normal conversation that strangers would have.

I told him, my name's Rhonda, and I'm a pharmacy student. What are you studying? He told me his name was Ted, and he was a law student. In just a couple of blocks, he turned away that wasn't the normal route to the university. And I asked him about that, and he was very polite and asked my permission if it would be all right if he took a little detour. He told me he had to run an errand up by the zoo, and I told him that would be fine. I didn't care. I thought I would still be home faster than if I had waited for the bus.

And then we went right on past the zoo. And I said, hey, I thought you were taking me to the zoo. And he said, no, I said, near the zoo. That road goes over the hill and drops down into Parley's Canyon, which is the main highway back into the city. And instead he turned left and started driving up another canyon. And as he's driving, he's kind of looking at parking places and side roads. The conversation started to go weird then because he stopped talking to me.

And I'm still trying to make idle conversation. And I'm thinking that he's probably looking for a place to pull off and park and wants to make out. And I don't know him and I'm not really a makeout person. But he's still a cute law student and I want him and I don't know him, and I'm not really a make-out person, but he's still a cute law student, and I want him, and I don't want to embarrass myself. So I'm thinking of, how do I get out of this situation? And then he pulled into a parking place and parked the car and turned it off.

And then he turned into the car seat, so he's kind of facing me, and he leaned in really close. I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead, he said very quietly, do you know what? I'm going to kiss me. Instead, he said very quietly, do you know what? I'm going to kill you. And he put his hands on my throat and started squeezing. My first thought was, it has to be some kind of a joke. This guy's got the weirdest sense of humor.

But that was just maybe a fraction of a second because I realized he was squeezing too tightly. He was serious, and I was in trouble and there's no door handle. What did you do? We had a little small battle in the car, but I went unconscious. Did you put up a fight? I did as much of a fight as you can put up when you're running out of air. Did you think at that point? I'm gonna die. You were hearing who was then a young college student Rhonda Stapley describing her encounter with Ted Bundy. She lived to tell the tale. To Peter Vronsky serial killer historian there are so

many aspects of what she said. He uses his charm, his affability, his, to many people, good looks, his status as a law student to impress a young girl. She believes it. It's almost as if her eyes and her mind are tricking her to what's really happening, Peter. Well, you know, that's what makes Ted Bundy such a unique serial killer. We hadn't encountered one like that before. I mean, here was, as you say, an affable, charming, intelligent, handsome young man. It wasn't what we imagined. You know, even though we didn't have the word serial killer itself, we knew that there were multiple killers like that, but not the kind of charmer that he was.

Our usual concept of that kind of killer was that they were kind of twitchy, reclusive, repulsive loners that would pounce on the victim. So Ted Bundy redefined, I think, in our perception what serial killers, the modern serial killer, really is like or can be like. He's right. Stephen Lampley, author of Outside Your Door. Stephen, Ted Bundy really changed the world's perspective of a serial killer because now, although Ted Bundy is not remotely attractive to me, many people find him to be, to have dark good looks. You know, he's got this thick head of wavy, dark brown hair, soulful looking eyes, a good physique. He's clearly highly intelligent. He could have done so much with his life. Instead, he became a notorious serial killer.

How do you think, or do you agree, Stephen, that he changed the world's perception of serial killers? I do. I do. You know, and I find even today that people will come up to me and they want to know, because I had my interaction with the Claremont killer. And he himself was, for the brief time that I spoke with him, he himself was a very charming individual, well-spoken, and he appeared to be a person that could be very well-liked. And then Ted did change.

Ted did change the perspective. And it's like Peter said, people expect serial killers to be some, for the most part, some under-the- knuckle dragging ogres, you know, with knives and running around the neighborhood. And that's not the case. And Ted did so much to change that perception. No one really knows when or where Ted Bundy really began murdering women. He's told so many different stories to so many different people. And he has always refused to divulge exact facts of his earliest murders. Now, he confessed in detail to many other murders, but we don't know when he began murdering. But we do know on January 4th, one of his murders goes down in the middle of the night.

He enters the basement apartment of a young girl, a teen girl, Karen Sparks. She has been identified under different names in different places. She's a student at UW, and she's asleep. He bludgeons her senseless with a metal rod that he gets from her bed frame and then sexually assaults her, we believe, with the same rod, causing so many and such extensive internal injuries from the sex assault. She remains unconscious for 10 days. She's in a coma. She survived, but with permanent disabilities.

Now, just a few days later, he breaks into the basement of Linda Ann Healy, another UW undergrad, who broadcasts a morning radio weather report for skiers. He beats her unconscious, dresses her in blue jeans and a white blouse and boots, and carries her away. Then female college students begin to disappear about one a month around Olympia, Washington, and nobody knows what is going on. Right there, Peter Vronsky, what happens next? He becomes very mobile as he's flunking out in some of his courses. He switches universities. He crosses state lines.

So nobody is connecting these murders that he's committing. And, you know, for Ted, it's not about the murder. It's about possessing these victims. He wants to disable the victim as quickly as possible. And, you know, as another killer, serial killer once said, it wasn't that I wanted to kill them. I wanted to evict them from their bodies. So he is a collector, essentially. In fact, he described his murders as possessing his victims, he said, physically, as one would possess a potted plant, a painting, or a Porsche.

So for him, it was control over a body. He is just obsessed with this collection. And the problem, of course, is he's a necrophile. So there's an expiry date on the bodies. And after a few days, as the body decomposes, he becomes repulsed by it, and he needs to move on. So find another body, and that's kind of the spiral that he gets into. How do we know, Peter Vronsky, that Ted Bundy, in addition to being a burglar, rapist, and murderer, why do you say he was a necrophile? Well, because he himself, he confessed that he would return back to the grave sites sometimes after work,

and that he would spend the night with the corpse, you know, until the corpse became repulsive to him. As well, he brought the heads home of some of his victims. At least half of his victims were beheaded. You know, in one case, he brought a head home to the apartment of his girlfriend when she wasn't there. And after he was finished with the head, he burnt it in her fireplace. You may have noticed a long pause because I thought I knew a lot about Bundy, but I did not know that. I did not know he severed the heads of victims. And I did not know specifically that he brought one home to his girlfriend's home and burned it in the fireplace.

Peter Vronsky, author of Sons of Cain, History of Serial Killers, why? What was his fascination with dead women's bodies? Well, you know, for serial killers, they say that the primary motive for a serial killer is control, control over the victim. And so the ultimate control that one can have, of course, is once you've killed the victim and you possess their body, there's no greater control than that, short of cannibalism. And certainly that's another trait, although I don't think Ted Bundy participated in cannibalism, but that's another example of taking control over the victim. He not only brought the heads home, but he also would apply makeup on some of the corpses. He would wash their hair. He would model them essentially

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Enter your own name. Get started. We're talking about one of the most prolific serial killers ever known in American history. It's Ted Bundy, who is synonymous with attractive good looks, charm, and debonair. Anything but is the stark truth of Ted Bundy. You're hearing stories, true stories, from Peter Vronsky, serial killer historian and author of Sons of Cain, History of Serial Killers from Stone Age to Present, and Stephen Lampley, highly regarded police veteran, SVU detective,

author of Outside Your Door, both of these books on Amazon.com. Peter, you were just describing how Ted Bundy would keep many of the victims' bodies, bathe them, wash their hair, apply makeup on them. True facts about Ted Bundy are horrific to me. Stephen Lampley, I mean, you guys are saying, oh, I don't know how genius he was. He managed to evade the police for quite a long time. He had two, at least we know of, two series of murders. The last one I was talking about in the Pacific Northwest, female college students disappearing at about one a month.

Nobody could figure it out. There was Donna Gail Manson, a 19-year-old at Evergreen State College in Olympia. Susan Elaine Rancourt, we talked about. I mean, it goes on and on and on. Then facts began sifting through about a Volkswagen Beetle, a tan VW. Then Roberta Kathleen Parks left her dorm at Oregon State University to have coffee with friends, and she never arrived. Another girl goes missing.

Apart from being young and pretty college students with long hair parted in the middle, no one could really get a better connection. So one woman recalled a man coming up to her asking her to help him carry a case to his car, a light brown VW, that he was struggling because he had his arm in a cast. Stephen Lampley, he's clearly tricking all these women. He also tricked the police. Sure. I mean, that's what that's what what one of Ted Bundy's traits. He did that very well. He was a very charming individual. And he approached strangers. He intentionally avoided people that he knew, women that he had probably met before. But he was a very charming

individual. And he used that guise, the fake arm. At one point, he even used crutches and a cast on his leg that he made from plaster of Paris in order to win the confidence of these women. Would you please help me? And of course, he was, as most people would say, a good-looking gentleman, a law student, and they were more than happy to oblige, which made his ability to grab victims relatively easy. You know, right now, I mean, there's such lore around, warranted or not, around Bundy. His Volkswagen Beetle, where he committed so many of his crimes,

is currently on display at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. Then we start seeing similarities between the victims. The disappearances take place at night. Within a week of exams, the victims are always wearing slacks or blue jeans. There were sightings in the area where people would go missing of a man wearing a cast or sling driving a brown or tan VW, a Beetle. Then came the broad daylight abductions east of Seattle. Witnesses describe an attractive young man in a white tennis outfit with the left arm in a sling speaking with perhaps a British or Canadian accent, introducing himself as Ted and asking for help unloading a sailboat from his VW. Four

refused. One went as far as his car, saw there was no sailboat and ran. Four hours later, Denise Marie Naslin, just 19 years old, left a picnic to go to the bathroom, and never comes back. What finally made Ted Bundy stop in that series of brutal murders, Peter Vronsky? Well, you know, what made him, he never stopped. Though, you know, that day at the beach, he actually had kidnapped two women. And in fact, that was the first time that authorities clued in that, you know, there was somebody called Ted out there because he had approached several women. He left behind witnesses in this case. He kidnapped one woman who was actually a probation officer. He appeared so vulnerable, so helpless, that these women just felt so sorry for him that they helped him. One actually later said, before she didn't have the time to help him, that she had hoped that maybe he would take her out on that sailboat, you know, later in the day.

So that's the first break authorities get. You know, you have to remember that the 1970s, people were not really as aware of serial killers as we are today. The FBI is only, you know, the so-called mind hunters have only started interviewing serial killers inside of prisons to ask them what they're doing. So jurisdictions didn't really have even the kind of communication nets that they have today. You know, most departments didn't use computers the way we do today. They were very, not a long time, really. So it was those kidnappings at the park that really alerted authorities to his method, to the possibility of an individual by the name of Ted in that colored Volkswagen. And very slowly, various jurisdictions began sharing information with each other. This is the irony, Peter Vronsky, author of Sons of Cain, because the Kings County police got a

detailed description of a suspect in his car, and they posted flyers all around Seattle, including a composite sketch. It was in all the newspapers, on TV stations. And right then, Elizabeth Kletfer, Ann Rule, who we were discussing earlier, a DES employee. She actually was on a man to suicide hotline with Ted Bundy. Ann Rule, who became the great prolific criminal

true crime writer and a UW psychology professor, all recognized the profile, the sketch, the car, and reported Bundy as a suspect. And guess what happened? Detectives were getting about 200 tips a day and they just couldn't take in that a clean-cut law student with no criminal history at all could be the perpetrator. And he continued killing. That happened, Peter. You know, Ann Rule at first actually couldn't believe that Ted Bundy was guilty. And a lot of people who worked with Ted would joke when they saw the composite and laugh, you know, well, isn't your name Ted?

You look like the guy in the composite photo and don't you drive a Volkswagen? But Ted's personality was, he had such a mask of sanity that nobody could actually believe, despite all this evidence linking him to that suspect, nobody could imagine Ted being a murderer. people are so interested in Ted Bundy because unlike many other serial killers, he had the same kind of ambitions that we did. You know, he was a middle class, ambitious, intelligent, studious member of society. He was among us. He was on the inside, to the point that even when police began to get a very good composite of who this suspect was, and people were recognizing him, they still could not see through his personality to the real truth, to the monster that lay beneath that facade that he had put up. Well, then he moves on. He gets a second acceptance from University of Utah Law School. He moves to Salt Lake City, and he leaves Seattle

and all of his murder victims behind. He was dating at least a dozen women at a time, according to what we've learned. In law school, the first year, this is his second time around, first year of law school, it hit him. Now, people believe that Bundy was brilliant, but he was personally devastated when he could not keep up with the 1L curriculum. And I've got to tell you, having been there, Stephen Lampley, I studied so much, I would even study when I was taking a bath. If you look at my criminal law book from first year, there's watermarks all along the side pages where I would turn the pages.

Sometimes I would have to read one sentence. Of course, a sentence could be a whole paragraph, but over and over. So I could make sure I understood it. Then I quickly got to the point where after reading one paragraph, I'd have to write a note and the column of the page on the side explaining to me in my words what that paragraph just said. And then I go through the whole Supreme Court opinion that way and then go back through and read my own notes so I could understand fully what I had just read. So it's overwhelming. A lot of the legal terms are in Latin. So Bundy basically nutted up because he could not keep up with the first year of law school, Stephen. Yeah, I mean, he had he self-admitted he had trouble keeping up with the other students, and he himself had a relatively low self-esteem and not a good outlook on himself anyway.

So the fact that he was not able to keep up by his own self-admission, like I said, it made it hard on him, and that could possibly have been one of the triggers that didn't start him, but kept him going in this carnage. Well, and also that frustration. I mean, how can he keep up when he's committing murders and hiding the evidence? I mean, he then killed an unnamed hitchhiker, then got rid of the body or went back the next day to photograph and dismember the body. Then there is a change. He kidnaps a 16-year-old girl, Nancy Wilcox, near Salt Lake City, drags her off into the woods, and he tries to change his M.O. He wants to just rape her and then release her.

He says he accidentally strangled her dead, trying to make her stop screaming. Her remains, to my understanding, were never found. If he's to be believed, her remains are somewhere near the Capitol Reef National Park. Then it goes on. Then there's a 17-year-old daughter of a police chief in Midvale, Melissa Ann Smith, just turned 17, disappears leaving a pizza parlor. She's found naked and dead in a mountainous area nine days later. And the postmortem reveals she remained alive up to seven days after she disappears.

What does that mean to Peter Vronsky, author of Sons of Cain? He kept her alive for seven days after he kidnapped her? Well, you know, serial killers, for many of them, it's kind of a learning process. So he's probably testing out his various fantasies. You know, the method kind of changes, but the signature, the inner psychological motive that's driving the crime always stays the same. And in this case, it's still control over the victim. So Ted might be experimenting at this point to seeing whether he can perhaps keep a victim alive rather than necessarily enjoying them when they're dead. So serial killers will shift and change in how they commit the crime, but the reasons will always be the same. And again, it's control over the victim. So, you know, it's essentially, you know, he's like his fantasy of being a lawyer or like his fantasy of having the perfect girlfriend.

You know, we often see that the beginning of his killings, when he starts, occurs shortly after he wins back his lost love, this girl he was dating who broke up with him, and then he reconquered her. And once he kind of reconquered her to return to him, he then drops her, because the fantasy is much better than the reality. So that's often how they get into that serial pattern. So he's testing all these different things. But at the bottom of everything is always his need to control the victim and possess. It's all about possession and control. We're talking a lot about the so-called genius of serial killer Ted Bundy. He was really nothing more than a killer and a necrophile obsessed with his victims' dead bodies. But what about the victims of Ted Bundy? Listen to the family of Susan Rancourt.

So her roommates knew right away something was wrong. I said, well, where did she go last night? I said, well, she went to a dorm leaders meeting and was on her way went to a dorm leaders meeting and was on her way back to the dorm room and never came back. This is where he abducted her. She had to walk through this to get to her dorm. I would be obsessed with searching for her.

She had a bright yellow ski coat. I would just look for that everywhere we went. I find myself looking in fields and ditches for this yellow ski jacket to stick out like a sore thumb. And I'd be able to say, I found her. And we lived for a long time. We are talking about the so-called evil genius, a prolific serial killer, Ted Bundy. His killing spree across the country continued. How, how, Peter Vronsky, author of Sons of Cain, was he ultimately captured? Well, you know, that's the amazing part of it, that sometimes it's a random alert police officer that breaks the case, not realizing who he has under arrest. Ted Bundy attracts the attention of an officer who sees his vehicle.

He doesn't appear to belong there. He pulls him over um you know he in fact i think if i'm not mistaken that the police officer suspected that he might have a dui case on on on yeah it was a utah highway patrol officer in granger which is near salt lake city and he saw bundy cruising a residential area in the early early early morning hours, got suspicious. And when he pulled up behind him, Bundy took off. Yeah. He didn't even know Bundy was doing anything wrong.

And then when Bundy took off, a speeding, when he saw the patrol car, there's nothing that gets under a cop's skin. Then you take off at 90 mph when all they do is just pull up behind you, you know. So, of of course they chased him and then when they get him he sees the cop sees the vw front passenger seat was removed and put on the back seats there was a ski mask a second mask fashioned from pantyhose i mean come on steven lampley a guy's carrying around a pantyhose mask. And a pair of handcuffs and an ice pick, I think, as well. And rope.

Yeah, and burglary tools. I mean, and it's important about the handcuffs, Stephen Lampley, author of Outside Your Door on Amazon, because Steve, he had changed his M.O. He had lost the fake cast and the crutches we were talking about. Then he began impersonating a police officer and would handcuff the victim. In fact, the first time that we know of, the first time he tried it, he accidentally put the cuffs on one victim's, both of them on one wrist, and she got away. And in the parking lot, they found the key to the cuffs. All right. Remember that after a drama practice or something one evening, a teen girl. So now these handcuffs are taking on a whole new meaning and

significance. So what about this? What about it, Stephen Lampley? You know, it reminds me so much of Timothy McVeigh, you know, the OKCity bomber. He was pulled over for some traffic issue. Same thing here. What about it, Steve? Well, it happens. You know, it's sort of related. Of course, they didn't arrest Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeffrey Dahmer had committed his first homicide of Stephen Hicks and was going to take him to the dump and had him in the backseat of his car in trash bags when the police stopped him.

Of course, now, in that case, unfortunately, they did not take it to the next step and actually look in the trash bags. And why would they? You know, it's trash. But it happens. A lot of times these criminals, in the 21 years I was a police officer, we would see people that would have felony warrants and be wanted for some pretty heinous stuff driving around with expired tags and one headlight. So you really never know.

Expired tag and missing headlight. Well, Bundy manages to explain some of this away when he's caught cruising that residential area. He explains a ski mask was for skiing. He had found the handcuffs in a dumpster and the rest were just household items. Now, the detective, it was Jerry Thompson, remembered a similar suspect and car description from the Durant kidnapping and he became suspicious. He searched Bundy's apartment. He found a guide to Colorado Ski Resorts with a checkmark by the Wildwood Inn and a brochure about a Vermont high school play where Deborah Kent had gone missing. But still, that wasn't enough to arrest him. They let him go ROR, released on own recognizance. We later find out the searchers missed a whole stack of Polaroid photographs of his victims. As soon as he was released ROR,

he destroyed them, got rid of them. So what happens next? They put Bundy on 24-hour surveillance, and Thompson, Detective Jerry Thompson, flies to Seattle with detectives to interview people, and they find out so much. They find out that in the year before he moved away, discovered in his home, his apartment he rented from someone, were crutches, a bag of plaster of Paris, and a meat cleaver that he never used for cooking, surgical gloves, an oriental knife, and a sack full of women's clothing. What about that, Peter Vronsky?

I mean, it just screams out evidence well you know certainly um the plaster of paris of course would connect him to the use of a fake cast that he wore in luring women into his uh vehicle um he would also use it as a as a way to knock them unconscious once they turned their back on him. So very slowly, police start making these connections to various cases that were unsolved in their jurisdictions. On top of that, you have to remember that Ted Bundy's girlfriend, even though she continued to have a relationship with him, she was sending this information to the police already. And so now police start backtracking and looking in much closer detail now that they had targeted, you know, who the individual was at the kind of reports they were getting. And so they were able to time, of course, much better when Ted possessed this medical plaster, which he was stealing.

He was working at one point in a medical distribution company. In fact, some of the tools that he used on his victims were medical tools that he stole from the delivery company that he worked for. So very slowly, they began to assemble all this evidence that began to look in the perspective of what they now knew, you know, it gave them a fresh approach to it. And, you know, the first charges, I think, that were preferred against Bundy was that of kidnapping in the Durant case. That's where it kind of begins. Yeah, because you're exactly correct. Big mistake. Bundy sells his VW to a teen in Midvale. Utah police, already suspicious of him, get the car and the FBI breaks it apart. They find hair matching samples from Karen Campbell's body. They also

ID hair strands that seem to be those of Carol Durant and Melissa Smith. Then they put him in a lineup and Durant immediately identifies him as, quote, Officer Roseland. Now, Stephen Lampley, Peter Vronsky, can one of you tell me why the victim who lived to, you know, live through an attempt at kidnapping, ID'd him as Officer Roseland? Well, here's some insight for us into just, you know, he's not a genius, but he's very cunning. He has an animal-like cunning. And so what Bundy had done in the Durong case is he had stalked her into the parking lot of a shopping mall. He knew what kind of car she was driving, and then he followed her into the mall and approached her, posing as a police officer, telling her that there appeared to be a break-in in her car. He flashed a tiny fake badge when she asked him to see his identification. Again,

he looked clean cut. There was nothing odd about him. And so she followed him out into the parking lot. He then lured her away from her car, telling her that he would like her to fill out a report that they had actually arrested the person who had attempted to break into her car. And so she ended up following him into his own vehicle. And that's when he tried to snap these handcuffs on her and, of course, ended up putting both cuffs on her wrist. And she managed to flee the vehicle. But, you know, very slowly, that's how he would work. He would lure his victims in that way, and here you had one that survived. And so we got some insight into actually how he worked,

how he would gradually find a victim. He probably approached many women in that mall. Some refused, perhaps, to go with him. Here was one who followed, you know, a law-abiding citizen. You know, when someone comes to you and says, especially in the 70s, they're a police officer, they look like they could be one immediately, kind of with a respect for authority, you know, Salt Lake City, you know, in that region, people are more conservative, more respectful of authority. So he used that to lure his victims in that case. Stephen Lampley, police vet, author of Outside Your Door on Amazon. Stephen, how did Bundy manage to escape more than once? Well, I'm not familiar with the second escape.

I do know he did escape twice. One of the times was when he wanted to act as his own attorney, and of course the judge allowed that. And one of the conditions, I don't know that Ted made the condition or the judge just said take the cuffs off, take the leg shackles off, because he is now quote-unquote an attorney. So Ted then wanted to research some information on his case and ask permission to use the law library or the library at the courthouse, which they granted. Well, he went behind a bookshelf that was obscured from view, lifted up the second floor window of the courthouse and jumped and escaped that way. He was very cunning, very, very, as Peter said, very cunning individual, very well organized and very thought. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. Well, he then ends up in Florida and the infamous FSU Chi Omega sorority house murders. You know, to Peter Vronsky, he graduates from getting a single victim to actually going in a sorority house and just going berserk.

What happened at FSU, Peter? Well, Ted Bundy is by now disintegrating. He is no longer acting in that kind of organized way. He's just looking for victims at random. And so he comes onto this house near a campus or on campus, and he goes room to room assaulting victims in those rooms, battering them on the head with a club that he had found at random upon entering the building. So he's no longer the kind of organized, prepared serial killer. He's in the disintegrating stage.

It's almost, you know, the way he kind of achieved his fantasy of getting into law school and then disintegrated. Here he achieved his fantasy of possessing victims, you know, becoming kind of a serial killer, but the fantasy now was no longer, the reality wasn't as satisfying as the fantasy. So he batters all these victims in that room. He kills two. He seriously, critically injures another, I think, three other victims in that place. It's a mass attack, and it's completely at random, completely unplanned.

He leaves behind a lot of evidence now, and he'll kill one more time. Again, he'll now snatch a young schoolgirl. There's a lot of witnesses because she's hanging around the school. He attempts to kidnap, abduct another young woman, but her brother intervenes. So he's getting sloppy. He is disintegrating, which happens often with serial killers who are reaching that burnout stage, when they realize that their fantasies were much more satisfying than the reality. And now what?

Some may retire and not commit a crime until you know DNA evidence catches up to them like the Green River killing or right you know the Golden State killer Bundy is the other kind he's the disintegrating kind it's not that he wants to get caught you know a lot of people think well you know serial killers really want to get caught it It's not about that. It's a complete disintegration of his relationship between his fantasies and the reality. And Bundy is disintegrating in Florida now. The interview that Ted Bundy gives, very, very revealing. Bundy himself speaks to, and exclusively, to the Focus on Family President James Dobson. Listen. Are you thinking about all those victims out there in their families

who are so wounded? You know, years later, their lives have not returned to normal. They will never return to normal. Absolutely. Are you carrying that load that weight is the remorse there again i know that people will accuse me of being self-serving but we're beyond that now i mean i'm just telling you how i feel but through god's help i've been able to come to the point where I've much too late but better late than never feel the hurt and the pain that I am responsible for yes absolutely in the past few days myself and a number of investigators have been talking about unsolved cases murders that I was involved in. And it's hard to talk about all these years later

because it revives in me all those terrible feelings and those thoughts that I have steadfastly and diligently dealt with, and I think successfully, with the love of God. And yet it's reopened that, and I've felt the pain, and I've felt the horror again of all that. And I can only hope that those who I've harmed, those who I've caused so much grief, even if they don't believe my expression of sorrow and remorse, will believe what I'm saying now, that there is loose in their communities, people like me today, whose dangerous impulses are being fueled

day in and day out by violence in the media in its various forms, particularly sexualized violence. Ted Bundy died in the Rayford electric chair, 716 AM EST, on January 24th morning. Outside death row, people were selling t-shirts, drinking beer, basically having a big party. I never felt the urge to party at the time of Bundy's death, but I can say this. Ted Bundy, rot in hell. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. Did you know a recent law can leave your personal data exposed online for anybody to find?

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