Criminology - Ted Bundy Part 4

Episode Date: August 25, 2018

In this fourth and last episode of our Ted Bundy series, we close it out by talking with some Bundy experts and authors. They are able to provide some amazing insight into the infamous serial killer. You can help support the show through Patreon. We'd love to connect with listeners on social media. We are available on the following platforms: Facebook - Instagram - Threads - X Formerly Twitter - Blue Sky - Twitch Criminology is an Emash Digital production hosted by Mike Ferguson and Mike Morford. 

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Save $80 with code space 80 at Talkspace.com. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I'd like to welcome everyone to episode four, season three of criminology. Morph, it's finally here. This is the season finale of season three, ending our dive into the mind and crimes of Ted Bundy. You know, we mentioned at the beginning of this season. This would be a shorter season than the other two we've done, especially when you compare it to season two.

That was a juggernaut. That was a very long season. But there was a reason for it. We know what that reason was. Now, before we get started, we have to get caught up on our Patreon shoutouts. We had Marcus Elliott, Timothy Di Martino, Josh Beaumont, Stephanie Carcieri, Deshira, Alvarez, Jennifer Litwin, Alexa Munoz Sakeno, Linda Jean Burley, Catherine Lacey, Anthony Jenkins, Charlotte Ferguson, that's a cool last name, Natty Clavier, Lauren Tawny, Dave C, Dakota Smith,

Don White, and Gerald Schute. So that's an amazing amount of support, Morph. I know you and I both appreciate it. In this episode, we've called in some of the most knowledgeable Ted Bundy authors and researchers to give us a behind-the-scenes tour of what went into their work. This season was all about the mind and crimes of Ted Bundy, so we think that the guests that we have on in episode four will allow us to explore those angles in the best way possible. That being said, we have in-depth interviews with our guest for this episode,

which includes Kevin M. Sullivan, who's written multiple books about Ted Bundy, one of which is the Bundy murders, a comprehensive history. We also have on Dr. Rob Dellenberg, author of the book, Ted Bundy, a visual timeline. And he uses his background in neuroscience to explore Bundy's crimes from a scientific perspective. And I think what's interesting, as you'll hear in these interviews, is that as any big case, not everyone shares the same theories or comes to the same. the same conclusions. But that's why we wanted to have on multiple guests for these in-depth interviews so listeners can take in all the possibilities with this case. We'll also have a short

discussion with E.J. Hammond, who's a Bundyfile and has explored this case for years. And she helped us bring this season to you, so we definitely wanted to hear from her. And Morph, I want to give E.J. another big shout out. The amount of work. and research that she put into this season helped make it all possible. So this is going to be a lengthy but in-depth episode. But before we get to all of the interviews, we thought it would be amazing to hear from someone that was involved in the Ted Bundy case in some way. And we thought, who better than a man who was actually interviewed early on as a suspect

in Bundy's Chi Omega murders and who would later wind up facing off against Bundy himself at Bundy's trial for those murders. This man's name is Ron Ng and this is his Ted Bundy story. My name is Ronald Ng. I go by Ron, but I was the houseboy at the Chi Omega sorority house at the time. of the Ted Bundy attacks and murders. My jobs, I was going to Florida State studying music, and I got a job at the Chi Omega sorority house as a waiter,

my freshman year, and my sophomore year. Yeah, so I was a little short of funds. The house mother knew that, you know, I spent myself through school. So she offered me the janitor job, I guess you'd call it, the houseboy job. And there was an elder black guy that used to do the job and he retired. And she offered it to me. And so my sophomore year, I started coming in early in the morning and mopping the floors,

doing the breakfast dishes, odd jobs, gardening, stuff like that. And I paid a little bit. And also being a waiter, you also got fed pretty much every meal during a week. So that was one of the mainstays for me putting myself through school. In 1978, when the murders happened, I don't know how far you want me to go with this, But, yeah, I had been the houseboy for a couple years by then. And basically all the guys knew the girls like brother and sister. And so it was, yeah, I mean, it was a terrible time, obviously.

Lisa and Margaret used to be on the football team, and I used to coach them on the intramural Kaamauga football team. and they played, I think, I can't remember, I think Margaret played basketball as well. And we're all very close, some closer than others, but that's basically my involvement. So after the murders, shortly after that, I didn't actually go home for a couple days. I stayed at the house because the girls were obviously very scared and freaked out. And just to interrupt for a second. How many girls were typically in that house at one time?

Well, it was two floors. I can't remember how many rooms there were. I think there was about four or five rooms downstairs, maybe even six or eight. And it was an L-shaped house upstairs. It was basically just living quarters. and there was a, you know, kind of a communal shower. I can't remember how many stalls were in that, but I'm guessing if I can remember,

probably about 50 girls, 60 girls that could live in the house. I think the sorority at that time was close to, it would, you know, depending on people graduating and people rushing the sorority, 80 to 100 girls. So, yeah, some girls obviously lived outside the house. It was an L-shaped house. There was basically three doors. There was the side door that the waiters and I and the two cooks would enter, and that went basically right into the kitchen area. There was a front door, which is a double door, led into the to the foyer

and then there was a kind of like a spiral staircase that went up to the second floor and then there was a rear door which had a punch code lock at the time of the murders basically all the guys were kind of just hanging

out at the house because you know the girls were pretty freaked out and I stayed there for a couple a couple days straight I don't think I slept and I got I was actually coming down with a cold so on like the third day or some like that, I told the house mother that I need to go home and get some rest.

And on that day, as soon as I arrived at home, the phone rang. And it was a sheriff's department saying, Mr. Ring, we would like to talk to you. And I said, okay. And, you know, could we do this a little bit later? I need to get some sleep. I haven't slept in a couple days. and I'm really tired and I have a bit of a cold coming on

and they said we'll be there in 30 seconds and I went oh, okay and this was pretty early in the morning if I remember correctly it was probably 6.37 o'clock in the morning and yeah they were there in 15 seconds

and searched the entire apartment looked at my clothing and then proceed to take me down to the sheriff's station and question me for like three hours and then asked me if I want to take a lie detector test and they basically were just telling me we're just basically doing this to clear you at least that was their story at the time and you know of course I didn't do anything so I

said sure and you know kind of went along with it and of course a couple years later the story comes out that the reason why this all kind of transpired is that the eyewitness, I think her name was Nita, if I remember correctly, came in the rear door, walked into the foyer where the front door was, and saw a man running out the front door. This was very late at night. And under hypnosis, supposedly, she said, I know it wasn't Ron, but it looked just like Ron. And, of course, that put a bull's eye on my forehead, and they were all over me. Of course, I didn't know that. That all came out in, I guess, in discovery, you know, leading up to their trial.

And so that was basically the weird part about the whole experience was. So then I was subpoenaed, but I wasn't subpoenaed by the prosecution. I was subpoenaed by Ted Bundy's lawyers and Ted Bundy's. because they were saying their basic thought process was, how could you say it looked like me? And then, you know, a few weeks a month later when they caught Ted Bundy in Pensacola, I believe, how could she say it was Ted Bundy and be sure? Believe it or not, the prosecution was basically saying, no, look, they have similar profiles, they have the same color hair.

Ted Bundy was a lot taller in me. but, you know, we did have similar profiles and the same color hair. And that was my basic involvement in, I mean, in a synopsis. I mean, there's a lot more to tell, but that's the basic story of how I was involved with the trial and the girls and that whole thing. And how scary was it feeling that you were being looked at by the police in such heinous crimes? I guess you know that you didn't do anything wrong unless you know you have some alter ego that, you know, it's just like, you know, so you're schizophrenic or something. So, I mean, I was, I started out like, and of course I wasn't feeling very well, like I said, but I was, yeah, I was just like, okay, you know, fine, you know, whatever you guys want to do.

And, you know, after a couple three hours, you know, and, of course, I came back to the house and I was talking to a couple of the other. house, you know, waiters, and they're saying, well, yeah, well, they question me, but, you know, they'll question me for a few minutes. I mean, what, you know, how long are you done? I was down there for a couple hours. They gave me a light detector. Really? You know, that kind of thing. And that was it. And they never, they never came back, you know, I think probably a hour or two into it. And then when the light detector test, I was pretty much a nervous wreck. That was, that was scary. Because, I mean, they basically tell you, okay, we're going to ask you some control questions. You like what your name, blah, blah, like, you know, stuff that you know and

that they know that you're telling the truth. And then they say, then we're going to ask some questions, you know, and of course they asked me, you know, did you strangle Margaret Bowman, did you, you know, did you sexually assault, you know, blah, blah, blah, and that, oh, you that kind of stuff. And, of course, somebody asking you that, and then you, of course, saying no, yeah, that was, that was pretty, that was pretty unnerving. But it was over, relatively quickly, and they never bothered me again. How was it in court when you actually were in there, you know, face-to-face with Ted Bundy, the guy that actually did do that?

Yeah, that was pretty weird. I remember when they called me to the stand, you know, you do the holes getting sworn in and, you know, I sit down and, of course, Ted's there with, I think, a couple of lawyers, but Ted was trying to do his own defense. But basically they started to question me, and I can't remember what the question was, but the judge, they asked the question, like, try to cast some, how would you say, some doubt on my innocence, or try to implicate me, I guess you'd say, and the judge just said, okay, stop it right there. I said, you know, and he just wanted this whole, like, yelling at the, but yell at the lures, like, you are not in any way. going to try to implicate Mr. Eng, Bob, and just kind of read him the right act, and just kind of shut that whole thing down.

And like I said, they basically, the big thing was, you know, that whole photo in the, and that was, you know, made me kind of famous for a few days, was, you know, they basically paraded me in front of the jury, and we stood, you know, face to face and back to back. And that was pretty weird, obviously. He didn't say anything to me. He had, you know, I thought it kind of, you've probably seen pictures. He had kind of like that smile, smirk on his face most of the time. And I was pretty, I was pretty calm on the outside, but in the inside, I was, I was pretty scared, truthfully.

Wow. And then now years later, you look back on it, and you were standing right next to one of the most heinous serial killers of all time. Right. I remember shortly after he got captured. They brought him back to a high security prison in Tallahassee. And since he was running his own defense, he just to piss all the girls off. He subpoenaed every one of them to come and talk to him.

And so you can imagine the girls were just terrified. And they all had to go in front of them. And he subpoenaed all the waiters too. And I had to go and talk to him. And I remember talking to one of the sheriffs. You know, I can't remember what we were talking about, but somehow we got out of, you know, like, you know, is this guy really guilty?

It was this guy that did it. And he said, oh, yeah. You said, you know, you can always tell. You just look into his eyes and you can tell. And, you know, that was. I remember that guy telling me that. I also remember the, which I never followed up on. But I remember when I, when the whole thing and I got subpoenaed,

And I came down and I was hanging out at the courthouse waiting to be called. I remember the prosecuting, head prosecutor called me in his office and said, you know, when this is all over, I want you to look me up because I got some things I want to tell you. And I never did. I, you know, I was a young kid and, you know, I was like, I guess I wanted to get as far away from that whole thing as possible. But maybe I should look them up now and find it. Yeah, it's definitely an interesting story to tell. to tell people it's not, you know, every day you're going to be associated with such an infamous serial killer. Yeah, well, the joke line is that I was, you know, winner of the Ted Bundy Lickalike contest.

Oh, geez. And I think, if I remember the photo correctly of you, it's an AP photo, and I think it was because they were trying to insinuate that you might have been the one that bit them, and I think they wanted you to possibly bite something to, to, to, compare your dental impressions. I don't know if that sounds familiar, but I seem to recall reading that. Yeah, that's probably around the time when the lawyer kind of, you know, said, absolutely not. We're not going there. We're not doing that. You know, Mr. Ng is not on trial. And yeah, I just remember sitting in the witness stand hearing the judge just lay into those guys and saying,

there's no way that you're going to try to implicate Mr. Ing. That's what they wanted to do. And again, I guess hindsight, you know, I guess the sheriffs were smart and, you know, basically having to do the Leitech test and, you know, searching my apartment thoroughly and, you know, talking to everybody. And so I don't think there was any shred of doubt that I was innocent. But I'm sure Ted would have loved to try to implicate me in some way. I mean, I can remember the day, was it either the day or the day, two days after the killings, they, you know, they had a big meeting in the auditorium, the big concert center at FSU, and just like that feeling, even the day of or the day after walking across campus, I mean, no girl would look you in the eyes.

I mean, everybody was petrified and freaked out. And it was, you know, because obviously no one knew what had happened. They just knew that, you know, obviously probably some guy had done this. And for the longest time, you know, everybody was being escorted around. No one was to walk alone. And, you know, it was a weird, like a whole, like, crowd. cloud of fear just hanging over the campus for quite a long time. I mean, it subsided pretty quickly as things go, I'd imagine, around the campus, but around the sorority house, I mean,

they had around the clock, you know, sheriffs there in the beginning, and then they had, like, I think they hired private security for a while, and probably, I can't remember for how many months, but we all would, the waiters would all take turns, you know, hanging out at the house and spending the night there for many months. I often say that if I'm not a big fan of capital punishment, but if anybody deserved it, that man did. Well, I don't know about you, Morp, but I thought that was absolutely fascinating. I totally agree, Mike.

That's a story he can tell for the rest of his life from being questioned by police who's suspected he might have committed the murders to standing back to back against Bundy in the courtroom. It's just one of the surreal experiences, I'm sure. But what a great story to tell at parties. Yeah, I don't have any stories like that. Now, I don't know that I want a story exactly like that per se. I don't want to have to go through everything that Ron went through, but it was just an amazing get to be able to talk to him and hear his story. And I just want to thank one of our listeners who actually set that up. Dobb Pierce, who's a listener out there that put us in touch with Ron Eng.

So thank you. Yeah, we have some amazing listeners. They get so into the show, the cases that, you know, they're dissecting them too, just like we are, along with us. And every now and then we get people that reach out that want to help. And this was a great example of that. Now, next up, we have Kevin M. Sullivan, who as we mentioned, has done extensive writing and research for multiple Ted Bundy books. And I don't even want to spoil this one. You have to hear his interview.

He has some very interesting experiences with his research. And he has even collected some of what you might call mementos connected to Ted Bundy. Kevin, I'd like to welcome to the show, and I'm glad to have you with us on criminology. Well, thanks, Mike. I'm sure we'll have a great time talking about Ted Bundy and the crimes, and I'm sure your audience will enjoy it as well. So you're an accomplished true crime author of several books. You've written, correct me from wrong, three books about Ted Bundy? Yes, actually, three books. The first book was, it's actually the main book.

It's the Bundy Murders, A Comprehensive History, and that's the fourth. biography of Ted Bundy and all the murders. And then the two books that I wrote after were really good companion volumes to that book. The second book was The Trail of Ted Bundy digging up the untold stories. It also contained like the first book, a lot of new information that had never been published before, new interviews, things like that. And then the last book was the Bundy Secrets, and it's a republication of various files from the record, really all the best stuff. I mean, the record consists of tens of thousands of pages, but you know, you'd have to have a lot of books to publish that, but that took what I thought would be the most interesting for the

reader, and we have reproduced those, and along with that is commentary, as well as an additional chapter of new interviews and all of these folks that were interviewed by me, except for one had never been interviewed before, but they have connections to the case and they are bona fide on the connection. So that, so it ended up being a trilogy. But anyway, it all began with the Bundy murders. And there's quite a story about that. And we can get into that later.

You might be curious to know that I never intended to write about Ted Bundy, but a friend of by the name of James Massey. He passed away, but a couple of years ago. But we had been friends for a number of years. And back in 2005, he let me know that his friend Jerry Thompson, a retired homicide investigator out of Utah, was going to come to Louisville in May. And he wanted to know if I wanted to have dinner with them.

And, of course, I knew who Jerry was, not because I'd read a lot of Bundy books, but because Jerry and I mean, Jim and I had talked about, you know, the Bundy case. Jerry Thompson was the person that was the lead detective in the Bundy case in Utah, and he actually brought Ted out of the shadows in Utah after his arrest there. But so I thought, well, that would be interesting. Yeah, I'd like to have dinner. And at the time, I wasn't on staff, but I was writing occasional feature article.

for a newspaper here in Louisville called Snitch. It was actually published in five or six states, but by the time 2005 was there, it was being published in, I think, still North Carolina, being published in Louisville, Kentucky, and Lexington, Kentucky. So I thought, well, that would make a great article for Snitch. But what happened was I also knew that Jerry had Ted Bundy's murder kit, because when he was arrested, you know, like, I mean,

most people know the story, he started killing him, Richmond State and then he went to Utah to, quote, go to law school, unquote, and started a new killing ground there. And then he branched out from there. When he was arrested, his murder kit was confiscated. Well, I knew Jerry had it. So I got a call from Jim on the night that we were supposed to meet it was a Sunday evening. He was going to let me know exactly where we were eating dinner with Jerry and his wife.

And as we worked out the details of that, he said, he brought the bag. And I said, what bag? He said, oh, he brought Ted Bundy's murder kit. And he said, I have it with me now in my truck. So I said, Jim, you got to let me meet you a few minutes before, you know, dinner so I can see this stuff. And so I did. And I went up there and it was really interesting. Of course, in the murder kit, it comes in a gym bag.

There was a ski mask. There was an electrical cord. These were choking. There was rope. There was strips of claws. bed sheet that he had torn into strips. He still had the FBI tape around them. And he would use that for binding hands and feet.

There was a flashlight. There was an ice pick. And there were two right-handed gloves. He was left-handed man, but he must have dragged the bodies with his right hand, maybe at his shoulder thing. I don't know. But there were two right-handed gloves only. One woolen-type glove with a leather palm.

you know, area, and then a more like a puppy ski type glove. And then he had glad trash, large glad garbage bags. And what Bundy would do with those is that he would when he would kill somebody,

he would take their clothes. There would be nothing left at the crime scene, except he might leave a beaded necklace on her. But, or if he strangled them with like a nylon stocking or something, which did happened to a couple of victims, probably they're stocking.

Then he might leave that on the body. But outside of that, there was nothing. And the clothes would be put in a dumpster far down the road or something. Now, so I got to see this bag. I got to meet Jim. I thought I wrote an article with snitch. And I did. But before Jerry left, he gave me, and he gave Jim also one of the green glad trash bags from Ted Bundy's car.

Now, I said, Jerry, I really appreciate that. And I said, can you write us a letter, each of authentication? He said, sure, I can do that. And he did. He was a really nice guy, as are all these investigators. And anyway, it was the surreal aspect. This is what drove me to write the book. It wasn't meeting Jerry.

Jerry would have been good for an article, but it was having that murder kid in my home. And I was able to photograph it. And you can see those. There's a couple color photographs. There's only three photographs floating around on the internet with concerning that murder kit. One is the 1975 black and white photo, and any color photo you see of

that murder kit, those are my pictures taken in my own. But it was so surreal doing that, and then having this bag, I remember thinking to myself, I just feel almost led to write a book about this guy. And of course, there were some naysayers, and they

said, well, you know, funny's been done to death. He probably should pick somebody else. I said, this is the way it is in life. Sometimes you just got to go with what you know on the inside. And I said, no, I'm going to go with it. I'm going to do it. And then I did it.

And it was such a smart move because when I was halfway through the Bundy murders, I remember I would stand back from it looking. It was almost hard to believe, but I was finding out new and never before published information about several of these murders, as well as a ton of new information, just general new information of the case. And it's like some of these detectives who were holding on the information that was very delicate at the time, began to open up with me. And I'll never forget the time that I called Bill Hagmire, for your audience, if anybody doesn't know, Bill Hagmire was a behavioral science FBI agent, and he worked with Ted Bundy for the last couple of years of his life, maybe the last three.

and they got to know each other and became friends, quote, unquote. Bill did it to obtain information, of course. But Bundy trusted him. So I had a relationship with Bill, but I remember I called Bill one day and said, listen, Bill, because I wrote the book chronologically, and I started with my writing in Mortonan State, moved on to Utah and so on. So when I was coming up to the Idaho murders,

there was a little girl named Lynette Culver that Bundy killed in the holiday end, in Focato, Idaho in 19 May 6 of 1975. And the only thing I knew about, you know, because I didn't have a case file yet. I, but the only thing I knew is that I knew her name, I knew how Bundy killed her. He drowned her in the bathtub. That information was given to me about the retired detective,

Mike Fisher, out of Colorado. And he had gotten it from the, from the head investigator out of Idaho. Russell Renault. And so here's what happened. So I expected Bill to fully know this, all right? Because Bill Higmar said on all on every confession. So I asked Bill about it.

He said, well, Kevin, he said, I have a great respect for Mike Fisher. But I sat in on every confession, and I've never heard that. And so at that point, I thought, well, you know, he's the expert, and I'm the novice. So maybe Mike's mistaken. So I said, well, Bill, let me tell you. well, let me, and Bill also reminded me, said, you know, Driner in the bathtub, that's not, not only haven't heard it, but that would be like against Bundy's MO.

I said, you do know he liked strangling women from behind while he had sex with him. I said, yeah, I mean, I do know that. That's pretty typical for what Bundy liked. So I said, but here's what I'll do, Bill. If I found out anything about this, and I can confirm it, or either way, and if I can't confirm it, I'll let you know. I called Mike, Mike Fisher. He said, oh, yeah, I got that information from Russ for a while we were all down in Florida

right here at the end. And he said, you need to call Russ. And I said, okay. I called. I was able to get a hold of Russ. And I spoke to Russ. He said, oh, yeah, that's true. And here's why Bill Hagmire, you know, he said, Bill, here's why Bill doesn't know that.

He said, what happened was we were, we only had an hour to do our interview. And I mean, it was cut off after. 60 minutes exactly. And he said, we were discussing two murders. We were discussing the woman that Bundy picked up the hit track that he killed when he was traveling on September 2nd, 1974 to Utah. And by the way, I was able to find that day. Everybody else thought it was September 3rd or it was later, just most writers say, you know, in September.

But I was able to, Bundy's girlfriend, Liz, was, with Clop for her, actually, her name is, her pen name is Kendall. And I used that in the book. She thought he left on the third, but he actually left on the second. And I was able to confirm that through the gas receipts. Anyway, so he killed this hitchhiker. And then he killed this little girl, 12 years old, when that's called her on May 6, 1974, I mean five. So, but I remember Russ said, but here's what happened. We were going back.

We would talk about the one. we jumped to the other, it was back and forth. And, of course, he's telling me this, and I did not yet have the transcript. Later, I got the transcript. It's exactly like he said. And here's what happened. When he was asking Bundy,

would there be, like, cranial damage on culver? He said, no. And then, like, you know, and I said, well, how did she die? He said drowning. Well, because Bundy had already stated that after the murder, he put her in the car, and he thought it was a snake river,

five miles north of Pokka. fellow after he took the body out of the hotel room and then he was gone and they assumed it was the river but as Russ was walking out of prison with his co-investigator Randy Everett Russ said you know he said it was drowning but he didn't say exactly how he did it see if you can go back in the prison and talk to Bundy and Bundy had already said to them look I know an hour isn't enough time so if you need anything else get back with me I'll see what I can do so Surprisingly, you know, Randy back in, I'll keep in mind that during the confession and during every confession, Bundy's attorney was there, Bill Hagmire was there. Well, he goes back in the prison, Randy, they think he didn't do a room.

20 minutes later, 15th minutes later, here comes Bundy. He sits down across, you know, Everett. Hengen's not there. The attorney's not there. It's actually a meeting that shouldn't have been scheduled in prompting meeting, but, but they allowed it. So he said, Ted, you said that. you drowned or the method was drowning. But he was needing to know the circumstances.

He said, oh, yeah. He said, well, I drowned her in the bathtub. And then I don't think Everett ask him, but Bundy offered the information. He said, yeah, and I had sex with her after she was dead. Of course, Bundy was a necrophile. That's what they do. And sometimes Bundy had sex before they were dead. He almost always had sex with him as they were dying.

And then, of course, he was a necrophile. So he had that. Okay. So I had to go, I had to email Bill and tell him, you know, well, yeah, Bill, it is true. And here's why you didn't know it. And I remember when I talked to Bill the first time, and I kind of broke this to him, you could tell he was kind of, you know, I wouldn't say the word is upset, but he was like if that did happen, that shouldn't have happened. And Bill's absolutely right. It shouldn't have happened without him being there.

But in any event, it was those types of things. And then getting other new information about the murders, about the, the, the. actual murder of Julie Cunningham and what what he had told Monday had told Mike Fisher that had never been in print before. And so again, halfway through the book, I was really pleased it was going the way it was going. And I finished the book up. Of course, I did the Florida section.

And it was, I remember when I finished the book in July of 2008, I took a couple weeks off just to just to get it all out of my sister. for a while. Going back to Ted's childhood, a lot of people think that's when serial killers begin forming the journey to becoming serial killers. And we know that Ted's earlier years,

there were violence in his home, with his grandfather in Philadelphia. What kind of toll do you think being around that kind of violence had on Ted and shaped him into becoming a serial killer? I'm not a big believer in a lot of violence in that home. I know there was some. I know there were some arguments. I think that and he may have thrown one of his daughters down the stairs or she tripped and fell. But here's

what I think has happened, because I've studied the case for years. You hear this stuff and then you try to trace down where it came from and you can never trace it down. And there might be a squibb here or a mention from somebody there. But I think what probably is true is that there were some issues there. Bundy said he only remembered his grandfather, Samuel Cow, as being a nice loving grandfather. And, you know, he may have a stash of pornography. But, you know, the thing about Bundy, and this is what people need to realize, first of all, pornography didn't turn him into the raging killer. He became pornography as a true.

tremendous amount of negatives to it. People get sucked into that and it changes perceptions and sexual perceptions and it demands more. And there's a lot of things that being a minister for over 30 years now, close to 35 years. I understand all this stuff. I mean, I get it. But it doesn't cause people to want to go out and slaughter women, cut off their heads and take their heads on and have oral sex with them. It just doesn't work that way. It just doesn't.

Now, Bundy was a big blamer on things, but he never blamed his grandfather for anything, and I think that's very telling. What we do know is that there is valid testimony from the ants, and the ants, it was either the same ant or because Louise, his mother had several sisters. It could have come from two different ants, but on one occasion, quote both he's in the book, that the one lady was standing on a train platform near dusk, probably going out of the city back to where they live. And she said something happened to Little Teddy's personality, and it was like he morphed into something else, and it scared her. She didn't elaborate on any more than that, but that's an oddity.

And then another aunt, or it could be again the same hand. She said that she woke up one morning, and he had taken kitchen knives and raised the cover of her bed and pointed these knives at her. Just a little boy, you know, he's probably three or four, maybe four. And, you know, you don't need to be a full-blown psychologist to know that when a child does something, there's something amiss. Those are something that we have that are valid. So I take, and this also, this rumor, that maybe Ted's grandfather had incest with, I mean, he had sex with, you know, his daughter, which would be incest, Louise, and Ted was born from that.

Could it have happened? I guess anything can happen because incest is a real thing. But the thing of it is, I haven't found any evidence for that. So some of this stuff about the early upbringing, except for what those aunts witnessed and told police about, except for those incidents, I kind of have a tendency to take these other things with a grain of salt. Whatever happened to Bundy that helped create what he was, there was some fracturing of his person. as a kid. And we know from the record that as a young adult, he had significant rage that he was born out of wedlock and didn't know who his father was. And that came out when the probation officer, after his arrest in Utah and he was going to prison for the Carol de Ranch abduction, he had one of the 15-year sentence. They had to do a pre-sentence investigate, investigation on him. And the parole person said that he had touched on his father. father, his real father, because he had been adopted by Johnny Bundy, who married Louise. But, you know, this probation officer didn't know he was flipping a switch, but he did.

And he said, Bundy's face became quite contorted, sitting there right in front of him. And then he was kind of like, you know, contorted and red in the face. But he was able to regain his composure. And when he did, he said something along the lines. It's in my book. Well, you know, my father just left my mother and me and then never returned. So he had this significant range, but range. But his fracturing of his personality, I believe, began when he was a child based on what the answer said.

Now, on top of that, as he grew, he took pornography. And for some reason, he mixed it with violent fantasies. And he never pushed those away. He rather, instead, he embraced them. And it was through that and however many years that took, that along with, that fractured personality, he gravitated towards that. And then, of course, thought produces emotion and emotion produces action. And those thoughts led to lots of emotion.

And he liked that. And he read those detective magazines. And those detective magazines were strange back in the 60th and 70s because you look at the cover of those. I mean, I've seen it. I'm 60. I'll be 60 for next year. So, I mean, I remember these things. And, you know, all these large-breasted women, they're being dominated by men, look like these men are ready to kill them.

They want to choke them and they want to rape them. Okay, so they were strange kind of magazines. But he loved those. So he had a thing for that. And that may have added to some of his fantasies about bonds against women. But at one point, that was going to, there was going to be a tipping point because he never pushed those away. He embraced them. And then, of course, that, as I say in my book, then they went from family.

fantasy to reality. And once it was reality, then you had Ted Bundy for what the world knows him to be. And that brings us to his victims, obviously. We know he killed dozens of women and some counts have it as high as a hundred. And we'll probably really never know. But let me ask, do you think he ever had any male victims along the way? No, I know John Brown said Bundy told him he killed a boy when he was a boy. And I don't have any trouble with believing and the Brown told him that, but I don't think he was being honest. I don't. I mean, there's no records of a kid that we know having disappeared in Tacoma about that time. I'm assuming people have followed up on that little bit, but I don't know.

My opinion, of course, that would be him when he was a little boy, but my opinion is that as he grew up, he was basically afraid of men. He didn't really have any true men friends. He had some people he worked with and things. Anytime he encountered a man, just like when he encountered the brother of a girl he tried to kidnap in Jacksonville at the Kmart. And, you know, the brother showed up in time and the brother gets out of the car. So Bundy's practically quaking in his boots. He had no trouble killing women, but he didn't want to mess with men. So I don't know.

I would doubt very seriously that that thing that Brown said Bundy told him. It's true. I think he was strictly a killer old woman. You mentioned also. Yeah, that's what I was going to lead into because you mentioned, you know, a 12-year-old, we know he had a couple young victims. Yeah. They weren't typically in the age range that he saw it. Were they just victims of opportunity? He saw a chance and just, and they were easy prey. Is that what you think happened in that situation? Yeah, well, it's really interesting because when I was doing the Culver case, he had gone to Pokerello and made. 5th on May 5th. He did

spend, and it was cold there. I found out the weather reports and what condition the city was in on May 5th and May 6th. Both days he was there. It was cold. It was having snow showers. And he tried to abduct a college

age, you know, woman. And he was, under those weather conditions, it was going to be tough to do. It was in an unfamiliar environment. And you know, any woman running to a car, whether she's not going to stop and talk to somebody.

So he had to go home that night and I say in my book, he's left to all the mental images of severed heads and smashed heads and he probably masturbated to that. That night after he returned his hotel room

without a victim. However, the next morning he got into his VW and I followed this exact same route, but he went on one road and it ran into, you know, He was in, I think, Fulcatello Road ran into Alameda, then became West Alameda, and then there he ran into this hask of this junior high. And here comes when that cold were out with, at lunch break with all these people.

And he called her over to the car, convinced her to leave with him. Now, he said, because she's a young girl, he said he didn't know she was 12. And that might be true. But I'm sure he wouldn't have guessed they're over 14. and that's still out of the range of a college-age woman. So the thing about Bundy, I think, yes, opportunity had a part to do with it. And the other part was he wasn't opposed to it, although I think primarily, of course, he was killing full adult women. You mentioned the body count.

Bundy said they came up with about 30. most people look at a figure of about 36. I think it probably goes a little bit higher. Not a lot. I would be surprised if it was over 50. It could be 40. But one thing I'm convinced of, we know he killed two 12-year-old girls.

One was Culver. The last murder was Kim Leach. She was 12. That was in Lake City, Florida. And he never wanted to talk about the motor of young girls. And I point this out in the Bundy murders that apparently it was okay talking about the slaughter of college-age women. He had no problem once he was confessing that. But he wanted to stay away from any talk of killing young girls.

I mean, there's even a talk that there's, I mean, perhaps he killed Anne-Marie Burr, who was eight when he was 14. We don't know that that's true. He basically pinned that on himself in his discussions with Ron Holmes, a criminologist out of Louisville, that Bob Keppel said until they had a falling out, he expected Bundy to confess everything to Ron Holmes. He was his golden boy. Anyway, that's what Keppel told me,

and I think Keppel was right. But he said something during an interview when he was talking about another killer. But I think he was really talking about himself. He said, well, he might have severed maybe a half a dozen heads of teenagers. And, you know, you know, I think he's talking about himself.

So I think there were more young girls, just really children, practically, that he killed, that he wouldn't admit to. He also didn't like to talk about the necrophilia much, but he did admit it. So, yeah, strange character, isn't he? Yeah, so you think maybe he had some kind of shame that he felt for killing, you know, some of the young girls and for the necrophilia itself? You think there were things that he felt shameful talking about? I don't think it was true shame.

I think it was based on what he thought people's opinion of him would be. In other words, it wouldn't be the type of shame that would ever cause him to stop because he enjoyed it so much. Now, there is a thing he said, and I think he may look back on some of it with a bit of, sometimes this truth would pop out of him. When they said to him, would you just tell us where you have Kim Leach? It's a miracle they found her. And they found her without his help.

Just a miracle. But he said, no, I can't do that because the sight is too horrible to look at. And that's just popped right out of his mouth during the investigation. But they found her. And, of course, he had had sex with her from behind and had cut her throat with a honey knife. And that was a change up in his mall. That was very different. He did not strangle her.

But if you're not much shame as having done it, no, I think he was glad that he did these things. I just don't think he wanted to. He had this strange quirk. Again, he didn't mind people understanding he killed women, but I think he felt like they would judge him too harshly about the necrophilia and about the killing of young girls. But he loved necrophilia.

He admitted to Bob Keppel. He said he really enjoyed the cyanotic cue that appears on a woman's finger. anything else as, you know, after all the cells in her body stop and it starts to turn. And so he just liked, you know, he liked necrophilia. So I just don't think he wanted to talk about it much. Keppel knew what he was doing. And when Bundy described in detail the capture of George Ann Hawkins, and now he took

him, took her to a deserted place, that he spent, she was dead back probably before 1 a.m. He captured her around 11, I believe. And then he didn't leave the crime scene until dawn. So careful knowing what he was doing, said, well, can you tell us what transpired? Then he said, no, he said, no, I'm going to have to skip over those things for now. You know, he just didn't want to talk about him. But it doesn't mean if you got a prison, he wouldn't go back and do it again. Because murder, it's very strange, but murder, macrophilia, and this strange desire to destroy women.

was always going to be there. He was never, ever going to stop until he was incapacitated. Maybe he would grow old. But yeah, and this is the thing about Bundy. He killed before 1974. He admitted a killing in 1973. He probably killed him 72. He may have killed her.

We don't know. But 1974 was different, even though he had some murders under his belt. In 1974, the dawn of 74 in January, he decided that he was going to, just going to full-fledged murder. Nothing else was going to matter. He wasn't really going to ever get married. He wasn't going to really be a lawyer. There were no exit ramps

to where he could stop and get off the train of murder. He knew this was the way he was going to go, and he was going to continue doing this the rest of his life. And the only thing he would stop him is if he were captured a pill. And that's exactly what happened.

He was captured, and he wouldn't have stopped. But Monday were alive today, and he was out there. He'd have a harder time today with all the cell phones and cameras and cities and stuff like that. But remember this, no matter what technology we have that supposedly would stop that, it won't stop very determined killers of women. Women still disappear to this day with all this technology, and they don't find them, and they don't find the killers. So you think in 1974 he really embraced the addiction that he had for,

for killing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was a launch. It was passing. Even though he had murdered before, there might have been some hope in him that he wasn't going to go that way, but it was just no.

He just wanted it too much. Bob Kippel said, there's a man who thinks 24-7, nothing but murder. And it's really true. And even though he didn't send an article to the newspaper, say, I'm launching,

you can tell by his actions that once he started down that road, everything became about that. You could see his political ambitions were backing off. Everything else it was backing off. Law school was going to be maintained just because it was part of the facade. And everything was really the hidden Ted was just going to keep murdering women. And he was only going to keep the ruse of a normal life going just so that he could maybe cover his tracks.

and that's all that was about. So, yeah, 1974 was different. There wasn't any way that he was going to come back from that, and he knew it. And I think a lot of people weren't aware. I know I wasn't until I dove into this case, but Ted Bundy actually has a daughter who would be in her 30s right now. What can you tell us about her and that whole situation? Well, you know, you can get just about anything you want in prison. And Buddy got drugs, alcohol.

And even though he was a death row prisoner. he wasn't supposed to have any actual physical contact with Carol Boone. People believe that he, you know, paid the guards. And they gave him some element of privacy, and he was able to impregnate her. And yeah, that girl today should be about maybe 38, I think, but in her 30 somewhere. Carol left really before the confessions. I mean, she came into that relationship thinking he was in his. just like Liz Kim,

tried to believe that he was innocent. And then she finally came, she had her own epiphany, and she had many epiphanies, and the last one was permanent. And because Bundy basically confessed to her after he got to Florida. And so Carol was with him for quite some time,

and of course then she's pregnant, she had this kid. But now they've had a low profile over the years. I have even heard that Carol may be dead. I don't know that. I can't confirm it. So hopefully the girl, I remember Stephen the show I had contacted him,

who was the author, along with the Wayne's worth, of the only living witness. And when I wrote my article for Snitch before I wrote the book, I had sent him a copy of that. We corresponded just a little bit. And he wrote me back and he said, he said, can you imagine what it's like to be to his daughter? And, you know, that is true.

I mean, because you want your dad to love you. And she's his daughter. but yet daddy was a slayer of women. So, you know, I'm sure the girl knows, obviously. But I hope she's living a productive and happy life because, you know, that was his life. That's not hers. So I hope she's happy. If somebody wants to see what you're up to, what your next project is,

or where they can, you know, find your book books or any other books you have, where can they find you? Okay. I have a number of publishers, but primarily, I write books nowadays for Wild Blue Press. You can go to Wild Blue Press.com. Bring me up as an author. You'll see you can go back and read my archive crime blogs and any other book news is there. So the best place to find me is Wild Blue Press.

But if you go to my author page on Amazon, there's all my books that I've written. And there's also links to articles and things like that that I've written. So either through Amazon, my author page or Wild Blue Press. That's the best way to find out what I'm doing. That was a great conversation with Kevin. I think he was able to touch on a lot of points that you and I, as well as the listeners, are really interested in. Yeah, we really covered a lot of ground in that interview. Now, next up is an interview with Dr. Rob Dielenberg.

His interest in Bundy arose not so much from. a fascination with true crime or serial killers, but he wanted to better understand how Bundy's brain worked. He gives us a very detailed and scientific explanation of just what made Bundy who he was. And it helps to explain why Bundy may have done what he did. So with us today is Dr. Rob Dillenberg. He's a PhD in neuroscience and accomplished Ted Bondi author, researcher and we appreciate you coming on the show today.

No problems. Well, I earned my PhD in neuroscience. So University of Sydney, 90, what was it? I think I got through 2002. I've completed my, I got letters in 2002, I think I was. Obviously, I've done a lot of things before that. I worked in, you know, pharmacology labs and stuff like that. And a lot of lab work, you know.

Essentially, it's a sliced, dice, mountain count kind of style of work. I spent 20 years in the lab. I never saw the sun. You know what I mean? I kind of got sick of that and I decided I was fortunate I got a gig here at Newcastle University. And Newcastle is just amazing. It's always blue skies, you know, great surf, great beaches, best beaches in the world. And I bought a place right next to the ocean here.

And I was spending all more days in the lab. I never saw this. I'd leave in the morning. It'd be dark. Come home and night, it'd be dark. I thought, that's it. I've had enough of that. I'm not going to do that anymore.

and I want to start enjoying my life. And so I quit, I went freelance, started my own company with a physicist, partnership, went into partnership. And since then it's all been freelance work. And I've been getting different gigs. One of the gigs I got was from the Royal Australian Historical Society to write a paper, a research paper on the culture of New South Wales. New South Wales is the state I live in, Newcastle, Sydney.

That's all part of New South Wales. So I got a research grant to write a paper on the culture of the New South Wales Police from 1960 to 1979. So suddenly I was researching 60s and 70s. I loved it. And I really particularly like the 70s. And so I really got into the 70s. And then when I finished that research project, I was thinking, well, I'm still into the 70s. I like it so much.

What can I do that? It continues my passion for the 70s. And I remember from my work in university that I got, we did some stuff on serial killers. And I remember that I got introduced to Bunny then and it wasn't very satisfactory. And I thought, maybe I should have another look at this guy. He's from the 70s. It's all about the 70s. And what can I find?

And so I just started digging and digging and one thing led to another. And I came to the book eventually after two years work. And that's pretty much a story. I'm always fascinated when people go from, you know, different fields. then they wind up going into something, you know, a dark true crime history and sort of get sucked into that and become experts on it, so to speak. I was interested in the stuff in the 70s and passionate about 70s stuff and history in particular. And how I was coming at Bundy was purely from a neuroscientific point of view. I was interested in his brain.

What drove me initially was what was his brain, how did his brain tick? That's how I got into it. There was no dark, there was no macabre. There's no, nothing of that involved. It was all about his brain for me. So you wanted to see why he did what he did and how he thought? Yeah, I was interested to see. As a neuroscientist, we basically look at the brain, how the brain works.

The brain is obviously central to humanity. I mean, it's the last frontier in some ways besides the physical frontier, now researching the origin of the universe. but in terms of the brain itself, it's the organ that actually is the medium through which we perceive reality. So, you know, until we understand how that works, we're not going to understand reality properly. So I'm interested in how the brain constructs reality, how human beings generate behavior through the brain, and everything we do is pretty much centered around the brain. But nevertheless, those who aren't neuroscience obviously don't think like that, that don't even,

that doesn't occur to them, but I spend most of my days from pretty much morning to night thinking about the brain, how the brain works. When I look at someone, when I'm talking with someone, my first thoughts aren't, oh, what nice shoes, what nice clothes they're wearing. My first thought is what part of their brain is making them behave this way right now. So kind of like x-ray vision, look into their skull, look through their eyes, behind their eyes, and actually start thinking about the actual operations of the brain while I'm dealing with a person.

So that's how a neuroscientist thinks when they get to this level. That's fascinating. And so what were you able to learn specifically about Ted Bundy's brain and how it function? Well, that's the core question, obviously, and that took me pretty much over a year to come to the, so, okay, just so you know how scientists works, we don't work in terms of putting forward ideas and then just try to prove ourselves correct. What we first do is we try to gather data. So in that respect, I had to get all the data, and there was a lot of it. There's a lot of books, you know, newspaper articles, journal articles, court case reports, you know, doctors and medical reports, psychiatrists, psychologists.

The list is endless, okay? Plus all the, of course, the police reports from the archives. So there's a huge amount of data you have to sift through. This is a huge amount of reading. So you wake up in the morning, you know, 7 o'clock, you start reading and you finish reading maybe 7 at night, and you've just, all you've just extracted information and you've put that into a text file, you know, and you just started collating all that information. Once you've done all that, you start putting the information to some kind of order.

And obviously, the way I felt it was the best way to do there was create a timeline. Because it was just, everything just jumbled. And if you read most authors on Bundy, they often only pick a certain part of his life, and they often jumble the timeline. You can't really make sense of anything going on until you get the timeline right. So the next step is to get the timeline right. And once you've got that right, then you can start what we do as science is called model building. We start building a model.

And that's really the, that's the core of the whole project, building a model. So how do you build a model from all that data? That was the big challenge. That took about a year, maybe a year and a half before I had the model in hand. Once I had the model in hand, then I was able to pursue further data to corroborate that model, that is back it up, make sure it's check it out, make sure it's right, and basically finish the book, tie the bow on the box and deliver it. So that's the whole story in a nutshell.

Then later on, of course, you can ask me questions about what the model is, how the model works, what's supporting evidence to I have for it and so on so forth. And one thing I didn't even, I wasn't aware of, but did anybody examine Ted Bundy's actual brain itself? That's a good question. Well, I wish. There was some examination. He had a CT scan at one stage. I tried to find out where that scan went, who had it, and what happened to it.

and what happened to it, no luck. That would have been a nice bit of data there, but unfortunately it was unavailable. However, the written reports on that suggest that he didn't have any gross abnormalities in his brain based on the CT scan. And the EEG, that is, electro and sathography data on that was pretty much borderline. He was interpreted by one of the technicians as having slightly depressive-like. profile and his EEG data. So that's about all that we can get from that side of things. We, of course, have psychiatrists reports as well and things like that, but they're indirect

reports. What did these models show when you compiled all that data? Yeah, so when the, okay, so in the model building aspect of it, that the scientific aspect of the model building is that you first collect the data and you look at patterns, obviously. The patterns is what is important. You try and extract patterns. Once you get the patterns and you develop your first sort of like your, you're, preliminary hypothesis and the patterns seem to be all pointing towards Ted having some kind of

prefrontal cortical disorder and there's evidence for that in the literature you look at the literature you see that people who knew him think said things about him people who interacted with him and they experienced his behavior all that comes together eventually starts pointing towards his prefrontal cortical disorder and then so the preliminary thesis is that he's got some kind of prefrontal cortical deficit. And this is what's possibly feeding into his behavior and causing him to act the way he does. That damage that you think he had, is that something you think he was born with? Or was that from physical damage?

What caused that? Okay. So just to give a really, really rough orientation for the readers and for yourself, is that the prefrontal cortices is simply known as the executive center of the brain. It's the part of the brain that where our personality really primarily derives from. It's the part where we make decisions, executive decisions. Damage to that area leads to basically dysfunctional decision making. Now, there's degrees, obviously, of prefrontal cortical damage.

I mean, you can have a bullet through the forehead, basically, because the prefrontal cordis is behind your eyes, on your forehead above, behind your eyes. And so let's say you get a bullet through there and you get massive damage to that area, well, that's going to completely stuff you up as a person. Whatever the person was before that bullet, after that bullet, they're completely different. They won't be the same person, okay? They'll be completely different.

They'll be, they'll have no impulse control. That could be also have stereotypical behaviors as they get fixated on things. They could have sexual obsessions. Often just basically the, because the pre-final cord disease, one of its major roles in the brain as a whole, is to inhibit emotional and primal drives in the brain. So sexual drives, food drives, aggression drives, all those kind of driving behaviors inhibited by the prefrontal courtesies. So when it's damaged, those drives are removed,

and then those behaviors start exhibiting. In Ted's case, of course, he's got what we call a borderline prefrontal deficit. And the question you asked was, was he born with it, or did he inherit it or did it happen? Did he have an accent? Well, as far as we know, we don't have any evidence of Ted having an accident. So the best hypotheses we can probably therefore support is that he had some kind of genetic inheritance.

For that, you look into his family and you find, in fact, that there is some evidence in the family of schizophrenic, agoraphobic type behaviours, possibly bipolar disorders in the family. And then you say, okay, possibly that. he inherited those genes and that could have contributed to his, you know, behavioral output. Those obviously anecdotal evidence, you don't, there's no, like, I couldn't find any clinical reports on his family members that actually stipulated clinically that that was the case. But if you read all the anecdotal evidence, that seems the point in that direction that there

was some kind of schizophrenic type disorder in the family, which therefore she may have inherited. The next important thing as well is there's a very important. event that occurs in human beings around the age of puberty. It's called neural pruning. What's really important about this is that neural pruning is an event that essentially takes the infantile brain, which has a lot of connections, a lot of wild connections in different directions, which accounts for the creativity of children. And it prunes those away and forms more stable, linear connections that are more suited to adult socialization, reciprocity, and those kind of things. And that occurs around puberty. So it's like imagine a big tree and essentially lots of little

twigs everywhere are all pruned off. And so you basically are for the main branches. And that's what's referred as neural pruning in the brain. And there was a strong indication that Ted had a neural pruning malfunction. And therefore he retained a lot of the infantile neural circuitry in his prefrontal cortex into adulthood that a lot of people would have had pruned away. So that's the other side of the story. Bundy compared to other serial killers? I don't know how much you dove into looking at the brains of other serial killers that are comparable to him, but did they all have some common traits or common brain models, so to speak? Yeah, that's a good question. So what you're really asking is, where

does Ted fit into the broad scheme of serial killer classification, psychopathic classification? And there's actually a lot of research on that. It would take us a lot of work to go through it but to put that in a really nutshell for you what I'll do is I'll just take you through just a couple of very very brief things you've heard of Cleckley's The Mask of Sanity you've probably heard of that I'm not sure if you have or not yeah I think yeah yeah Cleckley was a big player in the early days in the 40s okay he he came out with this thing this concert called the mask of sanity if you go through his list of criteria for he would define as a person who's got in that position he's superficial charm, good intelligence, absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking

and so on and so forth. And if you go through his list, there's about 12 or so items there that he would list which would identify that person as belonging to the kind of psychopathic category. Then in about the 70s, you have a person called Robert Hare coming along. And he basically worked off the colloquial list and expanded it and developed it and basically created what's called the psychopathy checklist. And that was then modified in 1991. And it's been, is basically the main clinical tool to assess psychopaths. And, you know, you've got other items coming in there, like parasitic lifestyle and, you know,

sexual promiscuity and, you know, once again, another list of 12-so items. And then in more recent times, with the advent of brain scanning and so on and forth, you're getting a lot of psychopaths being scanned now and looking into their brains. And they're finding, once again, common patterns, and one of the patterns is there is a video mental prefrontal cortical,

dysfunctional kind of pattern that's emerging, all the frontal cortex or part of the prefrontal cortical area, which is all associated with prediction and error moronting and reward outcomes. And there's also the amygdala, which is important for fear. So, you know, if you see a fearful face, your amygdala is a little like an almond-shaped thing, and their brain lights up like a Christmas tree. Average people have a normal emigula reaction to a fearful face

or fearful stimulus, but apparently psychopaths when they're presented with fearful stimuli, their amygdala doesn't light up as much. It's not as much activity going on there. So there appears to be a kind of like a fear suppression going on in their brains as well. And then you've got the genetic side of things where you've got this new gene that was discovered recently called the M-A-O-A or mono-o-mene oxidase-A gene, and that controls production of protein in brain signaling like dopamine or adrenaline and serotonin, those kind of things. and that chemical apparently, that gene, that malfunction and some people can lead to aggressive

behavior. But it's also been found with subsequent research that you could have that defaults in that gene. You could actually have it on right now. I could have it. But it might not trigger. It might not actually activate until we also have a childhood which has a persistent maltreatment and deprivation of those kind of things as well. So you have to have it hooked up with kind of some environment.

environmental factors that actually activate the gene. So that's the kind of the big picture. Now, where did Ted fit into this picture? Well, there is a general classification between organized and disorganized psychopaths, and clearly Ted's an organized type, so he'd belong in that category. And he'd have pretty much that list of Cleckley and hair. If you go through the list of 12 items, if you look it up on the line next time you get the opportunity, go through that list and you'll see, oh, yeah, that's Ted.

you'll pretty much see that pretty much fits everything about his behavior so um you could say yes he was an organized psychopath um whether he had a malfunctioning um ao gene i don't know um we didn't get a CT scan so whether he had some really obvious damage these people of course i doubt it because he's he was quite organized it's he was borderline so you know he'd be a psychopath but he wouldn't be one of the more crazy types he'd be more more more the organized type, which is obviously shown by his behavior. So that's pretty much the best answer I can give you there. One good thing, you know, your book is called Ted Bundy a visual timeline for a reason because you really, you start at the very beginning and you take it to the end and you're checking, you know,

the boxes all the way through. So one thing I thought it would be interesting to do, you approached it from a scientific aspect and you wanted to make sure everything was accurate. That's one thing that I've heard from a few different people that your book is very accurate. And I wanted to see what your research dictated about a few different things. I wanted to ask you. And you see what your opinions are or what your findings were, if you don't mind. Yeah, sure. Sure.

Go ahead. So one of the things, you know, I think would be important to know, based on your research and what you were able to find, when Ted was 14, his eight-year-old neighbor was killed, I think that was in 1961. and there's been a little bit of debate whether Ted might have done that. Do you think it's possible that he may have started with that eight-year-old neighbor?

No, not a chance. That's pretty much the realm of fantasy. And was there anything, you know, from a scientific angle, it was these problems that Ted has that you think he had, did they not start him on this course at that point? Is that what rules that are just based on evidence in fact?

Okay, evidence as well I mean, if you look at the evidence, there's no evidence to start with that links to head to that crime. I mean, you read Morris's book, but Morris, well, there's a lot of fishing going on there, you know what I mean? So I basically read that book

and wasn't even vaguely convinced, but I would say that there's a few criteria you have to have really firmly in your mind about this, okay? The first thing is, let's talk about a 14-year-old boy, all right? Well, 14-year-old boys, as you know, they're pretty hair-brained, you know what I mean? they're all over the place and they're very energetic and Ted was very much like that. And what you'll notice is that when you do get juvenile, what basically juvenile offenders,

one of the patterns among juvenile defenders is that they're often very, they're very emotional and they're very uncontrollable. And they're also very messy and they're very inefficient. So when you look at a crime like that, first of all, you can't attribute a 14-year-old. that's having the kind of control over that crime, say an adult ward who's already got experience in killing. It's just not going to happen. There's no experience there.

There's no ability to cover up to the degree, to hold the secret to that degree and so on and so forth. It's just not going to happen. That's the first aspect of it. It's just beyond kind of like reality. The second thing is that typically when a serial killer does start killing, they don't stop. It's very rare.

It's almost 99.9% all serial killers, once they start killing, they don't stop. So therefore we have to explain why did Ted kill at 14 and then he didn't stop until he stopped for like what until he was 24 almost or something like that or 8 or 21 let's say let's say he stopped for seven years that's just totally unbelievable so typically teenagers have emotion problems teenage killers are extremely emotionally disturbed okay when you take any look at the literature look at any all the evidence all teenage killers are extremely emotionally disturbed and there's a lot of what's called prodramal evidence

pro-dramal means before the crime evidence. So you'll see a lot of behavioral signals in the perpetrator long before the crime is committed. So a teenage killer who kills a 14, you won't hear them just suddenly killing out of the blue. When you look at the family history and people start talking about them as an individual, you'll start hearing lots and lots of stories that totally explain the lead-up to the crime. Okay, so nothing like that whatsoever is observed in Ted. and then the fact that they, once a serial start, they don't stop. So that's another fact that you've put into the case.

And finally, Ted didn't have the means. You have a car, didn't have any transport to remove the victim in any sensible way. So I think putting all those factors together, I think we can pretty much safely rule Ted out. I mean, the other factor, of course, is that it's, you know, why should we read into coincidences? There's other people that were disappeared and murdered in that area during when he lived there. so why don't we ascribe those to them in humans as well, but we don't. So we can't just go on coincidence. That's just not sufficient to base any argument on, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah. And one thing, you know, I'm from South Jersey, and Ted was linked or linked himself or alluded to the fact he may have killed two girls in the Garden State Parkway in 1969. Did you research any of the New Jersey portion of some of those claims? to see if you thought they might be legitimate? Yeah, yeah. When doing the book, I left no stand on turn.

So, of course, I went to those as well. I tried to once again draw a sort of a picture of what was going on. I think when I, okay, I'm in two minds about the New Jersey killings. I pretty much doubt it. I'm pretty much like 95% sure we didn't do them. But there could be a 5% chance you did do them. But once again, you have to look at the evidence. You have to look at the patterns.

You have to look at the means as well. What means do you have? and if you look at the crime and you look at the crime scene and everything that was there, it just doesn't, there's nothing TED about it. And there's also the means, it's the biggest hole in the argument. What was his means? I mean, you know, he, what was he doing? How did he get into that car?

Where was his car? Why wasn't there? You know, a lot of issues there involved explaining how that crime occurred. So I think I'm kind of, and also the timeline suggests he wasn't there as well. That's the other problem. So, you know, there's, there's, there's, I think there's a low probability on that one. Once again, as a scientist, we don't talk about absolutes.

I mean, when I say the Amory Burr case, I'm not going to say Ted didn't do Amory Burr. I'm going to say 99% sure, he didn't do it. And for the New Jersey case, I'd say I'm probably a bit low on that. I'm probably around the 95% mark on that one. Just in your data, just looking at it from a scientific standpoint, again, based on everything you've explored, people have tried to guess how many murders that, you know, Bundy actually committed, whether it was 30, 36, you know, if you had to venture to guess based on what you found personally in your research, what kind of number do you think he really did have,

or is it just not possible to determine that? Well, I think realistically, I couldn't go about 36, but I'd say to me, I've maxed at about 32. I can't find any more victims really beyond 32, but he could have done 36. I mean, there could be victims there that he did. he did. I mean, you know, there was a victim just happened in Iowa. Just recently, I can remember my name, just discovered on yesterday or something like that. And it was turned out to be a Mexican illegal immigrant that did it.

And anyway, the thing is, if you took that same crime and went back to the 70s, that guy would have got away with it. And, you know, so the thing is, you wonder what did Ted get away with as well. You know what I mean? He could have got away with stuff. Problem is finding the victim. If you look at, if you do the full survey, go across all the American websites and look for missing victims and looking for times, dates, places, locations, victim type, crime type and so and so forth.

When you start getting all that information together, you've got to start wandering, you know what I mean? I mean, I, at the 36 to me, seems probably more than he probably did, but I'm not going to rule it out, okay, but I can't go above 36. So that would be the absolutely minute I'd go to for sure. I mean, let's not forget the rape victims. I mean, he probably raped equally as, many as well, you know what I mean? Like living, living victims. So, so realistically, his victim

can't be his high 70 or 80, but that would be living victims, you know what I'm saying? You know, from getting back to, you know, the execution for a moment, do you think, from science-related background, do you think he should have been kept alive to study? Would that have, you know, maybe helped people understand why people do these things? Would you have liked to see him, kept alive to help catch other people like this? Whether he would have actually delivered anything substantial that we could learn, Ted, at the end of the day, was a garden variety rapist murderer. I mean, there's nothing really special about him.

There's millions of them. So, I mean, what are we going to learn from Ted in particular? That's any different from what we can currently learn from any other rapist murderer. There's so many of them out there. What made Ted special? Okay. What puts him in the Hall of Fame? and a class above the rest is that he had that charisma and he had the looks and he was the quintessential

sheep's in a wolf and sheep's clothing so that's what makes him that kind of interesting character a wolf and sheep's clothing almost to the letter no one else comes close to that kind of um quality that he had so that's what really makes him interesting i think and um that's what makes him a lesson for the generations. But as a garden variety rapist murderer, I mean, pick your number, there's so many of them doesn't really matter, you know what I mean? Why do you think it was that Ted Bundy eventually confessed to several murders after denying his guilt for so long? What do you think was his driving reason to do that? Yeah, that's actually a really complex question. I'm not sure I have the answer to that, to be honest, but what I can pick up from, see, first of all, we, we, the, we, the,

The media myth is that he confessed about three or four days before he's executed, which is not true. He actually started confessing in the spring of 88. So that's almost a full year before he got executed. That's interesting in itself. And then what's also interesting is that he chose, the victim he chose was the boy's hitchhiker, which is really fascinating because that hitchhiker could not be, was not in anyone's books. There was no police task force looking for that victim. There was nothing, there's nothing to name it to.

So there's a great choice to confess with as an opening, as an, like, an entree, so to speak. He could freely confess that victim and not have any hate put onto him by any agency research or whatever, because it just was pulled out of the sky, basically, and a great way to start confessing. Now, what is the purpose of that confession? Why did he start doing that? Well, seeing that if you read Pauline Nelson's book, that his main motivation was that he knew that his number had come up, he knew that within about a year. of that, something to confess. He knew that he was going to, you know, pretty much get fried.

So the question there is, was he motivated simply to extend his life? And I think that's probably the best answer we can give, which if you read Pauline Nelson's book is the reason. So he's basically said, look, I'll start telling you about my crimes and who I did and where I did them and so and so forth. And you give me another three years. And the argument was that he gave him to Pauline Nelson was that it's going to take me about a year to probably go through and, in detail.

and recover all the information for all the victims for the families and then after that as my reward I want two more years of life and then you can fry me so that was kind of like his argument at that time poly Nelson was vehemently against that she just absolutely just did not want him to do that but he was quite you know pig-headed about it and decided to go here with that plane anyway so it actually backfired because it ended up when it got the governor's table you know he didn't want to bar of it so so it didn't really work but I think that's what it really was was really about, it was about extending his life for that extra bit of time so you can, you know, just live a few more years, I think.

Based on all the data you've compiled, the research you've done, what are some of the most common misconceptions about Ted Bundy? So there's a lot of fun to be had there as an academic, shooting down some of the crap that's out there. It's just so much bullshit, really. So, you know, and I mean, if you want to, I can't go through all of them, but if I want to start putting the big ones out there, obviously. people saying that he killed 100, 300, that's just, you know, rubbish.

There's no evidence to support it. I mean, you know, if you read Polyneelson, going back to Polyneson's book, in that he said something quite pithy, I think, it really hits the nail on the head, and that is he said, no one has any idea how much it takes out of you to do one. It enables you to start thinking about Ted from a practical point of view. What is actually physically possible? What can a person really do? How, what does it take to really kill someone?

All the data that I could gather eventually led me to some really important criteria. that actually enabled me to determine his criteria for that, which is that he'd always look for a secluded place in the forest somewhere. It would be off the highway that he could access easily and often have a loop road. That's really interesting because he'd always look for a loop road. So the idea behind the loop road is that you have an escape route, okay? Ted would never go down a one-way road. You'd never take a victim down a road that would lead to a dead end, okay?

This is not going to happen. You'd always be along a highway, and you'd always go along the highway. He'd look for some kind of loop road that would branch off the highway, which you could drive in one way and drive out the other way. And often, to get into that loop road, he'd often cross a river or a creek or a railway line. He always looked for some kind of crossing to cross over. For him, that probably symbolized some kind of barrier, gave him some kind of psychological security.

His crossings are some kind of barrier, which he'd assume other people wouldn't cross. So often he'd look for water. He'd look for places near water. so he'd be in his car, get a victim. And if you look at some of the tables I've got in the book, you'd also find that some of the stories about him transporting victims for long periods of time, it's just ridiculous. I mean, it's nonsensical.

Ted, if you look at all the data, I mean, Ted basically tried, he'd murder and rape and murder his victim almost as soon as possible as he got them, okay? That's the reality. Within about 15 minutes, within 15 minutes. Within a 15 minutes of abducting a victim, no more than 20 minutes of abducting them, he'd be raping and murdering them. He'd have a pre-designed location where you could take them to do it,

and it'd have those criteria which I just described. So that's his motorist operandi. He wouldn't be taking victims back to his house and stuff like that. It's just absurd. There's another myth about him taking heads home. It's just ridiculous. I mean, often the whole heads thing, if you look into that part of the story, if we really dig properly into it,

what you realize is that the whole head sting was about obfuscating evidence of the crime. So my research has led me to the conclusion that probably what he was for the Seattle crimes anyway was that he killed them, took them to those locations which I described, and often left their bodies just above the ground and for the local animals to devour and remove the remains. However, what happened was that the Issaquah in September, remember September, was it, was was the 74 was it or yeah september 74 isicle was discovered right now i think what happened there was he panicked a bit he you know they found the bodies in isaq and oh my gosh they found them

what i'm gonna what i'm gonna do he's had he had these other bodies which he had distributed around different sites which he had um you know left them and i felt that at that point what he probably did was he went back to them and collected the heads and um uh collected them and then and then red dumped him at taylor mountain so so he just separated heads on the body so obviously to remove identification, okay? Because the teeth, right? He doesn't want to have the teeth associated with the skeleton. So he just took them all and removed them. And there's medical evidence to suggest that's exactly what he did. If you look at the only skulls were found a telemarked. And so he just removed them. And the thing part there was about Roberta Park. So he also smashed her face

in because he wanted to remove all evidence of her identity completely because he didn't want to be associated with going down to Oregon. So, yeah, there's a lot of complexity there. But certainly, I think the heads thing was basically another attempt to remove evidence from the victim so that they couldn't be identified and make it harder for the police to identify him with the crimes. You know, I'm going to encourage everybody to go out and check out your book, Ted Bundy, a visual timeline, because just on the brief conversation we've had today, I know there's a lot of detailed, fact-based information there that you've collected, and I think people would enjoy reading that. Where can people find that book?

If you look online and punch it in, you'll have no trouble finding it, really. I mean, we have a website as well, which we run. It's a Facebook website. It's by the same name, so just punch that in, look for it. It'll pop up pretty much straight away. In terms of the book, I really want to aim it at the student who is studying a university, studying psychopaths, serial killers and so and so forth. As a category, it comes under the area of abnormal psychology,

students of abnormal psychology who want to study people who have deviant behaviors basically and so they want to know what makes people tick referenced and as a as a bona fide reference for psychopathy in relation to people like ted bunny and again another great conversation morph i think for me anyway it brings a new way of considering bundy's crimes and then finally Morph, you sat down for a short interview with E.J. Hammond to discuss her background with the case. And again, we appreciate her effort so much in helping bring this season of criminology to life. E.J., I appreciate you coming on and talking to us about your Ted Bundy work and research. Absolutely. I am thrilled to be here and to have offered my research to your podcast.

My interest in Ted Bundy definitely runs deep. You've described yourself as a Bundy file, and I can picture some people thinking that you might be like a Ted Bunny groupie or fan, almost as if you're interested in Bundy is like a negative type thing. But from what I know about you, I know that's not the case. If you can, people exactly what are. Okay, sounds good. So the suffix file actually means lover of or attraction too. I am not a groupie. I'm not a fan of Ted Bundy, but I am definitely drawn to him.

fascinated by his just very different aspects of his personality. Though I find him interesting, I don't condone his actions. But what's more interesting to me is the mask that he showed to the world versus his true personality. That's not to say that there aren't people who are attracted to him because there are a lot of people. He's got a lot of groupies. He got a lot of marriage proposals and fan mail when he was on death row. Actually, when he was in jail during his trial, as well as on death row. But as far as being attracted to him or feeling any real draw to him in a romantic way, I don't feel that towards him.

It's more cerebral. I feel more of a sense of how does a smart man born to a seemingly loving family become one of America's most brutal serial killers, so they're in life, my interest. And you want to know pretty much what makes them tick? Yes. And what specifically drew you to Ted Bollars? Bundy, you know, did you have an interest in true crime or was it serial killers in general or was it just something about Ted Bundy himself?

With him, I found myriad things drew me in. He was actually the first serial killer I ever read about. I read Ann Rules, a stranger beside me, probably about 20 years ago. And that's really where my addiction began, just being drawn to someone who looked so normal. He didn't look like a criminal at all. He looked just like your average guy. and then to determine that, you know, later find out that he was so cruel and such a brutal individual, I think that was initially my draw to him.

He also had this chameleonic ability to look different in just about every picture of him. I don't know about you, Morse, but I have people tell me that I look exactly the same as I did in my school pictures from years and years ago, whereas with Ted, he would lose weight, grow a beard, maybe change his clothes. and automatically he looks different. So there's just different little aspects of him that just really appeal to me more than with other killers. And you can read about him, write about him.

How much time have you dedicated over the years would you estimate knowing what you know about them? Not sure exactly how to quantify, but I am constantly reading probably four or five books at any given time about crime, about Ted, about I like to throw in a few classic books, a few dystopian fiction, books like Clockwork Orange or Scand or Darkly to have something a little different.

But I do like constantly reading, constantly building my knowledge about serial killers and TED in specific. I do write every chance I get. I've gotten a lot of good feedback on my blog. So, you know, it seems like the theme in my life tends to be TED or another, you know, aspect of crime, particularly psychology. I am currently hoping to start. another blog where I'm going to be combining psychology and criminals kind of to break down and give explanation of crime sprees and the psychology behind them. So I may have a topic where I talk about one aspect of aberrant psychology and then a killer who exemplifies it. I'm also been considering publishing a book moving forward. I don't know what the angle is going to be,

but hopefully you'll be having me on your maybe this show or another show discussing that book one day. Yeah, that'd be great. We'd like to have you on if you get that done. So you see yourself branching out and doing some things not specifically about Bundy, but possibly other serial criminals or killers? Yes, absolutely. I look forward to that.

There are just so many different types of personalities that, you know, their TED is kind of the archetype, the lust killer, the average everyday killer we're used to hearing or reading about. There are a lot of different people. who fit under that title that heading is a lust killer that are fascinating as well and just on a light note before we let you go I know a lot of us that eat sleep and breathe true crime always have that spouse or family member that scratches her head and just doesn't understand our fascination with true crime how's

that been for you as your husband always yes my husband Ian has always been supportive of my writing and my interest in the crime genre he's not particularly a fanatic about crime but he's a writer as well so he you know he'll sit and watch crime shows and discuss them later or he'll go look for my work and edit it so he's been very good very supportive I've got friends and family that are also very supportive and they're the first people to go and read my stories or you know read what I've been working on and kind of help me out so I've had a lot of really positive energy and you know moving forward I think that's going to be very

helpful that's awesome and you know we just wanted to thank you Again, because you're writing and research for season three, criminology has been amazing. We've always been interested in Bundy, and when we met at CrimeCon, it just seemed like the perfect head Bundy to listeners of criminology. Absolutely. I am happy to have helped. As I said, it's a labor of love. This is something that I concentrate on a great deal, and I loved meeting both you and FERG and just putting a face to a voice that I'd heard online, at least in my head. People want to learn more about your work and your research, what you're writing.

Where can they find you? I am actually listed. I've got a WordPress blog right now at www.bundi file. WordPress.com, and it's called Confessions of a Bundy File. I also have a Facebook page under E.J. Hammond and a Twitter ID at Rose Dysfunction. Awesome. I hope people that listen to this season, if they're interested, and more Ted Bundy stuff, they will check out.

Sounds good. All right. Thank you so much, EJ, for joining us. We really appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Well, that's it. That wraps up season three.

I think we were able to learn some things about Ted Bundy that we may not have known before. And not just the facts, but more so, you know, insight, especially from some of these individuals that were kind enough to sit down. and do interviews with us. I mean, they had a lot of great insight. Yeah, I agree. I know I personally learned a lot of stuff doing this season that I didn't know about Ted Bunny before.

So it was a really good learning experience into Ted Bundy. Now, before we go, we want to tell you about something pretty big. And it's that we're going to be back for season four pretty quickly. We're not going to take the same type of break that we did. between season two and season three. I mean, frankly, more, if we were a little worn out after season two, that was, it was a marathon. It was a lot of work, those 15, actually 16 episodes.

So we're shooting for September 29th to be back for season four. And we don't want to give a lot of way, but season four will be a little bit different for us compared to the first three seasons. But we're pretty excited about it. So stay tuned for news about season four. And the other thing that is exciting to me is that we've made the decision to do some standalone episodes so that you're not waiting that entire time. You know, we've heard from listeners saying that it's hard to wait for a new season of

criminology to start. So Morph and I have planned to do some standalone episodes. They won't be seasons, but standalone episodes in between seasons to hold everyone over. And we've picked out some great cases to cover for those episodes. So look out for those. We know for sure that we'll be putting out episodes on September 1st and September 15th. And then like we said, we're shooting to be back with season 4 on September 29. So that is a pretty quick turnaround.

We've heard a lot of people say that they hate that downtime, so we're trying to keep it rolling. And I'm excited for what we have coming up. And I think listeners will enjoy what we have planned too. And don't forget, you can always get exclusive ad-free episodes from us by supporting criminology on Patreon. All right. If you like the show, and you haven't done so yet, please take a minute. Go out.

Give us a five-star rating. That really helps other people find the show. We very much appreciate it. And if you want to find us on social media, you can find us on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching Criminology Podcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group by searching for Criminology Podcast discussion and fans.

So I just want to thank everyone all of you listeners for tuning in with us for season three of Criminology. The show has gained so. much traction over the first three seasons. And it's all because of you. We could not do this without you. We very much appreciate it. So that's it from Morp and I. But we will be back with you very soon. Thanks for joining us for season three. And can't wait to see you guys again soon.