Serial killer series brings the shocks

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This article was published 28/01/2019 (2781 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Netflix is presenting a new type of Ted talk.

The streaming service dropped Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes on Jan. 24, 30 years to the day after the man who took credit for slaying dozens in the 1970s died in the electric chair at Florida State Prison.

The four-part docuseries features audio from conversations with Bundy behind bars, with journalists Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth and others. It also serves as a walk-through of his grisly crimes. Presumably, it is the perfect primer to Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the feature in which Zac Efron embodies the killer whose looks to many radiated benevolence, which premièred last weekend at Sundance.

Here are the shocking things we learned from the show:

● A childhood friend said he set traps, hurting a girl

While Bundy insists on the tapes he “never lacked playmates,” Sandi Holt, who is labelled as a childhood friend, says, “He just didn’t fit in.”

“He had a horrible speech impediment, so he was teased a lot,” she says.

“He had a temper. He liked to scare people,” Holt continues, adding Bundy liked to build what she refers to as “tiger traps,” a pit with pointed stakes, disguised with vegetation. “One little girl went over the top of one of Ted’s tiger traps,” Holt recalls, “and got the whole side of her leg slit open with the sharpened point of the stick that she landed on.”

Remembering Bundy’s high school years, Holt says, “He tried to fool you and lie to you” and recalls him spending time alone and not dating.

As Bundy explains in his own words, “It wasn’t that I disliked women or were afraid of them, it was just that I didn’t seem to have an inkling as to what to do about them.”

● He nearly killed himself before his execution

Bundy confessed to an estimated 30 murders to Bill Hagmaier, an FBI special agent, spanning seven states, on Jan. 22, 1989.

The following day, as people gathered outside celebrating Bundy’s impending death, Hagmaier says Bundy threatened to kill himself with a writing pen.

“At some point that day, Ted tells me that he’s not gonna sit in a chair,” he recalls, “and I said, ‘Well, what are you gonna do?’ He said, ‘I’m gonna die right here.’

“And he was sitting across from me, and he had a pen,” Hagmaier continues, “and he said, ‘I can stick this so far up my artery it’ll squirt in your face. And I’ll be drained before anybody even gets here.’ And I said, ‘Is that what you want to do?’ And he says, ‘I’m not gonna let them kill me.’”

Hagmaier questioned Bundy, who was toting the Bible at the time, as to whether he should “push the envelope” with any higher form that might be judging him at the end of his life.

“And he just looked at me and said, ‘You got me again,’” Hagmaier says. “And so then he prayed some, and I prayed with him.”

Bundy died the next day at age 42.

● Bundy seemingly thought killing would bring him fulfilment

Bundy propositioned journalists with interviews with the requirement his cases would be re-examined so he could be proven innocent. To get Bundy to open up, Michaud came up with the idea of using the third person, positioning him as an “expert witness,” instead of a criminal.

“Well, it’s not an easy question, but I think we can speculate,” Bundy answered when asked who could have done these things. “We can generally describe manifestations of this condition of this person’s being skewed toward matters of a sexual nature that involve violence.

“Perhaps this person hoped that through violence, through this violent series of acts, if with every murder leaving a person of this type hungry… Unfulfilled. Would also leave him with the obviously irrational belief that if, the next time he did it, he would be fulfilled,” Bundy said. “And the next time he did it, he would be fulfilled. Or the next time he did it, he would be fulfilled.”

Michaud adds Bundy said the person started “connecting naked women with violence.”

“The interest (in pornography) becomes skewed toward a more specialized literature, some of it pretty grotesque, which would preoccupy him more and more,” Bundy said.

When asked when the person first acted out, Bundy replied: “It would reach a point where the anger, the frustration, the anxiety, the poor self-image, feeling cheated, wronged, insecure. He decides upon young attractive women being his victims.”

● He was a master of deceit

The man who lured one victim in by posing as a police officer complete with badge had many tricks up his sleeve.

Bundy delayed a court appearance by stuffing his cell lock with wet toilet paper. “He was different, and he was smart and he was a challenge to the best,” former Leon County sheriff Ken Katsaris remembers.

Bundy also passed days on death row with the help of drugs. “His wife Carole (Ann Boone) would take drugs in to Ted vaginally, and then he would take the drugs back to his cell rectally,” Michaud says.

“I smoke a lot of weed, and I have never in my life been so (expletive) up,” Bundy said. “I don’t like the dope that just gets you mildly giddy. When I smoke dope, I like to hallucinate a little bit.”

● He felt no guilt for his actions

After Bundy was found guilty in 1980 of the murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, he refused to be affected by his actions. He was convicted in the deaths of Florida State University students Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy the previous year.

“I don’t feel guilty for any of it,” Bundy said.

“I feel less guilty now than I’ve felt at any time in my whole life. About anything. I mean really.

“And it’s not that I’ve forgotten anything or I’ve closed down part of my mind or compartmentalized,” he added. “I believe I understand everything that I’ve done.”

“I am in the enviable position of not having to feel any guilt. And that’s it,” he said.

“Guilt is this mechanism we use to control people. It’s an illusion. It’s this kind of social control mechanism and it’s very unhealthy.”

— USA Today