Original subtitles

[music]

[Male narrator] To the outside world, he was a law student,

a devoted friend, and a loving family man.

[Christie] He cooked big dinners, talked and laughed,

listened to music, and drank wine.

We went to church and took part in the church discussions,

he was just very normal.

She called him 'my prince' she said he was extremely charming.

[Male narrator] Below the surface lurked something darker.

Looking into his eyes you could see the evil.

He confessed to 30 homicides but law enforcement believes

that the number is way higher than that.

[Gillian] Being a serial killer is terrifying enough,

he was sadistic.

A textbook psychopath.

[laughs]

[Brittany] His superpower was being plain

and blending in to virtually every situation.

[Dr. Joseph] Ted Bundy was different than what we thought

a serial killer should look like,

he was charming, good looking, well educated, ambitious

and he seemed like the boy next door.

[Male narrator] What drove Ted Bundy's insatiable appetite?

This is a guy that truly loved murder.

[Male narrator] How did he get away with it for so long?

[Kathleen] There weren't surveillance cameras

on every corner,

DNA was not as sophisticated. Women just went missing.

[Male narrator] Were there any signs?

[Larry] If you have a friend and then you find out

he's actually a murderer, it turns your stomach.

And that doesn't go away, I'm 73 and I still feel that way.

[Male narrator] And how has Bundy made us reconsider

the evil hiding in our midst?

[Ken] He was that different.

He was an invisible monster who was amongst us.

The devil incarnate you'd like to have as your company.

[music]

Ted Bundy's upbringing is kind of the stuff of legend.

[Christie] Ted Bundy's mom, Eleanor Louise Cowell,

got pregnant with him when she was 22 and she was not married.

Her family was extremely religious

and they were deeply embarrassed and humiliated by this.

So they sent her away

to a place for unwedded mothers to have the baby.

[Stephen] Once Louise had recovered,

she intended to go home and leave Ted for adoption.

And her father said no, you're bringing him home

and so she brought Teddy home with her in Philadelphia.

[Male narrator] The real reason for the family's concern

may be much darker.

It's rumored that Ted's grandfather

is his biological father.

That he'd actually raped Ted's mother

and he was the product of that rape.

After she moved back with her family, they decided that

Ted would be told that his mother was actually his sister

and that his grandparents were his mom and dad.

And so for the majority of his upbringing,

that is what he believed.

[Brittany] If anyone in the family asked

about who Ted's father was,

his grandfather became instantly irate

and he would launch into these just violent outbursts.

It was a very abusive, destructive household,

his grandfather was known to have a violent temper,

there's stories about him, you know, abusing the grandmother,

throwing her down a flight of stairs.

It was just a very unstable, very sad, very scary environment

for Ted to grow up.

When a child is brought up

in these type of traumatizing environments,

it is really hard to walk away unscathed.

[Heather] When Ted was growing up,

he showed signs of being very brilliant

but he also showed some disturbing signs.

There was an incident where one of his aunts was babysitting him

and she ended up taking a nap and when she had woken up,

he had placed knives around her body while she was asleep.

There is something very, very wrong with toddler Ted Bundy.

And nobody really knows what to do about it.

[Male narrator] Eventually, the young Ted comes to believe

his grandparents are too old to be his parents.

And that his 24 year old alleged sister, Louise,

is actually his mother.

But he still doesn't know who the father is.

[Tristin] I don't think Ted ever felt stable

and that starts from birth.

You know, rejected, doesn't feel like he belongs

[Patrick] Eventually, Ted's mom found

the courage and the strength to leave the family,

in 1950 she took Ted and they moved to Tacoma, Washington

where she met a man who was an army cook

with the last name Bundy.

[Male narrator] Over the next decade,

Ted's mother and step father expand the Bundy brood,

welcoming four children by the time Ted is a teenager.

The additional kids only further alienate the eldest son.

[Patrick] He was described as a loner,

he was described as somebody who didn't really fit in,

he couldn't do the things that other kids could do,

he wasn't good at sports.

He just couldn't really measure up.

By and large his childhood was very lonely.

He just lacked the ability to sort of

have that human connection with people.

[Male narrator] To compensate, a teenaged Ted develops

a vivid fantasy life

fueled by his obsession with lurid pulp magazines.

[Kevin] On the cover of these magazines,

they would have like these large breasted women

with a knife to their throat by a man

or he's about to strangle her.

It was the threat of violence mixed with sexuality.

[Tristin] Back then true crime magazines

were also near pornography magazines

and the two were conflated sometimes

and I think that that did play a role

into some of the sexual deviance that Ted later developed.

His fantasy was to watch a woman be assaulted.

[Male narrator] The darkness inside Ted is growing.

Even at a young age, Ted knew that something was off,

something was wrong. Ted admitted later in life

that he used alcohol and marijuana

to sort of numb his darker fantasies.

[Heather] He showed an early predilection towards deviance,

some kids wanna go out at night and hang out with their friends,

he wanted to go out at night and peep in people's windows.

[Male narrator] Then one night,

Ted can no longer control himself.

As he's walking home, drunk, he comes up behind a woman.

Without thinking at all, he grabs a stick

and runs up behind her and clubs her over the head.

She drops to the ground. And he runs away.

[Brittany] Part of me wonders if this is him testing the waters,

seeing what it feels like to actually hurt somebody.

Ted gets to see somebody scared

and maybe he starts to realize that he likes it a little bit.

[Male narrator] Bundy is never linked to the attack.

And in 1965, graduates high school,

ready to begin his next chapter.

He attends the nearby University of Puget Sound

for his first year of college.

Then transfers to the University of Washington.

It's there he meets the woman

who will change his life forever, Diane Edwards.

[Christie] Diane came from a really wealthy family,

she uh, was beautiful, she was brilliant.

[Heather] The two befriended one another

over a mutual love of skiing and eventually they managed to work

the friendship into a relationship.

They fall in love, he looks like

a wonderful suitor to her family, and I think for him,

she was the be all end all, the absolute prize.

He seems to really love status

and she's a point of status for him.

[Heather] But he put her on such a pedestal

he let his academics slide.

[Brittany] Now Diane sees him as somebody

who doesn't really seem serious about school,

he's failing classes, he's not going to classes,

and so ultimately she decides to break up with him

because that's not the kinda guy she seems like

she wants to have a future with.

[Dr. Joseph] This really set a fire in him

and that amount of rejection really hurt him.

Probably more than any amount of physical pain.

So I think that this really triggered the vengeance in him.

[Male narrator] A year will pass before a devastated Bundy

tries his hand at romance again.

In the fall of 1969, he meets Marylynne Chino

and her friend Liz Kloepfer at a bar in Seattle.

[Marylynne] I was about 20 feet away and I saw this man,

he had a yellow shirt on, he was kinda nursing a beer,

and like staring into space and to be perfectly honest with you,

I've never seen that look before on anybody.

It was a real different look.

[Male narrator] Liz is taken with the mysterious man.

[Marylynne] She ended up dancing with him

and then we all decided we would go home

and I went with another friend

and then she took her Volkswagen and took Ted with her.

[Male narrator] The pair soon become inseparable.

[Patrick] He was really in love with her she was a single mother

she had a young daughter and Ted sorta like swoops in

and becomes sort of everything she needs.

The partner for Liz, the father to the daughter,

and from the outside they look like they have this

very typical very normal sort of all American family.

[Heather] She called him 'my prince',

he got along with her daughter,

he basically took on the role of the perfect partner

taking the little girl for walks throwing birthday parties,

he would wake up early on Saturday mornings

and cook breakfast for her while Liz slept in.

[Brittany] Liz is offering Ted a touch of normalcy

and open unrestricted love that Ted has never felt before.

Not from his mother, not from his grandparents,

and that's scary.

[Male narrator] Ted's new relationship

inspires other facets of his life as well.

In 1970, he reenrolls to the University of Washington

to finish his degree in psychology.

He actually was getting his act together

to appear as the partner that Diane originally wanted

when she said he had no ambition,

he went off and got his degree and said look, I graduated

and almost made it sound like he did it all for Diane

meanwhile he was dating Liz.

[Male narrator] The next year,

Ted puts his psychology studies to use

and begins working as a counselor at a suicide hotline.

[Stephen] He told me that when he was

a phone answerer for a suicide hotline in Seattle

that he always had his best luck

with young women who wanted to kill themselves.

That he was very good with them.

I think it...

ties into his need to feel like he controls life and death.

To tap into that god complex,

every day somebody else's life is in his hands.

It's interesting that Ted would be so good at talking to people

who are in their darkest hour.

It's almost like that's where he lives, in that dark place.

He went into those areas to understand and learn

the different ways that he could interact with people

to gain their confidence, gain their trust.

[Male narrator] Ted also develops a special interest

in law enforcement.

[Patrick] He's working on the Seattle Crime Prevention

Advisory Commission

and this job gives him insight into how police handle crimes,

what the blind spots are, he's able to see how

the jurisdictions don't talk to each other.

[Stephen] He learned some interesting things.

Useful things if you're thinking about becoming a serial killer.

[Male narrator] Eager to expand his knowledge

of the criminal justice system,

Ted enrolls in law school at

the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma in the fall of 1973.

[Kevin] He was attending classes at night,

I'm sure he was busy with Liz during the day

but they would work out their times

where they would do stuff together.

He was burning the candle at both ends.

He only attended law school, perhaps only three classes

during that first semester.

[Male narrator] Ted can't seem to keep his focus on school.

That breakup with Diane I think was really the, the last straw.

[Kevin] That desire to kill was rising and building within Ted

and it would completely break loose

and that's when the transformation was complete.

[Male narrator] By early 1974, Ted Bundy can no longer contain

the darkness festering inside him.

He drops out of law school, and finds a new focus.

He's looking at women who he might potentially hurt one day.

[Dr. Joseph] You're full of adrenaline, you want to kill.

The last thing you wanna do is sit in a classroom.

[Patrick] On January 4, 1974, Ted Bundy creeps his way

into the basement apartment of a University of Washington student

named Karen Sparks.

He quite likely saw her when he was out peeping in windows

'cause that was what he was doing in those days.

[Male narrator] The sleeping 18 year old UW dance student

has no comprehension of the evil about to be inflicted upon her.

He takes a metal rod from her bed and bludgeons her with it.

And then sexually assaults her with the same pole.

[Male narrator] When Bundy hears sounds from the room next door,

he flees.

But the damage is done.

Bundy has claimed his first new victim in a decade.

[Brittany] What a lot of people don't realize is that

guys like Ted Bundy don't snap.

This is not a one day you have a bad day

and you do a horrible thing.

Every moment of his life

up to this moment where he attacks Karen Sparks,

it's all been coming to this moment.

[Dr. Joseph] He's finally doing

what he's wanted to do for years.

He's not gonna hold back, it's gonna be messy,

it's gonna be bloody, it's gonna be impulsive.

And, you know, he's going to enjoy it.

[Christie] The beating was so severe

that it left her in a coma for ten days.

And while she did survive, she suffers permanent damage.

[Male narrator] After the attack, Ted seamlessly returns

to his normal life with his girlfriend, Liz.

[Brittany] Liz doesn't know this

but Liz is perfectly safe right now.

'Cause he let out all those horrible feelings

onto his victim.

He's not going to hurt her now.

Ted can keep it separate.

He can go back to Liz, he can enjoy what he has with her

but he also has to keep hunting for the new high.

He has to find another victim.

[Male narrator] Four weeks pass

and Ted can no longer contain the evil within.

He returns to the University of Washington to satiate his needs.

His next target is 21 year old senior, Lynda Ann Healy.

[Kevin] The front door was unlocked,

So he came in the, in the wee hours of the morning.

Went down the basement steps and he went into the first bedroom.

And that was the bedroom of Lynda Ann Healy.

[Male narrator] Bundy then chokes Healy unconscious

but her nightmare has just begun.

He takes her nightgown off, he hangs it up in the closet.

He makes the bed, he grabs the red bookbag

and he puts some of her clothes in it.

[Patrick] Then he changes her into her street clothes

and he leaves and takes her with him.

[Tristin] I think that that MO changed

because he learned something the first time around.

You can see the development of the intellect he's putting into

how am I going to do this? It's very calculated.

[Male narrator] Bundy takes the unconscious co-ed

an hour southeast to the remote Taylor Mountain

where he secretly rapes her.

Then for the first time, murders his victim as well.

Reports of Lynda's disappearance are big news.

Many locals know her from her daily radio weather reports.

Because she was the ski report announcer, she was known,

at least by name, to a lot of people in the Seattle area.

The public started taking notice in these cases.

Lynda Ann Healy was sort of everyone's daughter.

She was very wholesome person. A lot of co-eds began to worry.

If something had happened to Lynda,

maybe something could happen to me.

[Male narrator] They have no idea

the nightmare is just beginning.

[Kathleen] Over the period of the next four months,

there were several women who went missing.

[Male narrator] Only this time, there are witnesses.

At the time of Susan Rancourt's disappearance,

police receive reports of a man on campus

with a cast on his arm.

They describe him as slim build, good looking, arm in a sling,

saying he's been seen walking around asking people for help.

Nobody helped him but they're wondering

could this be connected to the Rancourt disappearance?

[Male narrator] Because Bundy has a new angle.

[Christie] Ted Bundy played to the vulnerabilities of people

and made himself look as if he were weak

and couldn't possibly hurt someone

either by being on crutches or having a fake cast on his arm.

At this point, Bundy's MO has changed.

He's now trying to lure these women to him.

[Dr. Joseph] He studied human psychology,

he knew how to con others and he used all these tools

against his victims to trick them.

He knew how to behave as if he were a normal civilized person

on the surface for a couple of minutes

and then he would attack.

[Male narrator] Like Lynda and Donna before her,

Bundy takes Susan to the remote Taylor Mountain

to rape, torture, and murder the 18 year old.

Then return to her body again and again.

[Gillian] Being a serial killer is terrifying enough,

he also was into necrophilia which is just really proof of

how he needed to control these women, he hated, hated women.

[Tristin] With the necrophilia, they can't fight him off,

he's got the ultimate power there, ultimate control.

They cannot say no.

Which is kind of like Diane,

she was exactly what he wanted but was rejected.

[Male narrator] And Bundy isn't finished.

Perhaps sensing the heat is on,

he crosses state lines to Oregon.

[Kathleen] A young woman from Oregon State University

which is in Corvallis quite a distance south of Seattle,

was out one night walking across campus and never seen again.

Kathy Parks was going to have coffee with friends, again,

there's a man in a cast asking for help.

[Kathleen] So all those cases are, are coming together

and law enforcement is extremely concerned about this.

Who is or who are these predators

that are targeting young women on college campuses?

[Male narrator] Authorities have no idea who the killer is

or that he's evolving.

[Christie] He got a little braver

and started attacking women and kidnapping them

while they were out doing things

so just really shows how he was ramping up in his crimes.

[Male narrator] One thing remains the same,

his hunger for fresh kills.

And his taste in victims.

[Patrick] They're college age, attractive, white women

with their hair parted down the middle.

[Gillian] Liz had that very same haircut and one day she told Ted

that she was thinking of cutting her hair short and he lost it,

he really, really didn't want her to change her hair.

[Male narrator] While Ted spends his nights

trolling for his next victim, during the day

he's a hard working law student and dutiful boyfriend.

[Kevin] He was basically on a monthly cycle

of committing these murders, he'd see Liz,

he'd do whatever he was doing,

trying to maintain an outward normal life

just to keep any authorities at bay.

Like so many serial killers, he was just completely capable of

turning it on and off and compartmentalizing those things

and he was able to live multiple lives all at the same time.

He cooked big dinners, talked and laughed,

listened to music and drank wine.

I think that emboldened him even more

and it also added to the thrill

because it's a secret he had that no one knew.

[Marylynne] Liz was mesmerized with him.

In her eyes he was so good.

She was always I'm gonna find my prince and get married

and she found him in Ted.

[Male narrator] But Bundy's emotional firewall

is beginning to show cracks.

[Kevin] Liz started to see his sexual desires change,

he was asking her to have anal sex which she didn't wanna have,

he was morphing into that altered personality,

that realm of murder.

Into the place where

only the women that he killed would ever see it.

It's like a Jekyll and Hyde thing.

[Male narrator] But Bundy will soon make

a potentially fatal mistake.

By the spring of 1974,

law enforcement in the pacific northwest

is no closer to identifying the man

who has raped and murdered five women in as many months.

The fact that these women had gone missing and were not found

was really key.

In the sense that in the majority of homicides,

there is quote a body there, that's very unusual

because it's not an easy thing to do

to kill someone and then dispose of their body.

[Male narrator] Then, one month after

Kathy Parks's disappearance at Oregon State University,

Bundy returns to his usual hunting grounds

just outside Seattle.

It's last call at the Flame Tavern.

And recent community college enrollee,

22 year old Brenda Ball is looking for a ride home.

She went out onto a very busy dark highway

and began hitchhiking.

[Male narrator] Brenda Ball is last seen

approached by a man in a cast asking for help.

After that, she simply disappeared.

The MO is emerging that it's

beautiful women with long brown hair parted down the middle

and they're being approached by someone

who pretends to be in need who then takes advantage of them.

[Male narrator] This new type of predator

sends shockwaves through the community.

There definitely isn't as much suspicion in the 70s.

There was no reason to fear people.

People did let their kids walk blocks alone,

like kindergarteners.

People really did keep their doors unlocked.

People just didn't know that

this guy was the scary guy to be afraid of.

[Male narrator] Ten days later,

Bundy continues pushing the envelope.

It's midnight when he approaches co-ed Georgann Hawkins

in the alley directly behind her UW sorority house.

Ted Bundy was an evil planner.

He really thought about

how he was going to lure his next victim in

and he found a pattern that worked for him.

He's trolling back and forth the alleyway

with crutches and a cast.

[Stephen] Georgann's walking down the alleyway

and she sees him and she says oh, can I help you?

And he says oh, if you could help me get to my car,

it's just over here.

And as she's helping him get his stuff into the car,

he reaches for his tire iron.

[Kevin] He hit her with such force

that both of her earrings came off

and she came out of one of her shoes.

He knocks her out, puts her in the car,

he drives maybe 15, 20 minutes away and soon after that,

strangled her to death.

[Reporter] Georgann Hawkins was last seen

Monday evening shortly after midnight.

Police believe she went along this route and then somewhere,

she disappeared.

[Male narrator] Once again, investigators scramble

to connect the pieces.

[Kathleen] There was very little information

about who might've done these horrible crimes.

There were no witnesses,

there weren't surveillance cameras on every corner,

people didn't have cell phones with cameras,

DNA was not as sophisticated as it is now,

women just went missing.

You didn't know what had happened

and where to look for crime scene.

There just wasn't uh, a lot of evidence that you could go to.

[Male narrator] But this time,

Bundy does leave evidence behind.

Georgann's missing shoe and earring.

And he realizes his mistake.

The next morning, Ted actually returned to the scene

and he was able to actually collect

the shoe and the earrings

while investigators were still on the scene.

The brazenness of the killer

returning to the scene of the crime

to try to collect evidence is just mind boggling.

[Tristin] Ted's definitely emboldened.

I think that he, again, feels superior.

He's done all of these things but yet nobody suspects it.

[Male narrator] But someone closer to home

is beginning to suspect something is amiss with Ted.

One afternoon, he and his girlfriend Liz

are enjoying a rafting trip along the Yakima River

when Ted suddenly changes.

Ted gets an itch to, to do this, this horrible thing

he thinks about all the time.

Ted became moody. Liz is talking to him

but he's not doing a whole lot of talking.

Suddenly, without warning, he pushes her

into the cold waters of the Yakima.

[Marylynne] He kept pushing her down in and wouldn't let her up.

She said she was really, really scared.

[Kevin] When she comes up out of the water,

she says his face is blank.

I get the feeling he's not even seeing me.

And again, it takes him a moment to come around.

[Brittany] I wonder if this was that moment

where the darkness kind of surfaced for a second.

And he realized he could do a lot of harm to somebody

who ultimately really cared about.

[Male narrator] Ted claims he was just joking

and all is forgiven.

Liz asks if he wants to get together that coming weekend

but her devoted boyfriend has other plans.

[Heather] In July of 1974, at a state park just east of Seattle,

we see his most brazen attack yet.

[Patrick] Families are there, young people are there,

sort of hanging out enjoying the summer.

And there's this man, sort of wandering around,

he's got his arm in a sling, he's looking beachy.

He's hunting prey with a million witnesses around.

[Brittany] After having perfected the ruse,

he decides to take it up a notch.

And pick people up during the daytime at a crowded beach.

[Kathleen] Around noon that day, Janice Ott who was sunbathing

was approached by a man

who asked for some help with his sailboat.

He had his arm in a sling.

He's boldly telling people "Hi, my name's Ted."

Absolutely no fear anymore. He was bold, bold dude.

He understood that this mask of sanity,

the normal Ted Bundy that he displayed.

Janice, a very personable young woman

went with him to help him.

Folks actually saw her drive away with him

and that was sadly the last time anyone heard from her.

Because he used the name Ted

when introducing himself in broad daylight, no disguises,

so police were able to get a reasonable composite sketch

and there was also a description of his car, a Volkswagen Beetle

which some witnesses saw Janice drive off with him

in that vehicle.

Janice was not reported missing until the next day.

[Male narrator] Bundy's dark desire is too much to resist.

Just hours later, he returns to the park

looking for another victim.

[Tristin] Ted is a textbook psychopath.

Sexually deviant, power control serial killer.

Someone who is a psychopath, they lack a conscience,

they lack empathy, they are not able to connect to other people.

They are driven only by their ego,

they're very superficial in all of their relationships

and everything that they strive for,

they're charming a lot of the times,

they're very criminally versatile, very callous,

very narcissistic in a lot of ways,

and they don't have a true identity of their own.

[Stephen] He meets another girl by the name of Denise Naslund

who was there with her boyfriend and two other people.

She was last seen going into the women's room

at a outdoor facility there.

[Kathleen] Within about 24 hours it was quite clear that

Denise and Janice had met the same individual,

gone somewhere with him, and were never seen again.

[Kathleen] Later that year, Denise Naslund and Janice Otts

remains found in Issaquah

not all that far from Lake Sammamish park.

[Male narrator] Word of the new disappearances

and the rumors behind them quickly spread.

There might've been foul play

but there really are no clues, no theories,

as to the disappearance of the two girls.

[Male narrator] Police now realize these disappearances

must be linked

to the women who vanished earlier that year.

They launch a task force to hunt the anonymous predator.

Because of my experience in investigating sex crimes

and the often links between sex crimes and homicides,

I was considered to be a pretty good person

to be part of that team.

Everyone was working together to try and find any connections

between the women who had gone missing and possible suspects.

These cases, they were involving young, attractive women,

that's the kind of thing that

gets a lot of media attention, of course.

[Dr. Joseph] So at this time during the 70s,

women are wearing less,

they are not afraid to ask for what they want,

women were going to college more, pursuing higher education,

and they felt more safe because they had choices.

Ted Bundy threatened all of that.

He was targeting women who wanted to be independent,

who wanted to assert themselves sexually.

[Male narrator] With literally thousands of witnesses,

investigators begin developing a profile of their suspect.

A man they believe named Ted who is hunting women.

And remember, Ted didn't look unusual.

He just looked like an average guy.

But Liz Kloepfer believes

she knows the man in the sketch the police are hunting.

[Reporter] With the disappearance

of the Ott and the Naslund girls

on the same day from the same state park

came the first indications that a male subject was involved.

His name was Ted and he was very polite and suave.

[Male narrator] Police use the media to spread the word

about the Volkswagen Beetle

Janice Ott is last seen driving away in.

And share a composite sketch of the driver.

A man known simply as Ted.

[Christie] Ted looked like the every man.

He was good looking but not too good looking.

There wasn't anything about him that, you know,

really made him stand out, so he was memorable

but also could also be forgettable.

[Gillian] Everyone thought they knew Ted or saw Ted

and he also happened to be driving

one of the most popular cars of the time

which is this Volkswagen Beetle.

At that time in Washington state,

there were close to 50,000 of those cars driving around

so it again just blended kind of into the background

and didn't really register in a lot of people's minds.

Because the news was showing all these missing women,

I think Ted was really enjoying that.

It was adding to that secret of they're never gonna know it's me

because, you know, I'm this great person,

they'll never suspect it.

[Male narrator] But the sketch does catch the eye

of someone who feels she knows the face.

None other than Bundy's girlfriend, Liz Kloepfer.

She brings the composite sketch, slams it down on the table

and, and I said, "What, what is that?" she says, "Who is that?"

I said, "Well it's Ted, why?" then she burst into tears.

I didn't wanna think that of Ted, goodness, he's a great guy,

he's my friend's boyfriend.

He wouldn't do stuff like that, you know.

[Male narrator] When Liz calls police

to report the image resembles her boyfriend,

she's met with skepticism.

[Kevin] When they looked at him and found out

he was a law student they said, "Look we'll look into him but

he just doesn't look like he's gonna be our guy."

[Patrick] And the cops essentially talk her out of it.

Your Ted is very upstanding, don't worry about it,

this isn't the one.

[Heather] He made it onto a short list of 100 suspects,

but because of his lack of a record

and because of his civic engagement,

they thought well it's probably not him, it's very unlikely.

[Male narrator] But Liz still has her doubts.

One of the reasons Liz is having that feeling,

that sort of dark feeling is because

she had also found things in his possessions

that are just kind of scary and unusual.

A bowl of keys, women's clothes, the plaster of paris

you would use to make a cast.

[Male narrator] Again, Liz calls police.

And again, they tell her there's nothing to worry about.

[Christie] Police told Liz, "We don't have time to

take calls from girlfriends,

if you wanna make a report you're gonna need to come in."

And at that time, she didn't do that.

[Tristin] She wanted somebody to reassure her that it wasn't Ted.

Because of how much she cared about him.

And because accepting that it is him would mean that

she'd have to accept that their entire relationship was a lie.

[Male narrator] As police continue

combing through suspects, they anxiously wait

for the killer to strike again.

[Kathleen] We knew in the fall of 1974

when several months had passed

without new cases in the Seattle area

that the person for some reason

had stopped doing what he was doing,

we just really didn't know what it meant.

[Male narrator] Investigators have no idea

that Bundy knows the noose is tightening

and has already left for fresh hunting grounds.

Things are heating up with the investigation

and Ted decides he's going to transfer to

the University of Utah law school

and take all of his first year law school classes over.

He makes the move and he gets to Utah and really does sort of

establish a life for himself.

[Male narrator] Including taking a new interest

in the local Mormon church.

Where he meets Larry Anderson.

Ted was very outgoing and friendly and talked to the group

and when you're in a group he would tell jokes

and laugh at our jokes and went to church

and took part in the church discussions,

he was just very normal.

There's the best known picture of Bundy in Utah

and it's my personal friend Carol, beautiful blonde,

parts her hair in the middle, he's washing dishes with her,

that was in our house.

And Carol thought he was a great guy.

Yet again, you see Ted Bundy fitting in whether it's church,

at law school, or in his new social circles,

he's being the person everyone wants him to be.

He's blending right in so no one thinks he can do anything bad.

Utah is the perfect place for Ted Bundy.

[Brittany] I wonder if it gives him a bit of a thrill

that he's sitting next to devout religious people

that he had really figured it out,

how to wear the people mask.

We have to remember that

people like Ted Bundy can have two sides

because they can't be completely unbridled all the time.

They want to continue killing and in order to do that,

they learn to be calculating

and that's how they're able to get away with it for so long.

[Male narrator] Within weeks, Bundy starts prowling around

looking for new victims to satisfy his hunger.

[Tristin] It's like a fresh start, he's able to

freely succumb to those urges right away

whereas in Washington

he would have to be more contained and controlled

with the heat that was picking up there.

Within just a month's time in October,

he killed three different women in a very short time span,

so the victims were really ramping up

and he was escalating very quickly.

[Male narrator] The evil inside Ted

leads him to attack again and again.

Yet he still keeps up appearances

with his friends in Utah,

even when the subject of the Seattle murders comes up.

They had just published

the composite pictures of the Ted murderer

and we had taken this composite picture

and we were holding it up to each other's face and laughing.

It didn't look like me and it didn't look like Ted

and the rest of us so it was just a topic of conversation.

[Brittany] What normal person

would hold up their own police sketch

and make a joke about it? Nobody else would do that.

[Tristin] He's projecting what he thinks he should be

to everyone around him

but I think that if you were to ask him to take off the mask,

I don't think he even would know who he was.

[Male narrator] But sometimes, Ted does lower his mask,

just a bit.

[Larry] We were having a gourmet dinner at his apartment

and Ted explained how he felt a person could kidnap a girl,

murder her, put her clothing in one county, her body in another,

and that the police forces and the agencies

would never connect all that together and therefore

a person could get away with these type of murders.

And we didn't give it a second thought.

[Male narrator] A week later,

Ted makes his most audacious move yet.

When he abandons his mask entirely.

[Heather] Carol DaRonch was at a shopping mall

when a man approached her,

he told her that he was a, an undercover police officer

and that someone had tried to break into her car.

He asks would she like to go with the officer to the car

to see if anything had been stolen?

[Gillian] She asks for a badge, he flashes a badge,

and they walk out to her car.

She sees her car, they open it up, nothing's wrong.

[Gillian] But the officer,

who's really Ted Bundy, says, "You know what?

Could you come down to the station and identify the guy?"

[Patrick] They walk through the mall parking lot to his car

and she's a little surprised to see that it's a VW Bug

and not a police car.

[Christie] She thought, well maybe he's just undercover

and got into his car and they started heading off.

[Male narrator] Carol DaRonch has no idea

what she's just gotten herself into.

But for the first time ever, neither does Ted Bundy.

Ted Bundy, posing as a police officer,

has tricked 18 year old Carol DaRonch

into climbing into his car at a Salt Lake City area mall.

She's expecting him to go straight

and head to the Murray PD.

Instead, he does a uey.

She said, "What are you doing? What are you doing?"

[Male narrator] The terrified teen realizes

she's made a grave mistake.

So Carol decides she's gonna jump out of the moving car,

she's taking her life into her own hands,

she tries to open the door and just when she does it,

Bundy grabs her hand and is able to get a handcuff on it.

[Gillian] The other arm is free so she's fighting him,

she's literally fighting for her life and she says that

everything about him changed, his demeanor changed,

he had black eyes, he was a total evil monster.

[Male narrator] Carol forces her way out of the car.

And runs for safety.

But Bundy is close behind.

[Christie] He ran after her and tackled her

but she fought and managed to get away and, and ran

until she saw a car, flagged them down,

and just jumped into the car.

[Gillian] Car she is hysterical and she's realizing

that guy was trying to kill me

and no one would ever know what happened to me.

Carol DaRonch was the first person that Ted tried to attack

that was actually able to get away and give a description

not only of who he was but also how he acted

and how he got her in to his car.

[Patrick] She lives to tell the tale,

she gives the cops information they didn't have,

the woman is a hero.

[Male narrator] But the police aren't able to act fast enough

to stop Bundy from striking again.

That very same night.

[Tristin] Once he got started, he wasn't able to stop,

he couldn't even take a step back, reflect,

whoa that was a close call, I could get caught any moment now.

He instead went straight into I'm gonna find another victim.

Ted still has the itch, he still needs to kill someone today.

[Male narrator] This time he sets his sights on easier prey.

17 year old Debbie Kent who's coming out of a high school play

the next town over.

[Kevin] Bundy notices her.

Number of people heard screams, one guy followed his Volkswagen

just tearing out of there.

[Tristin] With Ted he was all about baiting

and children were easily baited.

So it was an easier prey for lack of a better word.

[Heather] After the play was over, when her parents went out

into the parking lot and saw her car

was still there, that's when they knew

something was terribly wrong.

[Male narrator] Police investigating the scene

find a curious object in the parking lot, a handcuff key.

Later, when police heard about the Carol DaRonch abduction

that same night, they were able to match that handcuff key

to the handcuffs that Carol DaRonch

had gotten away with.

[Christie] This was the first time that Ted really messed up

and the investigators kinda got a break in the case.

[Male narrator] Soon word of Carol DaRonch's harrowing escape

and the series of unexplained kidnappings in the area spreads

Even reaching Ted's long distance girlfriend Liz Kloepfer

back in Seattle.

She once again calls the police to tell them what she knows

and again it goes nowhere.

[Christie] Then just a few weeks later,

Ted came to stay with her for Christmas

and was completely unaware that

his girlfriend had turned him in three different times and

was pretty confident that he was a horrible murderer.

[Male narrator] As 1974 comes to an end, Ted Bundy is on edge.

[Christie] Now there's this sketch floating around

of what the perpetrator looks like all around Salt Lake City

and the pressure was really mounting for Ted.

[Male narrator] With his impulse to kill

growing stronger day by day,

and law enforcement in Utah now closing in,

Bundy knows he must once again hit the road.

[Larry] Ted and I planned a ski trip to Colorado.

He pulled up in his Volkswagen and he said,

"You know, I just need some time alone.

Do you mind if I cancel and just go by myself?"

And I said, "Sure."

Then he drove off.

[Male narrator] Larry has no idea

Bundy's heading for new hunting grounds.

In January of 1975, with the pressure mounting on Ted in Utah

with these now connected abductions as well as

the link back to the pacific northwest,

he moves his hunting ground to ski lodges in the Colorado area.

Colorado is great for Ted

because there is a constant influx of new people

coming into the towns where he's staying

and he can pretend to be this playboy

hang out at the clubs one night,

the next day he can pretend that he's a ski instructor.

[Male narrator] It doesn't take Ted long to find a new target.

[Kevin] Caryn Campbell was a nurse from Michigan

and she had flown in with her fiance Dr. Raymond Gadowski.

[Male narrator] The couple and Gadowski's two kids

are staying at a local ski lodge.

[Kevin] Bundy was there hunting, he was on crutches,

and fumbling with these snow boots.

Caryn Campbell spots him down there

and she asks him if he needs some help.

He said yes.

[Tristin] He presents as somebody

who is the vulnerable one

because how could I be somebody that you should be afraid of?

I'm injured, I can't do this by myself, I need help,

so I'm not a threat to you.

Nobody thinks when you're on vacation with your family,

"Let me just run back to the room for a minute."

That's gonna be the last time you see them.

[Male narrator] Caryn's body is found

in the snow pack a month later.

By that spring, Bundy has moved from Aspen to Vail

in pursuit of his next victim.

[Heather] Part time ski instructor Julie Cunningham

decided she was gonna go meet some friends at a bar

but something happened between

her leaving her house and getting to meet her friends.

[Male narrator] Like Caryn, Julie meets

a seemingly helpless man on crutches.

Then disappears.

[Heather] With the abductions happening

in the pacific northwest and Utah,

Colorado authorities thought that

this might be somehow connected.

[Male narrator] As authorities try to

piece the puzzle together,

back in Utah, Ted keeps up appearances.

[Christie] Ted was almost a shapeshifter.

If he was with politicians, then he was the political guy.

If he was with his friends and cooking for them at home

and playing Mozart then he was the affable charming host.

It's all about keeping up appearances

and the narrative he wants to tell.

[Male narrator] But Bundy knows the authorities are closing in.

[Patrick] He's feeling the heat

so he expands his hunting ground to Idaho

and he drives way to Pocatello.

[Male narrator] That's where the predator

spots his youngest victim yet, Lynette Culver.

Just 12 years old.

Ted started to prey on younger victims.

They're more naive, they're more gullible,

they wanna believe that people are good,

they want to help others,

and so younger victims are easier to trick and to fool.

They're easier to catch.

[Heather] The last time anyone saw Lynette Culver

was at her junior high school

and she left to go on her lunch break.

[Male narrator] Eight weeks later,

Bundy snatches another girl, 15 year old Susan Curtis

from the youth conference at BYU back in Salt Lake.

She is never seen again.

Although Bundy spreads his crimes across several states

to cover his tracks,

he soon makes a fatal error close to home.

And there was a cop and he's sitting in his car

kinda waiting for his shift to end

and he sees a VW Bug driving towards him and then past him

sort of weaving in and out of the lanes.

[Heather] When he flashes his lights to approach the Beetle,

it takes off.

So he chases it, it eventually stops

in an abandoned gas station

and Ted Bundy jumps out of the car, puts his hands up, he says,

"Oh, there's a misunderstanding, I was just lost."

The officer became suspicious and asked to search the car.

[Male narrator] Inside he discovers numerous oddities.

[Kathleen] The passenger seat missing

and there were what we would call burglary tools in the car.

A crowbar and pantyhose with the eyes cut out.

A ski mask, an ice pick.

Torn pieces of sheet, coiled rope.

Things that most people don't carry in their cars.

[Male narrator] The officer arrests Bundy

and word quickly gets around the police station.

[Christie] It set off some alarms for some

detectives that had been working the case

because the VW Beetle was a red flag.

[Heather] That's when they realized

that Ted fit the description of the person

who tried to abduct Carol DaRonch.

I'm sitting in my office when I get a call and Ted says,

"Uh, Larry I'm in jail."

Said, "What do you mean you're in jail?"

He said, "I'm in the county jail, I've been arrested."

"What were you arrested for?"

And then he said, "They think I'm the Ted murderer."

And I laughed, I said, "Come on, Bundy, you gotta be kidding."

He said, "No, and you're my call."

[Male narrator] Ted's friend is incredulous.

[Larry] He's innocent, they've made a mistake.

I mean, how do you get a young lady to get into your car,

you know, when you're a stranger?

He was very outgoing, very friendly, very convincing.

Never gave it another thought.

Didn't even consider Ted Bundy, Ted murderer.

I didn't connect the two.

He didn't show any outward uh, gosh I could be guilty,

I mean from my perspective it just didn't show.

[Male narrator] As Ted waits to post bail,

police get a search warrant for his apartment

and what they discover stuns them.

In his apartment they find all of these like

pamphlets and brochures uh, about ski resorts in Colorado.

[Heather] There was a checkmark next to the Wildwood Inn

which was the resort where Caryn Campbell had been taken from.

They also found literature referring to

the high school play that was going on

where Debbie Kent was taken from.

[Male narrator] And that's not all.

When investigators found gas receipts that showed

he was near the Wildwood Inn

at the time that Caryn Campbell had gone missing,

I think they knew that they had found their person.

[Patrick] The pieces are really starting

to fall in place for investigators,

they're starting to really understand Ted Bundy

is potentially the Ted from Utah, from Colorado,

from Seattle, that they've been looking for all this time.

[Male narrator] Larry Anderson still can't believe the news.

I went to the state prison to visit Ted.

We talked about is there any chance you really did this?

[Male narrator] It's then Ted lifts his mask ever so slightly.

He would say well if I was somebody that had done this,

this is what I would've done.

And then you look back and say

he was telling us how he did this.

I never wrote Ted or visited him after that point.

[Male narrator] But authorities still don't have enough

to arrest Bundy.

And must release him on $15,000 bond.

With Bundy now under investigation for murder

in multiple states, police in Seattle

finally reach out to his girlfriend, Liz Kloepfer,

to learn more.

[Kathleen] We had many conversations with her,

she was able to give us information about his patterns,

cars he drove uh, things he would say,

times when he would kind of go missing

and she wouldn't know where he was.

[Male narrator] Police have another ace up their sleeve.

Carol DaRonch.

The victim of the attempted shopping mall abduction

outside Salt Lake City.

And bring her in for a line up with Ted Bundy.

[Gillian] The minute he walks into this lineup,

Carol goes, that's the guy.

And the cops are like do you wanna take another second?

She goes nope, I know my experience,

I know what I remember, that's him.

[Male narrator] Bundy knows he's in trouble.

[Heather] With investigators closing in on him,

Ted thought he was going to outsmart them

by selling his VW Beetle.

[Christie] The cops were way smarter. They do their legwork,

they find out who he sells it to, they go and find the car,

they do a complete investigation on it.

[Patrick] They find three hairs from Bundy's victims

who don't live in the same state, who wouldn't

know each other, and they're able to use this

hair evidence to connect these cases.

You're a friend of Ted Bundy and a phone call tells you

the FBI has found body parts of the girls that were murdered

in Colorado in Ted's car.

Obviously your mind changes immediately of gosh,

that's not a coincidence, he murdered them.

Sickening. Absolutely sickening.

[Male narrator] It looks like Bundy may finally

face punishment for his litany of unspeakable crimes

But the prolific serial killer has other plans.

Ted Bundy claims he's been wrongly accused

of the brazen kidnapping attempt of Carol DaRonch.

Police here aren't willing to accept what I think they know

and they know that I didn't do these things.

[Male narrator] He's released on $15,000 bail

paid by his parents to await trial.

The news shocks Ted's friends

in both Utah and the pacific northwest.

One of his friends in the church even said

I wouldn't hesitate to set him up with my sister.

Luckily he didn't because that probably

would not have gone well.

Ted got out of jail in Salt Lake, okay,

and he went right to Seattle and you could not believe

how many police cars followed him around completely

everywhere they went.

[Male narrator] Liz suspects her worst fears are confirmed.

My friend was acting really different

and I said, "What's going on?" And she said,

"I'm going out with Ted so please if he kills me

or something, tell my parents."

[Male narrator] Bundy is confident

that he can be as convincing in the courtroom

as he is with his friends.

In February 1976, the trial begins.

It takes just four days to decide Ted's fate.

[Stephen] The judge convicted him.

And Ted was absolutely stunned by it,

he did not believe it could happen.

He gets one to 30 years in prison,

and off he goes to the clink.

[Male narrator] Over the next year,

prosecutors continue investigating Bundy

for additional crimes.

In February 1977, investigators gather enough evidence

to have Bundy stand trial in Colorado

for the murder of Caryn Campbell.

Again, Ted decides to represent himself in his own defense.

[Christie] A benefit to Ted for being his own counsel was

he didn't have to wear handcuffs or shackles,

he was able to wear his own clothes,

he was keeping up appearances

and he definitely took advantage of this.

He's given access to the law library

in the courthouse on the second floor.

He's assigned a guard but this guard takes smoke breaks.

[Christie] Bundy found a bookcase in the room

where the guards couldn't see him and he used that opportunity

to open the window and jump right out.

And then he made off into the streets.

This is unbelievable.

[Brittany] Why didn't we have this guy locked up

when he was upstairs in the courthouse?

Why did the guard walk away?

[Larry] You get a call uh, have you read the news?

Bundy who we now know is guilty, escaped.

And you go you've gotta be kidding.

[Kathleen] We were contacted by the police immediately

that he had escaped because one of the obvious things was

he might go back to Seattle.

We wanted to make sure that his girlfriend was protected,

we wanted to make sure that the community was protected.

If we know anything about predatory behavior,

when there's opportunity, they take it.

[Male narrator] Even though Bundy is

one of the most wanted men in America,

he still continues pushing the envelope

by hiding in plain sight.

[Patrick] Ted Bundy could be whatever

the person he is talking to needs him to be.

He can be a husband and a father,

he can be a law school student,

so he really was able to blend in anywhere he went.

[Kevin] Bundy was stopped when he was on the lam

and a rancher came up to him,

said listen, it's not safe being here.

Ted Bundy's out here somewhere.

[Male narrator] Over the next six days,

Bundy takes refuge in the woods near Aspen.

He was very malnourished at this point,

had been out in the elements,

he had lost a significant amount of weight.

[Male narrator] Finally he grows so desperate he steals a car.

[Gillian] He's swerving all over the roads.

When he gets pulled over the trooper says,

"Hello, Ted Bundy, you're coming with us."

Well Ted was not content to remain behind bars.

[Male narrator] With months to go before his trial begins,

he plots his next escape.

[Gillian] He's in the jail cell

and he notices that there is a light fixture on the ceiling

that is broken and it has yet to be fixed

but because of that, there's this opening in the ceiling.

He realizes if he can lose like 30 pounds,

he can cut a hole in the ceiling big enough

to squeeze his skinny little body out--

[Male narrator] Using a hacksaw procured from another inmate,

Bundy cuts a small hole in the ceiling.

[Christie] It was December 30, 1977

and most of the jailhouse staff

was off on vacation so Ted used this to his advantage.

[Gillian] He puts all of his books in his bed,

he makes it look like someone's sleeping there.

[Brittany] Ted climbs through ventilation shafts

like it's Mission Impossible

and drops down into a guard apartment that's empty.

Steals the guards clothes,

and walks out the door like he perfectly belongs there.

When he escaped, I'll never forget I was, I was scared

'cause they said he was coming to Salt Lake.

I remember one time I put a chest up against the back door.

Ted Bundy, he had nothing to lose, he was on the run again

and we believed once he was on the run, he would offend again.

He would murder again, he would abduct again,

and that's what happened.

[Male narrator] After escaping from a Glenwood Springs Colorado

jail, Ted Bundy is a free man.

But he knows his freedom is fleeting.

And he needs to find new refuge.

Once Ted makes it out of the jail,

he sort of crisscrosses the country.

He takes buses, trains, planes, he ends up in places like

Chicago, Michigan, Atlanta,

and then finally he ends up in Florida.

[Male narrator] After nearly three years since his last kill,

Bundy now looks to release his demons in Florida.

By the time Ted gets down to Tallahassee,

he knows this is likely his last chance to start killing again.

This is the last hurrah.

So he's gonna go out with a vengeance.

[Male narrator] He heads back to familiar territory.

A college campus brimming with vulnerable coeds.

On January 15, 1978, Bundy slips through an open door

of the Chi Omega sorority house.

Wielding a heavy log.

[Patrick] Starting at about 2:45 AM,

he finds the room of Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy.

He bludgeons both of them

before strangling them with a nylon stocking.

In another room, he attacks

Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler.

But a passing car scares him off

before he's able to murder those women as well.

[Brittany] The night of the Chi Omega sorority attack,

Ted is pure himself.

This is 100% who he is, the darkest parts of him on display.

[Ken] It was unbelievable. Tallahassee hadn't had

what you call a major uh, murder investigation since 1966.

We were in shock that this could happen.

This had to be a stranger.

[Male narrator] He's right. Sorority sister Nita Neary

gets a good look at the attacker fleeing the house.

Bundy's gotten sloppy.

Whereas before his crimes

were a little bit more planned and calculating

and he was leaving no witnesses, no evidence behind,

now with these rage fueled attacks

he's leaving behind witnesses, survivors, and actual evidence,

both forensic and physical evidence at the scene.

[Male narrator] But Bundy's undeterred.

Ted Bundy continued down the street and attacked

another FSU student Cheryl Thomas in her apartment.

[Patrick] And the attack is so loud that the neighbors hear it,

they call the cops, it's enough commotion

that it scares Bundy off.

[Brittany] When Ted climbs in through Cheryl Thomas's window,

he's still amped up in that moment of hurting people

and trying to get that rush

so he has to just keep going and keep going.

[Male narrator] The 21 year old student survives

but suffers lifelong injuries.

After taking 24 victims across six states,

the monster then simply vanishes.

Nearly four weeks later and 100 miles west,

Bundy resurfaces outside Lake City Junior High.

[Kevin] Now Bundy had been just kinda driving around the school

patrolling, see if anything would turn up.

And sure enough, he sees this little girl walking.

[Male narrator] 12 year old Kimberly Leach.

Ted's the hunter, he likes to bait his prey

but he can't bait women anymore, so when he sees this young girl,

he can easily bait her by saying hey I know your dad

or I know your parents, you need to come with me.

Of course she never got away from him.

[Brittany] He is just at pure perversion

and there is absolutely nothing you can do that is more horrible

than what he did to Kimberly Leach.

There's nothing worse than pedophilia.

She was missing for several weeks until authorities

finally found her body near a hog pen around a state park.

[Male narrator] Bundy has no idea that 12 year old Kimberly

will be his last victim.

On February 15, 1978 around 1 AM,

Bundy is arrested at a routine traffic stop.

When the cop runs the plates,

he realizes that the car, another VW Bug, is stolen.

Rather than declaring his innocence, Ted fought back

and tried to go for the officer's gun.

Finally the officer subdued him by

hitting Ted in the head with the butt of his gun.

[Male narrator] When officers run Bundy's plates,

they make a huge discovery.

Once police officers realize that the vehicle was stolen

from the vicinity of the Chi Omega murders,

they start questioning him about that crime.

[Christie] At this point, he still refused to

give up his name and refused to cooperate.

[Male narrator] When Florida police

finally get a match of the fingerprints,

they're shocked to realize they've arrested

one of the FBI's ten most wanted.

We had confirmation that this was Ted Bundy.

Everything did fall in place once he was arrested in Florida,

all the connections were made between

Washington state, Colorado, Utah, and Florida.

[Ken] We put him in a cell that was steel lined

and that had three locks on it.

I put out a rule that the three keys had to be in the hands of

three different correctional staff members

and if I ever found out that one person had all three keys,

I would dismiss the whole shift.

[Male narrator] The next week,

Ted repeatedly reaches out from behind bars

to the only lifeline he seemingly has left,

his on and off again girlfriend back in Seattle, Liz Kloepfer.

Later in her interview with investigators,

Liz recalls those difficult conversations

with the man she and her young daughter once loved.

[Brittany] I wonder if Liz felt pity for him in that moment.

I'm sure somewhere in there she still loved him.

And Ted is telling Liz,

I left because I was trying to protect you.

Because the darkness was consuming me.

A darkness that she wasn't even sure was there.

[Male narrator] Now it appears Bundy may finally face justice

for that darkness within.

What do we have here, Ken?

Let's see, oh it's saying an indictment.

[Male narrator] In the summer of 1979,

Ted Bundy is about to stand trial

for the Chi Omega sorority murders in Miami, Florida.

Bundy's defense attorney, John Henry Browne,

knows his client could get the death penalty.

And brokers a deal to save his life.

[John] It was a plea bargain between

Florida, Utah, Colorado, and Washington

and if he pled guilty in Florida to things we'd worked out,

nobody would've asked for the death penalty.

He finally signed the paperwork

and we're going into court in Tallahassee,

and Ted turns around, looks at me and says,

I'm not gonna do it.

[Male narrator] The cold blooded killer who kept tight control

of the evil within him for so many years

refuses to plead guilty.

He insists he's innocent.

[Dr. Joseph] When Ted is going to trial he realizes that

he likely will never kill again

and he wants to maintain a position of power.

He's not in denial that he's done these crimes,

he's just denying it to everyone else

because he wants to maintain that image of

I'm charismatic, I'm accomplished,

I wanna see how far I can take this,

I wanna see how long I can dupe people,

I wanna stay in control.

[Male narrator] By turning down the deal, Bundy sets the stage

for a high stakes gamble in front of a huge audience.

In June 1979, Ted Bundy went on trial

for the murders at the Chi Omega house

and it was a media fiasco.

[Male narrator] This is America's first

nationally televised trial with millions tuning in

to learn Bundy's fate.

[Patrick] It's a spectacle, it's covered by

250 news outlets from five continents.

[Male narrator] Bundy relishes the forum.

Ted had this trait, Ted would never look you in the eyes

and he would never look at anybody in the eyes

unless it was a camera and then he loved that,

he loved the publicity.

[Male narrator] With the whole world watching,

Bundy trades his serial killer persona for his lawyer pedigree

to represent himself.

He had other lawyers but he needed to be the lead attorney

because, you know, he was in law school

and he thinks he's smarter than everybody.

The judge urges him against it

but says I'm not gonna take away your right to do it.

Certainly, I, I mean I can get up here and,

and examine every single witness to the defense.

It's no question what I know that I can do.

[Christie] By this time, Ted's name has become

a household name, he's infamous.

The murders are on newspapers all over the country.

And he kind of uses this to his advantage,

he wants to showboat as a chance to kinda make this all about him

and make this a circus.

It's like he watched too many episodes of Perry Mason.

He was allowed to interview the witnesses,

he would play this to the hill.

Ted Bundy in the courtroom, I would have to say,

was where he wanted to be.

As much as his life was on the line,

the courtroom was his forum.

He was in charge.

-Good afternoon, Ms. Gibson. -[Ms. Gibson] Afternoon.

My name is Ted Bundy and I'm the defendant in the case

and I'm just here to introduce myself.

[Ken] Everybody's eyes were on him. Everybody in the gallery,

the people at the tables, the witnesses, the victims,

the law enforcement officers, they all had to be quiet

while Ted Bundy got to be who he wanted to be.

[Male narrator] Ted calls a number of witnesses to the stand

including those who lived to tell the tale.

I had five skull fractures and multiple contusions in my head.

One thing that he did that was just flabbergasting

was he had uh, one of the officers

who responded to the scene at Chi Omega describe all of the

gory details of what they found in the rooms.

Well, the side of her face looked like it'd been uh,

literally uh, crushed.

He looked like he was enjoying it.

If you're defending somebody on a grisly murder

the last thing you wanna talk about

is the grisly details of the murder.

You wanna talk about something else entirely.

I think that these were ways for him to live in a fantasy world

where his needs were getting met in different ways

because he was not able to meet them anywhere else.

[Male narrator] That fantasy is shattered

when the prosecution calls Nita Neary,

the Chi Omega sorority sister who saw Bundy fleeing the house

the night of the attack.

[Prosecutor] And is that man in the courtroom today?

Yes, he is.

[Prosecutor] Would you point him out for us please?

She saw a perfect profile of Bundy and you can see the

composite drawing that she did, boy they got that exactly right.

[Male narrator] But the most damning piece of evidence

is the one Bundy himself leaves

on 20 year old Chi Omega victim, Lisa Levy.

[Ken] He left a bite mark and it was a big double bite mark,

it was as if he was leaving a signature.

[Heather] That is uh, a famous part of the trial

where they enlarged the photograph of the bite mark

that he left on his victim's buttocks

and they had experts come in

and identify the impressions left by Ted's teeth.

[Ken] And it was the bite marks at the trial,

the comparison made by Dr. Souviron

that made the difference.

[Brittany] Here's Ted in his three piece suit,

he's being charming, demure,

but then they bring out this evidence

that is showing exactly who he is.

That was the monster, and he's trying to pretend

that that person doesn't exist.

And they bring out the evidence of the reality of Ted Bundy.

It's sort of a delicious irony.

[Larry] I watched the court proceedings.

I thought oh my hell, he's been guilty all the time.

People who knew him who knew he was guilty put it all together

and said wow, wonder how many?

[Male narrator] The jury deliberates

for just over five hours.

On July 24, 1979, they find Ted Bundy guilty of murder,

attempted murder, and burglary.

During his pre-sentencing hearing four days later,

Bundy still professes his innocence

and tries to convince Carol DaRonch

she was kidnapped by someone else.

[Gillian] His technique was really to

gaslight Carol about her own experience I mean she was there,

she lived it, and she was so firm in what happened to her

and she didn't back down and she was there to tell the truth,

her truth, and she did.

[Male narrator] It's the final nail in Bundy's coffin.

This court independent of but in agreement with

the advisory sentence rendered by the jury

does hereby impose the death penalty

upon the defendant Theodore Robert Bundy.

As you can imagine, the jury hates this guy.

[Gillian] Ted, of course, cannot believe this,

he is innocent, he's never done anything wrong,

but everyone is feeling very relieved and very happy

that he's finally being held accountable.

[Larry] I look back and say what could've I done?

How did I not know? How did I not feel?

How did I not see that this guy was bad?

If you have a friend and you support him

and then you find out he's actually a murderer,

it turns your stomach and that doesn't go away,

I'm 73 and I still feel that way.

[Christie] Ted Bundy confessed to 30 homicides

but law enforcement believes

that number is way higher than that.

And while he did confess to those murders,

he never had remorse for them.

[Male narrator] After a decade of exhausting his appeals,

Bundy's time finally runs out.

[Christie] A guard the night before he was executed

said that he seemed somber,

even bowed his head and cried at some point,

he refused to eat his last meal, he called his mom twice,

his mom was really the only one

that was going to mourn his death.

[Male narrator] The next day, on January 24, 1989,

Bundy is put to death in the electric chair.

[Gillian] So there's footage outside the prison

where he's being executed and it's this really, really

dark celebration, they are chanting, they're singing.

[crowd cheering and singing]

[crowd cheering]

[Christie] Almost like a festival to celebrate

that he was finally going to be off the face of this planet.

[Man] I'd like to tell you that Theodore Bundy was executed

at 7:16 this morning

in the electric chair at Florida State prison.

[crowd cheering]

I hope I'm never as happy about the death of another human being

as I was about the death of Ted Bundy.

He had it coming, he needed it, and it was too long in coming.

I think the thing that stands out the most to me

about Ted Bundy,

especially given the time in which he was active

because we had Charles Manson, Ed Kemper, Gacy, Summer of Sam,

it seemed like the entire nation had a really hard time accepting

that this man was capable of these atrocities.

Because oh he's this affluent guy, he's educated,

he's well spoken, look how handsome he is,

he's a law student, he's one of us.

Ted Bundy had a talent, he was able to manipulate people

even when they knew he was guilty

and I think that that's why he's so memorable.

And scary.

[music]

[music]

[bell dings]