Original subtitles

[♪ tense music playing]

[clicking]

[♪ tense music continues]

[reporter] Convicted serial killer Ted Bundy tonight

has lost two more appeals to halt his execution.

Ted Bundy wanted a stay of execution, and Dad wanted a confession.

[♪ ominous music playing]

This guy is killing these women.

We knew it was Bundy, but we couldn't even prove cause of death.

[Katherine Ramsland] Bundy has raped and murdered these young women,

whose families are left devastated.

[♪ ominous music playing]

We have almost two dozen young women dead, the victims of the Green River Killer.

Robert Keppel got involved in the Green River killings,

and now was on a mission nationwide.

[reporter] Somebody has the key clue

that this group in the Green River Task Force needs.

[♪ tense music playing]

Ted Bundy says, "I will help you identify him."

The whole premise was using one killer,

who, in order to stay alive, was helping police catch another killer,

and that became The Silence of the Lambs.

It was Bundy's nature to play cat and mouse.

He was going to play that to the bitter end.

In less than six hours from now,

accused mass murderer Ted Bundy is scheduled to be executed

in a Florida prison.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[♪ dark music playing]

[distant sirens wailing]

[reporter 1] Along Washington State's Green River

near the Seattle airport,

police are hunting for a mass murderer.

[reporter 2] Explorer Search and Rescue scouts

have been combing the banks of the Green River

looking for any clues as to who may have killed five women in the last month.

[♪ dark music continues]

[Bob Keppel] In the summer of 1982,

first responders fished the body of a female

out of the Green River near Seattle.

She was found naked

with a pair of blue jeans tied around her neck.

This was obviously not the victim of an accidental drowning.

[Katie Larson] Wendy Coffield was found first.

And then Debra Bonner.

Both found floating in the water hung up in a snag.

We had two other victims that he had placed in the water

and put large rocks on them to hold them down:

Marcia Chapman,

and Cynthia Hinds.

And then Opal Mills was found in the tall grass.

These were all prostitutes.

[William Birnes] The crew that went into the Green River,

they were tripping over the bodies.

That's how he got the name the Green River Killer.

[camera clicks]

[Patty Eakes] In 1982, they created the initial task force.

[camera clicks]

In 1984, they made a larger task force because additional bodies had been found.

[reporter] We have almost two dozen young women dead,

the victims of the Green River Killer.

And what we have here are the makings of one of the most grisly mass murders

in American history.

[Eakes] As a teenager living in Seattle,

it was on the front page every day that bodies were being found.

It had such a huge impact on our community.

[protesters] One, two, three, four, we won't take it anymore!

[speaker] All women are in danger

when any woman is murdered by an unknown killer or killers.

[protesters] ...three, four, we won't take it anymore!

[Larson] Everyone was frightened.

In Seattle, we had already dealt with Ted Bundy

and, lo and behold, now we have a second serial killing.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[Bob Keppel] The lead detective on the task force, Dave Reichert,

came to see me.

He was taking this case personally.

And each new body found was like a left hook to his gut.

He was desperate for help.

[Eakes] Bob Keppel, who was kind of a legendary detective,

he was really well-known for his role in the Bundy case.

He was with King County Sheriff's Office

at the time that the Bundy murders happened.

He was known to be a very methodical, smart detective

who was able to kind of think like criminals

in order to solve cases that he might not have otherwise solved.

My dad helped out with countless cases,

uh, like over 50.

[Bob Keppel] By the late '70s,

I had figured out that my nemesis, Ted Bundy, had killed eight young women

in Washington State.

But I couldn't charge him, because he was in a jail in Florida

and soon to be sentenced to death for three murders he committed there.

Dad wanted to catch Bundy himself in Washington,

but they didn't have the evidence.

[Bob Keppel] The unsolved murders of those eight young women in 1974

have haunted me ever since.

[Birnes] Bob Keppel was a senior homicide detective.

He was promoted to work directly under the Attorney General's Office

as a chief criminal investigator.

He was a big deal.

And that's where Bob and Dave Reichert got together

to try to solve the Green River murders case.

[Eakes] The Green River Killer had a very simple method,

in many ways, of selecting his victims.

These were women that were engaged in the sex trade along Pacific Highway.

Very difficult to find witnesses,

very difficult to find out what their last movements were,

when they were last seen.

For Bob Keppel, it was so frustrating.

They had no evidence.

All they had were missing and murdered cases,

just like the Ted cases.

[reporter] They need a break.

Somebody has seen something, they may not even recognize it,

but it's the key clue that this group in the Green River Task Force needs.

[Bob Keppel] One day in October 1984, I was buried in a pile of paperwork.

I looked up to see a letter to the task force

from a wannabe consultant,

the most unlikely person I ever expected to be of assistance

in the Green River murders.

The letter came from a cell on death row in Florida.

The sender:

Ted Bundy.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

That's how this all began.

When Bundy read in the newspaper that Keppel was now on the task force,

he wrote to them.

"I have some information, which I think could prove useful

"in apprehending the person or persons responsible

for what are referred to as the Green River murders."

So, he's holding this out.

"I can help you find the Green River Killer.

I know what he's doing. I know what he's thinking."

[Roger Dunn] Bob was shocked when he got the letter from Bundy,

but, uh, it was still an opportunity

to find out more information about his own cases.

[Bob Keppel] Was this my chance to get Bundy to confess to the murders

of the eight young women in Washington State

that we could never pin on him?

I had a hunch that Ted couldn't talk about the behavior of the Green River Killer

without revealing some of his own.

But his offer came with several strict conditions.

[Birnes] "I do not want anyone outside your task force,

"especially news media types, to become aware of my offer to help.

"I would talk only about the Green River matters.

"We will handle this thing in a straightforward manner

or we don't handle it at all."

1984 was the beginning of Ted Bundy's game to stay his execution,

to put off his imminent death.

Dad wanted a confession.

They were playing this game with each other.

Keppel wanted to use one serial killer to catch another serial killer.

It had never been done before.

[Louis Schlesinger] That theme was repeated in Silence of the Lambs,

when Jodie Foster went to speak to Hannibal Lecter.

Bundy was gonna be the professor now

and teach, uh, Keppel about serial sexual murder.

-[♪ dark music playing] -[chains rattling]

[Bob Keppel] Bundy and I arranged a meeting

by exchanging several more letters.

And then Detective Dave Reichert and I went down to Florida.

The assistant warden led us to an interview room.

[chains rattling]

Ted was brought in with chains around his waist, wrists, and arms.

The touch of his hand was sticky wet.

Ted's face was pale, cheeks hollowed, and his eyes were dark.

He was like an animal just out of his cave.

[tape whirring]

[Bob Keppel] Bundy settled into his persona for the interview.

I looked back at him.

I was now face to face with my old nemesis.

None of this was going to be easy.

[match strikes]

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Every gesture, every aspect of his speech

was meant to convince us he was an expert in the field of serial murder.

It was like Ted wanted some form of validation

and for us to feed his ego.

[Birnes] Here's what happens with a sociopathic serial killer.

A sociopath's world is the world around that person.

You own the world.

[bird squawking]

And so, there's Ted Bundy,

the sociopath who owned the killing grounds

around Seattle and the Green River.

Then, into Bundy's world came the Green River Killer.

[♪ ominous music playing]

Now somebody was in his killing grounds?

Bundy was gonna put a stop to it.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy believed the river man was comfortable around his victims,

and that's part of the reason he'd been so successful

and impossible to catch.

Years later, we would find out just how right Bundy was.

Ted Bundy was more accurate in profiling the serial killer

than the police were.

He was right all along the lines,

where to find the victims and why he attacked the victims.

[reporter] You're looking at two undercover King County police officers

posing as prostitutes.

Their every move is being carefully monitored by fellow officers.

[Larson] I was hired in 1984.

The sheriff's office was setting up prostitute decoy operations.

At the time, I was 22 years old, fresh outta college.

And the very first thing they had me do was put on a fur coat

and start walking on Pacific Highway, attempting to lure the Green River Killer.

[Eakes] The area had been pretty taken over by low budget hotels,

motels that, you know, you could rent by the hour.

And it had a real flourishing sex trade.

Um, and that's kinda where

the Green River Killer first started meeting his victims.

[Bob Keppel] We had drawn the same conclusion

about the river man's victim class.

It had widened to include runaways.

[Eakes] Runaways had families that were dysfunctional.

They'd come from abusive families, abusive relationships,

and they were fleeing from something.

And for many of them,

engaging in prostitution was just a way to be able to support themselves.

And he realized that people just didn't notice.

These women became almost like invisible victims.

[♪ ominous music playing]

[♪ dark music playing]

[reporter 1] Another terrible discovery in the woods near Star Lake

in South King County.

[reporter 2] This is the second time in five weeks

a skeleton has been found around here.

[Bob Keppel] No one who hasn't done this knows what it's like

to be on the trail of a human killing machine.

Every day, you second-guess yourself about clues you might've missed,

and hot leads that turned cold.

[reporter 1] Searchers have found a fourth skeleton,

they fear, another victim of the Green River Killer.

[reporter 2] Another 12 are missing,

and police say they're sure those 12 are victims.

[Bob Keppel] But the toughest part is facing the families.

You wish you could say something positive when they call you,

but you can't.

[Jenny Graham] Debbie was my little sister.

She was barely 15 years old.

Debbie was just like any-- any normal kid,

you know, doing homework and playing with friends.

[♪ gentle music playing]

She loved horses. She absolutely loved horses.

Because of the environment that we are in.

We experienced abuse.

It was her biological father and my stepfather.

So, she left searching for safety.

And she found two men that sex-trafficked her.

The last time I saw Debbie,

she had come back to the house and picked up some things.

So, you know, I said, "Call me."

Right? "Call me."

They'd run away before, so you expected that they'll come back.

Because they always come back. Right?

They always come back.

Well, they come back until they don't come back.

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

[reporter] More bodies were discovered in the SeaTac area.

That's the second one found around here in the last five weeks.

[Graham] It was sad,

because a lot of the victims were seen as basically throwaway people.

I referred to them as paper dolls.

It really did seem like there was more anger, in a way,

towards the victims than there was the murderer.

[♪ dark music playing]

[Birnes] Ted Bundy, when he spoke to Keppel,

said he's a second-level serial killer

'cause he's killing prostitutes.

That's an easy kill.

You say to a prostitute, "Here's 50 bucks."

Gets into your car, you kill her.

[door slams shut]

[Bob Keppel] Every time Ted spoke,

his feelings of superiority over the river man would show.

He thought of himself as the Leonardo da Vinci of serial murder.

I wondered whether I would ever get the chance

to see this ego of Ted's rupture and collapse.

I hoped so.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring, clicks]

[people chattering]

[Ken Katsaris] Ted Bundy struck at the epitome of what we revere.

Young women outta college, they were all beautiful.

[Steven Winn] This goes back to all of these young women in Washington,

who, it's almost a, you know, Hallmark card of American innocence

that Bundy exploited.

[Kathleen McChesney] In January of '74, the Seattle Police Department investigated

the first case of a woman in the area who had been assaulted in her sleep.

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

Yeah, I think so, yes.

[Karen Sparks Epley] January of 1974.

I think it was a Thursday.

The next week, I was gonna go back to class at the University of Washington.

I was gonna start my junior year.

You know, college kids are gonna go out and party a little bit.

I didn't care to go out to drink,

so I just stayed in my room.

It was kinda weird because I do remember seeing some guy

a few days before at the laundromat.

He kinda would look at me and I would look away.

You know, he was older, a few years older than me.

I thought, you know, he was kinda nice-looking.

And then I never really thought about it.

So, I had a window that looked up.

I was reading.

I looked up...

[♪ eerie music playing]

...I thought I saw some guy looking at me.

It was just a flash.

I just thought, "No, you know,

it must've been a figment of my imagination,"

because, you know, who's gonna hurt me?

Nobody had keys. We just kept the back door open.

I probably went to bed about 1:00 or 2:00, Friday morning.

[♪ tense music playing]

Friday evening, my roommate, Bob, he went downstairs and went into my room.

When he tried to wake me up, I wouldn't wake up.

[♪ ominous music playing]

Then he saw the blood.

Karen Sparks was brutally assaulted and left for dead.

She was in terrible shape.

Ten days later, I just woke up in the hospital.

I slept on my right side of the bed,

and so they smashed me with something.

I was sexually assaulted but not raped,

meaning he slammed some foreign object up my vagina

and it split my bladder.

I've got like a big scar here.

And then they put in a plate

in there.

I couldn't speak. I couldn't walk.

I lost 50% of my hearing, and 40% of my vision,

and then, they say, about 24% of my brain activity.

[♪ somber music playing]

There was a lot of years where only my closest friends knew.

You keep it to yourself.

You just have to deal with it the best you can.

[Bob Keppel] And less than a month later,

another attack, just a few blocks away.

[♪ tense music playing]

[♪ dark music playing]

Uh, we have very few leads in the disappearance of Lynda, uh, Healy.

[Bob Keppel] The Lynda Healy disappearance

was one of the most bizarre and sinister chapters

in Ted's career as a serial killer.

She was probably his first murder victim.

Lynda Healy was a Ed Psych major at the University of Washington.

On January 31st, she said good night to her roommates

and then went down to her basement apartment.

[♪ ominous music playing]

The next day, she was supposed to give a ski report

on one of the local radio stations at 7 o'clock in the morning.

She didn't show up.

Her boss called the roommates,

and they went downstairs to look.

[alarm ringing]

What was odd was that her alarm was still ringing.

[Karen Hammond] Lynda and I had the two basement rooms.

She and I had ground-level windows.

And the side door right there was unlocked.

[camera clicking]

And her alarm was going off,

and it kept going and going and going.

[alarm continues ringing]

We ended up calling the police.

[alarm continues ringing]

I took 'em down there, and then he said, "Does this look usual?"

I said, "Well, actually, her bed is way too perfect."

And then he whipped the covers off.

[♪ suspenseful music playing]

[voice breaking] There was blood.

[choking up]

[♪ ominous music playing]

They opened the closet.

We found her bloody nightgown in there.

[flash bulb pops]

And the only conclusion I came to was that there was somebody following her.

She had been afraid someone was following her

at the laundromat, and that sorta thing.

[McChesney] When Lynda Ann Healy went missing,

it was a very big deal for women who lived in the Seattle area

and women who were on college campuses elsewhere.

[Winn] It was a kind of end of an age of innocence in certain ways.

Seattle felt stained.

How could this happen in our culture?

[♪ dark music playing]

[Bob Keppel] When we asked Bundy how the river man found his victims,

he couldn't help but talk about his own methods.

[Bob Keppel] During our Bundy investigation,

we noted similarities between the Sparks and Healy attacks.

They happened in the same neighborhood, in basement rooms

where the perpetrator could spy through a window

and enter through an unlocked door.

Plus, he appeared to have stalked them both in a nearby laundromat.

But in the Healy case, the victim had been taken.

Where to?

We dug deeper and discovered troubling links between Lynda and Ted.

Ted Bundy and Lynda Healy knew each other.

She was a roommate of Bundy's cousin.

They both had the same Psych seminars,

and they would pass each other as they left.

And he began stalking her.

[muffled laughter]

How do we know he was stalking her?

At the Safeway, Lynda Healy's check would be cashed at the register.

The next check cashed was Ted Bundy's,

the same cash register at the same Safeway!

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring, clicks]

[Bob Keppel] Lynda Healy was not the only young woman who'd vanished.

[Knute Berger] As you got toward the summer of 1974,

there were people missing from Oregon State,

there was a person missing from Central Washington University,

from the University of Washington,

from Evergreen.

And so, it began to create a picture

that was highly unusual.

They were not treated as homicide cases, because a body wasn't necessarily found.

People had simply disappeared, especially from college campuses.

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

The circumstances of this were strange and unnerving.

It's as if they'd been vaporized almost.

And that was part of what was so haunting.

It's as if they had sort of been whisked away into some other dimension.

So, knitting it together was hard.

And it wasn't until Lake Sammamish that the story really coalesced.

[♪ ominous music playing]

[♪ dark music playing]

[Winn] Lake Sammamish, not far east of Seattle,

is a beautiful recreational lake.

[boat motor revving]

That day was a Rainier Beer promotion that attracted 40,000 people to the site.

[people chattering]

Several people reported a man introducing himself as "Ted."

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

He was speaking with an English accent.

He had his arm in a sling, asking for help with his sailboat.

One of the women went to the parking lot with him.

He had a Volkswagen Bug.

She said, "Well, where's the boat?"

And he said, "Oh, it's up at my parents' house in Issaquah."

She got suspicious. She said, "I'm sorry, I'm meeting some people."

[♪ lively music playing]

This happened on several occasions.

[Richard Kraske] Janice Ott was a probation officer

with the King County Criminal Justice Group.

She lived in Issaquah

and she wanted to go over and join in the party.

Her husband was away, down south in California.

So she got on her yellow tiger bike and pedaled over to the park.

[♪ lively music playing]

[Winn] When Janice Ott was approached,

two people were lying on a towel nearby, sunbathing,

and-- and they were eavesdropping.

And this time, they said that he had altered his story a little bit,

and said, "My boat is up at my parents' house in Issaquah.

Would you help me go up and get it?"

[♪ ominous music playing]

He was very persuasive, very agreeable, gregarious, friendly.

[Dr. Peter Salerno] Ted Bundy knows how to fake it,

using props, feigning injuries,

doing all these kinds of things that could disarm somebody

and-- and make them more vulnerable.

[Winn] The witnesses watched them go.

And, of course, she wasn't seen again.

[♪ ominous tones playing]

-[♪ lively music playing] -[people chattering and laughing]

Two hours later, the same guy is going through the park again,

asking women the same question.

And he came across a very attractive young lady,

long black hair.

[Winn] Denise Naslund was 18 at the time.

She tooled around the parking lot for a while

and finally found a spot to sunbathe.

[Kraske] This was about 4 o'clock,

and he picked up on her when she came out of the lavatory.

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

Well, she went with him,

and they left the park,

and she never came back.

[Winn] Introducing himself as Ted and using his real name,

that was another piece of audacity.

He felt invulnerable,

and the need to ramp up the thrill of it, the daring of it.

I think the entire process for him was extremely exciting.

And he patted himself on the back when he succeeded.

[♪ dark music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Ted believed the Green River Killer had a method.

He would quickly move on from anyone who resisted,

and instead focused on those who went along with his ruse.

The more Ted talked about the river man,

the more he seemed to be alluding to his own crimes.

[Bob Keppel] Years later, we would discover

that Ted was also right about the river man's ruse.

[film strip whirring, clicks]

At Lake Sammamish, the ruse worked like a charm.

The stranger, known only as "Ted," took two victims that day.

The police and the searchers have to contend with the grim idea

that there might have been foul play,

but there really are no clues, no theories as to the disappearance of the two girls.

[Bob Keppel] Lake Sammamish, that's when Roger Dunn and I were assigned

to the Ott and Naslund missing person cases.

Bob was pretty much a rookie in the homicide unit,

but he was very intelligent.

Bob and I first met when we took the test to go into the detective division.

He had finished number one on the test, and I finished number two.

I wondered, what-- "Who is this guy, Bob Keppel, that beat me on the test?"

[chuckles]

I-- I found out he's gonna be my partner.

[Ramsland] He became a homicide detective.

And within two weeks, two women disappeared from Lake Sammamish.

[Bob Keppel] When Janice Ott and Denise Naslund disappeared,

we suddenly realized there was a total of eight missing girls

in the Greater Seattle area.

[Berger] You could begin to get a picture of these missing women.

Similar age: 19, 20.

Similar height: five feet, five four.

Brunettes, hair parted in the middle.

It became pretty clear there was a type.

[Bob Keppel] Within months,

those missing girls would become the eight murdered girls

that I wanted Bundy to confess to.

[♪ dark music playing]

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Sitting across from him now,

I wondered exactly how Bundy killed those eight young women

in Washington State.

[Bob Keppel] I didn't believe Bundy for a second.

[film strip whirring, clicks]

Ted's only contribution was chaos and fear.

[Dunn] It was a frenzy.

The entire Seattle area was on edge.

It got to the point where

I think they were making almost daily press conferences.

[reporter] In other words, you don't know anything really.

We don't know anything.

There was a lot of media the day the girls went missing,

and so we took as much footage as was available

and we looked at people's photographs that they turned in to us.

[camera clicks]

[Bob Keppel] One particular photo was of a light-colored VW Bug

with its driver behind the wheel.

[camera clicks]

The license plate was obscured from view,

but in our minds, there was no doubt it was the man named Ted.

There were witnesses

who could provide details for a composite sketch.

[reporter] Police were getting reports that Ted was at Central State College

and at the Seattle Tavern where two other girls had disappeared.

[Winn] Dozens of people, hundreds called in

about somebody they worked with, their cousin, their brother.

[reporter] And soon, Ted was being spotted behind every tree, behind every bush.

[Rich Bundy] I had a paper route when I was 13, I think.

You see the front-page headlines,

you know, "Police looking for the mysterious 'Ted'."

And I'm delivering these newspapers to people's front porches.

And I'm looking at this sketch,

not even for a second, I didn't even make any connection to my brother.

[♪ dark music playing]

I sat in that [bleep] car.

The very first time I ever got behind the wheel of a car

was in that little tan Bug.

I was 9 years old or so.

And he's like, "You probably should get used to what it feels like

behind the steering wheel of a car."

He was sitting there and he pulled the seat back

and so I could sit on his lap and steer that [bleep] thing,

his murder cage, his mobile murder trap.

[♪ eerie, ominous music playing]

[hacking]

People try to tell me, "Oh, but he coulda had a good side to him."

[bleep]!

I didn't find any-- any decent side of him.

It was just an exercise of his craft!

[♪ eerie, ominous music continues]

Don't ever [bleep] try to tell me

that he had some "legitimate," decent part of him.

It's just all [bleep].

[♪ music intensifies]

[bleep], people, wake up!

[♪ dark music playing]

[♪ dramatic music playing]

We have almost two dozen victims of the Green River Killer.

[Larson] Everyone was frightened.

The body count was getting to the point where it was nuts.

There had never been a crime spree like that.

[♪ dramatic music continues]

He had covered my mouth, strangling my neck.

I was trying to survive.

Young women brutalized in unthinkable ways.

He would have sex with the dead bodies.

Ted Bundy is just one step away from the electric chair.

[Birnes] In order to stay alive,

Bundy has to tell Keppel the secret of how to catch a serial killer.

[Ted Bundy] We need 60, 90 days.

It was Bundy's nature to play cat and mouse.

To him, this whole dialogue was a game that he was gonna win.

[Bundy] There's just no way it can be done in this amount of time.

He was just a simple, basic, devil monster.

[♪ eerie music playing]