Original subtitles

[♪ eerie music playing]

[Bob Keppel] There was no denying that Ted Bundy had knowledge

and a point of view that no one else did.

[Bob Keppel] Now was the time to play to his fragile ego

and make him feel respected.

Could the great Ted Bundy actually have valuable insights

into the Riverman?

[clicking]

[♪ tense music playing]

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

the victims of the Green River Killer.

[William Birnes] The whole premise was using one killer

to catch another killer.

It had never been done before.

And that became The Silence of the Lambs.

[♪ tense music playing]

[♪ tense music continues]

Less than six hours from now,

accused mass murderer Ted Bundy is scheduled to be executed

in a Florida prison.

[♪ intense music playing]

[♪ dark, tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Strange as it was,

Ted Bundy and I were hunting for the Green River Killer

who targeted prostitutes and earned his nickname

by dumping his first five victims in the Green River near Seattle.

-[insects chirring] -[water lapping]

As of November 1984, 42 women had either been found dead

or were missing and presumed dead,

all of them allegedly Green River Killer victims.

The discovery of each new body felt like a gut punch.

And the latest victim, Martina Authorlee,

had been found only three days earlier.

We finally caught a break when Melvyn Foster showed up on our radar.

[♪ tense music playing]

[prison door buzzing]

[reporter] For nearly a month now,

undercover officers have been stationed in this area

keeping a 24-hour watch on Melvyn Foster

who lives just up the road from here.

[Dave Reichert] We began to work on the tips that were coming in.

And one day, a call comes in,

and, uh, it was Melvyn Foster.

And Melvyn said that he could help us.

And he said, "Well, I have some experience in these things."

He says, "Yes, I-- I work as a cab driver.

I know the streets. I know all the people out there."

[♪ tense, suspenseful music playing]

And then we ask him about the first victims that were found,

and, uh, he denied knowing any of 'em.

But later, as we start talking,

he knows Marcia Chapman,

he knows Cynthia Hinds, he knows Opal Mills,

he knows Debra Bonner, he knows Wendy Coffield.

[Bob Keppel] Foster became a suspect

because he drove his taxi up and down Pacific Highway South,

which had an active prostitution strip.

He also looked promising

because he had served time in prison for auto theft.

The media was eager for a suspect to serve up on the evening news,

and Foster was happy to oblige.

Did you kill all those women or what?

No, but I wish I did.

I wish I did know who did.

[Bob Keppel] Foster failed a polygraph,

and he had no alibi for any of the murders.

Bundy had thoughts about Foster, of course.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy had learned a lot about police procedures.

He suspected we'd search Foster's home and vehicles for hairs and fibers,

the kind of physical evidence missing from our Ted investigation.

[reporter] Nearly 60 police officers launched a massive search

of Melvyn Foster's home.

[camera clicks]

King County police took several pieces of women's clothing from Foster's house,

items which Foster says belonged to his deceased mother.

[Bob Keppel] The search didn't turn up anything conclusive.

It almost seemed like, with Melvyn Foster,

that he-- he wanted to make himself a suspect,

that he kind of craved, uh, the attention, that it was exciting.

[Bob Keppel] I felt the last thing the Green River Killer would want

was any public attention,

and here was Foster giving one interview after another.

[Melvyn Foster] They couldn't have found their butt with both hands.

Instead, they chose to-- to squander

in excess of a quarter of a million dollars,

looking at the wrong guy

while girls 60 miles away are being snatched up

and losing their lives.

[♪ dark, tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Foster's behavior was odd,

but there was no hard evidence linking him to the murder,

so we ruled him out.

[Bob Keppel] We were no closer to finding the Green River Killer.

One of the biggest struggles in this case was the-- the doubt

that the media actually, uh, created in the minds of the public

about whether or not we even cared.

[reporter] The scene has become sickeningly familiar

in the last two years.

The US Prostitutes Collective as well as other women's organizations

have criticized police,

saying that because most of the victims were associated with prostitution,

no one has been taking the deaths seriously.

[Katie Larson] We had a very contentious relationship with the press.

I understand that the media has a job to do,

but unfortunately, they got in the way on more than one occasion.

[Bob Keppel] Reporters descended on Seattle,

searching for Green River Killer news.

The news stations were so determined to get the story first,

they blew our cover

on the first and most important Green River surveillance.

[helicopter whirring]

[Larson] And we're trying to do a surveillance and the word got out,

and so then we have the media overhead in a helicopter.

So, we did fight with information being leaked

and stymieing what we had wanted to do.

[Birnes] When the news goes public with something like that,

you're not just telling the public what's happening.

You know who else you're telling what's happening?

The serial killer.

[Bob Keppel] I believed our first Green River surveillance

could've identified the killer,

if not for the media's interference.

We were at a dead end.

I had nothing to lose by asking Bundy about the Green River murders,

and maybe he'd reveal something about his own cases.

I asked him how he thought the Riverman was getting rid of physical evidence.

[Bob Keppel] By now, Ted knew

we were asking questions about the Riverman's methods of operation

that resembled his own.

[♪ dark, tense music playing]

Bundy was known for leaving his victims naked.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy was shedding light onto what he did with his victims,

while also giving us a lead about the Riverman.

Since Ted was opening up,

it was time to see if he could really help us.

[Ted chuckles]

[♪ dark music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Bundy said he had some strange ideas

about catching the Green River Killer.

I got my poker face ready for what Ted Bundy considered strange.

[Bob Keppel] Ted turned to stare at me with a look in his eyes that said,

"Are you believing this [bleep]?"

[Louis Schlesinger] When you listen to his explanation of serial sexual murder,

he relies heavily on-- on blaming pornography for it.

He was a victim of pornography.

He was a normal person until society corrupted him.

None of that is true,

but that's what he-- Bundy wants people to believe.

Keep in mind: Bundy is a pathological liar.

[♪ dramatic tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Bundy would call his next idea strange.

I considered it the most preposterous idea I'd ever heard.

[tape recorder whirring]

[♪ ominous music playing]

Serial sexual murder is a fusion of sex and aggression,

so that the aggressive act itself is eroticized.

It's looking at a woman in a subservient position,

tied up, with violence around her,

and that attracts them like a magnet.

[distant siren wailing]

[Ted Bundy speaking]

[♪ dark music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Dave was so astonished by what Ted was proposing,

he accidentally knocked the tape recorder off the table.

[Ted laughing]

[Bob Keppel] What I didn't tell him was that his idea was illegal.

If we caught the Riverman this way,

we couldn't show probable cause

based on the killer's attendance at a slasher film festival.

It was time for a new tactic.

I knew a well-placed yawn might have him trying harder to please.

Did he have insights as good as the one about what the Riverman did

with his victim's clothing?

[♪ tense, suspenseful music playing]

[Katherine Ramsland] They wanted Bundy to think,

" You're not that important to us."

They, "But, you know, we'll give you some latitude

and see, what-- you know, if you have something that would be helpful."

[Bob Keppel] All it took was a yawn and I had Ted back on track.

He was offering a plausible strategy

and getting closer to details of his own murders.

[Bob Keppel] He was certain the Green River Killer would return

to his dump sites,

because that's exactly what he had done

over and over again.

[♪ dramatic tense music playing]

[Ramsland] Bundy had placed several remains in Issaquah, were three,

and then four near Taylor Mountain,

which suggested these sites meant something to him.

And they were hoping, when he talked about the Riverman's dump sites,

he would be revealing why his own dump sites were important.

[Bob Keppel] If we could go back in time, what would we have seen

if we had staked out Ted's dump site at Taylor Mountain?

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[Steven Winn] When the Taylor Mountain site was discovered,

it was Lynda Healy, Susan Rancourt,

Brenda Ball, and Kathleen Parks.

The fact that they were all there on the same site

meant that the killer's returning with remains from different killings

and going back to the same site.

[♪ dark, eerie music playing]

[Roger Dunn] At Taylor Mountain, they were just skulls.

There was no fatal injury marks on any of the skulls.

[camera clicks]

We didn't have any long bones to go along with 'em.

And that was a mystery for quite a while.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy and the Green River Killer

shared a common fascination

with their victims' corpses.

[♪ dark music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Even though Ted never said it directly,

by suggesting the crime scene surveillance,

I think he believed the Riverman was a necrophiliac.

I wanted to see if he would say the word out loud.

[♪ dark, eerie music playing]

[Dr. Mary Ellen O'Toole] Necrophilia:

you're sexually aroused when you go back and you have sex with a corpse.

Bundy was talking in the third person, that was just, uh, obvious to us.

And-- and so, therefore knew that

those things that he was talking about the Riverman doing,

that he had most likely done himself.

[Bob Keppel] I knew from post-mortem reports

that Ted was also a necrophiliac.

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

And now he knew we knew that.

[Dr. Peter Salerno] When it comes to necrophilia,

oftentimes, it's really more about control,

and power, and humiliation, and punishment.

They enjoy being able to engage in those behaviors

without anybody being able to stop them.

[Birnes] Bundy killed to get a sex partner.

The killing wasn't the highest point of his life.

The sexual activity after death was the highest point of his life.

I knew Bundy was evil, I just didn't know how evil.

[♪ dark, ominous music continues]

[Bob Keppel] The only thing Ted felt bad about was getting caught,

but he'd shut down if I challenged him.

I was also sure that the Riverman felt no remorse

based on how he had desecrated his victims' bodies.

[camera clicks]

The Green River Killer placed rocks inside the vaginas of some of his victims,

uh, particularly the early victims that were found in the Green River.

[water lapping]

[Larson] Many of the victims seemed to be posed,

legs spread apart, uh, arms spread out.

[Patty Eakes] His posing was about getting them into a position

where he could more easily have sex with their dead bodies.

'Cause you can imagine the difficulty once somebody has died

and rigor mortis sets in.

[Bob Keppel] Ted continued his defense of serial killers

with an insight about the Green River Killer

that eventually proved correct.

[♪ dark, eerie music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Ted considered himself the world's best serial killer profiler,

so we played into his grandiosity

and asked Ted to build a profile of the Green River Killer.

[Bob Keppel] Was he talking about the Green River Killer or himself?

It seemed the answer was both,

when I recalled the interviews we'd had with Ted's girlfriend, Liz Kloepfer.

[tape recorder whirring]

[Winn] Hundreds of people called in about somebody they worked with,

their cousin, you know, their boyfriend.

And one of them, of course, was Liz Kloepfer

who called in about Ted Bundy.

Having seen the composite sketch,

several people said, "That looks like Ted, doesn't it?"

[Bob Keppel] In 1974, Ted Bundy's girlfriend, Liz Kloepfer,

had contacted King County detectives to report her suspicions about Bundy.

We brought Liz in for an interview.

She told us she and Ted met at a bar in 1969.

She told us a lot of very positive things about him.

That he was good with her daughter.

He went to school and studied hard, had ambitions,

but also, he had a dark side.

He could be very strange and withdrawn.

[Bob Keppel] She said she'd noticed several similarities

between the suspect killer's profile and Ted.

He too had a tan VW Beetle.

And she remembered that on July 14th,

the day of the Lake Sammamish disappearances,

he had returned to her house in an angry mood.

Bundy didn't have a dark entity

that was causing him to do the things that he did.

He was who he was. And he was someone who liked to kill.

[Winn] Liz Kloepfer spoke about the things that she saw in his room.

He had Plaster of Paris. He had women's clothing.

He had burglary tools, masks, ropes, handcuffs--

stuff that just made her very suspicious.

[Bob Keppel] Ted's girlfriend, Liz, gave us three pictures of Ted

to show to the Lake Sammamish witnesses.

But none of them could pick him out of a photo lineup,

so the investigators put Bundy back into the pile of "Ted" suspects.

[Winn] But suddenly, the killings in Seattle stopped.

What we now know, of course, is that Bundy had moved on to Utah.

[♪ dark music playing]

[Bob Keppel] In 1974, Ted Bundy had enrolled

at the University of Utah Law School

in Salt Lake City,

where he had an active social life.

[Richard Kraske] Through his charm and everything else,

he joined the Mormon church.

He was a great cook, he'd have party--

I mean, he just was a nice guy to be around. They liked him.

[camera clicks]

[Dr. Salerno] He fits into a community in that way.

For him, what he really wanted, too, is to deceive those people.

[chuckles] That's how-- He enjoys deceiving people like that, too.

[Bob Keppel] When the task force found out Ted Bundy had moved to Salt Lake City,

we gave the sheriff's office there a call

to report his now ex-girlfriend Liz's suspicions about Ted.

Then we moved on.

[♪ somber music playing]

The last time I spent with him on a summer vacation was in Utah.

I would've been 15, 14.

He sent me home early,

uh, and I was really upset about that.

And he wouldn't tell me why he was sending me home early.

He just said, "Oh, I just got some really--

bunch of important stuff I have to do."

I said, "Ted, what the hell? What's the deal?"

So I-- I didn't wanna push it, I figured he's not gonna tell me or whatever.

He's just gonna-- he just wants me to go home.

So, at the airport, as we're waiting for the plane,

he had this look like he was gonna throw up.

He was-- He was just looking like

he was looking at something really ter-- uh, troubling and disgusting.

I think that he felt it coming on.

He wanted to go rape and murder somebody

and he didn't want me there when he did it.

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

He obviously had the two sides of a coin kinda thing

where you-- you couldn't see the other side of the coin.

Some things you just-- just stick in your head forever,

and I'll never forget it.

That was the last time I visited with him.

[film strip whirring]

[Bob Keppel] Nearly a year after Ted Bundy moved to Utah,

we received some shocking information.

When I got to the office that day, I felt a change in the air.

The drudgery of the daily routine was gone.

It had been replaced with a buzz of excitement.

[Kathleen McChesney] When a detective called me from Salt Lake City

and said, "We have someone here that's been arrested

and his name is Ted Bundy,"

it was a moment that I won't forget.

[♪ uneasy music playing]

[reporter] Ted Bundy was arrested in Salt Lake City,

being charged with possession of burglary tools and evading an officer.

[Bob Keppel] While we had leads on some other suspects,

we never had enough to charge anyone.

But now we did,

and his name was Ted Bundy.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[Winn] When he was arrested that night,

he was cruising through a neighborhood late at night.

[Bob Keppel] The trooper found a large ice pick,

pieces of rope, a pry bar,

a full-face ski mask,

and a pair of handcuffs.

[Dunn] When we found Bundy was in Utah,

the Utah Sheriff's Office had a-- a fresh case named Carol DaRonch.

[Bob Keppel] Carol DaRonch had narrowly escaped

from an attempted kidnapping at a Utah mall.

And for nine months, police had been hunting for her attacker.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[reporter] On the evening of November the 8th, 1974,

Carol DaRonch parked her car in this parking lot at the Fashion Mall.

Shortly after, began what she now calls, her personal nightmare.

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

[Winn] Bundy said, uh, "Excuse me,

"someone is trying to break into your car out in the parking lot.

Do you have a such-and-such car?"

She was reluctant at first. She asked to see a badge.

He flashed something at her, which was a fake badge, of course.

He gets her into the car and gets out a crowbar and handcuffs,

and tries to simultaneously hit her--

He gets one hand in one of the handcuffs, but she fights him off.

She tumbles outta the car, weeping and crying.

We know all of this because she lived to tell the tale.

[Bob Keppel] When Carol DaRonch got away, she set in motion a chain of events

that led to Ted Bundy sitting before me in Florida State Prison.

[film strip whirring]

He was embarrassed by this failure and quick to point out

the Green River Killer was making the same type of mistakes.

[Bob Keppel] Surprisingly, numerous serial killers have been brought down

by an unlikely source:

a living witness, the one who got away.

And now, Carol DaRonch was about to help put Bundy away.

[camera clicks]

[♪ tense music playing]

Utah was able to-- to get together the case on Bundy,

put him in a lineup.

[camera clicks]

[Bob Keppel] On October 3rd, after Carol DaRonch identified Bundy,

he was arrested for aggravated kidnapping and attempted murder.

That's when the story hit the newspapers.

[Rich Bundy] Uh, I remember quite vividly, my mom's on the phone

talking to the police or him,

and I could tell something was--

something very serious was going on.

She said, "Your brother's been arrested.

He's in jail under suspicion of kidnapping."

Then I just, I thought, "Oh, shoot, this is really, really serious."

So, you know, I'm a kid of,

uh, 14 and a half and, uh,

uh, dealing with his hero being accused of being the total opposite.

[camera clicks]

[♪ tense music playing]

But I still was not fully comprehending

that he was a scumbag, murdering piece of [bleep].

[Bob Keppel] While Bundy was in jail awaiting his trial

for the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch,

investigators in other states started to connect him

to unsolved murders of women in their jurisdictions.

The cases against Bundy were stacking up.

Keppel realized, "Good grief! This is the same victim profile!

"These are the same types of victims!

It's the same killer!"

It was Bundy.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[Bob Keppel] As murder cases against Bundy were building in several different states,

he stood trial for the Carol DaRonch kidnapping charges in Utah.

[reporter] On March 1st, 1976,

Third District Judge Stewart Hanson Jr.

found Bundy guilty of second-degree kidnapping.

He was given a one to 15-year sentence at the Utah State Prison.

[Dave Keppel] I don't think it turned out the way Dad would've wanted.

He would've wanted to bring Bundy in himself,

but they didn't have the-- the evidence at the time.

[Bob Keppel] Back in Washington,

we were collecting mountains of circumstantial evidence.

But we still lacked hard evidence, like hair and fibers,

needed to actually charge Bundy here.

[McChesney] We knew we just had to keep searching,

so we could bring it to a jury in Washington State and--

and get a conviction.

[Birnes] Knowing you have a suspect is one thing.

Proving that person is guilty is another.

One of the things I packed around for years

was guilt over not being able to get him charged in our jurisdiction.

I was just holding inside self-condemnation and guilt

for not being able to make Bundy's case here,

uh, because, you know, that was my job,

and I came up short in my job.

My job was to solve cases.

[♪ somber music playing]

I resigned as a homicide detective because I thought that...

I had failed.

Failed myself and failed the victims' families

for not being able to get Bundy charged.

So that was-- that was something I packed around for a while.

[Bob Keppel] If it can be said

that serial killers make victims of entire communities,

then, in our own way, Roger and I became two of Ted Bundy's victims.

And he was far from done with us.

[♪ tense music playing]

[film strip whirring]

Colorado became the first state to charge Bundy with murder

for a case involving a nurse who vanished from a ski resort in Aspen.

[reporter] While serving time in the Utah State Prison,

Bundy was charged with murdering a nurse near Aspen, Colorado.

[Bob Keppel] After his arrest,

police searched Bundy's VW and found a hair.

It was from Caryn Campbell's head.

[camera clicks]

That hair was the physical evidence investigators needed

to charge Bundy with murder in Colorado.

[camera clicks]

[Dunn] Bundy was in custody in Utah until he was extradited to Colorado.

[reporter] Bundy was brought into court early this morning.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy relished the spotlight as he was being extradited to Colorado.

It made my skin crawl to see the little zit holding court.

I wondered whether I would ever get the chance

to burst Ted's bubble.

I hoped so, if all went according to plan.

I don't like being locked up for something I didn't do,

and I don't like my liberty taken away,

and I don't like being treated like an animal

and I don't like-- like people walking around and ogling me

like I'm some sort of weirdo, because I'm not.

[interviewer] You think about getting outta here?

Well... [chuckles] Well, legally, sure.

[chuckles]

[♪ tense music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[Winn] The courthouse in Aspen.

Bundy was supposedly working on his defense in the law library

to defend himself in the Caryn Campbell killing.

While he was there, he struck up a camaraderie with his jailers

and gained the trust of these guys,

who eventually let him wander farther and farther away.

[reporter] He had gone to a small law library

in the back of the courtroom, out of sight of his guard.

It was then that he jumped out of a second-story window.

[Winn] A woman happened to be coming into the courthouse

and she asked the clerk at the front,

"Is it normal for someone to jump out the second-story window

of the courthouse?"

[reporter] Convicted Utah kidnapper, Theodore Bundy,

has escaped from an Aspen, Colorado courtroom

and remains, at this hour, the subject of a manhunt.

[speaker] I remember they were showing Green River Task Force picking up bones,

not knowing that that was our sister, Tammie.

[reporter] Bundy's escape bordered on a Houdini escapade.

[Winn] The fact that he escaped a second time

remains a criminal moral failing on the part of the authorities.

He's driving across the whole country to Florida.

What's in Florida?

Just like University of Washington: sorority houses.

[survivor] Ted Bundy never left a victim alive

and I knew he was gonna kill me.

[reporter 1] Accused killer Theodore Bundy was captured early this morning.

[reporter 2] Theodore Bundy could be the King County Ted.

At that point, there were only six days left

before he was gonna die.

[Ted Bundy] You can look at me as a hypocrite

because I've waited so long, but the fact is,

better late than never.