Original subtitles

[♪ eerie music playing]

[clicking]

[♪ intense music playing]

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.

[♪ intense 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 music playing]

[Bob Keppel] In 1988, the Green River case was six years old,

and the killer was still on the loose.

Ted Bundy asked for another interview with me.

His appeals were running out,

and his life was being measured in months, if not weeks.

He was looking for a way out, or at least more time.

[reporter] Convicted killer, Ted Bundy

is one step closer to the electric chair now.

[Bob Keppel] Ted said he wanted to teach me how to interview serial killers,

which was a lie, of course.

But, if I could get him to confess

to the eight unsolved 1974 murders in Washington,

I'd play his game.

I had a plan to draw him out

and ask him under what circumstances a convicted killer like himself

would talk about his crimes.

[Dave Keppel] Ted Bundy was trying to manipulate.

He wanted to be kept alive

with the little bits of information he would get out.

I think Dad just immediately knew that it was a manipulation.

[Bob Keppel] Like my partner Dave Reichert used to say,

sometimes you have to be the best friend in the world

to a person you absolutely hate.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[reporter] Convicted kidnapper, Theodore Bundy

is on his way to Aspen, Colorado,

where he will stand trial for first-degree murder.

He'd been extradited to defend himself in the Caryn Campbell killing

and about to be indicted in Colorado.

This is after he was already charged with the crime in Utah.

[reporter] Bundy, who was serving a one to 15-year term

at the Utah State Prison

for his kidnapping conviction of Carol DaRonch.

[Birnes] When they got the two notices from Colorado and Utah,

they were thrilled.

That was it. They had their guy.

[♪ tense music playing]

Good evening, convicted Utah kidnapper, Theodore Bundy has escaped

from an Aspen, Colorado courtroom

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

He always struck up a comradery with his jailers

and with the people who were charged with him.

And so, he was in this courthouse and gained the trust of these guys

who eventually sort of let him wander farther and farther away.

That law library was on the second floor,

and at one point, he turned the corner, he disappeared,

he was off.

[Bob Keppel] Out of sight of his guard,

Bundy jumped out of the second-story window.

The authorities launched one of the largest manhunts ever in the area,

leaving the small-town community in total shock and disbelief.

Jumping from the courthouse window during the day was just--

You know, it's hard to believe.

Of course, I didn't think, "Alright, yay, he escaped!"

And I also did not think to myself,

"Well, shoot, then that's kind of an admission of guilt,"

which basically it is.

[Bob Keppel] I was 1,200 miles away, powerless and bewildered.

The most dangerous man in America, and they couldn't keep him behind bars.

A wave of dread washed over me.

[reporter] After six days, they got him.

Bundy's plan to escape through the wilderness failed.

He broke into a cabin,

then tried to make a break for it in a stolen Cadillac,

and was caught in Aspen.

Back in the hands of authorities that night,

Bundy put on a cocky smile.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy was taken to Glenwood Springs Jail,

where he would be held during his trial in Aspen.

[reporter 1] Judge George Lohr advised him of additional charges:

escape, second-degree burglary, misdemeanor theft, and a felony theft.

-[reporter 2] Hi, Ted. -How you doing?

-[reporter 2] Good, how are you? -Uh, I'm here.

[Bob Keppel] But then, the unthinkable happened.

[♪ dramatic sting]

Bundy celebrated New Year's Eve by escaping... again.

[♪ tense music playing]

[♪ tense music playing]

[phone ringing]

[Bob Keppel] I'll never forget the call I got from the Salt Lake City investigator

who said, "The son of a bitch escaped again."

I was beyond angry,

and before I knew it, I had stood up and was gripping the edge of my desk.

How could this happen, again?

[reporter] Bundy was being held here in the Garfield County Jail

because it is modern and said to be much more secure than facilities in Aspen.

[Steven Winn] He plotted very carefully what he was gonna do.

He lost 35 pounds,

scoped out the plate in the ceiling that he could remove.

He determined where that was going to lead him.

He did it on New Year's Eve,

knowing that defenses were gonna be down.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy then crawled along the attic

through a maze of wires and pipes,

dropped into an empty office,

grabbed two guns and walked out the door.

The fact that he escaped a second time remains a sort of moral failing

on the part of the authorities.

[Kathleen McChesney] It was very unfortunate for law enforcement

there in Colorado.

It wasn't a good moment for them.

[Bob Keppel] Every minute he was loose

was another moment of danger for everyone around him.

Who knew what this psychopath would do to avoid capture?

He knew that the police departments

wouldn't necessarily coordinate about these things.

They're famously adversarial with each other and competitive.

[Bob Keppel] This lack of cooperation between police agencies

had already allowed Bundy to get away with murder

in Washington, Utah, and Colorado.

The FBI took over the search and issued a fugitive warrant for Bundy.

Agents feel the former Utahn is out of Colorado

and possibly even out of the country.

[reporter] At this point, with almost nothing to go on,

the bureau needs all the help it can get.

[♪ intense music playing]

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

[thudding]

[McChesney] If he came back to Washington State,

it was a state he was very familiar with, probably knew places to hide.

And on the other hand, he was not a stupid fellow.

[camera clicks]

To go somewhere else

where his picture hadn't been on the front page of the paper numerous times

where he would just be unknown

was probably the wiser move.

We always believed that he would go

to a place that was more urban and had a college campus,

because he was very comfortable in that environment.

[Bob Keppel] Ted saw a news report of his escape

while he was staying at the Ann Arbor, Michigan YMCA.

The walls were closing in.

He was desperate, running out of money.

He stole a car and headed south.

He's driving across the whole country to Florida.

He's hungry. His hormones are driving him crazy.

What's in Florida?

Just like University of Washington: sorority houses.

[Kathy Kleiner Rubin] My parents lived in Miami.

And I found that Florida State University was as far away from Miami as I could get

and still pay in-state tuition.

[♪ dramatic, tense music playing]

As a freshman, I had lived in a dorm.

My parents were very adamant that I get out of the dormitory.

They felt it wasn't safe enough for me.

So, that's when they chose Chi Omega.

I got to move in in the fall of my sophomore year.

In the sorority house, there were 40 women who actually had rooms

and slept in the house.

I had a roommate, and our room was on the second floor,

and it faced the back of the parking lot.

[Bob Keppel] No one knew that Bundy was in Tallahassee

renting a room just a few blocks away.

[insects chirring]

[Kleiner Rubin] January 14th, I'll never forget that night.

[♪ tense music playing]

[♪ dramatic sting]

Around 11:30, my roommate and I decided to go to bed.

So, we turned off the lights, and we both went to sleep.

And then, I heard a noise in the room.

And that noise was the door swishing over the carpet when it opened.

And I didn't have my glasses on.

So, all I saw was a blur.

And I saw him raise his hand...

[thuds]

...and he slammed it down on my face so hard

that he broke my jaw in three places.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

He cut open my cheek, exposed the inside of my mouth.

I almost bit my tongue off.

And the lacerations went down into my neck.

It hurt so bad,

and it shot daggers and knives into my whole face.

And then this person went to my roommate.

[♪ dramatic music continues]

He attacked her.

[thudding]

And in the meantime, I'm awake, and I'm trying to make noise.

And I knew he was gonna kill me.

And just as he was in my room, raising his arm up,

a car was returning a sorority sister home that night.

It just illuminated the room.

And he then ran out my door.

[♪ dark tones playing]

Frightened co-eds at Florida State University in Tallahassee

walked to class in groups today

while detectives tried to track a man

who slipped into a sorority house early yesterday

and murdered two women.

[camera clicking]

[Bob Keppel] Armed with an oak log,

Bundy clubbed and strangled to death 20-year-old Lisa Levy

and 21-year-old Margaret Bowman.

[camera clicking]

He then brutally beat three more of the sleeping co-eds,

including Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner.

It was kind of a replay of Lake Sammamish,

'cause there were A, multiple victims,

and B, there was 30-some women sleeping at a sorority house.

He was unraveling.

He couldn't keep it together anymore.

[♪ dramatic, tense music playing]

I believe that was his, "Here I am. Why can't this be stopped?" You know?

[muffled fighting]

[♪ dark music playing]

[reporter] The killer came in from the night

and then returned to it with an ease that has so far baffled the police

and left most co-eds here terrified.

[Ken Katsaris] Yeah, I started thinking about my own daughter.

So, I determined, as the sheriff, and with the authority to do so,

that the sheriff's office would be the lead investigative agency

to solve this case

and bring that person to the ultimate justice,

which would be the death penalty which was authorized in Florida.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[Bob Keppel] Just like Bundy,

the longer the Green River Killer was free,

the more comfortable he was with his urge to kill.

[reporter] Over the last several months,

police have set up a 37-member Green River Task Force,

but officials say the case is difficult to solve

because in general, mass murderers don't leave much evidence behind

and because not much is known about their motivations.

[♪ dark music playing]

[inmates chattering]

[Bob Keppel] Ted opened the door to a place we desperately wanted to explore:

the source of that urge to kill.

[Bob Keppel] Ted cleared his throat and placed his finger alongside his head

as if he were winding up for a long lecture.

This was something he wanted to talk about,

at least in the third person.

[film strip whirring]

[Roger Dunn] We heard about the Chi Omega case on the news,

and Kathy, and Bob, and I looked at each other

and thought, "Bundy's in Florida."

[Bob Keppel] Ted went on the run after the sorority house attacks.

For the next two weeks, he drove around Florida

in a desperate attempt to elude the police.

If you've ever watched, uh, The Andy Griffith Show,

Lake City was not quite Mayberry,

but it was close.

Kids go anywhere they wanted to.

They'd, uh, ride their bicycles all over town.

Doors were not locked, and houses, you know, no big deal.

That's-- That's not that way anymore.

And what started changing it was, uh, this-- this mess with Ted Bundy.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy arrived in Lake City.

And on the morning of February 9th, 1978,

he spotted a girl walking behind a building

at her junior high school.

[Bob Dekle] Kim was a, uh, 12-year-old girl at Lake City Junior High.

And in the first period, somebody found a, uh, pocketbook.

And one of the girls says, "That-- that's, uh, Kim Leach's purse."

Kim went back, picks it up, walks out the door,

and, for all practical purposes, just fell off the face of the earth.

[♪ unsettling music playing]

[♪ eerie musical vocalizing]

[Bob Keppel] Paramedics reported

a man leading a girl away from the school by the arm.

[♪ unsettling music and eerie vocalizing continue]

It was the last time anyone would see Kimberly alive.

[♪ music fades out]

[♪ dark, tense music playing]

[Dekle] You know, when Kim went missing,

from day one, law enforcement knew that, uh, she was not a runaway,

that more than likely somebody had snatched her.

So, there was a huge effort among the three local agencies

to find Kim Leach.

[reporter] Theodore George Bundy was arrested on Wednesday

while driving a stolen car.

But yesterday, it was discovered he was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list,

who's suspected of 36 rape-murders in several Western states.

[Dekle] I'd never heard of Ted Bundy.

Uh, I don't think anybody in law enforcement in Florida

had ever heard of Ted Bundy.

[reporter] Among the first to arrive to question Bundy

were these detectives from Tallahassee, Florida.

At a point, Ted Bundy says to the investigators,

"You don't know who you have in custody."

Our ears perked up and said, "Wait a minute."

I knew that this was unfolding rapidly,

so we went and, uh, started the investigation.

[McChesney] We believed that there was a real possibility

that Ted Bundy was responsible for those cases.

[Dunn] Bob stayed in contact with those people in Florida

offering any assistance or anything that he could remember.

I think Bob kept a lot of his notes.

Fortunately, the state of Florida

got the pound of flesh that everybody wanted.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[Bob Keppel] When police in Pensacola, Florida arrested Bundy,

they'd captured a criminal type they'd never seen before:

an alleged serial killer on the FBI's Most Wanted list,

a suspect in more than 25 murders.

And Bundy was soon their prime suspect

in the Kimberly Leach missing persons case.

[reporter] The badly decomposed body of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach

of Lake City, Florida was found under a piece of tin in an old hog shed,

40 miles from where she was abducted on February 9th.

[Dekle] The body been placed under a shed.

And I got down and I saw Kim, and I saw her clothing,

and I said, "You know, here we are, we found her."

Then the crime scene crew worked the scene and found a treasure trove of evidence.

And, uh, there was-- you know, we had no question who'd--

uh, that, uh, Bundy was guilty

and no question that we could prove it.

[camera clicks]

[Winn] He had stolen a van from Florida State and driven over there,

and there were all sorts of hair samples and blood

and the leaves that matched where she was found.

It was just a traveling van of probative evidence

that was-- that was gonna convict him, which he surely knew by then.

He arrived at the Leon County Jail and I was there waiting for him.

I put my hand on his bicep and I told him, "You aren't going anywhere."

Step out, Mr. Bundy.

[reporter] In an unusual setting, Bundy was informed of the charges

as he stepped from the jailhouse elevator.

[Ted Bundy] Yeah, let's see. Oh, it's saying an indictment.

Alright, why don't you read it to me?

[Winn] Ken Katsaris relished this.

Katsaris made a show of it.

He invited the press. There were video cameras there.

My chance to talk to the press--

[Katsaris] "Contrary to Section 782.04, Florida statute."

I'll plead not guilty right now.

You know, Katsaris was a showman and Bundy was a showman

and they were in competition.

He and Bundy were serious adversaries.

[Bundy] You're on the ballot for election, aren't you?

-Mr. Bundy-- Mr. Bundy-- -You finally got it, didn't you?

Told them that-- you told them that you were gonna get me.

He said he was gonna get me.

Okay, you've got the indictment. It's all you're gonna get.

Let's read it. Let's go.

We locked him up under circumstances that were tighter than anybody else.

He was in a solid cell for four people

by himself.

At that time, I had my investigators there,

and he was acting weird and had special requirements.

He wanted to be interviewed by a window.

He wanted to be able to see the full moon.

And he had all these special requests.

And I-- I was getting a little irritated

because they were not getting any information from him.

[Bob Keppel] Now, at last, Ted Bundy was back behind bars,

and after just a few hours in jail,

he was especially vulnerable and willing to talk.

[♪ dark music playing]

[♪ dark, tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] I knew what Bundy meant.

Serial killers are unlike any other type of criminals.

They're battle-hardened.

They can stand up to interrogators looking for a quick confession,

and they know more about serial murder than almost any detective.

[Louis Schlesinger] He doesn't want publicity.

He wants to keep quiet. Really?

Why did you represent yourself pro se with the cameras on there

if you don't want publicity?

He absolutely wanted publicity,

because it feeds in to another personality trait that he has,

which is narcissism.

He wants to be the center of attention to everybody.

[♪ dark music playing]

[crowd chattering]

[Bob Keppel] More than 20 television stations

set up in a Miami courthouse

for the trial of the former law student and accused killer

as he led his own defense.

This was the first criminal case ever televised.

It was actually fascinating to watch.

The Bundy trial has drawn a lot of attention,

partly because of who he is,

a mysterious former law student with a charming air in court,

and partly because of the crimes he is accused of committing.

[Bob Keppel] His Florida trial gave Bundy center stage.

It was a showcase for his grandiosity, bravado,

and overinflated ego.

In court, Ted Bundy ended up being his own attorney,

asking questions of both the victims of his crime

as well as witnesses.

[Winn] He was a terrible law student. He never finished law school.

Judge Cowart said,

"Well, you defend yourself, you got a fool for a client." [chuckles]

[Winn] There were times in the courtroom when he looked lifeless and bereft.

There was a kind of a dead-behind-the-eyes quality.

[Bob Keppel] Outside the courtroom, Bundy's mystique was growing.

There were Bundy souvenirs,

Bundy memorabilia,

even Bundy fan clubs.

[Katherine Ramsland] Ted Bundy has gotten the most media attention.

He had charisma, he did a lot of representing himself to the media.

I think Bundy's just become the most visible of serial killers.

When you think of the phrase "serial killer,"

that's the person that most often springs to mind.

[reporter] What is unusual to see is that many of the onlookers are women,

young women, contemporaries of the five Florida State sorority sisters

who were assaulted in their beds a year and a half ago.

Every time he turns around, I kinda get that feeling,

"Oh, no," you know? [chuckles] "Gonna get me next."

[reporter] But, yet you're fascinated by it.

Very, very.

[Kleiner Rubin] The public is interested and fascinated by Ted Bundy.

How could he be a serial killer?

People look at him and think, "Oh, he's just a normal guy.

He went to law school," and you know, all this stuff.

He doesn't have horns and he doesn't look like a devil,

but he was.

[♪ dark, unsettling music playing]

When it was my day to testify, I put on this bright red dress,

and I went to the courtroom.

I saw Ted Bundy.

He was sitting there staring at me,

and I stared at him.

And then when I was through with my testimony,

I was walked back out of the court,

and I felt I was gonna throw up.

The whole process had just hit me,

and-- and I understood everything that had happened

and that my part of the story now was over

and I had done the best I could to help in prosecuting him.

[reporter] The jury took little time finalizing its decision.

The scramble was on to beam the news by satellite across Florida

and west to Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Denver.

[Judge Edward Cowart] Count Three of the information,

a jury of your peers, having found you guilty of Murder in the First Degree

of this court, adjudged you guilty.

[♪ dramatic music plays]

[♪ dark, tense music playing]

In Miami, Theodore Bundy has been sentenced to die in the electric chair

for the murder of two Florida sorority sisters.

[Judge Cowart] It is further ordered that on such scheduled date

that you be put to death.

[Winn] After he was sentenced,

he told Judge Edward Cowart, "I'm not asking for mercy.

I find it somewhat absurd to ask for mercy for something I did not do."

[Bundy] So, I will be tortured for and will suffer for

and receive the pain for that act,

but I will not share the burden or the guilt.

[Bob Keppel] Ted's denials were true to form,

his usual mix of arrogance and lies.

It left a bitter taste,

but what did I expect from this wormy psychopath?

The truth? Remorse?

Never.

[film strip whirring]

After less than seven hours of deliberation,

the jury finds Bundy guilty of kidnapping and murdering Kimberly Leach.

The judge hands down Bundy's second death sentence.

-Get off! -[lawyer] Wait a minute. Judge--

Let go of me.

We're gonna go up to the holdings.

[lawyer] The court be in recess.

[Dekle] After the dust had settled and the smoke had cleared,

the awful nature of what had happened really hit me.

They had just published a picture of her in a paper.

Thinking about that,

thinking about what awful things had happened to her,

I cried.

Uh, I got psychological scars from that that, uh, I'll carry to my grave.

[reporter] The jury deliberated about 45 minutes.

They came back with the decision of death.

"And it impose the death penalty upon the defendant,

Theodore Robert Bundy."

Tell the jury that they were wrong.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy was now convicted and sentenced,

so I had assumed the story of Ted Bundy would end in Florida.

Fate, however, had charted a different course.

[Dekle] He was getting closer and closer to the end,

uh, so he was casting about for excuses to not get the death penalty.

And if he could turn himself into some kind of a, uh, guru

for, uh, helping people solve serial killer cases,

you know, that just might be his ticket to escaping the death penalty.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[Bob Keppel] Bundy wanted to talk, I agreed,

even though being part of a serial killer's scheme to avoid justice

made my skin crawl.

But still, I agreed to meet with him.

I believed Bundy's insights into serial killers

could provide valuable information for homicide investigators in the future.

Besides, Bundy was behind bars, The Riverman wasn't.

By 1985, he was suspected of killing 42 women.

By the end of the year, the total would be even higher.

[reporter] Authorities in Oregon said today

that the bodies of five young women found last week

may be victims of the Green River Killer.

[Bob Keppel] In 1985, the remains of a young woman

were found near a golf course in Tigard, Oregon.

Investigators suspected she was another victim of The Riverman.

Dental records identified her as 16-year-old Tammie Liles.

Tammie's family reported her missing two years earlier.

[camera clicks]

I remember coming in the house from playing outside

and KING 5 News was on,

and they were showing a Task Force picking up bones in Oregon,

not knowing... that that was our sister, Tammie.

[♪ dark, somber music playing]

[John Liles] We got pulled outta school and we went to my mom's office.

She worked at the hospital.

And when we got there, there were all the police,

the sheriffs, and everything, and that's when they told us.

[camera clicks]

[Jason Liles] They were wearing those Green River Task Force jackets.

[siblings] Mm-hmm.

So, once you see that,

-then you kind of think-- -Then you know.

Like, "Okay, now something's really gonna be going on here," you know?

That's when I kinda started thinking about, "Okay, maybe--

maybe this is what happened to her."

[Bob Keppel] Tammie Liles was laid to rest,

but The Green River Killer was still free.

There was no closure,

only questions.

[♪ tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] By the time Bundy and I sat down in 1988,

he was still appealing his case, but the clock was ticking.

I was flipping back and forth between Ted and The Green River Killer.

After all these years, I now needed Ted to talk about himself.

I played for time,

even when I knew there was no time.

He had to come to me.

[♪ tense music continues]

[Bob Keppel] Ted was talking about himself.

He didn't want to die in the electric chair.

It seemed like he was really close to opening up.

He was wriggling around in his chair like I'd never seen before.

[Bob Keppel] What I didn't know was that the day before,

Ted's attorney had convinced him not to confess to me.

If it hadn't been for his attorney,

I suspect Bundy would've begun telling all.

[♪ tense music continues playing]

Keppel thought he had failed with Bundy

because although Bundy had told him a lot, didn't tell him enough.

[Katsaris] He was never going to give us good or valuable information.

The people that were there collecting it, I admire them,

but in my opinion, he was playing them.

And he would continue playing that game,

and to this day, we'd be playing games with Ted Bundy.

Uh, he'd talk till he was blue in the face.

He's not gonna do those victim's a bit of good.

They're dead, they're gone.

And, uh, he is breathing good air

that somebody else could be breathing,

and he needs to die.

[phone ringing]

[Bob Keppel] I got a call from Bundy's lawyers

asking me to come back to Florida.

[Birnes] Bundy comes up with a strategy.

He says, "If I can tell you stories of my crimes, I can stay alive."

[Winn] You know, he held the cards, he knew everything.

Even as he was awaiting his execution,

he had a kind of a power that gratified him.

[♪ dark, tense music playing]

[Bill Hagmaier] There were investigators from four states:

Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and, um, Washington.

At that point, I think there were only six days left

before he was going to die.

[Bob Keppel] Was Bundy playing another game?

If so, this time, the game involved his own life.

He had just days to live.

[♪ dramatic music plays]

[reporter] The latest attempts to spare Bundy

from Florida's electric chair ran their course

when the US Supreme Court refused to hear his case.

[Birnes] His lawyers were going to the Supreme Court.

He says, "I can give you a lot more information

if I can stay alive."

Ted's trying to extend his life.

And he's going to say enough that they're going to go back and say,

"Hey, give him another 90 days."

[reporter] Ted Bundy confessed that he committed at least eight murders

in Washington State.

Keppel wants to solve The Green River murders case.

It was kind of just this legendary case in the office that had never been solved.

[Dave Reichert] It almost seemed like

you're working in the Super Bowl of murder cases,

and someone tells you it's-- it's over and you've lost.

I never had a thought that we weren't gonna catch him.

I just wondered how, when, and where.

And I knew I wanted to be a part of it.

[Patty Eakes] There were a lot more missing women

and he was much more effective at hiding their bodies.

The Supreme Court said, "There's nothing more to be gained,

carry out the sentence."

[Bob Keppel] Come on, partner. These are things I don't know about you.

[reporter] No one could be sure Bundy didn't have

a last trick up his sleeve.

[clicking]

[♪ tense music playing]