Original subtitles

[♪ eerie music playing]

[Rich Bundy] The last time I visited Ted,

I took a bus from here in Tacoma, Washington,

clear across the country to Florida to go see him by myself.

The visiting room was all black and dark,

and he wasn't showing his face.

It felt weird.

I never asked Ted if he killed those women.

I was just so confused, still believing that he was innocent.

[♪ eerie music continues]

You know, what can you do when you're 17?

You know, I can't wave a magic wand and make all this go away.

[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]

[distant sirens wailing]

[reporter] The latest attempts to spare Bundy

from Florida's electric chair ran their legal course

when the US Supreme Court refused to hear his case.

[James York] Mr. Bundy has had his days in court.

I think it's time that the legitimate verdict

of the state trial court is carried out.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[reporter] Serial killer Ted Bundy is set to die in Florida's electric chair

on Tuesday morning.

[Bob Keppel] The clock on Bundy's life ticked down.

He and his lawyers launched last-ditch appeals

to the governor of Florida and the US Supreme Court

asking for a stay of execution.

[Birnes] He says, "If I confess to a case

"and you take me back into court and find me guilty,

"look at the closure you give to the families,

and I get to stay alive."

[Bob Keppel] That's when Ted called me back,

just two months after our last meeting.

[Bill Hagmaier] There were four states invited to come down.

Investigators from Colorado, Utah, Idaho,

and Washington.

They thought that he killed between 20 to 100 women.

And so, 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."

[camera clicks]

I had to interview Ted several times,

so Ted wanted me to be there.

And Bob was the first one that interviewed him.

Keppel was a-- a key person in his case.

[♪ dark dramatic music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Bundy had groomed me to be his confessor

under the cover of solving the Green River murders...

[clicking]

...but the Green River case was now ice cold.

Dave Reichert was the only investigator who believed it would be solved.

[Dave Reichert] You know, the years go on.

We started hearing rumblings, uh, of cutbacks,

uh, as early as 1986.

After all that hard work,

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

I just wondered how, when, and where.

[Bob Keppel] But the Riverman would have to wait.

[chains rattling]

I was face-to-face with Bundy again,

and only had a single two-hour meeting to get him to confess

to the eight murders in Washington State.

In my first 20 minutes with Ted, his lawyer, and Bill Hagmaier,

he was stalling.

I ignored it and pressed him for details.

[camera clicking]

[♪ dark, eerie music playing]

[camera clicks]

[Bob Keppel] I was breathless.

After years of dodging questions,

Ted was finally describing his killing grounds

as only the murderer could.

[♪ dark, eerie music continues]

But just as soon as he opened up, he shut down again.

He was nervous about the corrections officers in the room.

Ted wanted control over who heard his confession.

[♪ dark, eerie music continues]

[♪ unsettling music plays]

[Bob Keppel] I was stunned.

The infamous Ted Bundy was confessing to murder

in the first person

for the first time!

[camera clicks]

Georgann Hawkins was an undergraduate at University of Washington...

[camera clicks]

...one of the sweetest, young college students you would ever see.

[camera clicks]

Georgann Hawkins was last seen Monday evening shortly after midnight.

She had been visiting at the Beta House

and was returning to her house just a half block away down this alley.

[♪ ominous tones playing]

Being conscientious, she left early

because she wanted to study for her Spanish test.

Several students remember seeing her.

One of them watched her to within 40 feet of the door

of her sorority house, Kappa Alpha Theta.

And... that was the last she was seen.

[Bob Keppel] Ted showed us where he had taken Georgann Hawkins.

But then, he started looking over his shoulder again.

[Ted whispering]

[Bob Keppel] How could I not?

[♪ intense music playing]

I was shocked.

It was confirmation that Ted had decapitated his victims.

What Bundy said next was even more disturbing.

[♪ tense music playing]

[♪ tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] A hacksaw.

It turned my stomach.

[♪ unsettling music playing]

But I pressed on,

encouraging Ted to take me through the Georgann Hawkins' murder

step by step.

[♪ unsettling music continues]

[distant traffic noise, car horns honking]

[♪ ominous music playing]

[metallic thud]

[Bob Keppel] His words were a revelation to me.

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

[♪ tense, ominous music playing]

[Hagmaier] He was a strangler.

He enjoyed killing people.

[♪ tense, ominous music continues]

He said, "I didn't go after old ladies.

"I don't go after prostitutes like the Green River guy did.

"I found my prey.

"I wanted them to be educated.

I wanted them to be worthy."

[Bob Keppel] In our 1984 interview,

I suspected Bundy was talking about himself

when he suggested this was how the Riverman disposed of evidence.

And now, Ted confirmed it.

Bundy doesn't wanna be caught,

but the possibility of it

is part of the heightened sense of it,

that's highly titillating.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy was obviously withholding the goriest details

until he and his lawyers were able to delay his execution.

[Bob Keppel] Bingo.

Ted had just confirmed his story by describing her clothing.

Still, I needed more.

[Ted chuckles]

[Dr. Peter Salerno] He chuckles with Keppel

and actually says, "I find it kinda funny."

I mean... it's inhuman.

[♪ unsettling music playing]

He had a complete lack of conscience.

[Bob Keppel] Georgann's friends had told police

she'd left the party to study for a Spanish test.

It was the last piece I needed.

[hacking]

[Bob Keppel] I didn't believe that Ted was returning to the scene

just to bury Georgann's skull.

[Louis Schlesinger] Bundy refused to discuss necrophilia.

Why?

Bundy was trying to humanize himself.

He wanted others to postpone his execution,

and if he described what he did post-mortem to the victims,

it would make him seem extremely deviant

and certainly not somebody they'd wanna keep around

for an extended period of time.

[Birnes] He's ashamed.

I mean, ashamed of the fact that the real center of yourself

is this desperate need to have sex with the dead,

because that's how you exercise your power.

It's the one thing he can't control.

[♪ dark music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Ted had said enough to confirm

that not only was he a chicken- [bleep] who cold-cocked his victims

before strangling them,

he was also a necrophiliac.

I only had 45 minutes left to get the other seven confessions.

I had to be quick and thorough.

I asked him where we could find the rest of Georgann Hawkins' remains.

[Bob Keppel] " Down, where the others were."

Those words changed everything.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[♪ dark music playing]

[birds chirping]

[people chattering]

[Bob Keppel] Bundy didn't realize it,

but he had just admitted to two more murders.

Janice Ott and Denise Naslund,

who disappeared from Lake Sammamish in 1974.

It was brazen to take two women off the beach.

Bundy got one of 'em.

And then he came back and got the other one.

And then, at Issaquah,

we recovered the skeletal remains of Janice Ott

and the skulls of Denise Naslund and the other one,

who we now knew, through Bundy's confession,

was Georgann Hawkins.

[camera clicks]

[Bob Keppel] When Ted told me Georgann's body was

-down, where the others were... -[Ted Bundy] Down, where the others were.

[Bob Keppel] ...he had tied Hawkins' remains

to Ott and Naslund's,

also found in Issaquah.

[film strip whirring]

[clock ticking]

[Bob Keppel] Ted had just admitted he murdered Ott and Naslund.

But I needed more.

I needed facts.

[Bob Keppel] Ted indicated on the map where he hid Janice's bike and knapsack.

This, and his admission he killed both girls

would be enough to close their cases.

After years of hunting Ted Bundy,

I finally got three confessions from him.

But with only 20 minutes left and five confessions remaining,

Bundy stalled again.

[Schlesinger] He's working him.

"You meet with the governor, meet with this person,

"meet with that person.

I need time to help the families and to help science."

And he was just trying to help himself, to postpone his execution.

[reporter] Officials say that Bundy spent the day confessing

to unsolved murders in the state of Washington.

[♪ dark music playing]

[Bob Keppel] By Saturday, the news had broken

that Bundy was confessing to me.

[camera clicks]

I was infuriated when his lawyers told the media

that he was totally honest and cooperative.

[Rich Bundy] When Ted started confessing,

I realized that he really... had done all those murders.

[♪ dark, somber music playing]

The only thing I kept obsessing about was the mothers of all those children...

[breathing shakily]

[voice breaking] ...who lost their daughters,

you know, who could've had really fulfilling lives, you know?

That is eternal.

She was everything to me.

And as far as I'm concerned, Ted Bundy took it all.

You left behind people that have to live with that,

and that killed them inside.

He was a scumbag piece of [bleep].

[camera clicks]

[reporter] Governor Bob Martinez has already indicated

that he wants the execution to take place.

We have every intention of carrying out the death warrant

at 7:00 a.m. on Tuesday, January 24th.

[Bob Keppel] At this point, all I could do was hope for one more chance

to talk with Bundy.

Bill Hagmaier was pressuring Bundy to give me more time.

I figured Bob would have the best show-up of anybody.

And Bundy said he'd do it as a favor to me.

[♪ dark music playing]

[Bob Keppel] It was Sunday night.

Ted had agreed to speak with each of the four state investigators

for 30 minutes apiece

starting with me.

It was my last chance to get him to confess

to the five remaining Washington murders.

[Bob Keppel] The Evergreen College girl was Donna Manson.

The clock was ticking louder with every passing second.

Could I get Bundy to tell me what happened to her?

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

One of the students at Evergreen, Donna Gail Manson,

she was 19 years old,

went to a dance on campus, uh, never arrived.

Was never seen again.

[Steven Winn] Donna Manson, she was more of a free spirit.

She wrote poetry. She was interested in weaving.

And when she went missing, her friends thought,

"Oh, well, that's just Donna. She's just taking off."

But five days later, her mother said,

"I knew that Donna wasn't coming back."

[♪ tense, ominous music playing]

[clock ticking]

[♪ tense, ominous music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Bundy had just told us we could find Donna Manson's remains

at Taylor Mountain, which was part of the Cascade Mountains.

[camera clicks]

It's also where we found the skulls of Lynda Healy,

Susan Rancourt, Kathleen Parks, and Brenda Ball in 1975.

Ted was pointing to nearby sites

where we discovered the skulls of the four other young women.

That tied Donna Manson and Bundy to Healy, Rancourt, Parks, and Ball.

At one point, he called him "partner."

"Come on, partner, tell me what--" That's very good.

Trying to ally yourself with him

so that you and he are both working on a case together.

[♪ dark, tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Bundy had just confessed to decapitating Donna Manson

and then burning her skull

in his girlfriend, Liz Kloepfer's fireplace.

After 15 years of searching

for the missing pieces of the Ted Bundy puzzle,

it was almost too much to comprehend.

Keppel wanted to understand what is the psychology of a serial killer.

And the more he talked with Bundy,

the more he kind of learned how to draw him out,

which is how we know that Donna Gail Manson

was an early Ted Bundy victim.

He got Ted to admit to it.

[♪ tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] I knew that was [bleep].

I asked Bob if he ever found out

why we just found skulls at Taylor Mountain,

and he said, "The reason was that Bundy kept the skulls in his freezer

for necrophilia."

[♪ dramatic disturbing music plays]

And occasionally, Bundy would take 'em out

and use them.

Then he threw 'em out at Taylor Mountain.

[Bob Keppel] Hagmaier had told me that Bundy once admitted

he had four heads at home with him at one time.

They must've been the Taylor Mountain women.

I remember just being shocked

that Bundy was that sick and that evil.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy had shut down again.

Suddenly, my 30 minutes with him were almost up.

This was my last chance.

Where were the remains of those Taylor Mountain women?

[♪ dark music playing]

[clock ticking]

[Bob Keppel] I had run out of time.

And as Ted waited for the Supreme Court's final judgment,

he still refused to say where he buried the bodies

of Healy, Rancourt, Parks, and Ball.

[♪ dark, tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] At this point, there was nothing I could

or would do to save Ted.

[ticking continues]

[Bob Keppel] He clicked the tape recorder off

and handed it back to me.

Knowing I would never see him again,

it was time for at least one moment of honesty.

I told him that he had orchestrated the past few days very poorly.

"You just killed yourself," I said.

That was the last thing I ever said to Ted Bundy.

[reporter] Ted Bundy confessed to investigator, Bob Keppel,

that he committed at least eight murders in Washington state.

We were elated that he had finally admitted to those murders.

Bob did a great job.

Dad would've liked to get his hands around his neck probably.

[laughing]

But I think that he got what he wanted in the end,

which was for Bundy to just admit that he'd done it.

[Bob Keppel] Bundy's confessions weren't perfect,

but he had given me enough.

I was confident I would finally be able

to close the eight Washington cases

in the months ahead

and give the families some peace.

[Vivian Winters] We knew in our hearts that he would be connected to her.

Losing a child is like losing a part of yourself.

You can't replace it with drugs or drink

or any number of things.

It's gone.

If a person is a menace to society, they ought to be exterminated.

That's how I feel about it.

I'd love to see him suffer is what I'd really like to see.

[protesters shouting indistinctly]

[crowd cheering and whooping]

The death penalty was necessary because he has to be stopped.

Just like you would put down a rabid dog.

[crowd singing] ♪ Bye-bye, Ted Bundy, goodbye ♪

[distant singing] ♪ Bye-bye, Ted Bundy ♪

[♪ dark music playing]

[protesters shouting indistinctly]

[people cheering and whooping]

[reporter] The Supreme Court has turned down his last appeal

making this, almost surely, the last night of Ted Bundy's life.

[Bob Keppel] In the end, Ted's strategy of trading information for more time

was always doomed to fail.

As the US Supreme Court said,

"The world had had enough of Ted Bundy."

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

He's confessed to the crimes. Carry out the sentence."

[reporter] The once smirking killer

is now reported sobbing and scared to death.

[Bob Keppel] FBI profiler, Bill Hagmaier had a special rapport with Ted.

Bundy asked Bill to sit with him on death watch.

There's always a death watch,

because some people do commit suicide the night before.

I was doing my job.

It's kinda awkward sometimes,

but I tend to believe that people can show people dignity

whether they deserve it or not.

[reporter] The death watch continues tonight

outside the state prison at Starke, Florida.

It's time for him to go and I want him gone.

He should die at 7 o'clock and not a minute later.

[clock ticking]

[Hagmaier] He asked, "Where should I get buried?"

So, we went through that.

[♪ tense music playing]

At one point he says, "I can't go in there."

I told him that it has to happen.

And he says, "Well, I'm not gonna give the governor or anybody else

the satisfaction of watching me cry into that chair."

[♪ tense music continues]

[Dr. Salerno] I think what bothered him is,

he couldn't talk himself out of anything at that point.

He was not in control.

And that enraged him.

I said, "You have to do it."

And he pulled a pen out and he put it up against his artery.

He said, "I push this in here,

"blood will shoot at least 14 feet.

"You're gonna have it all over your face,

and I'll be dead before you can get the guard here."

[♪ tense music playing]

[Hagmaier] It was a bad situation.

I mean, it was very difficult.

He's looking at the clock, and he knew that he was gonna die.

He says, "I'm not gonna sit in that chair."

A lot of serial killers will commit suicide in prison

just so they are in control of when they die.

That's like their last-ditch effort to be on top.

[Hagmaier] I just stared at him and I said,

"A little while ago, you took a Bible

"and were reading it and saying prayers.

What is it you wanted in there?"

[♪ tense music playing]

And he said, "I wanna know if I have a chance for another life."

And I said, "You ask God for forgiveness

"and you just told me you killed over 30 people.

You think you're in a situation where you can add another homicide?"

He said, "No, it's suicide." I said, "Suicide is a murder."

And he goes, "You're right.

"I just-- I just can't. I-- I'm just afraid.

But you know, you have been my best friend."

And, of course, that's-- [chuckles]

That-- that-- that kinda makes you throw up a little bit

as much as it does makes you feel good

that you've been able to... get through to him.

[♪ dark music playing]

[clock ticking]

[Bob Keppel] Hagmaier left a melancholy Ted Bundy alone in his cell.

Outside the prison walls, the mood was very different.

[reporter] Hundreds of people lined up outside the prison at Starke, Florida,

some carrying signs cheering on the execution.

Bundy did speak with his mother by telephone before he faced death.

For 13 years, he's sworn up and down,

backwards and forwards, that he was innocent.

And then all of a sudden...

[camera clicks]

After she got off the phone, she said, "Well, I said goodbye to Ted.

And he apologized for all the bad he did."

And I gave her a hug and I said, "You know, hey,

"we know that it wasn't right, of course, and that...

it's too bad it had to end like this."

If you're related to somebody like Bundy, that's traumatizing.

It's an extreme betrayal,

because it's like this truly authentic emotional bond

which Ted couldn't form.

There is no reciprocity.

She was still processing all this in her mind and her heart.

I-- I can see her quite clearly saying that to me like,

"Well, that's it. You know what? This is it." You know?

He's still our son no matter what he's done

and we love him very much.

[reporter] Ted Bundy stirred hatred.

An unprecedented crowd of hundreds started gathering before dawn.

It took on a macabre, circus-like atmosphere.

[crowd singing] ♪ Bye-bye, Ted Bundy ♪

[reporter] It was the morning people here had been anticipating

for 10 bitter years.

The day state prison officials wired up the chair called Old Sparky

and ordered Theodore Bundy to take his seat.

[♪ tense music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Ted's hour had come.

At 7:00 a.m., he was led to the death chamber.

At that point, he was scared to death.

Believe me, Bundy was terrified.

Nobody walks to their execution cool and calm.

[Bob Keppel] Outside, the chanting crowd wanted vengeance.

They watched for the lights to dim, the signal that the execution had begun.

[reporter] Until the very last moment,

no one could be sure Bundy didn't have a last trick up his sleeve.

You see the hand tightening, tighter and tighter.

The man suspected of brutally killing 36 women

met the long, drawn-out demands of justice.

Yoo-hoo!

I started to cry for all his victims.

The Green River killer had started killing in 1982.

[reporter] The identity of their killer remained a mystery

until 2001.

The break in this case came when detectives were able to conclusively link

DNA to three of the victims.

The first location is down that road down there.

There it is. Isn't that teeth?

Debra Estes was my daughter and she had just turned 15 years old.

This is something that is a life sentence.

It lives with you forever.

I hope you rot in hell. Son of a [bleep].