Original subtitles

[♪ tense music playing]

[Rich Bundy] Everybody can have that moment of going into a dark, bad place.

I imagined myself doing things like Ted did,

just to try to understand what he was like in that personality to wanna kill people.

I looked at myself in that mirror and I physically started to get sick,

queasy in my stomach. I knew I could never do such a thing.

I guess some people are wired for it and some aren't.

And he caused permanent anguish.

It's like, you know, this [bleep] gotta stop!

[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.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[♪ dramatic music continues]

Less than six hours from now,

accused mass murderer Ted Bundy is scheduled to be executed

in a Florida prison.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[♪ ominous music playing]

[Bob Keppel] Here we were, lead investigator Dave Reichert and I,

listening to Ted Bundy's theories about the Green River Killer.

He hoped that by helping us,

he could avoid his date with the electric chair.

But I was here for a different reason,

getting him to confess to the murders of eight young women

in Washington State 10 years ago.

To get there, I had to play a game.

When I asked, "How should I talk to the Riverman?"

I meant, "How should I talk to Ted Bundy?"

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

-[♪ gentle music playing] -[birds chirping]

[Rich Bundy] Ted was the first born from my mom to a different man.

And so my mom met my father.

My father and mom got married and had four more children.

Ted was 15 years older than me.

I loved him and I liked him, and of course, I looked up to him.

If I was at a friend's house after school

and I happened to call home to check in with mom or dad,

and they'd say, "Ooh, your brother's here,"

I would just suddenly go,

"Oh, I gotta go home! Ted's-- Ted-- Oh! Ah!" I was all excited.

We were very close.

He was kinda like a second dad in the way.

I remember him saying, "I sense music coming outta you."

You know, he's trying to encourage me, right?

We-- We went camping several times

and we went to a couple of rodeos together and football games.

He never showed any signs of the negative-- the bad side of him.

He made it a point to make sure

I didn't ever get any hint of that from him.

[Keppel] I knew lying was a major factor in Bundy's relationships.

He lied to everyone, his girlfriends, family,

parents, friends, cellmates, and lawyers.

[interviewer] Have you ever physically harmed anyone?

"Ever physically harmed anyone?"

No.

No.

He knew what he was doing. He should have [bleep] turned himself in.

'Cause I don't give a damn who the hell you are.

You know, I don't give a [bleep] if we're blood-related, you know?

These are women who didn't deserve that and they--

and there are people left alive,

and they have to live their whole lives with this horrible pain

that piece of [bleep], who I don't have any respect for anymore, did, you know?

[crying] Oh, [bleep], oh, [bleep].

I need to take a break.

[♪ somber music playing]

[Roger Dunn] One of the things that has always concerned me

about the Bundy story is,

most of the s-- the stories appeared to glorify Ted Bundy.

And that's why I haven't done any interviews.

It turns my stomach.

The victims' families have been ignored for 50 years.

Nobody's gotten to see what their story felt like.

It tore my guts up just thinking,

"What would it be like to lose a child to a monster like Bundy?"

I just... I-- I couldn't imagine that.

It's sad that nobody has taken the effort to tell that side of the story,

what those families went through.

[Vivian Winters] Sue Rancourt was my daughter.

Sue was, um, a dream child.

She had just turned 17.

All she wanted, from the time she was tiny,

was to go to school.

[sighs] The last time I saw Susan,

she was boarding the airplane in Anchorage

to attend college in Ellensburg at Central Washington.

You know, mothers have a certain second sense when it comes...

[voice breaking] ...to their children.

[sighs heavily]

[♪ somber music playing]

She turned around and she looked at me, and she---

[crying] Her face was wet with tears.

And of course, I was sobbing.

[inhales deeply]

And she just gave a little wave.

[shaky breaths]

And I told my husband, "I'll never see her again."

[♪ ominous music playing]

[Steven Winn] The day that she disappeared,

Susan Rancourt was on her way to a meeting about becoming a dorm counselor,

and she was never ever seen again.

[car door slams]

Two or three days earlier, two different women reported

that a man had approached them with his arm in a sling

and some books in his other arm, asking for help to his car.

[♪ ominous music continues]

[Keppel] Susan Rancourt was one of the first co-eds who went missing

from universities that were over 200 miles apart.

At the time, no one made any connection

beyond observing that they were all missing.

[Winn] Young college girls,

they go off with their boyfriend, they're somewhere else,

which is why the police take a measured view of these things

to determine if there are some other explanation

for why someone is missing.

All of us knew that something terrible had happened to her.

At one point,

somebody on the police department looked at my husband and said,

"Aren't you going to feel silly when she shows up married to somebody?"

[Keppel] From January to July of 1974,

eight women went missing from across the Pacific Northwest.

No one suspected the last person they ever saw

was the man I was sitting with now.

He was a nightmare,

a stalker who was able to strike with impunity,

just like our elusive Riverman, The Green River Killer.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[reporter] The bones of victim number 21 of Washington State's Green River Killer

were dug up near Seattle today.

[Keppel] We suspected that Ted was also talking about himself,

hinting that if we were smart enough

to follow him down the trail he was blazing,

we'd learn more about his methods.

[Ted Bundy laughing]

[bird calling]

[♪ tense music playing]

[reporter] A middle-aged man found a human skeleton this afternoon.

Officers admit the first thought through their heads

was the Green River case.

He's certainly the largest mass murderer this state has ever known.

[Keppel] We're looking at somebody who is less than 1%

of all psychopathic killers,

and they are very clever.

[♪ tense, ominous music playing]

Bob wanted to get into Ted's head about the... thinking

that went into "Where am I gonna leave these women?"

How do you know that nobody's gonna run into you

as you're doing your crimes?

Those questions didn't really have to do so much with the Green River Killer,

as it did with how Ted did his own offense.

[Keppel] We were getting somewhere.

I could see that Ted was projecting himself

into each Green River murder as if he were the killer,

making decisions on the spot.

Whom to lure, how to lure, where to drive.

Ted knew the importance of these things to the Riverman,

as a killer who meticulously practiced each one of those things himself.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[Dr. Donald Blackburn] If the addition of individuals,

the information that they might be able to get,

that can help with the return of our daughter,

we would do anything to facilitate that.

She's a beautiful, wonderful girl.

[Keppel] In the summer of 1974,

Detective Roger Dunn and I were still trying to keep up with leads

in the Janice Ott and Denise Naslund cases.

They disappeared from Lake Sammamish in July.

[newscaster] Each lead has to be followed,

every phone call has to be made,

most lead nowhere, some with a speck of information

that may, someday, help clear up the mystery

of the whereabouts of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund.

[Keppel] All we knew is that the stranger known as "Ted"

had likely taken two victims from Lake Sammamish that summer,

and that Ted drove a VW Bug.

[water lapping]

[♪ tense music playing]

It was pretty evident that there was some foul play involved,

even though the victims had not been located.

Bob Keppel and Roger Dunn, who were detectives in homicide,

needed additional investigators,

and they asked if I would join them on the task force.

So, it was Keppel, Dunn, and McChesney.

It wasn't a big task force, it was just the three of them.

[Dunn] But we were befuddled.

There was nothing to-- to follow up on.

-[radio chatter] -Until one day, we turned on the radio

to listen to the news,

and the news is broadcasting that

the sheriff's office was investigating, uh, found remains east of Issaquah,

close to where the two girls disappeared at Lake Sammamish State Park.

[officer 1] [over radio] 1-6-6, this is 1-1-0.

[officer 2] [over radio] Go ahead.

[officer 1] The only thing we have is bone fragments.

Issaquah was the first break that we had.

There were some bones scattered around there,

and hair strands from where the corpses laid for a while.

[camera clicks]

The bones had been scattered by animals and contaminated by the chew marks,

so not only were there no signs of homicide on the skulls,

there were no signs of lethal force on any of the long-stem bones either.

[Keppel] We discovered a graveyard,

a killer's lair.

-[♪ dark, ominous music playing] -[camera clicking]

Anyone who is really trying to understand the perspective of a killer

needs to go to the places that killer went

and try to imagine it from their point of view.

What were they thinking when they were here?

How were they calculating this to be a good dump site?

What would it have been like for them to bring girls here?

[engine rumbling]

[Keppel] Even though the crime scene was only one mile from a populated area,

it was still secluded.

It was the perfect terrain.

If you parked a car just off the dirt road,

you could see or hear anyone coming from any direction.

I got the feeling this was no accident.

The killer chose this site

so he could cover his tracks before anyone arrived.

Dental records quickly identified Janice Ott and Denise Naslund.

She brought me so much happiness and...

[sniffles]

...so much love.

Denise Naslund's mother became sort of the voice of all these women.

She was the designated mourner.

I went to her house and she had erected a kind of altar to Denise's memory.

I don't think she ever stopped crying.

She was just this wail of misery.

[Dunn] It really affected her.

Eleanor would call me almost every week

to find out if there'd been any new developments.

They said that they had found... a skull.

[♪ dark music playing]

At Issaquah, there was a third victim they couldn't identify.

[Dunn] We had no idea who that third set of bones belonged to,

but the logical probability was that it was one of the women

who had disappeared earlier in that year.

Our suspect was responsible for all of the women

that disappeared earlier that year as well.

[Keppel] One of those women was Georgann Hawkins,

a University of Washington student.

Near midnight on June 11, 1974, she was returning to her dorm

when a man on crutches asked if she would help him to his car.

He was becoming more daring and more audacious.

So, you have the Georgann Hawkins abduction occurring almost in plain sight.

The thrill. The need to up the ante.

It's a brazen move to kidnap Georgann Hawkins

out of an alley behind her sorority.

[Keppel] We were confident

that Georgann Hawkins had been taken by our mysterious "Ted,"

but we couldn't be sure

that she was the third victim we found at Issaquah.

And then, just six months later, another dump site and more bones.

[officer] Seattle police are proceeding on the assumption

that there are more bodies out here.

We keep finding more and more every day.

On Taylor Mountain, that's when the story really exploded.

-[♪ tense music playing] -[dogs barking]

[reporter] Skeletal remains were found on Taylor Mountain, near Issaquah.

[Keppel] It was only 11 miles east of the Issaquah site.

Forestry students found bones while marking trees for a class project.

You could find anything a couple hours from now

or five minutes from now, it doesn't matter.

Bob was stumbling through a thick patch and tripped over a vine maple root.

And when he fell down,

he looked up and he was looking at a skull.

[♪ dark music playing]

That wasn't the only skull that was found at Taylor Mountain, several were.

[camera clicking]

The problem that we have is we don't know the way they were killed.

All we found is bones.

[Dunn] When the discovery was made at Taylor Mountain,

we knew we had a lot more victims to account for

and a lot more evidence to gather,

a lot more witness statements to pull together.

All these skulls brought together the fact

that this one guy was responsible for all of these murders.

We had a massive serial killer case on our hands.

[♪ ominous music playing]

[Nick Mackie] We have identified today

that one of the skulls was that of Brenda Carol Ball.

She was 22 years when she was missing from the Flame Tavern

about 2:00 a.m. on June 1, 1974.

[camera clicks]

Nobody saw anybody with her in the parking lot.

She just vanished into thin air.

[camera clicks]

There was no leads to follow.

[Keppel] The remains of the three other women

were also identified from the skeletal remains

we had recovered.

Lynda Healy, who was reported missing from her basement bedroom

at the University of Washington.

Kathy Parks, last seen at Oregon State University.

And Susan Rancourt who disappeared from Central Washington State College.

We were relieved to at least know something.

We knew she wasn't coming back,

but to just have her... out there,

disappearing into nowhere

and not knowing

was harder to bear than realizing the fact that she was gone.

[♪ somber music playing]

[camera clicks]

It was something that none of us had ever been around before in our lives.

I mean, you've got seven bodies out there just a few miles apart.

[Keppel] One of those bodies was still unidentified

and we hadn't yet accounted for two of our missing girls:

Georgann Hawkins and Donna Manson.

I had agreed only to ask Ted about the Green River murders,

not his own,

but I couldn't resist bringing up Taylor Mountain.

Yet Ted showed no sign he'd ever been there.

[Dr. Peter Salerno] Bundy was always in control of what he wanted to say

and what he didn't want to reveal,

and he chose not to say certain things

because he knew that it would drive a lot of people crazy

if they couldn't connect the dots,

and that felt very empowering for someone like him.

[Keppel] Looking for another opening to talk to Bundy about his crimes,

I asked him how much he knew about our investigation 10 years earlier.

[♪ dark music playing]

[film strip whirring]

[Dunn] All of the leads and the tips that were coming in

overwhelmed the normal system that we had for follow-ups on a case.

[Kathleen McChesney] We knew that we had to compare the data.

We did not have investigative computers at that point,

so we had to borrow computer time from the county payroll folks.

And from there we narrowed it down to a hundred of the best "Ted" suspects,

and Bob and I were real keen on this guy, Bundy.

[♪ dark music playing]

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

[Keppel] In our conversations, Ted was constantly asking for more details

about our Green River investigation,

especially how the Riverman hunted, lured, and abducted his victims.

These, Ted told us, were clues to the killer's frame of mind

and motives for killing the women he did.

[♪ tense music playing]

[film strip whirring]

We had psychiatrists and psychologists helping with the profile

in the Ted investigation.

Profiling in an atypical homicide, where there are no clues and no motives,

is like finding a needle in a haystack.

First of all, you have to find the haystack,

then you have to find the needle.

[Keppel] In the Ted investigation,

the needle we were looking for was evidence,

and the haystacks were the dump sites where he left his victims.

[reporter] Could a man carry a dead body in as far as you found these skulls?

It would be a real job to do it.

[♪ eerie music playing]

I thought he was a extreme variant of a sexual psychopath.

This is not a man who rapes the woman then kills her,

which is not uncommon.

There was something different about this.

He might be primarily interested in dismembering the body,

particularly decapitating them.

[♪ eerie music continues]

And so, then you're getting a picture of somebody who has particular places

where they're putting human remains.

They may be cutting them up, they may be burying them,

they may be carrying parts away and then bringing them back,

or moving them from site to site.

They begin to get a much more complicated picture.

We were talking about someone who had planned the abductions,

they had planned out what they were going to do with the victims.

[Keppel] As we talked about the Green River Killer,

Bundy kept bringing the conversation back to the dump sites,

veering into a disturbing realm that seemed deeply personal.

[Keppel] I knew Bundy had returned to the same sites,

Issaquah and Taylor Mountain, over and over.

The Green River Killer also used the same sites over and over.

They had something in common.

Bundy considered his body dump sites to be sacred, like a church for him.

Once he had taken a victim and murdered her,

he possessed her, she belonged to him.

He assumed the Green River Killer was doing something similar.

[♪ dark music playing]

Recently, I thought about wherever we went camping,

if Ted and I ever went to these places that he committed his crimes,

and could-- Very possible.

I'm sure that it's always in the front of his mind.

[♪ dark, eerie music playing]

And he probably thought about it 24/7.

That day I was just thinking, "Well, I'm just gonna hitchhike

and I'm gonna get home, and everything's gonna be fine."

Little did I know it was gonna be my worst nightmare.

I looked inside and saw him, and I still remember his face.

My name is Rebecca Garde.

I am the only survivor of the Green River Killer.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[♪ tense music playing]

[reporter] One skeleton was found here on Saturday,

two more on Sunday,

and at about 10:30 this morning, it happened again.

They need somebody in the general public to come forward

with that one clue, that one break.

[phone ringing]

[Rebecca Garde] They were asking for the public's help.

I had finally got the courage to talk to the police

about what happened to me.

[officer 1] Rebecca, the reason that we are here today

is in regard to an assault

that you reported to the King County police in 1984.

The assault took place in November of 1982. Is that accurate?

[Garde] Yes.

[♪ tense music playing]

I had just got off work.

I thought I could get home faster by hitchhiking,

so I stuck my thumb out and immediately got a ride.

He pulled up and he looked at me really strange.

I remember those eyes, those beady little eyes.

[♪ tense music playing]

And so I got in the car.

I was making an exchange for a sex act,

and he gave me the $20.

I thought this was gonna be something simple and quick

and he would give me a ride home afterwards,

and everything would be forgotten.

He drove way, way in the back in the woods.

I didn't usually go that far.

Everything was going fine until he started strangling me.

I tried my hardest to breathe.

He had covered my mouth and was strangling my neck.

His face looked white, clammy, cold.

Everything was cold.

[officer 2] When you engaged in the act, did he have an erection?

[Garde] No. Kinda made me think

that he probably would've tried to have intercourse if I was dead.

I was able to bite him and that threw him off.

I ran down the hill as fast as I could, and kept running.

I didn't tell anybody for a long time.

And finally, I got the courage to call the task force.

I gave them all the information that I had.

I had picked out his photo.

[officer 1] Is that the man that assaulted you in 198--

[Garde] That is the man.

[officer 1] There's no doubt in your mind about that?

[Garde] No doubt.

[officer 2] Would you be willing to assist in the prosecution

of this individual for the assault on you?

[Garde] Yes, I will.

Because there could be another person that he does this to.

It seemed to me like they weren't working on this case.

I was considered to be a prostitute

and that's mainly why it wasn't pursued.

There was a lot of anger that perhaps because of our victims,

the majority have had ties to prostitution,

that we didn't care as much.

Having spoken with so many of the detectives on the task force,

that was never the case.

[Richard Kraske] One time, I went to the council

to ask for more money for the investigation.

And one councilman says,

"Well, they're just a bunch of hookers, aren't they?"

That was his attitude.

And I said, "Well, you know, they're also human beings too, so..."

And that really made me mad.

[♪ dark, ominous music playing]

[Keppel] The task force was under constant pressure,

but despite our best efforts, the body count kept rising.

[newscaster 1] Three other women have been added to the Green River missing list.

[newscaster 2] Police say the victims are similar: runaways, very young, disturbed.

I never thought the day that she--

[voice breaking] when she left, that I wouldn't see her again.

[sniffles]

[Keppel] In June 1983,

16-year-old runaway Tammie Liles went missing.

[♪ somber music playing]

[Jenny Berg] She was young, you know?

She just wanted to do what she wanted to do, you know?

And our parents-- we went to church on Sundays and we had curfews,

and I think she was just at that age

she wanted to hang out with friends instead.

-No. -[siblings laughing]

But they couldn't keep her at the house, either.

You know, it's not just our family.

Other family members are going through the same thing we are.

[Jenny Graham] There were a lot of people that didn't understand

that when you pick up the paper and you look at that picture,

that there's a story beneath that photograph.

So many people didn't know what that story was.

[camera clicks]

The last time I saw Debbie, she had run away, again.

The street corner

that he picked her up

was maybe two minutes away from where I was that day.

I was the last one to see her.

Debbie was just like any normal kid, doing homework, and playing with friends,

and she absolutely loved horses.

But when you're in an abusive situation,

you see that animals can be used to control.

Meaning, "I'll get you the horse, we'll do this."

And then her biological father did whatever it was he was doing.

Yes.

Sorry, it's-- it's hard now even to talk about.

They don't call...

raping children "soul murder" for-- for nothing.

In 1982, I got notification that Debbie had been put

on the Green River missing list, at that point.

It is quite different if you have a loved one that passed away

and are able to give them a decent burial.

You are able to mourn them.

You are able to have some resolution and finality in your life.

That is different than somebody that you love, missing.

[reporter] Facing charges they have not done enough to find the killer,

and under attack by angry and frightened residents,

police say they have their own frustration.

[protesters chanting indistinctly]

[Keppel] As horrifying as it was for the public,

it weighed even more heavily on us,

investigators trying to put an end to the murder spree.

But no matter what we did,

the Green River Killer was always one step ahead of us.

[newscaster] Another victim was added to the list

of young women murdered by the Green River Killer.

That list now has 28 names on it.

I looked at it and we figured it was a hip bone off of a person.

[♪ dark music playing]

[reporter] Police were combing this wooded area

after a motorcyclist found

the badly decomposed nude body of a woman Saturday night.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[Keppel] From 1982 to 1984, the Green River Killer was a busy man,

preying on prostitutes in the Seattle area.

We suspected him in the deaths and disappearances

of more than 40 young women.

There were so many women who we both knew were dead and or were missing.

And for it not to be solved was really kind of a blemish

on our local law enforcement and on the community,

because you just have years and years of unanswered questions.

[protesters] ...five, six, seven, eight, stop the murders! Stop the rape!

Whoever they marching against, murdered my daughter.

And I'm very bitter.

I think if it would've been a policeman's daughter,

they would've had that guy a long time ago.

[reporter] In the task force headquarters,

someone is almost constantly on the phone following up on a lead.

I know that this took an emotional toll on these detectives as human beings.

Knowing this killer is killing children and young women,

and we just don't seem to be able to catch him.

[Kraske] It was horrible.

My role was the major in charge of the whole investigation.

I was on it from 1982 to the end of 1984.

I ended up in the hospital.

It was the stress that caused it.

That kind of a case, I don't know, I just, uh...

To this day, it lingers in the back of my mind

about some of the stuff that went on.

[reporter] Officers have sent more than 800 pieces of evidence

to the state crime lab

and have taken calls from the public on more than 1,000 suspects.

We didn't have databases, we didn't have the internet.

You literally have to track down, on a piece of paper, every single tip

and then try to run it down.

It's incredibly labor-intensive.

We had people call in with tips about the Green River.

It was so overwhelming, we had to shut the phones down.

[Keppel] We were desperate to solve the Green River cases,

just like our Ted investigation

of those eight missing women in Washington, 10 years earlier.

Bundy was no psychic, but he did identify a weakness he saw in the Riverman.

[♪ ominous music playing]

Serial killers, they read the papers, they watch the news.

They're interested in staying a couple steps ahead of law enforcement.

The Green River Killer case had a great deal of attention.

[Patty Eakes] It was huge, it got a lot of publicity,

but it also brought a flood of information so it's both a blessing and a curse.

[reporter] Every time somebody does a news story

about the Green River murders,

the number of calls jumps back up.

[Keppel] One of those calls was a promising tip.

Finally, we had what looked like a real suspect.

Did you kill all those women or what?

[♪ tense music playing]

Undercover officers have been keeping a 24-hour watch on one of the suspects.

Police consider him a prime suspect because he failed a polygraph test.

[♪ tense music playing]

[officer] Would you describe the telephone call

that you received from Ted Bundy?

[witness] He-- he told me that he was sick

and that he was consumed by something that he didn't understand.

He just couldn't contain it.

[Rich Bundy] Looked like he was gonna throw up,

like he was looking at something really troubling and disgusting.

He felt it coming on.

He wanted to go rape and murder somebody.

[♪ dramatic music playing]