Original subtitles

♪♪

What's the right way for Ted Bundy to behave

to make sure that people get the right impression?

Am I going to jump on the table? Am I going to scream?

That's what I felt like doing, but I kept it together

because there's no point in destroying myself.

I have got to keep myself together.

I have got to stay calm.

I have got to keep my presence of mind,

and that's the way I feel.

♪♪

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

In the winter of 1974,

women from the Pacific Northwest began to disappear.

At first, the cases seemed random,

but soon, a pattern emerged.

The missing women were all beautiful, young, and white.

Families hoped for the best,

but when the girls' remains were eventually discovered,

authorities knew there was a killer on the loose.

Among the thousands of tips,

an unlikely suspect came into view --

a handsome, well-liked,

and respected law student named Ted Bundy,

and soon, the world would know his chilling story.

This is how it really happened.

♪♪

Women started going missing...

♪♪

...in intervals of about once a month.

♪♪

They seemed to vanish without a trace.

♪♪

McChesney: That was very frightening

for women in the area at the time

because there wasn't any sense to what was going on.

♪♪

When you're 18, you don't want to imagine the unimaginable.

♪♪

Zimmerman: My sister Sue...

[ Chuckles ]

She was a blonde, blue-eyed, pretty girl.

She had a great smile.

Winters: 5'2", 104 pounds, she was a little thing,

but she was so bubbly and loving.

She had such an inquisitive mind.

A bookworm, but she loved people.

I first met Sue in sixth or seventh grade.

We were cheerleaders together.

You could tell her anything.

If you were down, she was there to make you happy.

Somebody that would be on your side

if things weren't going your way.

She was so happy and excited to be going to college.

Good: We were ready to just get going,

see what life was about and what it had to offer.

Winters: She was where she wanted to be,

and she was doing wonderful at school.

She had made friends.

Her grades were exceptional.

Good: We would write letters back and forth.

The last letter that she wrote me

was that she had met someone new,

and she was very excited.

That was the last time I heard from her.

♪♪

Zimmerman: Sue's roommate called and said,

"Sue didn't come home last night."

I said, "What do you mean she didn't come home?"

♪♪

The night that she disappeared, she had gone across campus

to a meeting for next year's dorm monitors.

She had put her clothes in the dryer,

and she never came back.

Harper: Susan Rancourt, a straight-A biology major,

didn't show up to meet some friends for a movie.

She was gone, and we don't know what happened.

And they started searching that night.

Good: Having a dear friend, who was as sweet as could be,

go missing and possibly have harm come to her

is something you don't even really want to think about.

Harper: There was an extensive search by local police for days,

but very few leads, no sign of Susan.

Missing-persons posters yielded no information.

Susan had simply disappeared.

Al Pickles, the chief of police, worked with us every day.

Chief Pickles searched the dorms from top to bottom.

♪♪

He had notified other colleges in Washington State

and nearby Oregon and Idaho.

Then Chief Pickles started hearing of

another girl missing here and one missing there,

and he really started digging into it

to see what was going on.

Reporter: Lynda Ann Healy,

a 21-year-old University of Washington student,

disappeared from her Seattle apartment in January of 1974.

She went to the University of Washington.

She had an announcing job at a radio station in Seattle.

McChesney: She was on the radio every morning,

doing the ski report five days a week.

When she did not come on the news and do her ski report,

people noticed that she was gone.

Sullivan: And then on March 12th,

Donna Manson disappeared

from Evergreen State College in Olympia.

She was walking across campus one minute,

the next minute, she's gone.

There just was a kind of eerie erasure of these women.

♪♪

Harper: May 6th, the scene was repeated,

this time miles south

at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Kathy Parks disappeared while walking on campus that night.

No trace was found.

Three weeks later, the night of May 31st,

22-year-old Brenda Ball left this Burien tavern and vanished.

Keppel: Brenda Ball, we knew that she lived close by

to the tavern that she was missing from.

Basically, we had no witnesses.

Nobody saw her with anybody.

Then you had Georgann Hawkins disappear.

Harper: The night of June 10th, 18-year-old Georgann Hawkins

left a fraternity to make this walk,

just 90 feet down a well-lit alley,

back to her sorority at the University of Washington.

Georgann was never seen again.

Sullivan: She's gone.

The state of anxiety in Washington can't be overstated.

Meixner: This guy came up to me

and asked me to help him put his sailboat onto his car.

Lake Sammamish would change everything.

♪♪

Reporter: A wave of fear swept all across

the state of Washington from January to July of 1974,

when someone was abducting young women.

It was difficult to connect the dots

when you're talking about young women,

similar age, somewhat similar description...

Young, pretty, white females, dark-haired,

typically parted down the middle.

McChesney: ...who go missing with no -- virtually no clues.

It was very important to us to try and determine

whether or not there was any connection among the cases.

Keppel: We didn't have anything coming our way.

We had the fact that they were missing

and the date and time that they were missing, about,

but nothing to help us with the investigation.

There weren't suspicious circumstances.

No one had seen these women be abducted or in harm's way.

Then in July of 1974,

King County police started investigating two cases

involving women who had gone missing

from Lake Sammamish State Park.

Lake Sammamish would change everything.

♪♪

There were different events going on at Lake Sammamish park,

and thousands of people there with their families.

The first person at the park that was missing was Janice Ott.

♪♪

She was seen on the beach in her bikini,

talking to a guy, and they walked together.

And she wheeled her bicycle

back toward the parking lot where his car was parked,

and that's the last that she was seen.

And then Denise Naslund was on the beach,

and she had to use the restroom.

So she walked back toward the restroom

and was never seen again.

Reporter: 19-year-old Denise Naslund

and 23-year-old Janice Ott

disappeared on a warm summer day at Lake Sammamish.

Police launched a massive search of the park,

though there was no sign of the women.

Once the news media broadcast information

about these two women going missing,

witnesses came forward, and the witnesses indicated

that there were suspicious things.

Authorities didn't know it at the time,

but a girl who was only 15 years old

that would prove to be the key eyewitness.

Meixner: The news came on,

and the news anchor held up two pictures of two women

and started out by saying,

"There's two missing women from Lake Sammamish."

And I looked at one of the pictures,

and it was Janice Ott.

And I really felt like I had a knot in my throat,

and I remember turning to my dad.

I said, "That girl was laying next to me on the beach,

and she left with this guy."

He said,

"Well, I'm going to have to call the police department."

♪♪

The very next day,

Detective Keppel came to the house,

and I explained the whole story to him.

She turned out to be a pretty good witness.

♪♪

Meixner: It was an absolute beautiful day.

I'd say by noon,

it was literally wall-to-wall people on the beach.

Sylvia told Detective Keppel that a smooth-talking stranger

had come up to her and asked her for help.

Meixner: This guy came up.

He was kind of tall, very tanned, very good-looking.

He came up to me and asked me

to help him put his sailboat onto his car,

and I remember looking at him.

And I told him, I says,

"You know, two of my girlfriends are up at the concession stand,

and if I was gone, they would be really worried."

Then this girl laying next to me sat up,

and he asked her the exact same thing, and she says,

"Well, I could probably help you with that,"

and she got up.

She got dressed.

As she was picking up her towel, she says, "Hi, my name's Jan,"

and he said, "Hi, I'm Ted."

He said, "My name's Ted,"

so that's the first time we had a name.

Meixner: And he asked me if I could give a description.

♪♪

The individual was probably about 5'10",

with light-brown hair, somewhat curly or wavy.

♪♪

Keppel: Mid-20s, possibly a university student,

dressed in white t-shirt, white shorts,

white tennis shoes, white socks.

McChesney: And he was wearing a sling,

some sort of sling device on his arm,

so that was the composite.

♪♪

Reporter: Witnesses told of a smooth-talking,

good-looking young man named Ted,

who had been seen talking with them.

Police released a composite drawing and description of Ted.

The newspaper put the composite out,

and I think the headline was,

"Is this the Ted that took the girls?"

For two women, the composite sketch of Ted

hit a little too close to home.

Chino: My friend threw the picture on the table,

the composite,

and she said to me, "Who do you think that is?"

I said, "Well, it's Ted. Why?"

And then she burst into tears because that looked a lot like

her boyfriend, Ted Bundy -- a lot like him.

♪♪

A lot of people trying to pin a lot of stuff on somebody

because, you know, it's convenient.

She went to the authorities.

I think she wanted to make sure he wasn't the one.

Kendall: In my own mind, there was similarities

or coincidences that seemed to tie him in, but yet,

when I would think about our day-to-day relationship,

there was nothing there that would lead me to think

that he was a violent man.

Woman: Have you ever physically harmed anyone?

Ever physically harmed anyone?

No.

♪♪

♪♪

Jordan: In July of 1974,

eight young women had gone missing,

and panic was rising because it became clear

that they had not gone of their own volition.

They had been taken.

Authorities had very little to go on,

other than a few eyewitness accounts

of a man who had been in the area.

His name was Ted, and he was last seen with one of the women

who had gone missing at Lake Sammamish.

And from that point on, it was like heightened alert.

We didn't have any physical evidence to go by.

We had missing persons for months and no remains.

Sullivan: Before the first dump site was found,

they didn't have any evidence at all.

♪♪

McChesney: The first remains were found

just a few miles from Lake Sammamish state park.

Reporter: Police made the grisly recovery of several bodies,

badly beaten, sometimes strangled.

The skeletal remains of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund

were found on a hillside.

She was like a ray of sunshine in my life,

and she brought me so much happiness.

And I don't believe I'll ever be the same again.

♪♪

McChesney: The hunters came across bones.

You didn't have an entire skeleton.

You had just pieces, making it very difficult.

Keppel: Well, you could see in the skulls that were found

that there were fracture marks, so that led us to believe

that they were probably struck in the head.

Reporter: The bodies of four more young women were found.

All of them had been strangled or bludgeoned

by this brutal killer.

Reporter 2: Lynda Ann Healy --

her body was found on a mountain 18 miles from Seattle,

along with the bodies of several other missing women,

including 18-year-old Susan Rancourt.

Good: They found her body in the mountains.

They couldn't identify her except by her dental records.

That's horrific.

When somebody is missing, you imagine the worst things,

and it turns out what happened to her

might have been worse than what we imagined.

♪♪

McChesney: There were just very few leads, very few clues.

It was not easy.

♪♪

Keppel: There just wasn't any of the traditional things

you would find at a murder scene.

Clothing -- where was that,

and where in the world was the rest of the remains?

We didn't have that, either.

Only had bones.

We still could not find evidence leading us to the offender.

Sullivan: Lake Sammamish, with all those people there,

they were telling the public,

"Please, send all your photographs

of the crowds to us, please."

And they did, and they never got a photo with him in it.

They got a photo with what they believed might be his car.

McChesney: The witnesses that we had

saw Ted leaving with Janice or with Denise

and saw him heading towards this Volkswagen.

Unfortunately, there was no license plate that we had.

It was just a description of a car,

and there were literally hundreds of Volkswagen beetles

in the state of Washington at the time.

They were not in good shape.

Here's what they knew about the abductor --

people sitting around Janice,

they said this guy identified himself as Ted.

They had a description,

from which composite drawings came forth,

and they knew this person drove a Volkswagen.

We received literally thousands of tips,

and interestingly, Ted Bundy was among them.

♪♪

Reporter: Police released a composite drawing

and description of Ted,

and within weeks, through an anonymous call,

the name of Tacoma native Ted Bundy

was added to a file of more than 3,000 suspects

being investigated by the police task force.

Winn: People teased him at the office and said,

"Say, your name is Ted, and you've got a Volkswagen,"

and of course, they were teasing and laughing about it

because he was the boy next door.

He was handsome. He was charming.

He had political aspirations.

♪♪

Jordan: Ted Bundy had been in the press before,

but not for anything bad.

It was because he had been a rising star

in the local political community,

and he even made headlines in 1973

for catching a purse-snatcher.

He also happened to look a lot like the composite sketch,

and he drove a Volkswagen.

And the similarities were enough to make his friends wonder.

One of the articles in the paper

said that he drove a bronze Volkswagen.

We went to a pay phone, and I called and asked them,

for sure, it was bronze, and they said yes.

And that was a relief because Ted's Volkswagen was tan.

Jordan: Marylynne met Ted in 1969 at the Sandpiper Inn.

It was a tavern in Seattle,

and they soon became fast friends

because he was dating her best friend, Liz Kendall.

Chino: We did lots of things together.

There was kind of the three of us.

I came and went along for the ride, you know.

I feel good about myself. I'm happy with myself.

And they know that I didn't do these things.

♪♪

Ted was born in a home for unwed mothers in Vermont in 1946.

Bundy's mother -- she was a single mother,

and shortly after that, she moved as far away

as she could, moved to the west coast.

She met and married a man named Johnny Bundy,

who was a cook in an Army hospital.

Johnny was very self-effacing

and did not make a distinct impression.

Louise did.

Ted looked exactly like his mother.

Ted being the oldest and, you might say, my pride and joy,

our relationship was always very special.

A very normal, active boy.

He did all the things that most boys like to do.

Carlisle: He graduated high school, '65,

with about a B,

and he started fall, University of Puget Sound.

Chino: He was smart, and I think --

and he always got good grades.

We had wonderful discussions.

You know, I loved talking to Ted

because he's great, talks about politics,

very well-read, very analytical, all that kind of stuff.

Oh, yeah, you would have liked him.

He had a Bachelor's degree in psychology.

He had worked in some campaigns.

People liked him.

He had pretty good street cred

in some pretty legitimate circles.

Ann Rule, who later wrote a book about Ted,

had worked with him on a suicide-prevention line.

She was impressed with him.

Rule: Ted was my partner at the crisis clinic

for a little over a year, and I liked him.

He was so good on the phones.

He'd walk me to my car and say, "Ann, lock your doors

because I don't want anything to happen to you on the way home."

♪♪

Lots of people in the political world thought he had a future.

He'd worked for governor Dan Evans

in his re-election campaign.

He was a very nice guy, and like a lot of young people,

you're building a, you know, a group to go out and campaign

and help for a variety of things.

And he was one of those people.

Chino: When Dan Evans was elected,

he and my friend went to the governor's ball,

and I recall her saying, "I felt like I was in a dream

because we danced -- you know, the governor and his wife

danced the first, and then we danced.

The dream, yeah, it was wonderful."

Sullivan: He had a lot of influential people

that liked him and believed in him.

He enrolled in the University of Utah school of law.

He was making a name for himself.

It can't be.

It can't be our Ted because we know him.

Reporter: Ted Bundy, a rising star

in the state Republican Party,

was not considered a prime suspect.

Those Washington cases remain open.

♪♪

Jordan: By September of 1974,

the murders in Washington State had stopped,

but a little over 800 miles away,

near Salt Lake City, Utah, women began going missing.

And this was very near where Ted Bundy attended law school.

A highway patrolman saw the vehicle,

thought it was suspicious.

He searches his car.

He finds a ski mask and some rope

and an ice pick and a pair of handcuffs.

Jordan: And it all began to come together.

♪♪

I have the greatest amount of confidence

that at least in the preparation stage,

that my ideas will work.

Welcome back to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

In 1975, terror and panic gripped the nation

after eight missing women

had been found brutally murdered in Washington state.

Detectives had a suspect, Ted Bundy,

but had no evidence tying him to the crimes.

Then women began going missing near Salt Lake City, Utah,

close to where Bundy was attending law school,

and authorities began to wonder,

"Could this be the work of the same man?"

♪♪

Here in the west, there are still unanswered questions

in a number of murder cases.

The unsolved crimes frustrate police.

Packer: I was working late at KSL,

and the front desk called up to the newsroom and said,

"There's a police chief here

that wants to talk to a reporter."

It was Chief Louis Smith with the Midvale police.

He had a photo with him and said,

"This is my daughter Melissa,

and I think she's been abducted."

I want to know

that the young girls are safe on the street.

I don't want another parent to go through

what my wife and I went through.

I don't -- I don't think that's right.

Reporter: Melissa left her father

on the night of October 18, 1974,

to meet a friend at this Midvale restaurant.

They talked for a while, and then Melissa left --

she said for home, but she never got there.

Sullivan: She walked home.

It wasn't well-lighted, and a lady --

she hears a single scream pierce the night air.

♪♪

Jordan: Three weeks later,

Debby Kent went missing from a school auditorium

when she left a school play early.

Reporter: Debby was attending a play with her family

at Viewmont High School on the night of November 8, 1974.

She left the play early to pick up her brother at an ice rink.

And the mom said, you know, "Be careful.

Hurry back, Deb," and she got up

and she walked out the doors on the western side.

Reporter: We're at the Kent home in Bountiful right now.

What you're looking at is the porch light

that's been left on for Debby,

a beacon of light, a symbol of hope.

♪♪

Jordan: By year's end, four Utah women would be missing

and feared dead,

and just like in the state of Washington,

detectives were really just hankering for clues

as to who could be responsible for all of these missing women.

But then, police caught a break

in the form of a young woman named Carol DaRonch,

who came to them with an almost unbelievable story

of escaping the horror of being kidnapped

by a really good-looking man who drove a Volkswagen,

and that story would be key to solving this case.

♪♪

She was at a mall. He approaches her.

Carlisle: He went up and he says, "I'm a police officer,

and I think someone's broken into your car.

Do you have a Camaro?"

And she says yes,

and he says, "Would you come with me?"

"You can come with me in, you know, my car."

So she sees this ratty little Volkswagen.

♪♪

Carlisle: He gets her in his Volkswagen.

He's driving off, gets a few blocks away.

Sullivan: He pulled his Volkswagen over,

and within a second of having stopped the vehicle,

he attacked her.

Carlisle: He tries to slap the handcuffs on her.

He had gotten the handcuff on one arm,

was trying to get the handcuff on the other wrist,

missed it, got it on the same arm.

Well, she knew if she was going to survive

that she had to get out of that car.

She got out.

He got out of the vehicle, tried to chase her,

but there were headlights coming towards them.

He just knew couldn't stay there.

He got back in his car and left.

Jordan: Carol DaRonch told her story to the police,

and now they had insight into the suspect's M.O.

He would try to lure women into his car,

and they would never be seen again.

This began to match

what the Washington state police were hearing,

and it all began to come together.

He was very big on using the ruse of a helpless person.

At Lake Sammamish, he had an arm cast.

Carlisle: He said to the girls, "Could you please come

and help me load a sailboat on my car?"

Good: Calling them over to a car for a helping hand,

which you would normally go ahead and do,

if you were trusting.

Sullivan: At Central Washington State College,

where he abducted Susan Rancourt,

he did a similar thing.

♪♪

Two young women at Sue's college

had been approached by him before Sue.

One of the young ladies carried his books to the car.

♪♪

Carlisle: When he would get them in his vehicle,

he would try to knock them out at that point,

then molest them, kill them,

or kill them and rape them after.

Those people would never, you know, be seen again.

Sue -- she wasn't out looking for trouble when she was taken.

He asked for help, and she would have helped him.

Being helpful was her downfall.

♪♪

Jordan: So now they had an M.O., but no person of interest.

and it would be the work of an astute highway patrolman

who would finally bring this depraved suspect into the light.

♪♪

Carlisle: It was late at night, about 2:00 in the morning,

and he had stopped at this little residential area.

What happened is a highway patrolman saw his --

the vehicle, thought it was suspicious,

pulled him over.

Bundy: It was early in the morning.

I exited my car, and the officer, Hayward,

had left his car and approached me.

♪♪

Carlisle: He searches his car.

He finds a ski mask and some rope

and an ice pick and a pair of handcuffs.

They knew that somebody was out there that was,

you know, driving a Volkswagen,

that this Carol DaRonch escaped from,

and with the handcuffs, and said,

"Oh, I have to check into this guy."

♪♪

Jordan: The man now in custody was Ted Bundy.

Reporter: In October of '75, Ted Bundy was identified

in a police lineup after being arrested

on kidnapping charges in Salt Lake City.

Winn: He was a law student.

He was a kind of a rising star,

so the idea that somebody like this

was the possible perpetrator, it's impossible.

Munro: When it was first identified

that it might be Ted Bundy, it was just total disbelief.

None of us that had any remote connection with Ted

could possibly believe it, and yet, as time went by,

we realized there was more truth than there was suspicion.

♪♪

Complete and utter shock. We still don't believe it.

It just can't be.

Our son is the best son in the world.

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

and I don't like my liberty taken away.

Yes, I feel that I'm right,

and yes, I feel I'm going to make it, no doubt in my mind.

♪♪

I am going to do my best

to keep in touch with friends and family who have been so kind

and been so good in writing and praying for me.

I'm thankful for that.

♪♪

Jordan: In October of 1975, Ted Bundy was charged

with the aggravated kidnapping of Carol DaRonch,

the young woman he had tried to handcuff

inside of his Volkswagen.

While investigators were building the case,

Ted's friends and family were in complete disbelief.

The first reports were when he was arrested in Salt Lake City.

It was quite a shock when we realized,

in fact, it was the same Ted Bundy.

The Ted Bundy we knew was not a violent person.

♪♪

On the other hand, there were some people whom we interviewed

who knew Ted that put all the things together

and said, "You know, he was one strange duck."

They just thought there was something odd about him.

Sullivan: There was a professor.

He called Keppel's people one day.

He said, "I got a weird guy in my class.

His name is Ted. He drives a 1968 Volkswagen.

I think you ought to check him out."

It wasn't just his behavior that was seemingly odd.

It was his ever-changing appearance.

Chino: I remember distinctly when they did him in a lineup --

and Ted had longer hair, curly.

Well, when he went up to do the lineup,

he'd cut his hair very short so he'd look like everybody else.

Winn: It was not only cut,

but it was parted on the other side,

which would create this kind of different symmetry of the face.

He looked like a chameleon.

He was very much different each time somebody saw him.

Chino: I guess when I started putting things together,

I had spoken to my father here in Utah

because I was getting worried, and his words were,

"Marylynne, if he's the one, he'll do it again."

Winn: Once he was arrested and his name became associated

and the cops started speaking to each other,

people by then were convinced

that Bundy had committed these crimes in Washington.

McChesney: People had reported that they thought

he looked like the composite.

He had a Volkswagen bug.

He had left the area in 1974, after Lake Sammamish,

and gone to Utah, so that was a clue

also because the killings, abductions, missing-people cases

had stopped around the time he left the state.

I mean, he fit all the parameters.

Sullivan: And everybody's scales fell off their eyes at once,

and it was simply, "This is the guy.

It's Bundy. We just now have to prove it."

I am not guilty.

[ Laughs ]

Does that -- does that include the time

I stole a comic book when I was 5 years old?

I am not guilty of the charges which are filed against me.

Despite the fact that he was a suspect in multiple murders,

Ted was actually legally

just facing one count of aggravated kidnapping,

and he was given the possibility of bail.

And he posted bail and returned to Washington state

before his trial in Utah.

Ted was allowed to come back for the Christmas holiday.

Ted knew that people were watching him,

and he was infamous, really, at that point.

His visit put both authorities

and his girlfriend's best friend, Marylynne, on edge,

especially when Marylynne found herself

in Ted's company at Liz's house,

and then alone with him in his car.

Chino: I know by now that they're investigating him,

and I remember we were over at her house having dinner.

And I had to go home, and she said,

"Come on, I'll take you home,"

and Ted jumps in, "No, let me take her.

Let me take her," and he ended up taking me home.

I could have gotten an Academy Award

for the performance I put in in that car

because I just talked to him like things were normal.

I didn't want to be around him.

♪♪

Jordan: In the new year, Ted returned to Utah

to face the trial

for the aggravated kidnapping of Carol DaRonch.

A former law student, he had a lot of confidence,

and he decided he was going to help defend himself.

Bundy: Putting yourself in the position

of being your own counsel, it's that positive psychology.

You're going to do it.

You're going to do it because you're right.

Obviously, I'm going to bear the consequences,

so why not bear the responsibility?

I covered the trial from beginning to end.

They had a good case against him for the kidnapping,

not a really great case.

There wasn't a lot of evidence.

They found a head hair of Carol DaRonch in his car.

There was the eyewitness accounts of Carol.

She was obviously the key witness in the case,

but she wasn't the best witness

because her story was not really consistent.

At one point, she said, "Well, I don't know if the police badge

that he showed me was silver or gold."

These are minor details.

She was adamant that he was the man.

♪♪

This person is walking towards me

and has a smile on his face.

He says, "I'm Ted Bundy."

I noticed a long time ago,

it ceased to be an issue whether or not I was innocent or guilty.

The issue now is can we pin it on him?

♪♪

Every citizen who believes in law and order

should spend a couple weeks there and learn how it works.

Carlisle: Everybody knew about Ted Bundy.

He had attempted to kidnap Carol DaRonch, and she got away.

♪♪

Jordan: On March 1, 1976,

Ted Bundy was found guilty of aggravated kidnapping.

[ Chuckles ] It's an emotional time.

I don't even like to think of that day,

but I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction

of seeing me break down.

Jordan: Ted was then sent to Utah state prison

for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation

before his sentencing,

and the psychologist would be charged with the task

of determining whether this event

was just a one-time thing

or whether he was a predator who should be locked up forever.

♪♪

Carlisle: I was a psychologist at the prison,

and this person is walking towards me

and a smile on his face,

and he extends out his hand and he says, "I'm Ted Bundy.

You must be Dr. Carlisle."

He had the ability to make a very good impression.

He looked good. He smiled.

He seemed confident.

He seemed happy.

He gave me the Ted Bundy he wanted me to know.

Jordan: Over the next 90 days,

Dr. Carlisle would delve into Ted's psyche

by trying to cover every aspect of his life,

from his early childhood up into his teenage years,

when he became a prolific consumer of pornography.

♪♪

Ted is lonely, and he's just not fitting in.

He would just sort of withdraw,

and being lonely and not fitting in,

you have to get your satisfaction somewhere.

He withdrew into a quiet fantasy life,

but then, his behavior would begin to escalate.

Carlisle: He was getting interested

in window-peeking and pornography,

and he's feeling a sense of control, a sense of power.

So they rely upon it more and more and more.

♪♪

Dr. Carlisle focused a lot

on Ted's relationships with women,

but one woman in particular.

Her name was Marjorie, and she, by all accounts,

was Ted's dream girl.

She was very intelligent.

She was outgoing.

She had worked part-time as a model,

and her father was vice president

of an international company.

So this was everything he wanted.

She had money. She had prestige.

Ted felt like he'd been, you know,

left outside of that circle of privilege and pursued her.

Carlisle: They'd communicate back and forth,

and then she told him, "I just want to be friends."

A lot of experts believe

that Ted Bundy had a huge issue with rejection,

and that that rejection, the breakup with Marjorie,

was a watershed event that he would never get over.

He's very disappointed.

It's as though Marge was the last-ditch attempt

to get control over his wild life,

and so the dark side then just sort of shifts in.

Based on all the evidence that Dr. Carlisle

was able to gather from his interviews with Ted

and all of his friends and family,

he came to the conclusion that Ted Bundy was, indeed,

a very violent man

and that he was most likely responsible

for all of these crimes that he was being considered for.

Carlisle: After we finished, he says, "Al, do you think

I really killed those girls that they claim I did?"

And part of me wanted to say, "Yes, I have no doubt about it,"

but what I said was, "I don't know for sure,

but I think if you did, you'll likely do it again."

And at that point, he didn't say anything.

He just walked off down the hall, went back to his cell.

♪♪

As each day went on,

there was more information that came in about Ted.

Reporter: Eyewitness reports fitted with Bundy's description.

There was also physical evidence in Bundy's car.

Packer: They had seized the Volkswagen

and vacuumed the inside for evidence.

There were, I believe, pubic hair of other women,

young women, in the car, which would have been the first

really strong sort of smoking-gun link

to link him to these other killings.

Ted's not the person we thought he was.

They've got real evidence against him.

Being in prison, going through a kind of hell,

matures a person, and I --

and I think it's done good things for me.

My only misgiving is that I might never be --

might never be in a position to apply it,

you know, on the streets, where I'd like to apply it.

He was looking for avenues of escape.

Reporter: Bundy, who had been awaiting trial,

escaped on December 31, 1977.

Jordan: Ted Bundy was gone,

and the authorities did not know where he went.

Reporter: Roadblocks were set up

within 15 minutes of Bundy's escape.

So far, these road blocks have turned up no sign of Ted Bundy.

Theodore Bundy is now one of the FBI's most wanted men.

♪♪

After being convicted of aggravated kidnapping,

Ted Bundy was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in a Utah prison,

but he wouldn't remain behind bars for very long.

His story and his reign of terror were far from over,

next time on "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.