Original subtitles

♪♪

I'm satisfied with my blanket statement that I'm innocent.

No man is truly innocent.

I mean, we all have transgressed in some way in our lives, and as

I say, I've been impolite and there are things I

regret having done in my life,

but nothing like the things I think the jury are referring to.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

In 1980, the name Ted Bundy was one of the most recognized

in America, but for all the wrong reasons.

The charismatic former law student was facing

the electric chair for the brutal murders

of two sorority sisters and a 12-year-old girl in Florida.

Bundy was also suspected in dozens of additional murders

across the country, but always maintained his innocence.

Now in a fight to save his own life,

Bundy launched a series of appeals from death row.

Would it work?

Here's how it really happened.

♪♪

WOMAN: A wave of fear swept all across the state of Washington

from January to July of 1974

when someone was abducting young women.

Witnesses told of a smooth-talking, good-looking

young man named Ted, who'd been seen talking with them.

Police released a composite drawing and description of Ted.

The newspaper put the composite out and 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.

There was nothing that would lead me to think

that he was a violent man.

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

Bundy's mother, she was a single 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.

MAN: Theodore Robert Bundy at age 25,

a Republican campaign worker in Seattle;

at 28, a University of Utah law student.

SULLIVAN: Bundy was someone who was surging ahead in life,

seemed to have a lot going for him.

His friends would even say,

"Now, there's somebody that's going to make a mark in life."

They were right about that,

but not in the way that they thought.

MAN: Theodore Bundy was convicted of murder in the 1978 killings

of two sorority sisters and a 12-year-old girl.

The FBI says he is a suspect in the sex-related murders

or disappearance of more than 30 other women in four states

between 1974 and 1978.

People have said he was evil.

I think he was just a savage, feral, wild monster

that that was loose on humankind.

MAN: Lynda Ann Healy, 19-year-old Donna Manson,

Kathy Parks, 22-year-old Brenda Ball,

18-year-old Georgann Hawkins, Janice Ott,

18-year-old Denise Naslund, Susan Rancourt.

She had gone cross campus to a meeting,

and she never came back.

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

and Bundy depended on good, kind women

with good hearts helping him.

This guy came up and asked me to help him

put his sailboat onto his car.

PACKER: He looks clean cut.

You're only going to help for two or three minutes and then,

bam, you're in the car, and a couple hours later, you're dead.

♪♪

It really hit me like a ton of bricks because I knew

if I had made that wrong decision, it could have been me.

MAN: Young ladies began to disappear in Utah.

More disappearances, this time in Colorado.

SULLIVAN: He was smart.

He really was, and he did everything he could

to gain advantage over people and situations.

MAN: Prosecutors convicted Bundy not of murder,

but of attempted kidnapping and sent him to prison.

He managed to escape from jail twice.

MAN: Bundy, who had been awaiting trial for the January 12, 1975,

murder of a Michigan nurse near Aspen, Colorado, escaped

from a Colorado jail on December 31, 1977.

He's got $700 with him, that's a lot of money back then,

caught a flight to Chicago.

From Chicago, he took a train to Ann Arbor,

went through Nashville, went down to Atlanta,

took a Trailways bus to Tallahassee,

and the circus began in Florida.

MAN: Two Florida state sorority sisters were strangled to death

and three others brutally beaten with a club

the morning of January 15, 1978.

Bundy had entered through an unlocked door on the first floor

of the Chi Omega sorority house, had gone up the back stairs.

I woke up to being attacked.

There was blood everywhere.

The next thing I remember, I was in the hospital.

We were just so overwhelmed with grief.

Complete and utter shock, we -- we still don't believe it.

It just can't be.

MAN: This is no ordinary murder trial.

The case of Ted Bundy, a man suspected of murdering

two Florida state coeds and beating three others

a year and half ago, has caught the attention

of the national press.

During a court recess the defendant, Theodore Bundy,

who was partially acting as his own attorney,

examined some of the evidence.

Now he got to be his own lawyer in the most celebrated

and widely watched trial in Florida history.

He strutted and preened

and he loved to cross-examine witnesses.

BUNDY: Before I forget to ask the $64,000 question,

"Did you have a search warrant to search my car?"

No, sir.

Putting yourself in position of being your own counsel,

you're going to do it because the person you're representing

is innocent.

WOMAN: Bundy said he was hopeful and optimistic jurors

would see things his way.

They did not.

This court is hereby imposing the death penalty

upon the defendant, Theodore Robert Bundy.

BUNDY: I don't even like to think of that day.

I heard my mother crying.

It's just impossible. It's wrong.

When we was sentenced to death, my gut feeling was

he'll never hurt anyone ever again.

I don't think it will be over really for any of us

until they finally execute him.

I think I stand about as much chance of dying in front

of a firing squad or in a gas chamber as you do being killed

in a plane flight home because it's not going to happen.

MAN: Ted Bundy sits on Florida's death row convicted

of the brutal murders

of two Florida State University sorority sisters

and a 12-year-old Lake City girl.

JORDAN: After being given the death penalty twice, Ted Bundy became

a resident of death row, and then, of course,

he started his appeals process.

When the death warrant, the first one, was signed

for Ted Bundy, he had a petition pending

in the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court doesn't like

to deal with clients who represent themselves,

so I agreed to do it.

Mr. Bundy was denied a fair trial.

JORDAN: He argued that he had been denied his right

to a fair trial because of, all things, ineffective counsel.

The irony of that, of course, is that Ted Bundy acted

as his own counsel.

I mean, there must have been a kind of theatrical thrill

for him getting to play lawyer after washing out

as a law student.

He was playing lawyer, and he wasn't aware

of what the consequences were going to be.

Just let go of me.

Mr. Bundy spent a good deal of his time

essentially intoxicated.

MAN: The alcohol was found in the cans of V8 juice.

What?

CHINO: Ted was a handsome guy.

I kind of found it interesting to watch him litigate.

It was Ted, typical Ted.

The -- his movements, the way he looked.

He always would look, sort of,

like this when he was in the thing.

It was Ted, you know.

The Ted I knew, anyway.

I just think that he was egotistical

and didn't want to be wrong about anything.

BAILIFF: Please be seated. Court will come to order.

He just felt like no attorney was as good as he was.

MAN: Bundy employed as many as 14 defense attorneys,

and even represented himself at times.

His attorneys now say that representation was ineffective

and are asking for a new trial.

The ineffective counsel claim was rejected

by the higher courts, so Ted's lawyers brought a claim

of mental incompetence.

I'm not going through this, and you knew that, Your Honor.

JUDGE: Sit down.

You know how far you could push me.

MAN: His lawyers claim Bundy is mentally incompetent

and therefore, cannot be executed under Florida law.

And this was something that Ted Bundy had absolutely fought

against and rejected in his first two trials.

Because Bundy had an ego and had had some legal training,

he would not allow his defense attorneys to do that.

But now that his life was on the line,

he was willing to offer it.

COLEMAN: In fact, he didn't object, he didn't argue against it

because I think at that point, he realized that, you know,

now you can actually get executed, so, you know,

you got to decide, do you want to live

or do you want to be the star of your reality program.

Ted Bundy's behavior had become increasingly bizarre

in the Kimberly Leach trial.

Mr. Bundy spent a good deal of his time,

essentially intoxicated.

The alcohol was found in the cans of V8 juice,

resealable 16-ounce cans of V8 juice.

There were several, small containers we found out later

were mixed with vodka.

I'll be darned. I didn't know that.

During the death penalty phase of our trial,

Bundy actually did closing argument with the jury.

Ted decided to take the lead role in trying

to convince the jury to spare his life.

And so there's this great photograph,

and I have a copy of the paper from the Orlando Sentinel

with Bundy talking to the jury.

DEKLE: As he stood there with his bowtie

and he spread his arms out like this,

and he compared himself to Jesus Christ.

JORDAN: The most baffling moment was when Ted questioned

Carole Boone, and he called her as a character witness.

MAN: Carole Boone says she first met Ted Bundy five years ago

when they worked in the same office in Seattle, Washington.

Some have called her his girlfriend.

Let me put it this way.

I don't think that Ted belongs in jail.

THOMPSON: She was in contact with Ted daily.

He would give her instructions for the defense team

and we were to carry out his instructions.

She was quite forceful in making us do these things

that Ted wanted done.

She cooked up an idea that he would call her as a witness

in the penalty phase of the trial.

He used the penalty phase of the trial, when the jury is

considering whether he should be sentenced to death,

to get married.

Very well thought-out plan.

They had the blood test. They had the marriage license.

Somewhere, they recruited a notary public to come sit

in the audience and wait for Bundy

to pronounce him and Carole Boone man and wife.

I think it was pragmatic.

They needed to have a court proceeding and so this was going

to be a legally binding marriage, and the only way they

could do it was in the courtroom.

MAN: And he asked her, you know, "Do you love me?"

And she said, "Oh, yes. I do."

And he said, "I love you."

And we just, you know, were hanging on each question.

MAN: He said, "Will you marry me?"

And she said, "Yes, I will."

I hereby marry you, and we're going, "What?"

And he said, "I now pronounce us man and wife,"

and the notary public signed the marriage license, and by golly,

they were married right there in the middle of the penalty phase.

MAN: Bundy's attorneys claim that in itself should have raised

a red flag about his mental condition.

They agreed with us that there was sufficient evidence

of Bundy's incompetence that we were entitled to a hearing.

MAN: The three-judge panel issued the stay of execution

without comment.

JORDAN: For three years Ted Bundy's attorney, James Coleman,

argued his case all the way from the state appellate court to the

Supreme Court, and he succeeded in winning

three stays of execution.

But in January of 1989,

the clock ran down on the fourth death warrant.

He wanted to live.

I'm at the Florida state prison, going to interview Ted Bundy.

Ted realized that he had information

that law enforcement wanted.

That's when we received the call that he wanted to talk to us.

WOMAN: Ted Bundy, a onetime law student

who became one of the FBI's ten most wanted,

stands convicted of three murders and is still suspected

in more than 30 others.

Nearly nine years ago, Bundy made tape recordings

in his Florida jail cell for two authors who chronicled

his criminal career.

Bundy was emotional about hearing reports of his case.

MAN: Bundy has been in Florida's state prison

on death row for nearly 10 years.

He has been sentenced to death four times in old sparky,

the state's electric chair.

It was very disappointing to me that this guy had, you know,

not received a fair trial.

What's ahead for convicted murderer Theodore Bundy now

is a long appeals process.

COLEMAN: What we have to do is to prepare to litigate

in three or four courts at the same time.

I called it litigation at the speed of light.

That's what it felt like.

This is the second death warrant the governor has signed

for Ted Bundy.

We would file in the circuit court --

He's entitled to a new sentence.

-- in the Florida Supreme Court --

Ted should be dead.

I think he's been on death row a little bit too long.

-- Federal District Court.

WOMAN: A state prison van took convicted killer Ted Bundy

back to death row.

We went large and appealed in the 11th Circuit.

And then we went large and application

for a stay in the Supreme Court.

He appeared to be rational and he made arguments, but much

of what he did even at the hearing undermined his defense.

MAN: Although Bundy managed to avoid one of Governor Graham's

death warrants, another is imminent.

RUBIN: And he kept getting stays.

Different judges gave him stays for a number of years.

MAN: The U.S. Appellate court ruling marks

the second time Florida has tried to execute

Ted Bundy and the second time it's been blocked.

He represents what's worst about the system

and why you have capital punishment,

to get rid of those who engage in heinous crimes

that takes somebody else's life.

I kept thinking of Margaret and Lisa, how their lives

would have been, could have been wonderful,

and it upset me that he took that away.

It's time to end it now.

He took their life, shouldn't he give his?

I was just feeling, well -- the judges, they give him stays,

should have their daughter date him.

MAN: The life or death of convicted murderer Ted Bundy

is now in the hands of the Florida Supreme Court.

From the start of 1989, Ted Bundy and his lawyers had been

successful in three stays of execution, but the fourth death

warrant scheduled for Tuesday, January 24, 1989, was looming.

♪♪

COLEMAN: When we got the last warrant, I think that there was an enormous

pressure on the judges, especially, to not allow

this person to get out of a conviction.

MAN: Are you tired this is going on for so long?

Absolutely.

I don't think the public being fed up has anything to do

with whether we ought to pursue Constitutional claims.

That's the way the system works.

I think the end is drawing very near,

and the final chapter on Ted Bundy is about to be written.

I went up and talked to his mother a couple times.

I felt very sorry for her.

We gave him a good upbringing, and something has happened

to him sometime since he left this house that has

triggered some terrible madness inside of him.

She just simply could not even comprehend it, and was,

for a better word, she was a basket case.

I guess it's been going on for so long that we have,

little by little, been realizing that this was going to happen,

eventually, and I won't say I really accept it,

but I know it's going to happen, and we've just have

to learn to live with it.

Every mom wants their child to be a success.

Every mom, and to see this happen was,

I'm sure, it's what killed her as time went by.

THOMAS: It was very sad for me to know that he had a mother

that loved him so much, and he seemed like

such a handsome man and with such a future and it's shocking.

It's a shocking story.

MAN: Bundy was described by prison officials as becoming

increasingly nervous as his execution approached.

He was quiet most of the time.

He seemed a little depressed at times.

It appeared to me that he realizes

that there's only a few hours left.

With the clock ticking, James Coleman continued pleading

the case in court, but what he didn't know was at the exact

same time, Ted Bundy was pleading his case

from death row.

COLEMAN: We were still trying to get the execution stopped.

I went to Tallahassee to argue in the Supreme Court,

and when I got off the plane, the headlines were

that Ted Bundy had confessed to 12 murders, and I knew

at that point that, you know, we don't have a chance.

MAN: Bundy has confessed to murders in Western states in the past

few days in interviews with law enforcement officials.

I'm sure his whole strategy was just to give us a little

to nibble on, and that in hopes we'd try and get a stay for him.

I've been told that, you know,

the parents of these girls are fairly decent people.

I don't know, and I really feel for them because apparently

they suffered some --

an incredible tragedy in their lives.

The loss of a loved one is probably the most extreme kind

of loss you can suffer in this life, and I say I feel as much

for them as anybody can.

Welcome back to "How it Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

By 1989, Ted Bundy had been on Florida death row for 10 years

proclaiming his innocence while his attorneys fought to overturn

his murder convictions.

His legal team had won three stays of execution,

but now Bundy's luck was running out.

As his date with the electric chair approached, Bundy called

investigators from across the country offering to confess to

some unsolved cases and finally tell them how he really did it.

♪♪

He started to meet with the police,

and he was doing it in secret.

My view was, if he wanted to disclose where bodies

were buried, then he should do that and not place

any conditions on it.

I think that he saw a way to possibly try to save his life.

MAN: Bob Keppel worked at getting a confession

from Ted Bundy for years.

I went down to Florida to interview him

on three separate occasions, and we used the interviews

in 1984 as a way for him to talk about

what he would do if he were the killer.

And then in '88, it was more like getting him ready

to talk to us again.

MAN: When Keppel went to Florida nearly one year ago,

he was still playing Bundy's game trying to get

any information on the Washington murders.

KEPPEL: We'd already come to the conclusion a long time ago

that he was the one that did them.

The last interview with him was the most telling.

He was supposed to have had some spiritual change.

I'm very skeptical of that.

I don't buy that at all, but to all the investigators,

he did give it up.

KEPPEL: That was the first time, that I know of,

that he's admitted any murders to anyone,

and after hearing some of the details of what he's done,

I can understand why it's difficult

because they're not particularly pleasant.

MAN: Bundy, delivering details about the murder

of Georgann Hawkins --

MAN: 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.

MAN: Bundy told Keppel he found Hawkins walking

in a U-district alley about midnight.

I asked him if he killed the two girls

at Lake Sammamish State Park, and he said, "Yes."

I asked him if he killed Brenda Ball.

He said, "Yes."

WINTERS: And he said with Sue that he rendered her unconscious

and took her to an orchard.

We know that much, but that's --

we don't need to know what he did.

We have enough information to know that it was pure evil.

WOMAN: Ted Bundy was infamous as an intelligent

and handsome charmer, a highly likable boy next door.

KENDALL: When I would think about our day-to-day relationship,

there was nothing there that would lead me to think

that he was capable of doing something like that,

and that's the split that I think had everybody baffled.

He confessed to my friend and told her all the stuff outright.

And then a day later, he calls her back and said,

"What you think you heard, you didn't hear right."

LLOYD: This man felt nothing.

With all the people he'd done in, with all the harm he'd done,

he still felt nothing, so there was nothing to say sorry for

because he didn't feel sorry.

MAN: Bundy lived in Washington until late 1974

building a promising career in politics.

At the same time he came to law school in Salt Lake City,

young ladies began to disappear in Utah.

I dealt with him a little bit back in 1975

when we had him on some charges up in Salt Lake.

I really will be surprised if he does talk to us,

but I am here just in the chance that he might.

Bundy admitted to the homicide and kidnapping

of the Kent girl from up in Bountiful.

MAN: Debbie 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.

SULLIVAN: He said he dumped Debbie Kent's body off at, I think,

it's Fairview, Utah, and they did find a patella, a portion,

I guess, of the kneecap.

They turned it over to the Kent family.

You know, as a mother, I don't think until you lose a child

you ever know the pain and the hurt that it is.

SULLIVAN: He murdered these women.

Sometimes he would rape them before, but a lot of times

he would like to have sex with them after they were dead.

So he was -- he was a necrophile,

but he never liked talking about that.

JORDAN: Ted Bundy not only offered information on where

investigators might find the victims' remains, but he also

offered clues as to why they had trouble with certain kinds

of evidence, such as the murder weapons.

Ted didn't leave much of a trail behind.

McCHESNEY: In the end, it frustrated and irritated and probably even

angered many of the law enforcement officials.

At one point, it was, "You're done."

♪♪

We started to prepare him for the execution.

REGISTER: He was, I think, quite terrified when he came in.

He was puckered.

MAN: Ted Bundy may finally die Tuesday morning

after over 10 years on death row.

Ted Bundy reached out to investigators in Colorado, Utah,

and Washington State, offering them information on those open,

unsolved cases as a bargaining chip trying

to save his own life.

Bundy confessed to around 20 murders.

He was linked to dozens more.

He confessed to killing people they didn't even know were dead.

He confessed to killing some hitchhiker out West and told

them where the body was buried, and they called local law

enforcement, and lo and behold, there was a body there.

He was coming clean, and he was also very tired.

Ted was not the bold, defiant individual

that we have observed on TV.

He was a defeated person.

Approximately an hour into the interview,

he began to break down and cry, and stated that he was sorry.

But he also threatened to withhold information.

Bundy's attorneys were notifying the parents

that if we could write a letter to the governor and ask,

like, for a stay, you know, of execution,

he would tell everything, and I remember thinking,

"If I do write to the governor,

Bundy might lie about everything."

For him to be negotiating for his life

over the bodies of victims is despicable.

McCHESNEY: The risk of that sort of a bargain with the devil,

if you will, is that they're going

to give you false information.

They're going to send you on tangents.

They're going to just mislead you in 100 ways,

only so that they can benefit by postponing the inevitable,

in his case, which was execution.

SULLIVAN: He was hoping that it would create more time,

in Bundy's mind, three months, six months.

He just wanted to hold on to his life.

KATSARIS: That's all he had left was to bargain.

He tried to blame it on pornography, for example.

MAN: California religious broadcaster and psychologist

Dr. James Dobson interviewed Bundy Monday afternoon.

You were with Ted Bundy before he was electrocuted

by the state of Florida, were you not?

I was.

He wanted me to get -- have the last interview --

KING: What was that like?

-- and he wanted to confess and explain why he felt he got

into trouble, and he wanted to talk about pornography, and what

it had done in his life.

BUNDY: Like an addiction, you keep craving something,

which is harder, harder, something which gives you

a greater sense of excitement,

until you reach the point where the pornography

only goes so far.

SULLIVAN: Pornography does a lot of negative things, especially

to relationships and marriages, but one thing it doesn't do;

it does not cause people to slaughter women

and cut off their heads.

Bundy is just trying to pass the blame on why he's the way he is.

THOMPSON: It was not going to make a bit of difference.

Once you do confess to all those things, then it's hard to say,

you know, "Florida, don't do this."

On January 24, at 7:00 A.M., the death warrant will be in effect.

You don't negotiate with a murderer.

♪♪

Attorney General called and said,

"It's going to happen this time."

Execution is, you know, going to happen.

MAN: Ted Bundy sits in this wing of the Florida state prison 30 feet

from the electric chair where he's scheduled to die.

I had worked a long, hard time seeing to it

that he got executed and seeing it through to the end was

attending his execution.

MAN: Mike Vasilinda --

We were supposed to be at the prison at 4:00 or 4:30.

The van picked us up. They took us over.

We were taken to the execution chamber.

REGISTER: But for a glass wall, we could have reached out

and touched him on the knee.

He was that close, and, you know, he was,

I think, quite terrified when he came in.

He was puckered.

COLEMAN: They sat him down in the chair, and they started

to prepare him for the execution.

He looked more disoriented than defiant.

He asked me and the minister to tell his family

that he loved them.

MAN: The beginning of the end for Ted Bundy came

when the prison's generator was started

to power the electric chair's 2,000 volts.

Lights outside death row flickered,

and Bundy's life winked out.

Tell you what I heard said when the execution was accomplished,

"That was too easy.

They ought to bring him back and do it again 30 more times.

That was too easy for what he had done."

We got a call saying that, you know, it was over,

that he had been electrocuted,

and we knew before everyone on television.

At 7:16 this morning, the doctor at Florida state prison

pronounced Theodore Bundy dead.

I cried, just wailed, and I think it was

for Lisa and Margaret more than for me.

McCAIN: You never, you know, get over that pain.

You never get -- healing is a huge process, and a part

of your heart is always broken, but yes,

I think there was a sense that, you know, justice had been done.

Ted has gotten just exactly what he deserved.

If anybody ever fit the death penalty as such, Ted Bundy did.

MAN: Then a hearse carrying a metal pauper's coffin

with Bundy's body inside left the prison.

I was awake until they drove him out.

I just -- I started to cry and my nose,

it was just like my -- I was relieved in such a sense

that I could relax now after all these years.

And on the -- across the street from the prison

on the right, cheers went up and people were celebrating.

♪ Hey, hey, hey, good-bye ♪ Yeah!

COLEMAN: People were cheering for the execution of a person

who had been denied the rights that our system guarantees,

and nobody cared.

WINTERS: That was such a hard thing for us.

So hard for us to say, you know, "You need to die,"

but he had to be stopped. We knew that.

I think if he wouldn't have been stopped, he'd have kept killing.

The morning after the execution, a Seattle television station

came and we did the interview, and towards

the end, she said, "I have Mrs. Bundy listening to you.

Is there anything you want to say to her?"

WOMAN: In a quiet corner of the Lake City cemetery

lies a shy, sweet, 12-year-old girl.

Kim Leach was abducted from her school here almost 11 years ago.

After Ted Bundy there was a realization that no matter where

you live or who you are, you know, you can be a victim.

MAN: Bundy had beaten the electric chair for 10 years

on death row until Tuesday.

Theodore Bundy was executed at 7:16 this morning

in the electric chair at Florida state prison.

When Ted Bundy got executed, I, as well as many others,

thought, "Hooray."

He got what he deserved.

The fact that he could kill these innocent young women

just sees so far beyond even one's imagination.

GOOD: I think he got the justice that he deserved.

Not that I'm advocating for the death penalty, but there didn't

seem to be any alternative for someone who had done such

horrific things to so many people

and especially to my friend.

A federal judge called Bundy the most competent serial killer

in the country; a diabolical genius, a life of brutality,

murder and deceit, a life that ended this morning

as an unsolved mystery.

The morning after the execution, a Seattle television station

came and we did the interview, and towards the end,

she said, "I have Mrs. Bundy listening to you.

Is there anything you want to say to her?"

And I told her that we were so sorry that this had to happen,

and she talked back to me that I never wanted this to be true.

I just never thought it would be true.

He was our much-beloved son, and we can't --

we didn't raise him to be this kind of person.

She was hurting. Oh, my goodness.

I had a daughter like Sue, and I have all those golden memories,

and what did she have?

What did she take to her grave?

Shame and disappointment, guilt, heartache.

MAN: We all share in the shame of Ted Bundy -- Tacoma,

the University district, the east side of Lake Sammamish

where he conducted a couple of the murders,

Olympia, Ellensburg, Utah, Colorado, Florida.

I think there was a determination

to not be a victim, to not let an individual try to strip you

of that kind of future.

I try not to ever let it define me, but it's still a part of me.

There was nothing that he did

that was going to stop any part of my life.

I had too much to go for, too many things I wanted to do.

I didn't want to be held back.

You just got to keep going because there's going

to be another hurdle in front of you and you can't let

any one of them keep you down.

Your best revenge is a life well lived, so go for it.

Be your best self and make your life wonderful.

I just want to be sure the women are not forgotten that did die.

It's sad that they never had the opportunity to live their lives.

My sister Sue, people knew her

when she was alive and pretty and healthy,

and that's what I want her to be remembered as.

You don't ever put those you love out of your heart

and your mind.

They're there.

I don't believe in the word "closure" for victims' families.

There isn't any closure.

It's an open wound that scars over, but it's there,

and she'll always be in our life.

Bundy took one final mystery to the grave with him;

why he became one of history's worst mass killers.

What shocked Tallahassee, what shocked Florida,

what shocked the nation, was the boy next door was a monster,

and nobody knew it.

He told me that he was sick, that there was a force

within him that he tried to fight and tried to contain,

but that it just kept building and building,

and it made him do the things that he did.

I'm not sure exactly how many he actually confessed to.

The FBI has figured around 35.

There is some hint that there might have been a lot more.

To him, it's a big hunt-and-chase game,

and the fear and the terror is overwhelmingly exciting.

THOMPSON: I guess it's a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde;

that notion has been around for a long time.

You have a person who on one moment appears to be

an affable, decent, intelligent fellow that you like

to spend time with, and the next moment, he's, you know,

severing some woman's head and visiting her dead body.

And how do you put those things together?

BUNDY: I hear Ted Bundy in so many different contexts.

You did create a media image of me

that's far beyond the reality of me.

I'm not going to try to please people or impress people,

because, quite frankly, the amount of bias and prejudice

that surrounds me as a media image,

I can't begin to tear down.

♪♪

After admitting to 36 murders, Ted Bundy's reign of terror

ended with his execution was on January 24, 1989.

His heartbroken mother, Louise, lived for another 22 years.

She passed away in 2012.

The identity of Ted's biological father has never been revealed.

The Chi Omega sorority has created a scholarship fund

in the name of fallen sisters, Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy.

Susan Rancourt's mother, Vivian said her daughter

was always smiling and kind to everyone.

Susan's family has dedicated a memorial garden in her name

at Central Washington University.

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.