All language subtitles for conversations.with.a.killer.the.ted.bundy.tapes.s01e01.WEBRip.x264-ION10

It is a little after nine o'clock
in the evening.

My name is Ted Bundy.

I've never spoken to anybody about this.

I am looking for an opportunity
to tell the story as best I can.

I mean, I'm not an animal
and I'm not crazy.

I don't have a split personality.

I mean, I'm just a normal individual.

Ted: Testing one, two, three, four, five.

Stephen: That going okay?

Ted: Uh, I get... I'm getting a red light.
Blink, blink, blink. Record.

Stephen: That means it's recording.

Ted: It's blinking.
It's not on permanently.

Stephen: Yeah, well...
It should blink in response to the voice.

Ted: Blink. Blink. Oh, I see.

Stephen: May I have a cigarette, please?

Ted: Oh, sure, go right ahead.
- Stephen: Thank you.

Ted: They're good for you.
- Stephen: They are?

Ted: Only cause mild forms of cancer.
- Stephen: Right

Ted: Our house was on Sheridan street,
in Tacoma.

Second house from the corner.

on the west side of the street.

Moved there, I would guess, about 1951.

Ted: Yea, I remember Warren Dodge

one of my childhood buddies.

We both went to football practice
in the play field across the tavern

and then we fished at the pier just across
the railroad tracks from the tavern.

I'm particularly fond of

looking at things in a chronological way

Times, dates, places.

Ted: People perceive me differently
from how I perceive myself.

and I need to give others a chance to know

what was really going on,
what it was really like for me.

Stephen: We know that Healy
went to bed and was never seen again...

Stephen: I think we've got to try to think
in a more narrative kind of way,

about the crimes,
with which you have been connected.

I don't know. I'm, uh...

My initial reaction is
that I don't think that I can.

Boyhood on Sheridan Street
was not an unpleasant one.

I remember those days,

of roaming... with my friends,
the adventure, the explorations.

Those were the days of frog hunting
and marble playing.

First grade I was somewhat
of a champion frog catcher.

I was a frog man.

Prided myself on my ability

to spot that pair of bulging eyes.

which would bob
just above the surface of a murky pond,

I never lacked playmates in those days.

There were always more than enough kids
around to do something with.

They seemed to be everywhere.

I did well in academics,
I ran for high school office.

Most of my close friends,
we would play football.

I went out for the track team,
went skiing every weekend.

I was one of the boys.

Some people perceived me
as being shy and introverted

I didn't go to dances,
I didn't go on the beer drinking outings.

I was a pretty,
you might call me straight,

but not a social outcast in any way.

It wasn't that I disliked women
or were afraid of them.

It was just that I didn't seem to

have an inkling as to
what to do about them.

I honestly can't say why.

Everybody's fascinated

with the notion
that there is cause and effect.

That we can put our finger on it and say,

"Yes, his father beat him
when he was a boy

we could see it when he was a kid."

That's bullshit.

There's nothing in my background,

which would lead one to believe
that I was capable

of committing murder.

Stephen: Absolutely nothing?
- Ted: Absolutely nothing.

Stephen: The Disappearance of
Georgann Hawkins

is an interesting case

for the fact there's no evidence, at all.

She might be an interesting one
to discuss, what do you think?

Ted: Well, I don't know about

the Hawkins case

from what I know about it, it is unusual.

because she was in a neighborhood

where she would have
a lot of acquaintances

but I don't know.

Ted: At the University of Washington,
I was a nice, presentable,

affable young person.

I compensated a lot for what I consider
to be my most vulnerable aspects,

my introversion

by being seemingly aloof
and arrogant and intellectua,

but nice and uh tolerant
and that kind of stuff.

I had to sit down one night and say
this is what I want to be.

Ted: The relationship I had with Diane

had a lasting impact on me.

She's a beautiful dresser, beautiful girl.
Very personable. Nice car, great parents.

So, you know,

for the first-time girlfriend,
really that was not too bad.

We spent a lot of time driving around
in her car.

You know, making out in the car.

Mumbled sweet nothings
into each others ears

and told each other how much we loved
each other.

And she inspired me to look at myself
and become something more.

I've always been anti-union, anti-boycott.

I guess that kind of labels me
as somewhat of a conservative.

I just wasn't too fond of criminal conduct

and using anti-war movements
as a haven for,

delinquents who liked to feel
that they were immune from the law.

I did speak out
against these radical socialist types

who were just all
for trashing the buildings.

And destroying the university.

The reason I love politics

and was just drawn to it
from the very beginning

was because here was something
which allowed me

to utilize my natural talent in politics

and also my assertiveness.

And a social life.
I mean, the social life came with it.

You were set, you know,
you went out to dinner with people

and they invited you to dinner,
this is where they were,

they took you to drinks.

And there I was,
a life that had been missing for me.

During that campaign
I got laid for the first time.

I got laid in Walla Walla.

When I met Marlin,

I was attracted to him because his wife
could cook good sushi.

And they were very nice people.

I felt like I'd failed,

not only myself but even my teachers
and instructors at the university.

I was just absolutely
out of control of my life.

I didn't know what I was going to do,
didn't even know where I was gonna live.

Didn't even know
how I was gonna support myself.

I experienced
any number of insecurities with Diane.

There were occasions when I felt
that she expected a great deal more

from me
than I was really capable of giving.

I was not in any position to take her out
and squire her around, uh,

in the manner in which she was accustomed.

But, uh, Or buy her clothing or, you know...

I think I was coming apart at the seams.

Maybe she saw it
and maybe didn't understand, you know,

what I was going through.

Throughout the summer,
Diane and I corresponded less and less.

And then Diane stopped writing,

and I started to get fearful
about what she was up to.

I had this overwhelming feeling
of rejection

that stemmed not just her, but,
everything

The tail end of that summer
is really a blank,

I mean, it was a nightmare for me.

In there somewhere was a desire to

have some sort of revenge on Diane.

But toward the end of the summer,
I'm serious, I just, It's blank.

I don't know what the hell I did.

The record keeping operation

of the King County police agencies
in general was just horrendous.

I had this connection
with law enforcement there.

I worked for the Seattle Crime Commission.

I did some work on this crimes against
women issues, particularly rape.

to study this and make some suggestions

to the Seattle police
on how they can prevent rape.

What I discovered,
the discovery I made

was that they had well-intentioned people

but they didn't know what they should do.

Why and how an individual
would select women as victims

of a brutal crime
is not entirely clear to me.

I've always preferred women to men.

I probably have

sixty-percent women friends,

close to 40% men friends.
It's always been divided that way

I enjoy women.

I loved her so much
It was destabilizing.

She was from a mormon family.
She was from a wealthy background.

She was somewhat meek.

Liz had a child
that she had to raise alone for a time.

She was new
and this was a whole new...

dimension to living
that I had never seen before.

I felt such a strong love for her,

But we didn't have a lot
of interests in common.

Like, politics was something
I don't think we had in common.

She liked to read a lot,
I wasn't into reading.

I wasted a lot of time.

And the other problems
that I would experience, like

not being able to make
my genuine feelings for her come out,

whether it's fixing a special dinner
or going out

or bringing flowers
or taking out the garbage.

Changing the sheets, or doing the laundry.

On occasion I would experience
this fit of

guilt as it were, and I would vacuum,
and I would straighten up

and wash dishes or fix dinner
or do something.

The area where I really failed would be

not opening up my whole life to her.

Don't know what I was hiding.

Maybe I was just trying
to preserve the

Ted Bundy devil-may-care
attractive bachelor image.

I was terribly jealous of her.

I used to agonize about losing her.

I used to just torture myself.

And I did a lot of dumb things.

Stephen: I need to be reassured

that you and I are going ahead
in good faith, I guess.

Which is, under the terms that we agreed

that were, what is known
about the incidents themselves.

Can you do that?

Ted: Well, I don't want
to talk about that right now.

This is the defect of history.

That historians have to deal with.
I guess we're all historians.

I mean talk about fiction.
That's what history is.

You never know whether historians,

for one reason or another,
well-intentioned or not,

are creating things
that they wish had happened

or thought happened
or would like to have happened.

Because it satisfies
their own preconception

of what they think the history
should have been.

Ted: Well, it's not an easy question,
but, I think we can

speculate.

We can generally describe
manifestations of this condition

of this person's being skewed
toward matters of a sexual nature

that involve violence.

You go to the mouth of any great river

and pull out a handful of water
that's flowing from it and say,

"where did it come from?"

To trace it back, okay,
and this is what we're dealing with here,

we're talking about

microscopic events as it were,

and undistinguishable,
undetectable events.

The melting of a single snowflake
as it were, okay?

The advent of spring and the combination
of other forces perhaps

and the ultimate, uh
result that we appreciate,

which is the river itself.

We're now talking
about the development of

well, behavior,

murder.

Okay, well, what

caused what kinds of mental functions,

aberrations lay at the base of it
and how did they

where were they given birth?

Where did they result?
What were they the result of?

And it's difficult

to trace it back and say,
"This is what happened."

Perhaps this person hoped
that through violence,

through this violent series of acts,

if with every murder leaving a person
of this type hungry...

Unfulfilled.

Would also leave him
with the obviously irrational belief

that if, the next time he did it
he would be fulfilled.

And the next time he did it
he would be fulfilled.

Or the next time he did it
he would be fulfilled.