Original subtitles

- Of all the world's serial killers,

perhaps the most chilling is the charismatic,

smooth-talking law school-educated Ted Bundy.

- I didn't know it when I met Ted Bundy,

but the Devil was about to enter my life

that would haunt me for 15 years.

- The 33-year-old Utah law student is a suspect

in more than 30 murder-rape cases across the country.

- The authorities would say he would kill

one or two people a month, but based on what Ted told me,

there were more no one even knew about.

There's been a lot written about Ted.

but I think I knew him better than anyone.

- Police have discovered a pattern of rape-murders

which coincide with Ted Bundy's movements

over the past five years.

- Ted certainly had a grand idea of himself.

He thought he could fool everybody.

- Bundy insists he's innocent.

- Ted would try to minimize the charges against him.

He used to call it "this stupid little matter."

"Ted, there's 10 cops outside.

It's not a stupid, little matter."

Representing Ted Bundy

was an ultimate test of my belief system.

There are times when I thought

maybe I should just do away with him,

but instead I fought to save his life.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

- From January to July in 1974,

while Watergate, Richard Nixon,

and the Patty Hearst kidnapping consumed the nation,

a wave of fear swept across Seattle.

Someone was abducting young women...

and brutally murdering them.

- Back in '73 and 74, over a one and a half year period,

9 or 10 women in the Northwest disappeared,

all hauntingly similar in appearance--

hair parted in the middle, down to below their shoulders.

It was something that rightfully made women in Seattle terrified.

I mean, women were literally cutting their hair.

And then the Sammamish Park incident

put Seattle into a hysteria.

- 19-year-old Denise Naslund and 23-year-old Janice Ott

disappeared on a warm summer at Lake Sammamish.

- The women were approached by a stranger

who was somewhat well-dressed, khaki shorts,

you know, Top-Siders on, real preppy stuff.

And he had a cast on his arm,

so he told them, according to the witnesses,

that he had a little sailboat he needed help loading

on the top of his Bug.

♪ ♪

Both of them believed him and got in the car.

♪ ♪

And then disappeared.

- Police launched a massive search of the park.

Though there was no sign of the women,

several witnesses told of a smooth-talking,

good-looking young man named Ted.

It was determined that the person responsible

for these murders and disappearances

was someone named Ted,

so they became known as the "Ted Murders."

- I was a homicide detective for a week

when I was assigned the disappearances

of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund.

- The skeletal remains

were found by hunters in an open grave east of Seattle.

- The remains of three, maybe four females

were spread across the hillside.

That's how things really got started for us.

- Four more young women were found on Taylor Mountain,

all of them strangled or bludgeoned

by this brutal killer.

- The word "serial killer" didn't start till the mid '80s.

No one had ever investigated a case like this.

We have witnesses that observed our suspect "Ted."

I think one of these days we'll find him.

[track rattles]

increased in Washington

in the last five months. - Seattle's Ted is described

as 5'8" to 5'10"...

- There's a man walking up and down our street.

- If this guy Ted tries anything in front of me...

-Suspected of killing at least nine women

in the Seattle area.

- I think it's Ted. - All you could hear in Seattle

was Ted, Ted, Ted.

You know, if your name was Ted

and you drove a Volkswagen Bug in Seattle,

you were on the list.

At the time, I was, you know, young. I was 29 years old.

I was only three years out of law school.

I was Chief Trial Attorney at Public Defender's Office,

so I knew that the serial murderer,

if he was captured, would end up in our office

as a death penalty case,

so it occurred to me that I may end up

helping this person, but I didn't really want to

because of a major event in my past.

♪ ♪

I met my girlfriend, Deborah, the summer

between first and second year of law school.

This is always hard to talk about.

Um...and it was 1970.

And she was living in Berkeley and going to graduate school,

and I was living in Washington, D.C.,

but we were still pretty much an exclusive couple.

She was very beautiful, very smart,

and very progressive, 'cause she was very anti-death penalty.

She was leading the anti-death penalty movement in California,

and I was raised that the death penalty

never made any sense to me even in high school.

"Thou shalt not kill, and if you kill, we'll kill you"?

You know, that never made much sense to me.

I think it was a February night in 1970

that I got a phone call.

Deborah had been found murdered,

and, uh, it was, uh, tough, tough time.

She was strangled with a cord. It's never been solved.

And I wanted to tear apart body part by body part

whoever had killed her,

so I became a firm believer in the death penalty,

at least for the person that killed Deborah.

That changed. I had this very vivid dream

where Debbie came to me in the dream and said,

"Don't honor me by believing in something I never believed in."

So that was like a message to me

to fight against the death penalty whenever I could.

Deborah's murder gave me a very unique perspective

from a defense lawyer's standpoint,

particularly a defense lawyer

who ends up representing Ted Bundy.

♪ ♪

So when it all hit the newspapers

that all these women were disappearing,

and they put their pictures all together,

you know, I really felt awful

'cause of the experience that I'd had with Deborah,

who looked just like the victims.

- Police released a composite drawing and description of Ted,

and within weeks, more than 3,000 names

have been compiled into a list of suspects.

- People were flooding the phone lines.

We had several people snitch off Ted Bundy,

but there was no physical evidence

that could link Ted Bundy to the Seattle cases.

There were some circumstantial stuff,

but the prosecutor just wouldn't charge

without physical evidence.

- All of a sudden, the disappearances

in the Washington State area just stopped.

The authorities thought the perpetrator was either dead,

incarcerated, or had moved to a different state.

Well, it turns out that's exactly what happened.

Ted had moved from Washington to Utah.

to go to law school.

♪ ♪

Then the disappearances started happening in Utah.

So now Utah is in a state of hysteria

the way Seattle was when Ted was living in Seattle.

- The authorities from Utah called us.

They had read about the disappearances

in the Seattle region.

We told them about Ted Bundy,

and then they checked and found out that he was there.

The problem was they didn't have any evidence to connect him

to those murders either.

So we weren't able to arrest him for those crimes,

and he was free to go anywhere.

- While he was in Utah, he would make side trips to Colorado.

There were three women, I believe, total,

but most likely, a lot more.

In the beginning of Ted's adventure

of disgusting behavior, there was a certain pattern to it

where he would pretend to need help,

and he would charm a lot of these women,

but later on, he became increasingly violent.

I think it began with the DaRonch kidnapping in Utah.

Carol DaRonch was at the largest shopping mall in Salt Lake City,

and this person came up claiming to be a police officer,

identifying himself as Officer Rosebud

and said, "Somebody's tampering with your car.

Come with me." She ends up getting into a Volkswagen Bug

that's all beat up, and then he tries to handcuff her

and hit her with a crowbar.

So Carol flew out of the Volkswagen, into the lap

of the people who were driving the car next to Ted.

She miraculously escapes.

About a year after her attempted kidnapping,

this police officer just happened to drive down

this cul-de-sac in Utah and saw this Volkswagen Bug

at 3:00 in the morning, idling in front of a house.

[siren wails] And he knew that the adults

in that house were gone and they had left the children there,

which were younger women.

[siren wailing] And so he chased the Bug

until Ted pulled over.

And then he got out, and classic Ted,

and said, "Well, I'm just kind of lost."

It's 3:00 in the morning.

They eventually searched the car and find ice picks,

pantyhose with eye holes cut in them,

handcuffs, bunch of different license plates

for different states,

you know, a lot of things that are very difficult to explain.

And that's how they caught Ted.

In October of '75,

Ted Bundy was identified in a police lineup

after being arrested in kidnapping charges

in Salt Lake City.

- Once he was arrested in Utah,

the newspapers in Washington State

and all across the country went crazy.

It was a frenzy everywhere.

Then he was released on bail in Utah,

which I thought was a very low bail.

I think it was $150,000,

of which you only have to put up 10%.

But I think the reason for that

was they wanted to get more evidence against him

in Washington.

The moment he was released on bail,

Ted went back to Seattle, and the Washington authorities

followed him around to hopefully build a case.

♪ ♪

- We were worried when he was in Seattle

that he would do it again.

This guy is totally consumed with murder 24 hours a day.

That is when the Ted task force went into full operation

with five or six detectives steadfastly following him around

even to the point of letting him know that we were there.

He wasn't officially charged with anything

in Washington State.

He was being heavily investigated,

and that's why he had a right to counsel

because in Washington and most other places,

you have a right to counsel before you're charged.

Ted had talked to other lawyers and law students

and came up with name.

I was a brand-new lawyer

in King County Superior Court in Seattle,

and I thought John Henry Browne was the best lawyer

I had ever seen.

He had the voice, he had the stature,

he had the theater, he had every aspect you need

to be a consummate trial lawyer

and defender, you know, of the damned, which he is.

Ted knew who John was, and that's the lawyer he wanted.

He picked the best.

- I first met Ted in the lobby at the Public Defender's Office.

Ted came in the back door from the alley.

He was, you know, jovial and trying to be charismatic.

He didn't appear to be scared.

I didn't know it at the time, but evil just entered my life.

Pure evil.

He was purging himself.

He sounded more crazy than I'd ever heard him before.

I got sick to my stomach.

I felt like I don't want to be here.

I'm not sure I even want to be a defense lawyer.

♪ ♪

- I first met Ted in the lobby of the Public Defender's Office.

Ted came in the back door from the alley.

He was trying to be joking.

He didn't appear to be scared.

And I asked him what happened in Utah,

and he told me, "I'm not guilty, I'm not guilty.

I'm being framed," and as a defense lawyer,

I know that innocent people are investigated.

I know innocent people are charged,

and I knew the evidence against Ted Bundy

was very circumstantial.

So you're going, "Well, this guy may be innocent."

Ted certainly had a grand idea of himself,

and a minimization of the charges against him.

He used to call it the "stupid little matter,"

and I would go, "Ted, there's 10 cops outside

waiting to follow you.

You know, it's not a stupid, little matter."

As with many criminals and sociopaths,

they have no judgment at all.

Ted would try to minimize things

that simply couldn't be minimized.

So he was jovial and trying to be charismatic.

He wasn't charismatic. He was trying to be charismatic.

Ted really--to me, he never really pulled it off.

I became officially his attorney in Washington State,

and I also began working with him on the charges in Utah.

- Ted Bundy returned to Seattle this week

under the watchful eye of local investigators

who say he is a person of interest

Bundy is currently free on bail

from a kidnapping charge in Utah.

When I first met Ted,

my strategy was to minimize the public's belief

that he was the Ted.

Ted knew he was being followed.

There was no subtlety to what the task force was doing

when Ted was in Seattle.

- I think the defense attorneys are necessary evils for sure.

I don't harbor any ill will for them at all,

other than I'm trying to beat 'em all the time.

- Keppel called me. He said-- I'll never forget--

"John, this is Detective Keppel, and in this case,

the attorney-client privilege shouldn't apply."

I'm kind of very more anti-authoritarian then

than ever, but it really pissed me off

that he would think I would do that.

I said very firmly, "You're full of [bleep]."

- I've known John Henry Browne for years.

Let's put it this way.

I would put up with John Henry Browne.

Like him? No.

I would think that

that would be a not proper use of the word "like" at all.

♪ ♪

- Ted actually enjoyed the attention

he was getting from the media and the police.

They were following him everywhere,

and that became almost comical,

'cause Ted would make fun of them.

He'd make cookies for the cops. He'd knock on their windows.

He would, like, make coffee

and take it to the surveillance vehicles.

Ted would take on masks and false mustaches

and the wigs and everything to fool them.

- He was playing games with us, trying to escape from us,

running through

the University of Washington libraries.

He went researching

at the University of Washington law library

and completely freaked out the whole law school,

and I got a letter from the dean of the law school,

saying, "I think it would be better if Mr. Bundy used

"the King County law library and not come to the law school.

As you know, we have many women students here."

And I certainly don't blame the dean or the women students

for being upset about it.

But, you know, you would think the dean of a law school

would at least believe in the presumption of innocence,

but that's how bad it was back then.

Back in those days,

my phone number was actually listed.

My home phone.

I had some people at my house,

and I think there was a gathering

of three or four people from the neighborhood,

and the phone rang,

and one of the women in the neighborhood

answered the phone, and it was,

"Hi. This is Ted Bundy. Is John there?"

And that person left my house and never came back.

The media followed him right up to the door of my office,

and he would laugh and wave at them,

and he enjoyed the attention.

- Diabolical genius, deceptive, manipulative--

words authorities used to describe Theodore Bundy.

- We still don't believe it. Just can't be.

I keep shaking my head.

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

- He used to go to the pet store and buy 10 little mice,

and he would take 'em into the woods,

and he'd build this little corral,

and then he would choose which one he was gonna kill.

And then he would exercise his form of compassion,

let the others go.

Ted's history in childhood was kind of an enigma,

and there's all kinds of speculation.

He was born out of wedlock, which I think was something

that really bothered him a lot,

and his mother pretended to be his sister.

There are people who have analyzed Ted in retrospect

who think that whole situation

fueled his sociopathic tendencies.

I think his relationship with his mother

was very problematic,

but I don't think it had anything to do

with him being evil.

I think he was born evil,

and I never think people are born evil.

I never did until I met Ted Bundy.

♪ ♪

- Well, I didn't enter this life planning on being a lawyer.

As a kid, my father was one of the original members

of the Manhattan Project,

building the atomic bomb,

and I was born as a result in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

After the war, we traveled all over the country.

The last time I counted,

I went to nine different schools.

I was rebellious beginning in high school.

While I was in undergraduate school,

I started the Denver chapter

of the Students for a Democratic Society.

And then I was, of course, in the rock and roll band,

which was anti-authoritarian, to say the least.

We were called the Crystal Palace Guard.

You know, we played with Jimi Hendrix and The Doors

and the Grateful Dead when they came to Denver.

So we became quite well-known in Denver,

and much to the chagrin of the Denver Police Department.

They started harassing us pretty much on a weekly basis.

[siren wails] Following us, stopping our band.

One Friday night, I believe it was,

I got arrested by the Denver Police

for a $12 bad check,

but the critical thing, I guess, for my future,

was I decided in that experience

that I was gonna go to law school

rather than become a rock star.

♪ ♪

I was assisting Ted in defending

the charges against him in Utah

for the Carol DaRonch attempted kidnapping.

He never admitted Carol DaRonch escaped from his Volkswagen Bug.

He would always focus on the legalities of it

and how the lineup was unfair, the photo montage was unfair.

But at the time, I was the public defender

in Seattle assigned to his case, and I didn't have the authority

to represent him in Utah,

so I suggested he contact John O'Connell,

who was a very good lawyer,

and Ted, of course, never listened to him.

John and I would talk on the phone about the trial

because Ted was irritating him so much.

I mean, Ted could burn through lawyers really fast.

O'Connell thought there was

so much bad pre-trial publicity about Ted,

he had a better chance at being in front of a judge

rather than a jury.

And so he decided to waive the jury.

This was a big risk, because if you have a jury trial,

you've got 12 people who could potentially say

I have a reasonable doubt.

When you have a judge, it's just one person

that's making that decision.

So I would only waive the jury in a case

where it's very clear that my client is innocent,

which you couldn't say about Ted.

The victim, Carol DaRonch,

took the stand and identified Ted as her attempted kidnapper.

So the strategy was that it was a horrible mistake,

in identification here.

Eyewitness identification

is the weakest kind of evidence there is.

You can explain away eyewitness testimony pretty easily,

'cause we all misidentify people all the time.

"Aren't you so-and-so?" "No, I'm not."

So it was, you know, actually, not a bad defense at all,

except Ted, like an idiot,

decided he wanted to testify.

That's his right. Lawyer can't make that decision.

And Ted was convinced he could charm the judge.

So Ted took the stand against John's advice.

John called me, and he says,

"I can't believe this [bleep] wants to testify."

And that was the worst thing Ted could have done,

'cause he was caught in all these lies.

Ted lied about having other license plates in his car.

How did he lie about that? They're there.

He lied about the ice pick and the handcuffs.

They were there.

So Ted was completely discredited by the prosecution.

It was pathetic.

[buzzer]

The trial lasted four days.

He was convicted in Utah of attempted kidnapping

and then given a rather light sentence, 18 months,

because the authorities knew things were cooking in Colorado.

- New evidence has linked Ted Bundy

nearly two years ago.

- The police authorities claimed they found a hair

in Ted's Volkswagen that was seized and searched in Utah

that was similar to a hair from a missing woman in Colorado.

Everybody knows, including a first-year police cadet

that hair analysis is not definitive.

The most you can tell from hair is race and gender.

The only way you can tell any more from hair

is if you have a follicle which you could use for DNA testing,

but, of course, back then, they didn't have any DNA testing.

- That was the only physical evidence

that anyone had, but it was good enough for court.

- Aspen Police have begun expedition proceedings

to bring Bundy to Colorado,

where he has been charged with murder.

- The death penalty in Colorado had just been reinstated,

so I knew I would be hearing from Ted again.

I went to visit him in the Utah prison.

He had just been charged with murder in Colorado,

and I was assisting him on the extradition.

There was a lot of eyewitness identification in Colorado,

and the circumstantial evidence was mounting.

I was talking about getting a psychological exam for him

to convince the authorities

in Utah and Colorado to release him to Washington,

where he could serve his time in a mental institution

rather than prison.

I suggested that idea, and he ultimately rejected it.

Usually, Ted would continue to play the game.

"I'm not guilty, I'm not guilty.

I'm being framed. I'm being framed. I'm being framed."

But in Utah, he no longer had that façade.

He didn't say and admit

that he had committed all these horrendous acts,

but he no longer pretended that he didn't,

and now everything was becoming more and more clear to me

that Ted was the sociopathic murderer

that people claimed he was.

♪ ♪

And that upset me greatly.

I mean, I had to compartmentalize my lawyer side

and my human side-- not only my human side

but somebody who'd been victimized

because of the death of my girlfriend,

so there was this turmoil going on inside me,

and the first time I really recognized that was in Utah,

and it was very difficult for me.

I believe everybody has the presumption of innocence

and requires the state to prove things beyond reasonable doubt,

but representing Ted was becoming

an ultimate test of my belief system.

♪ ♪

- I really think the only reason

to be a lawyer is to help people.

I don't think it's to make money

because I haven't made a lot of money,

but I think I've helped a lot of people.

I represented a National Football League player

who was charged with sex offenses,

and he was totally innocent, and I won that case.

I've taken to trial over 350 cases,

which is probably more than any lawyer I know.

It's really hard work.

You know, I've had a family life

that hasn't been very, um...normal.

- John's very complicated. He's brilliant, very thoughtful.

He's very funny,

but in a lot of ways, I think he's been tortured,

having handled some of these horrific cases

over many decades.

There are times when I dealt with my stress

in unproductive ways-- drugs, alcohol.

I think I've dealt with it not very well.

My dad, who was very--

at one point, a very progressive man,

said, "If we're gonna have a free society,

"there has to be defense lawyers who are the absolute best

and who will stand behind citizen and the government."

Then he paused, and he says, "I'm just sorry that it's you."

[dramatic music]

- Drilled under suspicion of murder,

Ted Bundy escaped from

the Pitkin County Courthouse this afternoon,

evading the authorities.

- He was acting as his own lawyer,

so he was allowed to use the courthouse law library

without really supervision.

Maybe a guard was out in the hall

or standing by the door.

The jailers were foolish enough

to take his ankle bracelets off,

and then he jumped out the window,

he sprained his ankle, he walked along the river,

he ended up breaking into a cabin

up in the mountains,

and there was a manhunt for him all over the country,

and then he got caught driving through Aspen

at 2:00 in the morning in a pink convertible.

So then they arrested him.

- I don't like being locked up

for something I didn't do, and I don't like

people walking around and ogling me

like I'm some sort of weirdo, because I'm not.

- I was the first person he called,

and I flew to Aspen at his parents' expense.

Ted was sleeping on the floor,

and the guards said, "Hey, Bundy, wake up.

You got a visitor," and Ted woke up

and rubbed his eyes.

He looked at me and he goes, "Hey, John, did you figure out

which one of those two guys pushed me out of the window?"

And I didn't think it was very funny,

and neither did the officers.

He was always trying to manipulate or charm me.

He failed at both.

He had just been charged with murders in Colorado.

So Ted asked me during that conversation

where a person would go

to most likely get the death penalty,

which I thought was an odd question, to say the least.

And then I said-- without hesitation, I said,

"Florida or Texas."

'Cause their statutes had recently been upheld

by the Supreme Court.

♪ ♪

Once he escaped from Aspen,

they put him in a newer jail in Glenwood Springs.

- They intend to place the accused murderer

in a high-level security risk cell.

- I interceded with the authorities

in the Glenwood Springs jail to get him access to the phone,

access to mail that was not censored

between attorney-client,

to improve his diet

with the health food sometimes he was eating.

These are constitutional privileges

which any defendant in jail should have.

Later, when I saw him in Glenwood Springs,

it was amazing to me how much weight he'd lost,

and he was also working out a lot.

He was very muscular, very thin.

And this didn't occur to the jailers

that, you know, why is Ted losing all this weight?

You might go, "Well, maybe there's an issue

with this 12-inch grate in the ceiling."

[siren wailing, alarm buzzing]

- The County Sheriff's Office from Aspen

called and said... [telephone rings]

"Son of a bitch is gone. He escaped."

- People to this day have a hard time--

myself have a hard time believing that the authorities

led him to escape twice, so it involved a lot of planning.

And he was in the cell right next to where the jailers slept,

and he knew the jailer left on Friday nights

to go visit his girlfriend,

which let nobody in the jail, security-wise.

So he went-- just like the movies.

He went through the ventilation grate

and then through the ducting into the jailers' closet

and then went outside to a blizzard.

- I didn't know what to think. I didn't know if Bundy

would head to Seattle, but I did fear

that every time he escaped, he could kill somebody.

- I felt guilty, and I think, emotionally upset

that I'd helped him get into the shape

he needed to be in, basically, to escape again.

Because I knew that if Ted was loose,

he would kill again, period.

♪ ♪

- After Ted's second escape,

Ted takes a bus from Vail to the Denver airport,

and he got on an airplane to Chicago

and then went from Chicago to Ann Arbor

'cause he always hangs around universities.

And he said he was watching the Rose Bowl

when there was a little ticker along the bottom of the show,

saying, "Ted Bundy escapes second time."

I was very concerned that it was just only a matter of time.

I knew if Ted Bundy was loose, period, he would kill.

[suspenseful music]

I was sitting in my office in Pioneer Square in Seattle.

It was 7:00 at night,

and my answering service calls me

and says, "There's a Mr. Rosebud on the phone,"

and I knew immediately it was Ted.

- I do know he asked John when he was in Colorado,

"Where will they most likely put me to death

in the United States?" and John said Florida,

and that's exactly where Ted went.

In Florida, he broke into the Chi Omega house

and killed Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy.

- The he brutally beat three more sleeping coeds,

Karen Chandler and Kathy Klein.

Cheryl Ann Thomas was severely beaten

in her apartment six blocks away.

- And then he killed Kimberly Leach in Tallahassee,

who was 12.

She was walking home from school.

So he got caught, as he got caught in Utah,

driving around drunk.

- He's arrested and he's in jail and they don't know

that he's Ted Bundy, and that's when he called me.

♪ ♪

And that conversation was the most bizarre.

I mean, he'd sounded more crazy than I'd ever heard him before.

I mean, he was changing subjects.

He was using other tenses.

I think it was alcohol, but I think he was also having

a psychotic episode of some kind,

and I think he was calling me to just let me know

that he was in custody,

and, you know, what should he do?

I said, "Ted, you better tell 'em who you are.

You know, at least you'd sound like you're being cooperative."

He was picked up for something minor,

so I assumed he would be released by the next day,

and if Ted Bundy was released, he would kill again.

I wanted to call the authorities,

but I didn't because the attorney-client privilege

would prevent me from doing that.

You can't talk about any communications with your client

without the client's approval, so it was a real dilemma

for me, my conscience, my heart,

you know, having lost a woman friend to a murderer.

It was all playing through my mind,

and it really was a "Do I want to be a lawyer anymore?"

That went through my mind that night a lot.

Do I want to be in this position again ever?

I picked the phone a number of times to call the task force

and then put it down, and I called a friend of mine

who's a law professor, and he said,

"Well, under the ethical rules, you can't do that."

And then the human part of me was going,

"You need to do something about this."

So it was a very, very difficult evening.

[dramatic music]

The next morning, they had put the pieces together,

and they knew that it was Ted.

♪ ♪

Can't tell you the number of times that I had decided

I wasn't gonna help him anymore,

but I got drawn back in because the death penalty was looming.

I've never been able to rationalize

why he went to Florida when I told him

that was one of the places you would get the death penalty.

But I don't know.

I think it's more Ted liked playing the game.

He liked the playing the game with authority.

It still doesn't explain why he ends up in Florida.

Nobody thought anybody could get a plea bargain for Ted Bundy.

It's like getting a plea bargain for the Devil, but we did.

Millard Farmer and I worked with the prosecutors

in Florida, Colorado, Utah, and Washington.

The understanding was that if you pled guilty

and we had a life without parole sentence in Florida,

then the other states would stop prosecuting.

And the first response we got was laughter.

We had to soften them up,

and say, "No, we're serious,"

and that took probably two months.

Now Ted would have to plead guilty

and say he was actually the Ted.

But it was very difficult to get Ted to admit

he did anything wrong.

It was an interesting week or so because Millard and I

decided we were gonna deprive Ted of sleep.

[scoffs] So I spent five hours with Ted,

and I go back to the hotel.

And then Millard would come in and spend five hours with Ted,

so we basically wore Ted down,

and he finally signed the paperwork.

[reporters shouting at once]

We were walking into court to do it,

and part of the deal with the prosecutors was

nobody was to alert the media.

We were just going in and do it and obviously,

the prosecutors or the police, more likely,

contacted media so it was a media circus

at the courthouse.

- Level check 1, 2, 3.

- That really pissed off Ted, and Ted walks into the courtroom

and sees all the media and all this stuff.

Turns around to me and says, "I'm not gonna do it."

- We got a court order that there won't be any press in--

- Sure, there won't be any press interviews.

You've given them up. I'm game. You're not.

- All right, we're-- - I'll be heard.

- We went back into the holding cell,

and he tore up his copy

of the Statement of Defendant on Plea of Guilty form.

I don't think I was angry as much as disappointed

because we had really worked to get the impossible.

Millard put his leg up on the chair in the holding cell

and said to Ted, "Ted, me and John Henry

"only have so much time in this life,

"and we're gonna spend it helping people

that really wanna live. Bye!"

And Millard never got involved in it again.

I then told Ted that this could have been over with

and that I felt he had a death wish

and that I was not gonna help him anymore.

That was the end of my involvement

with Ted except when I testified in Miami.

[synthesizer music]

♪ ♪

- The jurors were brought in to hear the details

of what Ted Bundy is specifically charged with.

Prosecuting attorneys have told the jurors

that they believe Ted Bundy,

on the morning of January 15, 1978,

walked into the Florida State Chi Omega house,

strangled two young coeds, brutally beat two others

and then struck again, nearly killing a fifth woman.

If convicted, Bundy faces the death penalty.

- I do believe that criminals deserve a proper defense

because that's our system of justice,

but I do think that he deserved to die for what he did.

- At one point, when a university police officer

not his attorneys,

did the cross-examining.

- The first victim you saw was Kathy Klein?

- Yes. - Ted made the stupid decision,

of course, to represent himself in court.

He thinks he's very likeable, but he's not.

- Will you identify whose photograph that is?

- That's you.

- Theodore Robert Bundy.

- Before I forget to ask the $64,000 question,

did you have a search warrant to search my car?

- No, sir.

- Ted looks like a lawyer. He acts like a lawyer.

He's very respectful and all that, but, you know,

the jury wasn't buying any of it,

and, you know, it makes--

it screams sociopath to the jury.

And even though I thought I was through with Ted Bundy,

once again, I was pulled into his world.

It had to do with that phone call that Ted made to me

18 months earlier.

When Ted called me the night he was arrested in Florida,

he clearly wasn't rational in that conversation.

And turns out the phone call wasn't monitored

because they didn't know he was calling an attorney.

So I was subpoenaed by both the defense and the prosecution

to testify about his state of mind at the time he gave

the statements to the police.

But I had to get Ted to agree to allow me to testify

'cause it might involve the attorney-client privilege,

so the day before I was to testify

I went to visit him at the Dade County Jail.

The constructed cell was like a Hannibal Lecter cell,

and they had guards watching Ted 24/7.

And he was lying on the cell floor,

and he was crying, and he was very upset.

And that's when he looked at me from the floor

with tears in his eyes, and he said

he killed over a hundred people.

♪ ♪

- The day before I was to testify at Ted's Miami trial,

I went to visit him at the Dade County Jail.

And he was lying on the cell floor,

and he was crying, and he was very upset.

And that's when he looked at me from the floor

with tears in his eyes, and he said,

"John, I really want to be a good person. I'm just not."

♪ ♪

And that's when he told me, I think the only person he told,

was that the first person he killed was a young boy

when they were playing some kind of sex game in the woods.

Um, and so he must have been only 12, 13, or 14.

I didn't go into a lot of detail,

'cause I didn't need to or want to.

Ted told me in that interview that he'd killed

over a hundred people.

♪ ♪

And then he told me he'd been active in the Northeast,

Idaho,

and for the first time, California.

I think he was purging himself,

and I think for a brief period of time,

that small part of him

that recognized that he was evil came out.

That was the time that I felt most like

I don't want to be here.

I'm not sure I even want to be a defense lawyer.

I remember holding the jail cell,

not facing Ted and I was going,

"You know, what the hell are you doing here?

You know, why are you doing-- helping this disgusting person?"

- When Ted began confessing a lot of things,

and John couldn't talk about what Ted confessed

until Ted died because of the attorney-client privilege,

which was it wasn't 36 dead girls.

It was over a hundred,

and the details of what he did to their bodies

and did to them when they were alive.

What a horrible burden, you know,

to deal with someone like that that's the worst of the worst,

the most heinous of the heinous.

And all of those details, John had to keep to himself,

and I think that had to be torture.

- And also it was in that conversation where he told me

that he knew about the death of my girlfriend.

The first time I'd heard that from Ted.

So that obviously upset me greatly.

There's no belief amongst the police authorities now

that Ted anything to do with Deborah's murder.

But she did fit the profile of all the people

that he was killing.

It was almost beyond coincidence,

but I believe, as I say, I mean, I have to believe

that Ted had nothing to do with Deborah's death.

I have to believe that,

because I could never forgive myself if he did.

But the fact that he knew about it and then chose me

is very creepy.

I don't know that it's explainable.

At one point, I excused myself and went to the men's room

and got sick to my stomach.

This emotional state went on for an hour or more, maybe two,

and then all of a sudden I said something,

"Well, why are you telling me all this?"

And he just completely snapped back into his lawyer-like mode

and got up, sat on the bunk, washed his face off,

everything was fine.

And I find that very chilling.

[dramatic music]

- Just six and a half hours after Judge Edward Cowart

handed the case to the jury,

the 12-member panel returned with a verdict.

- He was convicted in the Chi Omega murders

based on basically a bite mark

and then, he, of course, had the Kimberly Leach case

up in Tallahassee, where he killed a 12-year-old.

And he was convicted of everything

and sentenced to death.

- Your sentence rendered by the jury

does hereby impose the death penalty

upon the defendant, Theodore Robert Bundy.

- Thank you. - It's a tragedy for this court

to see such a total waste, I think, of humanity

that I've experienced in this court.

You're a bright young man.

You'd have made a good lawyer.

I'd have loved to have you practice in front of me,

but you went another way, partner.

- I never felt threatened personally by Ted.

There were times, of course, I wanted to do him harm

because he would just continue killing

until he was caught or killed.

But that was a fleeting thought.

I'm not a violent person.

[melancholy music]

He would correspond with me from Death Row in Florida.

He would send Christmas cards. He invited me to his execution.

I said, "No, thank you, Ted. I'm not gonna do that.

It's not really on my bucket list."

[melancholy music]

I think representing Ted Bundy

was the turning point in my life.

♪ ♪

I've definitely done everything I could in my whole career

to be anti-death penalty.

You know, Ted was the biggest test you could have, really,

and I passed that test, yes.

♪ ♪

- You know, for John, I've talked to him

about so many of his cases over the years.

Ted was one of 'em, but I think Ted has now become the one.

I think it's the kind of case that haunts you.

It haunts everybody. Imagine being John Henry Browne.

- Once, Ted told me that,

"You know, the reason that you've been my lawyer

and legal advisor so long is 'cause we're so much alike."

And that was haunting to say the least.

What bothered me the most is that he would think that

we were somehow friends.

He came to that conclusion wrongfully.

You never really become friends with the Devil...intentionally.

♪ ♪

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