00:00:06
-Florida State University,
Tallahassee, January the 15th, 1978,
around 2:45 a.m.,
00:00:15
a serial killer on the run broke into the Chi Omega
sorority house and attacked four women.
00:00:22
-There's rape, he beats people,
he knocks people's teeth out, he bites the buttock
of one of the victims.
00:00:30
-The blistering attack
on all four students lasted just 15 minutes. -He could strike
like a chameleon...
00:00:38
Bam!
...and take his prey. -In just four years
in the mid-1970's, a sadistic killer kidnapped,
00:00:47
raped, and murdered
at least 30 young women. A few lived to tell
of their terrible ordeal.
00:00:54
-He leaned in, I thought
he was gonna kiss me. Instead, he said,
"You know what?
00:00:59
I'm gonna kill you." -Initially convicted of only
kidnap and assault, it is suspected
that Bundy may have raped
00:01:07
and slaughtered up
to 100 young women. Sentenced to death
for his terrifying crimes,
00:01:13
Ted Bundy is undoubtedly one of
the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Seattle, Washington.
00:01:41
Ted Bundy began his reign of
terror in the Pacific Northwest and spread it across
seven U.S. states.
00:01:49
He would eventually confess
to the kidnap, rape, and murder of 30 young women
between 1974 and 1978.
00:01:59
Two of his victims
were just 12 years old. -This is a man who killed
in the most violent,
00:02:07
the most terrifying way. He would -- Before death,
he would break bones, he would rip parts
of the body off,
00:02:15
he would keep parts of the body
mutilated after he did it. This is a person
who ravaged his victims,
00:02:21
intending to cause pain. -He was a monster because
he just enjoyed killing. One of his interviews,
the interviewer asked him,
00:02:31
point blank, he said,
"Ted, why did you kill?" And Ted kind of raised
one eyebrow and kind of smiled
00:02:37
and says,
"'Cause I liked it." -Rhonda Stapley
was a college student in Salt Lake City, Utah,
in 1974.
00:02:46
She says she survived
a vicious attack by Bundy and was so traumatized,
she kept her ordeal secret
00:02:53
for more than 30 years. -Nobody went out at night. Nobody even walked
to the library alone.
00:02:59
There was terror and fear
among women everywhere. Ted Bundy was one of the most
evil people in the world.
00:03:07
-When Bundy was finally
caught in 1978, he was incarcerated at
the Leon County Jail in Florida.
00:03:14
Sheriff Ken Katsaris, who oversaw all the county's
prisons, was charged with
keeping him behind bars.
00:03:21
-He was evil, but you could
not discern that, even if you knew he was evil. He came across as brilliant,
charismatic, smart.
00:03:35
So, you put together the evil with all of those
positive traits and you have
a very dangerous person.
00:03:45
-This killer's story
begins in 1946. Theodore Robert Bundy was born
on the 24th of November
00:03:54
at the Elizabeth Lund Home for unwed mothers
in Burlington, Vermont. -This was the 1940's in America.
00:04:03
The ideal nuclear family
was mom and dad, who were married --
that nice family unit
00:04:09
where everything is very neat
and very defined. And people who were outside
of that ideal
00:04:15
really were stigmatized. -To avoid that judgment, Ted's 22-year-old mother,
Eleanor,
00:04:22
moved back to her parent's home
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where her parents brought up
Ted as their own.
00:04:30
-The unusual part of his
childhood is how he's raised. He's adopted
by his grandparents.
00:04:36
He's raised alongside a person
who he is told is his sister. -But she wasn't.
She was actually his mother.
00:04:43
-This arrangement went on
for almost four years with Ted's grandparents
as his main carers.
00:04:50
-His grandfather was
quite a violent character, so that suggests to me
that very early on in his life,
00:04:56
he's almost in a bit
of a survival mode -- "I'm not safe within this home." -Just before his fourth
birthday,
00:05:03
Eleanor moved to Tacoma,
Washington. There she met and married
Johnny Bundy in 1951.
00:05:10
They formally adopted Ted
when he was 5 years old. The couple had four children
together,
00:05:16
but Ted reportedly didn't form
a close bond with his new family and still believed his mother
was his sister.
00:05:23
-Ted Bundy is somebody who has
always been really conscious
of his social class.
00:05:27
He came from quite
humble beginnings. The family were quite poor, and he was really
quite aware of that
00:05:33
and really quite embarrassed
and ashamed by it. -An exceptionally
bright student,
00:05:38
Ted Bundy enrolled
in the University of Washington in 1966 to study Chinese. There, age 20, he met
00:05:47
and fell in love
with a woman called Stephanie. -This was his dream girl. This was the woman
he was gonna marry.
00:05:53
This is the woman to which
he was dedicated. It was romance in the realest
sense that you could imagine it.
00:05:58
-But she suddenly dumped him. -One of the reasons
that she cited was that he wasn't ambitious enough.
00:06:04
And I think this would have
really hit Ted Bundy quite hard because this feeds
into his anxieties
00:06:09
around his social class
and those feelings of unease and those feelings
of not being good enough.
00:06:15
So, what we've got happening
here is this resentment brewing. -Bundy dropped out of university
in 1968.
00:06:23
The following year, he returned
to the East Coast in what he later described as a bid
to understand his roots.
00:06:30
Whilst there, Bundy unearthed
a family secret. -He discovers his true identity. He discovers that the woman
that he's considered to be
00:06:40
his sister for his whole life
is actually his mother. And he discovers his birth
certificate,
00:06:46
and the birth certificate says
he's illegitimate. -The two most important women
to him,
00:06:51
his mother and his mother's
surrogate, and the woman
he wanted to marry, in essence,
both deny and abandon him.
00:06:58
The significance to him of that is that women
simply cannot be trusted. -In 1969, age 22, Bundy returned
to the University of Washington,
00:07:11
and this time enrolled
as a psychology major. There, he met and started dating
a single mother
00:07:17
called Elizabeth. Their turbulent relationship
would last into the mid-1970's. -Women serve a function for him.
00:07:26
They provide a roof
over his head, meals on the table, sex, useful contacts
with other people.
00:07:31
So, he has got quite
a parasitic lifestyle. He will hook
onto particular people and get from them what he wants,
00:07:39
and then he will just
discard them and move on. -In 1971,
Bundy got a part-time job
00:07:45
at Seattle's Suicide
Hotline Crisis Center. -What he's doing is
he's performing the role
00:07:52
of the respectable
middle-class young man. He wants to be seen
to be helping other people.
00:07:58
He wants to be seen to be doing
socially worthy things. And this also feeds
into the work
00:08:03
that he becomes involved in in
terms of political campaigning. -When Bundy
graduated university,
00:08:11
he joined the Republican
governor's reelection campaign. Then, in September of 1973,
00:08:18
Bundy was accepted
into law school at the University
of Puget Sound in Tacoma, just 30 miles south of Seattle.
00:08:27
Before beginning the law course,
he went on a trip to California. Whilst there, he rekindled
00:08:33
his relationship
with his first love, Stephanie,
despite still dating Elizabeth.
00:08:40
-All of a sudden,
he's a different man. He's working for the governor,
he's talented, he's successful,
00:08:46
he looks like he's good enough
for her, finally. -Ted Bundy and Stephanie
get engaged.
00:08:51
They planned to get married. And Stephanie's very excited
about this, but Ted very coldly
just drops her.
00:08:58
-What this was all about was how
far this man would go for revenge to have the kind
of narcissistic victory
00:09:06
that it would not be her
that rejected him, and then rejected her summarily. -Having taken back control
by ending the relationship
00:09:16
with Stephanie, 27-year-old
Ted Bundy returned to Washington and decided he needed
to show womankind who was boss.
00:09:25
Just after midnight
on January the 4th, 1974, Bundy broke into
the basement apartment
00:09:31
of an 18-year-old dancer
and university student. -She was at home, asleep, in her house one night
when Ted Bundy broke in,
00:09:41
and he beat her with
a metal pole and he raped her and she was in
a really terrible state.
00:09:47
Many people think this is
something that just kind of came out of the blue, but I would say,
absolutely not, it didn't.
00:09:53
I think this was an attack
that was built up to. We often find with offenders,
there's some behavior
00:10:00
before they get to the point
of raping and attacking people. And in Ted Bundy's case,
this was voyeurism,
00:10:06
so he had a history of peeping
through women's windows and watching them get undressed.
00:10:12
And it's something that
gradually builds, and it's not enough for him, and he ratchets it up
to the next level.
00:10:18
-The violent assault left
the young woman unconscious for 10 days. -She sustained injuries
from the blows to the head
00:10:26
that will cause brain damage
and brain swelling. And when he sexually
assaulted her with a metal bar,
00:10:33
that caused damage
to her internal organs, and she was left permanently
altered by those injuries.
00:10:43
-Seattle, Washington,
February 1974, it was here that 27-year-old
Ted Bundy attacked again
00:10:51
and turned
from rapist to killer. -It's no coincidence that she's
a university student
00:10:57
who he sees as privileged,
who he sees as undeserving. Whereas he's somebody
who's really hard done by,
00:11:04
and it is that
constant jealousy, that constant underlying
feeling of shame, that drives
a lot of his violence.
00:11:11
-Bundy's chosen target
was a 21-year-old University of Washington student
called Linda.
00:11:18
He broke into her room. -He very severely attacks her. He really does bash her skull
00:11:24
when he carries out
the assault on her. She doesn't survive the attack. -That night, after he'd attacked
and killed Linda,
00:11:34
Bundy moved her away
from the campus. He dumped her body in the dense
woods of Taylor Mountain Forest,
00:11:42
a 30-minute drive
from the university. -It's very important that
he maintains control
00:11:47
over the victims,
even after he's killed them. So he doesn't just leave them
where they are,
00:11:52
he wants to be able
to know where they are. He wants to have
control over them. So he chooses a local
beauty spot, Taylor Mountain.
00:12:00
It's a place that people
generally go to enjoy, but for him it really
is a macabre dump site.
00:12:08
-Linda's body was found a year
later, in 1975. Her death marked the start
of a furious spate of killings.
00:12:16
At this time, Bundy
quit law school in Tacoma after just six months. He returned to Washington,
not as a student,
00:12:24
but as a predator. -He would lure women
over to his car saying that he needed
their assistance with something.
00:12:31
And he'd often be wearing
a sling to make it appear that he'd injured himself. And he was good-looking, he was
charming, he was respectable.
00:12:40
-Bundy's trademark VW Beetle
became his favorite method for abducting women before taking them
to a remote spot to attack them.
00:12:49
-When he hit, it was like
a shark grabbing its prey. Bam! -He'd use a blunt object
to bludgeon his victims,
00:12:59
and then he'd strangle them. -After eight aggravated murders
of young women in the first half of 1974,
a rate of more than one a month,
00:13:09
fear spread
across the Pacific Northwest. -I think Ted Bundy enjoys
the feelings of power.
00:13:15
He enjoys
the feelings of control. So, you start to see the attacks
get closer together
00:13:22
because he's having to escalate
his offending to get
that same feeling of power.
00:13:27
We know with psychopaths
like Ted Bundy, they're prone to boredom,
so they will start to mix it up
00:13:33
a bit
and offend in different ways. -Then in the summer
of that year, Bundy changed his M.O.
00:13:39
He now decided to attack
in broad daylight. On July the 14th at Lake
Sammamish State Park,
00:13:45
just over 15 miles southeast
of the University of Washington, Bundy attacked two young women,
00:13:51
23-year-old Janice
and 19-year-old Denise. Denise was last seen entering
a public restroom in the park.
00:13:59
-There are some witnesses
to these crimes. And there's one
common denominator, and that seems to be a man
called Ted
00:14:07
who drives a VW Beetle. So that begins to narrow
the field a little. -Bundy later said
that he kidnapped both woman
00:14:18
from the state park within
a few hours of each other. He raped them and made one watch
as he murdered the other.
00:14:26
Bundy disposed of their bodies
in an area two miles away. -It's reported that Ted Bundy
spent time
00:14:37
with the bodies of his victims, that he shampooed the hair
of some of them, that he painted
their fingernails.
00:14:43
-What his M.O.
always consists of is taking these two facets of his personality
and he used one of them --
00:14:50
the intelligent,
the charming, the caring, the one that would help
wash the hair --
00:14:54
he'd use that to seduce them
into his private presence, and then the monster,
the face --
00:15:03
the face of rage,
would come out. And this would plunder
this woman asunder. -In September of 1974,
Bundy left Washington
00:15:15
and moved east
to Salt Lake City. The 27-year-old had been
accepted into law school again,
00:15:21
this time at
the University of Utah. On the surface, he looked
like an ordinary student,
00:15:29
but inside was
a cunning serial killer. -He was not your average person. He was bright, brilliant.
00:15:40
He felt like he was a chameleon and that he
could disguise himself. He could change his colors,
and he could take advantage.
00:15:51
-Bundy later claimed
that he first killed in Utah on October the 2nd, 1974. The victim was just
16 years old,
00:16:00
and her body was never found. Rhonda Stapley, a University
of Utah pharmacy student,
00:16:07
was waiting for a bus. -I had a dental
appointment downtown, and while I was downtown,
I decided
00:16:15
I would walk over
to a city park. And then, my mouth started
to become un-numb from the dental surgery,
and I could tell
00:16:20
that I needed to go home
to some aspirins pretty soon. So, I went over to where
the bus stop was.
00:16:26
-The bus did not show,
but Ted Bundy did. He pulled his VW Beetle up to the bus stop
and offered her a ride.
00:16:34
-He was nicely dressed,
handsome. He told me
that he was a law student, and I was
feeling pretty lucky --
00:16:42
what college girl wouldn't
want to meet a law student? -Unlike other serial killers,
he did not target prostitutes,
00:16:51
which are easy victims. He'd target young, attractive,
intelligent, often beautiful
and successful women.
00:17:00
This he could do
because of his intelligence. That made him a unique threat
and danger.
00:17:05
-After a couple of blocks
with Rhonda in the car, Bundy took a turn away
from the university.
00:17:11
-Very politely, he says,
"Oh, hope you don't mind, but I have
a short errand to run."
00:17:15
And I said, "I thought you were
taking me to the zoo." And he said, "No."
I said, "Near the zoo."
00:17:20
And we kept driving up
that canyon and then down another canyon. -Bundy drove up into
Big Cottonwood Canyon,
00:17:28
just southeast of the city. -At this point,
he stopped talking to me. He just had both hands
on the steering wheel
00:17:34
and was just driving. -As Bundy came to a corner,
he slowed down. -In my mind, I thought
that he was looking for a place
00:17:42
to pull over and park
and make out. And so, in my mind,
I'm trying to figure out how do
00:17:46
I get out of this situation without embarrassing
either of us. -Bundy pulled off the road
and into a secluded picnic area
00:17:53
and parked the car. -And then he turned towards me and he leaned in
really close to my face.
00:18:00
I thought he was gonna kiss me. Instead, he said,
"Do you know what? I'm gonna kill you."
00:18:06
And he put his hands on
my throat and started squeezing. -She fell unconscious.
When Rhonda eventually woke up,
00:18:14
she was lying on the picnic
table with Bundy on top of her. -He was sitting on my chest
with all of his weight
00:18:21
on my chest and stomach. And I told him, "Get off,
I can't breathe." And he says, "Stop struggling,
and I'll let you breathe."
00:18:29
And so, I held still and he kind
of rocked up onto his knees, so it took some
of the pressure off.
00:18:33
And then he put his hand
over my nose and mouth and cut off my air that way. And he would do that until I
would just go unconscious,
00:18:40
and then he would kind of
bring me back. He -- he liked watching me fade
in and out of consciousness.
00:18:48
-Rhonda had just one chance
to save herself. -The last time, when I
regained consciousness,
00:18:54
I noticed that he wasn't
standing by me anymore. The canyon was pitch-black
with darkness,
00:18:59
and there was little light coming from the dome light
of the car because he had opened the door
to the Volkswagen
00:19:04
and was fiddling around
with something in the back seat. And I used that opportunity to
just run the opposite direction.
00:19:10
I just jumped up and ran. Fortunately,
or just by pure luck, or grace of God,
or intervention from above,
00:19:19
or something, I happened
to fall into the mountain river, which wasn't very deep,
but was really, really fast.
00:19:25
And it swept me away. There was water
swirling around boulders and flowing over boulders,
00:19:32
and I, of course,
was smashing into those. Eventually, I was able to climb
out and rearrange my clothes
00:19:39
so I could walk home. And that's what I did,
is I just walked home. -Rhonda kept her attack by Bundy
a secret for more than 30 years.
00:19:49
-I felt embarrassed and stupid
and ashamed and, plus I was religious --
LDS Mormon girl.
00:19:57
And the teachings at that time
were that, if you have a choice of losing
your life or losing your virtue,
00:20:05
it would be better for you
eternally if you lost your life. So, I decided the best thing
for me to do
00:20:10
was just to suck it up and pretend it never happened
and go on with my life. -Rhonda's escape did not deter
Bundy's murderous plans.
00:20:20
A few weeks later
in November 1974, Bundy was prowling
a mall in Murray, Utah, posed as a police officer.
00:20:29
Disguised, he managed to entice an 18-year-old
telephone operator called Carol
to get into his car.
00:20:35
He planned on raping
and killing her. -And this goes wrong.
It fails. She gets away.
00:20:43
-During the struggle,
Carol had managed to open the car door and escape. -Ted Bundy is not
the kind of guy
00:20:49
who just gives up and goes home. He's got his mind set on it. He wants to get
what he wants that night.
00:20:56
-Now two of Bundy's victims
had escaped death. The next would not be
so fortunate.
00:21:02
On November the 8th, Bundy
kidnaps 17-year-old Deborah as she left
a theater production.
00:21:09
She was on her way
to pick up her brother. Deborah was never seen again. -What happens with Bundy
and many other serial killers,
00:21:18
they have to kill. They kill, they get a release, sometimes they get
a little extra release
00:21:26
by returning to the corpse and having a small dose
of the arousal, which they can live through
by toying with their trophies
00:21:35
and toying
with the corpse itself, and then they have
a rest period. -All the time 27-year-old
Bundy had been killing,
00:21:44
he was still seeing
his long-term girlfriend, Elizabeth, in Seattle. In the autumn of 1974,
he also got involved with Carol,
00:21:53
a single mother and a divorcée. -He presented as
completely normal, and so many people
were taken in by him.
00:22:01
-Ted Bundy had yet to appear on
the police radar as a suspect, but thanks to eight eyewitnesses
who saw him in July of 1974
00:22:11
at Lake Sammamish,
the Washington State Police were on the lookout for a man
who'd introduced himself as Ted
00:22:18
and was driving a tan VW Beetle. -This guy is reported
to be nice-looking, in his 20's,
00:22:26
just an average college guy. He doesn't look like a monster. And nobody thinks that
a serial killer looks like this.
00:22:34
-Police issued
a composite sketch based on the descriptions
they had. It was broadcast
on national television
00:22:41
and was seen by Elizabeth. She called the police. She gave them Bundy's details,
as well as those of his car.
00:22:49
But the police dismissed
the tip, because reportedly Bundy
was a clean-cut law student.
00:22:56
A year later, the 28-year-old
headed cross country. He raped and killed three
young women in Colorado.
00:23:04
In May, he assaulted
a 12-year-old child. She'd been abducted from her
junior high school
00:23:10
in Pocatello, Idaho. -She's his youngest victim. Here, we've got Ted Bundy seeing
an opportunity
00:23:18
and actually seizing it, with not too much regard
to the risk, and that's not really
his previous M.O.
00:23:25
He's used that charm before. But this is quite disorganized, and this is something
that will lead to his downfall.
00:23:32
-Bundy had got away
with multiple murders and, despite a sketch of him
in circulation,
00:23:37
had not been identified
by police. In June, 1975,
he returned to Utah and killed
a 15-year-old girl in Provo.
00:23:45
Two months later,
Bundy was driving erratically through a Salt Lake City
suburb in his tan VW Beetle
00:23:52
when he was spotted by a Utah
highway patrol officer. -Ted Bundy is pulled over
by a police officer.
00:23:59
He notices the front
passenger seat is missing, there's an ice pick,
there's a crowbar,
00:24:04
there's a ski mask, and all of this looks
incredibly suspicious, but Ted Bundy being
the charming manipulator
00:24:11
has an explanation
for all of this. -Suspicions were aroused,
but the Utah police
00:24:17
did not have
enough evidence to detain Bundy for anything to do
with the murders.
00:24:23
Instead, three Utah
detectives flew to Seattle where they met up
with the Washington police.
00:24:28
Together, they interviewed Bundy's long-term girlfriend,
Elizabeth. She told them that she'd found
some strange items
00:24:36
in the apartment a year earlier, including a meat cleaver
and a bag of women's clothing.
00:24:41
-What happens over the course
of the lives of serial killers is the time it takes them
to need another killing,
00:24:51
to need, if you will,
another savage, evil meal, gets shorter
and shorter and shorter.
00:24:57
Their control gets less and less
and less. The way they perpetrate
their crimes becomes wilder and more foolish.
00:25:05
-With the FBI on his trail,
Bundy sold his VW, but it was found by police. Inside, they discovered strands
of survivor Carol's hair
00:25:14
and hairs from two other women. On October the 2nd, 1975,
detectives found Bundy in Utah,
00:25:23
arrested him,
and put him in a lineup. There, Carol positively
identified him as her abductor.
00:25:32
-This is where he's taken
his eye off the ball. This is where he started
making mistakes.
00:25:37
He's been so driven by his wants
and his desires that he stopped to actually risk-assess
what he's doing.
00:25:44
-Unable to find enough evidence
to charge him with any murders, Bundy only stood trial
00:25:49
for Carol's
aggravated kidnap and assault. On June the 30th, 1976, Bundy was sentenced to serve 1
to 15 years
00:25:59
and was eventually moved to the Garfield County Jail
in Colorado. -I felt relieved that
he was arrested
00:26:07
and wasn't a threat
on the street anymore. -Just as police were gathering
enough evidence to charge him
00:26:13
with the murder of
a 23-year-old woman in Snowmass, Bundy pulled a major surprise.
00:26:19
-There's a preliminary hearing
and Ted Bundy, being the incredibly arrogant
individual that he is,
00:26:25
decides that he's going
to defend himself in court. -Bundy was savvy about
how the system operated.
00:26:32
By being his own lawyer, he had access to the law
library system of the jail. And he was allowed to go there,
notwithstanding that once
00:26:41
you got access
to the law library system, you could go right out
the window, which he did.
00:26:45
-Bundy escaped and went
on the run in Colorado. He was caught six days later. A year later,
he pulled another surprise.
00:26:55
-He's in his cell and he notices that there's a hole
in the ceiling. And one day, he manages it,
and he gets through the hole,
00:27:01
and he comes out
in the apartments that belongs
to the chief jailor. And he literally walks out
of the front door of the prison,
00:27:08
and he's away again. -Free and on the loose,
Bundy made his way to the peaceful college town
of Tallahassee
00:27:16
in the sunshine state
of Florida. -I suspect that when Bundy knows
he's at the end of his rope --
00:27:22
he's been arrested enough times,
had enough interactions to realize that this story
is gonna come to an end.
00:27:29
So, it's in Florida
that he goes on his rampage. -Around 2:45 a.m.
on January the 15th, 1978,
00:27:38
Ted Bundy broke into the Chi
Omega sorority house. -He's somebody who's familiar
with college towns,
00:27:44
with college buildings. So I think he knew that there
were many women in this house,
00:27:48
and that was his intention
all along. -Within 15 minutes, he had
attacked 4 women, brutally --
00:27:55
cracking their skulls,
breaking their collarbones. -21-year-old Margaret was hit
with a piece of firewood
00:28:02
and then strangled to death
with her stockings. 20-year-old Lisa was beaten
unconscious, raped, and killed.
00:28:10
-The attack
is incredibly brutal. There's rape, he beats people,
he knocks peoples' teeth out,
00:28:16
he bites the buttock
of one of the victims. -The magnitude of the terror
for the victim
00:28:23
is as intense as the magnitude
of the rage by the perpetrator. -Two others were both
severely beaten and assaulted.
00:28:31
Miraculously, they survived. Within the hour, the sheriff
of Leon County, Ken Katsaris,
00:28:37
was called to the crime scene. -When I got there, I did check
with the investigators.
00:28:44
They had secured the scene. We knew that we had two
who were obviously dead, and two that
they believed may die.
00:28:57
You could tell which one
was first. You could tell which one
was second, third, and fourth.
00:29:04
But you could tell how
much energy that he expended. -This was not the end of
Bundy's activity that night.
00:29:16
-As I'm standing outside of
the sorority house, we get a call that there's strange noises
coming from a condo next door,
00:29:27
and I send an investigator
immediately because, I said,
"Six blocks away, could it be?"
00:29:33
He's doing it again, which only tells you
he couldn't help himself. -Bundy had broken into
another apartment,
00:29:43
where he savagely
beat another student. -She was in a pool of blood when my investigator went in
the condo, or the apartment.
00:29:51
And Bundy was leaving out
the back window, but she tended to the --
the injured first.
00:29:58
-Still free, a few weeks later,
Bundy struck again, this time in Lake City
in Northern Florida.
00:30:05
His victim was another little
girl who was just 12 years old. -He is a prolific serial killer
at this point in time.
00:30:13
Serial killing is his hobby. It's his vocation. It's something that he feels
that he's good at.
00:30:19
And, more so,
he's getting away with it. And when somebody's
getting away with it,
00:30:24
they're certainly
not going to stop. And, if anything, their offending
is only gonna get worse.
00:30:29
-Bundy dumped the girl's
brutalized body in woods about
30 miles west of Lake City.
00:30:35
He then stole a car and made his way west
into the Florida Panhandle. Three days later,
on February the 15th, 1978,
00:30:45
an alert Pensacola
police officer stopped America's
most notorious serial killer
00:30:51
near the Alabama state line
for driving suspiciously. -He just had a gut feeling
that something might be wrong.
00:31:01
And, of course,
it came out over his radio after he called it in that the
vehicle had been stolen.
00:31:07
-After a brief struggle in which
the officer was forced to fire a warning shot,
Bundy was arrested.
00:31:14
He was taken to the Leon County
Jail in Tallahassee, Florida. -I had him in custody for over
two years
00:31:21
in my detention center, my jail. I had him so locked up that
he wasn't going anywhere.
00:31:29
He not only was
in a secure jail cell, but I had him in a cell that we had lined
with armor plate steel in sheets
00:31:41
that were welded
in terms of the seams -- floor, walls, ceiling. There was no light fixture
that he could remove
00:31:53
like he did in Colorado. And then I put extra locks
on the door -- heavy, impenetrable locks --
00:32:02
in addition to
the jail key lock. And they were in the hands
of several people. -When she discovered that Bundy
was arrested for murder,
00:32:12
his partner, Elizabeth,
finally left him. At the same time,
detectives in Washington state
00:32:18
tried to build their case
against Bundy and prove
that he was a serial killer. Sheriff Ken Katsaris was also
doing some digging of his own.
00:32:29
-I went to his cell one day,
talking to him through the port. I told him, I said,
00:32:35
"Ted, I think I know
what's going on with you. You've had a problem
with your mother
00:32:44
because you were born
out of wedlock, she withheld who your father
was, you've never forgiven her,
00:32:54
and that has a lot to do
with what you're doing in terms of taking it out
on other women."
00:33:00
He immediately opened
his eyes wide with anger. He wanted to kill. He immediately started trashing
his cell, throwing things about.
00:33:13
And he grabbed the shower rod,
which was welded in place, he ripped it from its position,
which meant a lot of power.
00:33:23
-Intellectually,
Sheriff Ken Katsaris was more than a match for Bundy. He managed to goad
the serial killer
00:33:30
into a game-changing revelation. -He would taunt me with, "Ken,"
as he would refer to me,
00:33:38
with that sarcastic twist
of that name -- just three letters,
but he would say, "Ken."
00:33:45
And then he would say, "The evidence is there,
you just can't find it." And I thought then,
I know what he's referring to.
00:33:55
He signed one of those bodies. -This was Ken's eureka moment. -He used his teeth
and clamped hard twice
00:34:05
to leave a signature. And I realized we had a very deliberate
double bite impression --
00:34:15
double meaning he bit down and
then he came out and bit again. That was his signature.
00:34:23
-Ken Katsaris was convinced
the bite marks left on the bodies of his victims were the smoking gun
that would show,
00:34:30
once and for all,
that Ted Bundy was indeed America's
most vicious serial killer.
00:34:35
But to convict Bundy, the sheriff of Leon County
needed to prove it. -When I viewed the two bodies
of the young ladies
00:34:47
at the morgue on the slab, just barely 20 years of age, I had a one-month-old
little girl at home
00:34:58
and I had a 2-year-old
daughter at home, and I just kept flashing images
that this could be them.
00:35:07
I made myself a promise
in the morgue, somebody's gonna pay for this. I will find this person.
00:35:17
-During his regular interactions
with Bundy, the sheriff realized that in the
Chi Omega sorority house attack,
00:35:25
Bundy had left a bite mark
on the left buttock of Lisa, one of the victims. -I was teaching the forensics
of homicide investigation,
00:35:35
and I was teaching
the advanced concepts, so I knew that these bites
were going to be important.
00:35:42
-Sheriff Ken Katsaris determined
that if you can get an impression of Bundy's bite,
00:35:47
he might be able to match it to
the marks left on Lisa's body. -I needed an exemplar.
00:35:55
I needed his teeth marks. And that became --
I think it consumed me. How can I get them?
00:36:06
-The prison officers tried
some novel techniques to get the clean impression
they needed for a comparison.
00:36:13
-We gave him different kinds
of fruit, 'cause we weren't sure which one the core would leave
the best bite impression.
00:36:19
And that inmate said,
"You're getting fruit? I don't get any fruit." And I think he became suspicious
00:36:29
that something was going on
with that because he quit
eating his fruit. -After their fruit tricks
failed,
00:36:35
the sheriff and his team
had a trailblazing brainwave. -Then, it struck us --
it just, it hit --
00:36:45
what about a search warrant
for his mouth? We can just go serve it. That would get
the bite impression.
00:36:52
-Ken decided to take Bundy
to his own dentist. -I personally went to
Ted Bundy's cell and I said,
00:37:00
"You're coming with me." I told him to put his brace on. I had a special brace developed,
now called the Bundy brace.
00:37:08
It was spring loaded, so that when he would
straighten out his leg, you could hear that
spring pop into place,
00:37:15
that way if he tried to run, he'd be running
with one stiff leg. I told him to put his brace on.
00:37:22
-Bundy reluctantly went with Ken
to the dentist's office. -And I escorted him up
the stairway because
00:37:29
he couldn't walk it
very well with the brace. And then the door opened,
and there stood three men
00:37:38
with little white smocks on, and the dental chair
behind them. And he knew --
he knew the jig was up.
00:37:49
He knew. And that's when I knew
that he knew that the bite marks
were deliberate,
00:37:54
and they were put there
for a purpose. -Ken told Bundy
that he had a warrant and they were going to get
a bite impression from him.
00:38:02
-And I had the judge
put in there that we could use any and all force
reasonably necessary.
00:38:09
I showed him the contraptions
that they use post mortem to keep the mouth open. And he looked at me, he sat down
in the dental chair, smiled,
00:38:22
and said, "Ken, you know I'm not
a violent person. Do what you need to do." -The bite mark impression that
the sheriff obtained
00:38:34
would prove vital in proving that Bundy was,
in fact, a killer. His trial for the murder
of the two students
00:38:41
in the Chi Omega sorority house and the assault
of three more young women began in Miami
on the 25th of June, 1979.
00:38:51
It would be the first national
televised trial in America. -And I said I'm going to argue
more broadly 'cause I --
00:38:59
I haven't had
an opportunity to -- to complete my research
on the status of Florida law.
00:39:06
-I was watching the trial on TV,
and I saw how arrogant he was, and he wasn't in shackles.
00:39:12
He was dressed -- pretending
to be his own lawyer -- dressed like a lawyer, smiling and flirting
with the people in the audience,
00:39:18
and just being
Mr. Charismatic, and that was kind of sickening. -On July the 24th, 1979,
the jury convicted Ted Bundy
00:39:31
on two counts
of first-degree murder and three counts
of attempted murder. He was given
the death sentence twice.
00:39:38
-The only real evidence
we had was the bite impression. And, obviously, I felt good
because I found it.
00:39:47
I was conflicted. Yes, I understood that this was
congratulations, but it was no congratulations.
00:39:56
These women had suffered --
some suffered and lived, thank God, others died. How do you celebrate?
00:40:05
-Bundy would spend 10 years
on death row fighting his execution. -Ted Bundy exhausted
every legal avenue
00:40:12
he possibly could to save
himself from the death penalty. So, the cost of his trial
and his appeals
00:40:18
was around about
$9 million U.S., which was
a lot of money at the time. -At the sentencing for the rape
and murder of a 12-year-old girl
00:40:27
in Lake City, Florida,
Bundy represented himself. Sensationally, he used the
opportunity to propose to Carol.
00:40:36
Carol met Bundy in Seattle
in 1974. She would profess his innocence
until the eve of his execution.
00:40:45
She had a daughter
in October of 1982 and claimed that Bundy
was the father. -Serial killers,
they are intense,
00:40:53
they are moving,
and they are real. And I think some women
are excited about that.
00:40:59
Some women need that terror,
that terror, that excitement, especially if somehow
they can be near the flame
00:41:08
without being burned
by its touch. -Over the 10 years that Bundy
was on death row,
00:41:13
he slowly confessed
to 30 documented murders. -He has knowledge of murders
that he's committed,
00:41:20
which the authorities
don't know about, and he's gonna use that
to his full advantage.
00:41:25
And he's gonna drip-feed some of
this information out bit by bit in order to try
and buy himself some time.
00:41:32
-As the appeals run out, and as the death
sentence neared, a macabre fascination
with Bundy grew.
00:41:38
-Just before his execution, we started to see this immense
media circus around the event.
00:41:45
We started to see radio
shows playing the sound
of frying bacon on air, and they had a Bundy countdown.
00:41:52
People had Ted Bundy
dances and barbecues. -At 7:16 a.m.
on January the 24th, 1989,
00:42:01
age 42, Ted Bundy
was finally executed. -Even when he was being walked
to the electric chair,
00:42:09
he was shouting
out names of victims. Right up until the end, he's trying to buy
himself more time,
00:42:15
he's trying to just
gradually give away some of this knowledge
about his crimes.
00:42:19
-It's a sad thing,
from a scientific point of view, that he would die without
telling us or giving us any hint
00:42:28
about whether or not
there was something in his life that we don't know about
that helps explain his conduct.
00:42:35
-I was not really happy,
but kind of relieved. Normally, I don't very often
agree with the death penalty,
00:42:42
but with him, it was necessary. -So many people were taken
in by him, despite the fact he was leaving
this trail of bodies behind him.
00:42:49
Monsters don't always
look like monsters. Sometimes they look like
the guy next door.
00:42:55
-Arguably America's
most notorious murderer, Bundy was deceptively depraved. He used his charms to kidnap,
rape,
00:43:02
and kill by some estimates
up to 100 young women and girls, making Ted Bundy
one of the world's
00:43:10
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪