The Stranger Beside Me (28 page)

suspected.

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Carol DaRonch was not a confident witness; she appeared to be upset by the way Ted stared steadily at her. She sobbed during her testimony, recalling her terror of sixteen months before. But she pointed to Ted as he sat impassively at the defense table, identifying him positively as the man who had told her he was "Officer Roseland." Ted sitting there, clean shaven, wearing a light gray suit, white shirt, and tie, looked anything but a kidnapper; the accusing witness was plainly hysterical, buckling again and again under O'ConnelPs questions, questions intimating that Carol DaRonch had been led to her identification of Ted by the subtle and not-so-subtle persuasion of the detectives under Captain Pete Hayward's command. For two hours, the defense lawyer cross-examined the weeping girl.

"You identified pretty much what law enforcement officers wanted you to, didn't you?"

"No . . . no," she replied softly.

Ted continued to stare at her implacably.

When Ted himself took the stand, he admitted that he had lied to Sergeant Bob Hayward at the time of his arrest for evading an officer, that he had lied to O'Connell. He explained that he had "rabbited" when Hayward chased him in the patrol car on August 16th-but only because he'd been smoking marijuana. He'd wanted time to get the "joint" out of the car, to let the smoke clear. He admitted that he had not been to a drive-in movie, but had told Hayward that. He had not admitted the real story to John O'Connell at first.

Bundy had no firm alibi for the night of November 8th, but he denied that he had ever seen Carol DaRonch before he saw her in court. The handcuffs? Only something he'd picked up at a dump and kept for a curio. He had no k_ey for them. ,,

Assistant County Attorney David Yocum questioned Bundy under cross-examination.

"Have you ever worn a false moustache? Didn't you wear one when you were a spy in the Dan Evans campaign?"

"I wasn't 'spying' for anyone, and I never wore a fake moustache during that period," Ted answered.

"Didn't you brag to a woman acquaintance that you like virgins and you can have them any time?"

"No."

"Didn't you tell that same woman that you saw no difference between right and wrong?"

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"I don't remember that statement; if I made it, it was taken out of context and does not represent my views."

"Did you ever use an old license place on your car, after you'd received new plates from the state of Utah?"

"No sir."

Yocum then produced two gasoline credit slips.

"You notified the state that you had lost plates bearing the numbers LJE-379 on April 11, 1975. These slips show that you were still using those 'lost' plates in the summer of 1975. Why was that?"

"I cannot remember the incidents. The attendant probably asked for my plate numbers and I may have inadvertently given him the old numbers from memory."

Ted had lied, not big lies, but lies, and it tainted all the rest of his testimony. He admitted that he had lied to O'Connell about the marijuana until two weeks before trial. A jury might have believed him; Judge Hanson did not.

Hanson had retired to ponder his decision after final arguments on Friday, February 27th. On Monday, March 1, the principals were summoned into the courtroom at 1:35 P.M.

The thirty-seven-year-old judge by his own statement had spent an

"agonizing" weekend. And he had found Ted Bundy guilty of aggravated kidnapping beyond a reasonable doubt. Ted, who had been free on bail, was remanded to the custody of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office to await sentencing.

Ted was stunned; Louise Bundy's sobs were the only sound in the courtroom on that snowy afternoon. Convicted, Ted said nothing until he was handcuffed by Captain Hayward and Jerry Thompson, and then he said scornfully, "You don't need these handcuffs. I'm not going anywhere." Meg Anders watched as Ted was led out of the courtroom, seeing it all happen. It had been what she thought she wanted when she called police with her suspicions. Now she was sorry; she wanted Ted back. Sentencing was set for March 22nd. There would, of course, be an appeal. Ted was behind fbars again, in a world that he hated. I wrote to him, vapid letters full of what was happening in my life, trivia. I sent hfn small checks through John O'Connell's office for use in the jail commissary, stationery, stamps. And, still, I suspended judgment. Until / had proof that Ted was guilty of this, and perhaps of other crimes, I would wait.

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The frequency of his letters to me increased. They were more telling of his state of mind than what someone else could paraphrase. Some of them are misdated, as if time itself had no meaning for him any longer. 22

His first postconviction letter was mailed on March 14, 1976, although he had mistakenly dated it February 14th.

"Dear Ann,

Thanks for the letters and the commissary contribution. I've been slow in returning letters since this most recent setback. Probably a function of my need to mentally rearrange my life; to prepare for the living hell of prison; to comprehend what the future holds for me." He said he was writing to me as a "pump priming venture," to help him begin to assess what lay ahead. He was confounded by the guilty verdict and scornful of Judge Hanson, intimating that the jurist had been influenced by public opinion rather than by the evidence presented. He expected to receive a five-to-life sentence, and felt that the Department of Adult Probation and Parole were doing their presentence report with bias.

"The report seems to be focusing on the Jekel (sic) and Hyde theory, a thing disputed by all the psychologists who have examined me." i Ted said he had heard that the probation investigator seemed to believe that Ted had made some damaging admission to me in letters. Of course, he had not. I had had only those two letters from him before the trial, and, with his permission, had turned them over to King County-Police detectives.

On March 22nd, Judge Hanson announced that he would delay sentencing for ninety days, pending a psychological evaluation. Ted wrote to me that night as he crouched on the floor with his back against the steel wall of his cell, trying to glean enough light from the hall fixture so that he could see to write. He did not seem to be particularly upset about the diagnostic evaluation which would take place at the Utah State Prison at Point-of-the-Mountain.

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"If jail life is any indication, prison should be rich in the material that human suffering breeds, full of the startling tales which prisoners tell. For several reasons, I must take advantage of this opportunity and begin to draw upon this valuable reservoir of ideas. I will start writing."

What Ted wanted from me was my editorial advice and for me to serve as his agent to help him sell the books he wanted to write about his case. He was anxious that we move rapidly in establishing our roles as collaborators and to agree on a percentage agreement on the distribution of the profits that would surely be forthcoming. He asked that I keep his proposal confidential until the time was right and that I correspond with him through his attorney's office. I didn't know just what it was that he intended to write, but I responded with a long letter detailing the various avenues of publishing, and explaining the correct manuscript form for submission. I also repeated again the information about the book contract I already had with W.W. Norton on the missing girls cases, and stressed my belief that his story would have to be a part of my book, just how much I couldn't know. I offered to share my profits with him, gauged by the number of chapters he might write in his own words.

And I urged him to wait a bit with his attempts to publish-for his own protection. His legal entanglements in Utah and Colorado were not over. Colorado was moving rapidly in their investigation, although the public-of which I was a part-knew few of the details. The discovery of the credit card purchases had leaked out, however. And I had news. I was about to take a trip to Salt Lake City as part of the preparation for a travelogue book I was editing for an Oregon publishing house; I would try to get clearance to visit him in prison. That clearance would not be easy to come by. I was not a relative, and I was not on the approved list of visitors for Theodore Robert Bundy. When I called Warden Sam Smith's office in the old prison in Draper, Utah, I was told that, if I called again when I arrived in Salt Lake City, they would make a decision. I was quite certain that the answer would be "no."

On April 1, 1976, I flew to Utah. I had never flown in a jet, hadn't flown at all since 1954, and the speed of the flight, the knowledge that I could leave Seattle's rain and be in a

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comparatively balmy Salt Lake City within a few hours only added to my sense of unreality.

The sun was shining, and a dusty wind blew puffs of tumble weed over the brown landscape as I drove my rented car from the airport. I felt disoriented, much as I would three years later as I arrived in Miami-again because of Ted.

I called the prison and learned that visitors were not usually allowed on days other than Sundays and Wednesdays. It was Thursday, and already 4 P.M. I talked to Warden Smith who said "I'll have someone from the diagnostic staff call you

back."

The call came. What was my purpose in wanting to visit Bundy? "I'm an .old friend." "How long would I be in Utah?" "Only today and tomorrow morning." How old was I? "Forty." That answer seemed right; I was too old to be a

"Ted Groupie."

"O.K. We're granting you a special visit. Be at the prison at 5:15. You'll have one hour."

The Utah State Prison at Point-of-the-Mountain was about twenty-five miles south of my motel, and I had barely enough time to find the right freeway, going in the right direction, and reach Draper, the post office stop, population 700. I looked to my right and saw the twin towers with guards armed with shotguns. The old prison and the landscape around it seemed to be all the same gray brown color. A feeling of hopelessness seized me; I could empathize with Ted's despair at being locked up. I'd spent a summer working as a student intern at the Oregon State Training School for Girls when I was nineteen and I'd carried a heavy ring of flat keys wherever I went, but that was a long time before: I'd forgotten the security needed to keep human beings behind walls and bars. The guard at the door told me I couldn't take My purse inside.

"What can T do with it?" I asked. "I can't lock it in my car because my kevs are in it. May I bring my keys in?" "Sorry. Nothingdnside." He finallv relented and opened up a glassed-in office where -ti~ TM

in<-.v<>H My purse in the

He finallv relented ana openeu up a ^,u.^~~ ... I could leave my ear keys after I'd locked my purse in the

rental car. I carried my ciearettes in my hand.

-<._i-„ »

I could leave my «ai K^, „.^. , _ . rental car. I carried rny ciearettes in my hand.

"Sorry. No cigarettes. No matches."

I put them on a counter, and waited for Ted to be brought down. I was feeline the claustrophobia I always feel in jails, even though my work may take me into almost every jail in

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Washington sooner or later. I felt my chest tighten, my breath catch. To get my mind off my cloistered feelings, I glanced around the waiting room. It was, of course, empty; it was not regular visiting hours. The dull walls, sagging chairs, seemed not to have changed in fifty years. There was a candy machine, a bulletin board, pictures of the staff, a left-over religious Christmas card. To whom? From whom? Disciplinary notations on prisoners. For Sale notices. An application to sign up for self-defense classes. Who? The staff? The visitors? The inmates?

Where would we talk? Through a glass wall via phones? Through steel mesh? Some people hate the smell of hospitals. I hate the smell of jails and prisons, all the same:'stale cigarette smoke, Pine-Sol, urine, sweat, and dust. I didn't want to see Ted in a cage. It would be too humiliating for him.

A smiling man walks toward me-Lieutenant Tanner of the prison staff-and asks me to sign in. But first, we move through an electric gate that clangs shut behind us heavily. I sign my name, and Lieutenant Tanner sees me through a second electric gate. "You can talk here. You'll have an hour. They'll bring Mr. Bundy down in a few minutes." It is a hallway! A tiny segment of space between two automatic gates on either side. There are two chairs shoved against a rack of hanging coats, and, for some reason, buckets of varnish beneath them. A guard sits in a glass enclosure four feet away. I wonder if he will be able to hear what we say? Beyond me is the prison proper, and I can hear footsteps approaching. I look away, the way one averts his eyes from someone crippled or malformed. I cannot stare at Ted in his cage. The third electric door slides open and he is there, accompanied by two guards. They search him, pat him down. I was not searched. Had they checked me out? How did they know I had no contraband, no razor up my sleeve?

"Your I.D. Ma'am?" Someone is talking to me.

"It's in the car. I had to leave everything in the car." The doors open again as I run back to retrieve my driver's license, something to prove who I am. I hand it to a guard and he studies it, hands it back. I have not looked directly at Ted. We both wait. And now he stands in front of me. For a crazy instant, I wonder why prisoners wear tee shirts proclaiming their reli-

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gious preferences. His is orange and says "Agnostic" on the front. I look again. No, it reads "Diagnostic."

He is very thin, wears glasses, and his hair is cut shorter than I have ever seen it. He smells of acrid sweat as he hugs

me.

They leave us alone to talk in this funny coatroom-hall. The guard behind the glass across from us appears to be disinterested, and we are interrupted only by a steady stream of people-guards, psychologists, prisoners' wives headed for an Al-Anon meeting. One of the psychologists recognizes Ted and speaks to him, shakes hands.