The Stranger Beside Me (58 page)

It is interesting tk consider that when Ted confessed his escape and his intricate credit card thefts, when he discussed his terrible fantasies, it was to policemen. His voice on the tapes made in Pensacola is excited and full of pride. He is triumphant and hi his element on those tapes, doing exactly what he wants to be doing as if he were laying a gift before them, expecting praise for his cunning. Those detectives were

400

men who could appreciate his cleverness, and, as he said, "I'm in charge of entertainment..."

I have no doubt that Ted would have given anything in the world to have been able to change places with big, easy-going, Norm Chapman. Because that man-whatever his limitations-knew who he was ... and Ted never had.

Women were easier to deal with. But women held the power to hurt and humiliate.

Stephanie Brooks was the first to hurt him badly. Although Ted had dated only infrequently hi high school, he had longed for a relationship with a woman who was beautiful and wealthy. Stephanie did not make Ted an antisocial personality; she exacerbated what was already smouldering there. When she walked away from him after their first year together, he was ashamed and humiliated, and the rage he felt was out of all proportion. He was the litfle boy again, a boy who had had a toy wrenched away from him-and he wanted it back. True, he would smash it-and the relationship-when he got it back, but he had to have the opportunity to do that

It took him years, but Ted did accomplish the seemingly impossible task of reworking the outer Ted until he was able to meet Stephanie's standards for a potential husband. Then . . . then, he could humiliate her just as she had humbled him-and he did. Once she had promised to marry him, he changed suddenly and sent her away. He put her on the airplane to California without so much as a kiss, saw her stunned face and turned his back on her.

But it didn't seem to be enough. His revenge brought no lessening of the void in his soul, and it must have been a terrible realization for him; he had worked, planned, schemed so that he could reject Stephanie, sure that he would feel whole and serene again, and yet he still felt empty.

He still had Meg, and Meg loved him devotedly, would have married bun hi a minute. But Meg was too much like Louise; any love he felt for either of them was tempered with scorn for dieu: weakness. Somehow, he would have to punish Stephanie more.

It was, of course, only three days after Stephanie left Seattle in January of 1974 that Joni Lenz was bludgeoned and raped symbolically with the metal bed-rod as she lay sleeping in her basement room. And so the answer to the question put to me so many

401

times is yes. Yes, I believe Ted Bundy attacked Joni Lenz, just as I now am forced to believe that he is responsible for all the other crimes attributed to him. I have never said it out loud-or in print-but I believe it, as devoutly as I wish I did not.

The victims are all prototypes of Stephanie. The same long hair, parted in the middle, the same perfectly even features. None of them were random choices. I think some of them were chosen-watched for long periods before the attacks occurred-while others were picked rapidly because they were convenient targets during those times when Ted was in the grip of his maniacal compulsion.

But they all resembled Stephanie, that first woman who had pierced Ted's carefully constructed facade and revealed the yawning vulnerability beneath. That damage to Ted's ego could never be forgiven. None of the crimes filled the emptiness. He had to keep kïïïing Stephanie ovet and ovss agaa, hoping that each time would be the time that would bring surcease. But the more there were, the worse it became. Ted had said that "my fantasies are taking over my life," and I don't believe that he had any control over them. The compulsion that he excoriated in his first letter to me after his arrest hi Pensacola dominated Ted; Ted did not dominate the compulsion. He could manipulate other people, but God help bun, he could not stop himself. He also said that acting out his fantasies was a "downer," and the depths of those downers can only be imagined by a rational mind. Since an antisocial personality has no empathy at all for others, it was not his victims' pain that tormented him; it was that there was no relief for him.

All of his victims were so lovely, so carefully chosen, that during the time they were living players in his obsessive rituals, he thought he cared for them. The rituals themselves left the chosen limp, bleeding, and ugly. Why did it have to be that way? He detested them for dying, for becoming ugly, for leaving him-agai%-alone. And, hi the midst of the awful aftermath of the fantasies, he could not truly comprehend that it was he who l|ad wrought the destruction.

Madness, yes, but madness is what I am trying to understand. Holding the reins of power was no fun when there was no one left to terrorize with that power.

I think the rest of the carefully regimented games came about accidentally, an extension of the killing games. Driven 402

by rage, revenge, frustration, Ted killed. The sexual aspect of the murders was not a matter of satiating his drives, but rather the need to humiliate and demean his victims; he felt no true sexual release-only the blackest of depressions.

It was only after the killings that Ted realized just how newsworthy he was. He began to exalt in the thrill of the chase, and it became a part of the ritual, a part even more satisfying than the murders themselves. His power over the dead girls lasted such a short time, but his power over the police investigators went on and on. That he could do these things, take more and more chances, refine his disguises so that he could come out in the light of day-and still remain undetected-was the ultimate euphoria. He could do what no other man could do, and do it with impunity.

How often he would talk to me of being in the limelight, being the Golden Boy. It became life and breath to him.

And the games became more intricate. When Ted was finally arrested in Utah in 1975 by Sergeant Bob Hayward, he was outraged. One must understand that he actually felt this sense of indignation. As an antisocial personality, he could feel no guilt. He had only taken what he wanted, what he needed to feel whole. He was incapable of understanding that one cannot fulfill his own desires at the expense of others. He had not finished with the games, and the stupid police had ended them before he was ready.

When Ted complained throughout the years about jails, prisons, the courts, the judges, the district attorneys, the police, and the press, he was not aware that there was another side to it all. His reasoning was simplistic, but to him it made sense. What Ted wanted, Ted should have, and there was the blind spot in his superior intelligence. When he wept, he wept only for himself, but his tears were real tears. He was desperate, and afraid, and angry, and he believed that he was completely within his rights.

To convince him otherwise would be akin to explaining the theory of relativity to a kindergarten child. The mechanisms needed to understand the needs and rights of others are not integrated into his thinking processes.

Even today, I cannot hate him for that; I can only feel profound pity. Ted has often bragged to me that psychiatrists and psychologists could find nothing abnormal about him. He had

403

masked his responses, another red-flag indicator of the antisocial personality.

Dr. Hervé Cleckley, the Augusta, Georgia psychiatrist who interviewed Ted prior to his Miami trial (the evaluation that Ted felt he was tricked into), is an expert on the antisocial personality, and he acknowledges that standard tests seldom reveal this aberration.

"The observer is confronted with a convincing mask of sanity. We are dealing not with a complete man at all, hut with something that suggests a subtly constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly."

The antisocial personality does not evince the thought disorder patterns that are more easily discerned; there are few signs of anxiety, phobias, or delusions. He is, in essence, an emotional robot, programmed by himself to reflect the responses that he has found society demands. And, because that programming is often so cunning, this personality is extremely hard to diagnose. Nor can it be healed. My first niggling doubt about Ted's personality came when he forgave Meg so quickly for betraying him to the police. True, he had loved her to the extent he was capable of loving, and Meg had never humiliated him. He was the dominant partner in then-relationship, and he had humiliated her again and again. But he never viewed her betrayal as an act of revenge on her part I think she may have been the one woman in his life who helped to fill even a small corner of his barren soul. Although he could not be faithful to her, neither could he exist without her.

And so, because he needed her so much, he seemed able to obliterate any vestiges of resentment toward her. Because it was essential to have her emotional support, he could forgive her for her weakness. But it was such a flat response, so eerily unhuman for him to be able to simply forget that it was Meg who had caused him to be caught I am quite convinced that without Meg's interference the identity of 'Ted" would still be a mystery tèday.

Ted's psyche sol dominated Meg's that I am amazed that she was ever able to break free, and I don't know how free she is-even though she is married to another man.

Sharon Auer was merely expedient; she was there in Utah when he needed someone to run errands and bring supplies into prison, but he left her behind when he left Point-of-theMountain. Carole Ann Boone soon filled the gap; Ted has

404

never been without a woman at bis beck and call since his legal troubles began. Carole Boone has endured. She refers to him as "Bunnie," and plainly adores him. I could not presume to evaluate what his feelings are for her. I talked at length to his other women; Carole Ann said only five words to me. As he told me, "She has thrown in her lot with me," but it is certainly a blighted romance.

There is, within all imperfect mechanisms, a tendency to self-destruct, as if the machine itself realizes that it is not functioning correctly. When the mechanism is a human being, those destructive forces writhe their way to the surface from time to time. Somewhere, hidden deeply in the recesses of Ted's brain, there is a synapse of cells mat is trying to destroy him.

Perhaps that first Ted, the small-child-Ted who could have become all that was promised, knows that the Ted who has taken over must be done away with. Or is that too farfetched? The fact remains that Ted has constantly struck out at the very people who lave tried to defend him. Over and over, he has fired his attorneys-sometimes within sight of victory. He chose the most dangerous state in the union to flee to, knowing that the death penalty was a real threat there. Given a chance to plea bargain for his very life, he tore up the motion that would have saved him and virtually dared the state prosecutors to convict him-a challenge they were only too willing to accept I think he wants to die. I don't know if he realizes that he does.

In my opinion, Ted is not a Jekyll-Hyde. I have no doubt at all that he remembers the murders. There may be some overlapping, some blurring-just as a man may not remember distinctly every woman he has ever slept with. How many times has he told me that he is able to put the bad things that have happened to him out of his mind? The memories may lie hidden like festering boils-but he does remember. The memories can no longer be left behind, because he has no place left to run, and they must haunt his cell in Raiford Prison.

My own memory haunts me. The precognition of the dream-the nightmare-I had in April of 1976 frightens me. Why did I dream that the baby I tried to save bit me? That dream where I saw the bite mark on my hand was two years before the bite mark on one of Ted's Chi Omega victims became the prime piece of physical evidence in the Miami trial.

405

If only Ted had talked to me during our last meeting in Seattle in January of 1976, it might have been different When he said, "There are things I want to tell you .. . but I can't," was there something I could have said that would have allowed him to talk to me then? Could I have changed any of the events that were to come? Although Ted insists he bears no guilt for any of the killings, I am sure there are many others who, like I, carry feelings of guilt because we should have known more, done more-before it was too late.

Ted would have lived if he had confessed to me in the state of Washington. We had no death penalty here in 1974. He would have lived in the state of Colorado. The state of Florida will never let him go-not even to stand trial for Caryn Campbell's murder in Colorado. Colorado let him escape twice, and Florida authorities are scornful of their security. Ted Bundy belongs to Florida.

Killing Ted will accomplish nothing at all; all it would assure is that he could never kill again. But looking at the broken, confused man in the courtroom, I knew that Ted was insane. I cannot justify executing a man who is insane. Placing bun in a mental institution-with the tightest security possible-could perhaps do more toward psychiatric research into the causes and, hopefully, cures for the antisocial personality than the evaluation of any other individual hi history. It might save the potential victims of antisocial personalities still being formed. Ted can never go free; he is dangerous and he will always be dangerous, but there are answers to vital questions locked in his mind.

I don't want him to die. If the day comes when he is led into the death chamber at Raiford Prison, I will cry. I will cry for that long-lost Ted Bundy who might have been, for the bright, warm young man I thought I knew so many years ago. It is still difficult for me to believe that the facade of kindness and caring I saw was only that, a thin veneer. There could have been-should have been-so much more. But if Ted is toldie, I think he will muster the strength to do it with style, basking for the last time in the glow of strobe lights and television cameras. If he is relegated to the ranks of prisoners-the General Population-that will be the worst punishment of all. If he is not killed by his fellow prisoners, who have been vocal that "Bundy should fry," the emptiness inside himself will destroy bun. 406