The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (50 page)

The victim might also be too young; it’s not safe to be labeled a confessed child-killer in prison. Not only will the guards hate you, Ted admitted, but other prisoners will too. Finally, the victim might be too close to family or might be one of the killer’s own family members. For example, even though Ted knew that he was a prime suspect in the disappearance of an 8-year-old girl who lived near his home in Tacoma when he was 14 years old, he steadfastly did not want to talk about this case, and every denial he made was unconvincing.

Ted continued his discussion on questioning techniques by saying he found it useful to get murderers to talk about themselves. Ted said that while he talked to one killer in particular, “he finally started asking me questions. He said, ‘Well, what would happen if
they found a body that was like this and like that, what do you think people would think?’ He was worried about what people would think of him. And this is a curious thing that you may have run into, that each individual can’t be approached like in an FBI profile. He can’t be approached as a collection of disorganized characteristics. This guy had unique needs. When I was trying to figure out what happened to this girl, again not as an investigator, just as a curious individual, I had to find out what those needs were.

“And for him, his own view of the world was that certain murders are okay and certain ones aren’t. And I had to find out why wouldn’t he tell me about this one. Why wouldn’t he give me the details on this one? And it took us a while at first, talking generally about, you know, how our minds work, and how I could understand why he might think this was the case. ‘But listen,’ I said, ‘you’ve already admitted to all these others. Why hold back on that one?’ Then he says, ‘Yeah, but people would think I’m a really bad person if I told them about that one.’ So we had to work through all this guilt he had about this one versus all the others, thinking that people would view him more negatively, believe it or not, for this one murder than for these other twelve or thirteen. And this is something he held, like a secret locked away in his chest. And it was logically a foolish kind of reservation on his part, because no one would think he was any more horrible than they already thought he was. But in his own mind, that was what was holding him back.

“And this is what I found in a lot of guys that I’ve talked to. There are some things they’ll talk about and some things they won’t. And they have a particular view of the world that you have to discover. Why are they holding back? Why does this one guy, for example, not want to talk about the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds he killed—and he may have killed a dozen—but he’ll talk about all the prostitutes he killed. Because in his own mind, killing all the young girls that he got at roller-skating rinks was bad. The prostitutes off the street corner he’ll tell you about in a minute, okay? He had his particular
morality of murder,
if you will; it was such that he could talk about some but not others. He could tell you the truth about some but not others.”

I was almost in shock at this point. How could I carry on an interview in an atmosphere that held that “some murders are okay”? Was that what I was supposed to say to the Riverman—“It’s okay to kill prostitutes”? How do you get the killer to believe that you are truly sincere? When you confront your suspect for the very first time, should you automatically expect that this guy who’s murdered any number of people is going to have guilt or shame about one, two, or several of his victims? And how do you use that information to get more confessions out of a killer?

Bundy referred to these emotional attachments to victims as the killer’s soft spots. He said, “Every guy has soft spots. Some of those victims, he wouldn’t have a feeling for in the world. And others, he probably feels bad about. It’s hard to say. I’m guessing. It’d be easier for him to talk about others and harder to talk about some. It’s hard for me to imagine what the particular thought patterns are that he’s responding to, what needs he has in terms of just relating to what he’s done. But that can become fairly obvious to you over a period of time.”

Ted Bundy had the “luxury” of living with these guys. He was in prison with Bobby Joe Long, a killer who was arrested in November 1984 for murdering 11 women—some of them prostitutes—in Tampa, Florida, during a period of less than a year. Ted claimed to be fascinated with the murders committed by Bobby Long. He said, “I wanted to find out all about what Bobby Long did; I wanted to know exactly what he did, even though he’d already told the police. And so if you live with a guy for a few weeks I can figure out what’s going on in his head. And he knew where I was coming from, also.”

Ted relished being able to get into a guy’s head. When he’d talk about it, he would puff up his chest like a big toad, exulting in his superiority. Ted bragged, “a lot of people who come to me have read about Ted Bundy, so they know what—you know, they have an image or an impression of what I’m about. That may help them open up some, too.”

Ted criticized the facts gathered in interviews of serial killers by FBI agents. They listened to people like Edmund Kemper give details
of his murders that occurred in Santa Cruz, California, in the early 1970s. Ted said, “There’s no question in my mind, he’s lying, too.” He did not tell the whole truth about his own murders. “It’s curious that someone would admit to that kind of conduct, and yet over the years, for whatever reason, whatever psychological need they have to fabricate or embellish the story of the account, it happens. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve talked to guys who have come to me over the years and, you know, for whatever reason, they’ll try to speculate. But they’ll say, ‘Hey, let me tell you about this.’ And they told me some things and I know they’re bullshitting me.”

I directed my next question squarely at Ted’s ego. “Do you challenge them?” He responded on cue. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I know how to—I mean, I can see through a guy very quickly. It’s fascinating when somebody comes to me. I know when they’re bullshitting me and I know when they’re not. I know when what they’re telling me is for real and when what they’re telling me is a fantasy. And I’ve had a guy do both with me. It’s a curious, curious situation. I had a guy sit down and just tell me stories. I knew he was telling me stories. And yet, I also know that, essentially, he’d done what they said he did, but he had a need to tell it a different way so he looked different, he looked better. In his own mind, okay? He wasn’t a savage, lust-filled killer, but he was this guy who just—he just got mad. The bitch made him mad. So it’s very curious how guys—some men who committed a series of murders over the years, in their own mind, will rewrite history to satisfy their needs. And they will lie. To themselves, perhaps. I mean, one person in particular. Fascinating.” And he knows Bobby Joe Long did a lot more than the police say he did.

Ted claimed that Bobby Joe Long freely admitted a couple dozen murders to the police, many of which he didn’t do. “He confessed to murders he didn’t do and didn’t confess to murders he did do. He was so messed up. And he did it in such a way that his confessions were expressing his inner needs, reflections of his inner self, which were somewhat juvenile. And also there’s a need for approval. And he wanted people to say, ‘You’re doing good; you’re a good guy. You’re doing a good thing.’ But anyway, I don’t want to get too lost on this, but it’s fascinating to see how people will embellish on their accounts, under the best of conditions. So you don’t know what the FBI is getting.”

Ted had just rambled on about exposing one of his comrades
when he was lying, while at the same time fearing that I could tell when he was bullshitting. This conversation revealed one of the many flaws in Bundy’s personality that he constantly struggled with: his fear of not being believed or, worse yet, of being ignored because I would be able to detect that he was not telling the truth. Lying was a major factor in Bundy’s relationships with other people. He lied to everyone: his girlfriends, parents, friends, cellmates, and lawyers. Of course, Ted knew that his murderous friends would lie, because that’s all that they—and Ted—did in their relationships with other people. For Ted’s upcoming confessions, his real dilemma was providing certain information about his murders that would convince me that he was telling the truth, and at the same time, knowing that his proven credibility, by his own admission, was less than zero.

After having just struggled with his own inadequacies, Ted had to be reeled in and his ego elevated. When we did that, he was hooked. He loved talking about murder, which was nothing more than a glorification of himself. He needed to be told “you’re doing well, keep going.” So I asked him about all the books that have been written about him. “Have a lot of them read these dime novels that have been written about you?”

With this comment, I successfully stoked Ted’s fires. He said, “They all have, as a matter of fact, to one extent or another. And that kind of gives them a sense—at least an impression of—let’s face it, of camaraderie, and that may not be the right word, but you know what I’m getting at.”

He continued, “This guy will understand. Or sharing, like a kid, like a cat that brings the mouse home, you know. Sharing those experiences which he could probably never share with anybody. And I’ve had people tell me things. They said, ‘Listen, nobody could understand this. I’ve never run across anybody I felt I could tell this to without feeling like they’d turn me in.’ One thing they know about me is they can trust me, because there’s nobody the state of Florida wants more than me. So they know I’m not about to turn them in. And of course, in reality, I wouldn’t turn them in if they told me about what they did and told me about things that the police didn’t know about.” But cops knew Ted thought much the same thing would save his neck.

“A second thing: one in particular felt the need to tell me because he—it was a burden. He’d never been able to talk to anybody
about it for fear they’d turn him in. Or they wouldn’t understand or they would judge him. But when he talked to me, he didn’t feel like I would judge him. He was right. I wouldn’t. And he felt like I would understand, and he was right. I did.”

The art of interviewing a serial killer was clearly interviewing without being judgmental. It was more than just dropping a mask over your face and pretending that nothing he said got to you. Guys like Ted Bundy could pick that right up, and he had told me so. It was more; it was actually believing that this killer had a right to do what he did. But it was a technique that Bundy wanted me to learn from him, and I could only guess at the grand strategy that he had laid out. It would serve a double purpose. I asked, “How does a detective talk to somebody without judging him?” I meant, how should I talk to the Riverman; how should I talk to Ted Bundy?

Now Ted had to perform. He had to explain what no one else could. He struggled. “That’s hard. That’s very hard. I can’t imagine. I mean, it would take an extraordinary individual.” I asked him another way: “You talked earlier about the need to get to this person right away and to interview them in any situation, or in most. What does a detective do to get to that same sort of rapport that you have there?”

“It’s scary!” Ted said.

“They’re [the investigators], not Ted Bundy.”

“The scary thing is,” he said, “you have to have real empathy. Real, not phony. You don’t just call a guy by his first name, shake his hand, give him a cup of coffee, offer him cigarettes, and go through all the standard procedure of putting a guy at ease, which is important. But there has to be a real empathy, which, impossible as it may sound, lacks judgment, lacks—I mean, how do you detach yourself and say, ‘This guy did these things which I consider to be horrible and repulsive and I’ve seen the impact it has on the community and the family,’ and how do you detach yourself from all that? And all the personal stuff and just really try to get into the guy’s head without these barriers?

“My advantage, in talking to the guys that I’ve talked to over the years, is that I don’t have those barriers. Still, I don’t have those barriers that I’ve erected between myself and the other person. Still, I encounter barriers from time to time that they’ve erected between everyone—anyone—about knowing the real story.

“And that’s something, that’s, as I said before, a curious thing.
Even when they do, sometimes a guy does open up to me and tells me about stuff. I can tell sometimes he’s lying to me, that he’s not telling me the straight story. And I know what that’s about too. That’s because this guy has lived with this ‘terrible’ memory, with these urges, and has lived with his behavior for so long and has had to keep it secret, just to be able to survive. Just to be able to survive!

“Let’s say a guy has been out there for seven, eight years, periodically doing something, killing people. Now, from the very time that behavior sprang into his brain at some point, for whatever reason, he had to more or less keep that to himself. He couldn’t go around telling people, ‘Hey, listen, this is what I’ve been thinking about,’ before he ever did anything, okay? ‘I’ve been thinking about going around and killing people. I mean, I’ve been reading these books and I’ve been having all these strange urges.’ Now, nobody is going to go around announcing that, just for fear of the fact that people will reject them, which they probably would. Right?

“So in order for this guy to be socially acceptable, to be able to just perform his normal life, he’s had to erect a security barrier. He’s had to keep these thoughts and later be acting out of these thoughts, tight to himself, and share them with no one, because if he did, he knew what would happen. He’d be turned in and arrested.” Ted was now describing the basic paradox of serial killers: they want to blow off the sexual urges they have before they kill because they want to be able to navigate among people. Yet they also want some credit after they kill for remaining “socially acceptable.” How do they balance the two? They usually don’t, but Ted believed that police had to give credit where credit was due if they wanted a serial killer’s full confession. And I had to admit there was something perversely logical about his explanation.