The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (54 page)

“Somebody who’d only been at it for a short time would be more vulnerable, more unstable, more confused, more guilt-ridden, more susceptible to coercion, you know. Remember that classic case—you’ve probably run across it—where they bring this guy into an interrogation room and ask if he wants to take a polygraph and tell him to put his hand on this mat or something like this. And every time he gives an answer to a question, the investigator presses a button and a light goes on and said you’re lying—and thoroughly convinced this guy that they knew he was lying about these key questions and he finally confessed. Of course, it wasn’t hooked up to a polygraph at all. But that kind of ploy, as crude as it was, will work. Once in a while it will probably work on those guys who haven’t been at it very long, haven’t been through the system, criminal justice system, haven’t been imprisoned or jailed. And the whole thing about being in police custody is terrifying for [them]. And everything, their whole identity, everything they know about themselves, is shaping them. And they begin responding to unconscious cues, one of them being that they’ve always been taught, probably, to cooperate with the police, even when it comes to confessing some pretty horrible things.”

Up to this point, Ted’s interview had been filled with the key qualities that any skilled investigator was supposed to be capable of demonstrating: trust, confidence, understanding, real empathy, and patience. For me, the last one, patience, was running out. I decided to ask him a third-person type of question, one that he knew was for him, “Ted, the convicted serial killer.” I carefully asked, “How would you approach a convicted murderer that you know is in prison for murder and is responsible for cases that are technically unsolved? How would you approach an offender like that? I mean, they obviously know the system. They’ve been tried and convicted, maybe sentenced to death. Then all of a sudden, there are some unresolved matters of the past where this person is a suspect in those matters. How would you approach somebody like that?”

Ted was quiet for a very long time. “Well, I don’t—again, each case is going to be different. I think generally you’ve got to—it depends—it’s just an entirely different set of circumstances than you’re going to have with somebody who’s never been through the system, who’s not convicted. And I guess that you’d have to be able to give him something. I don’t know. Let’s say that you had the Green River guy locked up here—you had somebody locked up you thought was the Green River guy. May have been locked up for assault or something and he’s in Walla Walla [penitentiary]. I mean, how would you go to him? I mean, how could you approach such a person who’s familiar with the system, who’s locked up for ten or twenty years to confess to something which obviously carried some pretty heavy penalties and resulted in being a very notorious guy in prison?”

I said, “I mean, he may be under the death sentence, you know, for crimes he committed now, but what happened in the past there’s no death sentence for. I mean, the penalty is not as great for those.”

Ted was very pensive.

I let him—and me—off the hook for the moment by saying, “Seems like a pretty impossible situation that where there’s still answers to questions that could be resolved—you’ve talked a lot about how you’ve approached these people and the development of an appreciation of what was done. And I would expect that a detective in
that situation would have to be the same, absolutely with the same criteria to develop some sort of appreciation for what somebody has done and with real understanding…. We have several crimes where the circumstantial evidence is pretty well focusing on one person, yet the opportunity to go interview them is not right, and we virtually do not know how to operate that type of interview.”

Ted regained his composure and said, “Well, in that kind of circumstance, you see, everything is complicated by the demands of the criminal justice system, of the way everyone is more or less required to play the game. And a guy who’s in prison or whether he’s on death row or wherever, he has appeals, and he would simply be foolish to talk to the police about anything as long as his appeals are intact. Because the system, as it stands now, is not really geared to getting at the truth so much as it gets at portions of the truth. It gets at approximations of the truth. Whether it be a trial—and as long as a guy goes to trial, all you’re getting is what the witnesses say, you know. And that’s only part of the story, probably. The same is true on appeal. The guy who’s been convicted is bound to try to maintain his position, and he can’t say anything, is not in a position to say anything.”

At this point, since a killer will not want to speak directly, would that type of person be inclined to speak in the abstract? Is that what Ted was doing all along, especially in the interviews he gave? Were these backhanded, wimped-out confessions? Is this what I would have to look forward to if I ever interviewed the Green River Killer?

Ted began to get defensive. He said, “I don’t know what [purpose] that would serve. Remember you told me that didn’t totally serve any purpose to the investigators as long as it was so vague that they couldn’t really pinpoint anything. Well, I don’t know. It depends on how general they are. But I think you know … the old Miranda warning: ‘anything you say can and will be held against you.’ And I—it doesn’t necessarily even have to mean in a court of law. But I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. The way things are set up, I don’t see how someone could say that, like you’re talking about Walla Walla prison, where they have any incentive to talk to you. I mean, first, on the one hand, he’s got his appeals, and so there are disincentives—clearly disincentives—to talking to you. On the other hand, what motivations would there be for someone in that position to talk to you about anything?”

I pressed on. “How about someone like yourself who is obviously astute, by your own admissions several times, that you really
like talking to other people about this stuff? You like thinking about crime scenes and seeing pictures. And you like reading everything you can get your hands on about the subject. You obviously like talking to me about it, or otherwise you wouldn’t be doing it. Is there something about that atmosphere that is appealing?”

Ted was interested again and said, “Well, with me, I do enjoy it; and yet that interest ebbs and flows. There’s some times I’m more interested in talking about it than others. Like right now, I’m sort of ambivalent about it. I mean, it’s interesting; I find it interesting. I know a lot about the subject. It’s hard to put it in words in the abstract. I mean, to me, it’s more interesting to have specific things to deal with—you know, specific cases. I don’t like to generalize because, like I say, the guy who’s responsible for the Green River Killer is not a profile, he’s not a computer program. He’s a very unique human being. So I don’t want to generalize, but I do like to talk about it, and I like to read about it. And yet I can take it or leave it most of the time. I mean, it’s certainly not something that I would rather do than anything else. Like, right now, if I had a choice, I’d rather be outside running around in the sunshine. Sometimes I’m more motivated to talk or read about this stuff than others. But I don’t get off on it. I mean, that is, I don’t get a thrill out of talking to you about it, in the abstract. I mean, I’m not trying to, I won’t try to make myself out to be a good guy, but I do have motivations, and generally would genuinely like to see this questionnaire, for example, of your work.” He was referring to our HITS (Homicide Investigation and Tracking System) form.

Ted tried to keep me in his corner by complimenting our HITS program. He wanted to continue our correspondence about serial murder. One last time, he inquired about the crime scene photo I had shown him back in 1984. He asked if I had any more to show him. It was almost as if he needed to be energized. I told him maybe next time.

The stage had been set. Bundy had carefully prepared his student. In an indirect way, by talking about what would and wouldn’t work when interviewing the Riverman, he told me what it would take for him to talk about the murders he committed. I “would have to give him something.” Ted was talking about his life; he didn’t want to die in the electric chair.

Bundy emphasized that he had kept his secret for so long that any statement of admission would be difficult and would have to be made in degrees from the less painful to the most shameful. Ted had nominated me to be his confessor by grooming me from day one under the
camouflage of solving the Green River murders. He had warned me about saying “I understand” before he was able to tell me what “understanding” him was all about. My approach to him was that I was always looking for information that contributed to my understanding of the Riverman and, through the Riverman, him. It was an ongoing process that didn’t stop even with his execution.

He force-fed me with advice on maintaining a low-key approach and remaining patient at all times. My patience in developing the facts necessary to understand Ted on his terms was constantly being tested by him against the whetstone of his disturbing admissions and pretentious lectures on the Green River Killer. Maybe he had already convinced himself that I would be ready when the time came. Maybe this had always been part of his own exit strategy from the very beginning of our extended dialogue.

I did not know that Ted had made the decision to confess to me in February 1988, about one year prior to his death. If it hadn’t been for his attorney’s talking him out of it, Bundy would have begun telling all. I was always curious why Bundy kept changing the day of my visit in February at the last minute. Now I know. He was negotiating with his appellate attorneys about the propriety of giving incriminating statements. In 1988 he ultimately chose not to confess.

What controlled Ted’s ability to communicate with me was the stage of his appeals. By February 1988, he had received another execution delay. The next stage was less than a year away. His advisors apparently concluded that confessing to new murders might undermine his chances to win an appeal of his conviction for the Florida murders. At the close of our 1988 conversations, I informed him that I would return to visit him anytime he desired.

Unfortunately, Ted waited too long. My next visit was scheduled four days prior to his execution in January 1989. The conditions for his interview were horrible, and it was conducted in a circuslike atmosphere. Representatives from every major television and radio station and newspaper from Washington to Florida were congregating outside the gate of the Florida State Penitentiary to cover the story of his execution. My role was to participate in his “debriefing,” which was not exactly the forum that I expected for his voluntary confession. One more time, Ted was going to manipulate me and everyone else around him; this time it was his disorganized and unsuccessful effort to save his own life.

12
 
The Signature of Murder

T
ed Bundy, while he never did catch the Green River Killer as he wanted to do, still played a very, very indirect role in the capture of one of Washington’s most outrageously violent serial killers. And he did it from beyond the grave. I wouldn’t have believed it possible had I not seen it with my own eyes. It all began with Bundy’s advice that police agencies develop a violent-crime tracking system on computer. That eventually became reality with the FBI’s VICAP program that was housed in the basement of the organization’s headquarters at Quantico. Bundy was indirectly responsible for the development of the program because his cases, spread out as they were across hundreds of miles, were the types of crimes VICAP trackers and profilers were trying to investigate.

However, in the state of Washington, we had other plans. We went on to develop our own computer tracking system that ultimately helped us establish a pattern for and then solve a serial-murder spree that would have slipped right through our fingers if we had used normal investigative methods. The case we solved was that of George Russell, who was caught, in no small measure, because of Ted Bundy’s comments years earlier and our subsequent homicide tracking system based partly on our experience with
Bundy. And, like most of my cases, it started with a simple request over the phone.

Two months after I left the Green River Murders Task Force, I was surprised by a telephone call from Terry Green at VICAP, who invited me to participate in a meeting at Quantico to discuss changes that would reduce the size of the existing VICAP crime report form. The call amazed me because I thought I was pretty much persona non grata after my friend Pierce Brooks left the unit. My problems with VICAP had more to do with where the system should have been housed—it belonged anywhere but inside the FBI, as far as I was concerned—than the size or content of the form. In spite of my criticisms of the program, I was still one of VICAP’s most vocal supporters. For the first six months of the system’s existence, one third of VICAP’s database contained murder cases from the state of Washington that I had diligently researched for them. Differences aside, I was willing to advise, and my input about what and how information should be collected seemed to be highly regarded by those who ran VICAP.