THE CONFESSION OF TED BUNDY

Clip 1:
Bundy: “… and this is, I guess, where it counts, is to me that means that we go over things in great detail. But not just the incident itself. Ultimately, whether it’s to you, or to somebody else. Because basically it all began in Washington State; that is that’s where I was living, that’s where I grew up as a kid, and that’s where I grew up as a young man. And, and those kinds of, ah… images, impulses, and behaviors which ultimately led… to the violent behavior, you know occurred, if you will, in Washington State. That kind of… uh… broad understanding that I’m looking for is going to come, you know, um, during those years I lived in Washington State. Ahh, you know, unfortunately, I guess, from your standpoint it was Washington S—basically Washington State—where those first… crimes, incidences, murders took place.”

Clip 2:
Bundy: “Well, let’s just do one here—I mean to start. Obviously we’ve gotta start somewhere and I think it might—we might, as a long shot—it’s a pretty long shot—that you might be able to get something out of it. At least some of that so-called tangible, ahh, evidence that might be of some value, not only to you, but to others. And maybe a bit of information—even if you don’t find anything else—that might be of some value to families. Okay. So we’ll do… I understand that at the Issaquah site, which I could describe to you—would describe to you if you want—there were th… three, ahremains of three individuals found: two identified and one… not, ’cause of the… the ah, so few—the kinds of remains that were found were so few and unidentifiable, okay?
Former King County detective Bob Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “What do you want? The where the“
Keppel: “I’d like to know”
Bundy: “Description of the site first? How to get there? I mean you just don’t, you just don’t make this up.”

Clip 3:
Bundy: “Maybe a half a mile, quarter of a mile down this ahh… little side road; if you turn—if you kept on following it all the way down” (clip cut out)

Clip 4:
Bundy: “Oh, well, Lord knows what, what the little creatures up there did; what the animals would’ve done. But I think… [long thoughtful breath]. Well let‘s, let me start with one.”
Keppel: “Okay.”
Bundy: “Let me start this way. Umm, the unidentified remains ahh, umm… This is where I’m a little bit ahh, iffy. The presence of the officers down here is a little bit unnerving. Ah, some of it, some of this stuff I don’t mind talking about, but ‘cause they wouldn’t know if I‘m Adam. But I, names I will, I could write it down, or I could whisper it to you, or whatever. I just don’t want the police getting any kind of names at this point.”

Clip 5:
Bundy: “Well.” [now whispered into the mic to hinder officers hearing]
(this to Keppel): “If you can, can you hear that?”
Keppel: “I can hear it, yeah.”
Bundy: “Okay. I guess, what I just said that the Hawkins girl’s head was severed and taken up the road, ahh [sigh] 25 to 50 yards and buried in a location about 10 yards west of the road on a rocky hillside. (to Keppel) Did you hear that?”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”

Clip 6:
Bundy: “(thoughtful sigh) Yeah. But not had anything to do with the ‘found’ that I know of. If you’d f- you’d’ve found- probably would’ve found uh, the damage to the head.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “The jaw in particular probably broken.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “But if you’d found that, you would’ve known who it was. But anyway, I don’t know—
Keppel: “Right.”
Bundy: “Is that the reason you asked me that question?”
Keppel: “I wanted, umm”

Clip 7:
Bundy: “Uh, I was, uh, moving up the alley, ahh… using a, uh, a briefcase and some crutches and a young woman walked down. I saw her, saw her round the fr—the north end of the block into the alley and stop for a moment and then keep on walking down the alley toward me. And about halfway down the block I encountered her and asked her to help me carry the briefcase. Which she did and we walked back up the alley, across the street, turned right on the sidewalk in front of, I think, the fraternity house on the corner there… uh, rounded the corner to the left going north on 47th… Well, midway in the block there used to be a- you know, one of those parking lots they used to make out of burned down houses in that area.”

Clip 8:
Bundy: “Let see. We were to the, we were to- “
Keppel: “[INDECIPHERABLE] to your car.”
Bundy: “We were to the car, uh. [thoughtful sigh] Uh… I knBasically when I reached the car, what happened was I… knocked her, knocked her unconscious with the crowbar.”
Keppel: “Where’d you have her then?”
Bundy: “By the car.”
Keppel: “Alright. Outside?”
Bundy: “Outside, in back of the car.”
Interview: “Did she see you?”
Bundy: “No.”
Keppel: “Right.”
Bundy: “No. And then, uh, there were some- [whispered now] there were some handcuffs there, [voice returns to speaking-volume] along with the crowbar”
Keppel: “Along with what?”
Bundy: “The crowbar, yeah. And, uh, I handcuffed her and put her in the driver‘sI mean the passenger‘s side of the car and… drove away.”
Keppel: “Was she alive or dead then?”
Bundy: “Oh no, no. She was quite conuh, not, uh, she was unconscious but she was very much alive.”

Clip 9:
Bundy: “One of the things that makes it a little bit, well, among other things, it makes it difficult is that, uh, at this point she was quite lucid; talking about, uh… things; about some[laugh] It’s funny, it’s funnot funny, but it’s odd the kinds of things people say under those circumstances. And she thoughtshe said that she had thought thatshe had a Spanish test the next day, and she thought that I had taken her to help tutor me for a Spanish test. It was kinda odd. Odd thing to say.”

Clip 10:
Bundy: “To the long and the short of it, I mean, I, uh, I’m gonna nametry to make this, uhget there by degrees. The long and the short of it was that, that I, again, knocked her unconscious… and strangled her, and drug her into… uh, about ten yards into the, uh, small grove of trees that was there.”
Keppel: “What’d you strangle her with?”
Bundy: “Cord.”
Keppel: “Cord?”
Bundy: “An old, an old piece, an old piece of rope.”
Keppel: “Just something you brought there with you?”
Bundy: “Yeah.”
Keppel: “Yeah?”
Bundy: “Just something that was in the car.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm. Okay. Then what happened?”
Bundy: “[sigh] Then I, uh, packed the car up. By this time it was almost dawn. It was just about dawn. Sun was coming up. And I went through my usual—I say usual routine—I went through this routine where I was just… absolutelyI would go through this, but on this particular morning I, I was just absolutely, again, just shocked; kinda scared-to-death shocked—horrified—aboutand I, uh, went down the road throwing everything that I’d had—the briefcase—out the window. Throwing the briefcase, the, the, (this while chuckling) crutches, the rope, the clothes; just tossing them out the window.”

Clip 11:
Bundy: “This was justI was in a sheer state of panic, of just absolute… horror, you know. Uh, it’s like at that point in time was consciousness of what has really happened. It’s like… you break out of a fever, or somethinI would, that is. And, uh, so I wouldI drove north on 90, then uhnorth-east on 90... At some point throwing articles out the window as I went; articles of clothing: shoes etcetera”
Keppel: “When did you remove those?”
Bundy: “What?”
Keppel: “The shoes? The clothing?”
Bundy: “Well, after we got out of the car, initially.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “Okay. Well, I skipped over some stuff there, and we’ll have to get back to it sometime, but I don’t feelI justit’s just too hard for me to talk about right now.”

Clip 12:
Bundy: “Oh sure! Yeah. I threw away the briefcase, [laughs] and the crutches, and all that stuff.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “Yeah. And the crowbar; everything. The handcuffs. Everything… I’d, I’d get mad at myself a few weeks later ‘cause I’d have to go out and buy another pair. I mean it’s not comical but that’s what would happen.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”

Clip 13:
Bundy: “Well”
Keppel: “I mean the Spanish test is pretty darn good if you ask me.”
Bundy: “That’s what she said, unless she was hallucinating. She said everyeverybody called her George.”
Keppel: “George?”
Bundy: “That’s what she said.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “Or how about this: she used a safety pin to pibecause apparently her… blue slacks were a bit too big.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “Or… that’s about all I know.”
Keppel: “Okay.”
Bundy: “I mean, I suppose there’s, there’s a, ahh… You know, I’m sure there are other bits and pieces that’ll come back to me, but there wasn’t a lot, obviously, there wasn’t a lot of conversation, but…”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”

Clip 14:
Bundy: “[laugh] Talk about details coming back. I couldn’t find one of the shoes, so I thought it was there… but it wasn’t. So I went back, this was the sthis was the next day, got on my bicycle, rode back to that little parking lot—I knew there were police all over the place by that time, but I was kind of… nervous ‘cause… and I’ll tell you why in a minute. ‘Cause I’d left—and my car’d been parked there, so they may’ve seen it. Now if something was found there they might connect me. So I went back to that parking lot and I found both pierced earthe, the pierced earrings and the shoe laying in the parking lot at about five in the afternoon. So I surreptitiously gathered them up and… rode off.”
Keppel: “Hadn’t the police checked that area?”
Bundy: “Well, you can tell me. I’d sI’d seen ‘em, I’d seen whole streams of ‘em driving around all over the place, but they were concentrating on places like, uh, the park, aah, a nearby park. I don’t know ifI don’t knowI’ll bet yaThey couldn’t have looked in that parking lot and missed.. the, the patent leather, white patent leather clog and the two white pierced earrings… hoops.”

Clip 15:
Bundy: “… two weeks before that I had been doing, using the same modus operandi in the same neighborhood in the sAnd in front of thein front, now, of the same sorority house that Georgeann Hawkins disappeared from, I’d encountered a girl going out the door and asked her to help me. Walked her all the way to that lot. Eleven o’clock on a Friday night. And I was, I was drunk, and I was drunk and I was just babbling on, and I told her I worked in Olympia, that I lived in a rooming house. I mean I was just, I was horrified later on. But, uh”
Keppel: [INDECIPHERABLE QUESTION]
Bundy: “Yes. More or less, but yes, and that was basically part of the M.O. at that time, yeah. But I reached, uh, got all the way to the car, and this happenedwould happen sometimes: and just said no, I don’t wanna do it. I said thank you, see ya later, and she walked away. But after, after the Hawkins thing I was, you know, just paranoid as hell that this girl would say “you know, there’s something weird that happened to me a couple of weeks ago. This guy came along with crutches and asked me to help him. He took me to a Volkswagen, said he worked in Olympia and lived here in the university district”. And how many people could that apply to? So, there you are.”

Clip 16:
Bundy: “… Ahh, but of course afteryou know in June, after a week it’s, you know, what with all the local… the wildlife, there’s not much… left.”
Keppel: “Were you going back to that scene to commit sex acts?”
Bundy: “Well, that’sI don’t wanna talk about that right now. We will talk about it someday, but I don’t havewe don’tnotI don’t really have enough to give you the background on that. I want us to work into that.”
Keppel: “Okay.”

Clip 17:
Keppel: “Did you ever bury anybody?”
Bundy: “Oh yes! Yeah. I mean in my syeah, in, in my ah, you might say, my more… [sigh] ah, coherentAhh, not coherent. That’s notwhen I was really… going all out to… and took my time, yeah, I did. And, I mean, it’s, it’s quite clear. That means no question aboutalmost without question, those who’ve been found were not, and those who haven’t been found were buried.”

Clip 18:
Bundy: “… that’s right. Yeah.”
Keppel: “Yeah?”
Bundy: “Yeah.”
Keppel: “Where is she?”
Bundy: “Well… [sniff] she’s up in the mountains.”
Keppel: “In what mountains?”
Bundy: [laughs] “Oh well, excuse me. Ah, she, aah, up in the Cascades. Yeah.”

Clip 19:
Bundy: “I mean that night is like, is like some kind of dream… you know. Very… blurry, very… nightmarish and, um, I had trouble piecing it together, but we‘llit’s gonna take me a while to work on that one.”
Keppel: “Okay… Um”
Bundy: “I had, ahh, I had asometimes I had a bottle of wine in the car and I was just, among other things, extremely… drunk.”
Keppel: “I just wanna get an idea about timing”
Bundy: “Mm-hmm.”
Keppel: “or was that two hours, or hour[INDECIPHERABLE due to chair scraping along floor]”

Clip 20:
Keppel: [INDECIPHERABLE]
Bundy: “Well… Bill, I could [laughs] corroborate, ahh, something of virtually every one of theI mean, almost without a doubton every one of these in one way or another. I mean that’s the… the, uhI don’t think anybody doubts that, uh, that I’ve done some bad things; the question is what, of course, and how and, maybe even, even most importantly, why. Umm… and, ah… [sigh]… I’d… I’m not…”
Keppel: “But most of the people are coming, ah, to…”

Clip 21:
Bundy: “You know, I make no bones about it; I am looking for an opportunity to tell the story, as best I can, in a way that makes sense to me, and a way that’ll help, not just you or the familiesthat’s very importantbut also to help my own family. You see, I saw the look in my stepson’s eyes yesterday… after he had been told for the first time that… you see, he’s always believed, and it’s hardI mean, he always wanted to believethat I’d never… done anything like this. As hard as it may be for you to believe that, there are people who do believe that, Martin, and there are people close to me who believe that.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “And to see the look in his eyes, ah, confirmed my worst fears. See, he says ‘could you’and he was, he was just absolutely astounded. He couldn’t understand, and he was writing me questionsjust fiercely writing questions. I could see, you know, that he wasyou know, how really bewildered he was, and I need to give him a chance to know, and others a chance to know, what was really going on: what it was really like for me.”

Clip 22:
Bundy: “… out of context. And I know you have a narrow focus asyou have a narrow focus given your law-enforcement, uh… perspective. And that’s important for what you do. It’s important that those questions be answered, but it’s important for me that those questions be answered in context… ah… for any number of reasons. But, uh, I, I won’tbut perhaps the most important reason: for my own family”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “So that they understand it. But if they onlythey’re only getting part of the story, they’re only getting the worst stuff, you know howyou know what’s going to happen if and when this stuff goes public? if all you did was just hit the whos, and the whens and, and the body-count. That’s, I mean it’s, it’s just going to, it’s just gonna be, ahhit’s going to be bad enough as it is.”

Clip23:
Bundy: “I won’t beat around the bush with you anymore ‘cause I am just tired and just wanna get back and go to sleep,”
Keppel: “Okay.”
Bundy: “So let me just tell you, I… I know that the corcorpse [INDECIPHERABLE] there, but nothing identifiable. Probably just… literally… bones. But the head, however, the, the skull wouldn’t be there.”
Keppel: “Where is it?”
Bundy: “It’s nowhere.”
Keppel: “It’s nowhere?”
Bundy: “Well, by ’nowhere’, I’m not tryna be flippant, it’s just… it just’s nowhere. It’s, it’s… it’s, it’s in a category by itself. In, in that, uh, it was… Now I’d just assume this is something that you just can’tI don’t know, I can see the headlines now. But, uh, uhh…
Keppel: “Ted, there’s not gonna be any details. WhWhat you told be about Georgeann Hawkins isn’t gonna be known. I got parents out there who don’t even wanna know the details.”
Bundy: “Oh, I know, uhh”
Keppel: “He wants to know, and I wanna know for my own good.”
Bundy: “Well, it, it was incinerated, and it was… just an, ah, exception. A, a strange exception but, uh, it was incinerated.”

Clip 24:
Keppel: “Where’d you incinerate it?”
Bundy: [laugh]
Keppel: “C’mon partner.”
Bundy [long pause]
Keppel: “These are things I don’t know about you. [laugh]”
Bundy: “Yeah, this is, this is probably the, the disposal method of preference among those who get away with it.”
Keppel: “Yeah!”
Bundy: “But because of beingum… it’s the most bizarre, bizarre thing I have ever, ever been associated with, and I’ve been associated with some bizarre shit.”
Keppel: “Right. [long pause] It‘s incinerated, that’s”
Bundy: “Uh-huh. Incinerated.”
Keppel: “Well, tell me about it. [laugh] What the hell happened?”
Bundy: “Well, it, uh… don’t know the address of the place… I never wanted to tell these things, uh, uhhthe process, I’d never tell because it would ah, I thought thatof all the things I did to this woman, this is probably the one she was least likely to forgive me for, poor Liz.”
Keppel: “Mm-hmm.”
Bundy: “In her… fireplaceah, it’s really not that humorous, but, uh, in the fireplace at that house…”
Keppel: “Burned it all up?”
Bundy: “Down to the last… ash, and then… in a fit of”

Clip 25:
Bundy: “… twists.”
Keppel: “Yeah it‘s a slight twist.”
Bundy: “It is a twist, and uh, it’s a lot of work, and certainly very risky, under the circumstances. I mean, the kids come home from school and saw a roaring fire in the fireplace, and it’s warm outside.”
Keppel: “Did you ever keep anything in the refrigerator?”
Bundy: [long pause “No.”
Keppel: “No body-parts in the refrigerator?”
Bundy: “No, that was not, you know, that was not something that I’ve ever found any kind of… the body-part thing’s not something…”
Keppel: “Okay, before, you mentioned you, you gave up the eight before and you needed three more. Now, I don’t know what three you’re talkin’ about. Can you help me a little bit with those?”