"The First Time": Ted Bundy's 1986 Tape and the Jersey Shore

Name: "The First Time": Ted Bundy's 1986 Tape and the Jersey Shore
Uploaded: 2023-04-02
Duration: 2 min 48 s
Description: On a 1986 death-row tape, speaking of himself as "he", Ted Bundy described a trip to the Jersey Shore and "the first time". A 2023 Oxygen series played it to an expert on the unsolved 1969 Garden State Parkway murders.

On a 1986 death-row tape, speaking of himself as "he", Ted Bundy described a trip to the Jersey Shore and "the first time". A 2023 Oxygen series played it to an expert on the unsolved 1969 Garden State Parkway murders.

Subject: Ted Bundy
Recorded: about 1986
Runtime: 2:48

Content warning: Concerns violent pornography and the unsolved 1969 murders of two young women, which commentators suggest Bundy is describing.

The Interview

In 1986, while he was on death row in Florida, Ted Bundy was interviewed by the forensic psychologist Dr. Art Norman. Part of that audiotape was played in 2023 in the Oxygen series "Violent Minds: Killers on Tape". In this clip Bundy, speaking mostly of himself in the third person, describes a winter of trips to New York and its pornography, a decision to go home to the West Coast, and a stop first at "what they call the shore". There, he says, without really planning anything, he met "a couple girls", and "it wound up being the first time that he ever did it."

Historical Context

Bundy was born in Burlington, Vermont, on November 24, 1946, and grew up in Tacoma, Washington. After his time at the University of Washington and Stanford he spent a period on the East Coast, visiting relatives in Philadelphia and enrolling for one semester at Temple University. His known murders began in Washington State in 1974 and continued in Utah, Colorado and Florida. He was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989.

On May 30, 1969, the abandoned car of Susan Davis was found on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. She and Elizabeth Perry, college students from Illinois, had been on a trip to Ocean City. Their bodies were found three days later in woods off the parkway. The case has never been solved.

Circumstances of the Interview

Why Dr. Norman interviewed Bundy in 1986 is not documented in the sources consulted. The tape is reported to have been preserved in the archive of Dr. Al Carlisle, the Utah State Prison psychologist who carried out Bundy's court-ordered psychological evaluation in 1976. Carlisle died in 2018, and the Oxygen series was built on his inmate tapes, which Oxygen says were "previously thought to be lost to history". In this scene the tape is played to Christian Barth, author of "The Garden State Parkway Murders: A Cold Case Mystery", who says he is hearing it for the first time.

What the Interview Covers

Bundy speaks of being "pushed to the edge" by "the most sophisticated, explicit pornography available anywhere in this country", of being "more or less detached from people" with no friends, and of seeing "young women lined up along the beach" at the Jersey Shore in early summer, which he calls an "overwhelming kind of vision". Commentators point out how he moves between "I" and "he" when describing himself. Barth (apparently) says he has assumed that "did it" refers to the murders of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry. A commentator closes: "You can't un-kill someone."

What Makes the Recording Significant

On the tape Bundy appears to allude to a killing before 1974, years earlier than his first documented murders. Wikipedia, citing a newspaper report, records that he told Art Norman he killed two women in "Atlantic City" while visiting family in Philadelphia in 1969. Dr. Carlisle believed Bundy committed the Davis and Perry murders.

Archival Importance

The 1986 audio was presented in 2023 by the Oxygen series as part of a set of tapes previously thought lost. It preserves Bundy's own words on a period of his life for which there is little other first-hand evidence, and it bears on the continuing debate over whether his killing began years before 1974.

Important Caveats

The link to the Davis and Perry murders is an interpretation. On the tape Bundy names no victims and no place more specific than "the shore". He was never charged with the murders, and they were not among the roughly 30 killings he confessed to before his execution. The clip is a short, edited excerpt of a longer interview, cut together with commentary. Some commentators are not identified on screen, and a few words of the tape are hard to make out.

Ted Bundy: So [unclear: "he" / "I"] spent that whole winter going to New York, doing that thing, and getting pushed to the edge with the most sophisticated, uh, explicit pornography available anywhere in this country, anyway. And [unclear: "he decided" / "I had"] to leave, go back home to the West Coast. [unclear: "It was sort of like a defeated state of mind" / "because I don't know if I can understand why"]. But before he does, he decides just to take a little bit of [unclear: "a jaunt to" / no words heard] what they call the shore.

Commentator: Ted seemed to freely go back and forth between the first person and the third person, the first person and the third person, in describing himself and his crimes.

Ted Bundy: The Jersey Shore. This was early, like, early summer. And so after being more or less detached from people, didn't have any friends, he drove [unclear: "the shore" / "to the shore"] and [unclear: "walked the beach" / "walks to the beach"], and just sees young women lined up along the beach, you know, it was like an [unclear: "absolutely" / "absolute, uh,"] overwhelming kind of vision.

Commentator: When Ted says it's an overwhelming sort of vision, I think he must be referencing sort of the vision being the transition. All that has been built up to this point was overwhelming, when all of a sudden this Shangri-La, this beautiful place at the beach, sort of what he was dreaming of all along, suddenly becomes his reality.

Ted Bundy: Which, you know, eventually he found himself tearing around that place for a couple of days. So without really planning anything, [unclear: "picked up" / "he'd have" / "I have"] a couple of young girls, and ended up [unclear: "being the first time he'd ever done it" / "for the first time we've ever done it" / "the first time every time"].

Christian Barth: Okay, so that's the first time I have ever heard that. "Did it."

Unidentified Speaker: [unclear: "have a problem with the first time you've ever done it" (captions only; Whisper heard no words here)]

Ted Bundy: He was, met a couple girls, and it wound up being the first time that he ever did it.

Christian Barth: So what do we mean by "did it"? I've assumed that he is referencing the murder of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry. What else could he mean by "did it"?

Commentator: He had to do something. He didn't think it. He didn't feel it. He didn't plan it, because [unclear: "I did it" / "he did it"]. When a person does that and kills someone, it changes their whole personality. They're different after that. You can't undo it. You can't un-kill someone. ---