"I'm the Best, Ted": Gerard Schaefer's Claims About Ted Bundy

Filmed in prison for a French documentary, Gerard Schaefer claimed Ted Bundy had copied his crimes and competed with him over victim counts. None of it has been verified.

Subject

Gerard John Schaefer

Runtime

6:45

Content warning: Schaefer describes, as told to him, the strangling, decapitation and sexual abuse of the bodies of two young women; strong language.

The Interview

This is the last of four excerpts from a French documentary on serial killers that Sondra London posted on YouTube in 2008. In a translated voice-over, the French author Stéphane Bourgoin says that Schaefer was "pretending to be innocent" when he interviewed him, so he changed tack and asked about Ted Bundy. For more than three minutes Schaefer then talks about Bundy: he says Bundy had followed his case in detective magazines, claimed to have committed two murders in Washington in imitation of it, and pressed him about how many victims he had really killed. Schaefer says he taunted Bundy in return: "I'm the best, Ted. You're gonna fry, and I'm gonna be here."

Historical Context

Schaefer, a former Florida police officer and sheriff's deputy, was convicted in 1973 of the murders of Susan Place, 17, and Georgia Jessup, 16, and sentenced to two concurrent life terms. Press reports and police lists linked him to many more disappearances, figures he dismissed as false. Ted Bundy was sentenced to death in Florida in 1979 and 1980 and was executed at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989. Schaefer was serving his sentence in the Florida prison system in those years; he was stabbed to death at Florida State Prison on December 3, 1995.

Circumstances of the Interview

The interview footage is most likely from Bourgoin's filming of Schaefer in autumn 1991. The documentary's title, maker and date are not given by the uploader. Bourgoin's voice-over presents the Bundy questions as a tactic to draw Schaefer out and claims the answers amount to "in a kind of way admitting his crimes". After the interview, an unidentified analyst, in translation, comments on Schaefer's manner, and the narration closes with his death.

What the Interview Covers

Schaefer recounts what he says Bundy told him about killing two young women in Washington, including the treatment of their bodies, and his own reaction to the writers whose coverage he says Bundy had read. He describes Bundy asking, "How many did you get, really, Jerry?", says Bundy was "obsessed" with the count attributed to Schaefer, and describes showing Bundy a Palm Beach Post front page. The analyst then argues that Schaefer refuses to confess while signalling that he is "better than the best".

What Makes the Recording Significant

The passage is the longest of Schaefer's on camera in the two parts of this documentary checked (parts 1 and 4), and an account by one convicted killer of conversations with another. It shows how Schaefer, while denying his own crimes, presented himself as a rival to Bundy.

Archival Importance

Bundy and Schaefer both died in Florida State Prison. No independent record of what passed between them was found in the sources checked; Schaefer also made such claims in letters. This recording preserves his version of it, in his own words.

Important Caveats

Everything Schaefer says about Bundy is his own claim, uncorroborated: there is no independent evidence that these conversations took place or that Bundy said what Schaefer reports. The two women he names in passing are heard only indistinctly and are not named here. Bourgoin's voice-over says Schaefer was "on Florida death row"; Schaefer was serving life sentences and was never sentenced to death. Bourgoin admitted in 2020 and 2021 that he had fabricated parts of his own biography; his framing should be read with caution. The analyst's comments are interpretation, not evidence.

Stephane Bourgoin: While I was interrogating Gerard Schaefer, he was pretending to be innocent. So I decided to adopt a new strategy. Since he was on Florida death row, he was meeting other serial killers like Ted Bundy, the most famous American serial killer. I was selecting specific crimes of Ted Bundy which were exactly similar to those of Gerard Schaefer. And you can see now how he's, in a kind of way, admitting his crimes.

Interviewer: Was he reliving all the time his murders?

Gerard Schaefer: Well, I wouldn't say all the time, but I took the, uh... He told me that he had followed my case in the detective magazines, and that he had killed two girls in Washington as a copycat crime, so to speak, on the Place and Jessup [case], and I think those were [unclear: "Ott and Naslund" / "odd and nasal and"]. And he would tell me that he took them up on the logging road and strangled them, and had sex with their corpses, and went back and had sex with their corpses, and cut off their heads, like it's a tribute.

Gerard Schaefer: And I'm thinking, you motherfuckers that wrote that. I said, here's the guy who read it, believed your bullshit, and went out and did something like this. And now he's like bragging to me. It wasn't exactly a brag. It was like a tribute. "How many did you get, really, Jerry? They said 34. Did they get all of them? Or do you have private graveyards?" I said, "I'm the best." What could I say to somebody like that, right?

Gerard Schaefer: What can you say? You're left without any kind of rational response, because if you say, "Ted, it's all bullshit," he's gonna say, "No, it's not. I know." And he knew, see, because he had lived it. And I hadn't lived it, except through what was written about me. And he was doing it based on what he had read. So he had 36. He wanted to be the best. He was obsessed, because they said I had 34, and he was afraid that I had ones that he didn't know about, see?

Gerard Schaefer: And he was always trying to get me to say, "No, that's all I got, 34," you know? But I never would say that. I discerned that he was concerned about the number, and it was my own way of needling him back, by saying, "I'm the best, Ted. You're gonna fry, and I'm gonna be here. And I'll be the best, just like they said, the number one. [unclear: "Mr. Stone"] had it all right. The best there ever was. And you're nothing." And you just go crazy: "It can't be." And I'd take out my little thing from the Palm Beach Post. I said, "Read that, man. [unclear: "Cult" / "called"]. First page, Palm Beach Post." [unclear: "I'm the leader of the cult" / "I'm a leader of the cult" / "I'm the leader of the culture"]. [unclear: "He can't be, he was a sickie" / not in captions]. [about 04:08 to 04:22: no speech]

Commentator: There are certain elements of perversion that are demonstrated and connected to the pleasure he takes at certain times in telling his story, true, but at the same time he wants to be better than the best. The perversion resides in the fact that on the one hand he won't confess to his crimes, and at the same time he lets you know that others aren't as good as he is, that he's better than others. And if you look closely, you can't think that at the point where he licks his lips, when he runs his tongue on his lips, he doesn't extract great pleasure from it, since at the same time there's a particular intensity in his eyes and in the lowering of his voice, which shows the pleasure he still takes, in a certain way, in reliving these experiences.

Narrator: As with all serial killers, Gerard Schaefer set his heart on prey that was systematically weaker than him, young women who are easier to catch.

Commentator: According to the studies that have been done on serial killers, they're not courageous, contrary to what literature or movies would like us to believe, where they're either shown as courageous or extremely intelligent. Neither one is true. Serial killers are people who attack victims that are weaker than themselves. [unclear: "Generally" / "Maybe"] they attack women or young men, they're armed, and the victim is going to have a lot of trouble defending themselves. They don't attack someone who is stronger than they are.

Commentator: I'd like to point out that they aren't [unclear: "warriors" / "worried"]. They're people who are often afraid of others and are actually considered to be nice people in their everyday life, probably because conflict is not necessarily something they find easy. They're people who are going to avoid conflicts with people who have a certain power.

Narrator: On December 3rd, 1995, Schaefer is killed by another inmate, who stabs him 40 times.

Narrator: A fantasy: an imagined event fulfilling a profound desire. [excerpt ends] ---