Chapter 1-- for all of you armchair pychiatrists ...........
Clean and Sober
The Early Years
After spending the last remaining months of her pregnancy at a home for unwed mothers Bundy's mother gave birth to Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946. Ted's father, who was an Air Force veteran, was unknown to his son throughout his life. Shortly after Ted's birth, mother and son moved back to Philadelphia to live with his grandparents, who he would later refer to as his mother and father. This charade allowed his mother to escape any harsh criticism and prejudice for being an unwed mother. Ted grew up referring to his own mother as his older sister.
At the age of four Ted and his mother moved to Tacoma, Washington, to live with relatives. A year after the move to Washington, his mother married Johnnie Culpepper Bundy, whose last name Ted would assume for the rest of his life.
The Bundy family added four other siblings who Ted spent much of his time baby-sitting after school. Ted never really took to his new father who tried unsuccessfully to raise him as his own son, including him in camping trips and other father-son activities. Ted had his own ideas and thought of himself as special. Ann Rule reports that Ted's grandfather was the only man Ted respected and Ted was unhappy to leave him to move to a strange new place on the other side of the country.
As a youth, Ted was terribly shy and was often teased and made the butt of pranks by bullies in his junior high school. Regardless of the sometimes humiliating experiences he suffered, he was able to maintain a high grade average that would continue throughout high school and later into college. Friends from high school would later remember Ted as being a more popular figure than he was in junior high. Although he was very shy, Ted was thought of as "well dressed and exceptionally well mannered." Yet no one recalled him dating anyone during that period. His interests lay elsewhere such as in skiing and politics. In fact, it was in high school that Ted's interest in politics began to bloom.
Ted told Michaud and Aynesworth that his mother was the most directly involved in raising her kids:
"'We didn't talk a lot about real personal matters," says Ted. 'Certainly never about sex or any of those things. My mom has trouble talking on intimate, personal terms.'"
Michaud took a close analytical look at Bundy's youth and came up with some insightful conclusions:
"No one noticed that he was different, not like other children. He looked and acted like them...But he was haunted by something else: a fear, a doubt --sometimes only a vague uneasiness -- that inhabited his mind with the subtlety of a cat. He felt it for years, but he didn't recognize it for what it was until much later. By then, the rip in his psyche, had become the locus of a cold homicidal rage."
Even though he was popular, good-looking and friendly, Bundy had very few dates during his high school years. This social awkwardness and fear of social situations haunted him into his college years at the University of Puget Sound and the University of Washington.
Ted told Michaud and Aynesworth, "My social life was a big zero. I spent a great deal of time with myself. It was lonely for me...I didn't feel socially adept enough. I didn't feel I knew how to function with those people. I felt terribly uncomfortable."
He worked his way through the university by taking on low-level jobs such as a bus boy and shoe clerk. Yet, he never stayed with any one position for very long. He was thought of by some employers to be unreliable. Although he was inconsistent with his work outside of school, he was more focused on his work in school and was able to maintain a high grade point average. But his focus changed during the spring of 1967 when he began a relationship that would change his life forever.
He met a girl that was everything Ted had ever dreamed of in a woman. She was a beautiful and highly sophisticated woman from a wealthy Californian family. Ted couldn't believe someone from her "class" would have an interest in someone like him. Although they had many differences, they both loved to ski and it was during their many ski trips together that he fell in love. She was really Ted's first love, and, according to Ann Rule, possibly the first woman with whom he became involved with sexually. However, she was not as infatuated with Ted as he was with her. In fact, she liked Ted a lot but believed he had no real direction or future goals. Ted tried too hard to impress her, even if that meant lying, something that she didn't like at all.
Michaud writes that Ted won a summer scholarship to the prestigious Stanford University in California just to impress her, but at Stanford, his immaturity was exposed. He writes, "Ted did not understand...why the mask he had been using had failed him. This first tentative foray into the sophisticated world had ended in disaster."
In 1968, after she graduated from the University of Washington, she broke off relations with Ted. She was a practical young woman and seemed to realize that Ted had some serious character flaws that took him out of the running as "husband material."
Ted never recovered from the break-up. Nothing, including school, seemed to hold any interest for him and he eventually dropped out, dumb-founded and depressed over the break-up. He managed to stay in touch with her by writing after she returned to California, yet she seemed uninterested in getting back together. But, Ted was obsessed with this young woman and he couldn't get her out of his mind. It was an obsession that would span his lifetime and lead to a series of events that would shock the world. (cont.)
After spending the last remaining months of her pregnancy at a home for unwed mothers Bundy's mother gave birth to Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946. Ted's father, who was an Air Force veteran, was unknown to his son throughout his life. Shortly after Ted's birth, mother and son moved back to Philadelphia to live with his grandparents, who he would later refer to as his mother and father. This charade allowed his mother to escape any harsh criticism and prejudice for being an unwed mother. Ted grew up referring to his own mother as his older sister.
At the age of four Ted and his mother moved to Tacoma, Washington, to live with relatives. A year after the move to Washington, his mother married Johnnie Culpepper Bundy, whose last name Ted would assume for the rest of his life.
The Bundy family added four other siblings who Ted spent much of his time baby-sitting after school. Ted never really took to his new father who tried unsuccessfully to raise him as his own son, including him in camping trips and other father-son activities. Ted had his own ideas and thought of himself as special. Ann Rule reports that Ted's grandfather was the only man Ted respected and Ted was unhappy to leave him to move to a strange new place on the other side of the country.
As a youth, Ted was terribly shy and was often teased and made the butt of pranks by bullies in his junior high school. Regardless of the sometimes humiliating experiences he suffered, he was able to maintain a high grade average that would continue throughout high school and later into college. Friends from high school would later remember Ted as being a more popular figure than he was in junior high. Although he was very shy, Ted was thought of as "well dressed and exceptionally well mannered." Yet no one recalled him dating anyone during that period. His interests lay elsewhere such as in skiing and politics. In fact, it was in high school that Ted's interest in politics began to bloom.
Ted told Michaud and Aynesworth that his mother was the most directly involved in raising her kids:
"'We didn't talk a lot about real personal matters," says Ted. 'Certainly never about sex or any of those things. My mom has trouble talking on intimate, personal terms.'"
Michaud took a close analytical look at Bundy's youth and came up with some insightful conclusions:
"No one noticed that he was different, not like other children. He looked and acted like them...But he was haunted by something else: a fear, a doubt --sometimes only a vague uneasiness -- that inhabited his mind with the subtlety of a cat. He felt it for years, but he didn't recognize it for what it was until much later. By then, the rip in his psyche, had become the locus of a cold homicidal rage."
Even though he was popular, good-looking and friendly, Bundy had very few dates during his high school years. This social awkwardness and fear of social situations haunted him into his college years at the University of Puget Sound and the University of Washington.
Ted told Michaud and Aynesworth, "My social life was a big zero. I spent a great deal of time with myself. It was lonely for me...I didn't feel socially adept enough. I didn't feel I knew how to function with those people. I felt terribly uncomfortable."
He worked his way through the university by taking on low-level jobs such as a bus boy and shoe clerk. Yet, he never stayed with any one position for very long. He was thought of by some employers to be unreliable. Although he was inconsistent with his work outside of school, he was more focused on his work in school and was able to maintain a high grade point average. But his focus changed during the spring of 1967 when he began a relationship that would change his life forever.
He met a girl that was everything Ted had ever dreamed of in a woman. She was a beautiful and highly sophisticated woman from a wealthy Californian family. Ted couldn't believe someone from her "class" would have an interest in someone like him. Although they had many differences, they both loved to ski and it was during their many ski trips together that he fell in love. She was really Ted's first love, and, according to Ann Rule, possibly the first woman with whom he became involved with sexually. However, she was not as infatuated with Ted as he was with her. In fact, she liked Ted a lot but believed he had no real direction or future goals. Ted tried too hard to impress her, even if that meant lying, something that she didn't like at all.
Michaud writes that Ted won a summer scholarship to the prestigious Stanford University in California just to impress her, but at Stanford, his immaturity was exposed. He writes, "Ted did not understand...why the mask he had been using had failed him. This first tentative foray into the sophisticated world had ended in disaster."
In 1968, after she graduated from the University of Washington, she broke off relations with Ted. She was a practical young woman and seemed to realize that Ted had some serious character flaws that took him out of the running as "husband material."
Ted never recovered from the break-up. Nothing, including school, seemed to hold any interest for him and he eventually dropped out, dumb-founded and depressed over the break-up. He managed to stay in touch with her by writing after she returned to California, yet she seemed uninterested in getting back together. But, Ted was obsessed with this young woman and he couldn't get her out of his mind. It was an obsession that would span his lifetime and lead to a series of events that would shock the world. (cont.)
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Why did I make such an ugly corpse?
They fried me.
Fry Tyrone Power, fry Rock Hudson, fry Sly Stallone, and they'll come out plug-ugly, trust me.
As nuclear families go, mine wasn't that bad.
My mother, Eleanor, had poor taste in men but adored me.
My stepfather was a retired army cook who couldn't cook.
Couldn't bake either.
Johnnie Culpepper Bundy, known as Pep.
I loved my grandfather, he lived in PA.
Problem is we moved from there to Washington state when I was four years old.
Pep was into banging my mom, Eleanor.
Knocked her up four times, at least four.
Once I interrupted them, she was tummy down, he was straddling her.
It all started with the P-word: Pornography.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
My four step-brothers and sisters: I looked after them.
Babysat them, toilet trained them.
Good student, good manners, good looking: I did everything to a T.
So don't use that convenient "he came from a dysfunctional fam" bit on me.
I started getting funky only after I discovered porno.
That's not completely true.
There was a brief weird period when I was about 15.
I raped then whacked (actually it was the other way around) a young mark.
Neighbor girl who'd been following me around.
She was 12 or 13, can't remember her name.
Whacked her Schnauzer too.
They never found the corpse.
Could be I did a few other things in high school.
But my porno addiction was the big impetus for going psycho and whacking the 40 or so that I'm famous for.
The reason why is Stephanie Brooks.
Stephanie Brooks' rejection drove me into the siren arms of Pornography.
This was at the University of Washington.
I'd gotten a scholarship to the U. of Puget Sound and transferred to UW the next year, majored in Chinese.
Why Chinese?
My first choice was Bengali, I wanted to work with Mother Teresa in Calcutta.
Minister to the poorest of the poor.
But those good intentions conflicted with golf, which was a passion.
I was just this far from being good enough to join the pro tour.
UW is where I met Stephanie, like I said.
From Palo Alto, old money.
I developed a crush on her and her old money, and she seemed to like me, think I was sexy, etc.
Only I made the mistake of moving too fast, on the second date I stuck my fist in her crotch, etc.
Which is what she wanted, only she didn't know what she wanted.
She reeled back from me like I was the devil.
Which got me to thinking that maybe I was.
Maybe that wasn't so bad.
Lovesick, I dropped out of college.
I'd already learned enough Mandarin to impress busboys in Chinese restaurants.
Never got me a free meal, though.
Never got me a bowl of Wonton.
That's the way the human race is, one reason I got into whacking them.
The other reason, like I said, was porno, accessed mostly in mags and seedy movie theaters.
Wasn't much video in those days.
My favorite was anal intercourse.
The very large in the very tight, hotly contested.
Also bondage, violent cross-dressing.
Tire iron in my jocks.
Straight razor in my fake leg cast.
Ice pick, rope, and cuffs in the glove compartment.
Crowbar under the driver's seat.
Porno got me buzzing, made me peak.
At the same time it weakened me.
It's hard to explain.
With the embrace of porno came wanderlust.
I loved to drive.
Especially the TransAm.
Let me tell you something: the tan VW bug worked even better, got me more marks.
They'd see this clean-cut, slick looking guy, white small teeth, slide out of the bug with his leg in a cast.
Irresistible.
Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Florida.
I whacked a couple of marks in NYC too, the Bronx.
Puerto-Ricans.
Maybe they were Cuban.
Hoes is what they were, which is how I treated them.
I always wanted to bite a nipple off in the burnt-out Bronx.
Visualize the scene: Slim, handsome, Caucasian with his left leg in a fake cast slides out of his tan '63 VW Bug with that toothy smile and fat tire iron in his chinos in the burnt-out Bronx.
I'm getting ahead of myself.
After I dropped out of college and sank into violent porno I began to imagine playing the devil.
Whacked two young marks in Olympia in honor of my newly crowned anti-godhead.
Tammi and Joni I think they were called.
Long-legged and tan with blonde long straight hair parted in the middle.
Could've been Southern California transplants for all I know.
I lured them with the "broken" leg.
Lumped them with the crowbar.
Did the very large in the very tight deal with the tire iron while biting off some nipples.
Joni's was pink and puffy, Tammi's large and brown with broad aureoles.
Joni's tasted sweet and sticky, Tammi's tasted pickled.
Slit their throats and dropped them in one of our wooded areas.
Washington is a green state.
Compensation of sorts for the continual rain.
I drove back to Seattle and did the unexpected.
Re-enrolled in UW, majoring this time in Political Science, with an eye on the Law.
The same gifts that got me into the panties of young, soon-to-be-dead marks, propelled me into the inner circle of politics.
What I noticed at once is that upper-echelon boardrooms stink way worse than any sodomized, bludgeoned, headless, decomposed mark. There's a moral in that.
I said headless because I severed the heads of my Washington and Oregon kill and buried them up on Taylor Mountain near Seattle.
My range extended through Washington down into Oregon and Utah.
Utah turned out to be a mistake because that's where they collared me. I was enrolled in the University of Utah law school.
Mormons on every side of me.
I'd already whacked seven or eight in and around Salt Lake City.
Then I got a grip on this young Mormon mark with glasses, but when I tried to cuff her in the bug she slipped away and fell out the door.
Should have followed my first impulse which was to pass on her.
I never liked marks with glasses.
She had a weird name, Carol DaRonch.
She got away, but not without some bite marks on her shoulder.
Bite marks is how they collared me.
Mormons will take multiple wives but not bite them.
Me, I was a biter.
Only it got worse after I discovered porno.
Meg Anders, who I lived with for five or six months in Seattle then dumped, testified against me in court.
Said she saw plaster of Paris and a partial leg cast in my room.
Found a butcher's cleaver, ice pick, rope, and handcuffs in my bug.
Said I kept pornography and wanted to play rough sex with her and bite her titties and genitalia.
Carol DaRonch also picked me out of a lineup.
The Mormons jailed me.
Then they transferred me from Salt Lake City to Garfield County Jail, in Rifle, Colorado, population 4,237.
Human beans--more than you'd think--wrote to me in prison and asked what exactly I did to the marks before or even after whacking them.
Wanted all the sexy, gory details.
I did everything you fantasized me doing to them.
And more.
Wanted to know what made me choose one mark over another?
Iron in my jocks.
When it peaked I got to whacking.
Why did I sever their heads and bury them up on Taylor Mountain?
No particular reason.
I broke out of Garfield County Jail through the prison kitchen.
Six days later they collared me in Aspen.
There's no way Rifle, Colorado is capable of holding Ted Bundy against his will.
I escaped again three weeks later, this time through the ceiling.
Cold weather is boring if you don't ski.
A college town in the sun with lots of marks was what I craved.
Florida State University, Tallahassee.
First I stopped in Chicago.
Business or pleasure? Pleasure.
I whacked myself a brace of young marks.
No false leg routine this time.
Just broke into their dorm suite and got cracking.
When I got to Tallahassee I rented a studio apt near the university.
Called myself Johnny Culpepper, which was just another name, no symbolism intended.
For a few hundred dollars I bought myself a used bug, kelly green.
Surveyed the city, especially around the university.
Saturday night late, Chi Omega Sorority house.
Most of the coeds out partying, but some left behind: wallflowers and a few good lookers pining for their absent boyfriends.
I wasn't into wallflowers.
Ugly people hurt my eyes.
Made me want to vomit, which is something I hate to do.
Maybe I should have waited for a weekday night when the beds were filled with prime-time coeds.
Only that tire iron in the jocks--it couldn't wait.
I made my move at 1:45 a.m., slipped into a corridor window on the first floor.
Weapons?
Tapered oak log with a torn-away sleeve from my blue terry cloth robe wrapped around it.
Straight razor, ice pick, rope, and rags.
I wore a black mesh stocking mask.
Two of the five bedrooms on the first floor were locked, two were empty, the fifth contained a "wallflower" asleep and snoring in her bed.
I scampered to the second floor.
The first bedroom was locked, but the one next to it was open, and when I shined my light it was sweetness.
Two slim marks asleep on top of the covers in a single bed, the blonde wearing bikini panties, the redhead nothing at all.
I bludgeoned the blonde with the oak then stuck the rag down the red's throat before she got her scream half-out.
Bound her to the bed so she could watch me ass-fuck her dead and bloody lesbo lover.
Then I retied the red so that I could strangle her while ass-fucking her with the fat crown of the "tire iron" coated with her lesbo lover's dung.
First I did some biting.
I got the second load off even faster than the first.
Slit both their throats just to make sure they were goners.
Believe it or not, I had a couple or three loads left, maybe more.
Serial killers are like stunt dicks in porno loops.
Except what I did could not be undone.
Which was fine with me.
Serpent spitting fire, I slinked up to the third floor.
Again the first bedroom was locked, but the one to its left was open.
When I shined the light, the bed was unmade but empty.
Just then a toilet flushed and a mark came out of the small bathroom.
She saw me at the door and screamed and then I whacked her.
No time to ass-fuck her.
Loud, agitated voices in the corridor.
I opened the door and took off.
At the stairs a mark reached for my head and came away with the mask.
I was out of there, in the bug.
Less than a mile or so east of the sorority house I spotted a mark in an upstairs window and veered into a parking spot.
Then I saw that I'd left the straight razor at the first place.
Big mistake
But psychopaths are not going to think when they're hot.
My iron was working.
I jimmied the outside lock, bound upstairs and knocked at the door.
Wasn't sure what I'd do if someone besides the mark answered, but the mark answered.
"What . . . " is all she said.
Then and forever.
I stuffed the rag in her mouth.
We were on the floor.
I whacked her with the log, but when I went for her nipples saw that she was flat as a board.
For a second I thought she was a fag.
But no, she had a cunt and asshole.
I did her on the floor.
Tight fit all around.
For a fresh kill especially.
Can't recall ever dropping that large a load.
Mark's phone was ringing.
Glanced at my watch: 3:40 a.m.
Sort of late to call, even in cosmopolitan Tallahassee.
Could be someone spotted me whacking her through the window.
I got out of there fast and into popular history, sordid, made for TV.
Interfacing with sharks and rattlesnakes.
Condemned and consumed by the vast American public.
Swallowed the way I swallow a whacked mark's pee.
Back in the bug I did something unforgivable.
Got into a fender-bender with an old guy in a Studebaker on a side street.
Had to get away on foot.
Spotted a black TransAm double-parked with the door unlocked.
Had a gold racing stripe just like my old TransAm.
I slim-jimmed the ignition, pulled onto the highway.
I'd been in the TransAm less than ten minutes when a cop car started flashing me.
I sped up and veered off the highway but the TransAm didn't have the juice.
Had to ditch the TransAm and hoof it.
The cop shouted a warning then shot eight times fast.
I fell, pretending I was hit . . . when he moved over me I wrestled his gun away.
But now one, then two, three radio cars, lights flashing, sirens burping, zigzagged to a stop in front of me.
I dove on the pavement and fired the Colt, but there were only two rounds left in the magazine.
They collared me.
You recall that I went on to plead my own case in court, right?
Three separate trials in three years.
Got to use my law school theatrics.
Remember: I was always a straight-A student between whackings.
Naturally I had to wear a suit or sports jacket, which I wore unbuttoned.
Did you happen to steal a look at my crotch?
Jurors saw it.
Judges saw it.
This one old judge in the Chi Omega trial had his mouth open the whole time.
Every once in a while his coated old tongue would slip out and loll wetly over his thin chapped lips.
Like a horny old hound dog.
The reason why is I was showing yardage, sticking way out through my pants.
Fat, inflamed tire iron.
Sweet as can be.
Was it as sweet as whacking a mark?
No. No way.
But here's something I've lived by: if you can't get delirious, settle for second best.
Which for me was whacking forty-plus marks then arguing my case in court with a killer hard-on.
In one of his many neurotic phone calls to Father Jacobs, Marty Frankel told him, "Without money, there is no freedom. If I was living in my mother's house and I was a garbage man, do you think I would be attractive to most women? Money buys love."
For a very large part of his adult life, the only women in Marty's life were his mother and his sister. It wasn't until 1986 when he went to work for John Schulte that he began a sexual relationship with a woman. In this case it was Sonia Schulte and the relationship lasted, in one form or another, until Marty was caught.
Marty and Sonia had become convinced that John Schulte was molesting his two daughters. Marty helped Sonia get her husband into court on that matter and eventually to hide herself and children from Schulte. Marty was afraid of Schulte's reprisals and hired security expert David Rosse (the man who Marty impersonated in his Vatican deal) to protect him. Rosse told him the only way he could get away from Schulte was to get out of town -- as far away from Toledo as possible.
Marty found a marvelous property to lease in Greenwich, Connecticut. 889 Lake Avenue was in one of the most desirable parts of that very well-to-do suburb. Into this mansion, Marty moved Sonia and her daughters and two of his employees, Beng Tan and Tee Sow. It was the spring of 1993.
Frankel home at 889 Lake Avenue
Immediately, the easily frightened and naturally reclusive Marty had a high fence installed around the entire 3-acre property, which did not endear him to his neighbors. Rumors abounded about this odd new neighbor and his secretive behavior. What could he be hiding and who was he really?
As Marty's embezzled wealth grew enormously with money from the insurance company reserves, so did his ego inflate proportionately. He began to surround himself with beautiful young women, some of which were his sexual partners, others of which were just devoted followers. Vera Mironova, his housekeeper, said to the Wall St. Journal, "Everybody loved him and he cared for them. Care he did. Mr. Frankel paid for posh apartments in New York City, homes in suburban Westchester County, five-figure shopping sprees at Neiman-Marcus and Saks, cars and drivers, and first-class trips to Europe." Marty had purchased a lot of love. He had even leased another mansion on the same street to house his expanding household.
Martin Frankel in 1995
A dark side of Marty started to emerge and he became obsessed with sadomasochistic and group sex. Tensions became unbearable in Marty's relationship with Sonia. She and her daughters moved out of what had become a very unwholesome household to raise children. Neighbors were convinced that he was running a brothel -- with all of the young women living there, coming and going at all hours.
In 1996, a young woman named Frances Burge responded to Marty's ad in the newspaper. She told her mother that he told her to strip and then told her that he didn't want to have sex with her because she was overweight.
Frances Burge's room at the time of her suicide
She stayed on in the household, but suffered from depression. In the summer of 1997, she was found hanged on the deck of one of the mansions. The death was ruled a suicide.
If anything, Marty's eccentric life style became increasingly lavish and bizarre as his wealth increased. But, in May of 1999, Marty started to "flip out" and there were signs that the Xanadu that he had created was in trouble.