Introduction

Thank you for the reply, Em! Wow! Seeing one of the cars he’s owned … You are fortunate – to live in US, for this reason too :). I live somewhere in Eastern Europe and everything is more difficult here when it comes to stuff that can be found only or mostly in America. Must say (and it is clear to me that they shouldn’t have killed him, as now he is a legend) that I would be thrilled to see it. Connected to your page, you’ve got one containing some pieces of interviews with him (in the interrogatory room) – thank you! – I’ve listened and still am horrified and fascinated, still want to know more. I’ve read that his attorney was to publish a book, do you know if he did?

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It’s always seemed strange to me the stark difference between his killings in the Northwest vs Florida. He went from being a very organized killer to very unorganized. In Washington he picked a very specific type of woman in Florida it was far more random to include a child. Everything I’ve read has said killers don’t do this. I’ve read that in his case the rage just built up until he couldn’t control it anymore, but this seems a little like a cop out, seeing as he could have just as easily gone back to the same type of killings he had been so successful committing before. I’d like to hear your thoughts, theories or ideas on this.

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Thank you for your insight in this killer and Ted Bundy, I did love your website on him so I do hope you will keep writing. Have you ever considered writing a book on Ted Bundy?

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(I did not see a reply link on the last comment you posted. So here is this. This is really long. I talk a lot. I also haven’t exactly read this over.)

Hi, I’m well aware this is a very, very late comment. I wanted to read some more (a lot more) before comprehensively responding. I still didn’t quite read – or watch – everything I wanted to (like the book “Ted and Ann” – I didn’t have the money, so), but I’ve read a lot and think I have a lot more understanding now!

(I read “The Only Living Witness”, also, I went ahead and read “Conversations With A Killer” – or, well, I’m ALMOST done with that one. I have about a hundred pages left. Not sure why people thought the authors were trying to depict Bundy as innocent there. I think they were misunderstanding the strategy they were using to interview him.)

I’m sick right now, but feeling incredibly responsive. I’m going to apologize if this is really long or overwhelming. Also, my tone and everything is probably going to sound different. I was feeling more formal the previous comments. And a little wary.

Also, I remember noticing you had mentioned the Bundy movie on here. I didn’t quite care for this movie. A bit too sensationalistic. I was wondering if you had seen “The Deliberate Stranger” (1986) with Mark Harmon? I preferred that one, although I did like how the Bundy movie incorporated certain behaviours the other one didn’t. I guess because less was known at the time “The Deliberate Stranger” was made. Mark Harmon can look a lot like Bundy at times, it’s creepy. (Although I’m a little face blind, so… maybe he doesn’t look that much alike. But the profile, especially, to me. I also can never quite watch NCIS the same way again – Mark Harmon plays a main character in the show. He’s much older, but still.)

I find the fact that Bundy didn’t seem to realize other people noticed each other very strange. That’s not a common trait of psychopathy/sociopathy, as far as I know. Or maybe I don’t realize I do that, who knows – or it just doesn’t escalate to the level that Bundy had. If I do something wrong, in public – I’m going to think someone might have seen me. I’m very cautious and very paranoid about doing anything where anyone can see – it’s odd because Bundy seems to logically state these same kind of things, like when talking in the third person about the person who committed the murders (which we all know he was talking about himself), he says they tried to minimize witnesses and whatnot. Yet this contradicts with some of his behaviour and that whole idea. I know I don’t tend to really notice other people or look around when I’m out in public unless it’s deliberate. On the other hand, I’m also a people observer and tend to feel that people also observe other people. (But maybe that goes with the “deliberate” idea). So this is very contradictory, so… I don’t know, I can’t put this into words. I’ve honestly never heard that kind of thing before, and it’s been a little perplexing to me.

I found a great word to explain what my initial “guilt” was like, and I want to clarify I still feel that kind of thing most of the time – I rarely ever feel real guilt. I also want to clarify that I can’t possibly know for certain if the first time I felt it, if that was guilt. I am just going by what I was told – I was talking to some other people at the time it happened. I did not understand what I was feeling. I thought I was dying, or something. I got really freaked out and really scared. When I described it to several other people, they told me I wasn’t dying and I was okay – that I was feeling guilt. To me, guilt is very physical. Like, this emptiness in your chest, and it feels like it’s caving in, almost, and it really seems to hurt, physically. I don’t really feel emotions physically, except for anxiety, and anger. And it’s like it was uncontrollable – a lot of my emotions can be very uncontrollable, but this was different. It was externally uncontrollable. I just started to sob – and I couldn’t stop. I had to seek out the person and apologize, and make it right – this was just a very strange feeling. It frightens me. Other people said it was frightening to watch me go through it.

I trailed off – the word I found to describe the other thing, is “blame”. I’m going to assume a lot of people associate blame with guilt, which makes sense, but to me, these are two different things. I just feel like things are all my fault. I think I’m a really, really terrible person and I ruin everything. I think I deserve to be punished. It’s actually very genuine. I’ve ended up in the ICU because of these feelings – they’re intense. They get so intense I really do believe I deserve to die, because I see myself as very bad and evil, and think if I kill myself – no one else will be hurt by me. It’s self-hatred, and it’s a lot of blame. But not guilt. I have very, very low self-esteem but have high self-confidence (I’m confident in my ability to control over people, to exert power and influence over them – but I don’t think I’m a good person, and I don’t accept who I am.) I feel people are genuinely better off without me. I honestly think I believe that. It’s just really, really intense depression, self-hatred, and blame – it gets to suicidal levels, but not to stop your pain. To stop the pain you are causing other people, because you know it’s there. You really can’t deny it, even though you may not respond emotionally, in the form of guilt. But you understand that it’s negative, and that it’s hurting other people.

You mentioned Bundy being diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. I don’t really believe it either – the “highs” and “lows” he described are not caused by bi-polar disorder. When he was describing that, it actually hit me that I really think I know what he was referring to – whether he realized it or not. I’m not sure he fully did, or else he probably wouldn’t have given it away so easily. And, bear with me here, but I wanted to run something by you – about the Chi Omega case. Bundy kept really avoiding why this happened, or explaining it, especially the great deal of rage and anger. This may just sound… weird to you, I don’t know – and I’m going to have to insert some personal experience. But I have a hypothesis why this may have happened – all that anger and violence. And I even have a hypothesis why Bundy didn’t want to talk about it or address it (I didn’t believe that whole spiel, “It’s in the appeals process!”)

But going back to that highs and lows thing – where he mentioned how he would sit around consuming large amounts of time. I do this all the time, and it’s definitely not depression. It’s boredom. Sociopaths/psychopaths have chronic boredom. I’ll sit there, for hours – not doing anything. I don’t know what to do. This concept is so hard to explain to people who aren’t this way, so this post is probably the best explanation I’ve found (if you’re interested):

The “highs” he described didn’t really click until he described his second escape, and the authors mentioned how sociopaths/psychopaths do better in prison environments. I had never heard that before, but it made sense. I know that high, too! It’s a feeling of being in control and having power. I’ve never been in prison – but I’ve been institutionalized, a lot. A lot of people have compared institutionalization to like being in a prison. I have never understood this. I feel really, really good and in control when I am institutionalized. I feel like I can control the people and environment around me. It’s weird – I’ll want freedom. I also logically know I am being controlled, and that I don’t have as much power as I think I do – it doesn’t really seem to matter. As long as I have the illusion, belief, and feeling I have control and power. As soon as I get hospitalized, in about a few days, I’ll start wanting out! I’ll manipulate the staff to get out sooner than I probably should be. And when I get out, I feel very, very good. I feel like everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to work out, now. But then, in a very short period of time – I can completely crash. It can take only two weeks, and it seems to happen suddenly, and almost quickly.

When Bundy described that – to me, that reminds me of the loss of feeling like one is in control. It’s not mania, but it’s a really, really good feeling. And then you lose it. You can’t really predict people. They can respond in unexpected ways. It begins to just… unsettle you. I’m losing even more words to explain this. It is too hard to explain this feeling.

(I also want to interject, that like I said, I’m not quite finished with “Conversations With A Killer”, so… he may end up explaining this in the book. Although I’m not really sure I would believe any explanation he would give, given what I know and have experienced. I scanned through the rest of it – it doesn’t seem like he ever really explains it.)

But either way, when that starts happening – I start becoming very, very angry, more and more frequently. I’ll just get more and more antisocial, and do absolutely anything to regain my control (or feeling of control). It gets harder and harder not to lash out – not to engage in antisocial behaviours to regain control. It will be hell to be around me. I will see the most minor things as insults, as offenses, as challenges, in relation to power and control. Of course I don’t act like Bundy did. But when they postulated that possibly he had gotten rebuffed or insulted by one of the Chi Omega women – that really made sense to me. I wonder if Bundy felt like he was regaining control and power, when he did these things to women. There’s also the misogyny element. That fits into the idea of possession to me, too.

I honestly think Bundy was just – in his own way – embarrassed to talk about it. I don’t know, but when I regain that feeling of control – I become really embarrassed to talk about any ways I had lashed out or any of the antisocial ways I had acted. I also don’t even know if “embarrassed” is the right word. I have trouble explaining the ways I feel and relating them to other people. I definitely don’t feel guilt, but – it’s almost like that person doesn’t exist to me any more. I’ll get agitated when people keep bringing up things I did during those times. I don’t want to talk about it – I don’t know who that person is any more. That person is a different person from who I am now. I can’t seem to really, truly integrate these things. It’s over with now, it doesn’t matter any more, and I don’t understand why people want to talk about it. It doesn’t occur to me, really, that they’re still affected by whatever I had done, and they don’t understand it, and they want explanations. That’s kind of the impression I got from Bundy but – it’s hard for me to imagine it being that way in relation to murder. But maybe so. Sociopaths/psychopaths just have a real inability to truly imagine the future but also an inability to really remember the past. It’s like nothing is ever permanent. It doesn’t matter any more. It won’t matter in the future. Even if it does, and it will. That also kind of goes into the idea of him trying to convince himself that he was never going to murder again. I honestly believed him about that. I’m sure he did tell himself that.

So I was wondering, what your thoughts are on that? I understand if it’s hard to understand. I find the Chi Omega murders very interesting. I have a hard time grasping Bundy’s desire to kill – but his sociopathic behaviour, even in relation to that, makes sense to me. It’s interesting, because I don’t think he’s aware of how much he gives away. When reading his transcripts I kept getting the impression (as I’m sure everyone else did), that he’s trying to manipulate, you know, word things a certain way. But then it’s amusing because he doesn’t appear to notice the times he really gives insights into his behaviour. I guess that fits into the idea of sociopaths/psychopaths seeming like they’re self-aware, but not being truly self-aware. Although I’m not sure it’s that simple.

(And also, I personally agree about the NPD diagnosis. A lot of his level of narcissism is hard for me to grasp as well. I don’t have NPD. I’m not that highly narcissistic. It’s hard for me to understand. Self-confidence is one thing, but the rest, not really. I just can’t truly understand that level of narcissism. It’s the same with my mother, who, as I mentioned, has NPD. Maybe the “not noticing people” thing is really just part of NPD, or something, but I can’t understand how it would be. I’m not very well-researched in NPD. Reading about it makes me angry and gives me flashbacks to my mother’s abuse. So I avoid reading about it, for the most part.)

Jesus, this is getting really long. I’m really sorry, I just had a lot of thoughts building up over time, reading all this. So I’m going to try to end it quickly.

I agree about wishing Kemper would give more interviews. There are really no books and hardly any interviews with him. The few interviews that he has given are really interesting. (I have used the word “interesting” a lot, but it’s true.) I haven’t really read much about Dahmer, so I can’t comment on his level of self-awareness or understanding.

Like I said at the beginning, I still haven’t read that book yet (I’m hoping to read it soon) – but if they couldn’t even find her body, then I agree, that’s probably a good reason to be skeptical. I can’t imagine a fourteen year old having that much ability. Unless he was, as you said – extremely lucky. But I do agree that he probably killed before what is believed.

I’m ending this comment now, thank you for your time.

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