“...He isn't tired. He could, and does, talk for nine hours about himself...”

Blog Post incorporating Archived News Articles 

"...When I was first arrested , I know that if the police had sat me down in a room let me get drunk on, say, bourbon - a drink that really made me more vicious - hard liquor and 7-Up or some-thing, and showed me some really hardcore pornography, I could have talked to them from that perspective (The Entity). It would have just blossomed right out of me...“

      Quote made by TB to detectives following his arrest in Pensacola on February 15 1978.

Bundy was re - arrested and transferred to Glenwood Springs following his first escape on 7 June 1977 in Aspen. Then, just months later a second escape was achieved from his cell, as he climbed through a light fitting in Garfield County jail, on December 30, 1977. This would lead to Bundy being added to the Ten Most Wanted list on February 10 , 1978 following a hunch he was now an interstate fugitive. 

F.B.I Ten Most Wanted List

Number 360 : TED BUNDY, serial killer

LISTED: February 10, 1978

CAUGHT: February 15, 1978

DESCRIPTION: Born November 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont. Six feet tall, 175 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair.

F.B.I Memo describes Bundy as :

“BLUE EYES WHICH ARE SOMEWHAT OF AN ATTRACTING FEATURE, DEEPSET, IS KNOWN TO WEAR GLASSES AND DARK GLASSES AS DISGUISE, DARK BROWN NORMALLY WAVY HAIR, PARTED ON RIGHT SIDE, CURRENTLY COLLAR LENGTH, SIDEBURNS TO EAR LOBE, HAIR PARTLY COVERS EAR. HAIR IS VERY WIREY AND WHEN WASHED APPEARS ALMOST AFRO-LIKE, EASILY MANAGEABLE AND WORN IN VARIOUS STYLES, CURRENTLY CLEAN SHAVEN .

SUBJECT DESCRIBED AS WMA, DOB, NOVEMBER 24, 1946, BURLINGTON, VERMONT, AGE 30, 5'11 - 6°0", 145-155 LBS”

Detective Steve Bodiford, one of three detectives to interview TB for over 40 hours following his arrest would later comment :

     “...Mr Bundy told me that he enjoyed solitary confinement because he considered his problem like an alcoholic , when he wasn't in society, he didn't have a problem and that when he was in solitary confinement, he convinced himself that he was innocent of all things he was charged with...”

Above Bundy with Detective Chapman and below Bundy’s fingerprint analysis 

During the week of Feb. 15, 1978, more than 40 hours of conversation took place between a prisoner in the Pensacola jail and investigators from three Florida law-enforcement agencies. Much of the talk took place in the early morning hours and was taped on a recorder that was turned on and off at the prisoner's request .The detectives also employed hidden recorders. At first the man did not give his real name. When he was arrested, more than 60 stolen credit cards and assorted ID's were in his possession.

          The man later explained :

  “...I wanted to shake loose of my old … my past and I didn't want uh some people to know where I was …God, I've gone through so much to, to get out, to get free the first time. It seemed like such a waste to give up so easily...”

Eventually, the man informed officers that his name was Theodore Robert Bundy. It meant nothing to Pensacola police until "Bundy" was plugged into a police computer and the bells started ringing. It soon became clear why this man had struggled violently with Officer David Lee when the latter stopped him to ask some routine questions. Fact is , the day he was arrested by Officer Lee, Ted Bundy's name was added to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. He was an escaped felon from a Colorado jail. He had been convicted of kidnapping a young woman in Utah. He was sought in connection with the murders of young women in Seattle.

Ted’s booking photo taken on 15th February. Notice the abrasion on the left side of Bundy’s face caused by being hit with Officer Lee’s gun as they struggled! 

This information caught the attention of law officers all over the state, particularly in Tallahassee, where two young women had been murdered and three others brutally beaten near the Florida State University campus and exactly one month before. Pensacola Detective Norman Chapman Jr., Tallahassee Police Detective Don Patchen and Detective Steve Bodiford of the Leon County Sheriffs Department met in Pensacola to interview Bundy. It was Bundy who initiated the  meetings. He hinted that he was at the end of the line and ready to talk. It isn't too often a criminal of such stature passes through North Florida the officers were eager to listen. While the tape recorder was running, Bundy spent - most of the time detailing his prison escapes and his modus operandi in stealing credit cards, purses and cars.

 He called himself “an amateur” 

“I don't even know how to hot-wire a car, Any cars that I went into would be open.“

       He told about driving one stolen car from Michigan to Atlanta:

“...They'll never find that god damned car. I parked it in the middle of a black ghetto with the keys in it. It's probably in so many pieces, man, you'll never see it again...”

He described what the Tallahassee air was like when he stepped from the Greyhound bus in early January:

“...It smelled warm. I really expected, you know, big things. You know, good weather, all that stuff. It just smelled like it was gonna' be a great day...”

 At one point, he described his time in Tallahassee:

 “...It’s such a weird trip just walking around, believe me. Just walking around because I like to be free, for no other reason. Not to do anything wrong. Just really getting off on walking around the campus. And watching people play racquetball and tennis, you know- People are great anyway, but college students are beautiful people, good-looking people, healthy people, exciting people...”

The interviewers offered Bundy cigarettes and coffee, listening to his sometimes-detailed, sometimes-vague accounts of minor criminal exploits. They tried to direct the conversation to bigger things. Bundy wanted to make a deal.He would tell his story if Florida police could arrange his extradition to Washington, instead of Colorado or Utah. 

  (Detectives declined the "deal" because Colorado and Utah wanted Bundy so badly such a deal would have been out of the question).

     Bundy wanted to go to an institution in Washington where he could be studied. 

Captain Jack Pottinger of the Leon County Sheriff's Office who also interviewed TB 

    “...for whatever aberrations he might  possess. I think he feels that there may be some problems which manifest themselves from time to time...”

“...I think the gist of the conversation was that his problems were that he had a desire to cause great bodily harm to females- he made some comment to the effect he first had his problem when he saw a girl riding a bicycle (in Seattle) and she approached him and something happened...”

According to Bodiford :

“...He (Bundy) said he passed a girl on the street, I had a feeling I had never had. I wanted to possess her and he used the word 'possess' by whatever means was necessary. I just had to have that girl....“

As Bundy ordered the tape turned on and off, a fascinating narrative oftentimes unclear unfolded.

       Impatient after hours of routine conversation, detectives started to hone in on Bundy, asking him at one point about the disappearance of Kimberly Leach, a 12-year-old Lake City girl.

 Chapman says he asked Bundy:

“...Ted, if you will tell me where the body is, I will go get it and let the parents know that the child is dead...”

   According to Chapman, Bundy's reply was he cannot do that because the site is too horrible to look at...

“...He felt like a vampire because he could get  by on three hours sleep a night and get in his car and drive many, many miles...”

   Many of Bundy's statements did not come across on the tape recorders. The hidden devices produced such poor-quality transmissions that those tapes were deemed useless. Much of what Bundy said could only be reconstructed by the detectives, who did not take notes. In addition, no attorney representing Bundy was present.

     For these and other reasons, Judge Edward Cowart refused to allow the jury in Bundy's Chi Omega murder trial in Miami to hear the tapes. Cowart also banned testimony from the detectives about their interviews with Bundy...

...Towards the end of the conversations, Don Patchen went into the interview room at the Leon County Jail without Bodiford and Chapman. Ted had so far refused to discuss his total number of victims, but Patchen had thought out an approach he believed might work. He told Bundy that he was a Vietnam veteran and that he was tortured by the recollection of all the people he killed during the war. His conscience was deeply troubled. His dreams were full of terrors.

 “So what about you, Ted?” Patchen asked.

     “ If you can live with yourself, you must not have killed as many as I did. How many is it?”

    According to the detective, Bundy indicated the answer was three digits and did not elaborate.Patchen took the response to mean that Ted had killed a hundred or so victims. Unfortunately for posterity, the batteries in the tape recorder had given out, and the police did not videotape the sessions with Ted. So the common suspicion that Bundy killed a hundred or more women ultimately rests on this single, enigmatic remark and Don Patchen’s interpretation of what it meant.

Excerpt taken from Robert Keppel’s “Terrible Secrets”

Kimberly above  (second on left) With her School Friends 

Kimberly Diane Leach . Murdered by Ted Bundy February 9 1978. Her mutilated and decomposing body was found months later dumped in an abandoned hog shed. 

Pensacola Detective Chapman led the attempt to extract a confession from Bundy. The following is an edited version of a typical session:

     Chapman:  There's people in this country that would give anything in this world to see Ted Bundy dead...Because you've hurt them more than anything can be hurt...And you're the only person that could rectify that hurt. You've done this world a lot of damage. You can do it a lot of good. You're coming awfully close, you're coming all around it. You are an escape artist. I've seen you look through the halls, I've seen you look at those cells, I've seen you check everything out then walk back and forth. And you know if you stay up here any length of time, it's gonna' be a piece of cake getting out. You know that and I know that...but you don't want to leave now. You want to let everybody know what you've done so that it will stop anything like this in the future. There are people that would crawl on their hands and knees from Washington state to get a crack at you.

   Bundy:  I'm not afraid to die.

Chapman: But we're not talking about you being afraid to die. You're afraid you're gonna go before your story gets told.

                        Bundy: Sure.

   Chapman:  That's right. And Ted Bundy will have lived for nothing. See the only out you have right now...is to tell your story so that nobody else will get in the same situation you're in...This is the reason you wanted to tell us this stuff to start off with. The time's right, you know it is. I know it's right. You want to give your story now. This room right here means more to you than any place you've ever been in your life right now.

      Bundy: Oh well, you know, it just brought a lot of things to...to focus.

       Chapman: Ted, you've done in your lifetime more damage than any of us know. Only you know and you do know that you can do more good...here and now than I can ever do in my lifetime. To not cooperate with us, your story would never be told...You're a very unique person. There's maybe one person like you out of maybe every 100-million. Probably less than that. You said all along you're normal. And I believe it...you're not a violent person till that one thing triggers you...If they call for an arraignment down there ( In Tallahassee) and some girl's father comes down here and hits you before we get you in and out of that courtroom you saw the security up there. There is no security....

      Bundy: Thats what happened to Oswald.

Chapman: That's exactly what happened to Oswald...It's 200 miles over there. 200 miles, that's a 3 -hour drive...it'a a southern town, those people over there are rednecks and you can bet your a...they've got guns and knives and use em .

                     Bundy: Oh yeah.

   Chapman: You have destroyed lives, literally and figuratively. And you have the ability to reconstruct some of those lives. You have the ability to save lives, Ted. You're a unique individual, Ted. You're the only person that has your psychological makeup that's been willing to tell the story...you may know something that psychologists have not ever thought about before. I've got two of the prettiest little blond-headed daughters that you'll ever see. And theyre gonna' grow up . And I don't want anything to happen to  em. Cause I couldn't live with it And i think that , maybe you could do something that would helP me and my daughters . I Don’t want to see my daughters hurt. Cause they mean more to me than my life. And I'd gladly give each in   exchange for theirs. And I can relate to how some of these parents feel 'cause it s a special, really special feeling between a father and a little girl. I...I couldn't take that. So I want you to help all the little girls in the world. And I want you ... to tell me right now, I want you to start, start with Chi Omega. Tell me how it felt when you walked in there. When you knew vou were going  to kill. Come on Ted...come up. Talk. You talked to us before, tell me how it was when you went in there. Tell me, what, what it was that caused you to go in there...

  Bundy : ...can't...I can't talk about it

   Chapman: You'd be a fool, yeah, you'd be a fool .

             Bundy: Can't talk about it

   Chapman: You'd be a fool...that was helping more people than he could ever imagine. So tell me about it.

      Bundy: Can't talk about this situation (indiscernible).

        Chapman: Yes, you can, Ted...

      Bundy: (indiscernible) I can't do it (indiscernible)

    Chapman: ...I think you know you can talk about it ... So go ahead, Ted. Tell us, tell us why, tell us what the feeling was, tell us what urged you to want to go into thre Chi Omega house. Was there any particular reason to pick out the Chi Omegas? Come on, Ted, don't clam up.

Bundy: Tried to help you understand me and I tried to help you understand me a little bit more...I don't know anything about the Chi Omega house ...I have resigned, I may have resigned myself to answer questions when the time is right, but I haven't allowed myself to choke.

Chapman: Ted, if you didn't want to tell your story you wouldn't even be f-king with us.

  Bundy: I know it .... god-

    Chapman: ... (what) if the three of us could assure you that we would never, if you told us right now, we would never breathe a word of it? If you tell us...

  Bundy: No, I couldn't answer your questions.

   Chapman: Go ahead, just (indiscernible) take him back...I think we've reached the point where Mr. Bundy is no longer gonna' be in the driver's seat...

Source : “Tampa Bay Times“23 July 1979