The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (32 page)

Noting that the Riverman was working a relatively small geographic area, Ted was interested in whether any of the victims knew each other. Ted’s next few comments really were indicative of how much Ted thought about how to abduct easy victims. He wondered if any of the victims carried address books. Ted knew that the telephone was the perfect way to anonymously and facelessly set up a safe rendezvous. In an even more frightening portrait of a predator exploiting his victims’ abilities to find new prey for him, Ted suggested that the Riverman was asking those he abducted for names of friends and for places where they might hang out in order to supplement his existing knowledge of the scene, which he was always looking to expand.

The lapse of time between a person’s disappearance and the time the body was dumped or buried was very important to Ted because it revealed insight into the Riverman’s living situation. Simply stated, if several days elapsed, then a strong inference could be made that the Riverman lived alone in an apartment or house that afforded some privacy, especially for entering and exiting, just like Ted’s apartment near the University of Washington. We had a hard time following up on this possible lead because in 100 percent of the Green River cases, that crucial period of time was unknown.

Next, Ted wondered if any of the girls the Riverman had killed didn’t fit the model of his typical victim. If there were those types of victims, Ted hypothesized that maybe the killer changed his tastes occasionally or made a mistake, thinking one of those exceptional victims was something she wasn’t. Ted also cautioned us not to limit the description of the victims to prostitutes, since the Riverman
might have been looking for a general type, rather than someone who was actually a prostitute. Ted believed that the Riverman was hunting for young women who exhibited a certain range of characteristics, possibly a display of sexual promiscuity, which prostitutes as well as hitchhikers, runaways, and barflies demonstrated. More important, Ted pointed out that the Riverman focused on a kind of place or situation, as well as specific victim types. Occasionally, a hapless victim strayed into a situation or place and she was close enough to the Riverman’s profile for him to move on her. Ted emphatically explained that should the Riverman abduct more than prostitutes, then obviously his approaches, lures, and modus operandi were flexible and not tailored specifically to prostitutes. Ted predicted that the Riverman would expand the pool of women he was interested in, but for now he would continue with his present selection pattern.

The space of time between each of the Riverman’s murders was vital to Ted’s understanding of the factors that influenced the killer’s behavior. Ted surmised that when and how often the Riverman abducted his victim depended on what he called internal and external factors. The killer’s need to abduct, the time spans between which might vary and be separated by long periods of time, was an internal factor. External factors, such as the demands of family, job, or school, also came into play. Therefore, the pattern of victim’s disappearance—in the daytime or nighttime, during weekdays or on weekend—would probably reveal work schedules and family responsibilities the killer had. Ted believed that a close analysis of when the Riverman abducted his victims would give insight into his mind and lifestyle. As it turned out Bundy was dead right on this call.

Ted called the whole business about when, where, and how the Riverman abducted his victims the “front end” process. Ted admitted that all the various questions, hypotheses, speculation, lines of investigation, and possible clues were mind-boggling. But the investigation of the body recovery sites, or what Ted called the “back end” process, was just the opposite. Ted believed that the where, when, how, and why of the sites were much less of a mystery and, not coincidentally, offered us the best clues and trap to catch our man red-handed.

Ted most strongly advised that we stake out a newly discovered victim dump site to catch the Riverman. Ted could not think of any
objection to his tactic, emphasizing that if the site had a fresh victim, the Riverman was sure to return. Ted was so certain of this because that’s exactly what he had done—he had returned to old dumping sites, over and over again.

Ted divided his plan for surveillance of the fresh dump site into two parts. The first involved those actions of approaching and determining if a fresh find was indeed a Green River victim, and the second was the full-scale surveillance of that site.

Part one of Ted’s plan required that the newly discovered body be kept secret; that would be achieved by sequestering those who found the body. Ted recommended using land-based telephone lines instead of police radio frequencies for communication among task force members to avoid alerting the news media at all costs. Reporters and helicopter news units were all equipped with police band scanners and would phone in any body discovery message to their stations for broadcast. If the Riverman was anything like Ted, he’d surely be watching the five-o’clock news.

The next step of Ted’s plan was to rapidly deploy surveillance teams and equipment to the area and debrief those who had found the body. A review of detailed maps of the area with witnesses would also be required, with initial surveillance posts identified. Teams would take up positions to monitor traffic in the area by recording license plate numbers and types of vehicles traveling key roadways near the site. Team members would be dressed as civilians, and would drive to posts in old, beat-up four-wheelers, pickups, and station wagons. Ted advised that officers should never survey the area from a vehicle and that no officer should have to seek camouflaged cover. And, he stressed, officers should leave no vehicles in the area, nor should people be taxied in and out by police in uniform.

The last phase of part one of Ted’s plan called for a survey team to view the site and determine if it was a Green River site. If it was determined as such, then part two, a full-scale stakeout, would be enacted. As Ted explained part two to us, he warned us about what we should expect from the Riverman. Ted believed the Riverman would first drive by the general area of the site a few times. He might park some distance from the site and hike in. Undoubtedly, the Riverman would closely examine all activity and vehicles in the area before moving in, Ted said. If the Riverman returned to the site with another body, he would drive as close to the site as he
could at a time when there was the least amount of activity in the area. And finally, he could be expected to turn up at the site at any time, probably on foot. Ted’s surveillance theory was wonderful except for the fact that we hadn’t found a fresh body at the 20 or so sites we had discovered up to that time. And the way the cases seemed to have petered out, it didn’t look like we would find any new victims there.

Ted closed the second letter by taunting us with what he thought we would be interested in, and he was right. He said that his other ideas included a method of getting the Riverman to come to us, ways of hunting for his dump sites, and his own profile of the Riverman.

Ted’s communication revealed a great deal about his own behavior, in addition to his thoughts about what the Riverman was like. We felt Ted couldn’t talk about the Riverman’s behavior without detailing some of his own experiences. It was almost as though Ted wanted to use the first person rather than the third person to describe the Riverman because he felt he knew the Riverman so well. He crept inside the killer’s mind. These were Ted’s experiences, we believed, lusts and predatory strategies that control-type serial killers shared, not with each other directly, but from a pool common to all of them. From what Ted said, we discerned that each serial killer recognized an “other” on sight, either by description or through perception, and could relay through “others” the things that he couldn’t say at first about himself. It seemed like Ted was able to animate the Riverman as a presence, bring him to life in a way that we couldn’t, see through his eyes, and walk in his foot-steps. That was why it was as if Ted were talking to us at first in a language we couldn’t translate. And that was why it became clear to me that I had to lay the groundwork for confronting him face-to-face—not only to get Ted’s help in finding the Riverman, but also to get the confessions we so desperately wanted from Ted himself.

8
 
Innocent Victims

T
he city of Starke, Florida, was the home of the Florida State Penitentiary, a kind of Serial-Killer Central where some of the South’s most notorious multiple murderers were waiting on death row to have a seat in Florida’s equally infamous electric chair—“Old Sparky.” Dave Reichert and I had the privilege of visiting the town and the prison to make face-to-face contact with Ted Bundy. We had booked a room at the Econoline Lodge, which was about two steps lower than a Motel 6 and our home for two days. We didn’t want our presence to become general knowledge, so we registered under Dave Reichert’s name—the lower our profile the better. If anyone caught wind that we were interviewing Bundy, members of the news media would have flocked to the prison like ants on a bird’s carcass, and that was the last thing we wanted.

But Dave Reichert was an iron-pumping fanatic whose body-builder’s physique was something to envy. He had carted his dumb-bell weights, boom box, and aerobic tapes all the way from Seattle to Starke. While we waited through the hours early in the day before seeing Ted, an upbeat Reichert set up his weights on the motel’s lawn to work out in the Florida sunshine. With his well-developed body rocking on the lawn to an aerobic tape that boomed through the oversized speakers and his weight-lifting technique
that made him look more like machine than man, Reichert captivated the attention of the housekeepers, who were peeking out of windows or standing outside instead of cleaning rooms, asking, “Who is this hunk?” Word spread fast among the motel employees about the bodybuilder who’d just checked in. It didn’t take them long to get his name from the front desk and show him their appreciation for the show he’d put on that day. When we left to have dinner and returned later that afternoon, I noticed that the front marquee brightly displayed
WELCOME, DAVE REICHERT.
So much for incognito. I asked Dave to request that the greeting be removed.

That day, Dave and I made our first visit to the prison. As we pulled up, the lime-green state penitentiary was an impressive sight, rising austerely and dramatically above the surrounding landscape. The guard tower stood next to the main gate, and the fence that bordered the penitentiary and grounds was constructed of three separate coils of razor-sharp, 10-foot-high concertina wire. The grass between the wire rolls was neatly manicured. The sally port entry to the prison, like a hatchway on a naval vessel guarded by sentries, blocked our entry. After undergoing a search of our possessions, we were taken to Assistant Warden Pete Turner’s office. He had approved our visit before we arrived. With the savvy of a man who had dealt with hardened cons, he warned us of Bundy’s constant game-playing. “Try not to get used by him; he always has an agenda,” he warned. It was basic advice we wouldn’t forget. Turner led us to a small, drab, cream-colored interview room. A creaky wooden table and three metal chairs filled the room, and one wall had a barred window that was a constant reminder of restricted freedom.

Ted, adorned in interwoven chains around his waist, wrists, and arms, looking much like Houdini being led to the water tank, was escorted by a burly prison guard. His figure was hunched as he said sheepishly, “Hello, I’m Ted.” His reach for my hand was slow, weighted as it was by the chains of death row. The touch of his hand was sticky wet. Was the great Ted Bundy nervous? As I looked directly into his eyes, they quickly turned away. Ted’s face was pale, his cheeks hollowed, his eyes lusterless, and his voice
feeble. He was almost feral in our presence, like an animal just out of his cave.

Apologetic about his appearance, Ted expressed reservations about our interview, claiming that he was presumptuous to think he could be of assistance. Ted was setting the hook convincingly, in a way, we would come to discover, that only he could. What were we supposed to do, get up and leave? He had a captive audience and all of us knew it. His phony self-effacing attitude and feigned weakness were part of a preconceived act, a method to sucker us in. Sure, he was partly debilitated, caged together with other murderers on Florida’s death row, but he was also acting out a weakened state of health as a crutch, just like the arm-in-a-sling ruse he had used so cleverly in the past. Bundy was working on our sympathy, getting us to drop our guard in order to accept his view of reality. That was how he had lured his victims years earlier, and that was going to be his approach to us now.

But Ted also desperately wanted some form of validation from us. I was to realize years later that we were part of his grand scheme not only to extend his life, but to restart it by giving him an investiture as a homicide consultant. As bizarre as this sounds, it was almost as though he had found new meaning to life right there in the interrogation room on death row. Every body gesture, every aspect of his speech and phraseology, was keyed to convincing us of his expertise in the field of serial murder. Yet he was also dependent upon our approval that he was not the hapless person, the outcast of society, that we all knew him to be. Reichert looked at me while Ted settled into his persona for this first interview. I looked back at him. None of this was going to be easy.