The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (36 page)

Ted was intuitive about our interest in what he was saying. Our curiosity was probably written across our faces. Next, Ted wanted to know whether the victims were clothed. I pressed him for what significance that had to him. He eagerly responded, as if he were putting himself at the actual dump sites, by saying, “Well, let’s assume you had victims who were not prostitutes, and obviously he’s coming on to them—and this is what I feel—he has a method of approach. He has a lure or a ruse which applies to more than just prostitutes. He’s not walking up to them and saying, ‘Okay, hey, baby, you want to go for a ride?’You know, ‘Pay you fifty bucks or whatever to go.’ If you have victims who are not prostitutes, it says he has a ruse that’s more generalized. That he’s in fact not coming on all the time as a john. That he’s coming on as something else. Or offering them something else. See what I’m getting at?”

We nodded. We were getting somewhere. He continued to draw us a picture of the Green River Killer at work as if he had teleported himself directly into the guy’s brain and was looking at victims through his eyes. “If he picked up a hitchhiker or somebody who’s in a bar who may have dressed like, acted like, or looked like a prostitute, but in fact was not, who may have appealed to this man for one reason or another—she would not have responded to an approach that a john would make to a prostitute. Then I would say you have a guy who’s obviously capable of using ruses that are not applicable only to prostitutes.”

There were times when Ted would lose his focus or when he would seem to be ill at ease while talking to us. These lapses, our psychological research into Ted’s case told us, resulted from Ted’s very severe ego issues. We were prepared for this, of course, and
had a variety of techniques to focus the interview back on Ted’s thought process, while at the same time getting to focus on our concerns. One of these was to repeat a phrase that Ted was using to bring him back to a point in the conversation that we wanted him to elaborate on. Specifically, our using Ted’s own words to frame a question made him feel comfortable and, in a way, obligated to answer.
Words like this guy, his thing, get what I’m getting at,
and
you know
were frequently part of Ted’s phraseology. So I asked, “What is this guy’s thing? Is he all wrapped up in the approach, wrapped up in the event, or wrapped up in postevent behavior? There’s three questions there. What is he like after each of these, you know, like he might be somebody’s neighbor or live-in boyfriend for a while. Is there something here that we could key on about his before or after behavior that somebody else might see? We have a lot of people that call in, and they give us indications there’s something wrong with this potential suspect, and I don’t know what it is. Something happened before, something happened after. Understand what I’m getting at?”

Of course, Ted realized what I was getting at, and it was the last thing he wanted to talk about. We knew from the postmortem medical reports from Utah and from Florida that Ted had committed acts on his victims after death. In other words, he was a necrophiliac, and he knew we knew it. It was the one part of his criminal behavior that truly embarrassed him because it satisfied him sexually by going right to the center of his dysfunctional need for control. Bundy was so severe a sexual deviant that he was probably unable to reach an orgasm unless his victim was dead or unconscious. Women threatened him. He was petrified of his victims, which was why he had to take control of them and incapacitate them. Everything—his ruses, lures, traps, murders, and dump site—was secondary to his sexual satisfaction at having a dump site where his victims would wait for him in silent decay. Sitting there in that visitor’s death row reception room in the Florida State Penitentiary, Bundy knew that we knew his deepest and most intimate sexual desires, even though he pretended to be aloof and on a throne of superiority.

He was not about to talk about postevent sexual gratification. “Yeah,” he said. “I see what you’re getting at. When I don’t know something, I’ll tell you. When I don’t have a feeling for something,
I’ll tell you. And I don’t have a feeling for that. I don’t know what condition the bodies were in or anything and, you know, if you have any evidence if they were sexually assaulted or have been somewhat physically traumatized. And I think, quite frankly, in most of your cases there’s no evidence at all, that would help you on that. And I just don’t know. I can answer part of your question, or try to answer part of your question.”

Ted quickly turned to what he wanted to talk about. “I think that the hunt, the searching out, is always a big thing for him. He’s probably invested a lot of time and effort into it. And you asked another question earlier. Well, how would this affect his job? Well, I think, you know, especially in that period from July eighty-two until October of eighty-three, he was doing two and three a month, and some months he was doing four and five. And that takes an enormous amount of effort and concentration. And to be able to hold down any kind of serious job under those circumstances can be extremely difficult. And this is why I think his employment history might be somewhat uneven. And I would expect also that he’s not earning a lot of money. Or he would range further away, or that might be one of the reasons why he’s stuck around so long.”

At the same time as Ted was describing the practical difficulties of being a serial killer and holding down a full-time job, he was also blowing his own horn. Ted was a superannuated perpetual graduate student whose lifestyle was campus-oriented. In order to live among his victim pool, Ted had worked out the logistics of attending classes, holding down jobs that would earn him a living, and killing full-time. Thus, he was well prepared to discuss the Riverman’s predicament. “Quite frankly, he might not have been able to afford to go further or take more time off from work. There are other explanations, but that one appeals to me. But as to what he might do to them once he gets them, that’s a big blank spot in my mind. I don’t know. I mean, I can’t even begin to guess. Boy. Although I think he probably is a good deal more interested in, or caught up in the hunt than the actual doing of the deed. But that’s only a guess.”

Ted focused on the hunt because he was so intense about the
hunt himself, which was part of the thrill of anticipating his exercising complete control of a victim’s body. Feeding off our previous discussion about the Riverman’s picking on less-sophisticated victims and wanting to pursue the profile of the killer that Ted had held out for us, I asked, “In the hunt, he’s initially picked on an easily approachable victim. If he is wrapped up in the hunt, comparatively speaking, to going into a bar and picking up somebody or stopping by a bus stop and seeing if somebody wants a ride, he doesn’t seem to be that skilled. And he’s picking on a very vulnerable population that’s right there.”

Ted said, “That’s a good observation.” Even Reichert was amazed at Bundy’s bravado in complimenting me on simply repeating what Bundy himself had said just moments earlier. But I wanted to make Ted feel superior. That was part of our strategy. I indirectly complimented Bundy in return by saying that the Riverman, unlike Bundy, “doesn’t have to work that hard, in my opinion. He’s a lazy son of a bitch. You know.”

Ted jumped at the compliment. “That’s right!” he almost shouted. “That’s right! Although I think, again my guess is, he’s a little bit more skilled than we might think if, in fact, he’s picking on people who are not prostitutes, who are close to being prostitutes, who are vulnerable. Maybe ’cause they’re runaways, maybe ’cause they’re lonely, and on the run or need some drugs, or something. But you’re right. He is lazy, and I say not lazy. He’s pretty sharp in one respect. None of them have gotten away from him. He’s definitely thought a lot of this stuff out. He may not be very sophisticated in his approach, but given time, he’s working on it.” He truly believed that the Riverman picked up more than just prostitutes.

“And if,” Bundy continued, “he ever feels like he has to change a class of victims, comes up with a more sophisticated approach, then you will find him. And you’re going to see that start to show up. But right now, he is picking on somebody that’s vulnerable. And it’s good for him in the sense he doesn’t have to work that hard. He also knows that it’s not just vulnerable victims, but police have a devil of a time investigating the disappearances precisely because of the kind of women they are. So it may not be easy because they’re vulnerable, but also because their murders and disappearances are difficult to investigate. But what really intrigues me is—and once again the fact that you don’t really have anybody other than prostitute types—you
don’t have any other apparent nonprostitute cases in eighty-four that you discovered. And if you had a number of prostitutes who disappeared in eighty-four, they’d be on your list, I would suspect.”

In fact, some of the victims on the Riverman’s list were not confirmed prostitutes. I reminded him of that. “Well, we’ve got one that’s on the list that probably is not a prostitute, but because of the time, we’d have to put them on the list. We have some missing prostitutes that cannot be accounted for; their bodies have not been discovered yet. Some are prolific travelers from city to city.”

Dave pressed on about the hunt by saying, “Let’s go back to the hunt for a minute. You might have covered this already a little bit. How would you think he conducts the hunt?”

“Well,” Ted said, now hypothesizing
ex cathedram electricus,
as it were, and going back to my earlier assumption that he already had an insight into this, “the kind of subculture out there is a part of what he understands. Or he has observed them in the past, or he’s been in the same kind of environment where they lived and worked. He understands their movements. So his hunt is somewhat simplified by the fact that he understands, more or less, he knows where they are, generally, and how they behave and where he can find them.”

Dave asked, “Do you think that he parks his vehicle?”

“Oh, sure,” Ted answered, even before Reichert had a chance to complete his question. “And just watches.”

Dave continued. “Does he drive up and down and make notes of certain people walking on the highways? Maybe he stops and talks and visits with this person who later turns out to be his victim. Do you think that there is some kind of a need for him to get to know that person?”

Ted never felt the need to know any woman he killed, except maybe Lynda Healy, but he wasn’t about to admit that. Killing, for Ted, was probably the gateway to the act of knowing, to the only real intimacy he would ever experience with another human being. Even Liz Kendall, although she was his fiancée and lived with him, would never be as much an object of intimate bonding the way Georgeann Hawkins would become on the night of her abduction and murder. His victims were his relationships, and it was through that dysfunction that he was able to talk about the comings and goings of the Green River Killer.

Ted grudgingly answered Dave’s question. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “But your earlier question, is he closely observing the scene? And I have to say this guy is in and out and closely observing his victims, if not all the time in the area, at least a particular victim some period of time. He’s going to a great deal of trouble to check out the area, and everything that goes on in that area. It’s not just the prostitutes or the police. He’s very conscious of the police. I bet you he can feel them, undercover or whatever, because he’s very conscious of not wanting to have anybody observe him approach one of those girls, but also because, you know, he’s lived in that scene long enough; he knows what they look like. He can sense when they’re coming. And so he’s very conscious of all kinds of activity. And my guess is, generally speaking—and I’m sure there are exception—when he’s just driving along and sees something he likes, it feels right, he looks around, parks the car and, you know, starts looking. I don’t know how many suspect vehicles you may have on your list, but I’m pretty sure he’s very careful about where he puts his car. I just don’t think he’s the type that’s going to drive up to the curb and have them get in. That might be another question you’ve probably already asked your ladies out there—if they have to walk any distance to his car. And is his car parked in kind of an unusual place. Have you asked that question?”

We hadn’t.

9
 
Hunting the Killer

I
n my experience, the hunt for the killer is as exhilarating for the detective as the hunt for victims seems to be for the killer, especially when you feel that you’re making headway on a case. Unfortunately, too many times during a long-term investigation much of what is done feels useless and nonproductive. Investigators find themselves following leads on many different theories promoted during the case. One of those time-consuming theories that required a lot of follow-up regarding the Riverman was that he would deliberately draw attention to himself by contacting members of the news media and using them to communicate with police authorities.