The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (40 page)

As if he were turning that image over in his mind, Ted slowly began thinking aloud. “Ummm. May have not left it for you, but left it for himself. If it’s something that you think is significant, he may have left it there because he got off on that and came back to find it there.”

“Do you see any religious aspect in this whole thing?” Dave Reichert asked. Maybe Ted had some false altruism that drove him or maybe he could fathom something in the Riverman’s fascination with prostitutes, street hustlers, and runaways.

Ted suggested that he once wondered if the Riverman was the “Charles Bronson type, getting rid of prostitutes for the good of the
community. I don’t think so, quite frankly. I don’t think that he might be doing the Lord’s work. Is this one possibility?”

“That’s one thing that I’m trying to get at, yes,” muttered Dave.

Ted tended to lecture, but in so doing revealed that he was a seasoned sexual thrill-killer who understood the motivations behind the mutilated victims he had left for us. He seemed to understand that we realized he had sexually manipulated his victims after he had killed them. It was chilling just how much he did comprehend and accept without any apparent remorse. The Riverman seemed to be Ted’s objective correlative for describing his own fascination with his kills.

“In examining some of those bodies,” he said, “if you find that they have been sexually mutilated in any way, he was not doing the Lord’s work. If he was altruistic, he’d just go out there and knock them off and dump their bodies somewhere. But those murders are more than that. It’s part of getting away with it, not limiting him [from] having fulfilled his fantasies at the scene.”

“What would you say about mutilation?” Dave inquired, unaware, because he had not investigated him, that Ted was the supreme mutilator. I knew, more than anyone else except Ted, about the level of sexual perversion that Bundy wallowed in, and thus I sat there transfixed by the scenario that Ted unfolded.

“Well, if he’s in fact sexually assaulting the victims and mutilating them in some way, I doubt that he has any religious motives,” Ted said, repeating himself to make sure that we understood what he was explaining to us. “Motivations here, they’re seriously complicated with some sexual and violent motivations, and you wouldn’t see him as one primarily motivated by religious drive. My guess is if he’s not picked these victims because he knows they’re accessible, easily picked up, and difficult to investigate as far as law enforcement is concerned, he’s picking them because he has some particular grudge against them and a real hang-up, you know, beyond viewing them as young women. And I sense in this [that] it’s not a venting of religious anger or moral outrage, but a desire to kill and to harm these people. He will be doing that and probably continue to do it. I can’t imagine him stopping.”

Dave seemed to take the questioning deep into a speculative vein when he suggested, “It’s been mentioned as a theory that the victims
are put in the river for some form of baptism.” But in reality he was probing Bundy from a different angle.

Ted seemed to have taken the bait when he shook his head in comic disbelief and replied, “No. Well, okay. My opinion is that this guy is a straightforward individual who gets off on graphically killing and sexually assaulting his victims, involving himself completely. For whatever reason, who knows? Perhaps. I mean, anything is possible. My opinion [is] he was dumping the bodies in the Green River because he thought that they wouldn’t turn up, and they did, so he changed. It’s as simple as that.”

Some killers were known to have kept a diary of their misdeeds. Dave asked Ted if he thought the Riverman kept a log of who he killed and where.

Reflecting for a while, Ted answered, “I see what you’re saying. Yeah. Over the years I’ve had an opportunity [that] I’m sure you’ve had, to read about cases where a man accused of mass murders had his belongings examined. Some of them had the effort, you know, newspaper articles on the wall and everything. The Riverman is not flamboyant in the way that the Son of Sam types are. I mean, he’s not trying to be sensational. He’s low-key, not only in the kind of victim he’s going after—and this is my own opinion—but not disposing of them in a way to arouse sensation. He’s not going about looking for victims that would be a particular sensation. He seems to be going to great lengths to avoid detection, and, quite frankly, even may have some mementos or photographs of his victims. I’m sure he’s keeping that to a minimum, if he’s keeping anything at all. I wouldn’t. But my guess is the time between when he picks up the girl and the time he kills her is fairly short. Relatively speaking, there may be exceptions.

“He doesn’t have an opportunity to collect a lot of stuff. He gets their clothing. I think he may or may not have the ability to photograph them or get some other kind of information, which is another idea I have. Looking at some of the victims on your sheet there, I began to wonder if he might be interrogating some of them before he disposes them, to find names of other prostitutes. That may be why, for instance, I’m moving away from that question.”

Knowing Ted was now embarking on a subject we had previously discussed among task force members, Dave encouraged Ted to proceed.

So Ted continued. “That may be why you have a situation where you have a Cynthia Hinds taken on one day and Opal Mills the next. He may have interrogated Hinds before he killed her and found out the names of several other girls in the area. That may account for his success in hunting down prostitutes aside from just taking whoever was available. But anyway, getting back to your question, I would tend to doubt that he would keep much in the way of elaborate things around, because he might get caught. So much of this is pure supposition. And it’s interesting to speculate. My strong feeling is, from your point of view, you want to catch him, and there are all sorts of speculation that doesn’t get you any closer.

“What I tried to think about were the possibilities you had with those sites, perhaps ones you’ve already located. Maybe he will be drawn back to those. But any you locate in the future, you know, I can’t urge you more strongly to devise a technique of securing those sites and keeping them under surveillance some way. I know it’s tough. But boy, I’m just absolutely certain that if you have an opportunity, in terms of a good site, that the man will turn up.”

Picking up a previous reference Ted had made, I decided to confront him and press him about what he meant. I said, “You mentioned a while ago a typical serial murderer. What are you talking about when you say that?”

Ted really wanted to answer the question, but to do so would have violated his canon of not categorizing serial killers and, in so doing, becoming one of the profilers. Ted’s attitude was that profilers put the emphasis on psychological categories rather than solving the homicides. Now, however, he had fallen into the trap of categorizing the killer types himself. He said humbly, “I don’t know. I shouldn’t have used that, should I? I don’t know that there is a typical type. In fact, I should be critical of myself for saying that because I think there is no typical type, from what I’ve studied
over the years. I mean, you have your type of mother-hitting homosexual to the apparently normal marriage heterosexual, and all different versions in between—the other guy who is mad—that is, insane—and then you have those who are apparently normal. You have those who hate women, those who love women, generally speaking. So you have a lot of the gamut. You have drifters, regular guys, upper-middle class, lower class, so I don’t know that that’s a fair statement. I know that that’s not a correct statement to say typical serial murderer.”

Ted’s feeble attempt at classifying his “guys” struck me as being a remarkable mixture of denial and absurdity. On the one hand, Ted refused to define them and on the other, his deductions were uninformed and general. He knew very well that his “type” differed from others, but he declined to face the difference. So I reminded him of the serial-murder research done by the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit, which Bundy had followed closely. “Have you read some of the articles the FBI has published on their serial murderer theories?”

Sheepishly, Ted said, “I’ve read one in
Psychology Today
several years ago. It wasn’t much, but I felt they were right on track.” Trying to avoid the discussion, which undoubtedly would have included his crimes, Ted answered abstractly, “I can’t remember what it was about that article that made me feel anything about what they were up against. It was some statement someone made that they would kind of base their understanding of this kind of behavior on the facts. And I know that’s a cliché, but I think sometimes when you get too much into profiles and try to understand why and speculate why people do this, why people do that, what kind of person is he, and you get away from the hard-core facts, then you really lose something. From what I’ve seen, they start to limit their options. They start to believe profiles. Then if somebody doesn’t fit a profile, they may dangerously eliminate the real suspect. Obviously, a lot of these girls here knew that there was somebody out there who was looking for people like them. Those prostitutes along Pacific Highway South were disappearing for a year and a half, and they continue to disappear, because the guy who finally approached them did not fit their profile or anybody’s profile.

“When I read that article about the FBI, I said the only thing they can go on is what people actually do. And maybe later on, a psychologist
can try to get into his head. If I was in your shoes, I would try not to put too much weight on the profile and all the psychological mumbo jumbo, because all you got is the hard-core facts, and that’s the only thing that’s going to catch him, sooner or later. Or he’s going to catch himself.”

It was time to lure Ted into a more detailed discussion of the value of profiling because we wanted Ted, the only true, seasoned expert we had in serial murder on this case, to give us his profile of the Riverman. I sensed that Ted did not appreciate the so-called behaviorists who placed other killers in his class. So it was to our benefit to vilify efforts to profile killers. I reported, “We have the FBI profile, a psychological profile, an active profile, and profiles that we could read for days and still not get through them.”

“Yeah,” muttered Ted.

“I’m kind of [of] the same opinion that we’re working at the wrong end. What can police do to actually attack this problem? We always look to the experts, who have been historically like psychiatrists and anthropologists. We ask them questions about ‘What is the guy like that does this?’ And they lend absolutely nothing toward telling us how to catch him,” I commented, looking for Ted’s approval.

“Exactly,” Ted asserted, pounding his fist on the table.

“The experts tell us a bunch of bullshit about the killer and what his background might be like,” I continued, “but for cops trying to catch him, there’s no contribution. Now, what is the give and take? If the FBI is really serious about profiling, what should they be looking for?” I stopped talking because I could see that Ted was in a hurry for me to stop so he could begin.

Appreciating the opportunity to offer some significant insight, Ted started by saying, “Well, there are a lot of questions there. It’s a good question. And I think if the experts can give you some kind of background from which you can take concrete steps in your investigation, to locate someone, to help you understand a man in such a way that helps you focus your investigation, that’s one thing. But some of the profiles I’ve seen were wrong, and if they’re
wrong, they’re taking you down the wrong path. Let me put it this way: the only thing that’s not wrong is the names you have on this list, general dates when the bodies were found, where they were found, and where you are working with hard-core facts. That’s what you got. Who knows what the guy’s like? And I know that’s approaching it from a backwards point of view that says, ‘Well, we want to know what’s going through this guy’s head because that’ll help us understand him better.’ That’s true. But on the other hand, that tends to lead you down the wrong road. It could lead you away from your man. You may have him right under your nose, and the profile says, ‘Well, this is the kind of guy he is.’ And there’s some people in law enforcement who don’t even know of somebody who’s right there in front of them. And this guy is normal as the day is long. At least normal generally speaking. And what are you going to do? Arrest everybody? Every man who has been sexually assaulted or abused when he was a young person or hates his mother or whatever? Or everybody who walks out of a porno shop? You can’t do that.”

Ted was now on a roll, making his points, supported by what I believed to be his core beliefs. The mentor had transformed from one who was feigning knowledge of profiling to the clever psychopath who had intensely studied every aspect of profiles, especially those that pertained to him. “These profiles,” he continued, “I’ve seen them over the years. I’ve seen how they work, and I think, quite frankly—my understanding is they tend to mislead. They can help, but they can only help if they give you a direct focus on your investigation, just like my idea about using that movie.” Disingenuously, Ted admitted, “You know, I’m not an expert. I mean, I don’t have a degree. I do have a degree in psychology, but that doesn’t make me an expert in human behavior, certainly.”

But before Ted could talk himself into being the expert he already said he wasn’t, I interrupted. “In that article you read, there were several proactive strategies. Do you know what I mean by proactive? They are the things that the police can do to catch the killer in the act.”

“Affirmative steps,” Ted said to clarify.

“Right. There were several proactive things that they suggested have been done in the past.” Ted didn’t remember them because when he first read the article, he probably focused on the antecedent
behaviors of the murderers whom he was so desperately trying to understand, not how they were caught. He was always more interested in the killers themselves. Therefore, I suggested, “Okay, one of them that they mentioned was that some killers have a tendency to come back to the gravesite.” Ted muttered as though he understood. I clarified the strategy by explaining that the victim was now buried and the police could make a public display, appealing to his emotion.