The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (70 page)

With a scolding tone to my voice, I said, “At the beginning, I asked you, you know, where you wanted to start and you didn’t know so I told you and then you started.”

“Uh huh. Yeah?” Ted said, wondering what I was leading to.

“I can just move on to another one if that’s what you want for me to do, but that’s your order of things,” I said to clarify.

Realizing that I was not going to stand for his stalling tactics, he decided to tell me what he was really thinking. He said, “Well, no, we got a little bit—see, I haven’t been honest with you. This morning when I wrote down this itinerary—this outline of mine—I hadn’t fully intended to talk any specifics today. What I wanted to do is sort of set out some ground rules and get you to understand where I’m coming from and what I’m looking for, okay? Now, earlier today, I received some information, and it became clear that it would be in my best interest to talk about specifics to show my good faith. And, at that time, we were talking about Colorado, to begin with. And maybe Utah. To let the authorities in each of those states know that this is not any kind of game, but that we have to have more, and I can’t put myself in the corner of going through what I consider to be just the factual high points, and we’re missing a lot of the stuff in between. You know, I make no bones about it; I am looking for an opportunity to tell the story as best I can in the way that makes sense to me and the way it will help not just you or the families—but that’s very important—but also to help my own family. You see, I saw the look in my stepson’s eyes yesterday, after he had been told for the first time that—you see, he’s always believed in his heart—I mean, he’s always wanted to believe that I had never done anything like this. As hard as it may be for you to believe that, there are people who do believe that. And there are people close to me who believe that. And to see the look in his eyes confirmed my worst fears. See, he said, he was just absolutely astounded. He couldn’t understand. He was writing me questions, just furiously writing questions. I could see how really bewildered
he was. And I need to give him a chance to know and others a chance to know what was really going on. What it was really like for me.”

“Well, I think that a lot of that is going to come out with each stage we go through,” I volunteered, faking understanding.

“Well, this is true,” Ted responded.

“And if you want to start first with how you wanted to start and go with it, go ahead and do it,” I offered, knowing time was wasting away for me.

Ted, at his best, was trying to gain sympathy for how hard it was for him to finally talk about his murders. He went into a long explanation. “What I wanted to show with you is something we haven’t done before and which is talk about something very specific. This is something I’ve held, God forbid, but I’ve held for all these many years, fifteen years or so. And I think I’m glad we started with that particular individual—victim—case, because it was one of the unidentified ones, more or less, you know. I think you had your suspicions, obviously, and very strong suspicions. So we start with a case which I think kind of demonstrates or exemplifies what we’re trying to do. What kind of information I have. I intend to talk to the Colorado authorities about one of their cases where they’ve found nothing. Absolutely nothing. And the same with Utah.”

Quickly, I asked, “[Are] there any Washington cases that are like that? You mentioned Manson as a possibility—buried.”

“Yeah. I think there may be only one, though,” Ted replied.

“Only one that’s actually buried?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Ted.

“You want to talk about that one?” I asked, knowing that his answer was no.

“No,” Ted said with a sigh of relief that time was running out with me.

“How about the location?” I continued, as though I didn’t hear him.

“Well, all this—all this must come out and will come out. What I need is a chance to do it,” Ted began to plead.

Confirming to Ted that if he told me where something was, I had the resources to search, I said, “We’re a hell of a lot better at searching today than we were fourteen years ago. That’s for sure. And we’ve got the auspices of the Green River task force to search in the most professional way possible, and that’s about all I can
offer, if we know a location where you think we can find something.”

“Uh huh,” Ted said, listening intently to me.

“But to my knowledge, you know, Hawkins and Manson were the only two that disappeared who we knew were possibly associated with you. We may have had the missing-person mistake, which is entirely possible, but those are the only two. The reason I asked you if you ever buried anybody—the chances of finding remains that have been left aboveground over a long period of time are slim to none,” I said, referring to the 14-year time span since his murders.

“That’s right. That’s exactly true,” Ted said. “Oh, nothing. Nothing. I mean, I could tell you exactly where some clothing was thrown, but you’re not going to find anything. Not after all that time. Not along I-Ninety or anywhere else.”

Aware that Ted would become incensed that I didn’t really care about why he committed his murders, I ventured into dangerous territory with him by saying, “And from a factual standpoint—you know, the reasons why. To me, the why never caught anybody. So cops, with their mentality, think of what, where, when, and who. And so we’re kind of stuck with you wanting to explain why and maybe the occasion with William [Hagmaier] here will help that out a lot more than the one with me. But I’m not interested in the why.”

Ted took my statement calmly, because he felt the whole world wanted to know why. He continued as though he respected my opinion. Unshaken, he said, “Well, I’m not trying to convince you, Bob, that you should be interested in the why if you’re not. I think there are a lot of people that are. I know I am. And I think a lot of people are interested in why. People constantly come up to me and they will ask me why. I mean, it baffles people. And they’re not law enforcement folks. And I don’t think you mean that the why never caught anybody, because understanding the people you’re after is sometimes ninety percent of finding them, okay? That’s what you’re trying to do with the Green River guy. And more power to you, but I think why is important to a certain degree. I’m not saying we’re going to make any tremendous breakthrough here that I’m some kind of different creature, but I think I have the ability to articulate what was going on inside me a lot better than a lot of other people in a way that maybe people can understand. But again, it may or may not benefit you to put it together into how this evolved,
year by year, to the first incident, to the second, to the third, what happened before, during, after, in my own mind, what was inflaming me, what was inciting me, what was terrifying me. I mean, all those things. This is not by any means an attempt to gain sympathy. It’s simply an attempt to understand. And it would help me. It would help, most importantly, my family. It’s not worth it to me, really, to in the short run reawaken all these bad feelings and all this hurt and all this anger in a firestorm of publicity, which would hurt my family, without any kind of compensating ability to help them understand. And that’s a major consideration for me. I mean, my feeling is we do it right—I do it right—or I don’t do it, really, at all.”

Since I had just received the Ted Bundy 101 lecture about the importance of why he did what he did, wasting more of my valuable time, I snapped back, “Okay, how is right for you, then? What do you want to do? I mean, we’ve got forty-five minutes.”

“Well, we’ve got forty-five minutes left. We’ve got forty-five minutes left. And also, I haven’t spoken to Bill at all,” proclaimed Ted.

Not fully comprehending the rapport Bill Hagmaier had built up with Ted and what Ted was going to cover with Bill, I responded, “Well, Bill’s got a time with you tomorrow, and I don’t.”

Ted explained, “Okay, all right. Well, I need the opportunity to go over all the cases with you and with others who are experts in the field of serial homicide and to piece it together. The hard data, the crime scenes, the psychological stuff, everything. And we can’t do that in forty-five minutes and we can’t do that in two days, ’cause there’s more people involved than just you. There’s more obviously than you. More states, more jurisdictions. And so, we don’t have everybody scheduled right now, so for me to give them a demonstration of good faith, we only really have tomorrow and Sunday. Monday is basically just going to be for family. It could be the last day. So …”

Feeling that Ted should rewrite his agenda, I asked, “What do you want to do with the two days that we have here? ’Cause they’re going to be asking the very same questions that I am, the other people coming in, wanting to know time and events.”

Ted knew that the attorney general of Washington was not going to speak on his behalf to the governor of Florida. Now the real story about why Ted was stalling was about to come out. Ted explained,
“I know. Sure they are. Well, let me give you an example. I won’t give you specifics right now. Well—I—a representative of the attorney general’s office in one of the states got in touch with a friend of mine. And he said, ‘Listen, we know that Bundy has a lot of things to talk about that happened in our state. We know we don’t have enough time to really get into all that before Tuesday. Give us one thing, one tangible thing and our attorney general and our governor will do what they can to convince Florida to give us time to do it right, to develop this information, to find whatever needs to be found. And they’re committed to that. And they’re not asking for everything. We just want a demonstration of good faith. One hard thing to go on.’And that’s basically my thinking at this point.”

“So that state’s not Washington. It’s Colorado. And the hard thing is that you need to locate the bodies,” I said.

“Well, that was the thinking, that was what came off the top there. It’s not just Colorado. It’s Utah and Idaho and other places,” said Ted, not realizing that the locations of his victims in those states were under six feet of snow, and there wasn’t time to dig for them before Tuesday. If Ted didn’t understand this, I surely wasn’t going to tell him.

“Well, how do you want to treat the time here with me now?” I asked. “We’re not scheduled here. I’ve asked about nighttime visits. I don’t know what the policy is here,” I reminded Ted.

It was an appropriate time for the tape on the recorder to expire, so when Ted began again, his mood had changed to the wheeler-dealer, grandiose psychopath. He sarcastically asked, “What’s the attorney general of Washington willing to do?”

“Willing to do?” I repeated.

“Anything? Who is the attorney general these days?” Ted asked in his swashbuckling tone.

“Ken Eikenberry,” I responded, not knowing where Ted was going with this.

“Good old Ken Eikenberry,” Ted said as if he were back on the committee of young Republicans being solicited for his support by one of the candidates.

“He’s a Republican. You can imagine what he said already. He said we’re not going to stop the execution, not for any reason. So, a lot of law enforcement agencies in our state are waiting to hear back from me,” I said with a confident voice.

“Just a second,” Ted said, looking at a guard approaching to remind Ted of the time.

I continued. “We’ve been discussing the fact that you’ve been focusing mainly, at least in your reactions—I mean, you went thoroughly through one particular case, fairly well.”

“Yup,” Ted said.

“And although there’s some extra little things that are tough for you to talk about, the reality is that once we get to talking about another one, you’re thinking more about the Colorado cases,” I vehemently protested.

“No, I’m not,” Ted said, defending himself.

“And what’s behind your stalling rather than dealing with me?” I responded with force.

Protecting his backside by lying, Ted stammered, “No, I’m not. I’m telling you, I’m not, I’m not treating you—wouldn’t treat you—any differently. And I’m not holding you hostage, Bob.”

I responded tersely, as though Ted should have begun the day in a different fashion, “It sounds like, from what you’ve explained all through the past couple hours, is that maybe we should start with yourself—way back whenever you wanted to start off life, and start talking up through it. And maybe we might get to nineteen seventy-four and seventy-five, but your main interest is in making sure that people and humanity and those who deal with this know about the reasons for this activity and what goes on, the physical things that people can pick up on when somebody’s life’s going astray. And maybe that’s probably the most important thing to society, more so than the cops.”

“I know,” Ted said.

“But if that sequence happens to lead through some cases as we go along through the history of your life, maybe that’s the type of atmosphere that you’d rather be in,” I offered.

Quickly, Ted replied, “That’s the kind of atmosphere where I would be able to give it to you, at least in a verbal form like it was. Not bits and pieces. What we have been doing is taking stuff out of context. And I know you have narrow focuses. You have a narrow focus given your law enforcement perspective. And that’s important for what you do. It’s important that those questions be answered. But it’s important for me that those questions be answered in context, for any number of reasons, but perhaps the most important
reason is for my own family, so that they understand. But if they’re only getting part of the story, they’re only getting the worst stuff. You know what’s going to happen if and when all this stuff goes public, if all we did was just hit the whos and the whens and the body count. It’s going to be bad enough as it is.”

I continued, “We’re only here to represent one factor of the body count or whatever it is. You know, I personally, police, and law enforcement, we have an interest in knowing about the historical background.”

Agreeing, Ted said, “Right.”

I counseled Ted. “And you have talked on the other side of the wall to more cops than I have. My thinking is that the way things are confirmed with cops is just to tell the goddamn truth about the facts.”