The Ted Bundy Programme on Netflix

[BartonHollow]

Is anyone else watching?

I can't understand how he escaped so many times once in custody and how all these murders were happening in different states and it was only once questioned in one state whether it was the same guy as the first state but in Florida they seemed baffled at who could be doing this when there was an escaped murderer on the loose.

Making me think of the old quote "men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them"

Nearly 40 women and it feels like a tenth of them would have lived without strategic failures.

It's a very interesting documentary.

What angered me was the judge who found him guilty, who said it was a terrible shame and waste of life that BUNDY was going to jail/death! And that he felt no malice to him, as if that was relevant - I bet the girls' parents felt malice, and what about their wasted lives!

Fuck sake I've just got to the bit where he's cross examined a woman, and then got married, how was he allowed to turn such a deathly serious thing into his personal circus?

It was fascinating to watch but the arrogance of the man was astounding. I was gobsmacked to see him cross examine the witnesses himself.

I watched it over the weekend, it really was disturbing. He was a textbook psychopath - everything was about him and his needs. That superficial charm and cleverness and just cold and dead behind the eyes.

All those poor young women...

Textbook psychopath indeed.

Those poor women .

I too felt really angry with the judge who said he felt no malice towards Bundy that is absolutely shocking.

It was just all so bizarre wasn’t it, him being his own lawyer and the people on the stand answering his questions and calling him ‘sir’ was just so weird to watch - he was on trial!!
How tunes have changed ... thank God!

Times*

This series really fucked me up and I don't know why, because I've been interested in true crime and know the crimes of Bundy quite well (Ann Rule, who worked with him and was a crime reporter as a profession, wrote a book called Stranger Beside Me about Bundy).

I think just the circus of it all, the absolute apathy of Bundy and the recordings, particularly the ones at the end when the cowardly piece of shit confesses to get stay of execution, really played on my mind. The fact that someone that psychopathetic was born and raised in relative normalcy frightens me. I'm so glad we live in an age where crimes such as these are quickly solved, but equally as horrified people can and do exist like Bundy.

People often wonder why he's so infamous but the series speaks for itself. He genuinely was so gregarious, well mannered, attractive (in the eyes of some I guess) and intelligent. He didn't fit the mould. The man was absolutely demented though.

What worries me is there is a new film coming out depicting Bundy from the POV of the ex girlfriend (Liz, who was featured in the series) which almost seems to glorify Bundy and make him 'attractive' and rock and roll. We don't need that. We need to focus on his poor victims. Also frightens me how much discourse I've seen about how attractive he was, and that there was private Facebook groups for 'Bundy Babes' of something to that effect. True crime has always fascinated people, but once we lose sight of what a monster he was, and try to attribute blame elsewhere, it goes down a nasty path.

It’s a study on white male privilege.

I think it’s just because he didn’t fit the mould of a killer and it challenges us to see how offensive these offenders can be.

The judge I was less bothered with...he was right, had Bundy taken a different path he could have been a good lawyer.

The “no malice towards you “ made me feel a bit odd.

His crimes were utterly shocking though....just almost beyond belief.

I think he was seriously unwell or acted that way in order to give him the chance of an appeal for ineffective counsel (i.e. himself), but the judge should have put a stop to it all very early on and had him committed.

NOT praised him and claimed his sentence was ‘humanity’s loss’

I think everyone involved from the sheriff to the judge just wanted their moment in the spotlight though and so allowing the shit show to continue meant they’d get more coverage.

@whosafraidofabigduckfart yep was Samaritans. Ann Rule has said in her book how contradictory it was that he was so good at both saving lives and taking them. Apparently he was a very good counsellor.

With regards to Judge Cowart, as inexplicable as it may seem I think he genuinely liked Bundy and was able to separate the man from the monster, as most people in his life were able to until the end. The humour and jokes that were bandied around made me feel uncomfortable, but I took it to mean that the bizarreness of the situation of Bundy actually acting as his own counsel allowed the judge to see what Bundy must have been like as a person beyond his crimes. Fortunately the jury didn't.

I've read somewhere years ago that it was his cross examination of the detective that found Bowman and Levy (Chi Omega) that solidified the opinion of Bundy. Had he not insisted on doing that for his own perverse, fucked up pleasure (which was exactly that, he wanted to relive the crime) I wonder whether the jury would have been as unanimous.

Yes, I watched this.

Absolutely unbelievable. He killed at least 36 women! Total nut job. So smooth, so good looking, so charming.

What gets me is the way the police react to him : as if he's some high school jock playing the fool! They love him!

He manged to escape : twice!

One of the most shocking things is what the judge says to him when he sentences him : I won't say whatd it is as you might not have seen the last episode.

And do not get me started on the feminist perspective on how it was a handled by the police : they demonstrate a total lack of regard for all the young women killed.

If he had killed 36 men he'd have been in that chair before you knew it.

Also : he was a smart, educated, handsome white guy. Had he have been black he would have easily got life for the kidnap of Denise Laroch (name sp?)

I can't understand how he escaped so many times once in custody and how all these murders were happening in different states and it was only once questioned in one state whether it was the same guy as the first state but in Florida they seemed baffled at who could be doing this when there was an escaped murderer on the loose.

And do not get me started on the feminist perspective on how it was a handled by the police : they demonstrate a total lack of regard for all the young women killed.

US poster here. You have to have some perspective--quite frankly, the U.S. murder rate is (sadly) many many times higher than that of the UK. Lots of murderers running around. So there certainly isn't going to be an automatic assumption that a killer that escaped in Colorado is going to be on a murder spree in Florida, over a 1000 miles away. Florida had plenty of its own killers. The Florida police probably didn't follow Bundy's crimes that well. This was an era where there was little communication between police departments, there was no internet, and the FBI was only just starting their examination of serial killers. Florida police were getting calls from all over the country from other law enforcement with tips on who it might be.

As an example, this was the same time period that the East Area Rapist in California was operating. The police in his county warned the police the next county over that, judging from his movements and victim patterns, he was heading their way. Despite the fact that his crimes had been all over the news for two years, the police in the neighboring county had never heard of him.

Crimes against women, such as rape, certainly weren't taken as seriously in the 1970s as they are now. However, once it escalated into murder, they were (generally) investigated seriously. The investigators in the Pacific Northwest spent thousands of hours trying to catch Bundy, using the forensic tools that were available to them at the time. I wouldn't say that they showed a total disregard for the female victims. As far as how long it took to execute him--there is an extremely lengthy appeals process for death row cases, even for inmates as obviously guilty as Bundy.

Bundy showed some moments of real anger in the courtroom--I'm sure that didn't help him with the jury, either.

I remember the drama on TV years ago. They had Mark Harmon in the role, very effective.

I’m going to to be watching this tonight. Isn’t there a film about him coming out soon with zac efron playing him?

I remember the tv drama with Mark Harmon.
My sister was quite intrigued with the Bundy story, reading the Sunday papers, I was quite hound so didn't understand the enormity of the story.
The Netflix documentary was very interesting.

DulciUke, thanks to hear your perspective!

I'm sure it would have been similar in the UK in the 70's too. Just shows how far we've come now, not only with changing attitudes etc but also information sharing online.

The mother was so strange. Hearing her son talk of the murders then offering apple pie and ice cream.