Original subtitles

I wear the gloves because even after 40 years, I still don't like to touch the

letters.

I was convinced when we first got them that

actually evil was coming out of them.

There's something about looking at his handwriting.

I can still feel it.

Every family has secrets.

but not like this.

I have spent decades trying to hide the fact that I was related to a serial

killer.

His name was Ted, and he was very polite and suave.

Ted Bundy was my cousin, and we were really close.

He was like a big brother to me.

Imagine having someone you care about turn out to be a monster.

At the same time he was coming over to visit me and my friend, he was killing

girls that looked just like us.

And I had no

idea until one day I saw beneath the mask.

His eyes turned black.

I thought this was the end. I am just screaming, no, this can't be true.

I was a trained Marine.

And at that point, I'm going, I will kill Ted Bundy.

And then I decide there's no way he's taking me alive.

Serial killer Ted Bundy is just one step away from the electric chair.

When he was sentenced to death, I had to face up to him one last time.

I started writing him letters on death row, and he started writing me back.

Ted's letters showed a very private side of him that he only revealed to me. The

innermost thoughts of someone I loved dearly, but lost the evil.

And I've never shared them with anyone until now.

Dear cousin, I have no guilt, remorse, or regret over anything

I've done.

So where do we go from here?

Be good.

I love you.

Ted.

I don't like being treated like an animal and I don't like people walking

and ogling me like I'm some sort of weirdo because I'm not.

You know, I'm perfectly happy with the person I am and I've always been.

You are not guilty.

I'm not guilty.

No man is truly innocent.

I mean, we all have transgressed in some way in our lives.

Ted was my cousin, but I loved him like a brother.

I adored him.

I adored who I thought he was.

But after Ted was arrested, I really started to go through anything I could

recollect about Ted and where there might be signs that he wasn't the person

that I thought he was.

And things started to come to me, just little things, but they took on a

bigger significance.

One of those moments was one night when we went to the dance club called the

Windjammer. When we got there and got out on the dance floor, he just sort of

stood there rocking back and forth. He never looked at me once.

His jaw was clenched. He was in another world.

I would wave my hands in front of his face and go, Hey, Ted, remember me? I'm

your cousin. I'm here.

For just one second, he'd smile, and then immediately it would go back into

clenched jaw, looking around the room.

It felt like he was using me as his tool, so that it gave him a legitimate

reason to go to these different places.

That must have been the first time that I actually witnessed the mask dropping

off his face.

Another one was one day I decided to drop by his place.

And I hadn't done that before. He usually came by my place.

I knocked on the door.

He opened the door and ducked his head out and said, well, you don't want to

come in here.

And I thought, well, why?

And he said, oh, it's a mess.

He slowly closed the door.

I just had to think to myself.

What was it that he didn't want me to see?

I found out years later that he was known to have taken body parts, even

of his victims, back to his boarding house.

Families are probably the last ones to let go of their feelings of hope.

for somebody because they just don't want to believe that someone they love

that they grew up with could be somebody completely different.

The person that I thought I knew was this very attractive mask that he wore,

underneath it was this demon.

I had avoided talking about my relationship to Ted Bundy for 50 years.

I couldn't even say his name without stuttering.

I really didn't want anybody to know I was related to him because it was almost

like he was some kind of a pop star or something, and I was absolutely sickened

by that.

But it got to a point where I thought, wait a minute, I don't have to keep that

a secret anymore.

My daughter, Ann, and I go on lots of walks together, and right when COVID

That seemed to galvanize me to start thinking about Ted again. And I went,

it, why is he coming back?

We were taking a walk.

Out of the blue, she said to me, I think I need to talk about

Ted.

And I go, Bundy?

And she goes, yeah.

And she said, I can't stop thinking about him. I've pushed it down for so

I have to get it out of my system.

I had never read the letters until then.

It was so jarring and it was so real.

I could feel her pain then. I could feel what she'd gone through.

This is the first letter I wrote him.

in 1986 while he was on death row ted all these years i've written you

of letters in my mind only to tear them up in shreds of frustrations however i

feel that now is the time to say to you what i have been wanting to say to you

over the course of these last 10 plus years ever since i last saw you it was

a tremendous

to be able to write the letters, but I had a mission in mind.

I wanted to help the families find out where the remains of their daughters

were.

Some of the women you murdered have never been found.

I'm not interested in hearing excuses, but would certainly be impressed if you

would open those floodgates that have been so tightly shut these past years.

What do you say, Ted?

It's a chance for salvation.

In the summer of 1972, I applied to the University of Washington, got accepted.

I fortunately found an apartment just a few blocks away from the campus.

But what was a big bonus was it was just a few blocks from where my cousin Ted

lived.

He had just graduated from the University of Washington with a degree

psychology, and he seemed like he had such a bright future right in front of

him. I felt much safer knowing that he was nearby, and my parents loved it

because it gave them some peace of mind.

Ted had a tan Volkswagen Beetle, and we called them V -dubs, and I often rode

with him in that car.

He used to drop by frequently with a bag of groceries and a bottle of wine.

And that was always, you know, come on in. We were thrilled to have him there.

Ted came to the house where we live, and he was very calm and

open and welcoming.

He was attentive to Edna. He was affectionate in a big brother way, and

he was just very grown up.

He would sit in the center. He loved to be the center of attention.

He seemed sophisticated, very literate. He would make references to

classic literature in a conversation.

He was good, like almost too good.

He would tell us all these stories about who he had met, what he was doing.

Ted was working at Harborview Medical Center in the psych ward.

And so he was dealing with pretty traumatic situations, and he was

for a suicide hotline.

Ted told us that he wrote a pamphlet on rape prevention for women. We were just

like, wow, that's such noble work.

When I think back on it, I have to question myself, what was his ulterior

motive? Could he use this information later?

Ted took credit for the sexual assault study, even though he hadn't done any

work on it.

I'll bet he probably gleaned some information, though, that was coming out

it. Ted spent a few years working for the Seattle Crime Commission, and he was

privy to a lot of law enforcement data, and he was able to see that police in

different jurisdictions did not communicate very well, and he took

that.

It was a lot of fun in Seattle during that time.

But that bubble of innocence that we were all living in didn't really last

long.

There was an incident that took place early 1974 where there was a woman who

lived just around the block from Edna.

Karen Sparks was a student at the University of Washington.

Someone had entered into her room in the middle of the night, had beaten her

pretty severely in the head, and had sexually assaulted her with an object.

She suffered internal damage and some brain damage as well. She was left for

dead.

The next day, a roommate found her just covered in blood.

It's amazing that she survived.

But it was this horrible, horrible assault that happened within, you know,

minutes walking distance of Edna's apartment.

We heard about a young woman being attacked, but we didn't have any

And we had no idea this was just the beginning.

From January to July of 1974, the King County area was engulfed in a wave of

fear.

Once a month, another girl would disappear.

The pattern seemed to be emerging.

Similar appearance, age, circumstances.

These girls look like my friends and I.

Whoever this is, they're hunting people just like us.

After my first letter, I hadn't heard from Ted.

So I sent a second letter because I was fairly demanding and wanting answers.

And then finally, I got two letters back from him at the same time, including in

that same envelope, he returned the letters that I had written to him.

As if to say, I needed to rethink the way I had challenged him to come clean.

Dear Edna, thanks for writing.

As you said, it's been the better part of ten years since I heard from you.

What you seem to be basing what you said in your letter on is a multitude of

impressions which have been drawn from years of being exposed to the

publicity, the rumors, the gossip about some character named Ted Bundy.

Well, if you truly wish to be of some help, then you must dispossess yourself

all these images and know me as I am.

He just completely dismissed what I had said.

I won't disregard your accusations completely.

I will say this much.

I have not killed anyone.

He claims that he did not kill anybody.

I'm having chills right now just talking about it, that I feel what I felt then,

which was just like, oh, my God.

I don't know this guy.

People have asked me if I still loved him, and that's a hard question to

because I didn't love who he became.

I abhorred that evil entity, but I had fond memories of my

childhood friend.

I trusted him unconditionally.

When I look at the part of my life which took place before 1975,

I might very well be looking at an existence as one might view a prior

incarnation.

Ted was born out of wedlock, which was a bit of a scandal at that time, and that

was tough for his mom, Louise.

And my dad was really close to Louise.

He was her uncle, yet they were nearly the same age.

So when they both had kids, we were all...

the same age.

My parents moved from the Philadelphia area to the Seattle, Washington area,

and my father was urging Louise to leave and move to the Pacific Northwest

so she could start a new life and give Ted a chance.

And they ended up living in my parents' house, and it really worked. I mean, it

gave her a fresh start.

And Louise eventually met Johnny Bundy and got married, you know, and then had

four more kids.

We saw them quite frequently.

That was so much fun to have another family that was close by that we could

with.

My father treated him like another son.

He was a concert pianist, a composer, a conductor.

Edna's family traveled the world. He would perform all over.

And Ted saw Edna's family as being a family that he wanted to be a part of,

he wished he could be a part of.

Ted was a half -sibling and much older than most of his siblings, so I don't

know if he related to them as much.

He related to my brother a lot, and by extension, eventually to me.

I'm five years younger than Ted, but when he would talk to me, the thing that

liked about him was he would give me eye contact.

I didn't know that as a child, but he would actually look at me.

He was always focused on me like I was the only person in the room, and he

always treated me like I was special in his life.

He could just charm people into following him, believing him.

I learned a lesson from him because he deceived me. He fooled me. He used me.

And it never crossed my mind that he wasn't who he came across as being.

After my experience with Ted, for a while there, I thought, who can I trust?

Will I ever, ever in my life be able to trust anybody again?

But I was able to take that fear.

And turn it into something positive.

Thank God Don was already in my life.

Somebody that was totally trustworthy because I don't know if I'd met him

afterwards if I would have trusted a guy anymore after that.

The first time I met Ted before he started killing people, I liked him

instantly. I thought that, you know, he was bright.

He was articulate.

Seemed like a good guy.

One afternoon, we had lunch, and Ted said, Hey, Don, where do the Seattle U

hang out?

I had been a student at Seattle U.

So I said, Well, I'll show you. So we hopped in my car, and I took him to the

Forum Tavern.

We had a couple beers. I tried to interest Ted in a game of pinball.

He wasn't interested. He just was people -watching.

He was just looking around.

And I didn't, of course, see anything strange about that.

Later, when I found out that Ted was in fact a monster, I realized instantly, of

course, what he was doing.

He was using me to, you know, scout places where he might be able to abduct

women.

I was horrified, of course.

Felt guilty, even though rationally I knew that, you know, I'd been duped.

I was just hoping that I hadn't aided him in finding a girl. But then not too

long after, there was a lot more girls disappearing.

Less than a month after Karen Sparks was attacked, another young woman was

abducted from her bed in the University District in Seattle.

Linda lived here in this greenhouse along with five other university

She was last seen here Thursday evening about 12 o 'clock.

Linda Ann Healy didn't show up for work on February 1st, and this was very

unlike her.

And when the police came by, they found her bed had been made, and when they

pulled back the covers, they found blood on the seats.

Linda happened to be a good friend of one of my best friends.

Everybody was calling each other going, do you know anything?

Have you seen her?

I was in my room studying late, probably until about almost 2, and she came in

at about 11 .30 into my room and spoke with me then. And then she said she was

going to bed, and that was about 12.

We were all scared to death.

Then, once a month almost, it seemed like another girl would disappear.

And it was just fear from that point out.

All of the missing college girls were white females, 18 to 21 years of age.

We would just like to caution all young ladies that do not leave with a

stranger. It's unreal, and it's a nightmare, and nothing would prepare you

something like this.

This was dated May 31st, 1986.

Dear Ted, it took me a long time to accept the fact that someone I consider

only a close friend but occasionally a confidant, capable of ever committing

acts of violence you are guilty of.

What happened to you, Ted, that you had developed such a deep rage, a deep

hatred, that you killed ruthlessly in cold blood without mercy?

After Linda Ann Healy went missing, other disappearances started occurring

the area.

Donna Gail Manson was in a college that was just outside Olympia.

She was on her way to a jazz concert on campus, and she disappeared into thin

air.

About a month later, Sue Rancourt disappeared from Central Washington

College in Ellensburg.

As the girls disappeared, I became more protective, Edna.

She hitchhiked down from Seattle to Tacoma, where I lived, while that was

on. And I told her that she should stop hitchhiking. But I was working during

the week, and she said, well, you can't come and get me. And I said, then we

can't see each other.

It's real personal. You're going, this could be me.

Girls were scared. Guys were scared. Everybody was scared because usually the

police are on top of this kind of stuff.

And nobody can get a handle on it.

I remember one night I heard a knock on the door. It was Ted with a bag of

groceries, and he had come over to make dinner for my roommate Margie and I.

After we eat, I put on an album.

I turned around, and Margie and Ted were dancing. Margie was leaning her head

against his shoulder, and I thought, oh, that's really nice.

And then all of a sudden, I looked at Ted, and...

It was as if he had transformed in front of me.

He had this really intense, dark look on his face. His jaw was clenched.

He looked mean.

He had blue eyes, but they had gone black.

He was almost shaking while he was looking at her.

And I was startled by this. It was like he was somebody completely different.

And I yelled out to him, hey, Ted,

Ted, are you okay?

And all of a sudden he kind of shook his head and snapped out of it.

And the mask slid back up over his face and he just smiled at me. And he goes,

yeah, everything's just fine.

That's something that we have heard from other people who talk about their

experiences with Ted Bundy.

And from what I've learned, there's a physiological thing that can happen

closely tied to predators.

Wild animals in nature, when they're getting ready to make an attack, their

pupils dilate and just go as big as they can so you can take in more light and

you can see better.

And possibly this is what was happening with Ted.

About six weeks after Sue Rancourt disappeared, a young woman named Roberta

Parks, who went by Kathy, had received kind of an upsetting phone call that her

father had had a heart attack earlier that day.

She was going to go get an ice cream sundae to feel better.

That's the last time anyone ever saw Kathy Parks.

Shortly after that, there was another girl who went missing, Brenda Carol

All of the young women's disappearances were reported in the media individually.

At first they thought maybe they were all isolated incidents because they were

so far apart.

George Ann Hawkins was last seen Monday evening shortly after midnight.

It wasn't until after George Ann Hawkins went missing that the public started

to understand that these could be connected.

Because when George Ann Hawkins went missing, it was also from the University

Washington, which is where Linda Ann Healy had gone missing, which is also

Karen Sparks had been attacked. And the connection there became so strong that

it started to be in the news.

Police in the area announced to the news media that a pattern seemed to be

emerging. Similar appearance, age, circumstances surrounding

George Ann Hawkins was the sixth girl to go missing in less than five months.

It was really scary because it was happening all around us.

There were some features that the girls had in common. They were college age.

They had long hair parted in the middle. They were all American.

These girls looked like my friends and I. That was really unnerving, thinking,

man, whoever this is.

They're hunting people just like us.

We just want to caution the young women of our community to be overly cautious

at this time.

It was such an important time for women in this country. It was the 1970s,

women's liberation, you know, women going to college, freedom to

live on their own or live with friends.

But when Ted came on the scene...

and began killing women. A lot of those freedoms ended for women, especially at

the University of Washington, who realized they had to pay attention

It made us change our behavior. We began to become quite fearful about walking

around by ourselves.

I had been working at that time at a restaurant, and just having to walk that

block home in the dark.

after hearing about these disappearances, made me realize this

And so I had to quit my job. And a lot of other girls did too.

We knew that there was a predator out there, and we were his prey.

The ironic thing is I felt safer because Ted lived so close.

Ted would come over, we would talk about this and how much we were scared, and

he was very sympathetic.

Oh, yeah, it's a terrible thing. I mean, it's awful what's going on. I hope they

catch that guy.

During this time, my brother was worried because our locks were, he thought,

very flimsy.

So he went out and bought some kind of bolt to put on the door.

And he wasn't alone. He came over with Ted.

And so Ted and I are sitting there watching John install this barrel bolt.

to protect us from the very monster that's sitting in my house right at that

very moment.

The irony of that still gets to me to this day.

Years later, when these letters would come in the mail, it was a jolt.

I knew by his handwriting exactly who it was.

And I had to take a deep breath before I opened up and read it.

Dear Edna, you cannot know and understand me until you let go of your

transcend it.

Anger is a barrier which divides and destroys.

Just as crucial, you cannot know me until you know, truly know, yourself.

He's turning it around and putting it on my shoulders and explaining that I'm

the one with the problem. I'm the one with the anger issues.

I need to, you know, examine my inner self and find peace, love, and gratitude

before I can understand him.

It still hits me. I go, oh, God, what a bunch of bull.

When you're ready for a calm, compassionate, and loving dialogue on

things, write me.

I'll be ready.

July 14th was a really nice sunny day and there were a lot of people that were

going out to Lake Sammamish for the day.

There was like a sponsored thing on the radio, like parties that were going on.

So it was very populated that day.

And there's witness accounts of a man with his arm in a

sling going up to women and asking them if they would help him to get his

sailboat.

Some of these women that he approached told him no.

But the nicest girl said, yes, I'll give you a hand.

And that was Janice Ott and Denise Naslund.

These two young women in one day disappeared from Lake Sammamish.

So, of course, we were poring over the news trying to figure out what was going

on there. With the disappearance of the Ott and the Naslund girls on the same

day from the same state park came the first indications that a male subject

involved.

They had eyewitnesses because he approached so many people and did not

to hide himself.

And he even mentioned his name.

His name was Ted, and he was very polite and suave.

From January to July of 1974, the King County area was engulfed in a wave of

fear. The furor culminated on July the 14th, 1974.

On that day, two young women, Janis Ott and Denise Naslin, had vanished from

Lake Sammamish.

The day that we got the newspaper showing the missing girls out at Lake

Sammamish hit us hard.

We saw a composite sketch of this person that supposedly had kidnapped these

women. And I remember all of us...

You know, crowded around the newspaper.

We spread it out on the dining room table.

And we were leaning over, looking at it.

And I'm going, gosh, I wonder who that guy is.

Because it didn't look familiar to me.

But, oh, my God, it says his name is Ted.

And, oh, my God, they say he drives a Tan V -Dub. What a coincidence.

But it doesn't look like my cousin.

I thought it looked nothing like Ted.

I still think it looks nothing like Ted.

Almost immediately, Ted was being spotted behind every tree, behind every

Police followed up on all the reports but found nothing.

A couple days later, Ted came over and we couldn't wait to tease him about it

because we were sure that he wasn't connected to it. I pulled the paper out

I said, Hey, Ted, you've got a tan Volkswagen.

You don't have a phony arm brace, do you, Ted?

You don't have a sailboat somewhere, do you, Ted?

And he laughed at me.

He said, well, as a matter of fact, the police have talked to me about this.

And I'm like, are they crazy?

You?

He was real cheerful about it. And both of us were just like, oh, poor Ted. He's

had to go through this.

And he said, yeah, there's lots of V -dubs in the state of Washington, and

a few registered to a name Ted.

And we went, really?

And he said, but they're just doing their job. I want to do anything I can

help.

Ted had natural charisma. He really reminded me of John Kennedy. He just had

this something about him.

He was a master at hiding.

I can only tell you what I know, and I only know a small portion of what there

is to be discovered.

This much I can testify to.

Love is the force which heals and transforms us.

By studying ourselves, by listening to and being honest with ourselves, we free

ourselves to be guided by our true and loving nature.

He was gaslighting me. It was almost like he was writing in riddles to avoid

dealing with the truth.

I had to call him out on it.

So I followed up with another letter after that.

You discussed love, forgiveness, knowing yourself. Those letters I sent you were

an exercise at being direct, Ted, which you seem to have a hard time doing.

I want to hear your soul. What are you thinking?

Good heavens, how could you have gotten so terribly in trouble if you didn't

kill someone?

Not long after the disappearances in Lake Sammamish, Ted says,

I'm taking off.

I've been accepted to law school at the University of Utah, and we went, oh my

gosh, congratulations, and we were really impressed.

I remember feeling excited for him on one hand, but I also felt like I was

losing a layer of protection.

I no longer had Ted just in the neighborhood.

But after he left, the murder stopped.

Since the publication of the description of the man called Ted, there have been

no further disappearances from this area.

We kind of began to take a collective breath of air, realizing that maybe

things had changed, and we were hoping they weren't going to start up again.

What do you got there, Bob?

Just more bones so far.

Jaw bones, as a matter of fact, aren't they?

Well, one kind of looks like a jaw bone, yes.

Got teeth in it? Yes.

In March of 75, we got this horrifying news that bodies had been found on

Mountain. And we felt another layer of dread wash over us.

There are six people definitely identified at Taylor Mountain. Linda Ann

Susan Elaine Rancourt, Roberta Kathleen Parks, Brenda Ball, Janice Ott, and

Denise Noslin. You always hope that they'll come back somehow, but this

confirmed everybody's worst fears, is that these girls came to a very violent

end.

The word is that you are proceeding on the assumption that there are more

out here.

Well, we keep finding more and more every day.

My brother John had done a lot of hiking with Ted in that exact region, Taylor

Mountain.

Ted liked to choose different places to go, and often were places that were not

very scenic. They would be along the back end of a housing development or

power lines or near a major highway or something like that.

We learned later that after Ted had been arrested, the detective in King County,

Robert Keppel, subpoenaed John and took him out on hikes.

and said, take us where Ted used to take you.

And John did, and it was very close to where Ted's dump sites

were found to be.

So it seems like he was taking out areas.

For a year after Ted left, we didn't really...

make the association between him leaving, of course, and that the

stopped happening.

But then, for me, things really took a really dark turn.

My brother lived in Tacoma in these really incredible apartments.

One day I was going to visit him when all of a sudden I hear a sound behind

And I turn around, and this guy has come in between the buildings.

I started to turn to run, and he hauls back and punches me in the face.

I stagger, and I realize that I'm in deep, deep trouble.

I thought I was going to die.

This guy punches me in the face.

And I try to fight back.

He's just overpowering me, punch after punch.

I thought this was the end, and I was really, really mad that this was how my

life was going to end because there was so much I wanted to do.

Then he grabs me by my arm with the intention of slamming me into the brick

wall.

And I actually end up... falling partway through a basement apartment window,

which makes a horrific noise, glass shattering everywhere.

And when I turn around to look, expecting another blow from him, he

and runs.

I had black eyes and bruises everywhere.

I started thinking about these young women who had been attacked in Seattle,

empathy for them.

It has always been intense.

And I wondered at that time if it was the same guy, but then I thought if it

been, I would have been dead.

This is actually after Ted had left and gone to Utah, but Edna didn't know that

the perpetrator of these murders was gone.

The man that attacked me did not look anything like the sketch that we'd seen

from Lake Sammamish.

He was short.

He had dark hair.

I just didn't think it was the same guy.

They never caught the guy as far as I know.

For some reason, as I'm pulling myself out the window, I yell after him, you

need to get some help.

I thought maybe he could be redeemed, that if he got help, at least he would

stop doing what he was doing.

But I have come to the conclusion since then, at least with my cousin, that some

people are just not redeemable.

When Edna was attacked, her first instinct was sort of to help out the

who attacked her.

And that's, I think, something that... really stuck with her about these women

that Ted murdered because they were the ones that stopped to help him because he

had a sling on his arm and he was asking for people to come help him, you know,

get something out of his car or help him with his book bag or something like

that. And I think that's something that's really troubled Edna is this idea

they could be exploited for their goodness and that Ted, her cousin,

as she learned later,

Dear Edna, I have no problem with discussing that which is referred to as

past, but I have no interest, need, or desire to engage in some epic recount.

No one appoints you inquisitor or prosecutor.

I'm under no obligation to prove myself to anyone.

Be yourself, Edna.

I love you the way you are.

I would like the same consideration.

Within two months of Ted Bundy's arrival in Utah, two young women disappeared.

Another few young women were found murdered.

And then a fifth woman had been attacked, abducted, and managed to

Her name was Carol Durange.

She broke away, made it to the police station, and she said, this man is

to kill me.

And she described it as Volkswagen.

And by the time they go back to check out the scene of her escape, the

Volkswagen and the man were gone.

No one realized at that time that a serial killer had arrived in Utah.

After I was attacked, I needed to get away.

And one of our friends heard about jobs up in Alaska, working up in a crab

processing plant.

The idea of it sounded kind of romantic and crazy and wild, and it paid pretty

well. So we all decided to apply for it.

They worked us like dogs.

Ten -hour days next to the freezer room. It must have been 40 degrees in there.

I was working one day on the line, and someone comes down and says, Hey, you

a call.

And as soon as I clicked on, I discovered it was my brother.

And my brother is saying, I've got some news for you. And he's talking about the

things that are going on in Salt Lake City, girls disappearing there.

And then he starts tying that together with girls in...

Washington State, too. And I'm going, oh, God, what is this about?

And he said, they've arrested someone for that.

And I went, okay, well, that's really good news. I'm glad they have.

He goes, well, no, it's not really good news.

It's Ted.

And I went, oh, my God.

That's not possible.

And he said, it is. And I just, everything kind of shut down after that.

I just needed some air.

The whole ship is thrumming and vibrating and I break through onto the

outside and I am running and I'm just screaming.

I just needed to get it out of my system.

That no, this can't be true.

Someone you've grown up with, someone you trusted, someone who you felt safe

with could possibly have done this.

There's got to be some mistake.

I still get so emotional when I think about it.

One of the worst days of my life.

So where do we go from here?

I think anybody that's related to someone who has so much evil in them

you go, how did that happen to him?

Is there any remote possibility that any of that trickled down to any of us or

to me?

When he was getting ready to go through this execution, I really kind of went

into myself, and then I started thinking, God, what if, is there any of

insanity within us?

This is dated May 31, 1986.

Dear Ted, I hate you for what you did to those women, children, and their

families.

So many times have I wanted to take hold of you and shake you, shake you until

you break down and cry.

Are you taking revenge on your mother, on the rest of your family, on your

biological father, on those girls who rejected you?

Come on, Ted.

Can you stop the pretense? It appears the end is near for you.

I must confess to you that I will miss my great memories of you.

But can you come to terms with what you have done for the sake of your family

and especially the families of your victims? Will you please explain what

happened? Your cousin, Edna.

Are you angry?

Sure, I get angry.

I get very, very angry and indignant. I don't like being locked up for something

I didn't do, and I don't like my liberty taken away.

1975 was a turning point for Ted's life in that he got caught.

That was the beginning of the end, really, for Ted.

Utah Highway Patrol Sergeant Bob Hayward arrested Bundy and Granger after Carol

Durant was kidnapped from the Fashion Place Mall in Murray.

Carol Durant was actually put into his car and got away.

She made a positive identification of Ted in a police lineup.

And so that was the moment that he got arrested.

They're searching his car, and they find all of these burglary implements.

They find a ski mask, an ice pig, a crowbar, and he's trying to explain all

of it away.

But at that point, they're saying, this is a strange individual with some

strange things.

I couldn't believe it. Not Ted.

Not my cousin.

You have all this internal dialogue going where you're going, okay, one side

you is saying, no, no, no, this can't be possibly true. It's mistaken identity.

And then the other one's going, what if it is?

When these two sides are just warring with each other, you're in the middle

trying to process it.

I really wanted to believe that I was a good judge of character.

That's not the Ted Bundy we know.

He grew up around our family, so we were friends. If I needed anything, he'd be

there for me in minutes.

I wasn't ready to believe that he was capable of doing this.

Ted Bundy banks a lot on the fact that he did not have a criminal record, and

because he didn't have any priors, the judge assumed that he was not much of a

flight risk, and so his bail was reduced.

and he was released around Thanksgiving of 1975.

For the family, they see this as proof that the state doesn't have a case

against them. So it's even more so just providing this evidence for something

that they want to believe anyway, which is, head's innocent, he's just in a

terrible situation.

This thing must have hit you like a bolt of lightning. What was your reaction?

Complete and utter shock.

We still don't believe it. It just can't be. I keep shaking my head day after

day, saying, how can this be?

Because our son is the best son in the world.

The crab processing season ended at the end of November of 75 and

the beginning of December.

So when I was ready to head home, I needed to talk.

to Ted and hear it from him.

I wanted to believe more than anything that this was a terrible mistake.

I didn't want to accept it. I needed more facts.

And it just so happens when I got back to the Seattle area, he was let out on

bail from Utah.

And he got in touch with me.

And I said, well, I'm going to be in Seattle tomorrow, and I'm going to be

meeting up with some of my old workmates.

And I picked him up along the way.

He leaned over and he gave me a big hug.

He said, so good to see you. And I had so many things I wanted to talk to him

about. I didn't want to just start the conversation only to have to end it in a

few minutes.

So we went to the restaurant.

There were eight to ten of us.

And one of the guys across the table has said, so, Ted, what's your last name?

Ted who?

At that moment, I thought, oh, God.

At this point, the full name of Ted Bundy was well known in Seattle because

name had become linked not only with what was going on in Utah, but to the

disappearances here in the greater Seattle area.

I was hoping he would kind of just say, oh, just Ted is, you know, good enough.

But instead he goes, I'm Ted Bundy, and he sounded proud.

I turned to look at him to see the look on his face when he said it, and he was

smiling.

The young woman that crossed the table, she recoiled.

The guy that asked it, he looked like he was talking to a rock star, like it was

cool. And then I looked at him like, this is not the right reaction. I felt

a ping -pong ball batting back and forth between these different reactions.

And I said, we got to go, and I just bolted out of there. He had to run to

up with me.

We got in the car, and I turned to him, and I said, So, Ted, did you

really abduct those girls and kill those girls?

Dear cousin, that which I call the past isn't something I fear.

Tell me the truth, you said.

I have.

I will.

I'm alone with him in the car.

We're driving along, and I just kind of look at him, and I said, So, Ted, did

you really abduct those girls and kill those girls?

He looks at me, and he goes, Oh, of course not, Edna.

I would never do such a thing like that. It's all a big mistake.

And I remember that it sounded so genuine that I believed him.

And I was so relieved.

I was just like, oh, thank God.

So I said, well, I just have to run this one errand. Do you mind just waiting in

the car? Because I'll just be a few minutes.

And I ran into the bookstore, grabbed what I needed, and I'm distracted by

commotion that's going on outside on the street below.

Something's going on down on the corner.

I get down.

I was standing at the corner waiting for the light to change.

And across the street, there were crowds of people milling around.

I saw in the center of the crowd that it was my cousin, and he was standing with

his arms out, eyes closed, and his head tilted back.

And in a loud voice, as he was rotating, he was saying, I'm Ted

Bundy. I'm Ted.

And I just was like, oh, my God.

The crowd is starting to get aggressive.

All I'm thinking is, I've got to get him out of here. So I slap my hand over his

mouth to shut him up.

We get in the car, and I'm going, what have I just witnessed?

You know, it takes a few minutes for things to process when you see something

that shocks you like that.

We're in the car.

It's completely silent, except that my inner voice is yelling at me.

I'm freaked out.

And I turn my head, and I look at him, and he's just smiling at me.

And how, oh, God, he knows I know.

And then I decide what I'm going to do if he makes a move for me.

I'm going to crash my Ford Squire wagon.

I'm going to crash it into the parked car. I don't want to crash into somebody

coming at me because I'm considerate, you know. I don't want to do that.

But I'm going to do it on his side. There's no way he's taking me alive.

And I pull up in front of his house.

And he opens the door.

And he swings his legs out, shuts the door, and walks away.

And I put my head on.

the steering wheel, and I just go, oh my God.

He did it.

Edna, on an intellectual, factual level of knowing, you don't know me.

Dear cousin, when you come to know yourself, you will know me.

There is nothing that I have experienced that you have not experienced in some

way.

After I dropped Ted off, I had to talk to Don because he was my

load -bearing wall. He... I knew he would support me.

She came home and she told me, he's guilty, 100%. I said, Ted...

murdered those women. He's the one. He's the person that has been terrorizing

us.

I defended him. Well, Edna, you don't know that. Yes, I do. Well, you can't

know. I was just the devil's advocate because it was really important that he

not be guilty for his mother's and father's sake and his brother's and

you know.

But once she told me all that she saw that day, I went, he's guilty.

I was still in shock at that point.

And I questioned everything that I knew about him and wondered, had he ever been

telling me the truth about himself? And then I started thinking about some

instances that might have stood out that I hadn't really noticed before.

There was that time that he was over and he was dancing with Margie, and oh my

gosh, and the look on his face. I wonder if that was a sign.

Thinking about going dancing with him and how he was looking at everybody on

dance floor.

And those things started really taking on a whole new meaning at that time.

We all pray and hope there are signs.

But at the time, the signs that I saw didn't add up to anything significant

enough for me to be concerned.

And if that's the case, that's truly horrific.

Because then anyone could be a monster.

My life in the idea of time is divided into two eras.

B .C., before court and cops, and A .D., after damnation.

One life ended and another began once I began living in prison.

Ted Bundy was convicted of aggravated kidnapping.

Initially, he was charged with attempted homicide, but they decided there was

not evidence of an intent to kill Carol Durant.

Ultimately, he was given between 1 to 15 years at the Utah State Prison for the

kidnapping charge.

Attempted kidnapping.

It was a hard thing for the family to accept.

My parents were not quite where I was or where Don was on our realization that

Ted had committed these crimes.

We didn't force it on them because it's just too hard.

Sweet old people, they know it's going to devastate Ted's mom and dad and ruin

his family, which it pretty much did.

A lot of momentous things happened in my life after that moment on the street

corner with Ted Bundy.

Don and I got married in June of 1976.

And then the following year, we had our daughter, Anna.

Our life completely changed.

She was a new beginning, and it wasn't about him, it was about her.

We were new parents, foraging forward, with a lot of other things on our mind

besides Ted Bundy. He was in the background, for sure, but he never quite

away.

Convicted kidnapper Theodore Bundy is on his way to Aspen, Colorado, where he

will stand trial for first -degree murder. Bundy is accused of murdering

Campbell of Dearborn, Michigan.

She was vacationing in Aspen at the time of her death.

They started to suspect that he might be responsible for additional abductions

and disappearances in Colorado.

They found gas receipts close to where some of these abductions had taken

And they extradited him to Colorado so that he could face a trial there.

Bundy spends his life inside this 16 -cell county jail.

He gets up at 6 .30 in the morning, walks, he says, about two miles a day,

pacing a cell.

But he spends most of his time preparing his defense.

When I heard he was defending himself, I wasn't surprised.

He was so full of hubris and loved to be the center of attention that it didn't

surprise me, but I thought it was extremely foolish.

He was not really helping his chances of walking free.

But he had his own solution to that in Colorado.

On December 30th of 1977, the phone rings.

And a very familiar voice was on the other end of that.

call and it was my cousin ted bundy and i went wow oh well

you know how are you not really knowing what to say you know so we talked a

little bit of family talk for a few minutes and then he said hey i've got a

question to ask you what would you think if if i escaped and i said what

i said well that would be a very bad idea

I was thinking, he's just yanking my chain. I'm sure that they're listening

on this conversation, and he's probably doing it not only to, you know, get to

me, but also to really drive his keepers crazy.

And shortly after that, we ended the conversation.

I called my brother the next day and said, you can't even believe this.

And John said, he called me and asked me the same question.

He says, well, and he also asked me another question. What were the worst

for the death penalty?

I told him, most likely Texas and Florida would be the worst.

The phone call from Ted happened on December 30th. On the morning of January

1st, we were awakened very early in the morning by pounding on the door.

And we heard these people outside kind of yelling, FBI, and all of a sudden we

just both woke up. Our eyes just popped open going, oh my God, why is the FBI

here? Convicted kidnapper Theodore Bundy has escaped from jail in Colorado.

Bundy fled the Garfield County Jail in Glenwood Springs.

Bundy's escape bordered on a Houdini escapade. The 5 '11", 145 -pound former

student ripped out a light fixture and then maneuvered himself up through a 12

-inch by 12 -inch hole in the ceiling.

The sheriff says Bundy then crawled along the attic and dropped down into

empty jailer's office, grabbed two guns, and walked out the door.

The guns were later found, but Bundy was not.

By the time they got to us, he'd been gone for a while, and it occurred to us

that he could be getting close to us and that Edna was a likely place to come.

They knew that I had talked to him just 36 hours prior to that, and they came

out pretty strong about that we better not aid and abet him in any way, and we

tried to reassure him that we had no intention of helping him out, and that

made us... Really nervous.

I said, I'll do everything in my power to stop him. I was a trained Marine.

We were trained to kill.

I fortified the house, and at that point I'm going, if he shows up on my

property, I will kill Ted Bundy.

Wherever he may be, Bundy is now on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.

The search reaches all over the West right now and the East Coast, Canada,

Mexico. Dozens of leads are coming in, but so far nothing solid.

Some officers feel it's going to be a long time before Theodore Bundy is

bars again.

My cousin, Ted Bundy, had again intruded into my world.

He escaped from his jail in Colorado, and we were on high alert up in

Washington. wondering if he had come this way and he was hiding out and just

waiting to come by.

He wouldn't have called me and played with me like that if he didn't have some

kind of plan, is what I thought.

It seemed like he was coming after me.

I was feeling the part of a prey animal that I was being hunted.

Weeks passed, and weeks of us... checking the papers, looking for

what had happened to Ted Bundy. We were wondering if he was alive, dead. We

didn't know.

And then a huge news story hit the air.

Theodore Bundy was arrested on Wednesday while driving a stolen car. But

yesterday it was discovered he was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. Bundy is

prison escapee who's suspected of 36 rape murders in several western states.

Florida, one of the states that my brother told him, was one of the worst

to go to because of the death penalty.

And that's where he was arrested.

I couldn't help wonder if he indeed had a death wish.

I was really relieved that they had caught him.

But then that relief turned to another level of horror.

He had killed again.

Last night we told you about a most brutal and a savage crime on the Florida

State University campus. A couple of young coeds were killed in their sleep,

beaten and strangled. Three others were beaten near death, but they seem to be

pulling through.

The killings in Florida were big, angry, huge, explosive, loud.

They were nearly the opposite of how he had done things in the Northwest.

before it was a lot more surgical it was one at a time it was more calculated in

florida it was just like a rampage he broke into the chi omega sorority house

at night and he just went through the room attacking and assaulting sorority

women He wasn't even trying to be discreet. It was as if that time that he

incarcerated, he was just building up all this pressure and that he needed to

release it.

He got out somehow uncaught, and he is still at large.

But he stays in Florida, and weeks later, he abducts and murders 12

-year -old Kimberly Leach.

Ted went to trial twice for the murders in Florida. The first trial was for the

murders of Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy at Chi Omega. A few months later, he

was put on trial in Miami, Florida, for the murder of 12 -year -old Kimberly

Leach, who he had dumped in a pigsty and left for

several months before she was found.

At times, Bundy is turning into his own defense lawyer for cross -examination,

but prosecutors have left little doubt about the horrible nature of the crimes

they say Bundy committed.

When I was watching him in the courtroom on television and he raised up his

arms, chills ran through my body because it hearkened back to that day on the

corner when he had raised his arms saying, I'm Ted Bundy. I thought, there

is. He's basking in the glory.

He was a media god, and he thought, this is where I need to be.

He undercut any serious legal claims he might have been able to make.

His questions weren't well thought out. I think it was a ploy and just a game.

Finally,

the announcement came.

He was going to be executed. There was no way out for him.

It was an awful moment because you have all these thoughts about the person that

you thought you knew and the love and affection that never goes away.

And now you have to replace it with this other person.

I can't understand how he could be so kind and so sweet and attentive to me

and then turn around and do what he did to girls who look like me. Just

horrific, evil things.

Violent, painfully violent things that he did to them.

I was so revolted and sickened by it.

That I just, I got the cold sweats. It was terrible.

I had nightmares.

I worked really hard to put him out of my mind and go on with our lives, and we

were real successful on most levels with that. But as the years passed by, he

kept intruding more and more on my consciousness.

He was going to die.

And here he was.

He still was not explaining why he had done these things or where the girls

were.

But I had so much emotion. I had to express it somehow. Because if I didn't,

was just going to explode into fragments.

I felt like I still had some influence on him. That maybe I could do something.

And the most effective way I thought I could do that was to write to Ted.

And that's... what started as a series of letters to him where I just went at

him with what really was important to me and what I felt like was important to a

lot of people.

Did I think there was still hope for him as a person for his soul?

I don't know.

I didn't really think so at that point.

But if there was any of that old Ted left, I thought at least I could appeal

him.

Ted, you would be benefiting mankind by letting them understand better how a

mind like yours works.

How do you justify murder?

I'd like to know what it was that made you cross the line. It is time for you

do this.

No games.

You cannot deny your guilt.

Your cousin, Edna.

I had an amazing childhood.

Grew up on the beach.

We had a lot of bonfires. We played volleyball.

And my parents were amazing people.

They were so warm and loving and funny, and I'm an only child, so we spent, you

know, we were just like the three musketeers.

There was no indication that anything was off until I got a little bit older.

Maybe when I was eight, I saw...

a letter on the table, and it had this sort of scrawling handwriting.

And it was addressed to my mother, and the return address just said, T.

Bundy.

I started to go towards it. I don't know what compelled me, but I wanted to

touch it.

And my mother saw me going towards it, and she came over and she snatched it

said, don't ever touch that, don't ever touch that. And she was always such a

calm person that that, Totally upset me and startled me. I didn't know what that

meant. I didn't know why. She didn't tell me why.

The feeling that you have when you want to protect your child from the evil in

the world is so overwhelming.

When he was approaching the death penalty and the letters had arrived, I

kept her from touching them. I didn't want her to know anything about them.

He was full of questions, but...

I was unapproachable when it came to talking about him.

This was the second letter I wrote Ted after I got no response to the first

letter I sent him.

June 10, 1986.

Dear Ted, It's important for me to encourage you to make one of the most

important decisions of your life.

Ted, you have a date with the executioner. You are going to die.

But one thing you can do is tell people why you did it.

Tell people, Ted, why you murdered their daughters, and where you left their

bodies.

I was hoping I would have some influence on him.

Maybe this would get him media coverage, which he seemed to love.

But it certainly would make a difference to the families if he would

come clean and tell where he left their loved ones and say why.

They're really emotional letters. She's telling him, I loved you like a brother.

How could you do something like this to those women and children?

She doesn't get a response for a while. In fact, she writes him a few times, and

it isn't until after Ted gets a stay of execution that he finally responds to

her and writes back.

This is dated November 13, 1986.

Dear Edna, I take full responsibility for all that I have done. I have no

problem with that.

Yes, and I agree that we must learn from what has occurred in the so -called

past. It's essential.

The way I see it, that's the true value of reviewing the past.

To learn from it. To grow. To change. To be transformed.

I am not the fond memories you have of your cousin, Ted.

Just as you are not my equally fond memories of you.

I am just as I am, here and now.

He never answered my questions. He never owned up to what he had done.

In fact, in one point he quotes a section out of the Bible.

And this for all those who mourn.

Let the dead bury the dead.

For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living.

For all live unto him.

That's pretty callous. But to me, what it shows is this inability of his to

with the things that he'd done in the past.

He very successfully built this wall between his public persona and what he

calls this narrow sliver of his personality, which is the one who did

these horrible things.

And this wall is so important to him because it's the way that he continues

live his life.

I have no guilt, remorse, or regret over anything I have done.

What's done is done.

Watch yourself, quiet yourself, love yourself, and there's nothing you will

know.

Even now, as I read it, I just scoff at it.

It just amazes me that anybody can be that cavalier about what they've done.

He says that he has no regrets.

None at all? You don't regret anything?

All of us have regrets. You have none?

Ted's putting it back on her that you don't understand.

And you're part of the problem? He was not thinking that Edna would be

in any way from his situation.

It was about Ted.

We exchanged about six, seven letters.

Our correspondence ended with a Christmas card that he sent me.

Dear Edna and Don, much has happened over the years to separate us, but that

does not affect the love I have for you.

Have a great Christmas.

Peace.

Ted.

I did not follow up.

At that point, I just couldn't.

write him anymore.

You know, I thought maybe that affectionate relationship we had as big

little cousin would count for something.

But he was too used to avoiding the truth.

It wasn't until the last hours before his death that he finally started

confessing.

I'm here at Florida State Prison with Mr. Ted Bundy.

Hard to know where to begin.

Well, you've been involved in how many homicides?

Well, that's a big word.

How many homicides?

We came up with 30.

California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Florida

between 1973 and 1978.

In a couple of the cases, you opted to sever the heads from the victims.

How many were there, do you recall, of the 30?

Perhaps half of us.

It was obvious that he was holding out for the last possible moment to see if

would get a stay of execution, and that was his leverage, confessing to these

murders.

But the show was over. He no longer had control of the situation.

He played us to the very end.

This morning, just after sunrise, the man suspected of brutally killing 36

met the long, drawn -out demands of justice.

Ted's final words when he was on his way to the execution chamber were, give my

love to my family and my friends.

And that was it.

When I heard that, it was just... It

was a very difficult moment.

You know, just...

I was very sad about how this person who had so much potential completely went

off the rails.

He got executed very early in the morning on West Coast time.

And I couldn't watch it.

So I went down and walked along the beach and just sat on a rock and

thought about how good life really is.

And I thought, okay.

It's done. Now we can put him behind us and move forward.

But it's a lot simpler to say that than to do it.

He kept surfacing throughout my life. It was unavoidable because he's an icon of

sorts, you know, a touchpoint.

It wasn't really until we were taking a walk during COVID that my mom said,

I think I have to tell my story. He's been controlling me from the grave.

And I said, how can I help?

She said, well, I don't know what to do. How do we tell this story?

I decided to start off by writing a book about it and by extension doing this

documentary because I thought I had something to share with people about how

important it is to...

Talk about things.

I kept all that trauma inside of me.

I should have gotten professional help.

Trauma needs to be released.

And that is one of the big lessons that I've learned is how damaging it can be

if you don't get it out of your system.

The courage it's taken for her to face this was...

So moving and impressive to me.

And I've now seen how much it's cleansed her, how she's been able to let go of

the power he has had over her. And now it's like, F you to him. She's really

been able to let it go.

Recently, I had a dream about Ted.

We were kids.

My brother John, Ted, and me were down at the water's edge, and we were all

running in the water and laughing and splashing each other.

And it was one of those beautiful days where the water just glistened. And then

Ted became very intent on finding something in particular.

And pretty soon, John says, oh, I think he's looking for a stone. So we start

looking at the stones.

And saying, well, is this the right stone or is that the right stone?

As we're searching, the tide is coming in and it's splashing at our feet.

And so we feel a sense of urgency and we know that the time is running out.

Finally, John stops and he looks at me and he says, oh, I know what stone it

It's his headstone.

And then I woke up.

And the more I thought about it, I thought, okay, we're putting Ted to

This is it.

Ted is dead.

And I've never dreamt about him again.

Dear Edna, The first and most important thing we can do for someone

is to love them unconditionally.

I love you not because of the good memories or despite the bad, but because

are you.

I hope that someday you can feel the same way toward me.

There is a way.

And the light of love reveals it to us.

Be good.

I love you.

Tet.