Notes on Ted Bundy
1. Ted Bundy made me a hypocrite. I spent two years working on a book about female serial killers, thinking that maybe it was possible — necessary, even — to humanize some of history’s worst people. To do this, I cultivated empathy in myself like some sort of swamp herb. It felt important to remember that in certain ways serial killers are driven by the same things that drive the rest of us. I collected old newspaper articles in which these women were called “animals” and “beasts,” and on those reactions I built my philosophy: No, they were human. Always human.
This was all very well and good until I finished my work and sank down into my favorite armchair with a sigh of relief. I was in the mood for an exciting change of pace, and so I decided to read the thickest book I could find on Mr. Theodore Robert Cowell Nelson Bundy: the law student, the young Republican, the necrophiliac. With a world-weary sigh, I cracked open The Stranger Beside Me, a true-crime classic by Ann Rule. On the cover of the book, Bundy’s eyes float menacingly. They’re in the sky — no, they are the sky.
A few days later I closed the book, foaming at the mouth. My philosophy had mutated. “ANIMAL,” I cried. “BEAST.”
2. Later that week I went for a teeth cleaning and chatted about serial killers with the dental hygienist. At one point, as he was doing something obscure to my molars, he…
