The Stranger Beside Me (45 page)

Perhaps because I had been roused from a sound sleep, because / had no time to think, I responded with the honesty that can come with surprise; I decided the time had come to face whatever facts had to be faced.

"Ted," I began. "It's been a long time, and I think maybe now it's time to get it all out. I think maybe you should tell someone about it ... all of it ... someone who understands you, someone who's been your friend. Do you want to do that?"

"Yes . .. yes.. .. can you come? I need help . .." In a sense, it was a call I had expected for years-ever since I'd learned that Ted had called me that midnight in November of 1974, when he had been obviously disturbed about something. That had been after the last victim-Debby Kent-had vanished in Utah. I had always felt since that Ted knew I knew that he could tell me the terrible things bottled up in his mind, and that I could take it. Was this the call?

I told him that I thought I could come, but that I didn't have enough money for a plane ticket, didn't even know when planes left Los Angeles for Florida. "I can find the money-someplace-and I'll get there as soon as I can."

"I think they'll pay for your plane ticket from here," he said. "I think they want you to come too."

"O.K. Let me have a cup of coffee and get my head together. I'll check with the airlines, and I'll call you back in a few minutes. Give me the number where you are."

He gave me the number, the number in the captain's office in the Pensacola Police Department, and then we hung up.

I immediately called the airlines, found I could get a plane out early in the morning, and would get to Pensacola, via Atlanta, the next afternoon. I felt Detective Chapman wanted me to be there; why else would he have called me? I later learned he had contacted my babysitter in Seattle on my home phone, and had had to put his captain on the line before my sitter would release my number. They had gone to a lot of trouble to find me.

Yet, when I tried to call back to the interrogation room

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only minutes later, I was told by the desk sergeant that no calls were being allowed in! I explained that I had just talked to Norm Chapman and Ted Bundy and that they were expecting my call, but the answer was still no.

I was completely mystified until I received a phone call 30 hours later from Ron Johnson, an Assistant Florida State Attorney. "I want you to come. I think you should come, but the detectives here want three days to get a confession from Ted Bundy. Then, if they don't get one, they will send for you."

They never did. I would never see any of those involved until I walked into Ted's Miami trial in July of 1979. And only then would I learn what had occurred during that long, long night of February 16-17, 1978, and in the days that followed. Some of the interrogation was on tape, an hours'-long tape played aloud in the Miami pretrial hearing. Some of it came out in preliminary hearings, testified to by the detectives themselves, these men who spent so many hours closeted with Ted: Norm Chapman, Steve Bodiford, Don Patchen, and Captain Jack Poitinger. If I had been allowed to talk to Ted during those first days after his arrest in Pensacola, would things have been any different? Would there now be more answers? Or would I have flown to Florida only to be met with the same evasive, meandering statements that Ted gave to the detectives?

I will never know.

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Detective Norm Chapman of the Pensacola Police Department is a most likable man. There is much evidence that Ted liked him; it would be hard not to. I think the man is sincere, that his earthy, "good-ole-boy" quality is genuine, and I think he wanted desperately to find out what had happened to Kimberly Leach, for her parents' sake. And he wanted to clear up the murders and beatings in Tallahassee. I think he also had self-aggrandizing motivations, just as we all do. For a cop with six years' experience on a department stuck way up in the panhandle of Florida to elicit a confession from one of the most infamous fugitives in America would be something to remember. The detectives' decision to block my phone call and my presence in Florida may have been the right one; it may have been tragically wrong.

In July, 1979, Norm Chapman sat on the witness stand in Judge Edward Cowart's Dade County courtroom, his shoulders and belly straining at his sports jacket, his white socks visible beneath his slacks. He was not a braggart. He was what he seemed to be, a smiling, garrulous man, a man who carried a tape that would electrify the courtroom. Late on the evening of February 16th, Ted had sent word to Norm Chapman that he wanted to talk, and talk without counsel. The tape of that long conversation with Chapman, Bodiford, and Patchen began at 1:29 A.M. on February 17th. Ted's voice is strong, confident.

"O.K. Let's see: it's been a long day-but I had a good night's sleep last night and I'm coherent. I've seen a doctoiy called a lawyer." If Ted had expected a grand hurrah when he revealed that he was Theodore Robert Bundy, he was to be disappointed. The three detectives had never heard of him. It was anticlimatic. What good did it do a man to be one of the most hunted fugitives in America if there was such a blank re-308

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sponse when he finally announced who he was? It wasn't until Officer Lee walked in with a copy of the FBI TenMost-Wanted flyer (to have Ted autograph it) that they really believed him.

Chapman offers, "We'll listen-whatever you want to talk about. .." Ted laughs. "It is a bit formal."

"Anytime you get tired of our worn-ouut faces, just say so," Chapman says.

"I'm in charge of entertainment..." Ted begins.

"You got plenty of cigarettes?"

"Yeah.... It was a big deal not to tell my name .. ."

"I think we all understand since you told us. We can see why you were reluctant. I must admit you kept your coolstanding before the judge and not telling your name. It's more than I could do."

"You know my background?"

"Only what you told me. I deal on a one-to-one basis. We'll listen."

"The name business is a good way to start. I just knew the kind of publicity-if I got arrested in Omaha, Nebraska . . . I knew it was inevitable you'd discover my I.D. picture. I'd gone through such an effort, so much to get free the first time, it seemed like such a waste to give up so easily."

Chapman says he's interested in hearing about Ted's escapes. And Ted is so anxious to tell about them. So clever, so well-thought-out, and then he'd been unable to tell anyone. It is ironic that it is to policemen-the "stupid cops" he's put down for so long-that he finally talks.

There is frequent laughter on the tape as he starts at the beginning with the leap for freedom from the Pitkin County Courthouse and continues through until he reaches Tallahassee. His voice drops and he takes deep breaths as he berates himself for not finding a job. He mentions how much he enjoyed playing racguet ball and offers to sign permission for his stolen car to be searched. And then his voice breaks.

"You start crying in certain areas, like when you're talking about racquet ball," Chapman comments.

"It was just so good to be around people, to be a part of people. I have a habit that makes me want to acquire things-little things. I had a nice apartment in law school, and it was all taken away from me. I told myself I could live

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without cars and bicycles and stuff-just being free was enough-but I wanted things."

More tears . . . his voice is choked as he describes stealing himself for being so stupid. "I never got a job. It was really stupid. I do like to work but I'm just reluctant to get a job. It was a terrible time not to get a job."

Chapman asks Ted if he's ever been to Sherrod's in Tallahassee.

"I never went there until a week and a half ago. The sound's unbearable in there; it's a disco."

"You ever crash fraternity or sorority parties for free beer or food?"

"No, I had a bad experience that way a long time ago. I walked in with a friend and there was a belligerent drunk. I was able to run fast enough."

"You remember Rush Week-the beer busts out on the lawns in January?"

"Yeah, I heard noise from some frats close to where I live."

"What did you do at night? Walk around?"

"I'd go to the library. I made a point of going to bed early. Once I had the TV, I'd stay in my room 'cause I had something to do." Asked to describe his Saturday nights, Ted veers away. He does not remember stealing a license tag around January 12th or 13th, but he remembers one tag stolen six days after he got to Tallahassee, a tag from an orange and white van.

Asked if he'd ever wiped his prints off the cars he'd stolen, he replied with surprise, "Well ... I wore gloves, just leather gloves." Tears brim in his eyes, blur his words.

"Anything else in Tallahassee you can clear up for us?" More tears ... his voice is choked as he described stealing the neglected Raleigh bicycle. It seems to be an almost animate companion.

"I asked you about a white van-taken off campus .. ."

"I really can't talk about it."

"Why?"

"Just because I can't talk about it." Ted is crying.

"Because you didn't take it, or . . ."

Ted's voice is muffled by sobs. "I just can't . . . it's a situation-" Chapman quickly shifts gears, changing the subject to Ted's arrest in Utah. Ted explains he got one to fifteen on a kidnapping charge.

"Man or woman?"

"Oh well . . . it's all so complicated. I thought you'd have all that background by now. I was in prison from March to late October, 1976, in Utah when the murder charge came down from Colorado." The detectives take a picture, and someone asks, "What's your best profile? Hell, you made the top ten last week . .."

"They'll take credit for my arrest."

"You don't like the FBI?"

"They're overrated bastards."

Chapman asks Ted about what happened in Colorado.

"Standard Oil slips ... I don't really understand how that came down. Oh yeah. ... I had bought gas in Glenwood Springs the same day Caryn Campbell disappeared from Aspen about fifty miles away. If the bells rang before, they were clanging-especially since the Washington situation. I had a lot of connections in Washington-Governor's office, etc. The pressure was really on."

"What kind of homicide was it?"

"Well, I know because it was communicated to me-they were young women. The captain of King County Homicide was under pressure-but they never questioned me. They had no evidence."

"What kind of murders were they?"

"No one knows because the parts are scattered."

"How about Colorado?"

"I saw the autopsy pictures. Blunt trauma and strangulation ..."

"In what way?"

"I don't know."

Chapman switches gears again, asking Ted if he ever went in sorority houses to take wallets.

"No . . . too jnuch risk. Too much security. I'd assume they'd have locks,lock devices, sound systems ..."

At this point, TJ6d requests that the tape recorder be turned off; he asks that no notes be taken.

According to Detective Chapman's courtroom testimony, a "bug" had been activated in the interrogation room-a bug that failed to record. In Washington State, such surreptitious recording of an in-312

terview would have made the whole interrogation tainted; in Florida, no.

The interrogation went on throughout the night, and Bodiford, Patchen, and Chapman insist that Ted made statements that were far more damaging than those captured on any tape. Judge Cowart would eventually rule that none of the statements Ted Bundy made on the night of February 16-17,

1978, would be admitted into the Miami trial, but the conversation that is alleged to have taken place after the recorder was turned off is the most chilling.

The three detectives say that Ted told them he was a night person-"a vampire," and that he'd been a "voyeur-a peeping Tom." He said he had never "done anything" but that his voyeurism had to do with his fantasies.

He had apparently described one girl to them, a girl who had walked down a street in Seattle years before, when he was in law school in Tacoma. "I felt I had to have her at any cost. I didn't act on it though." He had allegedly discussed a "problem," a problem that surfaced after he'd been drinking and driving around, a problem having to do with his fantasies.

"Listen," he said, after the tape was off. "I want to talk to you, but I've built up such a block so that I could never tell. You talk to me."

"Do you want to talk about the Chi Omega murders?"

"The evidence is there. Don't quit digging for it."

"Did you kill those girls?"

"I don't want to lie to you, but, if you force an answer, it would be a no."

"Did you ever act out your fantasies?"

"They were taking over my life ..."

Bodiford asked again, "Did you ever carry out your fantasies?"

"The act itself was a downer . .."

"Did you ever go to the Chi Omega House? Did you kill the girls?"

"I don't want to have to lie to you ..." There were more statements alleged to have been made by Ted that night and the next. One must decide whether to believe police detectives or Ted Bundy as to their authenticity.

According to the FBI information and several reporters who were deluging the Pensacola detectives with calls, they

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had caught a man suspected of thirty-six murders, a figure they found hard to believe.

When Chapman asked him about that during the posttaping conversation, Ted had reportedly replied, "Add one digit to that and you'll have it." What had he meant? Was he being sarcastic? Did he mean thirty-seven murders? Or, no, it couldn't be ... did he mean a hundred or more murders?

The FBI figure had included several unsolved cases pulled in from left field, including some in northern Californiacases that the detectives who'd dogged his trail didn't believe had strong links to Ted. But, off the record, Ted reputedly hinted to the Florida detectives that there were six states who would be very interested in him. Six? They say he talked of making a deal, of wanting to give information in return for his life, that he felt he had things in his mind that would be invaluable to psychiatric research. None of these statements is on tape, and, just as Ted seemed to approach specifics, the investigators say he backed off, teasing them, offering the "carrot," only to retreat. When the statement "Add one digit to that and you'll have it," filtered down to Washington detectives, they immediately thought of two long-unsolved cases in their state.