Room in Heaven

Comments

1. Jonathan Potter says

   August 24, 2011 at 5:31 pm

   One link leads to another (speaking of serial killers) … yesterday in porn, featuring Ted Bundy: http://youtu.be/NlKgqTRNjcU

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   • JOB says

     August 25, 2011 at 6:54 am

     Has the accusation that he was attempting in his anti-porn remarks one last-ditch effort of currying favor with the guv, fishing for a reprieve, ever been cleared up?

     I tend to think that, as Thomas points out, if a man doesn’t spill his guts and seek forgiveness in the face of capital punishment, he never will.

     Truth will out when you’re hours away from megawatts lighting up your life…

     JOB

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     • Churchill says

       August 25, 2011 at 8:54 am

       No, I think sometimes one behaves passively, rather than necessarily in one’s own best interest, even to save one’s life, and especially if that passivity is encouraged by those in authority. A sort of rabbit put in front of the headlights for its own good.

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     • Jonathan Potter says

       August 25, 2011 at 10:57 am

       I don’t know that there’s any way to resolve the question. It seems plausible to me that porn was what triggered something horrible in the dude, but to lay it all on porn in and of itself … well, I don’t know. Oftentimes it seems that what triggers us to action — either for good or ill — are seemingly insignificant events. Would shielding the young Bundy from porn have prevented the later horrors? Maybe, but maybe something else would have come along and triggered the same or different horrors. And what about the vast horde of porn viewers that never become serial killers? There are inscrutable mysteries of freedom, will, providence, fallenness, sin, grace, and evil at work.

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2. Quin Finnegan says

   August 26, 2011 at 12:26 am

   Porn definitely had a something to do with his deviancy, and he was definitely trying curry favor. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. Even if he was beyond a reprieve, and knew it, he may well have seen the interview with Dobson as a chance to spend little more time in the spotlight.

   Bundy himself describes incidents of his grandfather Samuel abusing the family dog. He also claimed that Samuel would swing neighbourhood cats around by their tails. Ted himself has been said to torment animals with knives. He would mutilate animals with the knives which seemed to fascinate him so much.

   His Aunt Julia, his mother’s younger sister, recalls incidents of laying down for a nap in her home and waking up to find knives surrounding her and a smiling three year old Bundy at her side.

   Three years old.

   There is good circumstantial evidence that Bundy began killing girls when he was fourteen years old.

   http://www.bukisa.com/articles/16246_10-weird-facts-about-ted-bundys-childhood#ixzz1W7F59qrf

   Bundy became a fairly important part of the team trying to catch the Green River killer, and Robert Keppel, the lead investigator from Washington State, describes numerous trips to interview him before his execution. I gave away my copy of Keppel’s book (The Riverman), but I recall that during one of those interviews, Keppel asked Bundy if he’d killed any more than the 30 he’d been convicted of (might have been the 34 he’d confessed to by that point). Bundy replied something like, “Add one digit,” and Keppel asked, “35?” At which point Bundy was silent. Keppel now thinks that what Bundy was finally admitting to was 134 murders, or thereabouts.

   Bundy is a bottomeless pit of creepiness. Except, possibly, for the Marquis de Sade, there just isn’t anyone as creepy. Evil? Of course. Sick? Certainly. The words seem diminished when applied to him.

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