Title: Ted Bundy
First published: 1989
Description: Written by Bernie Weisz Historian contact: BernWei1@aol.com Pembroke Pines, Florida May 24, 2010 Title of Review: A Twisted Manipulator That Rambles to Save his Miserable Life!   This book is a very frustrating read to say the least. Expecting a confession, Ted Bundy rambles with his little shenanigan of describing to the two writers, Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth in the third person in considerable detail what it "would be like" to be a serial killer. This confession of what he was eventually executed for in the electric chair sadly never comes. Ted Bundy was born on November 24, 1946. Bundy murdered numerous young women across the United States between 1974 and 1978. After a decade of vigorous denials, he eventually confessed (although not in this book) to 30 murders, although the actual total remains unknown. Estimates range from 29 to over 100, with the general estimate being 35. Generally, Bundy would bludgeon his victims, then strangle them to death. He also raped almost all his victims and engaged in necrophilia.  On January 23, 1989, the night before Bundy was executed at age 42 at Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida, Bundy gave a television interview to James Dobson, head of the Christian organization "Focus on Family"  During the interview, Bundy made repeated claims as to the pornographic "roots" of his crimes. He stated that, while pornography did not cause him to commit murder, the consumption of violent pornography helped "shape and mold" his violence into "behavior too terrible to describe." He alleged that he felt that violence in the media, "particularly sexualized violence" sent boys "down the road to being Ted Bundys." In the same interview, Bundy stated: "You are going to kill me, and that will protect society from me. But there are many, many more people who are addicted to pornography, and you are doing nothing about that." Bundy is interviewed in this book for over 150 hours, and throughout the pages denies that he ever killed anyone. Bundy gives a rambling tale of his early school days, his shoplifting, his drinking and feelings of inadequacy because he was a small man, but he points specifically at pornography as the start of all his problems. Interestingly enough, for a "cold-blooded, savage killer" to point at pornography as the start of his problems is supported in a book written by David E. Caton entitled "Overcoming The Addiction to Pornography."  Caton supports Bundy's claim by stating: "The moral conscience of man becomes desensitized and seared from the use of pornography. Pictures which at one time were repulsive, obscene and vile become attractive to the porn user as his moral conscious erodes. By viewing soft core pornography, the porn user has opened the door for all wickedness and evil acts to become acceptable to him. The desire for harder porn becomes obsessive as the softer material appears less erotic to the porn user. Most often the porn user escalated his immoral behavior by indulging in hardcore porn, child porn, sadomasochistic porn, satan worship porn, and snuff (actual killing) films. The damage done through this escalation of immoral behavior is irreversible without Jesus Christ. The porn user has now become a prisoner to the spirit of bondage. Such bondage often leads the porn user to act out scenes in pornography, thus raping, molesting and even killing innocent people." Aside from detailing his earlier career as a "peeping tom", Bundy has this to say: "In a pornography shop you can find a variety of perversions in sexual conduct, from homosexuality, to abuse, to lesbianism, etc. People who market pornography are dealing with a special-interest group. It offers variety and different kinds of literature, and a certain percentage of it is devoted toward literature that explores situations where a man, in the context of sexual encounter, in one way or another, engages in some sort of violence toward a woman-or the victim." Annoyingly, Bundy gives an example of how, if one was to become a serial killer(in the 3rd person, of course), how the idea would come to him to hurt a woman would be as follows:" On one particular evening, when "he" had been drinking a great deal...and as he was passing a bar, he saw a woman leaving the bar and walk up a fairly dark street. And for no, uh, we'd say that, something seemed to seize him! I was going to say something crystallized, but that's another way of looking at it. But the urge to do something to that person seized him-in a way it had never affected him before. And it seized him strongly. And to the point where, uh, without giving it a great deal of thought, he searched around for some instrumentality to uh, uh, attack this woman with. He found a piece of two-by-four in a lot somewhere and proceeded to follow and track this girl". It's obvious to the reader who this "he" is. This gets irritating to the point that both Michaud and Aynesworth constantly remind Bundy of his evasiveness and that he deviates around a question if he doesn't like it. However, there is an important message Bundy sends to the public. Bundy states that the only thing that will stop a budding serial killer is to restrict or eliminate stimuli that could provoke that deadly behavior. Bundy explains: "The things that can be done to prevent persons from engaging in homocidal behavior on a massive scale are things which society has to correct on a massive scale. If society were able to restrict or otherwise eliminate the environmental stimuli that provoke or otherwise create this kind of individual, or the mores that contribute to his behavior, then it would go a long way toward eliminating that kind of behavior". This statement of Bundy's is supported in a book written by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman entitled "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society." Grossman asserts that violent video games "hardwire" young people for shooting at humans and that the entertainment industry conditions the young in exactly the same way the military does. Grossman writes: "Some would claim that modern, ultraviolent movies and their video-game equivalents examined here serve as a form of sublimation that will make violence and war obsolete. "Sublimation" is a term coined by Sigmund Freud in his book entitled "Sexuality and The Psychology of Love"   Freud was referring to the turning of unacceptable urges and desires toward something socially desirable:taking the dark, unacceptable drives of the id and diverting them toward the sublime. Thus someone with a desire to slice open bodies may become a surgeon, or someone with an unacceptable urge toward violence may channel it towards sports, the military, or law enforcement. But watching movies is not sublimation. The entertainment industry is not providing a socially acceptable channeling of energy. Indeed, very little energy is generally spent in the passive reception of tv and movies. And this hardly qualifies as a socially acceptable or desirable channel for energies. Unless it has become socially desirable to kill outside the authority of the law, or to murder innocent victims-which, in the twisted world of the entertainment industry, it has. If violence in tv and movies were a form of sublimation, and if it were at all effective, then per capita violence should be going down. Instead it has multiplied nearly seven times in the span of the same generation in which this supposed sublimation has become available". Clearly, Bundy has a point. There are two topics that Bundy explored that truly jump out at me in this book. First, if you didn't know that Ted Bundy had sodomized, decapitated, raped and murdered over 30 innocent women, you would get the sense that he was a very level headed, smart and sophisticated gentleman that couldn't be a savage, serial-killing degenerate. However, when Michaud and Ainsworth confront Bundy about if he had any remorse or guilt for what he had done, Bundy frightfully had this to say:"I don't feel guilty for anything. Guilt? It's this mechanism we use to control people. It's an illusion. it's a kind of social control mechanism-and it's very unhealthy. It does terrible things to our bodies. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt". Obviously, this man is very sick! Author Susan Forward discusses this manipulation in her book entitled "Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You."  Even more deranged, is Bundy's justification of a serial killer where he asserts: "Well, she or he (once again, Bundy talks in the 3rd person) would of hurt me if I hadn't hurt them. Well, there's so many people, they won't be missed. The victim was luring them or trying to arouse them, uh, in some way. They deserved it, you know, or uh, all sorts of things like that". Don Denevi and John H. Campbell  wrote a fascinating book that discusses Ted Bundy's mindset in "Profilers: Leading Investigators Take You Inside The Criminal Mind."  Finally, this book, while being a let down because Bundy never admits as to his terrifying deeds, does give you a glimpse into how a charming, clean-cut, all-American boy and law student was truly a master manipulator and sadistic monster. This book, despite lacking a confession, was an interesting read worthy of your time. It will give you a glimpse of what made this sociopath tick!
Subjects: Criminals, Serial murders, Interviews, Serial murderers, Biography, Criminals, biography, Criminals, united states
Places: United States
People: Ted Bundy
Time periods: 1989