Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the
social media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway
Murders Facebook page with my partner in crime, Bill Thomas.
Welcome to Mind Ever Murderer. I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm
Bill Thomas. We're joined today by Edna Cowell Martin, author
of Dark Tide, Growing Up with Ted Bundy. Edna, thank
you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me start by.
Speaker 3: Telling us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 4: Well, I am a retired person now, which is exciting.
I worked quite a bit into my early I just
turned seventy a couple of years ago. Which is kind
of what instigated all of this. And I live in
the Seattle, Washington area, which is right in the heart
of everything that was happening with Ted Bundy, and I
am Ted's cousin, or I was his cousin. And this
was a story that I had been keeping really literally
to myself for the last fifty years. Felt like I
couldn't keep it bottled up any longer. I needed to
get it out. So that's what has brought me to
the point of writing a book about it.
Speaker 2: So map out the family connection, if you will, the
moms and dads and cousins and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Louise Bundy is Ted's mom, My parents, all of us
grew up. All of them grew up in the Philadelphia area.
So my dad was the youngest of seven kids, and
his very oldest sibling was Samuel Cowell, who is the
father of Louise, and he had three daughters. The oldest
daughter was Louise. Sometime during nineteen forty six, she gave
birth to a little boy, and it turns out that
she was not married to this guy. It was they
called them, you know, unwed mothers or you know. It
just they had pejorative terms for them. At that time,
my parents had moved before that. They had moved to
or not long before that, they had moved to the
state of Washington to follow my mom's parents. My dad,
my grandfather moved out and had a job with the
Seattle Gas Company at the time, so my parents were
already out here, and because of what she was going
through and ted she called them teddy at the time,
at age four, was starting to sort of strike out,
ask questions and she was dealing with a lot of
negativity about being a single mom. So my dad reached
out to her and said, hey, you need to consider
moving to the state of Washington. That's, you know, three
thousand miles from there, and it gives you an opportunity
to create a whole new narrative about your life. She
subsequently changed her last name, took him up on it,
and moved out to Washington. And at that point, my
parents had moved down to Tacoma from so from Seattle,
that's about thirty five miles and my dad got a
job at the University Puget Sound at the time, he
was a music professor. So my parents also had a
four year old son, so they opened up their doors
to Louise and her four year old son. With two
four year olds, I'm sure my mom, I can just
he's this elegant lady. She grew up in a well
to do household, and she had a nanny and other people,
and now she's on her own and she's got two
crazy four year old kids. But the interesting thing is that,
for up until I wrote this book, everybody thought that
Louise Bundy and Ted Bundy came out and stayed with
somebody called Alan and Jane Scott, and that was another
author who had written a book, one of the first
books about Ted Bundy had used pseudonyms, and I'm forever
grateful for her wo to her for doing that, because
that was one of the ways that we were able
to stay out of the limelight. So that's a connection.
So the only relatives that the Bundies Louise and Ted
had in the state of Washington was us. That's how
we became close.
Speaker 3: And it sounds like from reading the book, you almost
sort of grew up with Ted kind of like a
brother figure along with your own brother. Would you characterize
him like that as almost brotherly towards you.
Speaker 4: Well, he was he was just he was like a
big brother to me. He was five years older as
was my brother, and so actually, you know, growing up,
they hung out a lot together and I became friends
with his younger siblings. He was a great guy. He
was always so nice and friendly, and we really enjoyed
it when we had our family get togethers. We had
a cabin in addition to our house. We had a
cabin on Pewtet Sound, and so they would join us
for picnics and events and things like that. And he
love to come out to the beach, and so we
would spend a lot of time. We had three boats,
so you could row a boat or take a little
put putt boat or if you were really gregarious. I've
always been super into doing all kinds of things, so
I was heavy into water skiing, so I was always
happy to if anybody wanted to do that. We saw
a lot of them. And then we moved away because
my dad got a job as a chairman of a
music department at a university in the South. We left beautiful,
cool Washington then moved to the heat of the South.
And that was such a trick, believe it, humidity like
I'd never seen before.
Speaker 3: And so many bugs, Yes, so many bugs, too many bugs.
I apologize on behalf of the South for all of
our humidity and bugs.
Speaker 2: It's awful.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, it was, you know. I was an eye opener,
Thank goodness. I had a great biology teacher in high
school that made us go out and categorize them so
I could learn what they were, and that took away
my fear of them. But when I first got there,
I was terrified. So it was crazy. So I didn't
see Ted for a while while we were living there,
although he did come through and visit at one point.
Speaker 2: A lot of people have talked about how charming Bundy was,
and I've never met the man obviously, but I sort
of pushed back on some of that. But you actually
knew Ted and were related to him. So is he
as charming as people make him out to be.
Speaker 4: He was very charming. He managed to put everybody at ease.
He had a great smile and sparkling blue eyes. When
he was around me and my friends, we were all
impressed by him. I moved back to the Seattle area
to finish up my junior and senior year at the
University of Washington. I couldn't wait to come back. That's
when I became really close to Ted, So we were
much more on the same plane at that time. I
was much more grown up as a college student. He
was already out of undergraduate school at that time, but
he still lived in the university district. So he lived
in a rooming house just a few blocks from my apartment.
And then he also had a girlfriend at the time
that he would stay with, so he would alternate between
those two places, and so we saw each other a lot.
And when you ask about him being charming, he would
come over and drop by my apartment, and that's when
I saw him quite a lot, and he became really
close as adults, and my roommates loved him. We all
loved him. He was charming, and he would tell us
all these great stories about all these things he was doing,
and so we would sit around in awe of this guy.
And he loved being the center of attention.
Speaker 3: You know, you mentioned at various times in the book
that you could see these traits in him, like that
that brilliant charisma that need to be the center of
attention that he would later use to gain women's trust
to their detriment. Of course, do you ever find yourself
looking back on your interactions with Ted and second guessing
them or even third guessing them, Well, of course.
Speaker 4: You know, especially doing this project and all the research
we had to do, and finally facing up to my
relationship with him, because I didn't want anybody to know
I was related to a serial killer. I mean, who
wants to be identified with somebody who murdered young women
who were my contemporaries. You know, my heart going out
to these families and just crying for them. All During
this time, Ted is coming over and we're talking about
these things, how scared we were. He's disagreeing that it's
just an awful, awful thing. Yes, he could be so charming,
and I do feel that, just as you describe, he
used that to his advantage because he was able to
disarm people, you felt comfortable around him. He used this
to approach young women.
Speaker 3: I say, the English teacher in me was sitting here
listening to those scenes, taking in those scenes and going,
my god, the irony of him sitting there and putting
on this performative show for you. Oh yeah, it's certainly scary.
What's happening? My gosh, what kind of monster would do that.
There were times when I sat there and read these
scenes and I was just sitting there with my mouth open.
My god, what a grand performance he was giving.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he enjoyed doing it, and he was good
at it. He also would tell us these you know,
he told us about what he was doing, working for
the reelection campaign for our governor, who is a very
popular guy at the time, and going undercover into the
opponent's camp, wearing disguises so they wouldn't recognize him if
he went back a second time. So doing all these things,
you can't help but asking yourself, he is really perfecting
this art of deception. And then he works for the
Seattle Crime Commission. He's writing pamphlets on crime prevention for women.
He writes a pamphlet on rape prevention for women. And
we're so proud of him for doing this, because this
is about this In nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy four,
this is when the women's movement was really taking hold,
and we are all starting to feel really empowered and
excited about what was going on. Billy Jean King was
playing you know that famous tennis match, you know, and
all this stuff was going on, and he's doing these
things that seem positive for women, But why was he
doing that?
Speaker 2: In retrospect, do you think he was enjoying this sort
of duality where he was pretending at least to be
a good guy in helping women, while at the same
time he's committing these heinous crimes.
Speaker 4: You know, I've talked to a lot of people who've
worked with dual personalities like this, so as if he
had these two different masks. So when he's around family
members and friends, he's one person, and obviously when he's
he takes that mask off. God forbid who this other
person was. I think that he probably the amassed a
lot of experience at working with people. I can't understand
the anger and the rage and where that came from.
I don't know if it's because he never found out
who his biological father was and that really really really
bothered him. I don't know what it is that built up.
You know, he was angry at young women, He was
rejected by this very classy young woman who came from
US California, very high level family. I think rejection of
all these things. I have no idea, but I do believe, yes,
Bill that he definitely was building up to something.
Speaker 3: You had mentioned in the book. There was a time
when you watched him slow dancing with your roommate and
you saw the mask slip and he had this just
rage and hatred infused expression on his face that must
have been chilling.
Speaker 4: Well, it was shocking because I'd never seen him like
that before, and I I kind of wondered if I
could believe my eyes, you know what was I seeing?
Because we were dancing around. He'd come over with a
bag of groceries and so we cooked this wonderful dinner
and then afterwards we were playing records and dancing around
my apartment. I love to dance, so I'm always dancing,
and I see him in my roommate in his arms
and they're slow dancing, and you got it right, he
is looking down at her with this look on his
face of I didn't even recognize him who he was
of complete rage and his jaws clenched and he looks
very angry. And the thing that really stood out to
me at the time was his blue eyes were completely black.
And I've found out since then that this happens there
are irises dilate, so it completely removed all the blue
you know what I'm talking about, I mean, and that
was happening, and I had to yell at him a
couple of times to get his attention. And then it
was this piece snapped out of a trance.
Speaker 2: He didn't say or do anything to manifest what you
were seeing. He didn't hurt her or threaten her or you,
but there was something about his expression.
Speaker 4: It was his expression looking down at the top of
her head, and it alarmed me, and I yelled. I
had to yell a couple times at him. Finally I
turned off the music and then I said, hey, Ted,
are you okay? And he finally kind of just you know,
as if somebody just snapped out of something, and then
just the whole mask was back in place, and then
he smiled and said, oh, no, no, I'm just fine.
But I'll have to tell you he left just moments
right after that. It was such a sudden departure that,
you know, the only speculation I have in retrospect, because
at the time I was just confused. And then I
kind of put it out of my mind, going, oh,
you know, you must have had his mind on something else,
or I mean, because why would you think otherwise. But
then where did he go that night?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: I did that. I had the exact same thought when
you said that.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's and that's got to be the hardest
part of this, I would imagine, is you're having to
sort of reassess everything that you think you knew about
this guy who really did seem to be kind, charismatic,
the sort of perfect young man out there about to
make his way in the world, out to go do
successful things. What an absolutely horrible thing. And that's got
to be very complicated, does it? You know, does it
make your memories of Ted more complicated? Knowing Okay, I
knew him as this wonderful person, but I also know
that he was this horrible monster. It's got to be
some weird cognitive dissonance right there, so weird.
Speaker 4: And so alarming because I'm hanging out with him and
I don't have any idea. So you can imagine how
much that makes me doubt my ability to judge somebody's character.
That this person who was so vile and so violent
was in my room and I completely trusted him, and
I exposed my girlfriends to him, and yet I did
not know, And yes, that makes me really have very
complex feelings about him. I'm you know, I'm angry with
him for fifty years and felt deceived and manipulated and
used and just horrified and just completely perplexed at how
I couldn't know, how could I have missed the signs?
You know, how could how could somebody so successfully be
two completely different people?
Speaker 2: Tell us more about your discussions what you can remember
years later. You actually discussed some of the murders that
were going on at that time with him in close
to real time.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Actually, and my now husband Don had who is
my boyfriend at the time, had come up. He usually
came up on weekends from Tacoma after work, usually at Friday.
There had been these two young women abducted from a
lake not far from Seattle, east of Seattle called Lakes Mammish.
Apparently the person that did this was careless or bold
or whatever, because someone overheard him say his name was Ted,
and someone also witnessed him walking towards a VdeV bug
and then so what happened was they had a and
then two girls, two young women were kidnapped and disappeared.
Nobody knew where they went. One earlier in the day
and one a little bit later. So apparently he did
these horrible things to one and then came back and
got another one. We're just you know, we get the
newspaper these You know, I had two other female roommates,
and you know, we were all terrified. All these these
things have been happening almost one a month up to
that point. Starting in the end of January, a young
woman is attacked. She was one of the fortunate ones.
She was left four dead and the thing got interrupted,
so she she got lucky, I mean, not without lots
of physical and mental repercussions for her. She lived. If
you walked from Ted's apartment, you know, he was five
minutes from me, and he walked by my front door
to my apartment building across the street and went around
the corner. That's where she lived. So these things are
happening once a month, so you can imagine how we're
all getting more and more terrified. And we're afraid now
to walk to class. You know, it's out of my bike.
It takes me ten minutes to get to campus, and
I've never ridden a bicycle so fast. Or I'll we'll
walk in. You will team up with other people walking together,
so fast forward to July. I've graduated, I'm living with
my two roommates into this I've moved out of my apartment.
I'm into a house. We're getting these papers and we
see this composite drawing that somebody, an eyewitness had put together.
And we're looking at it and we don't recognize who
that is, but they say it's Ted and he has
a tan V dub or something like that, and I'm going, God,
what a coincidence, because my cousin's name is Ted and
he has a vdub that looks a lot like what
they're just And so Don is over at the house
and the dog, Jeffy, starts barking, and we look out
the front window and I see Ted's car parked out below.
So Ted comes to the door and everything's fine at
that point when the dog no problems then, and he
comes in and so Don thinks, oh, you know what
I'm going to do is I'm going to thrust the
picture of this composite in the Ted's face and say,
you know, say something to him. So he does. He
picks up the paper and he goes, oh, hey, Ted,
this picture looks just like you. And we're thinking it
looks nothing like him, but he was teasing him, not
realizing that that was Ted, the Ted. But Ted is
so adept he doesn't even hesitate a second. He goes,
oh God, I know, isn't isn't that awful? Isn't that terrible?
What's happened to all those girls? And then we're just
feeling so badly for him, and then he says, at
that point, yeah, I've been interviewed by the police, and
we're just we feel terrible that he's been inconvenienced. And
he says, yeah, there's V dubs are everywhere at this time.
If any of you remember from that time period, it
was a really, really popular car. There was something like
forty thousand of them registered in the state of Washington.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, no a lot.
Speaker 4: There were a bunch of them with somebody whose name
was Ted or Theodore or something like that. And he's
telling us all this and that's why he got pulled
in because his name is Ted and he has a
V dub with the police. Don't believe he's a suspect.
Speaker 2: And do you think he was telling you the truth
when he says he was interviewed.
Speaker 4: I do, I absolutely do. And in my research, he
was interviewed.
Speaker 3: What a smooth operator.
Speaker 4: Smooth operator, he didn't even bat an eye, and here
we were thrusting this right in his face at the time.
Speaker 3: It really is just sort of astounding the way that
you wrote it. It's so compelling him because you're going
through this it by minute and we all know it's
actually Ted, Ted is the one who's doing this, but
we're getting all of these scenes of what it is
like to watch you go through this minute by minute,
not really seeing that your Ted is the Ted who's
doing these terrible things. But I one hundred percent can
buy into it. Guy, I see it. I believe it.
I can see how he would have absolutely pulled the
wool over everybody's eyes because he was so smooth and
charismatic and adept exactly. You know, there is this whole
still a cult of personality surrounding Ted, of women who
are fascinated with him. What you're telling me, though, that
does kind of jive with that, Like I get why
women are still really fascinated. I think it's abborrent, but
I get, but I get it. Like, how do you
feel about this whole cult of personality around Ted?
Speaker 4: You know, My only thought is there is something in
these women's lives that makes them feel like they have
to be attracted to somebody like this. So I feel
sad for them in some regards, but I don't understand it.
I can't identify with it. To me, it seems like
an awful thing to do is to somehow feel thrilled
by a personality like that. And meanwhile, the thing that
really gets to me because the first thing my co
author and I, Megan Atkinson and I, I mean, we
had long discussions because my first concern was about the families,
the victims, you know that from his horrific acts to
hit their daughters, their siblings, their cousins, their friends, and
these families are I would think, are still suffering to
this day, and some of them their remains have never
been found, and those families still haven't been able to
put them to rest. And this is the thing that
gets to me. And meanwhile, they're these people that are
like this cult of personality where they have I I
don't get it. I don't understand it, and I'm sure
there's a lot of psychological reasons why they feel that way.
Speaker 3: Bill and I have told the story on the podcast
a couple of times, but we've never told it to
Ted's cousin. I remember the very first time that we
went to Crime Con in Nashville. One of the very
first people that I saw walking into a ballroom had
a full face tattoo of Ted on her forearm. And
it was like, I can't believe you would come to
crime Con with a full face Bundy tattoo. And she
wasn't the only one it was. It was incredibly, incredibly bizarre,
and like I said, there was a certain amount of
cognitive dissonance there. You know, women like our tattooed friend.
She knows what Ted did. Why are you still walking
around with him on your arm? Is sort of the
question for me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't understand it. There is something in there
that it would be interesting to find out what the
attraction is. I have no idea.
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Speaker 4: You know, my first reaction is it's so disrespectful for
the victims. But there's got to be more to it
than that. This cult of personality. I mean, he was charming,
he was good looking. When I started to when I
finally came to realize that he was guilty of this,
he was no longer charming or good looking to me.
It was a tool that he used for evil. One
of my mutual acquaintances and I didn't know her as
well as my roommates did, was one of his very
first victims. This is very personal. This is a really
really awful thing. This is nothing to glorify, This is
nothing to admire. There is not one, so no kind
of part of his personality that we want to emulate.
Speaker 2: Well said, let's drill down on that so who was
this victim and what was her relationship to you.
Speaker 4: Her name was Linda Ann Heally. She was the very
first victim that we are aware of. Now we think
that he was way too practiced. This is according to
Robert Keppel, the chief detective on his case. But I
read his book and I have to agree with him
that he didn't think that Ted went from zero to
one hundred miles an hour, just like This young woman
was best friends with one of my childhood friends who
was also my roommate, and I had met her. I
did not know her well, but she was a lovely
person and the effect that her disappearance had on one
of my best buddies was absolutely terrible, because we all
fretted horribly about what happened to Linda. But when you're
a really good friend of someone who's disappeared, that you've
confided in, you've shared your lives with, you've done things together,
and then suddenly she disappears from the face of the earth,
it was just an awful, awful thing. And she knew
their family too, her family, Linda's family, and that good
friend of mine whose name I have not mentioned out
of respect to her, and also the other roommate of
mine who was also they were roommates together at the
University of Washington. She cannot even talk about it to
this day. That's how upsetting it is still to her.
So to have people that are idolizing him, disregarding the
level of pain that he has caused is just it's
really hard for me to process that.
Speaker 2: For me too, And this is something we've talked about before.
As the brother of a murder victim still unsolved, I
find this highly offensive. Now, Kristen knows, I'm usually polite enough.
I wouldn't go up and initiate a conversation. I would
be polite, and I was polite. Actually, I know that
it's something I'm really really uncomfortable with, and I think
it is horrifically disrespectful. I actually publicly criticized crime con
in a lengthy article in the Washington Post for not
taking steps to let people know how inappropriate that is.
When you've got, in addition to now six thousand true
crime fans meeting typically once a year, you also have
a smaller group. But it's a couple one hundred people
who are subject matter experts like ourselves and others who
are speaking about true crime and unsolved cases and solved
cases and survivors stories like we've talked about Kathy Kleiner
Ruben who survived Ted Bundy, and many many others. So
you've got a chunk of people attending crime Con that
have direct connections, including often family members of murder victims,
some of whom are looking for answers in their loved
ones cases, and they're all part of this mix of
true crime community. Crime Con took steps after that to
really kind of shift the focus, and I will give
them credit for this. They let people know that this
isn't comic con or some other place where we dress
up as fantasy characters, and that there are family members
of victims who who were there and survivors who were there,
and we need to be respectful of the fact that
they're also attending these events. So, as I've said, through
gritted teeth, you know, you walking around with a picture
with a serial killer's face on your T shirt or whatever.
It's not appropriate. And you might think that's hip and
cool and edgy, but you know something, No, it's actually
offensive and gross and disgusting.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm proud of you, Good for you for doing that.
Speaker 2: To be fair, they did take steps at Crime con
to let people know, and they've gotten a lot more
victim focused. I understand that there's going to be some
graphic talk and some maybe some difficult moments at a
conference like this, but this is not a conference of
law enforcement or forensics experts, where those conferences can be very,
very gritty. But that's not you know, when you're talking
about how to solve difficult cases, some times the conversations
themselves are difficult. I share your perspective. I'm completely baffled
by it. I'm actually offended, and Kristen knows I'm actually
not easily offended, but this is one thing that just
really sets me off. We can move on from there.
I appreciate your perspective on.
Speaker 3: More hardly, I don't get it, and I'm curious, do
you consider you and your family to be secondary victims
of TED? How have you dealt with the trauma and
the turmoil of this. You've had to live with it
for the last fifty years. How in the world have
you been able to sort this and you know, compartmentalize
it and keep it from bleeding into all other areas
of your life. That's got to be difficult.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean there are primary victims of Ted
and I didn't feel that I even should have anything
to talk about because of what they went through. But
I realize now over time, and that's part of a
reason why I wrote this book, is that there are
adjacent victims. There's you know, his siblings have I know
that they have suffered because of it. Many many people
who knew ted Or and trusted him, you know, so
many people have become victims of it, you know, because
they stood up for him. And yes, I realize now
that I am also a person who has because even
the mention of his name over the years, I would
get like a jolt through me, as if I'd stuck
my finger in a light socket. That's how much his
name upset me. I couldn't even stand to hear his name,
and it came up everywhere. I was not a true
crime fan. I had never had been because of him,
and avoided it because I didn't want to face up
to it. To the horror of it. We hit out,
We avoided whatever we could do to make sure that
when the frenzy was taking place during the countdown to
his execution, they were looking for everybody to interview, and
we just prayed that they would not find us. It
was an awful, awful time, first of all, because I
still had these really dual feelings. I hated the monster
side of him, and I mourned the part that I
cared about so much, and the loss of potential because
he was on such a trajectory, you know, going to
law school and doing all these really great, what looked
like great things, and yet this is the way he went.
So that was a really difficult time, and we lived
in fear that the press would find us because we'd
seen what they put his mother through, and oh my god,
it was horrible. You know, we didn't want to do that. So, yes,
I finally have come to realize, and it's okay to
admit that, yes, there's lots of layers of victims, and
we're one of those layers. Nothing compared to the primary ones,
but we are a type of victim as well.
Speaker 3: What I really enjoyed about Dark Tide one of the
many things I enjoyed, I should say, and I want
to commend you for the fact that you were willing
to include this. You included a lot of your prison
correspondence with Ted. It was so fascinating to read because
you can hear and see that struggle. I love the
relationship that we used to have because you are my family,
but also, oh my god, what have you done? You
need to confess. And you can see that there was
struggle in there. You could see the way that he
pushed back on it every time. Oh, I don't worry
about the past, I worry about the now, would bes
I really? I mean, I have to commend you for
being willing to put that in there, because some of
that has got to be really hard to look at
now it is.
Speaker 4: And yet I wanted I wanted people to see what
he was like and what he was saying from prison,
and how he was not facing up or coming to
terms at all with his actions, and yet to such
an extent that he was saying things like, the past
is the past. You need to know me as I
am now. And I was saying, well, you know what,
you know what you are a sum total of your
past actions. You cannot save that. Your present self isn't
a result of what you did in the past. Look
at where you are, Ted, it's because of what you did.
And I wanted him to come forth for the families.
I wanted him to if I could have any influence
on him, I wanted him to tell why he had
done it and where some of he where some of
the remains were of some of these the young ladies,
young women that he killed, and girls young you know,
young people too. But it was it was a fruitless endeavor.
I was obviously very naive, but I had to try.
Speaker 2: You were able to save some of the letters. Were
you typing these or were they handwritten?
Speaker 4: Well, you see back in nineteen yeah, this, I didn't
have a computer. I did have a typewriter, but these
were all handwritten. So that and that there's something about
handwriting a letter, you know, because it's not very fast,
it gives you the opportunity to really put your thoughts together.
And that's what I did. I hand wrote them. And
he did me a big favor in that he sent
back two of the letters, like, oh, you should be
embarrassed about these. I'm going to send them back to you.
And I'm so grateful that he did, because then it
showed the you know, back and forth conversation that we
had in those letters.
Speaker 2: Were his response is handwritten as well? Yes, And did
you have any awareness as to whether prison authorities were
reading your letters in and his letters out.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm sure that somebody must have. I think
he wrote his letters, but he couldn't seal them, and
they came to me obviously sealed, but possibly somebody else
looked at them first. I'm guessing that that's what happened,
and I kind of have the impression that's what was
happening then, So I'm sure somebody else wrote them. But
you know what, I couldn't touch them with my hands.
I had to put on gloves because I was so
freaked out about you know, and I'm not a superstitious
person at all, but I felt like just evil essences
were emanating from those letters.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 4: I just want to put a barrier between him and me.
Speaker 3: At that point, you'd said in the book that you
do you still have the letter. It's like you've kept them.
Speaker 4: I kept them. I felt like, Okay, So I majored
in history, and I feel like these were historical documents.
While as they are, they're part of history, and so
I felt incumbent upon me to save them in a
box in a dark part of the basement, a far
way from the family as possible, So I honestly had
not opened up that box for decades until I started
working on this project.
Speaker 2: You mentioned something very interesting about your work on Dark
Tide the book. You said that you started watching documentaries
about Ted Bundy in order to kind of to take
familiarize yourself with the facts. What was it like for
you to watch those docs.
Speaker 4: I could only watch them in the morning, not at night.
So I'm an early riser, but I felt that it
was important that I do my research and do my
due diligence, and so I read a cherry picked which
books to read, and I had very specific authors who, yeah,
like Robert Kepple, the Detective, the guy that was a
political reporter who became a friend of mine that actually
have a chapter about him. I read his book, and
then the woman that worked beside him on the suicide hotline.
Speaker 2: And eral right.
Speaker 4: But in fact I asked him about Admiral and one
of the letters, and that was pretty funny response he
gave me.
Speaker 3: He kind of discounted it. He made it sound like
she was just sort of making stuff up.
Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, really, yes, yes, a half truth.
And my husband thinks that's one of the funniest lies,
he goes. So it was half right, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, yeah, he sud he sounded kind of
grandiose about the whole entire thing, like, you know, he
was disapproving of all of this, you know, the wrong
kind of publicity, right.
Speaker 4: But he also, in my mind, had to love that
publicity too, but sure.
Speaker 2: The narcissist, the narcissist, and then had to love it
and then at the same time criticize anything he thought,
you know, any writer didn't get correct.
Speaker 4: That exactly describes him. I mean he is the epicyle,
the you know, epitome of a narcissist, the absolute worst ride. Yes,
he loved the attention. Yeah, so I get up early
to watch those, you know, some of the more well known,
well done versions, and they were very helpful too, just
you know, to kind of get an idea of what
was going on at the time. And we were reading everything.
And Megan's amazing too as a co author. She's she's
a talented writer too, and she's also as attuned to
getting the facts right as I am. We're both researchers,
and we didn't want to even start writing until we
had done a month or two of research to make
sure we were messing up on timelines and what happened
during the time, what was happened historically at that time,
because so much was happening.
Speaker 3: There has been so much about Ted. I mean everything
from the Ted Bundy tapes on Netflix to Liz Kendall's
book came out, The Phantom Prince. There has been so
much done about Ted. I'm not necessarily saying that you
should call out the bad actors, but were there any
that you watched or read that you were like, oh
my gosh, what now they got it wrong or this
is nonsense. Were there any that you were just like, no, no, nope, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean I would see some things. Even in some
of their books. Most of it was amazing what those
particular people had written. Both all of them did a
good job. And my heart goes out to Liz. I mean,
can you imagine having this person as your boyfriend and
not having a clue for quite a while and then
starting to suspect things. I mean, oh my gosh, and
exposing her little girl to him. There are there's so much.
There's so much written about him, and some of it
is just crazy. Some of them glorify him in ways
that we've already discussed, So yeah, I don't even want
to give them the time of day.
Speaker 3: Were there mistakes ever about like Ted or your family
that you found, Like I mean, you know, as a historian,
I know that you're probably looking and kind of double checking.
Was there ever any egregious, glaring errors that you found
that made you go and I think, I think this
person needs to be put right.
Speaker 4: I mean, there was a lot of speculation and things
like that. You see a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists
writing things. A lot of their take was pretty interesting.
You'd see a lot of people who claimed that they
were approached by Ted, and I'm not saying that they weren't.
He probably approached a lot of people before he found
someone who would, you know, actually allow him to draw
them draw them away. But there's a lot of that.
Some of them couldn't have happened because of he wasn't
even in the area at that time. But my heart
goes out to those people because something happened that still
scared them. Until I wrote this book, everybody thought. I
think I may have already mentioned this that when Louise
and Ted came to stay with our family, they thought
that they were staying. It was everybody up in Wikipedia
and everything said they stayed with Jane and Alan Scott.
That was that was actually my parents. You know, so
little things like that. Sure, there's some big stuff and
there were some little things.
Speaker 2: Is this the sort of thing we know? How much
work has gone into co writing this book? Would you
ever want to write about Bundy again? Or do you
feel like you've gotten out of your system what you
needed to get out?
Speaker 4: No, you notice there's no image of him on the
cover of my book.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I did.
Speaker 4: Not want to give him that power of being on
the cover of my book. No way, No, not at all.
And I wanted to exorcize him out of my system.
And I wrote this book to get him out of there,
and he no longer has any power over me. And
it was the best thing to the writing the book
was great. I felt like I released a lot of
things and he didn't get a chance to say otherwise.
So I'm done with him.
Speaker 2: So the word Catharsis comes to mind.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it's.
Speaker 4: A good word.
Speaker 3: Even the last image that you had of that, that
dream that you have of Ted searching for his grave,
I was like, what that's if that isn't your subconscious
yea sending a whole bunch of stuff up from the
vault there it is.
Speaker 4: That was so weird because how often do you remember
a dream when you wake up. I rarely do. And
Megan and I were in the midst of writing this,
and we would write back and forth. I would write
and send her things and then she's such a beautiful
writer she would send it back at Oh my gosh,
I mean. But anyway, I woke up one morning and
I had this dream about looking for stones with Ted
and my brother, and we were back on our beach
in Felucy Bay and the Puget Sound. I just ran
into my office and I just quickly wrote it down
because I thought, God, this is so amazing, and I
wanted to put him to rest. I wanted to end
it with him, put him in the grave. And that's it.
That must have been my subconscious talking, because that's that's
what happened.
Speaker 3: And now, why do you think that the fascination with
Ted persists so many decades after his crimes, Because I mean,
I have students who are like, oh, Ted Bundy, I
know about Ted Bundy. They don't know about other serial killers.
Maybe necessarily, but like right now, it's like they know Bundy,
they know Dahmer, they know Gasey. Ted is right up there.
Why do you think this fascination just persists years upon
years upon years later.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you guys are clear across the country, not
necessarily in the one of the states where he caused
all his reign of terror. He was one of the first.
I think that he kind of epitomizes what a serial
killer is. And that was the original big book that
was written about him at Amerl's book that turned into
a movie with a very attractive actor playing the role
of Ted, Mark Harmon. Oh yeah, yeah, And I think
that that was and also he was good looking and handsome,
and so he didn't fit into the mold of what
people thought of as a as an evil looking person,
which you know, I've asked a lot of young women
since then, what is their fascination with true crime? And
it's all over the board, and a lot of them
have heartfelt tones in their voice, have said because they
want to know what to look out.
Speaker 2: For, which is valid.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I think that you know, there is a
fascination because also with the fact that we didn't know.
And this person was right in, right in the literally
the bosom of our family, and we did not know it.
And I think that really gives people chills. It still
gives me chills to even say this, that someone can
be so successful at wearing a mask that they completely
pull the people around them who think they know them.
So what has that done to me? It's changed how
I look at people when I meet someone. I honestly,
and I was in sales for forty years and that
was really successful at it because I go, I wonder
what's behind that mask? And I would ask many, many
open ended questions to get a lot of information from them.
And also I want young women to know and to
be a I wanted to be freaked out all the time.
But just don't Willy Nelly walk off with somebody. Obviously,
But I'm an avid walker and I spend a lot
of time walking by myself, and I have on many
occasions come up behind a young woman who is wearing
earbuds mm hm, and she has no idea that I'm
walking up right behind her. Yeah, And she has effectively
blocked out one of her primary senses. And if you
need to have situational awareness all the time. Mm hmm,
never know what's going on. And I when I'm out walking,
I will turn around and check behind me on occasion,
and you know, around on the sides of me. But
I keep on going. Doesn't keep me from doing it.
But I can't help but telling these people, I have
to tell you a story, and you know, and then
that kind of blows their mind and they go, okay.
Sometimes they're very annoyed with me, but I don't care.
I hope that they remember, you know that this is
this is not a safe thing to do.
Speaker 3: Honestly, That's something my own students need to hear absolutely
because they do not have that kind of situational awareness.
And most of them do walk around with AirPods in
all day long, so you know, so.
Speaker 4: Absorbed with their phones that they have no idea what's
going on around them. And believe me, there's a lot
of stuff going on around them. Well.
Speaker 3: The book is Dark Tied Growing Up with Ted Bundy
by Edna Cowell Martin and Meghan Atkinson. Eda. This has
been delightful. Thank you for joining us today. We really
appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you. It was very interesting. I really appreciate it
that is.
Speaker 3: Going to do it for this episode of mind Over Murder.
Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.