← UNMARKED: A True Crime Podcast
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- [00:03]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Ted was very friendly. It's like he wanted to stop, but he couldn't. But he knew there was something in him.
- [00:13]
James Buddy Day
That's the voice of Dr. Al Carlile. In 1976, he was the prison psychologist assigned to evaluate Ted Bundy, not after the crimes were known, but while they were still happening. What Carlisle was looking at wasn't history. It was a threat that hadn't finished revealing itself.
- [00:34]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Ted Bundy is a very disturbed, intelligent person. Police say two more young women are missing tonight. Investigators are now reviewing whether the cases may be connected. How can you have such an urge, A habit, a set of behaviors, to kill someone?
- [00:56]
James Buddy Day
Ted Bundy's crimes have been studied exhaustively. But what's often missed is how this man came to be. The question isn't what he did, it's when he crossed the line and whether that line was already far behind him, long before anyone realized he was dangerous.
- [01:15]
Dr. Al Carlisle
When does it get to a point you've crossed over the line that you can't cross back again? That's. That's the part I like to understand.
- [01:23]
James Buddy Day
I'm James Buddy Day. This is unmarked.
- [01:33]
Dr. Al Carlisle
I remember he walked toward me in the hall, and I was standing outside the room we're going to use for the interview. And as he walked toward me, smile on his face, brisk walk, stick out his hand and shook mine, says Dr. Carlisle. Right, I'm Ted Bundy.
- [01:56]
James Buddy Day
Before anyone recognized Ted Bundy, he was arrested in Utah in 1975 during a routine traffic stop. The subsequent investigation identified Bundy as a suspect in numerous unsolved homicides and the attempted kidnapping of a young woman. When that case went to trial, Bundy was convicted, and what came next was critical. Before sentencing and placement, Bundy was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. The task fell to prison psychologist Dr. Al Carlisle.
- [02:33]
Dr. Al Carlisle
I thought, this is, yeah, he's got a nice personality, but what's he gonna be like as we start really getting in the nitty gritty of all of this?
- [02:42]
James Buddy Day
Dr. Carlisle passed away in 2018. The interview you're hearing today was recorded shortly before his death, one of the last he ever gave. When he Met Bundy in 1976, Carlisle was no stranger to dangerous offenders. He would go on to spend more than 20 years as a clinical psychologist in the Utah State Prison, eventually retiring in 1989 as the head of the department.
- [03:10]
Dr. Al Carlisle
All the time he's with me, he's saying, I didn't do anything. I'm not guilty of these things they say I might have done up north, and I'm not guilty of Carol Durant. I just didn't do that. I didn't do any of that.
- [03:22]
James Buddy Day
Before we go any deeper, a brief step back. Ted Bundy is often described as one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. And you should know the full scope of his crimes remain unclear and will likely continue to be the subject of research and debate for years to come. To date, approximately only 20 of his victims have officially been confirmed. And nearly all of those murders occurred within a remarkably compressed period, roughly four years between 1974 and 1978, though Bundy himself claimed responsibility for at least a dozen additional killings. But this episode isn't about how many people Ted Bundy killed. It's about how someone like this comes into existence.
- [04:17]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Here you got a guy who's come down Salt Lake. He's in law school. He has a political career ahead of him.
- [04:29]
James Buddy Day
When Al Carlisle and Ted Bundy sit down together, it's 1976, right in the middle of Bundy's most well documented killing spree. At the time, Bundy is 30 years old. You have to picture Ted Bundy as he appeared then. A perennial college student studying law, loosely involved in politics, presenting himself as someone hovering just on the edge of a respectable future.
- [04:59]
Dr. Al Carlisle
So here he is, and he has the possibility of losing his whole career. And I said, ted, you don't have any anxiety, None. Or depression, you know. And he says, no. Things just don't bother me. I thought, there's something wrong here.
- [05:16]
James Buddy Day
He's thin, tall, often smiling, bright blue eyes that hold contact just a beat longer than necessary. The kind of man who seems eager to help. Nothing about him signals danger.
- [05:31]
Dr. Al Carlisle
I gave him some tests in the beginning, personality IQ tests and such as IQ was in the mid 120s. So he's got superior IQ. And by his vocabulary, I knew he was very intelligent. On some of the other tests that measure anxiety, depression, they came out extremely low.
- [05:51]
James Buddy Day
Bundy's high intelligence is unmoored from conscience. He doesn't internalize social or moral constraints. Rules are external obstacles, not internal guidelines. Ethics are something that other people believe in. What Dr. Carlisle sees is a psychopath presenting with such grandiosity that he can't meaningfully imagine the inner lives of other people. Their experiences, their fear, their suffering. None of it registers to Bundy as real.
- [06:24]
Dr. Al Carlisle
I talked to people he knew, girlfriends, friends, a few people in Salt Lake who knew him, and they were all impressed with him. Except there was another side of the story that some got into. There's one side that most people see when he Wants them to the side he wants to show. And then there's a dark side of him. And so I wanted to get to know the dark side.
- [06:56]
James Buddy Day
For Bundy, the dark side emerges as a young child. He's born in 1946 to Eleanor Louise Cowell at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers. Shortly after, Bundy is briefly abandoned by his mother. He's taken to Philadelphia, where he's raised by his maternal grandparents. For much of his early childhood, Bundy is led to believe that his mother is his sister and that his grandparents are his parents. The truth about his parentage is concealed from him, part of a family structure built on secrecy and misdirection.
- [07:36]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Back in those days, illegitimacy was a huge thing. And to Ted, he not only the oldest of a family, he doesn't fit in. He's very shy.
- [07:51]
James Buddy Day
The term illegitimate, it sounds outdated now, but in the early 1950s, it carried real weight. It meant a child born outside of marriage at a time when that distinction wasn't just social, but moral. It's hard to imagine now, but it could affect how a family was viewed, where they could live, even how a child was treated in school or church. As a teenager, Bundy is told the truth about his parentage by a cousin. Later in life, Bundy would openly scoff at anyone who suggested that this revelation had any bearing on the man he became.
- [08:34]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Now when I asked Ted about this, he says, oh, that wasn't a big issue, but it really was.
- [08:40]
James Buddy Day
But that dismissal misses a larger point, one that often gets overlooked. Bundy's childhood isn't just marked by secrecy. It's unstable. His grandfather is a brutal disciplinarian. His birth mother moves through a series of relationships. At one point, Bundy is taken by his birth mother to live with an uncle, adding another rupture to an already fragile sense of home. You have to imagine this child early on, isolated, lonely, and acutely aware of what he lacked. He envies the financial security and the emotional stability of the families around him. And that's when something important begins to take shape.
- [09:25]
Dr. Al Carlisle
He lived in a place where he could look out his window and down into the window of the next house and see whatever he could see there. And he went out and started window peeking and such. So he began this other life then.
- [09:42]
James Buddy Day
For Ted Bundy, this early behavior later escalates into stalking. But at the time, it's a coping mechanism. Bundy is born with a mind that fixates inward. Add to this that his early environment is unstable, marked by secrecy and Emotional distance. Bundy is never given a truthful account of who his father was. And that absence creates a vacuum, one filled with shame, grievance and envy of those who seem grounded.
- [10:13]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Ted to the other kids and I talked to a couple of them who were in his neighborhood. They said, well, he wasn't really angry. He was just there, just Ted. He just seemed okay. He didn't stand out in any way, but he got into this fantasy and he was very lonely.
- [10:38]
James Buddy Day
Watching others lets Bundy study the life that was denied to him. In that space, he begins constructing a private fantasy. And in that fantasy, Bundy would become the man his non existent father never was. Successful, respected and powerful.
- [10:58]
Dr. Al Carlisle
I said, ted, what were you after this time in your life? He said, I wanted a beautiful co ed and I wanted a profession.
- [11:11]
James Buddy Day
By middle school, Ted Bundy's inner fantasy life only deepens. His emerging psychopathic personality means social cues of like discomfort, rejection or indifference. They don't register the way they do for other children at this stage. He hasn't yet developed the charm or the mimicry that will later allow him to conceal himself.
- [11:35]
Dr. Al Carlisle
I think people stayed away from him not because they didn't like him or that he was so unusual or that he was violent. They didn't like him because he was so shy and he really didn't speak up and talk and he didn't seemed to want to put himself in social situations.
- [11:52]
James Buddy Day
And that solitude doesn't interrupt the fantasy that's forming inside him, it feeds it. With fewer real relationships to correct or challenge his perceptions, Bundy's internal world grows more elaborate, more insulated, and more detached from what other people see.
- [12:12]
Dr. Al Carlisle
I ask him one time because he was when he was in junior high, I said, ted, did you date, have any girlfriends? Yeah, he said, I have two or three girlfriends. Okay. Did you do anything with them? Yeah. Did you kiss them? Yeah. Huh.
- [12:31]
James Buddy Day
The people who were there tell a different story over the years. Family members, classmates, acquaintances, they've all spoken in numerous forums and their accounts are strikingly consistent. They describe an introverted, withdrawn child, sad and lonely, unable to form attachments and confused about why he couldn't. At some point, that isolation, fantasy and grievance coalesce into violence. What we don't know, what we may never know, is exactly when the line was crossed.
- [13:07]
Dr. Al Carlisle
He was about 14, and there was this little girl named ann. She was 8 years old and she was on his paper route and he delivered papers over there. And so he likely knew her. And one day she went missing in
- [13:28]
James Buddy Day
the early morning hours of August 31, 1961. Eight year old Ann Marie Burr is abducted from her home at approximately 5:15am her mother checks on the four sleeping children. Ann Marie's bed is empty. Downstairs, the signs are unmistakable. The living room window, normally kept cracked open, is wide open. The latch on the front door is undone. Ann Marie Burr is gone.
- [14:03]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Whoever it was talked her out of the house so she knew the person.
- [14:08]
James Buddy Day
Her disappearance triggers a massive search effort and intense media coverage. Police recover a shoe print near the home and theorize that the abductor may be a teenager. No suspect is ever charged. Ann Marie Burr is never found. The Burr home is six blocks from where Ted Bundy lives. At the time
- [14:32]
Dr. Al Carlisle
I asked Ted, I said, what did you think about that? And he said, I really didn't pay any attention to it. I don't think I really knew about it. And I said, how could you not know about it when everybody's talking about this over breakfast? He says, well, I thought, I think I must have just been involved in school. And that was my main interest. You know, that's when the red flags that go up, you think, whoops, wait a minute. Caught him off guard. I think he killed her.
- [15:05]
James Buddy Day
Al Carlisle is not alone in that belief. Years later, while filming a documentary in Tacoma, I spent time with the investigators from the Tacoma Police Department off camera. In candid conversations about the case. The view was consistent. They share the opinion that Ted Bundy was solely responsible. Now that assessment isn't presented as a formal finding and it isn't a closed case declaration. It's the kind of conclusion investigators arrive at after decades of hindsight. But the truth remains elusive.
- [15:42]
Dr. Al Carlisle
All the way through high school, he was very, very lonely, very shy. He couldn't ask a girl for a date. He went to a dance, to high school dance, but that didn't amount to anything. But a couple of guys asked him to go skiing. He had got a book on skiing and he had learned to ski. And so he went skiing with him. And when he was up on the slopes, he was one of the guys. And this was a big turning point because now he was it. He was in, he was one of them.
- [16:21]
James Buddy Day
For the first time in his life, Bundy discovers something that works. Skiing gives him a way in. It teaches him how to blend, how to mirror, confidence, competence, ease. On the slopes, social rules are simple. Skill equals status. Silence reads as focus instead of awkwardness. For Bundy, it's not only a revelation, it introduces him to Taylor Mountain. Taylor Mountain is a rugged wooded area that's largely undeveloped. Imagine dense forest cut by logging roads and informal trails. It's close enough to town to be accessible, but isolated enough to disappear into later. It becomes something else entirely.
- [17:09]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Ted graduated high school. He went to University of Puget Sound for a year. He got a scholarship there.
- [17:21]
James Buddy Day
It's now 1966 and Bundy is developing the camouflage he'll use to hide his psychopathy. A college student. If you listen to our episode on the Grim Sleeper, you've already heard me talk about geographic profiling. The idea is simple. Offenders choose locations. They know the corners they watch, the places where they feel invisible. Victim encounters attack sites, disposal points. They all cluster inside that small comfort zone. Research consistently shows that most serial killers operate close to home. In one major study of 54 serial offenders, 87% of crime scenes fell within a five mile radius of the killer's residence. Ted Bundy follows this pattern precisely. He grows up in the university district. He understands these neighborhoods. He knows how to move through college campuses without drawing attention. He knows the rhythms, the class schedules, study halls, lunch, late nights, unlock doors. Campuses offer exactly what Bundy needs. Social trust and young people accustomed to strangers. And this camouflage doesn't just facilitate violence, it facilitates connection. While skiing, Bundy meets a fellow student named Diane Marjorie Jean Edwards.
- [18:53]
Dr. Al Carlisle
He wanted a politician's wife. He wanted someone who was beautiful and she was. He wanted someone who was intelligent and she was, you know, her father was the CEO of an international company and so they were quite wealthy, you know, and Ted was very poor. He falls head over heels in love with her. And she is the major turning point in his whole life.
- [19:26]
James Buddy Day
While his first serious girlfriend continues her studies at the University of Washington, Bundy begins to move freely between institutions. He transfers from the University of Puget Sound to the University of Washington and later spends time taking classes through Stanford University, including a brief summer session.
- [19:46]
Dr. Al Carlisle
He went to Stanford for the summer and he took classes in Chinese studies. And he really liked it. Boy, he was in his element then.
- [19:58]
James Buddy Day
New campuses mean new faces, new routines, and no long term accountability. At the same time, something darker is unfolding. Bundy begins to follow female students. He breaks into dormitories. And these intrusions aren't random. They're exploratory rehearsals. This is where he finds exhilaration. By this point, it's almost certain that Bundy is already hurting people. Though the specifics of when and how remain poorly understood even to this day. His movements during these years are fragmented, difficult to reconstruct, and largely self reported.
- [20:41]
Dr. Al Carlisle
There is one time that he had Molested a woman, possibly killed her. And he was driving away and he was crying because he felt. He felt so bad about what the direction his life was going, you know, and he rolled down the window and started throwing some of her things out. And it seems like he didn't really understand why he did, and which may sound rather ridiculous.
- [21:15]
James Buddy Day
By 1969, Ted Bundy is 22 years old, moving constantly, drifting between campuses, cities and states. He's exploring universities the way other people explore neighborhoods. By his own admission, Bundy is passing through New Jersey over Memorial day weekend of 1969. One week later, on Monday, June 2, 1969, the bodies of two young women are discovered hidden beneath piles of leaves in dense woods near Summers Point, about 200 yards from the Garden State Parkway and roughly 150 yards from their abandoned car.
- [21:58]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Memorial Day, 1969. He was going to drive a car back, he told me, back west. And he was out to New Jersey beach, and there were two girls out there, and he somehow got them to ride with him. He took them. He killed them both, you know, and I think that was a huge turning point.
- [22:26]
James Buddy Day
What matters here is the shift. The medical examiner later concludes that Susan Davis and. And Elizabeth Perry, both 19 years old, had been killed by stabbing several days earlier. The two women had been staying in Ocean City on vacation since the previous Tuesday. They were last seen leaving a diner together days before their bodies were discovered. But by this point, Bundy is fully engrossed in his fantasy world at the expense of the only real relationship and he's ever managed to achieve.
- [23:01]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Marjorie was up at the UW finishing out some classes, and she began cutting off the relationship little by little. Then finally she said to him, you know, I'm. I'm sorry, Ted. I'm not ready for a real serious relationship. Let's just be friends. And he, you know, that was it. That was. His whole world was absolutely destroyed at that point.
- [23:29]
James Buddy Day
Moving between campuses and cities gives him temporary trust and anonymity, but it also demands something that he can't sustain. His grades begin to slip. At one point, he's forced to drop out.
- [23:43]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Now he's applied to law schools, and University of Utah was one of them. He applied to six of them. He got turned down by five, and he took the lsat, got. Failed it twice. It was about two days after that that you have the first attempted homicide.
- [24:09]
James Buddy Day
On January 4, 1974, Bundy targets a young woman who embodies what he feels he's lost. A female student attending the University of Washington. He breaks into an apartment in the University district of Seattle, where he assaults a sleeping student named Karen Sparks. Miraculously, she survives, though with lifelong disabilities, the geography here matters. Sparks apartment is roughly one mile from the University of Washington, close enough to sit firmly inside Bundy's comfort zone. It's an area he knows intimately, an area where he still presents himself as a student, even though in reality that identity is fractured.
- [24:56]
Dr. Al Carlisle
There's a feeling of possession, and so that's what he was after.
- [25:04]
James Buddy Day
That word possession, that's key. By this point, Ted Bundy isn't seeking connection. He isn't even seeking validation. What he wants is ownership, control. Within weeks, the violence becomes unmistakable. On February 1st, Bundy abducts 22 year old Linda Ann Healy from her basement bedroom near the University of Washington. On March 12, he kidnaps Donna Gail Manson, 19 years old, as she walks to a concert at Evergreen State College. A month later, on April 17, Bundy lures Susan Elaine Rancourt, 18, from a meeting at Central Washington State College. On May 6, he abducts Roberta Kathleen Parks, 22, from Oregon State University. And on June 1, Brenda Carol Ball, 22, disappears after leaving the Flame Tavern in Buren.
- [26:06]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Ted's killing these people, and I think at that point, he can't stop. He's crossed the line. He's so addicted. I don't think he likes what he's doing, but he can't stop.
- [26:19]
James Buddy Day
The pattern is crystal clear, even if some of the details are not. We don't know precisely what route Bundy used in every case, but in some instances, witnesses report seeing him speaking with the women, often wearing a sling on his arm, sometimes asking for help. It's a performance designed to lower defenses, to appear harmless, to invite proximity.
- [26:45]
Dr. Al Carlisle
He goes into another and another and another and another. And each one of these, you can see they're well planned. He has a lot of confidence in what he's doing.
- [26:56]
James Buddy Day
What forensic evidence later establishes is consistent. In each case, Bundy incapacitates the victim inside his vehicle, then transports them to Taylor Mountain, the remote wooded area he knows so well. A short drive from where he often goes skiing.
- [27:15]
Dr. Al Carlisle
He would go back to Taylor Mountain, you know, when he lived up there, and visit the, the, the corpses.
- [27:25]
James Buddy Day
By the summer of 1974, Ted Bundy's violence escalates. On June 11, Bundy abducts Georgia Ann Hawkins, 18 years old, from the alley behind her sorority house near the University of Washington. This time, the geography changes. Bundy transports Hawkins east to the Issaquah area, into the forested foothills across the Cascades. It's wooded and remote, but it's not his original corridor. This isn't Taylor Mountain. This is outside his comfort zone. And that shift matters. It signals confidence, a willingness to travel farther, to manage greater risk, to operate beyond the spaces that he knows best. The fantasy is no longer contained. It's extreme, expanding.
- [28:15]
Dr. Al Carlisle
In the summer of 74, two girls went missing at Lake Sammamish.
- [28:22]
James Buddy Day
On July 14, 1974, Ted Bundy is seen by dozens of people approaching young women at Lake Sammamish. Lake Samamish is a sprawling state park east of Seattle, a summer gathering place with beaches, picnic areas, boat launches, and long sight lines. On warm weekends, it's crowded and loud, a place defined by visibility. That day, the park is packed. There are more than 40,000 people there. Families, students, couples, friends. It's the opposite of isolation. Early in the day, Bundy begins approaching young women in plain view of everyone around them. He introduces himself casually. His arm is in a sling. He asks for help unloading a sailboat.
- [29:17]
Dr. Al Carlisle
She went up to the parking lot with him. It wasn't there. The car was there. The boat wasn't. He says, oh, it's up in this little town. She says, I'm sorry, I've got someone coming. I can't help you. She went back.
- [29:29]
James Buddy Day
By this point, Ted Bundy has become so detached from other people that that he believes he's effectively invisible. When an eyewitness later describes him, he's reportedly shocked. Despite committing these crimes in front of more than 40,000 people and using his real name that matters. Bundy no longer feels the need to protect himself when his first approach fails. When one potential target escapes, Bundy doesn't even retreat. He escalates. In broad daylight, he abducts Janice and Ott, 23 years old. She's last seen leaving Lake Sammamish with Bundy.
- [30:12]
Dr. Al Carlisle
He went back to virtually the same spot, close enough for her to hear, and said to another girl, hi, my name is Ted. Could you help me? And she went to help him, and she disappeared. And that's how they came up with the name named Ted.
- [30:28]
James Buddy Day
Four hours later, he returns to the exact same spot, and he does it again. This time, he abducts Denise Marie Nazlan. 19. Two abductions. Same day, same location, same ruse.
- [30:43]
Dr. Al Carlisle
In Lake Sammamish. He kidnapped the one and then molested and killed her. Then he kidnapped the other.
- [30:51]
James Buddy Day
Bundy transports both women east into the forests near Issaquah. But in the weeks after Lake Sammamish, something shifts. Witnesses are talking and Investigators are converging. So Bundy does what he's done his entire adult life. He transfers to another school. Bundy leaves Washington and enrolls at the University of Utah College of Law. The move accomplishes several things at once. First, it puts physical distance between him and active investigations. It places him under a new institutional identity. A law student. He's ambitious and respectable once again. And second, it shifts him into an entirely different jurisdiction where no one is looking at him.
- [31:39]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Ted came down here to go to school at the University of Utah at the law school, and they sent a communique from up in Washington down says, hey, you've got a Ted Bundy down there that could possibly be a suspect in these. And there's a bunch of girls had
- [31:58]
James Buddy Day
been disappearing in Oregon and Utah. Ted Bundy continues. On October 1, he abducts Nancy Wilcox, 16 years old, from a shopping mall in Oregon. Seventeen days later, October 18, Bundy intercepts Melissa Ann Smith, 17, outside a pizza parlor as she's walking home. On October 31, Halloween night, he kidnaps Laura Ann Amy, also 17, as she heads home from a party. The pace is shocking. The victims are younger. The confidence is growing. A week later, on November 8, Bundy crosses another line outside a shopping mall in Utah. He poses as a police officer and targets Carol Durance, 18.
- [32:51]
Dr. Al Carlisle
He comes up and he identifies himself as a police officer from the Murray station. And he says, I think someone broke into your car. Do you have a Camaro? Yeah, I think someone broke into your car. Can you come and see if there's anything missing? Nothing's missing. He says, well, let's. Let's drive over to the police station. He pulls out these handcuffs and he starts slapping him on her.
- [33:17]
James Buddy Day
She manages to escape jumping from Bundy's vehicle after he mistakenly fastens a pair of handcuffs to the same wrist. It's a critical failure, a rare break in his control. But Bundy doesn't stop. Shortly afterward, he drives to a nearby middle school and abducts Deborah Jean Kent, 17, from the parking lot.
- [33:41]
Dr. Al Carlisle
I had another killer tell me, he says, when you're all worked up to do this type of thing and it doesn't go through, he says, you can't back off. You can't settle down. You can't let it go until you've done it.
- [34:04]
James Buddy Day
The victims are all left in wooded or remote areas. The methods are consistent. There's no serious question about who is responsible. But with each homicide, Bundy feels more invincible, confident that no one can stop him. By 1975, he's moving constantly through Utah, Colorado, Idaho, leaving a widening trail of violence behind him. On January 12, 1975, Bundy lures Karen Eileen Campbell, 23, from a hotel hallway in Snowmass Village, abducting her from the parking lot. Her body is later recovered a month later near a dirt road. On March 15, he takes Julie Lyle Cunningham, 26, while she's walking from her apartment to a local pub. Less than a month later, on April 6, Bundy stalks Denise Lynn Oliverson, 24, as she cycles towards her parents home in Grand Junction. Her body is never recovered. On May 6, he abducts Lynette Don Culver, 12, from an Almeida junior high school during her lunch break. Then on June 28, Bundy abducts Susan Curtis, 15, during a youth conference at Brigham Young University after she leaves her friends to return to her dorm. The geography is expanding, the age range is narrowing, the frequency is accelerating, and still no arrest. That finally changes in August of 1975. Bundy's first arrest doesn't come from a long investigation or a targeted manhunt. It comes completely by accident. Late one night in Murray, Utah, a patrol officer named Bob Hayward notices a Volkswagen Beetle driving erratically with its headlights off. He pulls the car over for a routine stop.
- [36:09]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Ted was off over here with his Volkswagen coming along with his lights off, smoking a joint. And as his Volkswagen is searched, they find an ice pick, they find a ski mask, they find a crowbar, they find some of these other things. And Howard thinks, well, this looks like burglary tools. So he arrests him.
- [36:31]
James Buddy Day
Bundy gives evasive answers. He's arrested on suspicion of kidnapping. And within days, Carol Durant identifies Bundy as her attacker. And it's this identification that changes everything. For the first time, investigators across Utah, Washington and Colorado begin actively sharing information. The fragmented pieces, the witness statements, the vehicle descriptions, the survivor testimony, it all starts to align on one person. After a four day bench trial and a weekend of deliberation, a judge finds Bundy guilty of kidnapping and assault. With that conviction secured, Bundy is transferred to Colorado to face murder charges for the first time. Now, we could spend an entire episode talking about Ted Bundy's escapes and his legal maneuvering, but the important part is this. On June 7, 1977, while preparing for trial, Bundy escapes by jumping from a second story window of the courthouse in Aspen, Colorado. He disappears into the surrounding mountains and remains at large for several days. Then something unexpected happens. Bundy walks himself back into town and turns himself in. But it's not because he couldn't Escape, it's because he was hungry and tired. Remember, Bundy doesn't experience fear or guilt in a way that would drive surrender. What he feels instead is irritation at the inconvenience. The escape stops being rewarding once it becomes physically unpleasant. This is a key feature of psychopathy, short term dominance over long term planning.
- [38:19]
Dr. Al Carlisle
When he went to Colorado and he escaped and he was caught, then he called me, we Talked for about 15 minutes on the phone. He says, I just wanted to know what you thought of my escape. You know, just like almost like someone calling their father and says, you know, I had a home run. I just want to know what you thought about it. And very friendly talk. Then he escaped again. Shortly after that.
- [38:47]
James Buddy Day
The second time, Bundy adapts. On December 30, 1977, Ted Bundy slips out of the Garfield county jail, exploiting his own familiarity with the system. This time, he doesn't head into the wilderness. He heads towards something much more familiar.
- [39:05]
Dr. Al Carlisle
When you escape the second time from jail, his objective was to go to South America, start all over again, give up contact with everyone, get himself another profession down there. Where'd he end up? Florida.
- [39:20]
James Buddy Day
After his second escape, before he ever reaches Florida, Ted Bundy puts the camouflage back on. Bundy surfaces in Ann Arbor, where he goes to a college bar and watches the Michigan Wolverines lose to the USC Trojans in the Rose Bowl. This matters. It tells us he isn't panicked, he isn't hiding. In fact, he almost gets in a bar fight while watching the game. He's doing what he's always done, placing himself in student environments where he knows how to blend, where his age and demeanor do not stand out, where no one asks questions. From there, he steals a car, he takes a bus, and eventually he arrives at Florida State University. Once again, he presents himself as a law student, steals another car and breaks into dormitories. He takes valuables and credit cards.
- [40:19]
Dr. Al Carlisle
Ted said at one time, he says, you know, I can be here talking to you and then I can be gone and you won't find me me.
- [40:29]
James Buddy Day
One week later, Ted Bundy commits the act that finally shatters any remaining illusion of control. Shortly before 3am Bundy breaks into the Chy Omega sorority house at Florida State University through a rear door. Once inside the house, he moves from room to room. Two young women, Margaret Elizabeth Bowman, 21, and Lisa Janet Levy, 20, are killed in their sleep. Two others, Kathleen Kleiner and Karen Chandler, both 21, are brutally injured but survive. This attack is different from everything that came before. It's Loud, it's chaotic. It leaves witnesses. About a month later, on February 8th, Bundy steals a floor Florida State University van and drives roughly 150 miles east to Jacksonville. In a parking lot, he approaches a 14 year old girl falsely identifying himself as a fire department official. The encounter ends abruptly when her older brother intervenes. But that same day, Bundy doubles back to Lake City. And the following morning at Lake City Junior High School, he poses as a teacher and removes Kimberly Diane Leach, 12 years old, from her homeroom. Her remains are found in a rural area outside the city. This crime marks the final collapse. A week later, Bundy is arrested for the final time. Once again, it's not through a sweeping manhunt, but after being stopped for suspicious driving behavior.
- [42:14]
Dr. Al Carlisle
When he got picked up by the police, he wrote a letter and he said, what's happening to me is like an alcoholic. He says, I would find myself following girls around campus at night and I didn't want to do it, but I couldn't not do it. I couldn't stop. No. So that, just that, that type, it gets to a point that a person say, okay, how do I stop? Could I stop? Can I ever stop? You know, and if so, what do I have to do?
- [42:55]
James Buddy Day
After his final arrest in Florida In February of 1978, Ted Bundy is tried, convicted and sentenced to death for multiple murders. His trials are highly publicized and marked by Bundy's insistence on representing himself, by repeated attempts to manipulate the court. After years on death row and numerous appeals, Bundy is executed by the electric chair at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989. But the takeaway from this man's life is that Tim, Ted Bundy didn't emerge fully formed psychologically. He was vulnerable early, detached, inward, struggling to regulate shame and envy. That vulnerability was compounded by an unstable childhood marked by secrecy, disruption and emotional distance. Out of that mix came a recurrent fantasy. Success, admiration and power. A version of himself, himself that felt untouchable. But fantasy alone isn't dangerous. What changed is that the fantasy attached itself to what he could not have. Young women, college students, Lives that symbolize status, belonging and choice. The scary truth is Bundy wasn't invisible because he was brilliant. He was invisible because the system wasn't built to see someone like him. And by the time anyone understood what they were looking at, the line Al Carlile talked about, the one you can't cross back from, was already far behind him.
- [44:39]
Dr. Al Carlisle
See, with Ted, it's a feeling that there's a dark side which you've created over time, and it gets more and more and more more powerful, that there's a competition, so to speak, between the dark side and the good side. Every time they're in it, they're feeling a sense of power.
- [45:05]
James Buddy Day
Before we wrap up, a quick note. If this case pulled you in, if you're interested in the psychology behind someone like Bundy, then my book might interest you. It's called Charles Manson the Last Words. It goes deep into that world. It's built from years of research and direct interviews with members of the Manson family, including Manson himself. And if you want more beyond the episodes, there's a lot waiting for you inside Unmarked Case Files. It's our research portal where you can go through documents, extended interviews, and the material behind these stories. Now, Unmarked takes a ton of work to produce. Every episode comes out of one weeks of research, documents, interviews, and we're starting to work with advertisers to support that work. But if you'd rather listen without ads and get early access to all the episodes, you can join us inside Unmarked Case Files. If you're already there. Thank you. It genuinely helps keep this research going. This episode of Unmarked was produced by John Nadeau and edited by Dave Alderson. Our additional producer is Jesse Demarais. Until next week, this is Unmarked.