Ted Bundy

[Are_grits_groceries]

There is a kerfuffle over the Bundy series with Zac Efron. People are accusing the producers of romanticizing him.
Bundy was handsome and charming. It is a shock to see what he really was. They have stayed as true to the story as they can. I know it makes it that much scarier.
Once again, people want history sanitized. History would never be studied if a lot of it was presented true to form in front of our eyes.
If the Bundy series does one thing, it should show that what you perceive as perfect may not be so.
He was a conman extraordinaire who was mixed with murder.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. What history can we learn from Ted Bundy?

If the Bundy series does one thing, it should show that what you perceive as perfect may not be so.

The problem is, it's presented as a lesson women need to learn because he was good-looking and charming, when police incompetence (largely male) and institutionalized male supremacy (rewarding mediocrity) is a lesson men should learn as well. Would a series about Jeffrey Dahmer be produced the same way?

It's shot as entertainment. That's not history.

[thucythucy]

7. Excellent post.

"..when police incompetence (largely male) and institutionalized male supremacy (rewarding mediocrity)" is the lesson to be learned.

Jeffrey Dahmer was also given a pass by the police. Without white privilege he would have been caught far earlier than he was.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

18. White privilege, plus the disinclination of the police to get involved with gay people hurting gay

people.

[Aristus]

2. Romanticizing?

Thirty years ago, Ted Bundy was played by Mark Harmon.

Are they supposed to cast an ugly actor because his actions were ugly? There's some Victorian thinking right there...

[Johnny2X2X]

3. Sickening

Bundy has never been portrayed accurately as the total monster he was. Even the recent Netflix documentary barely talked about his victims, it was focused more on his celebrity. And through his whole trial he was given a platform to get exactly what he wanted, attention.

He was a necrophiliac, that's the essence of him. He and Dahmer were the same, yet if you mention Dahmer, everyone knows exactly what he was, but mention Bundy and most don't know that. They both killed innocents so they could have sex with their dead bodies. It was an act of dominance and possession to both of them. Most people don't know that Bundy returned to the bodies of the women he killed to have sex with them, sometimes several times until they were too putrid for him. Most don't know he collected the heads of several of his victims and kept them at home. Most don't know he'd dress up the bodies and put makeup on them, or did their nails. He took photos too.

Bundy was worse than Dahmer really, Dahmer seemed to kill because he was lonely, Bundy killed because he hated women. Bundy's entire killing career was about rage against women and wanting to totally dominate them. Both were control freaks.

[3catwoman3]

4. I have read Ann Rule's...

...The Stranger Beside Me several times, and I recall no mention of those details you just passed on.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. That's because Ann Rule is an unreliable narrator for that book, a contract for which she had

signed before they knew Ted Bundy was the killer. After his conviction, she considered including chapters *written by him* in the book.

[JenniferJuniper]

8. They were friends before he started murdering women

Weird.

The Netflix documentary is pretty good. Made by the same filmmaker who made the non-documentary film.

[Johnny2X2X]

6. Then her book was inaccurate or left that out because it was too disturbing

Bundy's crimes were disgusting and beyond brutal. And he likely murdered children as young as 8, that tidbit gets left out a lot too.

[JenniferJuniper]

14. I don't think he did that murder when he was a kid.

Read a book about it. There is really nothing connecting him to it.

He did brutally murder a 12 year old - his last murder.

While he had mommy issues I don't think he starting fully hating women until after a break up with his first serious girlfriend.

[Johnny2X2X]

17. Bundy mentioned some of his victims were very young

When he was confessing he said he wouldn't talk about some of his victims because they were very young. So he probably had victims younger than 12.

What's totally unacceptable is that he escaped, twice. After the 2nd time he escaped he got away clean and went to Florida and killed some more. If he had been a better driver he would have not been caught for much longer. He was the most dangerous possible inmate and the podunk CO town jail he was in was staffed by imbeciles who gave him free run of a library where his first escape occurred from. And then didn't even bother to regularly check his jail cell to see if he was digging a hole in it for his second escape. I hope their incompetence kept every jailer up at night for the rest of their lives.

As far as White Privilege goes, he definitely benefited from it. He was suspected by dozens of law enforcement officials of the worst possible crimes and just moved around the country freely. If he had been a minority or a woman, they would have found something to keep him in jail for while they gathered the evidence to prosecute him. They never even searched his apartment in Seattle where he sometimes had heads, and kept keepsakes from his victims because, "they had no grounds to get a search warrant."

[milestogo]

9. Bundy did not dismember his victims like Dahmer did.

Bundy raped them after they were dead, Dahmer had consensual sex with his victims and murdered them so they wouldn't leave him. Dahmer knew he was sick. Bundy was a total con artist who thought he was smarter than everyone.

[thucythucy]

11. Dahmer usually raped his victims.

Including, as I recall, under-age adolescents.

[mercuryblues]

20. Yes he did

he decapitated several and kept their heads in his apt for a while.

[milestogo]

21. ok... but no parts in the refrigerator

I guess its impossible to say who was worse. But Dahmer did fess up to everything, and I don't think Bundy ever did.

[thucythucy]

10. The urge to romanticize men who commit monstrous deeds

is just weird. Are there similarly romanticized accounts about Lizzy Borden?

And it's been going on forever. Jessie James was a racist thug who murdered people in cold blood. His victims were almost always unarmed and helpless. Yet the mythology about him being some kind of Robin Hood of the Wild West goes back a century or more.

[Johnny2X2X]

13. Agree

Likewise with Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger.

With Bundy though, he was the literal worst monster the country has known, and he was worshiped by the media.

I don't know if anyone else has ever lost a loved one to violent crime, but I have. The anger and despair you feel during the court proceedings is too much to bear at times. I cannot imagine what the families of these 30+ victims went through seeing the circus that was going on around Bundy. And now to see him in movies and still not being shown for the coward and animal that he was. Those families are still suffering.

The only punishment Bundy received was finally having the spotlight taken from him with the death penalty, and an incident in prison where other inmates doled out their own justice. He loved every second of everything else.

[Drunken Irishman]

22. There aren't many female serial killers for one...

But yes, absolutely, Hollywood sexualizes and romanticizes fictional female killers. There's a whole sub-genre of erotic thrillers that do just that.

[GusBob]

24. The Night Stalker, Ramirez

In prison got thousands of love letters. Naked pics

Who is romanticizing whom?

[mercuryblues]

12. Monsters do not look or act like monsters

should be the lesson. Instead of complaining about how he is portrayed, they should be emphasizing serial killers don't look like the depraved monsters they are. They look and act normal, which is how they can con their way into your space.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

16. Funny, when women talk about needing to be on guard around men, they're mocked for being

overreactive, judgmental and misogynistic. It's like they just can't win!

[elfin]

15. I always thought Bundy looked like George W

Albeit a slimmer face. But no one seemed to agree with me and I thought it was so evident.

[MyNameGoesHere]

19. The only thing I learned from that series

Bundy was a republican.

[GusBob]

23. O! Ted Bundy! O how do I love thee!

In the past week the superlatives to describe this monster make me vomit

O he was so handsome! Just dreamy!
O he was so charming! A regular Romeo!
O so witty! O so intelligent!
O he was just a regular guy!

O the women fell for him! O fell for his charm!

Fuck that shit sideways