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You are now listening to True Murder the most Shocking Killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them, Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, BTK. Every Week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with Your host journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good Evening, Ted Bundy Examining the Unconfirmed Survivors' Stories is the first publication to collate the known and frequently discussed stories of those individuals who share their encounters with Ted Bundy decades after the execution of the serial killer. It compares these reports with data compiled by investigators, psychologists, and contemporaries of Ted Bundy as found in police files, psychological assessments,
and relevant literature. Includes thorough investigations into the accounts of Blondie singer Debbie Harry, Ronda Stapley, Sarah a survivor so Trea Chritsonis, as well as numerous other unconfirmed survivors. Features the self debunked story of a woman who had previously believed to be a Ted Bundy survivor delves into the possible motivations of deliberate and indeliberate victim players, as well as doctor Elizabeth Loftus Discoveries of the malleability of human memory.
Aaron Banks, who is meant who was mentored by Ted Bundy expert Kevin M. Sullivan previously controls Bit a chapter to the author's sixth book on the case, The Enigma of Ted Bundy, The Questions and Controversies surrounding America's most infamous serial killer. Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for this interview, Aaron Banks.
Thank you.
Now, Aaron, for this book Ted Bundy, examining the unconfirmed survivors stories. You state right initially in the book for people that might want to know why this publication.
Yes, I do. It was important for me to write this book to do justice to the entire case and especially the actual and confirmed victims, everybody who worked on this case, psychologists and law enforcement, because I think that these new claims by the unconfirmed survivors are important to invest the gate and to really look into to see if they actually hold up under scrutiny, because they're comparing themselves to the actual confirmed victims and that is a heavy subject.
Absolutely, you include the confirmed survivors, Karen Sparks Epley, Carol de Ranch, Kathy Kleiner, Karen Chandler Pryor, and Cheryl Thomas.
Yes I do, and many many others. Of course, many of the victims who did not survive, But as for the survivors that we know of, those are the names. Of course, we can always count people like Leslie Parmenter who had a run in with Bundy, who certainly would have been a victim, similarly to Kim Leech, who was not as fortunate, and other people who went to the
police after Bundy had approached them. For instance, on the night of Susan Rancourt's abduction on April seventeenth, nineteen seventy four, there were at least two other women who came forth and reported to police. There was a young man and he seemed really strange. He was very nervous. He tried to get me to take his books to his car, and who later ran off in fright because he was
just acting very oddly. And thanks to them, we know exactly how many women he must have tried this routine, his different ruses with over the years.
Now, you say that there was many questions you wanted to explore, and obviously you wanted to investigate these claims to their fullest yes. But also you talked about the mythologializing, mythologicalizing of Ted Bundy.
Well, this is something that I just witnessed in the groups. When I first joined Facebook and got into Ted Bundy, I saw exactly how many people there are still buying into these common myths about the door handle being not in place when he did his abductions, which is not true, as we know from Carol Deran, who's a survivor, and after talking to Volkswagon, it became very evident that this could not be a true claim. Right. Other things were he killed only women with dark hair. This is also
something that is not correct. If you look at the photos of the victims, you can very clearly see that they had all types of different hair colors, hair does, and so forth. So this was just one part, of course. Another part is there is a group of people who
are deeply enmeshed with Bundy. In fact, they claim to be in love with him, and I think by highlighting exactly what he did and how brutally he was, how merciless in his approach, we can help these people maybe see a little clearer that there's nothing to actually be enmeshed with there's no romantic Bundy, no misunderstood folk ravel. There's really just the killer.
Right now. You examined some stories and I was surprised to have this story included because I had Ronda Stapleon with her book I think in twenty sixteen when it was released. I survived Ted Bundy, the attack, escape and PTSD that changed my life. You say that her publication divides the Bundy community in equal parts to this day, Explain explain that for us?
Well, when I still had the online group where we studied Bundy together and whenever Ronda Stapley came up, it was very clear that there were was this camp of people who thought, you can never ever question somebody who claims that they were attacked and also raped and almost escaped the killer. And those who said, but wait a minute,
we still have a couple of questions. If psychologists and law enforcement ask questions, then why can't we, I mean, should we not hold ourselves to the same standard and say, well, we're not saying you weren't attacked, be it by Bundy or somebody else, but there are certain parts, their components in your story that just cannot have happened that way. Can we just take a look at this together. So those two camps are still at war with each other in the Bundy community.
Unfortunately, what was it about you? You mentioned things about the door handle in some of these would be survivors' stories. Tell us what you had issue with Ronda's story completely?
Well, that is actually my longest chapter. And I read her book about four or five times, also together with friends of mine, just to see if maybe they came up with different results, you know, to their research. Could this have happened? Could this not have happened? And the door handle certainly is one of the things that do not make sense, especially like I said, because I contacted Volkswagen, and because you cannot remove just the outer part or the inner part of the door handle and think that
it will still be operable and still stick. That does not make sense. It just doesn't work. And I've tried this at home myself. Another thing was her claim that she had broken two of her ribs. That I absolutely believe she suffered a horrendous attack. But the problem with that is that my mother broke her ribs just last year, and even without that, I know that you cannot move when you break your ribs. You can hardly even breathe.
So for her to say that she walked home after her struggle in the river, where she also says she was unconscious for several minutes, it's just a little strange. She says that she continued to go to classes and move about quite normally. In fact, she even went on to jog late at night because that was her way of dealing with the trauma that she had suffered from the attack. That she she stayed she went through. This is just one of the many things that don't really
work out. I don't know if there's just a timeline error. Maybe she felt like this happened just a couple of days after or that she went to classes the day after the attack happened, and in truth it was several weeks. I mean, trauma works in mysterious ways. I cannot say that. All I can say is the way she wrote it in her book just doesn't make sense. Because I talked to different psychologists, to hospitals, to doctors, and they all
told me the same thing. If you break your ribs, you cannot breathe, you cannot move, you cannot go for jobs late at night.
What's interesting about Ronda's book is that it seems to have an endorsement to some level of credibility Anne Rule, which seems for all intensive purposes, she was the resident expert before Kevin Sullivan came around, people taking her word as gospel. So what is it about what Anne Rule had said about her credibility? What? How do you well?
I mean? And Rule certainly was an authority when it came to anything Bundy, certainly, but she was also just another person. So just because she says, well, I find this person credible and this other person didn't make it into my book because she mentions a couple of survivors stories that you know, when women contacted her to talk
about it, that she thought were realistic. I don't know what standards she had or what methods she applied to verify these stories, whether it was just you know, the tone of voice, or whether she actually looked into the timelines, the dates, the years, and all the things that I did. I looked at weather, at charts, I looked at the speed limit in New York City when looking into Debbie Harry's story. So I did a lot to actually try
to find out could this have happened? I'm not saying that anvul didn't, but maybe she just came to different conclusions than I did.
Let's move on to another person that claims to have encountered Ted Bundy, so Tria chritsnis Yeah. In early twenty eighteen, Heiro Channel seven Washington State News Agency conducted an interview with so Tria. What was it about what she had to say? Tell us what she said and what problems you had with her account?
Well, she also repeated some of the claims that Rondas Stapley had. The stories in fact seemed somewhat similar, and that could be indicative of hey, maybe they're telling the truth, but it could also mean well, maybe Siritria Critsonas was influenced by Stapley's story and sort of built her a narrative around that. I don't know which is true. I'm again, I'm never saying that this didn't happen. I'm just pointing
out the things that could not be true. I mean, I'm asking you and everybody who listens to this, how likely is it that an experienced killer gets somebody in his car then decides, oh, well, I don't like her haircut, So I'm just gonna let her out in front of the university building on campus where hundreds of people are watching on He shoves her out of the car onto the hard ground, giving everybody time to look at him. The car, the plates right. I just don't see it.
I just don't see that personally. Plus the problem was with the university that it very likely was closed on that day because it was a bad snow day, and a friend of mine back then looked up snow days during that time and especially in January and February, and basically half the city is closed at that point, even the universities. The buses do not run. So that's another factor that made me go, naw, I don't know if she's maybe confusing something there.
What about the idea do you discuss as well? The idea that they didn't report these incidents to police or authorities. Ronda didn't and so Tria didn't as well.
Yes, many of them did not. And I find that very bothersome because, as I mentioned in my book, I'm also a survivor, and the first thing I thought was, I do not want this to happen to another living person. So the fact that they didn't go to police, p I understand that, especially in the seventies, it was a
different time. There was a lot of shame involved. People were also partly more religious, as in Ronda Stapley's case sheep in race in Utah after all, but still, I mean, can you really live with yourself knowing that this person is out there, there's a rapist and possibly a killer because he abducted you, so it's likely that he will let you live after this encounter. Can you really live with yourself doing this? This is kind of what I
have the problem with. Another thing is that this is just a little too convenient for me because all of the evidence that they stated that they had on their bodies and about this encounter is of course gone forever. Ronda Stapley disposed of her clothes in a dumpster. Citria Critzonis didn't talk to any of her classmates about this. Somebody surely must have witnessed that and said, hey, you know, I'll a come to the police, let's get this guy. Nobody did that. I just think it's odd.
Right now you talk about another would be survivor, Mitzi Beader Herb's story and that she was presidently samam Ashes on July fourteenth, nineteen seventy four. Yeah, what did she have to say? And what were you as you write, what were you sort of offended by one of her statements?
Well, I mean, I'm not su sure I was offended, but I just thought that in her case, it was very obvious she didn't have a story to tell right off the bat. When the interviewer, Mason Weaver I think his name was, asked her about the encounter, her eyes
went blank. She sort of panicked, and then went on to describe everything that happened that day, what she was wearing, what they were doing at the lake, what it was usually like at the lake, that she wanted to sell a horse, and that she wasn't feeling too well that day,
but nothing really about Bundy. And when she finally got back to Bunny, she couldn't actually remember the encounter and then seemed to this is my personal opinion, it seemed to draw from Bundy lore bundy mythology saying while his eyes changed color, they got really dark and he got really mean. That struck me a little bit as odd, because this certainly was a traumatic encounter for twelve year old girl to have. If a grown man approaches you and tries to get you to go someplace with him,
and then acts very aggressively towards you. I think that in her case, it became very clear that she was all about the ultimate message. Her message was be aware of your surroundings, right, always have somebody with you, have somebody know where you are, be careful out there, especially as a girl, as a little girl, and as a woman. And she also drove that home as well as the
interviewer did at the end of the interview. And I still felt like, but she didn't actually tell us anything about Bundy, right, It was really just the message that she had, which is a good one, really it is. And I think it's important to teach both girls and also little boys that because boys are also getting victimized. But I just think that it wouldn't have needed a creation or a possible creation of yet another Bundy story to drive that point home.
Absolutely. You cite another person, Victoria lh those initials. Yeah, and you call it more of a leaflet than a book, conquering the Haunting Memories of Ted Bundy, the thirty pages of her encounter and how it influenced her life. What did you have to say about this in terms of the plausibility.
Well, with Victoria, it became evident that she talked or wrote like a person who may have a unique perspective of reality. Again, I'm not trying to ever diagnose somebody, but from my personal experiences and reading, she seemed rather delusional in her thinking and very disorganized in her speech
at times. For instance, she claimed things about Bundy that were simply just odd, like he was driving by when she was out walking, and then he was driving back and forth with his genitals waving out of the window. I mean, first of all, that's some impressive contortionism right there, right.
But also she later stated that when she gave her statement to police, they had organized a class field trip so she could give a statement because they had agreed they wouldn't tell her parents about it, but she still needed to obviously come down and make a report. I mean, first of all, the police just doesn't work like that,
not even in the seventies they didn't. And then the forensic psychologist that allegedly was at the station acted as a Hollywood agent, asking her if it could note down her name real quick in case they ever made movies about Ted Bunny the serial killer, which in the seventies early seventies. He was not He wasn't known as anything
back then. And ten years later, she had moved to a different city and suddenly, while she was out about walking yet again, a police officer stops her saying, hey, aren't you the girl that had that run in with Ted Bundy. She was in a different city. This was a completely different police officer than any of the ones that she had seen or met at the station ten years ago. That police officer also only stopped her to offer her a chance to appear in a movie right
that they were making about Ted Bundy. There's yeah, there's a lot wrong with that. And she later went on to admit in her leaflet or book that she had had surgery and it left her chemically unbalanced and with some problems with memory. She couldn't remember the incident with Bundy for decades after just suddenly from one day to
the next. That's not really how trauma or amnesia works for once, but her admission that there was something going on with her memory, with her brain, with amnesia, that she had had surgery pointed to her maybe having more of a psychological issue with you know, how she views reality.
Yes, and she claimed that she just demanded to be let go by Ted Bundy, and so she was.
That was so horrible. I mean, I'm really trying to be especially fair and sort of a little more gentle with the people who may suffer from delusional beliefs. But I think that's a terrible thing to say, because I think we all know if you are in a serial killer's car, if a serial killer has you and you just a man let me go, you will let me go. That's not going to happen. So to insinuate, well, the others were basically just too stupid or not daring enough
to free themselves and not die. They should have just told him they would leave right now is just awful.
Yes. Absolutely, Let's talk about a famous person's claim. Oh yeah, I've encounter with Ted Bundy. And that's Debbie Harry from Blondie, the singer from Blondie, right, And she says that this was in the early seventies, And you talk about her initial statement and then the new interview in twenty twenty. Tell us what she had to say about her encounter with Ted Bundy and where this was.
Well, back then she was in New York City, she lived in the Village neighborhood back then, and she wanted to go to an after hours club, so obviously it was at night. She also says that when a small white car pulled up next to her and the driver first offered and then insisted she get into his car, that it was extremely hot and stuffy in the car, and that he was had a terrible odor. I mean, first of all, if it was so hot in the car, how exactly did that happen? Because it was late at
night in New York City. I looked up how hot it was back in the seventy seventy one, seventy two, seventy three. Because she didn't really give an exact year at first, and also not an exact month later when she said it was nineteen seventy sharp, the average temperature in the summers was about seventy five degrees, so at night, you can imagine it was not that hot. It was already cooler. Why was it that hot in the car.
Of course, she needed that element in her story, is my personal opinion, because she needed to credibly state or sell that she reached through the open window, which was really just I think she says eight inches or ten inches wide open, and then freed herself by reaching towards the door handle and being catapulted from the car. So all of this kind of goes hand in hand. It had to be hot, the window had to be opened just a little bit so she could reach through the window.
And I actually tested this out and it doesn't work the way that she says. I had a friend who has an original nineteen sixty eight a Volkswagen Beetle test this out for me and almost damage her car in the process. I damaged my mother's car in the process, and actually cracked the window because I reached through the hole, tried to reach the door handle, couldn't. My weight shifted, my head bumped into the ceiling of the car, the roof of the car, and well the window cracks and
I almost got thrown under the wheels. Basically, so none of this can really have happened the way that she says. But that's also that's really just one element of the various other things that sounded a little odd.
M hm.
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of levels and more to come. So Best Fiends is there for me, with always a new challenge and a great mental escape. Download Best Themes free today on the App Store or Google Play. That's Friends without the R Best Themes. Now, Aaron, we were talking about all of the survivors or the would be survivors, their claim that they survive an encounter with Ted Bundy.
We have you talk.
About Mally clop story, Elizabeth's daughter Mollie and her story. Yeah, tell us about the updated and the second edition of The Fantom Prince My Life with Ted Bundy by Elizabeth Klopfer and what this addition was by her daughter explained right.
So, in early twenty twenty, the new version of The Phantom Prince came out. It was updated, had yet another chapter by Elizabeth Klepfer, and also a surprise edition by Mollie,
and Mollie made a few very shocking revelations. First of all, that Bundy had not been the loving family man that he had been portrayed as, that he was abusive emotionally, physically towards her and also sexually, and she went into detail about one encounter that she had with him where he sexually molested her, which caused huge ruckus in the Bundy community and also yet again dividing the community, splitting them right down the middle of people who said, yes,
we had always seen this coming. Many of us had suspected that there was way more to this story because serial killers, of course, very often have a facade of family, tried to portray themselves as normal people with the normal life. But if you go into the stories of the family members, for example, Melissa Moore, Keith Jasperson's daughter, or btk's daughter. There were always signs it was not all as peachy as it was made out to be, and the same
happened with Bundy. I had been awfully criticized when I once wrote an article for the Crime Piper Blow about my theory that Ted Bundy was actually a Heba file and a fabo file, which is a person who's attracted to minors. Now that's not the same as a pedophile, because they're attracted to ubescent children ages usually thirteen and up.
And I had written about, you know, his younger victims, because many people believe that Kim Leech was his only underage victim she was twelve years old, and that it had happened in sort of a frenzy because he was in a psychotic bipolar state in Florida he was desperate to kill. But no, he had had many underage victims, at least eight that we know of, which include the fifteen year old unnamed Idaho hitchhiker right that he confessed
to killing. So there was definitely something there in the fact that he later claimed wellography made me do it, which is very debatable. But no pornography had ever been found at his residences, not in Washington, not in Utah, not anywhere. Instead, he had always been a fan of cheerleader magazines. Now we all know how old a cheerleader on those magazines or in those magazines usually are.
So you're saying too that with people that were for some reason committed to disagreeing with you, that he could have been had an interest in young girls.
Yeah.
The idea that which you also write about is Burgling Berlingers. Berlinger's movie project was purported to be from the perspective of Elizabeth, and so you talk about those circumstances in which this movie was made which are contrary to that, and then you offer the explanation why Mollie is likely not lying when her motivation is h is not suspect. So please explain that as you do.
In the book. Yeah, exactly. There were many people who said, well, she just did it for money, She's just money hungry, and so's her mother. But those were the same people who had completely guzzled up the stories of the other unconfirmed survivors, not accusing them of being money hungry and just going for a quick cash grab. The thing with Mollie and Elizabeth Klepfer is that they were silent for decades. There were many people who contacted them, a couple that
I'm friends with, and they were shot down. They just wanted nothing to do with anything Bundy. They could have made millions in those decades, they did not. They only came forth with the second Edition and the Amazon Prime documentary by tish Wood, after Berlinger had decided, well, I'm just gonna make a movie and I'm gonna portray Bundy like a family man and a heart throb. And look what a great time Elizabeth and Ted had as a couple.
It was very odd to see that, and because of course he hadn't asked Elizabeth Klepper or even her daughter what their input was. If they were okay with this project, you just went for it. And so the only chance that they got to sort of change the narrative and sort of rectify the mistakes made in this movie was to come out with the second edition, A Phantom Prince and the new documentary, and there they told it as it was that Bunny was a terrible person inside out,
even as a private person. There was no loving Ted, there was no good guy Ted. He was really just the monster with them as well.
To add more credibility to this as well, you talk about a documentary with doctor Dorothy ottno lewis crazy not insane about the prospect or the idea that he molested at least one of his own two sisters while he was a teen can explain?
Yeah, yes, I think the documentary came out in November twenty nineteen and that was a completely new and shocking revelation by doctor Atna Lewis that Bunny had told her he had once molested at one of his sisters when he was a teen. And you know, looking at the ages of his sisters, they were obviously a whole lot younger. So is this maybe where his pedophile or hebephile urgis started. You know, he stayed on that same level. Many people said he was always like a twelve year old boy.
Basically you can see his behavior in court. He was just impulsive. He acted very immaturely, and maybe that's exactly because something happened to him when he was a child where he basically he was an arrested development. Right. We know that his grandfather was very violent, very brutal. He was cruel towards animals. He kicked one of his daughters
down the stairs because she'd overslept. Very obviously, he was not fond of the idea that his daughter brought home a so called bastard, because of course, back in the day, that's what they were called. Bunyoways said that he had such a happy childhood growing up up with his grandparents thinking they were his parents. I just don't see that,
because nobody could corroborate that. I think that something happened to him, whatever it was, if it was physical or even sexual violence, that sort of stunted his emotional development and turned him into what he ultimately became.
You talk about some things that you discovered, and you write in this book about his upbringing and some of the controversy with his grandfather, Samuel Cowell and his influence on Ted Bundy, and so as you as you do in the book, tell us what you think was that influence.
Well, I think that we know by now that it's not that somebody is born bad. Somebody may be born with a predisposition to men illness. Somebody may be born with a brain that functions differently. So maybe have the brain of what we call a psychopath, some with antisocial personality disorder or another personality disorder, whatever cluster that is ABC. But that's not enough to actually activate somebody into erupting and violence. It would have taken more than that. It
would have taken a neglectful or violent upbringing. We know that he was neglected or felt neglected because his parents were working. His mom remarried, married Johnny Bundy, and immediately had another child, and another child and another child, and Ted sort of became the substitute father. So he never
really felt like he received that love and care. And he even remarked this later on to doctor Carlisle during the psychological assessment, and that he felt really sorry about the fact that he could never really talk to his mother about his dad. You know, he questions about his heritage, where he came from, or about anything personal or emotional. They just talked about different subjects, but it never got personal. So it's made me strange for ordinary people to hear.
But this type of neglect already would have been enough. I mean, if you look at cases like Jeffrey Dahmer, he didn't have an abusive upbringing, but he was severely neglected or felt very neglected as well. And sometimes it takes just that. But in Ted's case, he also suffered from an early identity crisis because he'd been raised thinking that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was a sister. Now, if you tell a little boy at the age of three four, well, these are not
your your actual parents. And by the way, i'm your mother, and I'm taking you all the way from Philadelphia to Tacoma now where you're gonna live with me. Oh and by the way, I'm also changing your last name. You're not a Cowl anymore. You're a Nelson now. And then shortly after he gets yet another new name. That does something to a child. I mean, he just you can't catch up, You can't catch catch a break. Basically, who are you? He always had this, this identity crisis. He
struggled with who he was. And that's also that becomes evident in the ruses that he used and the way that he behaved in court as opposed to you know, with his girlfriends, for example, where he was extremely immature and through temper tantrums and so forth. So and of course the violence that he may have experienced at the hands of Sam Cowell. His grandfather also didn't help, So I think it's all factors that played into this absolutely.
You also talk in cite doctor Elizabeth Loftus and that you say that memories change over time and why eyewitness testimonies are not reliable. Can you touch on that for us?
Yes, Well, Elizabeth Loftus has dedicated her entire life to studying memory basically, and she did a study I think in nineteen seventy four, even with a colleague of hers, John Palmer, and she wanted to prove how leading questions used during eyewitness interviews can influence and alter memory basically. So the I think it was forty students participating in this experiment were shown a brief clip of a car collision, and after that they were separated and we're asked to
describe the collision. And when Loftus used more emotionally lame words when she talked about tell me what it was like when the car smashed into each other. Smashed that is obviously a very emotional word. When she said, tell me what happened when the cars connected with each other, that influenced the eyewitness testimonies. So the next time she asked the people where she had used the word smashed, she said, was there a glass? Did you see glass
on the ground? Or did the windshield break? And they all said yes, So their memory had been altered. They heard the word smash. That changed something of how they preceived the entire accident or the clip, and then it sort of spiraled from there.
You talk about as well that you talk about him being in a victim, and we talked about Ted Bundy being an unconverned victim of Samuel Cowell and his and his life growing up. You also talk about Bundy also some of the statements he made, or pardon me, that Anne Ruhl made about the idea that he picked his victims with the long hair. Again, you just put that to rest, to spell that that notion. Tell us what you found out about that idea.
About the hair idea, or about more. Okay, Well, it didn't really take a whole lot because I just looked at every available victim photo. So I looked through the police files and used Google and did everything to just get my hand on as many photos as possible and also see if I could date those photos. And of course what became evident is, first of all, they were not all dark haired. There were blond ones, brunettes, and different shades dark brown, even people with blackish brown hair,
different lengths of hair. Now, of course, we always have to take into account that Lisa Levi had shorter hair when she was attacked, but that was not his usual. He didn't really use his usual mo here. That was a blitz attack. It was dark in the room. I don't think that he was going through the rooms and seeing is that my type? Am I going to kill her? He was just in a complete frenzy. But with the other girls, you know, I absolutely believe that he had a type. I mean, you just have to look at
his girlfriends. Diane Edwards had brown hair and Elizabeth Klapfer had here. So yeah, he probably was into pronounced. But when the kill urge emerged and he couldn't get his hands on so many that he had pre selected, then he just went for anybody that would go with him. Anybody that was pretty, that was a woman that was Caucasian. Sure, but the hair color was like the least of his issues. Are the things that really mattered to him.
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No, we're necessarily detail revoid, where every if I lost the terms conditions eighteen plus.
Now we talked about you talk about things in this book, like so many of these unconfirmed survivors, when interviewed or on Facebook posts or in various interviews, talk about the entity and Ted Bundy's eyes and his physical appearance transforming changing. Tell us about some of the or many of the stories that include that kind of idea of the entity.
Yes, I mean the entity is a difficult thing. Even among my psychologists friends, everybody argues about what that actually was Did he have dissociative personality disorder? Was it just his way of trying to explain there is an urge in me that almost seems like a different and Ted like an entity or not. We'll probably never really know
the answer. I think that Bill Hagmeyer probably learned the truth and all there really was to the entity thing, because Ted Bunny ultimately admitted, you know, everybody asked me about this entity. The thing is I really just wanted to kill. I can't explain it otherwise. I really just had to kill. So that was really all there is to it. As for these metaphysical myths like oh, his eyes turned black, that's actually easily explained. There's nothing supernatural
or demonic about it. There's a condition called my dreassis. I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly because I've only ever seen it written. And this is when you're in a state of high arousal, when you're very excited, or even when you when you're very stressed, your pupils dilate to the extent that it looks like there's no color left in your eyes. It's all black. Another thing is with
the odor. Some of the investigators and psychologists noted that he at times smelled bad, almost like rugburn, or like
sulfuric or just weird, weirdly toxic. That is also a stress response, and I think we can all agree that if you're accused of murder and you're being assessed by psychologists and you think, oh boy, they see right through me, you're very, very stressed, and so you know your pupils dilate, you have this midra assis going on, and you start to smell, you start to sweat very badly because you're nervous. So there's not really anything demonic or satanic going on.
I understand that some people find this very fascinating, and there's sort of an overlap with the true crime and the horror community or paranormal community, But I'm personally not too interested in these paranormal stories because, first of all, we can't really verify any of those claims if they are ghosts or spirits or demonic possessions. All we can say with certainty is that science can explain many of the phenomena that previously were thought to be supernatural.
You include a story with Liz Eric eric Kellyan made mismounce her name, you titled the Self debunked story of October first, twenty nineteen article. She wrote, or I believed I encountered Ted Bundy until my research proved me wrong. Can you tell us about this story and the less and that she has for everyone reading that?
Yeah. So the lesson was basically very similarly to the one that Mitzi beter Herb had, which was be very mindful of your surroundings, trust your got instinct, be careful, maybe do not pick up hitchhikers and so forth. But she was very honest about her her story. She really initially thought that Ted Bunny had picked her up. Again, here we are with the memories she remembered his face. Of course, it turned out that it could not possibly
have been Ted Bundy. But instead of you know, sort of beating around the bush or trying to make the narrative fit, she admitted, you know, I looked into it, I did my own research, and I realized it had to be honest, it was not Ted Bundy. I think it's important to admit that and encourage people. Look, even if you already said something online, even if you wrote something online or you started writing a book or a story about your encounter, and you do the research, or
you suddenly realize no, this could not have happened. Admit it. Just come forward there. People are going to be way more grateful and are not going to mock you and disbelieve you if you just if you're just honest and say, well, I still have a message. It was not Ted Bunny, but I still have a message. And that's just be careful out there, guys.
With this book. You risked criticism for this. Why is this? Why did you risk any kind of criticism with this? Why would people be critical of you unearthing the facts?
Well, I think you know that we live in an age of the me too movement, and not that this is generally a bad thing. It's always good to see that people in power, no matter if they're men or women, are taken down a notch and are being held accountable for abusive behavior. Of course, the problem is that women, especially women, have come forth and declared certain men guilty of a crime, yet they can't prove it, and then they argue, well, how should we prove it? This usually
happens behind closed doors. That's true. I've been there. I know how awful this is. It feels like the victim has a fate and the perpetrator has free will basically, but you just can't make a statement and say cancel this person. This person is guilty of a terrible crime
and you have no proof, right. So I knew I was going to get attacked for for the book and for daring to look into all of these different stories and try to find like a common denominator there about why these people might be fabricating stories or why some of them might just misremember very honestly not know that it didn't happen the way it did. But it was just important for me to change how we discuss these cases and that we just accept that somebody is accused
of a crime that they didn't commit. Now you can always argue, well Bunny was a bad guy, Does it really matter if we ascribe even more crimes to him, if we say, well he did this or that, Well, yeah, it does because it changes how we profile him. It changes how we look at his psychopathology at the time, at the timeline, and everything else, and that also influences how or potentially how law enforcement and psychologists are going
to look at future cases. So it's very important to always be honest and try to be as scientific and reasonable and logical as possible with these types of cases.
What did you Were there any surprises in all of this in terms of what you did uncover for this book project.
Everything was surprising because I didn't go in saying I want to debunk all of this or I want to prove they're all right. I just went in with an open mind, being very curious. Okay, let's see if we can actually do this. I mean, how many of them are potentially telling the truth? I mean, how exciting would it be to be able to talk to real survivor and include them and learn more about who Ted BONDI was. I didn't go in with a preconceived not at all.
So everything was surprising to me that I uncovered. I think maybe in hindsight, maybe I was surprised that all of the stories had so many different elements that didn't make sense. I had expected to at least find a couple cases where I would say, well, yes, I completely believe that it happened the way this person says, but that just didn't really happen. Other than with Molly klepfor.
You mentioned Kevin M. Sullivan being your mentor with this project, tell us a little bit more of the invaluable help that Kevin M. Sullivan imparted to you for this project.
He was just always very encouraging and he told me right after that, I think this is a very important thing to write down these stories. You've done it on your blog, and now you're trying to turn this into a book.
Do it.
Any question you ever have that I could help with, you can ask me. He did that. I mean, he was just an invaluable source. Most of all, though, he was just the best friend you can ever imagine. He was always encouraging, He always had some really good advice about how to tackle a certain issue, or what else to look into, or just how to word certain things. Because of course, when you get into all these women were not just attacked but partly claim that they were raped.
There's just things where you have to ask yourself, is it necessary that I write this in a book because it's distasteful and it could be re traumatizing if this person really was a victim, if you had have Ted Bundy or another offender. So we sort of talked through these things a little bit, and he was just there step by step, every step of the way, and I appreciate him.
Ever, he must have told you about similar instances where he had disagreements with people. Once he's trying to write a book and offering anybody he has over the years, offered anybody that felt that they were had an encounter with Ted Bundy or had any information regarding Ted Buddy to come forward. So he did probably tell you about some of the encounters he's had with people that disagreed with him.
Yes, he did. I mentioned I think two of them in the book, and that was one man, surprisingly who claimed that he had been a Ted Bundy victim and also witnessed the abduction of the unidentified Idaho hitchhiker. He said that Ted Bunny was a pedophile who also tried to sexually molest him, and his story just kept changing. He had initially contacted Solid to talk about him, you know, can I maybe get a mention in your book? Then later he recan and said, well, it's not exactly my
intention of making it into your book. But when Sally dug a bit, it's just that his story changed so dramatically each time, and he always got ready to say, well next time I have a funky phone. Something isn't right with my phone. Next time, I'll tell you all about it, and he just kept posting in the groups as well. At some point people were of course overjoyed, Oh my new Bundy information, tell us everything, and he
never really did. He just kept repeating these different elements of the story that did not fit together at all, right, and eventually became admin of his own group, where to this day I hear he is telling people that tomorrow I will write it all down. Today I can because my phone is being weird. So that's one of the
people that I know about. And another is, of course, when Sally said, he also believes that there are a couple elements, some elements and staple story that he cannot believe happen the way she claims, just because he knows the case inside out like nobody else. There was a documentary filmmaker who very badly attacked him and then started rumors about him online that he hated raped women and
he disbelieved raped women, which is absolutely not true. So this is yeah, this is just the kind of backlash and criticism that you face when you dare go into these stories. And I think we can all agree that Sullivan is as successful as he is because he really does care about the victims. He cares about the cases. He knows a stuff. He's written six books and more coming obviously, as he announced, so he really Yeah.
We mentioned just in an introduction you were part of Kevin Sullivan's last book, the sixth book. Tell us just what your participation was in that book and what the title of that book was.
Yes, that was the sixth book, The Enigma. And he asked me if I maybe wanted to explore how Ted Bundy is viewed in Europe and especially in Germany where I grew up, and I said, I can certainly try.
It was overjoyed that he thought I was good enough a writer and a researcher to do this, and I spent a couple of months online on different forums across Europe, even on French forums, always translating, you know, with Google Translate, what they were saying to me and how they were answering the polls, talking to a lot of people online
about how they viewed Ted Bundy. Were they maybe really interested in the research side of things or was it more like your average true crime afficionado who sort of love serial killer stories, sort of like you would like horror stories, or is it maybe people who are in love with serial killers, the hypristophiles? What else is there?
And is there?
Can you say that maybe in Northern Europe people are generally behaving differently or viewing Ted Bundi differently than in Eastern Europe, for example, or Southern Europe? And why could that be? So? I sought to explore that I made very clear early on in the chapter that this was only my own personal findings gathered within a few couple
of months. If you wanted to do an actual reliable field study, I mean, it would be fantastic to have, but obviously that would have to happen with way more participants and over a longer period of time.
This is a fascinating addition to the true to the Ted Bundy official story. And I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about Ted Bundy examining the Unconfirmed Survivor stories. We talked about, or you mentioned in your book about your crime Piper blog. Can you tell us a little bit about that and if you have a website or a Facebook page for the Ted Bundy Examining the Unconfirmed Survivor Stories.
I do not have a page for the book. Friends of mine told me that I should definitely finally create a writer page for myself because obviously I'm ster still working on other projects, both true crime and fiction and so forth, so I'm working on that. Keep on the
look look out. And as for the blog, that's a word Press blog that I started with a couple of friends of mine initially in twenty eighteen, and it was really never supposed to be this big thing that it became, because by now we have I think about one hundred and ten posts written by me and friends and guest bloggers, and we're definitely gonna keep going posting about both Ted Bundy, partly Edmund Kemper, Scott Peterson, we have a couple of
Scott Peterson writers, and also explore different paraphilias and things topic relating to psychology. So yeah, we're gonna stay around.
That's great. Thank you so much, Ted Bundy examining the official unconfirmed survivors' stories. Thank you so much, Aaron Banks. It's been an absolutely an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. You have a great da.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you, good night,