Although you don't want to admit it, you're obsessed with learning about serial killers just like I am. Their lives are fascinating; I mean, not in the aspect that they murder tons of people with usually psychotic or freakish intentions, but I'm talking about the background of them. Learning about what causes these killers to kill is just something I absolutely am infatuated with. For the longest time, I can remember knowing more about serial killers than the math I learned throughout my high school career. Sad, I know, but, it's much more interesting than learning the quadratic formula.
People know the names Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, Jack the Ripper, Edmund Kempfer, but Netflix decided to open people's minds and eyes to the cases of Theodore Bundy in the four-episode series entitled "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes" on the 24th of January, which just so happened to be the 30th anniversary of Ted Bundy's execution.
Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix www.youtube.com
The series goes into detail about how Bundy was able to almost get away with 30 or more murders between the years of 1974 and 1978. The murders in themselves are brutal and horrifying to hear about, but what makes this series more bone chilling and hair raising are the recorded conversations with journalist Stephen Michaud and Ted Bundy while he sat on death row. Michaud convinced Bundy to use a little of his psychology degree earned from college to confess to his murders and describe them in very gruesome detail. The creepiest part of it all? Ted seemed to remain very calm and unbothered by these events, speaking in the third person as if he was someone analyzing Bundy from the outside.
True Crime fanatics, including myself, went crazy over this on social media. I've always been fascinated with Bundy's case in particular as he was able to escape prison twice and kept the secret of the murders for so long. It was all in the looks, he called himself "the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet." Him outsmarting the police and FBI for so long made him more of a mystery than anything. How could he kill all these poor, defenseless women, and feel no remorse whatsoever?
With Bundy being deemed some 'attractive man' during the time of his killing sprees, the Netflix series does an amazing job of highlighting how easy it was for Ted to lure these women in and trick them into thinking he wasn't a bad person, he didn't look like Charles Manson, so he couldn't be a bad guy, correct?
The series included interviews with friends, past girlfriends, minister and classmates who all knew Ted very well who mentioned him as a charismatic, good-looking church attending man. Bundy was even baptized as a Mormon and kept in touch with his minister often. But, despite all of that, Michaud was able to conclude that Ted Bundy was a sociopath who resented women and thought of them as nothing more than objects.
While the murders of these young women were terrifying, nothing frightened me more than the way he graphically talked about the Chi-Omega murders. Ted Bundy had made his way all the way from Colorado to Florida after escaping prison for a second time where he snuck into a sorority house when everyone was asleep and brutally attacked and murdered two college girls, then proceeded to rape and beat two more. He then left the house and killed another girl nearby.
Even the police didn't take Bundy seriously from the start; they didn't seem to take notice when he decided to escape the first time by jumping out of a courthouse window, running away. And no one seemed to guard him when he fled from his jail cell through a hole he made in the ceiling.
I give Netflix props for not romanticizing Bundy, as documentaries and movies seem to lean towards romanticizing serial killers and trying to make it seem like we can empathize with them. You could say that Ted's big ego was ultimately his demise, acting as his own defense lawyer in his own trial, which, was a stupid move, buddy, you could've found someone to represent you instead of making yourself look more like an idiot.
Bundy was executed by electric chair in Florida on January 24th, 1989. People stood outside the prison, dancing, and singing as the execution went out. When an officer came outside to announce that he was dead, the crowds roared in celebration. His body was cremated and his ashes are scattered in the Cascade Range of Washington State, also a common place where he would murder and bury his victims.
Even though lots of people were suggesting not to watch this docuseries by yourself, I say? Go for it. Take the dive into the deep end and watch this by yourself. Hell, watch it at night, right before you go to bed. If you're creeped out by Ted Bundy's creepy, calm voice, you got a big storm coming. But, if you're like me, and that stuff doesn't phase you? Binge watch the entire thing in one sitting.
This Netflix series is just the beginning though. Zac Efron stars as Ted Bundy in the newest biopic "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" which is set to premiere at Sundance Film Festival. So, if anyone from Sundance wants to hook a girl up with that streaming link so I can see my man in action, hit me up, I'm all about that serial killer stuff.
EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE Official Trailer (2019) Zac Efron, Lily Collins Movie HD www.youtube.com
