The “smelling salts” myth that’s being spread on social media
Something that struck me as unlikely has been recently written in a public
Facebook group called “CrimePiper”, in relation to the latest film about Ted Bundy, "No Man of God":
https://www.facebook.com/crimepiper.writers/posts/173746998137471
The “CrimePiper” admin (Erin Banks) wrote: “When quizzed about the new NO MAN OF GOD movie, Bill Hagmaier shared that Ted Bundy used smelling salts to wake up some of the victims he had previously rendered unconscious. He did this so he could fully enjoy their pain and terror while raping them repeatedly and eventually strangling them to death.”
This triggered her long-held suspicion
that Ted Bundy may have been far more sadistic than he's being given credit
for, and she latched on to that at the sight of a dubious claim.
Then in one of the comments under her initial Bundy/Hagmaier/salts post, she wrote: “I'm surprised he revealed anything new since he appears to have been adamant he'd not share any more details out of respect for the victims' families. This was a very important detail however, and even just a tidbit, it yet changes our outlook on the case once more. Exciting times!”
The fact that someone is inclined to immediately believe what I suspect may have been a fictitious line in the newly released movie “No Man of God”, puzzles me.
I thought that it wouldn’t have served Ted Bundy’s cause at all, to share such a grizzly detail with FBI agent Hagmaier.
And the source of the “salts” claim hasn’t even been determined properly. The source that was given for the "smelling salts" statement was poor and vague. In fact one of the group member asked to see the actual source of the "smelling salts" information...
All we knew, vaguely, was that someone on their private Instagram account wrote that, “When quizzed about the new NO MAN OF GOD movie, Bill Hagmaier shared that Ted Bundy used smelling salts to wake up some of the victims”...
Yet this may have been sensational fiction from the film. I suspected that it wasn’t actually Hagmaier who said shared that detail about Bundy, but that it was a line that the writers of the film made up to use in the film.
I had listened to Bundy’s 1986 and 1989 taped discussions with Hagmaier (and also read the transcripts of the interviews). Bundy never got into such graphic detail with Hagmaier on those tapes.
And yesterday I also managed to see the “No Man of God” film. Here is what the fictional Ted said in the film:
“She’s... beautiful. She’s... radiant. Fairly familiar. Her dad is sick. He’s in and out of the hospital. I hear her talking about it over a pay phone, it’s heart problems. I have a badge, that I got the usual way... local police badge. It’s night, full moon, she looks nice, she looks exactly like one of the girls from the [detective] magazines. I walk up to her... ‘I’m officer Ted Bundy. Something’s happened.’ She goes pale... ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Your father’s had a heart attack. I was sent to find you... My car’s over this way...’ It all happened so fast. She doesn’t have time to clock that the police officer is picking her up in a Volkswagen. I open the door for her, before she realizes there’s no passenger seat... I hit her in the back of the head with a tire iron. Isn’t she beautiful... Her dark hair, parted down the middle. Gorgeous. A few more miles... I drag her out of the car... I have already picked up the spot... she’s lying there in the moonlight... After I’m done, I never use the same kit twice. You’ve got to get rid of it... And I undress her. I wrap the garrote around her neck... I bend her over, and I wake her with the smelling salts. She wakes...”
I saw the film to understand how the “Crimepiper” group admin came to spread the myth about the smelling salts that she said Ted Bundy used. And I'm glad I saw the film and saw exactly how the smelling salts idea came up in it. It wasn't Ted Bundy who really told Hagmaier that he woke his victims with smelling salts, it was fictitious Ted (played by actor Luke Kirby) talking about what he did to a fictitious victim in the film. It was all fruit of the screenwriter's imagination. The smelling salts in particular were never by Bundy himself anywhere during his police interrogations.
Hagmaier was a producer and a consultant on the film. I find it highly unlikely that as a producer and consultant, he would allow the "smelling salts" details to be shared in the film if they were not true. His name is on this film and as a producer and consultant, he has a say on details that are used. This detail may not be published anywhere, however there were a lot of "off the record" statements that Bundy made and even Hagmaier shut off the tape recorder before Bundy confessed to certain details. Ted did actually talk about some of the graphic details with Bill such as severing heads and hands. He also confessed to Robert Keppel that he burned a severed head in his girlfriend's fireplace. I don't see how that would serve Ted's agenda either, yet he did confess to it. It's too bad that Bill doesn't want to share all the details at this point, as it can only help to paint a more clear picture of Ted and perhaps give psychologists more understanding of the mindset of the most prolific serial killer in US history.
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