Ted Bundy talking to Hugh Aynesworth about serial murder in the context of perpetrator motivation

Here is an audio recording on which Ted Bundy can be heard talking to Hugh Aynesworth, in 1980, speculating on serial murderers' attempt to justify their actions to themselves. Ted can be heard going into some depth about how serial murderers might rationalize their murders. Segments from this conversation between Bundy and Aynesworth were included in the books "The Only Living Witness" and "Conversations With A Killer".

This recording has been shared courtesy of University at Albany:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wwe6o0flz135pm5/Ted%20Bundy%20-%20Hugh%20Aynesworth%20-%20FSP.mpeg?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR3CQnzLdKX5rWt92np1sTZT3nir2pkNfZ6oMlWZag7RPRfots4eiHeg-8Q

And here is a link to the transcript: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dhmx670tpovy4vu/Ted%20Bundy%20-%20Hugh%20Aynesworth%20-%20FSP-Transcript.pdf?dl=0&fbclid=IwAR09sEDYDiA1JoX0lpXBgSVhIjQexe2QQuh52ii_E3j9PzUFb93suwUDOmI

“Well, we've described this individual, we found his behavior becoming more and more frequent, was also uncountedly... Love that word. I don't use it very often. [inaudible] occupying more and more of his mental and intellectual energies here. So, he was facing the greater, more frequency, the challenge of this darker side of himself to his normal life. He couldn't keep distinct. One was demanding so much that it was going to interfere with his surface validity, his normal appearance. So clearly, he would have to make a choice. Now, assuming he was capable of making a choice, he'd have to weigh the future consequences of continuing on in this course of action, course of conduct. Murdering in such a senseless and incomprehensible fashion, or return to a normal life because it would be clear that there was no longer a choice. Either it would be one or the other. Now, if he was captured, then it would be clear that his conduct was seriously interfering with his ability to not only survive, to live free, and so on. So, it would have to - there's clearly motivation there. We know, we all know, that not only is the act of murder, the kind I'm talking about; it's senseless, inhumane, cruel. It's also illegal. And people lose their freedom because they engage in that kind of behavior. So, understanding - if he was capable of any kind of understanding - the dimensions of the problem that seemed to grip him and the consequences of continuing that kind of behavior. If he was capable of making an intelligent decision, the intelligent decision would be to find a way of distinguishing the motives, as well as the behavior. The motives behind the behavior of killing, as well as the act of killing itself. And all points in between. It would be a real choice, and if he failed to do that, there's no in between. There's no middle ground. If he could realize this. If he couldn't, then of course he wouldn't do anything about it. But if he's capable of making a choice, he would make a choice to understand the problem, understand what his independent variables were, how to eliminate those, how to deal with them in a more adaptive fashion, and attempt to in such fashion eliminate. Not just reduce or suppress, but eliminate the need or the underpinnings of his criminal behavior.”

“For a person who's committed, 50 or 100 murders, perhaps he would view his role as being serious. That he had an important... attach some significance to it. But maybe not any more than you would attach to refereeing an important basketball or football game. And I tried to make this clear a few days ago, when we were talking about the hunter. Somebody going hunting. I mean, at each stage of that process, the individual students will be different. And when he's 15, hunting may be a much more mystical, exciting, intense, overwhelming experience than when he's 50. And even within a given hunting expedition, the feeling of sighting the animal is going to be different from shooting it. From showing it to your buddies and putting it in the truck, taking it home, butchering it and having it for dinner. At each stage, there's a different set of emotions involved. And it's not to say that deer hunting may not be commonplace, but for some people it may. Some people say, "Oh God, it's hunting season again." They pick up the gun and go out with the kids. That's the way somebody might approach killing their fellow human beings. It's hard to accept that.”

“...it's like any justification of that sort. Let's consider the justification the soldier develops for, rationalization as it were. That he would develop to cope with shooting large numbers of his fellow human beings that he didn't know. Well first of all, he didn't know them. So what?”

“’In our urban society we don't know a lot of people. So what? Then I suppose there's also like, "He would've got me if I hadn't got him.’ Which might not fit into what we have here. But on the other hand, there might be some mass murderers that might say, ‘Well, she or he would have hurt me if I hadn't hurt them.’ They might also say, ‘Well, there's so many people, they won't be missed. So, what's one less person on the face of the planet? What difference will it make 100 years from now?’ Again, they're not... they're rationalizations, but not rational. They're justifications but they're not just. That's the way it works, that can apply to any number of different things, but it also applies to the persons who are trying to cope with their need to kill. They're not coping with what's really driving them to do that. Maybe they don't know what it is. They can't see it. They don't want to see it. So, they come up with the other justifications. And again, they're just throwing up any number of things just to try to make some sense out of it. They might say the victim was luring them, or trying to arouse them in some way. ‘They deserved it.’ All sorts of things like this. It's a commonplace excuse on the part of child molesters, rapists, and the like. That they would say that the victim lured them on or the child was trying to excite them and arouse them. When in fact that was probably not the case, but that's just the justification used by the perpetrator to make some sense out of his crime.”

“I would expect [that justification] is continual. Just as it would be for the soldier in the field. Now, clearly, we know the soldier in the field comes home and some men are scarred psychologically because they're trying to deal with this. But many just never deal with it. Obviously not everyone that came back from the Second World War, or Korea, or from Vietnam is a basket case. Because they just kind of put it to rest over here. ‘Hey, I had a job to do, I did it. I didn't know these people.’ We don't find American tourists going over to Germany and shooting up German men working in the field anymore, because the surface justification for that is no longer there. It's a very curious kind of way of dealing with it, but...