The second tape Bundy recorded for Michaud and Aynesworth in 1980

 

The second tape Bundy recorded for Michaud and Aynesworth can be heard and downloaded here:

https://archive.org/details/nam_apap213_bundy_tape2

On this second tape, Bundy can be heard saying that the date is January the 26^th, 1980 and it’s 11 o’clock, and he also says that he has already recorded one tape that evening, on which he recorded his memories of Stanley School mostly. He then says that “Monty Python” is on tv and he can’t record while “Monty Python” is on and he offers a brief sample of what is on tv, and describes the “Monty Python” show (noted for its black humor)  this way:

“It sounds kind of weird. It looks a lot better than it sounds. These Monty Python people are inconsistent. Sometimes they’re genuinely crazy and other times they’re just…” And he then says he is watching “Patient Abuse”… Which is a sketch from the final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Party Political Broadcast". I found the “Patient Abuse” sketch that Bundy was watching back in 1980 here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6gf7r1

I even found a transcript of the sketch: http://www.montypython.net/scripts/stabbed.php

On the tape he made for Michaud and Aynesworth, Bundy is then heard saying that it’s Sunday, January 27, 1980, 5:30-6 o’clock in the evening. He says, "Doesn't look like I'm going to the telephone tonight, or if I do, it won't be for very long so... I'll try to make up for it by spending most of the time that we'd spend on the telephone, on this tape recorder."

He also says he has wasted most of the day, just laying around and not getting much accomplished, watching tennis, a couple of movies, visited with Carole in the morning... “I probably stayed up too late last night... Of course the fact that I may be here for less than a week before I go back to Florida State Prison is also weighing on my mind” [he was in Orange County Jail, for the Leach trial], “also bothered me somewhat... The reaction I received from Africano when I spoke to him concerning the new developments so to speak in evidence relating to my whereabouts on Sunday, February the 12^th 1978, and Monday, the 13^th... more precisely the evidence I related to him and that Carole related to him, which... to the effect that I left Tallahassee late in the evening, late Sunday evening, arriving in Crestview early Monday morning... Steve and I have gone over this, discussed this in some detail or in as much detail as I can remember... it was two years later what occurred on the evening when I left Tallahassee and I provided as many details as I can recall concerning the trip from Tallahassee to Crestview. Again, Vic seemed unenthusiastic about much of that, especially the fact that I purchased gas at a Gulf gas station with the stolen Gulf credit cards near an intersection in Tallahassee at approx. 10, 11 to 12 o’clock on Sunday evening, Feb. the 12^th, 1978". 

He then recognizes that there were certain witnesses in that kind of evidence even if they couldn’t get a hold of the gas station attendant and a credit card receipt... “Certainly there’s no way, or there may be no way to document exactly what time I arrived at that station”... But he says it’s worth a try... “Who knows what might be developed from that, who knows what the gas station attendant may or may not remember he may have written on the gas receipt and so on”. He then said that he expected the prosecution would contend that statement... “For some reason I drove five... ten miles out of town to the Interstate to purchase gas around midnight and drove back into town, stayed overnight to allegedly dispose of the FSU van in broad daylight... it just does not wash! And it’s a collection of circumstances which would tend to show that I left on Sunday evening... But anyway it’s somewhat disappointing to get the response that I got from Vic [Victor Africano] on this new development... But I must forge forward and on the remainder of the tapes that I’ll record this evening, I’ll discuss the events of my childhood... I discussed on tape number 1 of this micro-cassette some general background about the house we lived in on Sheridan Street... We moved there I guess about 1951 and we left there two or three years later in the summer after I finished second grade at Stanley Elementary School. Last night I discussed one of what I would call the three phases of my life, that being those three years at Stanley Elementary School.”

“The next phase that I wish to discuss tonight, or the next category as it were, would be my friends and my activities outside the school and outside the home. During the years we lived on Sheridan Street I can’t remember that I suffered from any lack of playmates. They seemed to be anywhere... the neighborhood, while an older neighborhood, was still a fairly violent neighborhood, with lots of large families... a neighborhood with several minorities, principally Italians... There were few if any blacks... What could be characterized as the neighborhood I lived in, is that there was only one black family I can remember in the years I was there”...

And he also added that there was a fear of the blacks, shared by his own parents... He also added that the black community lay some distance to the South, it was expanding... “The blacks were shortly invading the neighborhood and thereby affected property values... And it was for real, not some cliché worked up by the civil rights activists, it seemed to me it was a very real fear which was often communicated by the adults of the neighborhood... The unmentionable did once occur: and on our block... my house is on Sheridan Street, second house from the corner on the West side of the street down to the middle of the block and back to our house was an alley, unpaved, and I don’t know the name of the street, it was at the back of our house and we’re on the other side of the block, but in any way on the other side of the block that we were on, if I got back to our back gate, turned to my right, go down the alley and go to the far end of the other side of the block, a black family moved in. And I believe this was after I was in the first to second grade... I believe it was the first grade... And the father, I recall, was in the military. They had several children, one of them was a young boy my age... I can remember making quick friends with this young fellow... with the boy... and being advised by my friends that it would be better to stay away from them. And I don’t know why I made an issue of... if it was an issue... why I went out of my way to make friends with him but I swear to God that I remember feeling sort of a... not just a genuine friendship, but in addition to that, a strange kind of... what was for me a compassion for someone whom I felt was being unjustly punished for something that I wasn’t really sure what it was! I don’t mean to come off sounding like a Sir Callaghan, the knight in shining armor... what I felt was akin to a feeling that this wasn’t right, but in addition to that it was a fun playmate to have. Certainly I was made very well aware of my dad’s strong dislike for blacks and I’m sure, but I can’t remember anything specific, but I’m sure he commented on the presence of this family... I remember being told by the garbage man one day as I was going down the alley and going into the back gate of this family’s home that I shouldn’t go in there because there were blacks living there...”

“But I have my memories of that home and the boy’s mother... were memories of a warm, friendly place, fairly bursting with clouds of punching odors verging from the kitchen, smells that were alien to me, smells of peppers, smells that never came from my parents’ house and which I found deeply exotic.”

“My trusted companion for those years was the dog. A dog named Lassie, of all things... sorry about that. [laughs] It was a collie, generally basically white with a black, brown and white covered hair, and we were inseparable. Every kid should be able to have a dog. It’s just too bad that cities being such as they are, it’s unfair to keep the animals in the city, but in those days there were no leash laws that I knew of, we didn’t worry about leaving the gate open, Lassie stayed close to home, and I never felt like she was being unfairly restricted in her freedom. She went everywhere I went when I was out to school and away from home...”