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The newspaper articles describing Ted Bundy at the beginning of his Chi Omega trial, alluded to his innocence

During the 1960s and 1970s, there was a plethora of newspaper stories regarding real killers. Newspaper articles describing gruesome murders committed by “crazies” furthered the public’s fear of mental illness off the screen. The newspaper articles describing Ted Bundy at the beginning of his Chi Omega trial reflected how the media did not view him as a cold-blooded killer, and therefore not a man with mental illness. The stories revolving around Bundy did not explicitly reference mental illness at the time, and in fact they demonstrated the society’s reluctance to “other” Bundy precisely because he didn’t embody the stereotypical elements of a serial killer. In the 1970s Americans found it hard to fathom that a handsome, charismatic man could commit awful acts of violence, and when Bundy was first placed on trial, the media alluded to his innocence because of his persona and appearance. The newspaper articles that described Bundy when he was first placed on trial were starkly dif...

Interview with Jack Bowman, Margaret Bowman's father

  Jack Bowman, Margaret Bowman's father, consented to be interviewed by David Finkel two hours after Bundy was executed. For 10 years, Bowman had never said anything publicly about Margaret Bowman's murder case. The interview was published in Tampa Bay Times on January 25, 1989, as part of a sidebar to the newspaper's main execution piece. It's an interesting interview and I'm sharing it on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/tampa-bay-times-wed-jan-25-1989-1 Jack Bowman, even in grief, allowed the interviewer to ask questions endlessly. The interview never did achieve the level of conversation, and yet it was ultimately successful because it did the most important thing of all: it got the details, and the details are what make a story vivid. The interviewer also described the private, pivotal scene of Bowman's reaction to the news of Bundy's execution as it was being broadcast in the media on the morning of January 24, 1989... Jack Bowman wa...