Ted Bundy on the relationship between mental illness and violent criminal behavior

Ted Bundy reasoned along these lines: a murderer who manages to not get caught and who leaves very little in the way of clues, cannot be mentally ill, but a rational individual. Bundy discussed the issue of “mental illness” in the context of murder investigations, and more specifically in relation to the Green River murders, when he consulted with the King County Sheriff’s Office in the Green River case.

In Bundy’s opinion, the distorted mental processes which underlay the Riverman’s violent behavior would appear, from the facts and circumstances of the case, which Bundy analyzed, to be as well integrated as they were hidden from the view of those around him.

Bundy shared these views in a February 5, 1985 handwritten letter he sent to Dave Reichert, in reference to a mental patients printout that the detectives included in the data that was being analyzed at the time in the Green River investigation. The detectives were compiling various lists meant to help them identify the likeliest candidates for further investigation, and a mental patients list was among their lists, and here is Bundy’s opinion about that list:

     “Mental patients printout.

     I am not very enthusiastic about such a listing but don’t want to overlook it. The Healy list of lists included mental patients. While including them won’t hurt, doing so should be done with the following qualifications: 1) Mental patients show no greater propensity for violent criminal behavior than the general population, and 2) I believe it is highly unlikely that the Riverman has suffered or is suffering from the kind of mental disturbance that would bring him to the attention of mental health professionals. There is always a possibility, though, hence the mental patient list.

    Why do I believe he doesn’t have a recorded history of mental problems? For starters, he has committed between 40 and 60 murders over a three-year period, and he has not been caught and has left very little in the way of clues. This by itself isn’t conclusive and must be considered in light of other things. The manner in which he has gone about systematically abducting, asphyxiating and disposing of his victims is evidence of a highly controlled, quiet, relatively rational individual. He has had to be very well disciplined and conscious of what is going on around him. Furthermore, a certain presence of calm and normality has been essential to him being able to lure and abduct his victims, most of whom were aware of a killer stalking them and looking for anything bizzare or threatening in the men who approached them. And from what I know about the murderer, there is a lack of the kind of extremely bizarre acting out (taunting the police, mutilating the victims) that would suggest a severe impairment of mental capacities.

     The Riverman has his problems, which sounds like an understatement I suppose, but these distorted mental processes which underlie his violent behavior would appear, from the facts and circumstances of the case, to be as well integrated as they are hidden from view of those around him.”

I transcribed that part of Bundy’s handwritten letter by maintaining the spelling and typos in the letter, because I wanted the transcription to be a faithful representation of the original. Here is the handwritten original (courtesy of the King County Sheriff's Office):

Throughout the 80’s, the King County detectives carefully reviewed and investigated the Green River cases for forensic work and profiling, putting together a multiagency task force, the Green River Homicides Investigation (the “Task Force”) to prepare the cases against the Riverman and review the unsolved murders committed by the Riverman. It is this “Task Force” that Ted Bundy corresponded with. The lead investigators were Robert Keppel and Dave Reichert. In 1984, Bundy offered to help the investigators try to understand the killer (the “Riverman”), and the detectives accepted his offer, eager to take advantage of whatever resources were at their disposal in order to capture the killer. Keppel had also been active in the Bundy case, but between 1984 and 1988, Bundy would only talk to Keppel about the Riverman, never about his own case.

Bundy didn’t live to see the police charge the person responsible for the Green River murders. Eventually the Riverman turned out to be Gary Leon Ridgway. DNA linked Ridgway to his victims, and this is how the King County Sheriff’s Office captured and arrested the person responsible for the Green River murders.

I find it particularly interesting that for Bundy, it was overt acts of humiliation, degradation, dehumanization of the victims, as well as taunting the police, that suggested a severe impairment of mental capacities. He wrote: "from what I know about the murderer, there is a lack of the kind of extremely bizarre acting out (taunting the police, mutilating the victims) that would suggest a severe impairment of mental capacities".

Bundy’s own competency came under scrutiny once and for all in 1987: at the end of a four-day hearing in Orlando, U.S. District Judge. G. Kendall Sharp said that there was no evidence Bundy was incompetent to stand trial for the murder of a 12-year-old North Florida schoolgirl, Kimberly Diane Leach, in 1978. In his verbal ruling, Sharp strongly criticized the federal appellate system, which he said prolonged appeals of death row inmates to the detriment of the total legal process. And he saw the proceeding in Orlando as part of the “lengthy, cumbersome” appellate process. The judge called Bundy a “diabolical genius” who was able to understand the charges against him and aid in his defense in the 1980 trial. Sharp, apparently angered by the 11th District Court of Appeal ruling that ordered him to hold a competency hearing, said the system has to change somewhere to keep it from becoming this cumbersome. “They either should abolish the death penalty itself or change the procedure. Everyone knows that competency was not on trial here”, Sharp said and was quoted in The Daily Sentinel from Grand Junction, Colorado, on December 17, 1987.

So in 1987 the federal judge declared Bundy was mentally competent during the 1980 murder trial in Orlando. The December 17, 1987 ruling described Bundy as “the most confident serial killer in the country” at the time.

Besides his Florida convictions, Bundy was also suspected in a series of disappearances and killings of young women in several Western states, including Colorado.

 

The entire correspondence between Bundy and the King County Sheriff’s Office throughout the 1980s is shared publicly here: https://archive.org/details/bundy-king-county-correspondence