Episode 3: The Fireplace

Bundy says it’s the most bizarre thing he’s ever done. One of the FBI’s original criminal profilers reveals Bundy’s motives behind the burning of body parts and the mental games he played taunting police. 

+ Read the episode transcript

Ted Bundy: “This is something that happened, uh, piece by piece as strange as this may sound. I’m trying to remember exactly where it all happened. That was a.. that’s something -- something to talk about in the future. I don’t know if I was ever more incoherent. (pause) That night is something like a dream. Very blurry. Very nightmarish and I have trouble piecing it together. Give me a moment on that.”

Halsne narration: When notorious serial killer Ted Bundy opens his mouth and confesses on audiotape to raping and mutilating multiple young women – most audiences edge closer to their speakers.

Detective: “_Did you ever bury anybody?” _

Bundy: “Oh yes. In my more coherent, not, when I was really going all out and took my time. Yeah, I did. It’s quite clear. Without question, those who have been found were not and those who haven’t been found were buried.”

Narration: It’s morbid curiosity, with a touch of horror, that makes us want to keep listening.

Bundy: “Lord knows what the little creatures would have done.”

Narration: But for criminal profilers like Pete Klismet, listening to Bundy – and hundreds of other killers, perverts, and child predators over the course of his career – these rare recordings create a very different set of emotions.

Pete Klismet/ FBI Profiler: “I’d reach into my left pocket and pull out the card that says, Drop dead and we will see you later because all you’re trying to do is pull me chain and jerk us around. I don’t even want to talk to you so shut your mouth, here’s your cuffs, go back to your cell. Good luck on that. And in a couple of days you’ll meet your maker.”

Narration: I’m investigative reporter Chris Halsne. In this episode of Interview with Evil, you’re going to get an insider’s look at how and why the FBI first formed its psychological profiling unit in LATE 70s. And how Ted Bundy, still 30 years after being put to death for his crimes, is teaching the next generation of detectives.

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Halsne narration: From his Colorado home, retired FBI criminal profiler Pete Klismet keeps busy teaching, writing books on the criminal mind, and consulting with local law agencies regarding unsolved murders.

He was working as a homicide detective in Ventura California in 1984 when he first heard the Federal Bureau of Investigation was starting up an intriguing new science unit – dedicated to predicting how serial killers think & act.

Pete: “My boss seemed to like me. What I want to do is send you to school for this psychological profiling, so I said essentially, what the hell is that? I didn’t know. Too busy running around arresting bank robbers’and gamblers, you name it.”

Chris question: “Way before the CSI and all the Hollywood hype on solving crimes? It was new science”

Pete: “Yes. But I have to say, Chris, less of a science and more or an art.”

Narration: About 15 or 20 percent of the original FBI profilers had any what Klismet labels “street experience.”

Quick nat pop “I’d had the cuffs on several hundred people. ”

Narration: So former cops, like him, teamed up with PhD’s in psychology, accountants and attorneys to bring different perspectives to solving the most difficult and sadistic crimes in the country.

Pete: “I went through profiling bootcamp as I call it. It was nasty. One of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life. Again, not having fallen of the turnup truck. I’d seen a lot of things. I’d seen a lot of dead bodies and horrible things. I saw things there nobody should ever see.”

Silence of the Lambs nat break “I’ll help you catch him Clarice..”

Pete: “When they were called in on murder cases, the things exemplified in Silence of the Lambs, for example, encompassed several people into the movie – Ed Gein a guy who robbed graves and steal woman’s bodies and would skin them and use their skin for backing on a chair all kinds of horrible stuff. I wasn’t ready for this.”

Halsne question: “And they called you to the most horrible stuff because they weren’t one off homicides. Locals can take care of that. (Yeah.) They call you because it’s someone doing this repeatedly? (Yeah.).”

Narration: The legendary Alan “Smoky” Burgess. Chief of investigative Support at the FBI Behavioral Science Unit was Pete’s boss.

Klismet also worked with a specialist named Bill Hagmaier. Hagmaier is one of the two people sitting in a prison conference room questioning Ted Bundy a few days prior to Bundy’s execution in Ole Sparky.

In this section of the unredacted recording, Bundy is pleading with the FBI to stall his execution, saying he’s finally ready to reveal where he hid ALL the bodies.

Bundy: “The calling car of today’s politicians, today’s compassionate politicians, is that they have deep respect for families. Okay. I might be a hypocrite if I say anything about these families given all the years I haven’t said anything. The fact is, they are still out there. They are still wanting to find their people. I can find their people. I can tell them how. It’s up to the politicians to give me a chance and if they don’t, they will won’t be able to help those families they so righteously talk about. It sounds to me like they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Think about the predicament. I know the allegation has been made I am manipulating families. The reality is they are out there. They are there. If we didn’t talk about them, they’d still be there. There are a handful, several dozen mother’s, you don’t like me talking about it but I am going to. I will tell you and your fellow law enforcement officers everything I can to locate the remains of a number of people in your state and elsewhere and I can do that. This can be done. There are some of these people don’t even know I am involved. I’ve killed and they are doubly deprived. They don’t’ even get the satisfaction of executing the guy who did it to their child. This way they get both the knowledge, the remains of loved ones and satisfaction of some justice being done.”

Narration: A reminder here. these are 30-year-old recordings created on cassette tapes and stored in a shoe box so audio quality might be off a hair, but we also didn’t want to overly produce them.

Another choice we made is to let Bundy talk for a while, uninterrupted and unedited, much like the detectives did that day.

Bundy: “You don’t need to worry about that. (pause-clock ticking) But you’ve been after this for fifteen years. (pause) A couple months is not going to make any difference.”

Narration: Listen closely to that last part again.

(pause) A couple months is not going to make any difference.”

That’s Bundy’s voice cracking with emotion about one hour into the first day of recording. It is the only time Bundy seemingly showed emotional weakness.

Was he crying actual tears or putting on a theatrical display to humanize himself with authorities? I put that question to Klismet.

Klismet: “Here’s the thing about Bundy. He’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. Bundy is a typical pathological liar. He’s a typical narcissist. Typical sexual psychopath in his case. You combine all those things and it’s the perfect recipe for him to think he’s smarter than anybody else. Bundy is a smart guy. His IQ is 135. That’s pretty good. As smart as most us. What he has never learned there are people who are smarter. I ran into a lot of characters like this.”

Narration: Klismet told me he knew the raw recordings of Bundy’s confessions existed in the FBI archives, but he had never hear them until Interview with Evil approached him.

Bundy: “I could give you most of the names or some names or some locations that don’t have names (okay) But this is what I want to avoid. Putting myself into a position where we run through the standard litany of the victims and without the depth of information and the precedent and antecedent stuff going on in my mind and I’d like o clothe these names in reality even though it be a distorted reality. I’m worried, I won’t bullshit you, I’m worried we just run through it like this and I can understand your curiosity, believe me, but we run into the temptation to leave it at that. (Right) ”

Kepple: “_One of the things I’m concerned about is time. (I know) And I’d like to know. You haven’t finished everything about Georgann Hawkins either. (No) So we’ve got 10 more to go. _

Bundy:_ “That’s right.”_

Pete: (Laughs): “By allowing that to happen, they are allowing Bundy to control the interview. You can’t do that with this guy. He thinks he’s pulling their leg and they are allowing it. There came a point early on there when I’m pointing a finger at Ted, saying Ted, ‘do you see this thing over here? Yeah. What is that? That’s your hand. No, it isn’t Ted. That’s a train, the engine of a train and its started and running down the tracks. And you got one of two choices. You’re going to get on the train and go with it or that train is leaving the station and you’re going back to your cell. I’m tired of listening to this random nonsense. He’s minimizing. He’s depersonalizing his involvement. Come on Ted say it! Say something!

Narration: That comment brings us back to Bundy’s detailed confession of the kidnapping of University of Washington freshman Georgann Hawkins.

I don’t want to be too repetitive -- I promise I will get back to unheard material in a moment -- but let me again play you a short segment of Bundy’s confession which aired during out first podcast. It’s relevant to a pair of important new revelations we’ll get to in a few minutes.

Bundy: “I was moving up the alley using a briefcase and some crutches and a young woman walked down. I saw her round the block and go in the alley toward me. About half way down the block I asked her to help me carry the briefcase. Basically, when I reached the car, I knocked he unconscious with the crowbar. (Where’d you have that?) Outside. In back of the car. (Did she see it?) No. No. Then there was (whispering) some handcuffs there, along with the crowbar. The crowbar. And I handcuffed her and put her in the driver’s I mean passengers side of the car and drove away.

Narration: So that’s the set up. Bundy, pretending to be injured and need of help, stands in a dark alley just north of the UW campus. He rapes, strangles, and decapitates Hawkins about 20 miles away in a wooded area near the town of Issaquah.

After the sun rises later that same day, Bundy takes a huge risk and goes back to visit Hawkins’ headless body. While there, he does a mental inventory of all his victim’s possessions.

Bundy: “Talk about details coming back, I couldn’t find one of the shoes. I thought it was there, but it wasn’t. So I went back, this was the next day, got my bicycle and went back to the place. The police were all over the place by that time, but I was kind of nervous because, I will tell you why in a minute, because I left my car there and the may have seen it. Something there that might connect me. So, I went back there to the parking lot and found both pierced earrings and the show in the parking lot and about five in the afternoon. I surreptitiously gathered them up and rode off.”

Kepple: “After the police had checked that area?”

Bundy: “Well you can tell me. I had seen a whole, streams of them all over the place, but they were concentrating on places like the park. Nearby park. I know, they couldn’t have looked in that parking lot and missed the patent leather clog and the two white hook earrings, hoops.”

Dr. Sasha Reid:: (Laughs) “Can you pause that for a second?”

Halsne n arration: Dr. Sasha Reid has a PhD in serial killers. She has examined the tendencies of thousands of murderers, This part of the recording caught her attention.

She says Bundy’s non-chalet visit back to not one, but two crime scenes within 12 hours of snatching a TEENAGE college girl off the streets -- is extraordinary.

Dr. Ried: “He is a risk taker. He’s lived a long life evading the law, manipulating law enforcement, shoplifting. He’s skilled at how to evade and avoid detection. There is an imbedded comfort he’s built for himself. He’s a great talker. I don’t think he perceives this as a big risk. He knows to play it cool. He also has that type of privilege that deems him not suspect. He’s middle class, white male, 1970’s, in law school – nobody is going to suspect him. But going back to that crime scene? That is an enormous risk. He knows that. You can’t easily talk your way out of that.”

Narration: Collecting a shoe and earrings from a kidnapping scene, while police are within site is no doubt “bold” -- but might also read as desperate-to-not-get-caught. Bundy’s next confession, however, cannot be seen as anything but reckless -- a complete inability to curtail his murderous urges.

Bundy: “The reason I was nervous about anything being found in that parking lot was, ha, that no more than two weeks before I had been using the same M.O. in the same neighbored in front of the same sorority house as Georgann Hawkins, I encountered a girl, going out the door. I asked her to help me. Walked her all the way to that lot. 11 o’clock on a Friday night. And I was drunk, and I was just babbling on and I told her I worked in Olympia. I lived in a rooming house. I mean I was just horrified later on. But I reached, got all the way to the car. And this would happen, happen sometimes. I just said ‘no.’ Didn’t want to do it.’ And she just walked away. After the Hawkins thing, I was just paranoid as hell that this girl would say, something weird happened to me a couple weeks ago. This guy came along with crutches and asked me to help him and had a Volkswagen and said he lived in Olympia and lived here in the U district. How many people can that apply to? There you are.”

Narration: FBI profiler Pete Klismet says Bundy is full of crap a lot of the time he speaks -- but this admission felt true.

Klismet: “_Okay. Well. What does that show? That shows some planning. Some forethought. It probably shows some guilt about what he’s done previously. You don’t wake up one morning and say drink coffee, check som e emails, and I think I’ll go out an murder someone. There are things that are antecedent behavior that manifests itself. He was smart in thinking that part out -- if he didn’t make that part up.” _

Narration: These recordings show, even though Bundy said he wanted to tell investigators everything he knows – in exchange for delaying his execution -- he simply can’t do it. Here’s a good example.

Bundy: “I can tell you exactly where clothing was thrown but you’re not going to find anything. Not along I-90 or anywhere else.”

Kepple: “Maybe we could find, I don’t know where it is, but we never found the bicycle. Janice Ott’s bicycle.”

Bundy: “Ha ha ha. Well, I know what you mean.”

Narration: 24-year old Janice Ott disappeared from Sammamish State Park July 14^th, 1974. Bundy said he pretended he had a broken arm and asked Ott to help him load a small sailboat from his Volkswagen. She agreed. He kidnapped her in broad daylight – and hoping to leave no evidence behind, also took the yellow Tiger 10 speed bike she rode out to lake to suntan that day.

Keppel: “Is the bike something someone would have found out in the open?”

Bundy: “Some little black kid is riding it around. (Sure. Sure) Probably ridden the wheels off it. (Hm hum) It’s a black area. Mixed. It used to be. Central area.”

Narrative: This segment is a little harder to hear than prior cassette tapes. I’ll boost the audio and reduce the hiss. Bundy’s voice has changed to one of brazen negotiator – to a defeated man – and he admits the questioning is wearing him out.

Bundy: “I’m bad about where one stopped and another stops.”

Dr. Sasha: “I feel like he’s turned inward. The charisms is gone. It’s gone. I know the volume is low but the tone -- he’s not as engaged. He’s very pulled back.”

Kepple: “All we found of Janice Ott is the lower jawbone. We didn’t find her skull. We found what we think Ott’s was Ott’s backbone. Those animals -- You going to give me a hint where the rest of those bodies are?”

Bundy: “I don’t know. To be honest with you, I can’t tell you.”

Narration: Whatever game of secrets he’s playing, Bundy’s time is fast running out -- In the final hours on day two of the FBI session, his voice is barely audible.

Nats beginning of last day. “Testing one, two, three. The Seattle Times is..”

Narrration: That’s partly due to detectives moving the cassette recorder’s microphone - but I think this next segment is worth straining to hear.

Kepple: “How about Donna Manson? Girl from Thurston County? Olympia? Where’s she?”

Narration: Bundy is trying to explain to Bob Keppel why detectives are going to have a nearly impossible time finding the body of Donna Gail Manson. She was a 19-year-old freshman at Evergreen State College in the Tacoma area -- and went missing on her way to a Jazz concert in 1974.

Bundy: “I won’t beat around the bush anymore. I just and tired and want to go back to sleep. Part of her is buried but nothing identifiable. Maybe bones. But the head, the skull wouldn’t be there.”

Detective: “Where is it?”

Bundy: “It’s nowhere.”

Narration: Bundy said part of her is buried up on a mountainside near Issaquah, but he removed her head cut her up, spread the bones out along Powerline Road -- And when detectives ask specifically where, he dismissively replied nowhere.

It turns out he decided to take Manson’s head to his girlfriend’s house in Seattle and burned it in the fireplace.

Kepple: “It’s nowhere?”

Bundy: “Well, I don’t mean to be flippant. It’s just nowhere. It’s in a category by itself. In that it was, I assume this is something I can see the headlines now.”

Detective: “Ted. There aren’t going to be any details. What you told me about Georgann Hawkins - no. I got parents who don’t even want to know details. I do and he does.”

Bundy: “Well it was incinerated. It was an exception, uh, a strange exception but it was incinerated.”

Detective:_ “Incinerated. Where did you incinerate it? (Bundy laughs) Come on partner! There are things I don’t know about you.”_

Bundy: “This is the probably disposal method of preference for those who get away with it. It’s the most bizarre thing I have ever been associated with and I have been associated with some bizarre shit. (Right. It’s incinerated) It’s incinerated.”

Keppel: “ Tell me about it. What happened.”

Bundy: “I don’t remember the address of the place. I never want to tell this because, I thought, above all the things I did to this woman, she is least likely to forgive me for. Poor Liz. In her fireplace. It’s really not that humorous, but in the fireplace at that house.”

Detective: “Burned it all up?”

Bundy: “Down to the last ash. In a fit of paranoia, clean iness, packing down all the ashes. That’s a twist. Twist. It’s a lot of work and certainly risky. Kids come home from school. Fire in the fireplace. It’s warm outside.”

_29:00 Narration: Bundy recounts -- reiterating its not that humorous -- that he burned the skull down to the last ash -- in a fit of cleanliness. He admits it’s a twist -- and a lot of work -- and risky since Liz -- his girlfriend’s children arrived home from school while he was still in the middle of getting rid of the evidence. _

Narration: Two of our serial killer experts disagree on if Bundy is telling the whole truth and why he might have shared the burned-skull story.

Klismet: _“His voice once again goes down a couple of octaves. What does that mean? He thinks he’s going into confessional mode. Like the priest in a confessional or penitence in a confessional and he’s almost afraid to say what he did. That makes it more sincere. In that that voice he did. The other part is – he thinks now, because I told them I incinerated her head, that he’s given them something significant. That’s going to be a big revelation to them. What a big deal that is. it is nothing. Will an entire head burn up? Sure. What won’t burn? The glossy whites. Where are the ashes go, Ted? Did they get scraped down the little ash’s thing. Come o Ted. I was born at night, not last night Ted. What happened to that head?” _

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Dr. Ried: “He mentions cleanliness? I think is really interesting. What does he mean? Throwing skulls in fireplaces? He knows it not biological cleanliness because he’s been doing things not cleanly at all. Cleanly in a psychological sense. Burning something. Fire has an all-consuming power. It can reduce something to ash. I think there is something cathartic about that.”

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Halsne narration: IF YOU’VE BEEN INTRIGUED WITH THE DISCUSSION OVER THE PAST THREE WEEKS OF TED BUNDY’S ADMISSIONS RELATED TO THE KIDNAPPING AND MURDER OF GEORGANN HAWKINS -- I HAVE A REALLY COOL AND EXCITING REFERRAL FOR YOU.

IN THE COMING WEEKS, A GROUP OF AUGMENTED REALITY VIDEO-DESIGNERS WILL BE LAUNCHING A NEW APP CALLED “CRIME DOOR.” THEY HAVE RE-CREATED THE HAWKINS KIDNAPPING SCENE WITH INCREDIBLE DETAIL. YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ENTER A PORTAL VIA THE CRIME DOOR APP AND WALK AROUND THAT UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PARKING LOT WITH BUNDY AND HAWKINS. SEE THE CROWBAR, CRUTCHES, THE VOLKSWAGEN BUG WITH A MISSING SEAT -- AND ALL THE OTHER PIECES OF EVIDENCE IN STUNNING, ACCURATE DETAIL. IF YOU LIKE VIDEO-GAMES, YOU WILL TO NUTS FOR THIS. WATCH FOR “CRIME DOOR” AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD ON ITUNES AND ALL YOUR OTHER FAVORITE FORMATS. I’VE BEEN LUCKY ENOUGH TO SEE THE SCENE DURING BETA TESTING AND IT IS INCREDIBLE. I’LL HAVE MORE DETAILS SOON.

And by the way, Patreon has decided the content from this podcast must be labeled adult content. Because of that, they have blocked the account from showing up in any seach. If you would like to see what they are so afraid to release, you can still visit the page, but you’ll have to go through our website at interview with evil dot com.

Narration: “I’m investigative reporter Chris Halsne -- Coming up in the next segment of Interview with Evil.

After some great feedback from listeners -- I’ve decided to start releasing what I call Ted Bundy RAW. Subscribe to Interview with Evil on i-Tunes, Spotify or Stitcher and you will have access to the unredacted audio files captured of Bundy in that prison room just before his execution in 1989. Hear every detective question, Bundy’s laugh and odd sense of humor, how he manipulates the room with his emotions and storytelling. We won’t make any edits for at least an hour of content -- and we are committed here at Interview with Evil: Ted Bundy’s FBI Confessions -- to continue adding RAW segments as this series progresses. In the end, we’ll release everything we acquired.

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