The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule

 

The Book

True crime writer Ann Rule first met serial killer Theodore "Ted" Bunny in 1971. At that time she was in her own words, "a plumpish mother of four, almost thirty-five, nearing divorce." Ted was much younger, 24. They worked at a suicide prevention hotline for several years before each moved on. Ann, in the throws of a divorce, takes up writing true crime articles for magazines to support her kids. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is dying of cancer and soon she will be the sole support for the four kids they had together. 

Ann chronicles how she made contacts across her county as a crime reporter, a job she did well and was trusted by the cops since she had been a cop over a decade earlier before her marriage. She wrote about closed cases for magazines, careful on how she portrayed both victims and cops. As a result, she gained the trust of many cops throughout the greater Seattle area. 

After 18 months working at the Seattle Crisis Clinic, Ann burned out. She needed to write six days a week as her divorce and her ex-husband's cancer progressed. That was 1972. 

After Ann left the crisis clinic, she and Ted, who had been overnight colleagues, kept up a sporadic friendship. All this while, he knew what she did for work. In the summer of 1974, the awful year where young woman after young woman disappeared, two women were abducted from a state park one summer afternoon. Two other women who might have been victims, but they turned down the charming man asking for help, gave rise to the name of these murders. They were called the "Ted Murders" and Ann Rule signed a contract to write a book about it. 

As she started working with the cops, chronicling the lengths they went to in order to stop the "Ted Murders", she gradually began to fear her buddy, Ted Bunny, might be the Ted they were looking for. But as the investigation got hot in Seattle, Ted did what he would do time and again, he left for law school in Utah. 

In Utah the strange disappearances followed him. His grades, which had been really good, sank. He was having problems holding it together. He drank too much. Finally, in the middle of his second year in law school, he was caught, in Aspen, Colorado, in connection with another murder. This time, he had to face the music. While going through pre-trial motions, Ted escaped. He was later caught and was in turn jailed, awaiting trail in the Garfield County Jail, when, on December 31, 1977 he escaped again. 

This time he made his way to Tallahassee, Florida where just a few weeks later he attacked 4 women one night at a sorority house. Chi Omega was the same sorority that Ann Rule had pledged in college, some 20 years earlier. One of many eerie ties that Ann and Ted had in common. 

Not satiated, Ted continued killing until, finally, one night, afraid the police were closing in, he stole a car an attempted to flee Florida. He was stopped for erratic driving, where the officer who pulled him over did a routine "wants and warrants" search. When the car Ted was driving came back as stolen, he was arrested. 

The state of Florida does not play around, Ted was tried twice, once in 1980 for the Chi Omega murders and again later for Katie Leach's murder. Both trials resulted in him being found guilty and getting the death penalty. 

The death penalty had been reinstated by the US Supreme Court in 1976, and Florida was a state that believed whole heartedly in the punishment. At the conclusion of the second trail, Ann Rule took a year to write the first edition of this book. She updated it twice more, once in 1989 after Ted was executed and once again in 2000 for the 20th anniversary of the book. There are newer versions on the market, but this is the one I read. 

My Thoughts

Ted Bundy, so many thoughts and I spent so much time just giving you the wide brushstrokes of this 500+ page book. Charming and cool, Bundy is perhaps one of the most chilling of the famous serial killers. 

While Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Bueno (The Hillside Stranglers) and Richard Ramirez (The Night Stalker) were busy killing women of opportunity. Ted stalked his victims. One could argue that none of these other serial killers were destined to be murders. Bianchi and Bueno because they were a duo and without the other, that neither could successfully kill on his own. And Ramirez because he was so deeply poisoned and high at the time he killed that just a little bit of intervention in his life might have put him on a different path. 

Ted on the other hand, that case is harder to make. Ted was smarter than those guys. Much smarter. And he thought he had a difficult childhood, it wasn't nearly as bad as some other killers. His mother got him out of a seriously violent household when he was 4 years old. 

Ted's problems seem to be more pathological, and more volatile. 

While I believe Ann Rule when she says she sat there and heard Ted save lives at the crisis center, it's hard to believe he meant any good from it. I suspect, although I don't have any evidence, or a degree in psychology, that Ted took the job to hear people on the edge of dying. I believe he may have fooled everyone with his work, but I believe he got a thrill out of hearing people on the edge of death. I think, this was sick voyeurism on his part, a way to live in those moments between life and death. He may have believed that by doing this he was quieting the part of his mind that was obsessed with killing. But in reality, he was strengthening the neural pathways to enable him to be his most violent self.

Ted may have been the most charming and manipulative serial the world has seen to date. And like Jack the Ripper, it seems he will live in infamy forever. 

How Much My Library Card Saved Me

This is the third and final book lent to me by CM. As always, she's a light reader who only occasionally dog ears her own books. I am agnostic on dog earring one's own books. I tend to highlight passages in the ones I own, making the resale of them impossible. I only say, that dog earring a library book is a grave sin, so please be kind to the reader behind you and use a bookmark. 

This is the 20 anniversary edition of this book. And the one CM has been most interested in my opinions. It took a long time to read, partly because with true stories, even if I know the outcome, and perhaps how the person came to justice, I need to read the details more slowly. I need to hold them in my head better. This has nothing to do with following the story. I am remembering details, impressions, and my own imagining while reading true crime. This informs my world building and character buildiing in my own books. I am inspired by the things I encounter in every day life. Many people read or listen to true crime podcasts these days. Although the stuff in true crime often goes farther than a novelist can extend, being grounded in reality keeps an author's work fresh. 

The cover says this book cost $7.99 when CM purchased it. That's the number I will use. 

This Book                                                        $0.00

Items Reviewed This Year                             $319.96

Private Books

This Book                                                        $7.99

Total of Private Books                                    $44.89

Total of All Items Reviewed This Year         $365.73

Still Here? 

 I am now a published author. You can pick up a *FREE COPY* of my novella The Big Intersection here.