Ted Bundy: A Killer in the Archives

A Conversation About the Riverman, 1984, Part 11

Added 2024-04-16 02:55:47 +0000 UTC

“We’re dealing with such a unique individual, who knows what it is that sets him off, specifically? Generally, what set him off are the young teenage prostitutes. But beyond that, whether he likes to keep a photograph of them or collect newspaper clippings, whether he gets off by going back to the sites and molesting corpses or whatever, any number of different things that might be part of the pattern, or as I say "ritual," but I only mean that in the most general sense, nothing religious necessarily, but part of his, uh... syndrome that he’s caught up in, which is evolving over time, too. I mean, changing as he changes. Everybody changes. But it may be a fetish, it may be necrophilia, it may be any number of peculiar things. Is there any indication that the man is, has been back to the sites where we’ve found whole bodies to see if the bodies have been disturbed postmortem?”...

“The reason I ask is, cause this guy is responsible for twenty or thirty or more deaths at least, and there’s a certain aspect of possessiveness-- I think that’s one way of describing it in rather bland terms-- a possessiveness where the, the, the corpse could easily be as important as a live victim, in some respects. I mean, it’s a physical possession, an ownership, a taking, if you will, that is just part of the syndrome. Which is another reason why I think the sense of power and ownership... and uh... which is one of the reasons why I think in certain cases—not all, certainly, but in some, and I think this might be one—why I think he might, uh, individually intend to return to the scene to either view his victim or, in fact, even interact with the body in some way.”