Senate Committee Hearing on Serial Murder, 1983

This is the transcript of a 1983 Senate committee hearing on the problem of serial murder and the need for a program called VI-CAP to apprehend the killers. Ann Rule testifies as an expert, as well as John Walsh and a representative of the FBI. Their efforts were successful- the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program within the FBI was founded in 1985.
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"Since I have covered more than 1400 murder investigations in the past fifteen years in my work as a fact-detectlve writer, I have encountered many serial killers. In 1970 and 1971, my partner at the Seattle Crisis Clinic was a brilliant young man named Ted Bundy, an honor student in abnormal psychology at the University of Washington. In 1974, young women began to vanish in Washington, Oregon, and Utah. The prime suspect emerged, almost accidentally. He was Ted Bundy, the young man I had thought to be kind, caring, and slated for great success in his career as an attorney… 

When detectives finally coordinated their investigative research, it appeared that Ted Bundy had destroyed anywhere from 24 to over 300 young women in his rampage across the country. He killed in Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Florida--and probably other states. When a Florida detective asked Ted about the FBI's ball-park figure of his victims--36, he replied enigmatically "Add one digit to that and you'll have it."

In Ted’s case, I think we could not have saved the girls in Washington. I think we mIght have saved the last two girls in Utah if Utah authorities had been able— all the computer intends to do is to put the two jurisdictions together and say ‘look, we have had crimes here, they have had crImes there, and it looks kind of similar. Maybe you had better get together and talk.’ 

I think the Utah police and King County police and Seattle police would have gotten together. I think between them they would have had enough physical evidence to arrest Ted Bundy. I think certainly they could have identified him instead of his being given a chance to continue his roving through the end 1974 into August of 1975. I think they would have had him.

It is ironic that in an era of advanced technology, homicide detectives are working with a horse-and-buggy system. They are invariably overworked; they cannot possibly keep in touch with what is happening in other police jurisdictions halfway across the country. So many of the serial murder cases that are solved are solved accidentally. With a computer to allow detectives to pool their information, lawmen would no longer have to rely on such flukes to solve their crimes.

VI-CAP is an idea long past its time. We have to have some way for detectives to join together with their information on M.O., victim profiles, and suspects. Unless we do, these men will continue to rove, just beneath the surface of awareness, throughout the country. They drive constantly, trolling for victims. They invariably work with the same M.O.— but they move on before the pattern becomes apparent. With VI-CAP, the M.O. pattern would literally leap out of the computers.

Speaking for myself, my greatest hope is that I may help to put myself out of business in the crime-writing field..."