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| “ | You feel the last bit of breath leaving their bodies... you're looking into their eyes... basically, a person in that situation is a god. You possess them, and they will always be a part of you. And the grounds where you kill them, or where you leave them, become sacred to you, and you will always return there. | „ |
| ~ Ted Bundy describing in the abstract what it feels like to kill someone. |
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy is the main antagonist of the television film The Riverman. He is a fictionalized version of the late real-life serial killer of the same name, who briefly "consulted" with Seattle Homicide Detective Robert Keppel to profile the then-unidentified Green River Killer in a vain attempt to have his death own sentence commuted.
He was portrayed by Cary Elwes, who also played Donald Curtis in the English dub of Porco Rosso, William Boone in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, Dr. Jonas Miller in Twister, Casanova in Kiss the Girls, Paxton Powers in Batman Beyond, Sir Edgar in Ella Enchanted, Lawrence Gordon in the Saw franchise, Aquaman in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, Larry Kline in Stranger Things, Denlinger in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning and Pistol Pete Whipple in Knuckles.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Bundy was born to a single mother in 1946; he never knew the identity of his real father. To avoid that era's social stigma on having children out of wedlock, his mother told him that she was his sister, and that her parents were his parents. Their real relationship was an open secret in the family, however - throughout his childhood, he was called "mommy's little brother". When she wanted to punish him for misbehaving, Bundy's mother sent him to stay with his grandfather, a violent alcoholic who routinely locked him in the closet and turned out the light.
At a young age, Bundy found that he could not feel emotions like everyone else, so he learned to mimic them to make people think he was just like them. He started collecting sadistic pornography and peeping into women's windows in an effort to feel something, and gradually developed violent fantasies of murdering women and violating their corpses.
He acted on these fantasies for the first time as a teenager by sneaking up on a young girl and bludgeoning her with a two-by-four, running away as she screamed in pain. The experience filled him with a newfound sense of power and control, so he began committing evermore brutal acts of violence against women until he finally killed one; he then acted out his sadistic sexual fantasies on her corpse.
His modus operandi was to pretend to be injured and ask his intended victim for help carrying his things to his car, and then knock her unconscious. He would then drive her to an isolated spot in the wilderness, strangle her to death, and sexually abuse her corpse. He also periodically revisited their bodies for the purposes of necrophilia, and sawed off several of his victims' heads with a hacksaw and kept them as trophies until they decayed into skulls. By the time he was caught and sentenced to death in 1978, he had murdered dozens of women and at least one preteen girl.
The Riverman[]
In 1982, Bundy writes to Robert Keppel, the now-retired Seattle Homicide detective who investigated his murders, from death row, offering to help him create a psychological profile of the Green River Killer, an unidentified serial killer who is preying on prostitutes in the Seattle, Washington area. Keppel doubts that Bundy, who claims to be an expert on serial killers from talking to so many of them on death row, will be useful to the investigation, but agrees to meet him because he thinks he can get him to confess to unsolved murders he is suspected of committing.
Keppel and his partner, Detective Dave Reichert, visit Bundy in his cell, and Bundy tries to negotiate with them to get his death sentence overturned or commuted, or at least stall his execution. When Reichert refuses, Bundy starts antagonizing him about "allowing" so many women to die by failing to catch the killer, whom he dubs "The Riverman". Keppel plays "good cop" by sending Reichert away and pretending to take Bundy's theories seriously, while making vague promises to "see what he can do" about Bundy's death sentence.
In return, Bundy offers his insights on the killer. He posits that the "Riverman" has a menial job in the Seattle Strip that allows him to move around anonymously; that he has a car and gasses it up frequently; that he patronizes prostitutes even though he hates them; and that he is intelligent and disciplined enough to balance his murders with his daily life as a functioning adult. Bundy theorizes that Keppel can find "The Riverman" by staking out slasher film festivals, reasoning that the killer has an insatiable need to fuel his violent fantasies.
A few years later, Bundy contacts Keppel again, once more promising to deliver a profile of the "Riverman" in return for "some more time" to help police find his victims' bodies. When Keppel makes another vague promise to "look into it", Bundy says that the killer will repeatedly return to the grounds where he buried his victims to relive the experience of killing them. He advises Keppel to imagine himself as the killer, reasoning that whatever he does in the fantasy is likely to be similar to what the killer will do.
Despite Keppel and Reichert's best efforts, the Green River Killer eludes authorities for years, killing prostitutes with increasing brutality and brazenness. In 1989, Bundy, who has just lost his last appeal, asks to meet with Keppel again to offer more insights on the murders in a last-ditch effort to get a stay of execution. Keppel agrees to the meeting to take one last shot at getting Bundy to confess to more murders before he dies. When Keppel rejects his request for "a little more time", Bundy spitefully says he can tell that Keppel fantasized about killing a woman while imagining himself as the "Riverman". He also describes his traumatic childhood and evolution into a serial killer in the abstract, second person, avoiding direct admissions of guilt.
Finally, Keppel becomes impatient and asks Bundy to tell him about one of his murders. Bundy is hesitant at first, but eventually starts talking about the night he killed one of his victims, Georgeann Hawkins. Keppel then confronts Bundy with evidence that proves that he committed necrophilia with his victims. Bundy denies it, but he becomes visibly aroused when Keppel describes the decaying skin and fingernails of a corpse. Keppel asks Bundy why he had kept his victims' skulls and presses him until he finally admits that he would masturbate to them as they decayed.
Finally beaten, Bundy tells Keppel about committing several murders that had gone unsolved for years. As Keppel leaves the cell, Bundy yells after him that he is still important, and that they are just alike. Days later, Bundy is executed in the electric chair. Years later, the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, is finally apprehended thanks to newly discovered DNA evidence.