Ted Bundy - Part 4
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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Weyborg Thun. And tonight, dear listeners, part four of the Ted Bundy saga. If you have not listened to part one through three, please stop listening to this episode and go listen to those episodes first.

It's important to understand Ted Bundy's background before exploring more details regarding his exploits and ultimate fate. Please check out my fan page on Facebook. Go to facebook.com slash the SK podcast for discussion, bonus content, and frequent interaction with me, your humble host. Also, feel free to visit my website at theserialkillerpodcast.com.

And of course, my Patreon page at patreon.com slash the serial killer podcast. Any donation, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated. And so, dear listener, we arrive at tonight's feature. An exclusive interview with one of America's true legends. As I mentioned in part three of the Ted Bundy saga...

Ted Bundy underwent a 90-day psychiatric evaluation in the 1970s. The lead psychologist on the team was Dr. Al Carlyle. After his experiences interviewing and evaluating Ted Bundy, he wrote a truly great book called Violent Mind, the 1976 Psychological Assessments of Ted Bundy. And he has been generous enough to provide me a copy of that very book.

I've read it, and it is a riveting and fascinating read. I recommend all my dear listeners to purchase a copy for themselves. Dr. Carlyle has earned his bachelor's and master's from Utah State University and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Brigham Young University.

He retired as the head of the psychological department at Utah State Prison in 1989. Dr. Carlisle has conducted extensive research on serial killers and has interviewed Ted Bundy, the Hi-Fi Killers, Arthur Gary Bishop, Wesley Allen Dodd, Keith Jesperson, and many others. He currently resides in Price, Utah.

and is at the moment sitting on Skype, ready to be interviewed by me, your humble host, Dr. Carlisle. Thank you so very much for agreeing to come to this interview. It is a true honor and privilege to be able to talk to a person who not only interacted with Ted Bundy, but actually spent 90 days interviewing and evaluating his psyche. Welcome. Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be with you and to be doing this. Pleasure's mine.

Great. So do you prefer doctor or should I call you Al? Al is fine. That's why most people call me Al. So that's great. Fantastic. And just so our listeners are informed, where in the United States are you speaking to me from? Right now I'm speaking from Vernal, Utah. It's a little town up in the corner of Utah.

And so I'm in an office that a friend has. And how is it up there now? Do you have winter as we have here in Norway? Generally we would, but it's actually fairly warm and they're predicting good weather for the next several days. So it's supposed to get up to about 60 degrees. The sun is shining, skies are clear.

It's about 34 degrees this morning, but it's warming up. It's very nice. That sounds nice. So, before we begin digging into the meat of the matter, I gave a little introduction there, but can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your background as a psychologist and writer in your own words? When I started working for the Utah State Prison,

with a master's degree at that time working on my doctorate. I had the chance of working with various types of inmates, sex offenders, violent offenders, and all kinds. And then I was working with the 90-day program, and Ted Bundy came, and that's when I began that part of my career. And actually, that changed everything because having...

interviewed having gotten to know Ted Bundy quite well. I had a friend of mine who said, why don't you write about him? And so I did. And so this is actually my fourth book. And so I kind of specialized in killers, violent people. And that's been my interest in understanding why they do what they do and the step-by-step process

stages in going from a normal child to a killer who is so obsessed with it that he can't not kill. That is actually almost exactly the same reason that I started doing what I'm doing, understanding why the killers do what they do, the serial killers in particular. It is a very fascinating topic because it's such, it's so extreme.

Yes, I agree, but they're fascinating. They're fascinating people to talk to. Very much so. Yeah, in addition to Ted Bundy, I got histories from two child killers, Wesley Allen Dodd up in the Northwest who killed three kids, and Arthur Gary Bishop who killed five. And because I wanted to understand how they could do that and talk to Keith Jesperson,

who killed seven women. And I did a book on, it was a Vietnam vet who was a hero. He was a Marine, well decorated, and he came back and couldn't settle in to a regular life anymore. And became a biker, then became a hitman and wrote a book on him. And his story is absolutely fascinating.

So now we're working on the Columbine killers. What's the name of the book about the biker? The Broken Samurai. And the reason it's called that is because when he was in Vietnam and a good friend got killed, he then began, he in essence became a killer. And his justification was he was samurai

And being samurai, you can eliminate bad people. So when he came back, he was eliminating drug dealers, drug kingpins. And he always had that samurai as his justification. But then he accidentally killed a kid and he totally fell apart and couldn't kill anymore after that. So it's a work on how a person is.

learns to justify what they're doing in such a way that they can do some heinous acts and still feel that they're doing good. Fascinating. I will be sure to pick up that book for myself.

All right, a bit more background. You were in your 30s when assessing TED. How did a 30-something professional really dress back in 1976? Did you have a corduroy suit with a huge multicolored tie? No, we just dressed down pretty well. At times we'd wear white shirts and at times dress shirts.

But other times we could just dress down, so there was really nothing spectacular, nothing expensive. I was just a plain ordinary person, as I thought. I expected as much. And I read in your book that the first time that you met Ted, he was in prison overalls. Did you ever see him dress in civilian clothes? No. No.

And the reason I didn't is because I didn't see him until he came to prison. And when we gave him up to Colorado, he was in jail over there. So he was wearing their outfit. So I talked to him after when he escaped from jail and got caught. He called me. We talked. But no, I didn't see him only in that prison outfit.

I'll get back to his very famous escape a bit later. But before we do that, I have to ask you, have you listened to any of my podcast episodes about Ted? No, I haven't, but I'd like to. Yes, you really should. But yeah, it's...

I'm quite happy with them. It's been very interesting researching Ted. He is the most famous, at least that I know of, of all the serial killers, but he wasn't the most prolific. Yeah. Right. So in my first two episodes, I talk about his youth and his adolescence and the beginning of his killing spree.

I read that he had a somewhat troubled upbringing because he was led to believe that his mother was actually his sister and his grandmother was his mother. And I had a bit of trouble trying to find out when exactly it was revealed to him that his sister was actually his mother. Do you know that? No, I don't.

Ted denied that was a problem. Of course, he also, you know, he was illegitimate and he said that was not a problem. But I got a lot of evidence that it really was. When he moved with his mother up to the Northwest and they stayed with her brother for a bit and they got their own place and she married John Bundy. So at least by then you'd assume that Ted would have known

that this was his mother. I'm sure that people would refer to her as his mother and not his sister. But except for that one statement that he believed and was told that she was his sister, I haven't heard any further documentation. Now, it's logical that he might believe that.

Because when he lived in Philadelphia with his grandparents and his mother, he had two aunts, teenage aunts, and he was close to them. And his mother was a teenager just above. And so in essence, there are three young girls in the home who took care of him. And so it would be logical that he might believe that story.

Right. And I also read quite a lot about his grandfather and that he had quite a strong bond with him when he was a child. His grandfather is described as a very abusive person, very violent, and perhaps even a pedophile who abused Ted's mother. Do you know anything about that?

No, only it seems like that information was later obtained from one of the aunts. I hadn't heard anything about the pedophile thing, but just that the grandfather had a temper. Ted spoke of him in warm terms. Of course, when I saw Ted doing the evaluation, in essence, he was denying any problem. And so he would have spoken kindly of them.

But in our interview, when he talked about going back to Philadelphia, and every couple of years, the family would go back, he and his mother and John Bundy and his step-siblings would go back to Philadelphia just to visit the grandparents. And he never spoke of those except saying that they did go back. But then...

He later on went back and spent some time with him after he broke up with Marjorie, visited his uncle as well. Ted would talk to his girlfriends about being illegitimate, and they told me that it really bothered him that he was illegitimate and

A couple people, he just burst into tears and said, I don't know how you could like me because I'm illegitimate. They never reported to me that he spoke of his grandparents. They did say that he didn't want to take them to visit his mother and stepfather very often. And so they thought he and his mother likely were not that close.

But this was later on when he was associating with these other people, going to college and all of that. Right. Okay, moving on to our first question from one of my listeners, Jennifer Green at SJMum81 from St. John, New Brunswick in Canada. Her question is,

When you spoke to Ted, was he open to talking with you or did he try to switch the conversation? Well, a little of both. He was very closed and yet he didn't try to switch the conversation. He let me ask my questions. He gave complete answers. His answers very often seemed rehearsed. And there were times when I asked him something that he didn't seem prepared for.

And he would pause and then he would give an answer. But no, he didn't try to switch it up. But, you know, at that point he was saying he was innocent. He hadn't harmed anyone. He wouldn't harm anyone. And he thought it was an injustice that he had ever been arrested in the first place. So his answers were complete insofar as.

what he said and giving an explanation, but he was smart enough, verbally articulate enough, that he could say whatever he wanted to say to make it sound like he was giving an honest answer. But there were several things that tripped him up, and I felt he wasn't. Right. And I think you mentioned that, I think, several places in your book.

the answers being very calculated and rehearsed. But when you start to scratch the surface of his persona, you see the insecurity below. But before we go deeper into that, I think that one of the fascinating things about Ted is simply how he looked. He looked very, at least in my opinion, like a celebrity, like a movie star. But I haven't seen him in real life.

I wasn't even born when he was arrested. But the first time that you met Ted, what was your impression of him appearance-wise? And did he have his famous unibrow? Mark Harmon, in a movie, a documentary, played Ted Bundy. And Ted and Mark looked similar. That is, Ted, he dressed well, even if he was in the prison. His clothes were pressed and...

He had a lot of energy. Back at that time, I would call down and say, would you send inmate so-and-so up to the office, which was in the prison? And so they would send him and he would walk up and he was walking up the corridor towards my office. And he saw me and assumed I was who I was. Big smile on his face. He held out his hand and

and shook mine and says, "You must be Dr. Carlisle. I'm Ted Bundy." And it was similar to a politician or a salesman. Very friendly, nice looking, somewhat piercing eyes, a clean cut, and he had that persona that you assumed he would have had when he was working in political campaigns. But I was very impressed.

And Mark Harmon, he played in the movie "A Deliberate Stranger", I think was the film. Is that right? Yes, I think that's the one. It's a book written by Richard Larsen, associate editor of the Seattle Times. Right. And a lot of descriptions of Ted conveyed that he had an uncanny ability to change appearance and personality.

Do you agree with that? And did you experience it yourself? Yes and no. The part I experienced was when his mood changed. And I've seen the different pictures of him and he had that capability of doing that. But there were a couple of times when he got angry and he paused and he seemed to look through me. And the one time he was talking about his girlfriend that he was living with.

Spend a lot of time with her in her place, even though he had his own apartment. And she had gone on a date with a guy. And the purpose was to make him jealous. So he would marry her. And another time when she helped a guy with on a catamaran trip. And he said that was the last straw. And he seemed to be looking through me. And I just paused and waited.

And it seemed clear to me that he was reliving something with her about that incident. And his eyes seemed to change, got a little darker. But he was very, very angry at that point. Then he caught himself and looked at me. And we went on with the conversation. And he had a way of showing that emotion.

And then when he caught himself, he'd say something like, but it was really not a problem. We got together. We both cried and everything was fine. And then we'd go on with the interview. So I did see that a couple of times. But having seen him only under that one condition in the prison, I didn't get to see him with other clothes, other clothes.

hairstyles and such. Right. I have another question here from Richard Adewale from Blackburn in the United Kingdom. Did he admit to you any expression of remorse at all, or do you know that he did so later? No, I never heard him say he was sorry for anything. When he was in prison in Florida,

I understood that he was meeting with some people. He was into religion again at that point. And whether or not you really said he was sorry, I think he regretted what he did. But he was not one to say he was sorry for anything. However, the flip side of that was when he confessed to the killings. And then I understand when he was on his way,

to be executed and he said to one of the people taking him down, he says, "Oh, there's one more I didn't mention." And he talked about a girl he had kidnapped in Provo, Utah. She was on her way to a dance at the college and he kidnapped her and killed her and talked about where he deposited the body.

So was that remorse? Was he trying to make amends? I didn't ever hear him say he was sorry, but at least when he talked about killing these girls, especially that last one, he didn't have to confess to the last one because he was on his way down to be executed. So as with Ted, it always seemed like there are different sides to him.

A fascinating character. Yes, very much so. And let's expand a bit more on his character. And we can do so by posing you a question from another one of my listeners, Jennifer Green St. John. And she is the same woman. She's from New Brunswick in Canada. In your professional opinion, how do you feel Ted would make out in present day? He was a master of disguise and appeared confident when he spoke.

But with the internet and social media, do you believe this would hinder his ways at all? I think you'd do fine. Ted had a way of holding himself together, making a good impression. He was articulate. He was very intelligent. He could adapt to many different things. So yeah, I think with the social media now, I think...

I think he'd have a lot of fun with it. I think he'd try to impress a lot of people because his whole goal in life was to be a lawyer, to be in politics, to make money. And so he dressed nice in the past and he wanted people to like him. He was lonely. I think in many ways, he was just a lonely boy who never got over it, very shy.

So he was able to put on airs. I imagine that if he had not got involved with killing, that he could have been a lawyer, a politician, and it might have done fairly well in politics. He played the dirty games trick.

for a while with one of the people he was working with in politics. And he would go to go listen to their speeches and record them. And then his candidate could use them, however. But he evidently was quite good in those dirty trick things. And so I think he'd be devious. But having developed that obsessive

need, so to speak, to kill, I don't think that would ever have gone away, not without about 30, 40 years in prison. Right. And winding a bit back to what you said about his politics, because in addition to being very interested in serial killers, I am also a political junkie.

And when I read that Ted Bundy was a member of the Washington State Republican Party and active in that party, I was very, very tickled by that. So I read about it, and apparently he was campaigning for Daniel J. Evans. And I think what you mentioned there about him recording speeches was on his behalf. Is that right? Yes.

Back in the 1970s, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, I guess, was a bit different than what we have today. But do you know why Ted became politically active? Do you know what his main causes were, if you had any? Yes. The whole thing started when he was a child. He would go up to his room and listen to the old serials.

that we had back then that would come on every week. Back in the 40s, early 50s, most people didn't have any TVs and he would listen to those. But one of the things he listened to that he told me, he listened to political speeches and he would memorize parts of them. Now, to a lonely, shy, intelligent boy who

needed some kind of an idol, someone he couldn't look up to. And it wasn't his father, his stepfather rather. So he didn't have anyone. So it became these people. I think he even said at one time he wanted to be adopted by Roy Rogers. So he listened to these and he was having some failure experiences, like in about the fourth grade, he wanted to be at the top

of the spelling circle in his class and he didn't get there and he said he was humiliated. And humiliated is a very strong word for a kid that young who just doesn't happen to be one of the best spellers. So he was always aiming for something higher. When he was in high school, he helped some friends run for student body offices and he did well. He liked that.

And then as a senior during winter and he went skiing with his friends, he was one of the boys. So he then was with some popular kids when they went skiing, but then they would come home and he would go off alone by himself while they went to dances, parties and such. So just very, very lonely and very shy. But he told me his objective, his goal, his dream was

was to have a beautiful co-ed in college and to work for the government in helping US and China to reestablish or to improve relationships. And he also wanted to be involved in trade so he could make money. But he was always looking above himself and associating with whoever he could.

to get to that place. In his first campaign, he said he would be a driver. He was a driver and he was helped with the political speeches and such. But so to Ted, politics was a way of being important, of being in control. And he being poor, various people said he always had a desire to help the poor.

And with Watts, he was concerned about that. So it was that side of him that wanted to be famous, wanted to be a politician, wanted to help the poor, that wanted to be rich, and wanted to have a beautiful co-ed. Someone that, in essence, he could walk around with, walk in conventions and dances and meetings with.

and be seen as a person who was married to this beautiful, intelligent woman. And so, in essence, he put all of his marbles in that one basket, and when it fell apart, he fell apart. Fascinating. And let's dig a little into Ted, flesh out a bit more of his persona. I know that Ted really enjoyed skiing, and that he was in peak physical shape.

In your conversations with Ted, did he proffer up any personal information about his leisure life? For example, did he have any favorite books, films, hobbies, and so on? No. He liked classical music. He liked Mozart. He liked Wagner. And his girlfriend, Liz, she talked about him having nice things in his apartment. But he didn't seem to do a lot of reading.

When he had his various jobs, including working for the Republican Party and such, he never kept anything for very long. He was always moving. He was dissatisfied. He was given a task to get into white-collar studies, and he did, but he didn't finish it. And when he went to college in Asian studies in Palo Alto,

He dropped out there. And so it's like he was always seeking as if there was always a drive to do something. And knowing Ted now is what we was going through. He was going through a lot of window peeking. He would go out at night and look for girls. He would walk across campus and he found himself following girls.

And later on, when he got arrested, he wrote to his girlfriend, Liz. He compared his obsession at following girls on campus at night to her alcohol problem. And so I think he was just taken up so much in this drive, which seemed to have started when he was in his early teens. Because he got into pornography and he got into crime.

crime magazines. And even at one time when he was back in New York, he went to a medical library to seek out pictures of autopsies of women. So he wasn't one who could just relax and enjoy life. It's like he was always driven and he couldn't stop. Once the habit was there, he couldn't change it.

When he talked to Dr. Dorothy Lewis, a psychiatrist from New York, and she was doing the evaluation on him when he was in the penitentiary in Florida, he mentioned about this entity and how it seemed to drive him, and he would talk to it. And so she thought he might have the makings of a multiple personality disorder. But he was really driven by

And so he just couldn't relax. It seemed like one of the times he relaxed the most was after he killed the two girls back east. And this was in October, October 31st, 1969, when he first met Liz at the Sandpiper. And he stayed with her and he bought her flowers and he would borrow a car to drive around, but he took her around town.

around Seattle to some of his favorite spots. And he really seemed to enjoy the family life with her and her daughter. And even in the winter of 69, when he came down to Utah, where she was from and met her parents and spent time with them, he just seemed to fit right in, you know. So I think that was one of the happiest times in his life.

Yes, I've seen a photo of him holding a small child. I was uncertain if he was actually a father, but I couldn't really find any information about that. So I suppose that might have been the daughter of his girlfriend then. It could have been. I think she was about three years old in the beginning. Now, you know, his girlfriend did get pregnant and she had an abortion.

And Ted said the two of them decided that'd be a good thing because he was still going to school and he wasn't financially stable yet. But later on, she kind of swore at him because she felt that he had talked her into having the abortion. And so Ted would spend time with her child and he was good to her.

It wasn't like he was all for Liz and ignored the child. He would play with her and watch cartoons with her. So there was part of him, at least at one point, that was kind of a family man. He just couldn't capitalize on it. Right. And I've seen the very famous last interview he did with Reverend James Dobson.

where they almost exclusively talk about porn. And he goes on and on about how addicted he became to porn and how it

drove him to feeling never getting enough pleasure, like it always had to be more and more extreme. There are people saying that this interview was his desperate attempt to get some clemency from the court. I don't know myself if I really buy into the whole theory that porn ruined him, because there are thousands and millions, hundreds of millions of people watching porn every day,

and serial killers are very rare. So, but do you hold any opinion regarding his porn usage? Yes and no. If you take an actor who lives apart on stage or in front of the camera, and when he walks away from it, say goes to the beach for the weekend, he is not that part anymore. He can shift in and out of that part. With someone like Ted,

Getting into that in the first place, it's a development of a fantasy life. And the more a person gets into it, the more they try to have that fantasy life feel as real as possible. And so every time there's a disappointment, it's easy then just to go back to that, to the pornography. And it wasn't just porn with him.

A lot of it was the crime magazines. Crime magazines would have a picture of a woman on the cover who was dead and the body was there and such. That was a big thing to him. So it wasn't just porn. So in essence, that was his escape. And so with this type of person, other than, well, the actor can go out on the beach and he's out of the role.

With this person, he goes out on the beach and he can't step out of the role. He sees these women walking around in their bathing suits and he's right there feeding it, thinking about it, about how he would kidnap her. And as he keeps doing that, I believe he's developing a neural circuit in his brain associated with this.

Because he can step in and out of that role. And when he's in that killer role, when he is following the girls, when he is standing there looking at one of them and imagining what he would do, where he would take her and such. And then when he would kill him and then possess him after, it becomes so strong. It becomes so powerful.

that it isn't just the porn, it's the whole lifestyle that goes with that and with the killing. And that's why I think when he said he had this entity, to me the entity wasn't so much an excuse. It wasn't him saying he was not guilty. It's that something very powerful happened.

would shift in and he would know what he was doing. He wasn't a true multiple personality disorder. He would shift in and I've had others tell me the same thing. Once that trigger goes off and they get into that thinking, that fantasy, that emotion, if they don't get a victim right then or that night, it doesn't go away. It stays the next few days.

So we're talking about something extremely powerful. So that's why I say it's not just the porn, but it's the whole lifestyle that that represents.

Right. And when you talk about, when you mentioned that very strong feeling that doesn't go away, would you compare that with a compulsion? Like you have people with obsessive compulsive behavior that has to touch the doorknob seven times in a row before leaving the room and so forth. Do you think there are any similarities, of course, of difference in severity, but

Yeah, I think there's similarities there because it is a compulsion. And once it gets triggered, it comes in and it's in the mind and the person has to do something. Now, when Ted told his girlfriend, Liz, he wrote to her and he talked about him going across campus following girls at night. He said that.

He couldn't step out of that role. Once that urge was triggered and he saw a girl at night walking across campus, he felt he had the follower. And now, of course, if a cop was there, you know, that would always stop him. But otherwise, he shifts into that fantasy as he's walking behind that girl. I knew one guy who said he walked in front of the girl.

That way she wouldn't think that he was following her. And if she took a turn that he was not taking, he would circle around and come back and then watch her. Yeah, I think it's very much like that. I knew a guy who was a truck driver and he had to get into his truck three times before he could start it. And so the first time he climbed in the truck and he had to get out.

To him, it was just wrong to try to start it. That was that urge. He had to step out of the truck, and then he'd get in a second time. And he tried to change it, and he tried to start the truck, but he would never feel right if he did. It was always a very uncomfortable feeling. So he had to get out and step in the third time. The third time, he was comfortable. He could start the truck up and go about his job.

So, yeah, those drives become extremely obsessive and the compulsion is there. And it's very hard, like you say, a person has to touch the door knob seven times before they can go. Or a person who handles a shopping cart and the thought that there are germs on this handle. And so...

They can't go shopping until they clean it off or they have someone else push the cart or something. But that becomes extremely powerful. Interesting. In your excellent book, page 53, you mentioned the disappearance of the 80-year-old girl in Ted's neighborhood when he was a teenager.

Do you believe this young child was Ted's first victim? And following up on that, if he did, considering his murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, do you think Ted was a pedophile? Okay, no, he wasn't a pedophile. A pedophile, by definition, is a person whose primary sexual desire is toward young kids. Now, I think that Amber was his first victim.

And there are people who, of course, disagree with that. But I asked him one time because I knew of the situation and I knew how big it was. It was huge. Everybody in town was talking about it. The kids' school were talking about it. It was a discussion over the breakfast table and supper and everyone was out looking for this little girl.

And I asked Ted, I said, tell me about this girl that disappeared. Someone got her out of the house and they never saw her again. He says, well, I didn't know anything about it.

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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. And I said, well, how could you not? Because it was one of the biggest tragedies that had occurred

and people were dragging the rivers and everything else. He said, "Well, I must have been just spending so much time on my studies in school." And to me, that was a big red flag. It's like women. It would have been much easier, much more believable if he had said, "Yeah, I was very, very disturbed about that, and I went out and helped look for her."

She lived a couple miles away and Ted had a paper route in that area. And I don't know if he went right past your house. But yeah, my guess is whoever was got her out and was sexually doing some things that she started crying. And so he tried to stop her, smothered her and then had to do something with the body. But yeah, it's the way he denied he knew anything about that.

It's like he'd never heard of it. And that was one of the times when I think that Ted was caught off guard and hadn't practiced what to say about that. But still, you don't think he was a pedophile because his primary sexual urge was not for little kids. But he did rape Kimberly Leach. What do you think was the what was the motivation there? Was it simply like spinning out of control or what was the deal?

I think that was pretty much it. Yeah. When Ted was put in prison, when he went over to Colorado and he was in jail and he escaped and he called me and we had a very nice conversation, so to speak. He treated me more like a father he was calling to talk to to tell about a baseball game or something. But when a person gets locked up like that, the urge tends to lessen.

And so I think when he escaped, he thought that he would be all right. He thought that he wouldn't kill again. And he went up northeast and down to Florida. And when he got down to Florida, he was just out of control. And so I think with Kimberly Leach is just that she was there and she was an opportunity. But it wasn't like he was looking for someone that age.

It seems like there was a victim in Idaho who was young. And I'm just pulling that off the top of my mind. But, you know, there's always a possibility, although I don't see any evidence for it, that he saw Kimberly Leach and reminded him of his first victim and Burr. And so he just lost it out of anger. It's interesting that when...

He was asked about her. Now, his lawyer asked, one of his lawyers asked, and when he was doing the psychological evaluation with Dr. Art Norman, he would not talk about Kimberly Leach. And I've seen that before, a case where a guy kidnaps a girl, and as he's taking her clothes off, he notices that her panties are clipped together.

with a safety pin and he feels real bad, but he goes ahead and kills her anyway. But suddenly she becomes very human to him. And I think with Kimberly Leach, he killed her. And then my impression is he felt very bad. He felt horrible about what he had done. And so he could talk about his other victims, but he could not talk about her. Right. Regarding his, uh,

many, many victims. I've tried to find as much detail as I can because that's one of the things I do in my podcast. I try to flesh out the facts, even though they are disturbing and very graphic. But the media tends to gloss over details when discussing and dealing with serial killers and

But one of the things that I kept coming over was that Ted would return to his dump sites. He would leave his victims and then he would return to them, at least sometimes. Do you know any more details regarding that, about what he did with the victims? Well, evidently he would have sex with the corpse. And trying to get into the name of a person over in London.

who kidnapped kids and would do the same thing. But I think one time when Ted was going through an evaluation with Dr. R. Norman in prison in Florida, there was another lady with him, and she asked Ted about what he got out of the homicide. Was it the killing of the victim? And he said no.

It was possessing them after. And so I think with him, a lot of what was most important to him was his fantasy with the victim after she was dead. Of course, you know, with Lake Sammamish, there's a question of did he kill the first girl and then go back for a second one? Or did he?

tie her up and keep her so that she could watch him rape and kill the other victim. And he seemed to indicate that he killed the one and then went back after the other. And with Carol Durange, where he attempted to kidnap her, and she was able to get away, and that was about 5, 6 in the afternoon. And then he went up to the Bountiful area above Salt Lake and

And he kidnapped Debbie Kent. So it's the feeling the drive and not getting satisfied. And the drive becomes even stronger. So it was a rather dumb thing for him to go up to North Tall Lake, the Bonneville area, and kidnap someone up there. He got her out in the parking lot and

As I understand, when he was up there, at one point he was holding books in his arm and pretending he had that injury and was trying to get people to help him go out in his car and ask women going by if they would help him go out. And it carries some of that stuff on his car. Well, if you do that, people see you and some might pay attention.

And so it's a pretty ridiculous thing to do if you don't want to get caught. I've read that somewhere. I don't remember exactly where, but I seem to remember someone, maybe it was you, that said that he did that because he was so narcissistic that he couldn't really imagine people noticing other people.

I think there's a certain amount of that, yes. Ted had been involved in this stuff for quite a period of time, and people really hadn't noticed that much. It was only at Lake Sammamish when he introduced himself to that one girl on the beach as Ted, and the other girl he had already asked to help load a boat on his car was close by and heard it.

But, yeah, he came to believe that he could get away with almost anything, and it's mostly because he did. When you think that in January of 1974, when he first attacked a victim in her place, and then shortly after that, he began killing victims. And he beat that first one real badly, and I think he thought he probably killed her.

But you look at the way he committed those crimes, and especially that first one, it was not done by a novice. The way it was done was by someone who had been watching her. He knew how to get in and out of the apartment. There were people in an adjoining apartment who could have heard. And so he was very confident even at that point.

that he could get away with it. And so, yeah, a lot of narcissism and just the belief that he had gotten away with so many things so many times. There was a time he went into Walmart and he got him a Benjamin's tree and he carried it out right through the doors, put it down through the top of his Volkswagen and drove home. Well,

he was confident at that point that he could do it. And when he did some of the political dirty tricks, he was very confident. So Ted was very confident in his capabilities, even though he was extremely shy in having a relationship with the girlfriend. Right. And we can, from that, move on to another question from one of my dear listeners.

India Campbell from Birmingham, United Kingdom asks, what characteristics, if any, separates Ted Bundy from other notorious serial killers? And expounding on that, what are the similarities? Well, the similarities, of course, is the drive that gets so uncontrollable. He is different partly because he's of our age and so

There's so much information we can get that you couldn't get, say, on Jack the Ripper or the Boston Strangler or others back then. But to be so articulate, to be so friendly, when he got picked up by the police in Salt Lake and West Valley, and then they started looking at him as the possibility of having kidnapped Carol Durant, there's a lot of people in the Northwest who said,

This guy could not have done it because that was not his personality. He impressed people. There were people he worked with in committees up north who said he was interested in the poor and in helping people, and he could organize things, he could plan things, and he was just exceptionally good at what he did. And so most people were really impressed.

And you generally don't get that with serial killers. You didn't get it with Keith Jesperson. And people liked him, but not that impressed. Keith Jesperson was a truck driver, you know. And Wesley Dodd, who killed three kids, he was friendly. He held down a job, but people were not really impressed by him. He was just sort of

There's someone that you got along with, but you didn't think a lot about the same with Arthur Gary Bishop in Salt Lake who killed five kids, you know, and so he is so fascinating because in essence, we meet people with this personality every day. We listen to them talk. We interact with them. We find that they're very friendly to us.

And then to think or read in the paper that this person is a serial killer or that this person went into a movie theater and began shooting people or a church or the Columbine kids who got along with people. There are some who didn't like them. They were bullied, but they came from decent families and nobody would have predicted that

that they would go in to the Columbine High School and set up explosives planning to kill at least 400 to 500 kids. Fortunately, the explosives didn't go off in the double bags. But it's that fear. It's a fear of not knowing and not being able to tell if someone is threatening and can harm you.

So many bad guys, they act like bad guys and you sense it right off and you stay away from them because you don't want to get hurt. But it's the guy who seems so normal, so pleasant, such a good talker who can show an interest in you, who has definite goals and dreams of things they want to do in the future. That's when it becomes scary because we don't know which of those

is going to turn out to be a killer. Exactly. As Ted said, we are your husbands, your brothers, your cousins, your friends, your co-workers, we are among you. Yes. Yeah, he said that in an interview, I think. And about a bit more of the details about what he did, I don't remember where I read it, but I remember reading an interview with Ted

where he is challenged with how many he actually killed and if the official number of 36 was correct. And when answering, Ted said something to the effect of, put a number one ahead of that and you're getting close. Do you have an opinion regarding how many Ted actually killed? And if so, how many? Well, I think the jury's kind of out on that.

I know he told Dr. Ron Holmes that it was likely three figures, which you put at over 100. FBI says around 35. There are some people who are still doing some research trying to determine if there were a lot more. And so if they found they were, fine, I could buy that. But when he confessed to the ones he did, it seems a little improbable.

that he would confess to the group that the police knew were missing. And he didn't confess to any of the other 60, 70 who there's no record of except possibly just some teenagers who went missing. And so, you know what I mean? He didn't seem to confess to more than this one group of people.

Yes, and my personal opinion on that, and I am very much not a professional, so it's very much a layman's opinion, but I have a feeling that it might be connected to his obsession with possessing things. He wanted maybe to possess what he did for himself and keep

control of his actions as a final possession to have maybe. Could be. Yeah, I think when we get another five, ten years down the road, we're going to find out a lot more about him and other serial killers that we'll look back at what we know now and what we've written about now and say, well, our research now is a good beginning

But not the complete answer. Right. And in your book, you are referring to your specific task of assessing him for the trial in 1976 and if Ted is a violent person.

Hence the title, Violent Mind. For our readers that have not read your book, do you conclude that he was a violent individual? And if he was a violent individual, do you think he classifies as the classic psychopath? Good question. When I first saw Ted, he had had a psychological evaluation. And in our 90-day program with the psychiatrist,

did an evaluation and both of them said that he was closed, he wouldn't give very much information, so they couldn't say he was violent. They did say that they didn't think that he was amenable for treatment because he wasn't willing to admit anything. So I had to take a different approach.

And while I gave him some psychological assessments, the big thing was I contacted some of the people who knew him. And some said some very nice things. Others talked about a violent side. And so I talked to enough people that I could trace his life from the time he was a child up through the time when he committed the homicides in Salt Lake.

And I could get enough of a step-by-step change in him and him having been violent with some girlfriends and having dissociated in his own little fantasy when he was having sex with some of them that I was able to say, in my opinion, yeah, he is violent. So that's how I came to determine that he was violent.

And I have a different opinion on psychopath. You know, to me, a psychopath is what you see at the end stage. You don't necessarily see it in these people when they're teenagers. I think even Cleckley, who made the term psychopath real popular with his book,

I think he even said at one point in his book that Ted didn't fit the profile of the psychopath the way he had written about it and in his studies as a psychiatrist in the hospital. I think if you take a person as a child and they start having needs that are not being met and they're lonely and they begin doing some inappropriate things, they begin to feel

some discomfort and some guilt. Well, they can't very well go to church and feel guilty, so they start cutting off church, and they start blocking out the guilt feeding. And then they do more and more things, and they're feeding less and less guilt. So as they progress, they adapt to what they're doing, so they need to go a step further. And so they're gradually taking on or

they're developing the characteristics of a psychopath because they're feeling less and less guilt and and then even the shooters in Columbine Eric Eric Harris is Touted to be an absolute psychopath, but you see a lot of the things Characteristics he had were not what you typically see in a psychopath. I

You know, so there's a lot of controversy around psychopath and what it is. But at that point where he is killing people, he's killing girls, especially in Salt Lake. He just absolutely could not stop. And so he's doing this Salt Lake. He's doing Utah. He's going over to Colorado. He's driven and he's not feeling any guilt and he's justifying himself.

justifying by saying that people and animals and everything is alive. And so if people can take a trophy, but why can't, why is it so wrong to kill a human since animals are just as much alive as humans? And so he was able to justify what he did. And so he was an absolute psychopath at the end stage.

but not as a child. But he developed it. Yeah, I think once he killed that little girl, the only way you can deal with that is by shutting down those guilt feelings. And then it doesn't bother you so much to continue to do more and more stuff after that. Right. Very interesting answer. Thank you so much for that.

Do you know Robert Keppel, the guy who interviewed Ted in regards to the River Man case? Yes. I haven't talked to him personally, but maybe I talked to him way back in the 70s. But yeah, Keppel is very skilled, very good at what he does. And it's quite interesting because Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer,

He also operated in and around Seattle. And he may have started as early as the late 70s. Isn't that right? It could have been. I don't know a lot about that case, Ridgeway. Right. Because Robert Keppel, did you read his book, Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer? I started it.

but I was so involved in all this other writing, I didn't get it finished. It's very interesting and there's also a movie where you see this dramatized, this interview between Keppel and Ted. It's quite unnerving. It's where Ted famously talks about how one of the girls he had kidnapped, I think maybe it was

Denise Naslund, I'm a bit hazy on the name at the moment, but she woke up in his car and thought that Ted was there to help her with her Spanish test. Interesting. Is that the same one where he confessed to the killings and so in the movie you see kept walking away from the cell?

And Ted is trying to get him back again. So I'll tell you more details if you'll stay. Yes, I think that is the movie. The guy who plays Ted is so good that it's actually quite creepy. I've seen the recorded interviews with Ted. And when you compare them, the similarities are really, really good. Was that Mark Harmon?

No, that was the movie called River Man, I think. Yeah, okay. It's quite good. And we are nearing the end of this interview. But I have to ask you, because I'm in addition to a true crime junkie and a political junkie, I'm also very much into movies and books. Yes.

And Al, have you seen any films or books about fictional serial killers that you would recommend that you think would fit? That's a good question. Not that come to mind right off. You probably know a lot more than I do. My favorite book and film in the subject, it's actually the book that got my interest in serial killers started, is American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis.

Ainsworth Michaud, their book on Bundy is real good. Richard Larson, I liked his book on Ted Bundy. But Ainsworth Michaud, I thought, did a marvelous job. One of the best books out on Ted. Yes, I referenced them quite extensively in my book. They are very detailed. It's fascinating, really fascinating.

And I have a question here from one of my listeners, Philip Preet from Charlotte, North Carolina in the United States. I don't think that you know this, but I am here to serve my listeners. So I have to ask you, did Ted Bundy cry when it was time to be executed? Well, it's a good question. I assume so. I don't know. I haven't heard any accounts.

And maybe someone who was there wrote about it, but Ted is cold and is hard and psychopathic as Ted was. I think there was a softer side to him. So I wouldn't be surprised if at the time he was executed, he did cry. But I don't know. Thank you very much.

We can start to round off this interview now, but before we leave, would you like to tell our dear listeners a bit more about your upcoming books? Okay, we're working on one now on the psychology of Columbine. Columbine was the high school where the two boys went in.

And they had planted explosives and the explosive didn't go off so they went in with their weapons, well armed, lots of ammunition and just started killing people. And there have been various books written on that but we're taking a little different approach because we're going to show how the person, how these two boys became psychopaths. Especially Eric Harris.

And I've got a co-author with me who has collected a lot of information. And she is really, really skilled in this. So this is the one we're working on right now. And hopefully we'll have it done by next spring. Her name is Rita Ellis and very skilled. And then one more after that.

I'm going to write a book on the compulsive desire to kill and take a group of killers and what they've told me about how they became that way. Fascinating. And your previous books is Violent Mind, and you said you had written three more? Yeah, the first one is on Ted Bundy. Then I wrote one on...

The Vietnam guy and then one on the two child killers. And in each of any of these, they can see just by pulling up Al Carlyle online and they'll see all of these books. But yeah, it's fascinating doing it because I've learned so much about why and how a person becomes a killer.

So this lady helping me now with this next book is Rita Wallace. Fantastic. Thank you so much for allowing me to interview you. It's been a true honor talking to someone so close to the Ted Bundy case. It has been thrilling. I'm humbled by the experience. Thank you very much, sir. And thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.

I don't know.

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The next episode on the Serial Killer podcast will not feature Ted Bundy, but our fresh new serial killer. And that will air on the 15th of December. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. I have been your host, Thomas Weyberg Thu. Doing this podcast is a labor of love.

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