Welcome to my scientifically-informed, insider look at mental health topics. If you find this video to be interesting or helpful, please like it and subscribe to my channel. Hello, this is Dr. Grande. Today's question asks about the Netflix special that came out, "Conversations with a Killer", which was a four-part series that looked at Ted Bundy, who is one of the most notorious serial killers in history, and I thought this was an interesting topic. I spent a lot of time studying psychopathy, narcissism, and the different histories of serial killers, so I was familiar with Ted Bundy in terms of what we know that's documented. Although, there were a few things in the Netflix special that were new that I'd never heard before. Most of it I had heard before. So, it's important when talking about somebody who was an actual person... Ted Bundy was an actual individual, a serial killer, who was executed in... I believe it was 1989. It's important to point out that we can't diagnose real people. My analysis is really speculation based on different information that was reported in the media, and books, and even on Netflix. I've never met Ted Bundy, obviously, and I can't offer any type of diagnosis, and, for what it's worth, nobody can unless they've met Ted Bundy and were there in a clinical capacity. Nobody can offer a diagnosis. What I can do, however, is talk about what could be happening with someone who exhibits the behavior that we see documented in all these reports. And this isn't really a matter of courtesy. It's a matter of logic. Right? So, I could see some people saying "Well, Ted Bundy murdered maybe around fifty people or more," "We don't know. He doesn't deserve the courtesy. You can just say whatever you want." It's not a matter of that. It's a matter of logic. If you haven't met somebody in person, you can't diagnose them. In the mental health profession, our diagnostic skills are already fairly limited by what we know in terms of psychopathology because people are so complex, so even if I were with somebody in person and tried to diagnose them, that would be not perfectly reliable. So, when mental health professionals try to diagnose from a distance just based on reports, it's extremely unreliable. So, again, here, I'm just really exploring both sides of certain arguments in terms of what we see in the documentation that we have available. And I'll talk about a few different questions I've been asked. "Was Ted Bundy really special?" So, this question is talking about "How was he so devastating as a serial killer?" "Did he have some sort of special capability?" "Was he extremely intelligent?" Things like this. I'll also talk about the debate between psychopathy, narcissism, and bipolar disorder that was touched on a little bit in the Netflix special, but I've seen it talked about more in different articles and books where there was this attempt at one point to diagnose him with manic depression. I think it was one of the mental health professionals hired by his defense team. So, now, of course we call that bipolar disorder, so I'll touch on that. And I'll talk about some other unusual features of this case like how people are so fascinated with Ted Bundy. We see that in the Netflix special one person indicated that his eyes went from blue to black when he was talking about his crimes. One of the people that was interviewing him in prison. And of course we know that eyes can't change color from blue to black like that. It doesn't work like that. But there was really just this whole idea that there was something magical or supernatural or just incredible about Ted Bundy. And we also see it with a lot of the fans. A lot of the women that wanted to be with Ted Bundy that tried to slip him notes when he was in court. So, there's just a lot of fascination around serial killers in general, but specifically I think Ted Bundy has captured the attention of a lot of individuals. So, before I get into the questions about whether he was special or not, the argument there, and kind of looking at both sides of that argument, I want to talk about another question that I've received many times about Ted Bundy. And I think this question really kind of revolves around this idea that people are baffled that his history lead to him being a serial killer. There's this idea that with some people's history it's really obvious they were abused, maybe tortured, when they were young, they had an extremely difficult time adjusting to social situations and, even though it's a low probability event that somebody would become a serial killer, people can still understand that certain experiences could lead to that. And that seems to be absent with Ted Bundy, but I would argue that his behavior was understandable in the context of his experience. Although, of course it was still a low probability event. Again, we don't expect anybody to become a serial killer no matter what they've been through just because it happens so rarely. So, we see from various sources... I don't think this was in the Netflix special but other sources I've read that there were reports that Ted Bundy's grandfather tortured small animals and drank excessively and was physically abusive to Ted Bundy. Also, Ted had a speech impediment and was bullied when he was young. He was described as odd and weird, and I think that was mentioned in the Netflix special, and he didn't seem to fit in with a lot of the different social engagements that he was involved in. So, yes, you put those things together that still shouldn't equal serial killer, but it becomes more understandable that that could lead to it. It could lead to characteristics consistent with psychopathy and narcissism which of course we believe are very common in serial killers. Was the fact that he became a serial killer inexplicable? I don't think it was. I think it lines up fairly well with the experiences that were reported. So, how about the question of was he special? How was he able to cause so much devastation and murder so many people and evade capture? Well, I think here this is just an assembly of a lot of different circumstances that... in part, you kind of have to understand the time of the 70s. Right? It wasn't just the characteristics of Ted Bundy. It was the characteristics of the time, and the area where he was operating, and he did perhaps by luck evade capture a few times and also through intelligence, but I think a lot of it was really the context. He was one of the first serial killers to operate in the way that he did. According to the Netflix special, the term serial killer hadn't really been used before, and, in other things that I've read, that's actually fairly consistent. Ted Bundy might have been the first person actually referred to as a serial killer. So, you have this person who has unusual behavior for the context and a society that was not prepared to deal with that behavior. But let's look at some of the details that led to him being considered special. So, with this potentially special aspect, I'll start by looking at this idea that he got away with a number of murders and other crimes. Well, he did a few things that I think threw off law enforcement and, again, just weren't expected in society at that time. For example, he selected victims at random. He didn't know the victims, and this really gave him an advantage in terms of evading capture. A lot of the time of course when police investigate a murder, they look at the friends, family members, people near the person, people that knew the person, but, again, with random selection, that made it difficult to catch him. He also hid the bodies. He didn't leave a disorganized crime scene. He was careful about what evidence was left there, and, by hiding the bodies, he denied police access to a lot of forensic evidence that could've been helpful in finding him. It's also important to remember there wasn't much technology available for the police to use. So, some of this technology that we have today was simply unavailable or, for all intents and purposes, it was unavailable in the 70s like smartphones, cellphones at all, surveillance cameras, computers, and reliable ways to transmit information to a lot of people like the Internet and social media. So, a number of the potential victims didn't even hear that murders had taken place in another nearby jurisdiction. The information really wasn't widespread. Also, we see in the 70s, people were living in a more free lifestyle. There was hitchhiking, there was a lot of exploration with attitudes towards sexuality and relationships, and I think too if you look at what was available to entertain people, we didn't see video games and a lot of information on TV. There weren't movies available that could be brought home and watched at home, so people would walk to a friends house, they would wander around sometimes, get fresh air. Those were popular activities that we don't see as much anymore, so this meant that thee were more potential victims for somebody like Ted Bundy. Also, by and large, the 70s weren't considered a dangerous time for interpersonal violence like murder. There were some crimes that we saw a lot of like drug use and things like that, but it wasn't considered particularly dangerous. A lot of people, especially in the areas where Ted Bundy operated, didn't even lock their doors at night so you really have to remember that the 70s were a lot different than the times we live in now. Another interesting characteristic that I think helped Ted Bundy get away with the murders for so long is he didn't really appear to have worked his way up to murder And what I mean by that is a lot of times when we look at serial killers and we look at people that commit a lot of heinous crimes like that, we see that they started with smaller crimes, and they have a really long arrest record, and when they commit their first murder, when they're apprehended, and you look at the series of problems that they were in with law enforcement and criminal activity, it kind of makes sense. It looks like they were escalating up to something more serious, and Ted Bundy really didn't have a lot of serious issues before he committed his first murder in terms of a criminal history. So, again, his profile just didn't fit with what the police were looking for Some other aspects of Ted Bundy's evading capture... We see this in the Netflix special... The police departments didn't communicate very well from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Now, of course they do. When we look at this special, it's pretty clear that a number of those people in law enforcement simply didn't understand human behavior as it relates to a serial killer, as it relates
to psychopathy and narcissism. Some of them used the words, but, again, if you
just look at the whole special, if you watch all the about four hours, you get
this sense that they really didn't understand what they were dealing with. And I think that they underestimated him as well. Just the person of Ted Bundy and
his capabilities. If you look at his escape attempt from the courthouse, where he did manage to escape... I think that was in Aspen Colorado... and he went into the mountains, and he had to return because he was hungry, and
eventually he was apprehended, he escaped from a jail after that happened. So, he escaped from a courthouse jumped out a second-story window, and they put him in
a jail, and he escaped again. Now, I was thinking about this because he
committed, if I'm not mistaken, three murders after he escaped. All three were
in Florida, and I think he also had three attempted murders as well. So, that error
of letting him escape was really a very serious issue. It amazes me that somebody
could escape from a courthouse and then go to jail and be allowed to escape
again. When you think about the responsibilities of a jail... Right? If we
use an analogy, and we think about a for-profit business, you can see people
from that business sitting around and saying "Well, we need to increase sales. We
need to decrease costs." If you're in a meeting in a jail, you would think they
would talk about people not escaping. That seems to be a really central
concept to what a jail does. As a matter of fact, it's hard to think of many other
important tasks that they really do. I mean, they have to make sure the prisoners
have food and water, they have to make sure their medical needs are cared for,
things like that, but I would say not escaping would be really high on their
list of goals each year, and it just, again, amazes me that they underestimated
him that much and that he was able to escape, and they didn't even know he was
missing for 17 hours. I don't know if that was mentioned in the Netflix special,
but that's how long the time duration was. They believed he was already in the
Midwest by the time he was even detected missing from the jail cell in Colorado.
Again, just unbelievable and they really did underestimate his capabilities quite
a bit. Now, how about the personality characteristics? And, again, here, I can
only speculate. How about the potential personality characteristics. Was there
something special about his personality that allowed him to evade capture and to
be able to cause so much devastation, to commit so many murders? Well, we only have
what we see reported in the media and some people that met him and what
they described, but, by many accounts, he appeared as I mentioned before kind of
strange or odd to some but ordinary to others, and this is what really strikes
me about Ted Bundy is everybody that looked at him saw something different. So,
it was interesting in the Netflix special there was this point where
somebody was commenting on Ted Bundy's face and saying he had one of those
faces that, depending on the angle, he could look like different people, and
that's really referring back to when he was arrested I think in Florida, and they
didn't know it was Ted Bundy that they had captured. So, I find this interesting
because I don't know if I really see that in terms of his facial
characteristics, but in terms of his personality, everybody that looked at him
saw something different in his personality. Some people saw a person who is odd and
strange and maybe even dangerous, and other people saw somebody who's charming
and relatively normal and friendly and outgoing. So, you have this individual who
is able to appear in different ways to different people, and I think this is one
thing that helped him to evade capture because a lot of people believed he was
ordinary or even intelligent and really not capable of being a serial killer. So, with other personality characteristics related to Ted Bundy,
there's a lot of discussion over psychopathy, and, again, this brings me
back to this idea that we can't diagnose people which is of course true, but we
can look at the different characteristics and see if they align
with psychopathy. Does it make sense? Is it possible he was psychopathic? And of
course I think a lot of people would believe that he was. Specifically, a
factor 1 psychopath. So, there's factor 1 and factor 2. Factor
1 has characteristics like superficial charm, lack of empathy, being manipulative,
deceitful, and factor 2 has characteristics like impulsivity,
irresponsibility in committing crimes. So, if you look at his characteristics they
seem to line up to some extent with both, but more characteristics seem to fall in
the factor 1 psychopathy. So, for example, people reported that he
had that superficial charm which was short-lived, and people could see through
it, but they had to have time with him to see through it, and that's highly
consistent with the type of superficial charm we see with psychopathy and with
narcissism. We see lack of empathy. Several people reported he was cold,
unemotional, callous... all consistent with not having empathy, which is... empathy is
the ability to understand how somebody else feels. We also see that he appeared
to be manipulative, and he did seem to lie quite a bit. We saw that from his
experiences in prison when he was being interviewed, and he told just a large
number of lies. So, a lot of characteristics that line up with
psychopathy and a few that line up with factor 2, so we see a lot with factor
1 and a few with factor 2 psychopathy. What about narcissism? Many
people reported that he had this arrogant way about him, he was
condescending, a sense of entitlement... All these are highly consistent with
narcissism, and narcissism tends to co-occur with psychopathy, so if he had
psychopathic characteristics, it wouldn't be surprising that he would have
narcissistic characteristics. Often they do go together. So, I'll get to some more
potential personality characteristics in a moment that want to cover in this
video, but I wanted to get back to our original question. Was there something
special about Ted Bundy that helped him to evade capture?
And if you look at the circumstances, again, that occurred that
we see in the 70s, the context, and then you look at his personality
characteristics, which potentially would be related of course to psychopathy and
narcissism, I don't really see him as that special. I think circumstances lined
up for him. He certainly had some abilities that he was able to exploit to
manipulate people and to harm people, but I don't see him as that special. I don't
think he was an evil genius or a criminal mastermind or something like
that. For me, it was just a person who had characteristics that appeared to line up
with what his goals were which was murdering people, and then he was in a
time when he was able to get away with that because he was one of the first
that did that. So, again I don't really see Ted Bundy as special, and I don't think
what he did really merits all the attention that he's been given. He was
just really another serial killer, another person that caused devastation
and havoc in the lives of so many innocent people. So, I understand there's
a fascination with him, but I don't think it's really warranted. Okay, so, this
brings me to some of the other personality characteristics theories
that we see out there with Ted Bundy, and I've heard... well, I don't know if I heard all of
them but I've heard a lot of them. One is that he could have had odd, eccentric
traits like we see with schizotypal personality disorder. Maybe not the actual personality disorder, but rather just the
schizotypal traits which we see in a lot of people. There's some evidence
for this. If you look at some of the reports that we see in the Netflix
special, I think it was one of his attorneys that said he didn't seem to
understand consequences, he thought he had supernatural powers. This really
points to a lack of insight which, again, could be connected back to psychopathy
and narcissism, but there could have also been schizotypal traits at work. That's
possible. There's not a lot of evidence to support that, but it's an interesting
theory, and if you look at the different symptom criteria for schizotypal
personality disorder for instance, which do line up with a
schizotypal traits of course, you do see odd, magical thinking, unusual perceptual
experiences, so it's possible there was something like that going on. The other
debate was around bipolar disorder, which back then they called manic depression,
and this has really brought up an interesting debate. I think that it's
possible of course that psychopathy and narcissism could come occur with bipolar
disorder, and that's actually happened a few times, I've seen that before, but many
people think "Well, the bipolar explanation really means that he had
bipolar disorder instead of psychopathy and narcissism," and again I don't think
that's what that arguments really saying. I think it's saying that it's in
addition to. So, how about the different points in favor of the bipolar argument?
Well, the level of energy that he had is consistent with mania. So, bipolar has
episodes of mania, which is a state where somebody has a lot of energy and euphoria,
and they can be impulsive, and depression, somebody's depressed. So, in favor of this
argument of bipolar, we do see this increased level of energy, we see the
presence of command hallucinations, which were reported, so these are hearing or
seeing things other people can't see or hear, and, specifically with command
hallucinations, these are auditory. That's when somebody is told to do something,
usually bad, usually hurt someone else or hurt themselves. What's interesting is
command hallucinations are actually fairly popular in people that have
bipolar disorder. Over 80% of people with the disorder will have command
hallucinations, so this isn't really kind of a wild theory. This does make sense, to
some degree, based on the characteristics that were reported with Ted Bundy. We
also see that earlier in his life and even a little bit later we see these
different reports where he appeared to be down or somber. That could have been
depression. Again, it's hard to know, but if there was both mania and depression,
that would certainly point toward bipolar disorder. Technically, bipolar
disorder doesn't even require depression. bipolar I disorder only requires mania.
So, how about the argument against the bipolar disorder theory? Well, as far as I
know, Ted Bundy was never hospitalized, like in a psychiatric hospital or
anything like that, and many people with bipolar disorder at one point or another
are hospitalized. Not everybody, so, still, it's possible. Also, mania is fairly
obvious. When somebody's manic, other people tend to know. And, again, this
really connects with the hospital theory. People tend to know, and they call people,
and somebody ends up in the hospital. So, it would be I think somewhat unlikely or
at least it would be arguing against the bipolar disorder theory, that somebody
could go and have several episodes of mania and other people really not pick
up on that. Another component that argues against the bipolar disorder theory is
that usually bipolar disorder leads to disorganization, not organization, and Ted
Bundy was very organized. He was a methodical killer, so if he was manic
when he was committing the murders, you would think that he would've
made more mistakes and really been much more erratic than he was. Also, on the
depressive side, if he had depression, that tends to slow people down. Now, he
did have periods of inactivity, so this kind of supports the bipolar theory that
maybe he was depressed during those times and then manic when he was killing
people, so it's really not clear here. It's not clear whether he had bipolar
disorder or not. Again, there's some evidence that supports he did and some
evidence that makes it look like it would have been difficult for him to do
what he did if he had those symptoms. So, the next question I get on Ted Bundy is
"What about the rage and the sexual deviance?" So, this is really I think
pretty interesting because a few things kind of came together with Ted Bundy. At
least that's the way the evidence looks. He had impulsivity,
and he also had the ability to be calculating and to control impulses, so,
in a way, along the impulsivity characteristic, he was impulsive in some
ways but not in others, and it was a combination that allowed
him to be able to commit these murders. He could organize them, be calculating, he
could consider some consequences, but then he also had the impulse ability to
actually follow through, and I think this is where the rage, his hatred of women,
and the sexual deviance really motivated him. If we look at the Netflix special,
it's really clear that certain times he was calm and thinking things through, and
other times like in the Chi Omega murders he just seemed much more
disorganized, and it seems like a crime more of rage than of being calculating. I
think what really stood out for me about specifically the Chi Omega murders was
that he committed two murders and two attempted murders in that one house, in
that sorority house and then a few blocks down the street committed another
attempted murder, which, again, just kind of points to rage
and impulsivity as opposed to being organized. So, in terms of the rage and
sexual deviance theory, there does appear to be a lot of evidence to support that he had rage and that he of course engaged in sexually deviant
behavior, as part of carrying out the different murders that he committed. Now,
another element of Ted Bundy that I think fascinates people is he appeared
to be resourceful. Like if you think about the escape from Colorado and how
he made it all the way to Florida and he rode a bus, I think he flew in an
airplane for part of the way there, might have been a train involved, and stealing
a car involved as well, he really... With no money or little money
presumably when he escaped, he went from state to state with hardly any resources
and managed not to get arrested and was only arrested in Florida because of a
traffic stop, so it's pointing to this idea that Ted Bundy was maybe more
intelligent than average and particularly resourceful. He knew how to,
again, control impulses when he needed to, to be able to evade detection, and to
move about freely. So, there's another example of his resourcefulness as well.
When he was in jail, and he was planning on escaping from that courthouse, which
of course he did do later on, he jumped off the top bunk to strengthen his legs.
This is highly consistent with somebody who is resourceful at thinking things
through and planning. And, actually, there's a number of examples where Ted
Bundy really demonstrated this resourcefulness and this ability to be
clever and to maneuver carefully. So, the last question I'll answer here today is
"What would have prevented Ted Bundy from being a serial killer?"
meaning "What could have changed in terms of personality or other characteristics?".
Well, I think, as I mentioned before, there's a lot of circumstances that came
together, so probably really almost anything that was different could have
prevented this. The thing that occurs to me of course is if he had more empathy,
that would have kind of held the desire and the rage at bay to a degree, he could
have connected with the people that he was thinking about hurting and that
might have prevented it. Also, if he didn't have the rage and the sexual
deviance motivating him and pushing him, the lack of empathy may not have been a
problem. He may have not committed crimes at all or stuck with other types of crimes, and of course looking at it from a societal
level, if law enforcement was able to apprehend him, if they really understood
what they were dealing with and had more resources, that would have stopped him as
well. So, a lot of things came together that allowed him to commit these really
devastating, horrible crimes over a long period of time, and a number of things
could have prevented that, but nothing did. Again, and this was mentioned in the
Netflix videos, it was a traffic stop that ultimately brought him into custody
where he never was released again. Of course he was executed in '89. So, Ted
Bundy - really an interesting serial killer. I think there's a lot of
fascination as I mentioned before, but I don't really quite connect with all that.
I don't see why he's that fascinating. I think some of it was just luck, and
things kind of lined up well, but either way a lot of people are fascinated with
him. There's a lot of discussion around Ted Bundy. It has kind of renewed an
interest in psychopathy and narcissism and serial killers in general. Of course
there's a lot to learn from Ted Bundy's behavior, and I hope that we can learn
that and apply it to try to prevent this behavior in the future. So, I know
whenever I talk about serial killers and psychopathy and narcissism, there's
always going to be a lot of different opinions. If you agree or disagree with
me or any of the points I made or have anything else you want to offer, any
observations or thoughts or theories, please put those in the comments. As
always, I hope you found this description of personality characteristics and
serial killers to be interesting. Thanks for watching.
This is interesting! Thank you!