There have been many books written about notorious serial killer Ted Bundy over the years. His legacy is an enigma that continues to haunt society and fascinate minds. Authors have tried to detail the events surrounding his crimes, the legal tactics involved in his trials, and gain insight into how he became the monster he was known to be. While each of these works provides various insights and offers assorted pieces of the puzzle, the complete motive and extreme depravity of his crimes have remained a dubious and eternal mystery. It’s been over a decade since Detective Robert Keppel’s riveting book, “The Riverman: Ted Bundy And I Hunt For The Green River Killer”, was published and the time has finally come for another interesting perspec tive on this enormously impactful true crime phenomenon. Author Kevin M Sullivan’s “The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History” now available from McFarland, takes a well-researched crack at the Bundy saga, and offers up some interesting tidbits along the way.

One facet of the Bundy case that has remained somewhat cloudy over all these years is the fact that he was a compulsive necrophile. When Ann Rule released her fascinating Best-Seller about Bundy, “The Stranger Beside Me,” back in 1980, even she didn’t know that his crimes involved necrophilia. Bundy himself even told Rule that she was “all wrong” in her conclusions about the motivations of serial killers. While he lived out a decade on death row, Bundy slowly gave hints to the details of many of his crimes and ultimately, just a few days before his execution, he finally confessed and let the cat out of the bag on the necrophilia. Sullivan pays a little bit more attention to the importance of this grotesque fetish to Bundy than you’ll find in most other Bundy books (aside from “The Riverman”), and rightfully so, as it may have been one of Bundy’s often-overlooked twisted motivations.

Unique to this particular book is that Sullivan reveals some never-before-told details he learned along his journey into the darkness of Ted Bundy. These details include information about a couple of the murders that have not yet been found in print. Though his conversations w ith the lead detective on the case, Sullivan includes a closer look into the abduction and murder of one of Bundy’s youngest victims, a 12 year old Idaho girl. Sullivan also does a good job at chronicling Bundy’s downward spiral as his murderous multi-state rampage progresses and the even further deteriorating of his mental state after he makes a daring escape from jail in Colorado and takes up residence in Florida.

Another chapter discusses how Bundy was unexpectedly transferred from his Utah prison cell (at 3:30am) to Colorado where he would be tried for the mysterious murder of a woman abducted from a Ski Resort. Dedicated detective, Mike Fisher, who headed the transfer, discusses the somewhat humorous event of what that voyage was like for a scared Ted Bundy.

As the book focuses more on the actual murder periods, it doesn’t get much into the sensational trials or Bundy’s life behind bars after his final arrest, which could easily fill another 245 pages. Bundy’s story is so huge and filled with so many interesting facets that even if you’ve read about it before, it’s no less fascinating this time around as Sullivan paints his version of Bundy’s blood red portrait. The author does take various liberties to offer up his intriguing views of what Bundy may have been thinking or doing at times, and most often his thoughts seem very probable.

Of course, the more answers you get, the more questions you come up with, and you will most likely be left with some questions, but that‘s not because the author didn‘t try. Only Ted Bundy knows the final answers and he took them to the grave when he was executed in 1989. Sullivan does a good job of looking at the story from outside the perspective of a detective or attorney and spends adequate time recounting the events for readers familiarizing themselves with the Bundy story for the first time. I do feel that this book has attempted to fill in some of the many gaps that the Bundy saga has left behind, and in doing so provides the world with a reawakening into the most notorious, bizarre, and mysterious serial murders of our time.

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