Vanity Fair: Myra MacPherson: 'The Roots of Evil'

Source:Vanity Fair 1989 profile of convicted serial murderer Ted Bundy.

"When serial killer Ted Bundy went to the electric chair after ten years of scrutiny on death row—and countless reports, television programs, and books—he was still a chilling enigma. Composed, lucid, personally charming, the man who defended himself at his own trial seemed to have no connection with the other Ted Bundy, the depraved monster who lured at least thirty girls to gruesome deaths. Now, for the first time, some of the shadows have been illuminated. MYRA MACPHERSON obtained the exclusive help of psychiatrist Dr. Dorothy Lewis, who was with Bundy for his last hours, and has reconstructed the formative roots of a serial killer. What she found was a reality very different from his mother’s picture of a normal childhood and adolescence—and Bundy’s own claim that pornography was to blame." 

From Vanity Fair 

I guess it's always helpful to try to find out why serial murderers (what I call so-called serial killers) murder not just one person, not just multiple people, but why they murder anyone at all and why they enjoy murdering people. And I'm not talking about mob hitmen, but people who murder for the simple pleasure of murdering people, which is what a serial murderer is. 

But if you are going to try to find out what makes a serial murderer a serial murderer, you better find out correctly and get it right, so you don't mislabel and mis-profile people. I think the only possible thing that we know about Theodore Robert Bundy (better known as Ted Bundy) that might explain why he was a serial murderer of women, is the way his parents raised him. 

Ted Bundy never knew his biological father. There are rumors that the man who should be his maternal grandfather, was actually his biological father. His mother sort of treated him like a girl and had him dress up like a girl. That might explain the strange relationships that he had with women (not just the women that he murdered and raped) but it doesn't explain why he enjoyed murdering them. 

I'm not a professional criminal profiler or a law enforcement officer, I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but the best guess that I have for by Ted Bundy was both a serial murderer and serial rapist, is the same thing that makes an alcoholic an alcoholic or any other addiction that you want to talk about. 

There's something in the addict's system that makes them enjoy something so much, that isn' good for them, or other people (like getting raped and murdered) and they feel that they need that so much and can't live with that, so they're only happy when they're drinking too much alcohol, eating too much, smoking too much, taking illegal narcotics, or violently raping and murdering other people. 

This is what I get from reading a lot and watching a lot of documentaries the last 25 years, about perhaps the most successful and most interesting, as well as most intelligent serial murderer, that America at least, has ever seen. I think a. better profile about Ted Bundy and something that should be looked into, is why he was addicted to rape and murder. Because we know why he raped and murdered, he was addicted to those two evil acts. 

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