True Crime With Caledonian Kitty

Apparently the word 'Serial Killer' didn't exist until Ted Bundy, we had dangerous killers roaming around but there wasn't a specific name for them and so when Ted's crimes came to light, the phrase apparently became a thing and we've been using it ever since to describe these types of monsters. In this series where I have been focusing on a select number of serial killers from the 1970s, I've spent the past week focusing on Ted Bundy. This will be my fifth installment in the series and of course he had to be included (especially as so many of you have been asking me to write about him for years now). He has featured on my blog very briefly but in this post we'll be talking more about him. 

I'm lucky enough to have a vast number of books and quite a lot of encyclopedias of Serial Killers, as you can imagine, Ted Bundy features quite a lot in those books. Some people believe that he is the most infamous Serial Killer in American history but that is up for debate as we often hear others sharing that title, especially Jeffrey Dahmer. I knew about his case like so many people but I wanted to approach my research as if I was only discovering his story for the first time and even though I may have felt that I knew a lot about him before, I did come across details that I had never heard before. 

I spent many hours reading books about him, watching all the trial footage that I could find, interviews with him, newspaper articles, court documents and listened to various books on audible (I'd actually go to bed with my headphones on and wake up in the morning with the narrator still yapping away in my ears). Not surprisingly I ended up dreaming about Ted Bundy (not in a romantic way but his face just appeared in my dreams) which came as a surprise because I've written about a lot of serial killers and never do I have them pop up in my dreams. 

I'm not attracted to Ted Bundy, when well dressed he could appear to be handsome. Certainly not what people in the past would consider to be a dangerous Serial Killer based on looks. He broke the mold in that respect and woke everyone up to the reality that anyone, no matter how successful or good looking they may be, could be capable of such evil things. On the surface he had a lot going for him and had the ability to draw people into him. Even the footage of the interview that was recorded the night before his execution, if you look at the comments underneath the video you will see so many people saying similar things. They were taken in by him, forgetting what he had actually done. They found him interesting, well spoken and charismatic. 

When I watched the footage of the Chi Omega trial where Ted had represented himself, I watched in amazement as he single handedly held everyone in the courtroom (even the judge) in the palm of his hand. When he spoke, people listened, People couldn't take their eyes off of him. Usually trials can be long and exhausting to get through but the utter fascination of watching this individual, who had done the most horrendous things imaginable, was quite interesting. Ted would just stand there full of confidence and intelligence, talking in such a manner with a calmness, so self-assured and it was like he was hypnotizing everyone. The people in the courtroom would hang on every word as well as the viewers like myself who watched the footage on YouTube, all transfixed wondering what he was going to say next. 

I think that's why the fascination with Ted Bundy continues to this day because we just can't get our heads around how he could be so many people in one person. I titled this post 'The Many Faces of Ted Bundy' because he was able to adapt his personality (of which he had multiple) to whatever situation he was in and whoever he was with at the time. Some people knew him as a monster, some knew him as a life saver who comforted people who were having mental health difficulties. Some people saw him as a promising politician, a future lawyer. Some people saw him as a family man who was a great cook and great with kids. Some people saw him as a creep. 

Like Richard Ramirez, Ted Bundy had this neverending line of adoring female fans who are still obsessed with both of them to this day. I've seen tattoos dedicated to these killers, coffee cups with their faces on, valentine's cards and fridge magnets with their images on....pure madness! Even I get messages and emails from people who assume that I am a fan girl who's obsessed with such serial killers like Bundy and just jumping on the true crime bandwagon. When the reality is that I'm working on my own book and plan to be a published true crime writer. Both Richard and Ted had no problems with the opposite sex and many women found them attractive so what was this incredible evil that drove them to hurt as many women and people as possible? And why would some women find this attractive?, to be drawn to a dangerous man that has done the most unspeakable things? I spoke recently about the young boy, Jason Moss who wrote to serial killers in prison and how that had psychologically scarred him to the point that he ended up taking his own life. I have also mentioned before about one of Richard Ramirez's fans who thought she was in love with him. She visited him in prison for the first time after months of letters to find that the sexy fantasy that she had in her mind, was not what she thought. The guy was a complete and utter psycho and scared the hell out of her so much, that she cut off contact with him from that moment on. 

So, in this post you will be familiar with the timeline and other details may ring a bell but I do hope you are able to take away something from this that you may not have heard before. I always inject a lot of my own personality into my posts so it's not supposed to sound like a run-of-the-mill boring script. I always want my readers to feel that I'm there with them telling them about these cases over a cup of coffee. That's the feeling I always get whenever I pick up an Ann Rule or Reg McKay book. 

Before I go any further I have to warn you (which you won't be surprised, I'm sure) that I will be sharing disturbing details. I don't think it's possible not to talk about Ted Bundy without sharing horrifying details but these are his crimes and this is what he did to innocent people and they deserve their stories to be heard. Also, talking about Ted Bundy in posts such as mine is important for reminding some people that this guy was not a comedy character or just some guy off of the TV to admire, he was a monster who destroyed lives. He may have done some good for other people at some points in his life and he may have been handsome and talented at certain things but the reality is, he was a very sick and evil individual. 

• His interests were Psychology, Asian studies, Politics and Law and he did go to and fro with Universities, spending a semester here and a semester there. Sometimes Ted would start things and fail to complete them and this would be a sense of frustration for some people close to him. He was dating a girl at the time who he considered to be his ultimate dream girl. She was pretty, intelligent and was from a highly respected and wealthy family. His confidence soared when he was with her and he had aspirations of being wealthy and successful for himself but also to impress her and her family. He still had his heart set on law school but his applications kept getting rejected. He decided to do some voluntary work for a crisis helpline as well as work on some political campaigns to help make connections and he viewed this as a foot in the door to law school. It was at the crisis helpline center that he met the late, best selling true crime writer, Ann Rule. Ann previously worked in law enforcement but was now a single mother and aspiring writer. She would volunteer at the helpline once a week and she would sit for hours taking phone calls and chatting to Ted. They grew close, not in a romantic way but they had a mutual respect for each other. 

• Ann would later describe those late nights of working with Ted and claimed that he was always very good at putting people at ease and helped save a number of lives. Ted would beam as he told Ann about his girlfriend but on one evening she noticed that he wasn't being his usual self. It turned out that his girlfriend broke up with him because she felt that he didn't have any proper goals or plans in place. He would talk about becoming a lawyer and all of these other great things but nothing was actually happening and months and months would go on with no new development. Ted was utterly heartbroken but it pushed him to try harder and eventually he got into law school and was doing so well in the politics field that he was being painted as this up-and-coming star. Months had passed since his girlfriend had dumped him and he was moving on but seeing how well he was doing, she was suddenly back on the scene again. They gave their relationship another chance but Ted had other ideas. 

(Ann Rule. Picture credit: storey-lines)

• Ted became a bit of an injustice collector and never forgot how she made him feel. It was difficult enough for him to try and impress her before because of the wealthy background she had but for him to be dumped out of the blue, was a massive bruise to the ego for him. So he set about a ridiculous plan that actually produced the results that he wanted. He waited until she was comfortable in the relationship and made her endless promises about marrying her, going for holidays with her and moving in together. He basically 'Love Bombed' her (emotionally setting her up for a downfall by promising her all of these romantic things and love) and then suddenly without warning, he dumped her, leaving her hurt and confused. He wanted to make her feel how he felt. The strange thing is, that he never stopped loving her in a way, but too much water had gone under the bridge at that point and he had moved on. Some people believe that the disintegration of this relationship was what started Ted on this horrible path to serial murder. 

• Around this time in 1974, Ted was reported to have started his horrific campaign of attacking young women and girls. He would peep through girl's windows and watch them get undressed whilst he would pleasure himself. He would break into their apartments, in many cases he would render them unconscious by hitting them violently over the head with an object, strangle them and sexually assault them. Some were able to survive these evil attacks, some died from these devastating ordeals and some seemed to vanish into thin air with only traces of blood left on their bedsheets which indicated that all was not well. He didn't just break into apartments, he would drive around in his Volkswagen Beetle equipped with a missing passenger seat and a brown satchel which contained his rape kit (items included a ski mask, ice pick, large plastic bag and a pair of stockings with holes cut out of them which he would use to either wear as a mask or strangle his victims) as well as a crowbar under his seat. He always had everything planned right down to how he was going to trick the girls to come with him. He would stalk college campuses and parks abducting girls by posing with his arm in a cast pleading for them to help him get his canoe either on to or off of his car. Girls were vanishing and nobody knew what was happening to them. He moved around different states and started to be careless, being seen talking to girls who would later go missing, mentioning his name was Ted and the fact that some witnesses were aware of the type of car he drove.

• Whenever his name came up during an investigation into a horrific sex attack, girl's disappearance or murder, his file was cast to the side and he wasn't looked at as a person of interest in the beginning because he was deemed to be too 'squeeky clean'. The cops thought he was a well spoken, university educated and handsome young man so they thought there was no way that he would have had anything to do with what happened to any of these poor girls. When two girls had gone missing from a popular park, witnesses had provided information to authorities who put together a sketch which matched Ted's profile, people who knew Ted personally had seen it and agreed that it looked and sounded like him but they didn't believe he could be capable of such a thing, not the Ted they knew.

• Ted would abduct girls by his method of using a cast on his arm (an idea which was also used by the character Buffalo Bill in the movie The Silence of The Lambs) to gain sympathy and encourage them to help him put some books or something into his car, he would then hit them over the head with a crowbar and bundle them into the space where he removed the front passenger seat. The girl would be subjected to a horrendous ordeal before being murdered. He later confessed to taking the girls deceased bodies to various woodland areas, he would return repeatedly to the remains to record the progress of decomposition. Sometimes he would put makeup on the heads which would (in many cases) be decapitated. He claimed animals were responsible for the heads being detached from the rest of the remains. And just when you thought all of that wasn't sickening enough, he would pleasure himself sexually using the decomposing remains until they had become too putrid. Some of the heads would be brought back to his apartment and he would do the same routine of putting makeup on them, even washing the hair. He would use the heads for sexual gratification before they had decomposed to the point that it was no longer possible. 

(Ted Bundy. Picture credit: peacocktv)

• Like a lot of serial killers, there comes a point where they are so careless that they end up making a slip somewhere. Ted Bundy claimed that alcohol helped fuel his actions, he needed it to give him the confidence and nerve to carry out his evil acts. He made a huge mistake which was to lead him on the path to downfall when he tried to abduct a pretty young woman by the name of Carol DeRonch from a shopping mall in Salt Lake City. He followed Carol and approached her claiming to be a police officer. He told her someone was trying to break into her car and told her to come to the police station to file a report. Alarm bells started ringing for Carol, she'd seen the state of the inside of his car and could smell the alcohol. She attempted to get away from him but there was struggle and he managed to handcuff one of her wrists but she managed to get away and he sped off. Through Carol, the police were able to get some information but it would be months before the cops caught up with him.

• On the same day as the attempted abduction of Carol DeRonch, another young girl went missing some hours later. A key was found near to where the girl went missing. The cops tried the key in the lock of the handcuffs that Ted had slapped on Carol's wrist and the key fit the lock perfectly.

• On the 16th of August, Ted Bundy was up to his old tricks again, driving around in his car looking for potential victims and he ended up in a random neighbourhood. A local policeman spotted him and chased after him. Eventually Ted stopped the car and got out, playing Mr charming as usual. The policeman noticed the brown satchel and searched it and judged it to be items used for an attempted burglary. He was arrested and put in a lineup where he was identified by Carol DeRonch as her attacker. He was charged with attempted kidnapping but the police believed he was responsible for more abductions and murders, they believed that they had a serial killer on their hands. He was taken over to Colorado to face charges for the murder of a girl in Snowmass. If convicted of his crimes he was due to go down for the rest of his life in prison but he came up with a plan as he always did. He asked to be allowed to represent himself at trial and requested access to the law library which was granted. On the 7th of June 1977, Ted Bundy managed to jump out of the library window and escape for a period of 8 days. He slept in abandoned cabins, ate leaves and stole food wherever he could but he couldn't stand it anymore so he went into town to steal a car and ended up being caught by the cops and taken back into custody.

(Ted with Elizabeth. Picture credit: marieclaire)

• In his private life during these horrendous attacks and murders, he was busy playing house with a single mother named Liz. With Liz and her daughter, he played the perfect family man. He cooked and cleaned, acted caring and protective. Liz was even there in the early stages of the investigation and both she and Ann Rule originally believed that Ted Bundy was innocent in the beginning. I was reading Liz's book this past week and I was cringing at a lot of what she had written, especially when she'd said that she met Ted Bundy in a nightclub, took him home with her that same night and he was there with her and her young daughter. She fell asleep and basically left him alone with her daughter on more than one occasion. I'm not saying that every guy is a potential Ted Bundy, I'm not even a parent yet but even I know, you don't have strange guys around your children, not even yourself. Anything could have happened and she was really lucky that nothing did. It was clear thought that she had been hoodwinked by Ted as a lot of women who had known him personally seemed to have been. 

• Ted Bundy's vanishing act from police custody was not a one-off, he came up with another plan. He noticed there was a hole in the ceiling of his cell right next to a light fixture. He studied the size of the hole and managed to chip some of the ceiling away. He started to starve himself so that he could lose enough pounds to be able to fit through the gap. He would practice climbing through the gap late at night and on one evening he decided to make a real go of it. He stacked some books on his bed and threw a sheet over them, then he climbed through the gap and managed to get to what looked like closet space, he climbed down in and it ended up giving him access to a prison official's apartment. The apartment was quiet as nobody wad home so he put on some clothes and carried on with his escape plan. He managed to get away with it and spent New Years Eve at a bar before fleeing to Florida.

(Ted Bundy. Picture credit; abcnews)

• Once he was in Tallahassee, Florida, he managed to find some accommodation using what money he had. He was staying right at the heart of the student area. In January 1978, Ted Bundy struck again in the wee small hours at the Chi Omega Sorority House. Earlier that evening he'd been spotted by some of the female student that lived there, in a nightclub. Ted had been acting creepy, staring at all of the girls but not in an appreciating way, more of a angry sort of way. His sickening actions in those early morning hours at that student household were something that nobody who heard about it back then or even hears about it now, can ever comprehend such pure evil. Like a psychotic wild animal he broke into the house and headed straight for one of the rooms to where a girl named Margaret Bowman was sleeping. Margaret had been hit so violently over the head with a blunt object that her skull had been completely shattered and some of her brain was exposed. She was then strangled with a nylon stocking which was later found tight around her neck. He then moved on to the room of Lisa Levy. Lisa has been beaten, strangled and sexually assaulted. Her nipple was almost bitten off and she had bite marks on her buttocks. Two girls were also subjected to a horrendous attack but by some miracle they managed to survive. They had been beaten so badly that they had no recollection as to who or how it happened. one of the victims later recalling that she went to bed that night and the next thing she knew, she was being lifted into an ambulance. 

• After the horrific events at the Chi Omega Sorority house which all happened so fast that it literally took Ted Bundy just around 15 minutes to brutally attack four girls, two fatally and the other two almost at the brink of death but were saved just in time. He then broke into another young students bedroom and subjected her to an horrendous assault leaving her alive but permanently disabled. 

• Days and weeks passed after those horrible incidents and nobody knew who was responsible but some of the people who lived at the same accommodation as Ted, noticed how strange he had been acting. He seemed to keep looking over at the Chi Omega house all of the time. A short while after this, a white van was reported stolen from the University and it had been taken by Ted. He must have known that this deadly trail of beautiful young girls who had been so cruelly murdered, would lead the cops to him so he had to get out of there. The nightmarish scenes at the Chi Omega house and the student he attacked a few blocks away seemed to be not enough for Ted Bundy, he was ready to find another victim. 

• His next and final victim was little 12 year old Kimberly Leach, she had been at school and was due to take a PE lesson but had left her kit at another part of the building so she was on her way to retrieve it. Ted Bundy had already attempted to abduct another child previously to spotting Kimberly but that attempt failed and the child was able to get away. Sadly, Kimberly was to fall into Ted Bundy's evil clutches. Witnesses say that they saw Kimberly getting into the white van looking really upset. Ted reportedly had an angry look on his face. Another witness claimed to have seen Ted Bundy driving the white van and shouting in the direction of the passenger seat. The van was discovered abandoned a few days later and under inspection it was clear that a lot of trauma had taken place within that vehicle. Investigators also found a receipt for a hunting knife which they believed to have been the weapon he used to murder Kimberly. Ted Bundy was nowhere to be seen, he dumped the van and took off. Kimberly's remains were found dumped in an unused pig pen in some woods. 

• It seemed that Ted Bundy's time had now come, he was spotted driving around in his macabre VW Beetle, erratically, psychotic, full of adrenaline and alcohol. The police took him into custody and finally, Ted Bundy was removed from the streets and nobody was going to have to suffer this monster anymore. 

• In 1979, the man of many faces, the cruelest of killers and sickest of individuals, finally was going to be put to task for everything he had done. He put on the performance of a lifetime as the promising, wannabe lawyer but it was just another role to play for him. The trial itself was gripping and watching this demon in action was both disturbing and fascinating. He really thought he could get away with anything but none of his games worked this time. He was sentenced to death for the murders of Margaret and Lisa at the Chi Omega Sorority house and later tried and sentenced to death for the murder of Kimberly Leach. For 11 years he continued pretending to be innocent despite the mountains of evidence against him. Investigators and the victim's families were desperate for answers and there were missing girls who's families wanted to know if he knew of their whereabouts. Ted Bundy kept his mouth shut and didn't say a word. Even being the psychotic monster that he was he always seemed to be in some sort of relationship with someone and his final relationship was with a woman named Carol Ann Boone. Despite the fact that this guy was a raving lunatic and total monster who tortured, sexually assaulted and brutally murdered various young women and a 12 year old child, Carol still thought he was a bit of a catch. Carol was clearly desperate. 

• So he and Carol had this long term relationship and she'd even had sexual intercourse with him on one of her prison visits which resulted in pregnancy. Ted Bundy had one biological daughter as a result of this relationship. Carol was in deep denial due to Ted's ways of persuasion and actually thought he was an innocent man. However, three years before he was due to die by electric chair, they broke up. Apparently she finally realised that the numerous amounts of evidence proving his guilt was actually real. His daughter would later change her name and live a quiet life not wanting anyone to know who her biological father was, who could blame her? 

(A member of the public selling Ted Bundy execution t-shirts. Picture credit: etsy)

• When it was clear that no appeal was going to work and there was no doubt that he would be facing the electric chair, Ted Bundy decided to start talking but it was too late, nobody cared, they'd had enough of him. As the day of death grew closer, members of the public threw parties, it was like a holiday event. 
• His mother (who came across as a total nutcase herself) had been in denial for years about Ted and practically worshipped the ground he walked on. She stood by him all the way and wouldn't hear a bad word said against her precious boy. He finally told her the truth that he did it all but that didn't do anything, she still attempted to defend him and make excuses. 

(Ted Bundy's last interview. Picture credit: pinterest)

• The night before his execution, Ted gave an interview putting on another performance. He was in denial himself, he was always able to try and get out of any situation but this time there was no stopping it and I think that shocked him. In the interview you can see it in his eyes how scared he was. He thought he could use the victims as a bargaining tool to buy himself more time on death row. He claimed he could help solve cases, work with the police to identify victims etc but nobody was interested. They knew what he was trying to do. 

(People celebrating Ted Bundy's execution. Picture credit: aenetworks)

• For his last meal, he was so nervous he didn't want to eat anything but it was part of the rules that he was to have some sort of dinner. They brought him in some steak and eggs but he didn't touch any of it. In a movie based on Ted Bundy, there is a scene where he has to bend over and cotton wool is inserted into his anus being forced to wear an adult diaper as well as other indignities. Sadly this didn't happen. It's a wonder why this scene was put in the movie, maybe because it was the sort of justice that we all wanted to see? Ted Bundy being humiliated after everything he had done to those poor girls. He was scared and his last word were simply ''Give my love to my family and friends.''

(Members of the public celebrating Ted Bundy's final hours. Picture credit: The Sun)

• Ted Bundy was executed on the 24th of January 1989 by electric chair. The time of death was 7:16 am. 

(The Newspapers after the execution: Picture credit: rarenewspapers)

(Another newspaper article about Ted Bundy's execution. Picture credit: The Sun)

• In the weeks and days leading up to his execution, Ted Bundy confessed to the murders of 36 women and girls. He said that he was not willing to talk about any murders that had happened to younger girls or murders that had happened closer to home. He never admitted any involvement in the disappearance of 8 year old Ann Marie Burr who lived in his neighbourhood when he was 14. Was she his first victim? 

(Some of Ted Bundy's victims. Picture credit: inews)

• In the 1980's, Ted Bundy reached out to investigators and offered his help and advice on how to catch the infamous serial killer known as The Green River Killer. At the time nobody knew where this guy was or that he was indeed, Gary Ridgeway. Ted offered his advice on the case but the killer's identity was finally revealed in 2001 due to the advances in today's DNA technology

• Ted Bundy was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. This was another unpleasant fact about the case since we know that some of his victims remains were placed there.

• Ted Bundy's mother, Louise passed away on the 23rd of December 2012.

(Ann Rule. Picture credit: nytimes)

• Ann Rule sadly passed away on the 26th of July 2015. Her true crime books continue to fly off of the shelves. She continues to be an inspiration to me and other aspiring true crime writers. The judge who presided over the Chi Omega trial, Edward Cowart, sadly passed away on the 3rd of August 1987. He was a highly respected man and well liked by all who knew him and who did not know him personally. Everyone still talks about that moment during the Chi Omega trial where he accosts Ted Bundy for shaking his finger at me ''Do not shake your finger at me young man.''

(Judge Edward Cowart. Picture credit: imdb)

• The Infamous picture of Ted Bundy in the courtroom was one of the most used pictures that was printed in the newspapers at the time and is still used to this day. Ted was not happy with the picture and said that it was taken completely out of context because the newspapers wanted to paint him as a monster. The shot was taken during a joke as Ted had been doing a Laurel and Hardy impression at the end of one of the court sessions. See the picture below: 

(Ted Bundy. Picture credit: cosmopolitan)

• Ted Bundy's 1968 Volkswagen Beetle can currently be seen on display at the crime museum of Alcatraz East. 

• Some people believe that there were plenty of red flags in Ted's childhood of things to come. Rumours have played out for years that his grandfather was a violent man who had a severe addiction to pornography and would show indecent images to Ted. Ted never spoke of this and never claimed to have been molested by his grandfather although some people believe that to be the case. Psychiatrists who have worked on the case and studied his behaviours believe that something else must have happened in Ted's childhood (such as possible molestation and exposure to violent pornography) because just the upset from learning the truth about Louise being his biological mother was not enough to have set him on the path to the pure evil monster that he became. 

• I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to the young women and girls who lost their lives at the evil hands of Ted Bundy. There are those that we know about, the ones that he had been convicted of killing, the brave survivors and the girls who remain unidentified to this day. He has been linked to so many other murders and often hinted about other possible victims but he continued to play games and refused to elaborate further. We may never know the true number of his victims but investigators believe that the number could be close to 100. RIP: Ann Marie Burr, Lonnie Trumbell, Lisa Wick, Joni Lenz, Lynda Ann Healy, Donna Gail Manson, Susan Elaine Rancourt, Brenda Baker, Roberta Kathleen Parks, Brenda Carol Ball, Georgeann Hawkins, Janice Ott, Denise Naslund, Caryn Campbell, Julie Cunningham, Denise Lynn Oliverson, Melanie Cooley, Shelly Robertson, Nancy Wilcox, Melissa Smith, Laura Aime, Debby Kent, Nancy Baird, Sue Curtis, Debbie Smith, Rita Lorraine Jolly, Vickie Lynn Hollar, Lisa Levy, Margaret Bowman, Kimberly Leach, Lynette Culver, Rita Curran & many unidentified others. 

• Ted dumped the remains of five of his victims on Taylor's Mountain and this became known as 'Bundy's Graveyard'.

• Like some of his fellow murderers, Ted Bundy's brain was removed after death to be examined. Nothing abnormal was found which added a further sinister twist because there just didn't seem to be any answer or explanation for his level of depravity and evil.  

''I'm perfectly happy with the person I am and I've always been. I don't pay my telephone bills on time and I don't write my mother as many letters as I should. There's all kinds of things I could improve about myself...so...but weirdo? No! I feel good about myself. I am happy with myself.'' - Ted Bundy 

Further Reading & Sources:

- Hunting Humans | Book by Michael Newton

- The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers | Book by Susan Hall

- The Big Book of Serial Killers | Book by Jack Rosewood & Rebecca Lo

- The Killer Book of Serial Killers | Book by Michael Philbin & Tom Philbin

- Journey into Darkness | Book by John Douglas & Mark Olshaker

- The True Crime Dictionary | Book by Amanda Lees

- Serial Killers of The 1970s | Book by Jane Fritsch

- Ted Bundy (Documentary) | Born To Kill

- Ted Bundy: Conversations With A Serial Killer (Series) | Netflix

- Ted Bundy: Article | Facts.Net

- Ted Bundy | Wikipedia

- Ted Bundy | Murderpedia

- Ted Bundy: Trial Playlist | Youtube

- Ted Bundy: Article | Britannica

- The Enigma of Ted Bundy | Book by Kevin Sullivan

- The Stranger Beside Me | Book by Ann Rule

- The Stranger Beside Me | TV Movie

- Serial Killers & The Phenomenon of Serial Murder | Book by David Wilson, Elizabeth Yardley & Adam Lynes

- The Anatomy of Evil | Book by Michael H. Stone

- The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers | Book by Michael Newton

- The Only Living Witness | Book by Stephen G . Michaud & Hugh Aynesworth

- The Phantom Prince | Book by Elizabeth Kendall & Molly Kendall

- Facts & Information | Death Penalty Information Center

If you have made it all the way to this point in the post, I thank you so much! It was a lot to get through but I hope you found it informative and maybe learned a few new things along the way as well as any myths you've heard about Bundy, being cleared up? As always, I welcome any comments either in the comments section below, elsewhere on my socials / Instagram or simply email me at jocaledoniankitty@gmail.com 

If enjoy my weekly content and would like to donate to help keep my blog running, research materials, my upcoming boom etc, please donate here, thank you do much!

I will be back with my last installment of my 1970s Serial Killer series next time. But all is not lost because I will be moving on to the decade of the 1980s after that which I hope you will find interesting. 

See you in the next post x

 (Pedro Lopez: Picture credit: murderpedia)

As you go through this post (if you're not already familiar with this horrendous individual - so many things that I would like to call him and none of them are complimentary) you will understand why I was sitting going through my books and there would be moments where I would say profanities out loud because I could not believe the level of evil of this guy. No matter how many cases I have written about, I'm still a human being at the end of the day and some of them really affect me and this is one of them. So it is at this point where I should mention that I'm going to be talking about nightmarish things in this post to do with horrible things that have happened to children, abduction, sexual assault and other related evil. I will try my best as always to be as sensitive as possible whilst stating the facts.

The quotes I have included in this post, however, the ones that have come from that thing pictured above, is beyond my control. I have not edited them or changed them in any way for a reason because these are his words, this is the person he is and these are the horrendous things that he has done. I always aim to give you an insight on what really happened and I feel that it's important to include quotes to give you a glimpse at just how truly evil and twisted these people can be. 

So, in my fourth instalment of looking into some of the serial killers from the 1970s, I have been focusing on Pedro Lopez. We never can really tell when these people commit their first murders but I have included him in this decade of the 70s because (although he had committed murder in prison in 1969 whilst serving time for a petty crime) he was the most active in the 1970s and his victims were innocent girls from ages 8 to 12. The murders that he committed in prison in 1969 were revenge attacks after he had been assaulted. I don't class the two as the same. In 1969 he murdered fellow r**ists who had attacked him, as a form of revenge he sought them out and killed them (I'll go into all of the details in this post) whereas when he was out of prison, he was stalking, abducting, sexually assaulting and murdering children at an alarming rate so I class that as when his criminal career as a 'serial killer' began. 

I have tried to cut this post into bite size chunks as I have done previously in this series. I hope you find this post interesting and I hope that it doesn't affect you too much as some of the details make for very difficult reading. 

So let's get into who Pedro Lopez is...

1) Pedro Lopez came into the world in all the wrong ways you can imagine. He was born on the 8th of October 1948 in a poverty stricken area of Venadillo, Colombia. His birth was a result of an 'arrangement' between his mother and his biological father. His mother was a sex worker and already had 12 children to different fathers. His biological father was a married man who frequented sex workers and was a regular customer of Pedro's mother. He was also a small time, right wing politician who ended up being shot to death before Pedro was even born. So his introduction to the world was an absolute mess to begin with and things just got worse as the years rolled by. 

2) He lived with his mother and siblings in dire circumstances and lived off whatever earnings his mother made from prostitution, which wasn't much. Various men would come to the house and Pedro and his siblings would have to share the same bed just a few feet away from their mother's bed. It's hard to imagine 13 people in a bed but that's how it was. Their mother would be having sex with her customers in full earshot (and in many cases, full view of Pedro and his siblings) of her children. They were all in the same room with a thin strip of curtain separating their mother's bed from their own. 

3) Pedro always had a difficult relationship with his mother. It was clear that his mother wasn't maternal and resented the fact that Pedro's father had been killed because she thought that could have been a huge financial help. In her mind she was stuck with 13 children and no money and struggled. She never showed any love to her children and there was a lot of abuse. Pedro was beaten many times by his mother. When reading the beginnings of his childhood and not knowing what came after, you could forgive someone for feeling sorry for him. I knew of his crimes before I read about his childhood so I lack in sympathy in that department because of what he went on to do but I understand the path to which he was put on and I don't think anyone could have come out of that harsh beginning a fully well balanced person. There's lots of people who have come through abusive childhoods and don't go on to harm others. I see no excuse for what he was to go on and do. 

4) When he was just 8 years old (having witnessed all the regular, sordid goings-on with his mother and her customers) Pedro became curious about his sisters in an unsavory way and tried to act out some of the things he had seen the strange men doing with his mother. His mother found him touching his sister's breasts one day and all hell broke loose. Pedro was beaten and thrown out of the house to live on the street. 

''My mother threw me out when I was 8 after she caught me touching my sister's breasts.'' - Pedro Lopez. 

5) His mother made it clear that under no circumstances was he going to be allowed back into the family home and he was even banned from seeing his siblings. At 8 years old, Pedro found himself sleeping in alley ways and eating out of trash bins. He also begged for money and food and on one occasion a man stopped him in the street and asked him what he was doing there. Pedro explained that he was homeless and that his mother threw him out. This man appearing to be sympathetic promised Pedro some food and a nice place to stay at his home. Being naive and just a young child of 8 years old with no proper guidance in life or warnings about wandering off with strangers, Pedro followed the man. Instead of being taken to the man's house, he was led into a derelict building where the man forced him to undress before sexually assaulting him repeatedly. The man then left Pedro, who was traumatised, in pain and bleeding, lying on the cold, concrete ground. It was at this moment that Pedro claimed that he had lost his innocence and didn't care about anything anymore. 

6) So here he was at just 8 years old, without a father, abandoned by his mother, no food, no water, no money, no place to sleep and had just been horrifically sexually assaulted. A child's brain at that age is not capable of dealing with so many levels of trauma, even fully grown adults would struggle with that. So he became numb to everything and lived a life on the streets, begging, stealing, being sexually assaulted and sleeping wherever he could. A positive moment in the darkness was when an American couple decided to take Pedro into their home and give him a chance at life. They fed him, clothed him and helped get him sorted out with school. For Pedro, maybe he wasn't used to people being so nice to him or maybe the rot had already set in, but he repaid this nice couple's kindness by stealing from them and the school. Instead of facing the consequences, he alleged that a teacher had sexually assaulted him (there's no way of knowing if this was the truth) and he basically ran away. 

7) Pedro returned to the streets and somehow managed to survive, by this time he was becoming more hard as nails and had no feeling left, it was all about just surviving and what could he steal next. He went from stealing small items to cars. He realised that there was more money in stealing and selling cars and he was able to live on the money he made by doing this for quite a while. It all caught up with him though and he was arrested at the age of 18 for auto theft.

8) So he had his first experience of prison at the age of 18 and of course, like everything else, it was going to be a traumatic time in his life. The second day that he was there, four older men attacked him. They beat him and he was subjected to another horrendous sexual assault. Instead of telling prison officials what had happened, Pedro decided he was going to take the matter into his own hands. He decided that he wanted revenge and that he was going to kill them. He stalked each of them for a period of time and found out their routines. He made himself a 'Shiv' which is basically a makeshift knife. He individually attacked the four men over the course of about two weeks by cutting their throats with the shiv, Three of the men died and one survived. When the truth came out of what had happened, authorities came to the decision that Pedro had been acting in self defence and added an extra two years on to his sentence. 

9) When Pedro was finally released from prison he didn't come out of the gates wanting to change his life for the better and work through his trauma. Instead he carried the anger of everything he had endured before and decided that somebody was going to pay. He'd never received proper therapy for his traumatic childhood or the horrific r*pe by the four men so all of that pent up anger and scars from past trauma were still there. He was deeply angry about what had happened to him at 8 years old when he was sexually assaulted and the fact that the man had gotten away. He decided that he was going to be in charge of everything now and began to have sick fantasies about targeting young girls. 

10) He called it his mission to find as many young girls as possible and take their innocence away as well as their lives. In his mind, he was angry about his childhood and he wanted other people to suffer like he suffered. He also got a sexual kick out of it. He put his fantasy into a cold-hearted reality and began to seek out young girls, abduct them, sexually assault them and strangle them. 

''I lost my innocence at age of 8. So I decided to do the same to as many girls as I could.'' - Pedro Lopez 

11) Pedro Lopez's method of murder was very up close and personal as he would strangle his victims but insisted in looking into their eyes as he did so. He claimed that he enjoyed doing this because he would see the light in their eyes vanish and feel the life go out of them. 

''I walked among the markets searching for a girl with a certain look on her face of innocence and beauty. She would be a good girl, always walking with her mother. I followed them, sometimes for two or three days, waiting for the moment she was left alone. Once, I even spent two days following a tourist family. I was told they came from England or Scotland. I really wanted to take their beautiful blonde daughter, but I never got the chance. Her parents were too watchful. There is a wonderful moment, a divine moment, when I have my hands around a young girl's throat. Her fingers flutter briefly. The moment of death is enthralling. Only those who kill actually know what I mean. I look into her eyes and see a certain light, a spark...suddenly go out. It took them between 5 and 15 minutes to die. Sometimes I had to kill them all over again.'' - Pedro Lopez

''They never scream, they expect nothing. They are innocent.'' - Pedro Lopez

13) He later stated in an interview (the only one that he granted whilst in prison) that he would often spend time at the graves of his victims and would exhume the bodies so that he could sit with them and have a 'tea party'. He would call his victims 'my little friends'. 

14) He would target a children from different tribes and whilst in Peru he tried to abduct another child. A tribe by the name of Ayachucos caught on to what he was doing and they decided to punish him in their own way. He was stripped, beaten and then buried in sand with only his head exposed. They covered him in syrup and planned to just leave him there to die and let the ants and animals feast on him. This should have been the end of the story but just as all this was happening, an American aid worker and her team had spotted Pedro and tried to persuade the tribe to let him go. They said that they would see to it that he faced justice and the authorities would be informed. 

''They had me tied up and buried in sand to my neck when they found out what I had been doing to their daughters. They had placed syrup on me and were going to let me be eaten by ants. But an American missionary lady came by in her jeep and promised them she would hand me over to the police. They left me tied up in the back of her jeep and she drove away. But she released me at the border of Colombia and let me go. I didn't hurt her because she was too old to attract me.'' - Pedro Lopez

15) The Ayachucos took the lady at her word and got Pedro out of the sand but kept him tied up for safety reasons and placed him in the back of the lady's jeep. Now, in every book I have been reading this week, the outcome to this incident was that the lady contacted the authorities and they refused to deal with Pedro so he was deported. In Pedro's own words (which, in some cases you may want to take with a pinch of salt) the lady apparently drove him to the border, took him out of the back of the jeep, untied him and let him go. He said he never attacked her because he wasn't attracted to her and she was too old for him. Whatever the case, he was free again to carry on with his sickening murder spree. 

16) Pedro continued to travel extensively throughout Colombia and Ecuador carrying out his sickening crimes wherever he went. Young girls were going missing but their disappearances were not taking seriously because of their backgrounds and that it was a regular occurrence for young girls to be forced into human trafficking in many parts of those areas. Apparently this still happens to this day, girls are abducted by human traffickers and rich businessmen travel to these parts to take part in human sacrificing rituals. 

''I like the girls in Ecuador. They are not as suspicious of strangers as Colombian girls.'' - Pedro Lopez 

17) In April of 1980 there was a huge flood in the area of Ecuador where Pedro had been staying and where a number of his sickening crimes took place. Like a scene out of a horror movie, deceased bodies and remains of skeletons of (previously reported) missing young girls were suddenly revealed as the flood had opened some of the ground up. 

18) A few days after the horrific discovery of the remains, a lady had witnessed a strange man trying to abduct her daughter. The lady screamed for help and luckily other members of the public could see what was going on. It was Pedro up to his old tricks again and this time he was being held down by a few kind members of the public until the police arrived. 

19) When Pedro was arrested he was rambling nonsense and the police didn't know what to make of it. When he was questioned about the remains that had been found, he went silent. The police believed that they had their man but they needed more evidence. Pedro was placed in a cell and it was decided that a local priest was going to go undercover and join him in there. The idea was that the priest was going to pretend to be a child sex offender in an attempt to get Pedro to speak and confess his crimes. Although it was a terrifying experience for the priest and he whole ordeal went on for nearly a month, Pedro soon spoke up and once he started talking, he just could not shut up. 

''For 27 days I hardly slept, afraid I'd be strangled in my bed. I kept a towel wrapped around my throat. But I tricked Lopez into confessing by pretending I was a r*pist too, He boasted to me of murder after murder in Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. It was beyond my wildest nightmares. He told me everything.'' - Father Cordoba Gudino. 

20) Pedro told his undercover cellmate that he had been responsible for 110 deaths of girls in Peru, as well as hundreds of others in Colombia and Ecuador. He estimated to have around 300 victims (investigators believe it to be more). Pedro went into great detail about everything and the police put him to task for it, he confessed and led the police to 53 of his deceased victims. It was a hell of a shock for everyone because they thought at first that Pedro was just a fantasist, a complete madman who was just making up stories about having all of these victims but then when he took them to the graves of the 53 victims, they realised what a dangerous man he really was and that there could be truth in everything else he said about the deaths he was responsible for. 

''If someone confesses to 53 you find hundreds of more you don't, you tend to believe what he says. I think the estimate of 300 is very low, because in the beginning he cooperated with us and took us each day to three or four hidden corpses. But then he tired, changed his mind and stopped helping.'' - Major Victor Lascano. 

21) The police charged him with 110 murders but they believed him to be responsible for as many as 400. He claims it's around 300. He was sentenced to life in prison but in Ecuador that only amounted to 16 years. 16 years is a pathetic sentence for all of the lives he cruelly took. He served the majority of his sentence and did his only one interview in prison (which clearly continued to highlight the fact that he was a sick predator who had not changed his evil ways and was boasting about how he was looking forward to getting out so he could start killing again). He even told the interviewer with a confident grin that he was going to be released early for good behaviour and that's exactly what happened. The removed him from prison two years early and drove him to the border. They didn't want him back in Ecuador but they found him back in the country a few days later where he was arrested and deported to Colombia.

23) Pedro managed to get to his mother's house and demanded that she gave him some money. She refused so he took some items out of her house to sell on the street. He then took what money he made and completely vanished!

24) For a while he was on the most wanted list on Interpol and whilst I was reading Michael Newton's excellent book Extreme Killers as part of my research, he stated that he checked Interpol for Pedro's record in August 2014 but it had been removed. I checked Interpol myself to see if the record had been put back up but it hasn't, so it's a mystery as to why it was removed unless they know something we don't?

''It will be kindness to the world for someone to murder this fiend, The Monster of The Andes won't last long on the outside. Maybe that's why we haven't heard of more missing girls, perhaps someone, even the police in Colombia or Ecuador have already killed him?. If they have, I hope they made him suffer.'' - Corvinia Poveda. 

25) Pedro Lopez has never been officially declared deceased or been returned to face justice. If he is alive right now, he'll be in his 70s so where is he? According to investigators, there's no evidence that he has continued to kill in recent years but they are interested in looking into a 2002 case and possibly a 2012 case which they think he may have been involved in but again it comes down to evidence. Would he still be able to carry out such murders as an elderly man in his 70s? 

26) Whilst in prison, rumours circulated around for years that the families of Pedro's victims all got together to put a price on his head. Apparently they were looking for anyone, a prison guard, a fellow inmate, basically anyone, to murder Pedro Lopez and they would pay the individual $25,000. This was never proven and the fact that he was still alive and able to get away says a lot. Nobody would have complained or missed him if he suddenly 'had an accident in prison'.

''Someday when I am released. I will feel that moment again. I will be happy to kill again, it is my mission.'' - Pedro Lopez 

27) The Guinness World records once listed Pedro Lopez as one of the most prolific serial killers of all time. Due to public outcry, they removed the title quite rightly so. Serial killing should never be glamourised or seen as an achievement to reach a certain level. 

And there you have it! A difficult case to get though and one that leaves you both seething and confused. It angers me that this monster never properly faced justice. His mother has a lot to answer for and has a part to play in this too. Was he born a monster or did he just become one because of his childhood trauma? Who knows the answer to this question. I wonder why Interpol removed his details and if the likes of Michael Newton don't know the answer to that question then I don't think anyone else will. Maybe he died? His whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. It probably sounds unprofessional but imagine if that aid worker had not driven by and rescued him, the number of lives that would have been saved and the heartbreak that would have been prevented. People like him don't deserve a place on this earth and I think about the numerous victims and their families, the pain of losing a child in such a horrendous way and then never getting that proper justice and closure. I can't imagine what that must be like but my heart goes out to them.

RIP to the little angels.

Further Reading & Sources:  

- Hunting Humans | Book by Michael Newton

- Extreme Killers | Book by Michael Newton

- The Big Book of Serial Killers | Book by Jack Rosewood & Rebecca Lo

- The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers | Book by Michael Newton

- Pedro Lopez | Wikipedia

- Pedro Lopez | Murderpedia

- Capital Punishment In Colombia | Wikipedia

- Pedro Lopez: Article | The Sun

- Pedro Lopez: Article | Encyclopedia Britannica

Thank you for joining me in this difficult post, if you've made it to the end, I really appreciate it as always. I hope you will join me in my next post in my 1970s Serial Killers series. I have a feeling you may know this individual quite well. 

Take care x 

Jason Moss was just eighteen years old when he began writing to serial killers. He had always been fascinated by them and the psychology of how they think and carry out their crimes with no remorse and feeling for their victims. Their attitude to their crimes and what they were able to carry out, always intrigued and disturbed him. He was an honour student and seemed to be have an ability to turn whatever he touched into gold. He had a lovely family, a girlfriend, a great social circle, so nothing was missing in his life but there was a curiosity and he wanted to look into it for a school project where he could talk about whatever subject interested him. 

When he was a young child his mother had a fascination with true crime books and would often take him to the local library where she would share with him the disturbing details that were written in the pages of the books. He was always confused as a child as to why his mother would tell him about such things. As a student he found himself in a bookstore and was drawn to the true crime section. His first book about serial killing was the classic, Hunting Humans by Michael Newton. The book focuses on various serial killers and it grabbed Jason's attention. Soon he was stacking up true crime books like they were going out of fashion, he wanted to soak up as much knowledge as possible. So, as mentioned at the start of the post, he decided that he wanted to do a project for school and include his interest in criminology. Over the dinner table one night he declared to his shocked parents that he was going to write to some infamous serial killers. His mother thought it was odd despite her curiosity with true crime but his parents didn't really object to it and let him carry on so he set about writing to them. 

Whilst I have been spending the majority of the week studying John Wayne Gacy for my 1970s serial killer series, Jason's name popped up and I'd never heard of him before. I'd discovered he'd written a book with Jeffrey Kottler called 'The Last Victim' based on his experiences of writing and meeting various serial killers. I was intrigued by the title and the fact that he had partaken in extensive communication with John Wayne Gacy whilst John was on death row serving time for the r*pe, torture and murder of 33 young men and boys in the 1970s. 

Out of the serial killers that Jason had been in touch with, he seemed to have had quite a strange relationship with John Wayne Gacy almost like a strange, close bond and friendship. Jason claimed that he wanted to be in communication with the killers purely for research purposes and he would try and act out various roles with these dangerous men. He would write to several in the hope that one of them would write back. He would find out what their likes and dislikes were, including their sick tastes and he would write to them pretending to have the same things in common with them in a an attempt to get as much information out of them as possible. 

With John Wayne Gacy, he (although he claimed to be heterosexual) pretended that he was confused about his sexuality. Being a handsome looking young boy of 18, he knew that he was John Wayne Gacy's type so to speak and wanted to play into that. As you can imagine, John was pushing for the letters to be sexual in nature and Jason, unsure and uncomfortable with how to approach this, decided the best way for him to be able to respond to theses letters in a believable manner, was to speak to someone in the gay community. Jason had found a male sex worker who gave him stories about his life meeting various different men and indulging in different sexual practices. Jason took what this man said and copied the language in his letters to John Wayne Gacy. 

The letters were not just sexual, they talked about various things including the fact that John was trying to manipulate Jason into thinking and believing that he was innocent. He told Jason that it had all been a set up, he was innocent and he was very persuasive and Jason found himself at times coming around to some of what John was saying, especially when John mentioned that other people had keys to his house. As time went on and the letters continued, it was quite clear that John was trying to manipulate Jason into more sexual conversations whilst dangling information about himself which he knew that Jason, being a young, naive teenager and somewhat in awe of John Wayne Gacy. John had established from the outset that he was completely in charge and Jason went along with it. 

However, things started to get out of hand when John started to talk about sexual abuse he had endured in the past and he also mentioned that he had molested his own sister. The letters were becoming more and more disturbing and explicit but Jason couldn't stop writing to him for whatever reason. It got to the point where John had persuaded Jason to attempt an incestuous relationship with his younger brother. Of course Jason was horrified but instead of throwing the letters in the bin and calling a day on the whole thing, he decided to go along with this facade by pretending to also be his brother, writing to John. 

So Jason was pretending to have an incestuous relationship with his brother in order to keep the letters and conversation with John Wayne Gacy going. He was also trying to communicate with other serial killers too. With Jeffrey Dahmer, he wrote a letter to him pretending to be this loner type who lived with his sick grandmother. He had obviously done his research on Jeffrey and was trying to tap into his world. He would try to adapt and portray himself in various different roles when writing to these infamous killers. He did have some luck with responses back but he communication with John had seemed to be the strongest and that is what jumped out at me, hence another reason why I wanted to write about Jason. 

What started off as a research project was now taking over Jason's life, he found himself having nightmares and constant thoughts of the horrible things that he was been told by the monsters he was in communication with. Despite the obvious toll that it was taking on his mental health and his social life, he continued. Jason was a hard worker and always dedicated himself to whichever task he undertook and always aimed to see things through to completion. I think he felt that he'd been able to do something that a lot of people would have desired to do and that was being able to communicate on a personal level with John Wayne Gacy and as John would often remind him ''Do you know who I am?'' and ''I get thousands of letters from people but I chosoe to talk to you''. John was very dominant as he always was and the situation was becoming more scary even just through letters and phonecalls. 

John had organised for Jason to come and visit him for a couple of day, John paid for the whole thing and had his lawyer set it all up. So, this was the first time that the pair were to meet and of course, Jason was nervous. The first meeting is a complete rollercoaster. Jason was able to observe that John had pretty much the run of the place with the guards fussing over his every whim. It was a ridiculous set up and John had organised for the pair to have lunch together but he wasn't happy with what the guards had brought to him so he ordered them to take it back and bring him something else. Jason watched in shock as the guards walked away and sorted out John's food for him like it was some sort of restaurant. The guards pretty much left the two of them alone in private. 

The whole first visit was creepy and disturbing. It's unclear what exactly John thought this was or that Jason had maybe lead him on too much in the letters, but John was under the impression that something sexual was going to occur between the pair. Jason had noticed that throughout him trying to make conversation, John repeatedly touched himself through his trousers and that he was clearly turned on. Before Jason knew what was happening, John had pulled his penis out of his trousers and was shouting at Jason to look at it. The whole scene just went from horror to horror as John Wayne Gacy, aggressively horny, proceeded to masturbate in front of Jason whilst telling him how beautiful his penis was and that it was like a mushroom. He said that people died for his penis (I'm trying to be careful with the exact wording here but it's all in the book) and saying obscenities to Jason who was terrified. 

John continued to get more and more aroused as he told Jason that he wanted to bend him over a chair and sodomize him until he bled. He also threatened that he could kill Jason right there and then. Jason claimed that he had seen the evil look in John's eyes and the change from him being friendly when he first walked in with the guards to how he was in that moment. He said that he experienced some of what John's victims had experienced before he killed them. 

Luckily the guards appeared and that seemed to calm things down a bit especially as John was very angry at Jason because Jason would not engage with him sexually. Things were very tense for a moment but John seemed to snap back into a more chilled manner which was quite scary too, how he was able to switch moods so fast in the blink of an eye. 

Jason had come all of that way to visit John and had been writing endless letters to him in an effort to gain his trust and he really wanted this to be a success. He wanted photographs taken with John maybe as some sort of proof that they had actually met. John was happy to do this and just before Jason was about to leave he slipped some sexy underwear in his hand and said ''Can you wear these for me tomorrow''

I don't know if Jason actually wore the underwear the next day for John's approval but I was shocked that he actually went back for another visit. After the two visits, Jason had more or less got what he wanted in terms of having had the communication with John Wayne Gacy and the photographic evidence. The novelty seemed to wear off but John was quite persistent and wanted the whole 'incest' thing to continue with Jason and his brother. Jason was fed up and didn't want to play along with it anymore. He had an answer machine and John would often call and leave messages. Jason would receive some of John's art work as a gift and it was clear that John had quite a romantic, sordid interest in Jason and Jason had realised that he had gone too far and possibly led John on to think that the relationship was something more than it was. He tried to avoid John's letters and phoencalls but eventually responded and told John that he might not be able to be in communication as much anymore because his Dad was finding it difficult to cover the costs and it was getting expensive with the calls and postage of the letters. 

John was not one to take no for an answer and still continued to try and contact Jason. On one occasion, Jason heard his phone ring and it went straight to answer machine but there's was a problem with the answer machine and Jason was able to overhear a conversation that was going on between John and his lawyer. 

John and his lawyer were unaware that Jason could hear everything that was being said. John complained that Jason had been avoiding his calls and letters for about a month. He said that he had spent a lot of money on Jason and his lawyer agreed but the conversation turned dark when John said that he basically wasn't going to be taken for a mug and threatened to send the private letters that Jason had sent him about the so-called incest with his own brother, to Jason's father. Jason continued to listen in shock and all of of a sudden he realised that he was no longer scared and intimidated by John and he's had enough of everything so he got on the phone and he told John (who was shocked, there was uncomfortable silences) that he had heard everything that had been said and that he was lying the whole time in the letters and that he was not having a incestuous relationship with this brother. 

John was silent and was at a loss for words which for him was quite something as he always had something to say for himself. I think in that moment that Jason was lucky that he was in the safety of his own home because I think John Wayne Gacy would have killed him in that moment. All Jason heard was John hanging up the phone and that was it. 

Jason realised that he had to tell his parents everything about the truth of the letters and the fake story about the incestuous relationship with his brother. His family supported him and contacted a lawyer for advice. There was nothing that John Wayne Gacy could do even though he would often threaten to tell authorities that Jason was abusing his brother so that he would get arrested and his brother would be sent away somewhere. They were able to prove that Jason had been lying and no sort of abuse was going on in the family. 

The whole situation sort of dwindled away and Jason pretty much got on with his life but the day soon came where it was announced that John Wayne Gacy was due to be executed by lethal injection. Jason was nervous about this because John had managed to have his execution put off numerous times and everyone was concerned that he would be able to do it again. This time however, it was to go ahead. Jason was with his family at home when he heard that there had been an issue with John's execution. It took him 18 minutes to die which raised some concern although that is nothing compared to the utter hell and torture that he put his poor, innocent young victims through. Compared to what those 33 young men and boys went through (and who knows for sure, how many countless others who have never been identified) he actually got it easy in my opinion. 

Jason went to his bedroom after the official announcement was made that John Wayne Gacy was no more. He was officially gone and a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief. John's lawyer called Jason and it was a somewhat bizarre and emotional phonecall. John's lawyer told Jason that John had been asking about him in the weeks leading up to his execution and he believed that John had genuinely liked Jason. Jason found himself in tears when he heard that. It really was a strange relationship between himself and John Wayne Gacy. 

I think that like a lot of us in the true crime community and anyone with an interest in true crime we often think about what it would be like to meet these infamous monsters. It leaves a chill down the spine the idea of having these people in the same room as you. I often get asked who I would like to interview and I've always said John Wayne Gacy. I would have to have some security in the room because even though I wouldn't fit his criteria for a possible victim, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. As well as being a master manipulator, John Wayne Gacy was very clever at sniffing out people's weaknesses and using them against them. He was a control freak but he did it in a way that he was able to trap people into doing what he wanted and would feel vulnerable in his presence especially if he was alone with them. I noticed that in front of other people he would put the 'nice guy' performance on. He was very much like two people. 

After John's death, Jason became well known for the young guy who wrote to John Wayne Gacy and other serial killers. People were fascinated with him and asked him constant questions. Some people thought he was brave for what he did and some thought he was crazy. 

Jason was still suffering a lot with the things that he was told by John Wayne Gacy and the other killers who had responded to him. He was struggling with the thoughts and descriptions of what these people had done to their victims. Despite the project being a success, Jason continued his contact with some of the serial killers and was attempting to get close to The Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez. He actually was successful in doing so and had even been to meet Richard in prison. As part of trying to tap into Richard's world, Jason started studying satanism. 

I wish I could write that Jason had wrapped up this strange urge to continue to communicate with such people after the success of his project and the experience with John Wayne Gacy coming to an end but sadly he continued on and nobody knows the exact circumstances of what was to happen next. 

It seemed that Jason had been going on a downward spiral for quite some time. He was just a kid when he started writing to these people, these monsters and his head was filled with some of the most horrific things you can imagine. As a writer, I try my best to take care of myself when I'm writing about some of these cases because it can be really tough, the details can be horrendous and you see the world in a different light. I'm lucky that I have the ability to separate my private life from that of my writing. I'll research a case, read every book I can about it, watch every trial etc and I will type it up on my blog and then I close the book on it and move on. I don't know how I would feel if I was in contact with some of the most infamous serial killers to have ever existed. My blog would be through the roof, it would be amazing from a popular stand point but I would be traumatised. To be honest, I think anybody in their right mind would. 

Jason wrote about his experiences in detail in the book The Last Victim and I highly recommend that everyone who hasn't read it, to have a look at it because he spoke honestly about what the whole thing had done to him psychologically, being in contact with these monsters. He was only a young man and he should have been like other young people of his age at that time, care-free, thinking about the future, parties, fun, holidays etc but he was suffering from nightmares and terrifying thoughts that he could never shake. He didn't wish it on anyone. 

Jason sadly took his own life and it became clear that he had been researching a lot of satanic materials and had been connected to Richard Ramirez. He ended his life on the 6th day of the 6th month in 2006. Was it just sheer coincidence or was that intentional? We know Richard Ramirez was an absolute monster and the things he had done to his victims were the stuff of nightmares. Jason was already vulnerable as it was and to have been involved in some small capacity with Richard Ramirez was just a big mistake. One wonders if it was an addiction for Jason, the thrill of being able to get near to these monsters when other people couldn't or were too scared to? Maybe he felt it was his duty to find out all he could incase they felt comfortable enough to tell him about other possible victims? Whatever the case, I know he was old enough to make his won decisions but I feel that it would have helped if somebody stepped in and said ''That's enough Jason, you need to stop all of this and get on with your life and live your life''. 

None of us can really know what was going through Jason't mind and it's heartbreaking on so many levels because he was such a bright, intelligent young man who could have done anything he wanted and it seemed he found himself sucked into this horrible, dark world that he couldn't get out of of. Once the door was open to all of these dark and disturbing curiosities, he just couldn't turn away. 

I hope that you have found my posts on both John Wayne Gacy and Jason Moss to be interesting and informative. I hope to have provided you with some new information that you may not have come across before. So I end this week of research into John Wayne Gacy with the sad post about Jason. Jason is often referred to as the title of his book 'The Last Victim' and in a lot of ways, sadly he was. RIP Jason and for whatever the reasons for your strive to learn about these people, we have learned from you. Not only have we learned that these monsters were every bit as horrific as we imagine from what we have read about their crimes but that the idea of ever being tempted to write to these sorts of people, is a seriously bad idea unless you can fully handle what they are going to tell you and in the end, unless they are revealing new details about missing victims or locations of remains, it's simply not worth it. 

Side note: A movie based on Jason's book called 'Dear Mr. Gacy' was released in 2010. 

Thank you for taking the time to read my latest post and I hope you will join me in the next one as I will be continuing on with my 1970s Serial killers series. 

Take care x