Ted Bundy: Dialogue With The Devil is a six-part docuseries that centers around interviews Bundy gave between 1984 and 1989 to Robert Keppel, an investigator for Washington State Attorney General’s office. At the time, Bundy was serving on death row in Florida, where three of the many murders he committed took place. As a tactic to help him stave off execution, he decided that it would be fruitful to give investigators from his old stomping grounds in the Seattle area insight into The Green River Killer, another serial murderer that had been terrorizing Washington State starting in 1982, leaving very little evidence behind for law enforcement.
Opening Shot: After a warning about how the content of the docuseries might be “triggering” for some viewers, we see a reenactment of someone pressing record on a cassette recorder and handing it over to Ted Bundy.
The Gist: Via the twelve hours of interviews Bundy gave to Keppel, as well as interviews with investigators from the “GRK Task Force” that was created to help track down the Green River Killer, as well as Keppel’s son and a few survivors of Bundy’s, we get a picture of just how thorough the GRK terrorized the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s. Gary Ridgway, who was eventually captured in 2001, was convicted of 49 murders but may have had twice as many victims. We also hear a narrator read entries from Keppel’s journals that analyzed the interviews with Bundy.
Keppel was one of the primary investigators that worked on the eight murders that Bundy was suspected of committing in Washington starting in 1974. When Bundy wrote him a letter saying that he could give Keppel insights into what the Green River Killer was thinking, Keppel’s idea was that, in the process of those interviews, he could get Bundy to finally admit to the murders in Washington. It was Keppel’s chance to finally nail Bundy for those murders, which had eluded law enforcement for over a decade by that point.
Bundy’s motivations were twofold. For one, He thought that the Green River Killer, who killed mostly prostitutes and runaways, was an inferior serial killer compared to him. But he was mostly trying desperately to stave off his execution, and he figured assisting Keppel would help. But both Bundy and Keppel know that his time is limited.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There have been a few Ted Bundy-related docuseries, including Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes.
Our Take: Ted Bundy: Dialogue With The Devil tries to take on three big tasks: Summarize the killings Bundy committed in the Seattle area, which Keppel investigated, explain just how terrified the area was a decade later when the Green River Killer was on his spree, and get at the essence of the cat-and-mouse game Bundy played with Keppel during his death row interviews. It’s a lot, and it feels like the show loses the thread of what it wants to do about halfway through the first episode.
As we mentioned before, there have been plenty of documentaries and docuseries about Bundy, and while we understand that this documentary is likely concentrating on the murders he committed in the Seattle area — ones that he finally confessed to Keppel days before his execution — it seems like territory that has been covered elsewhere. The Green River Killer has also been covered in documentaries in the past.
So where the interest lies here is where one famous serial killer giving investigators insight into the thought process of another famous serial killer. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that was the plot of the novel and film Silence Of The Lambs, which was no doubt influenced by Bundy’s talks with Keppel.
What we’re not sure about is why the bulk of the first episode didn’t focus on these interviews, instead of going off on a rehash about Bundy’s killings in Washington. Anyone who is even somewhat versed in serial killer true crime stories knows about the horrors that Bundy inflicted on his victims, and how his looks and charm helped him elude suspicion for so many years. What we want to see in this series is how his observations of what GRK might be doing ended up being spot on, even if law enforcement didn’t finally catch Ridgway until 12 years after Bundy’s execution.
Sex and Skin: None besides graphic descriptions of Bundy’s and Ridgway’s murders.
Parting Shot: Ted Bundy’s brother Rich talks about how he never connected the “Ted killings” to his brother until Bundy became a person of interest.
Sleeper Star: Oh, we are very much looking forward to seeing more of Rich Bundy’s interview. He seems to be as shocked as anyone else that his brother Ted could have been such a bloodthirsty killer. “Goddammit, people, wake up!” he says when he describes how people would tell him his brother had a “good side” to him.
Most Pilot-y Line: The reenactments are a bit cheesy, but they’re not that intrusive. What we wonder about is the snippets of dialogue where it sounds like someone else dubbed in what Bundy said during those interviews. It’s pretty obvious and doesn’t help the show’s authenticity factor.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We think that Ted Bundy: Dialogue With The Devil could have been at least two episodes shorter than it is, because much of the material about Bundy’s killings and how GRK terrorized the Seattle area feels like a rehash compared to the interviews Bundy had with Keppel.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.