Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes on Netflix documents the case of American serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy confessed to killing 30 women between 1974 and 1978 and potentially many more victims when he was on death row. Bundy tried to appeal his death sentence for the final time in 1989 but was he successful? Here’s everything you need to know about the fate of Ted Bundy.
Is Ted Bundy still alive?
No, American serial killer Ted Bundy is not alive today.
He was executed by the electric chair on January 24, 1989, at Florida State Prison.
He died in the Raiford electric chair at 7.16am, aged 42.
The Netflix documentary, Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes was released exactly 30 years on from his execution date.
Ironically, Bundy was terrified of death and did everything he could to prolong and remove his execution date.
He could have accepted a plea bargain put forward by his defence team which would have saved his life.
Instead, Bundy acted out in court and fired his lawyers, refusing to accept a plea deal, sabotaging his own fate.
On the days leading up to his original execution date, July 2, 1986, Bundy began confessing to his crimes to Special Agent William Hagmaier of the FBI Behaviour Analysis Unit.
He detailed how he would return to the murder sites at Taylor Mountain, Issaquah and others and often engage in necrophilia.
He also confessed that he decapitated the heads of 12 of his victims and kept some severed heads at his home before disposing of them.
Stephen Michaud, who interviewed Bundy on death row in 1980, exclusively told Express.co.uk: “He hoped to trade confessions for a delay of execution. Ted did not want to die.”
Bundy tried to appeal his execution from death row and the lawyers defending him claimed at the time of his trial for the Florida murders that he was not of a sound mind.
As a result of a poor mental state and his irrational decision to represent himself at trial, it was hoped his death sentence would be overturned.
Less than 15 hours before the July 2, 1986 execution date, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an indefinite stay and remanded the Chi Omega case be reviewed.
The execution date for the Kimberley Leach murder was set for November 18, 1986, which was then postponed indefinitely by the Eleventh Circuit Court on November 17.
Despite the postponements, all appeal avenues had failed and the attempts to spare Bundy of the death penalty collapsed.
In December 1988, the final execution of January 24, 1989, was set.
Bundy then went onto confess to homicide detective Robert Keppel that he had committed the eight Washington and Oregon homicides and revealed he left a fifth corpse – Donna Manson’s on Taylor Mountain but incinerated her head in his girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer’s fireplace.
In his book The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer, Keppel recalled how the murderer said: “Of all the things I did to [Kloepfer]. This is probably the one she is least likely to forgive me for. Poor Liz.”
He also confessed to murderers in Idaho, Utah and Colorado but withheld details in the hope he would be granted another stay of execution, known as “Ted’s bones-for-time scheme” noted author David Von Drehle in his book, Among the Lowest of the Dead: The Culture on Death Row.
On the night before his execution, he spoke to Hagmaier about taking his own life.
In the documentary, Hagmaier reflects on the dark conversation and said: “He did not want to give the state the satisfaction of watching him die.”
Bundy was executed by the electric chair as huge crowds and the media gathered outside the prison, waiting for his death to be announced.
The documentary shows people cheering, carrying posters and wearing merchandise being sold, including pins of an electric chair and t-shirts that read ‘burn, Bundy, burn.’
The hearse containing his corpse left the prison soon afterwards and hundreds of people chased it down the road.
His ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location in the Cascade Range of Washington State, in accordance with his will.
It was mentioned in the documentary that the executioner, whose identity was concealed with a black hood, may have been female.
Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes is streaming on Netflix now
