Parents' Guide to Ted Bundy: Dialogue with the Devil

TED BUNDY: DIALOGUE WITH THE DEVIL is a docuseries that reveals how talking with convicted serial killer Ted Bundy helped improve future forensic investigations. In 1982, women began disappearing around King County, Washington, and the remains of five victims were eventually discovered along the Green River. By 1984, as the disappearances continued and the cases went cold, Bundy, on Florida's death row, wrote to investigators to offer his assistance with profiling the Green River Killer (G.R.K.) in hopes of delaying or staying his execution. The letter reached Detective Robert Keppel of the Washington State Attorney General's office, a man whose early career included a preliminary look into the 1974 disappearance of Brenda Ball, and the investigation into the murders of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund, for which Bundy was a person of interest. After establishing a rapport with him via correspondence, in 1986 Keppel, along with Detective Dave Reichert of the Green River Task Force, talked to the convicted killer face-to-face to see what information he would offer. Throughout their multiple recorded interview sessions, Keppel spotted patterns in the convicted killer's behavior and speech that indicated that he was profiling himself instead of the G.R.K., but would stop short of admitting guilt. It wasn't until a few days before his execution in 1989, in a last-ditch effort to avoid the electric chair, that he confessed to the murders of Ball, Ott, Naslund, and five other women whose cases were unresolved. Excerpts from these conversations, along with audio passages from Keppel's book, The Riverman, and conversations with investigators, forensic scientists, scholars, authors, and journalists highlight the significance of what was revealed during these conversations. Also sharing their thoughts are Richard Bundy, the convicted serial killer's younger brother, and survivor Karen Sparks Epley, the killer's first known victim. The role these interviews had on the search for the G.R.K., who was eventually arrested in 2001, is discussed, as is the way Keppel's work helped advance the forensic sciences. Throughout it all, archive photographs and news footage of both serial killers and their victims, along with shadowy reenactments and crime scene re-creations, are shown.