Ann Rule in 2004 (Betty Udeson/Seattle Times via AP)
I wouldn’t characterize the friendship of Ted Bundy and Ann Rule as “twisted” in the slightest. That sort of characterization is being made because the writer of the title of this article in the Washington Post is looking back at Bundy through the lens of hindsight and knowing exactly what he did, because now, we all know that he was a serial killer. We have known it since the 1980s.
But Rule herself was never exposed to that side of Ted Bundy. You can read about it in “The Stranger Beside Me”. She simply wasn’t the kind of female he wanted to kill: she was older than him, for one, and she wasn’t a coed-type.
“People like Ted can fool you completely,” she said in 1999. “I’d been a cop, had all that psychology — but his mask was perfect. I say that long acquaintance can help you know someone. But you can never be really sure. Scary.”
She added: “I felt sick when Ted was executed — but I would not have stopped it if I could. He was going to get out, and he would have killed again and again and again.”
The news of Rule’s death shocked me, even though she was in her eighties. When you grew up reading her books, as I did, you never think that someday, this brilliant author will be gone, leaving their writing as a legacy. Because he was her friend, she had an insight into the mind of Ted Bundy as perhaps no other author has had. He compartmentalized his life so intricately that those closest to him had no idea that he was a monster. Rule and Bundy worked togather on the Seattle Crisis phone lines in the 1970s:
“If people believe, as I do, that he killed those women, then I am here to tell you that he also saved lives, because I was there when he did it.”
Rest in Peace, Ann. You, and your talent, will be greatly missed.
Links to buying the updated 2008 edition of “The Stranger Beside Me”:
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
