In January of 1989, the state of Florida put Ted Bundy to death in the electric chair.  The night before his execution, Bundy granted one last interview to Dr. James Dobson, a known anti-porn activist and a member of the Meese Commission on pornography.

Bundy claimed in this last interview that pornography drove him to serial murder.  Ever since then he has been the poster boy for the anti-porn faction.

But was Bundy telling the truth?  Or was he pandering to anti-porn sentiment in order to stall his inevitable ride on "Old Sparky"?

The Facts

Psychopaths are notorious liars.  And as these examples show, they can easily fool psychologists and psychiatrists.

Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers, had several psychologists believing that he suffered from multiple personality disorder. Bianchi confessed when caught faking hypnosis. Arthur Shawcross tried a double stratagy of post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by wartime atrocities in Viet-Nam and MPD. When military records showed that Shawcross was no where near battle, he dropped the post-traumatic disorder and went to trial with MPD. After the jury decided that Shawcross' MPD was faked, he confessed that he made the whole thing up.

The most dramatic example of a psychopath fooling psychiatrists comes from Ed Kemperer. Kemperer had killed his grandparents, been committed to a mental institution for seven years, and had outpatient therapy for two years afterwards. Psychiatrists declared Kemperer, "no danger to himself, others, or society", while Kemperer had the severed head of one of his later victims in the trunk of his car.

As these examples show, psychopaths are superlative liars. And Bundy was no exception.  While he killed numerous women, he managed to maintain a long term intimate relationship with a woman and he helped raise her daughter. He worked in a crisis center. Ann Rule recounts how Bundy was teased by the staff for his resemblance to the "Ted" in the police artist sketches. Bundy also worked on a political campaign, the people with whom he worked predicted that Bundy would be governor someday. Incredibly Bundy joined police and other people in the search for his victims.  He basically fooled everyone around him.  He lived a lie.

Since Bundy was a plausible and practiced liar, one must look at the circumstances of the interview.

Bundy contacted Dr. Dobson, by letter, and they began a dialog on pornography. Bundy also contacted many other people by letter. Most ignored him.

The Dobson interview was the only interview where he spoke with any clarity about his crimes.  In the week before his execution, he had set up interviews with police in the states where he had murdered, in order to help the police find his victim's bodies.  He proved to be evasive, and asked the police to petition the Florida courts for a stay of execution so he could continue his "cooperation".  They were not impressed, they left Florida without petitioning anybody.

This is important because of contentions that Bundy did not want to interfere with his appeals. Writing to police officers and admitting that he knew where bodies were buried would not hurt his appeals in Florida. In fact, all the missing victims were from other states which would not affect the Florida appeals at all.

Even though ten years later, we know that execution was inevitable, things were not quite so clear January 23, 1989. Bundy had managed to acquire at least two stays of execution on both of his death warrants. In fact, Bundy was under two death sentences. The first was handed down at the Chi Omega trial, and the second was handed down in the separate trial of the murder of Kimberly Leach. The prosecutors tried him for Kimberly Leach after Bundy had received the death penalty for Chi Omega because death warrants have been know to expire and the sentence commuted to life. Florida prosecutors and the public wanted Bundy dead.

In fact, Bundy had no reason to believe that his execution was imminent for one of his stays was less than twenty-fours hours before his scheduled execution. And at the time of the Dobson interview, his case was being reviewed by the Supreme Court.

So Bundy had no reason not to lie, and perhaps a very good reason to lie. His behavoir had not changed less than a week before execution. And by the account of the police officers who came across the country in order to find missing victims, Bundy was searching for something or someone to give him a little more time.

Now onto evidence that Bundy was lying to Dobson.

Bundy did not have pornography on his person or property when he was arrested. Not when he was arrested in Florida, Utah, or Colorado. If he possessed porn, the police would have found it. When pedophiles are arrested, the police find huge collections of child pornography. Surely pedophiles would have hidden their porn much better than Bundy would have hidden porn that one can buy legally from sex shops.   

Since the theory was that his "addiction" to porn would compel him to seek it out, the fact that he had no porn in his effects at any time when he was arrested is very telling. If porn addiction exists on the same line as drug addiction, Bundy would have some in his possession. 

The Dobson interview was the first time Bundy ever squarely blamed porn as a causitive factor. Even though Bundy was evasive in many interviews, he was quite comfortable talking about his crimes and the circumstances surrounding them in the third person with Stephen Michaud. He did not mention porn in the many months that Michaud interviewed him. Bundy only pinpointed porn after his death warrants were signed and he had to find reasons not to be executed by the state of Florida.

Now on to Dr. Dobson.

Was Dr. James Dobson qualified?

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