Over the years, many people have described their interactions with Bundy and, collectively, these impressions demonstrate Bundy's ability to be different things to different people. Interviewers were frustrated to learn that he'd contradicted to someone else what he'd just told them. He hedged, deflected, and talked circuitously while sounding completely open and sincere.

Reporter Barbara Grossman nicely sums it up: "Sometimes I come away from an interview with Ted thinking I've got great stuff. But then the more you listen to what he says, the more you wonder what he's saying."

Bundy's chameleonic style presents a unique form of mental flexibility that certain predatory psychopaths possess. It would be useful to develop an objective assessment of this aspect of criminal behavior, for better comprehension and prediction. By making Bundy the "specimen for study" that he sought to be, we could turn his game plan into a tool for shrewd analysis for today's offenders.

THE FACTS

Whether Bundy's murders began in 1974, the official calculation, or earlier, (he claimed to have killed 30, but also confessed to 36 and hinted at many more), this former Boy Scout, crisis counselor, and campaign volunteer took secrets to the grave.

Investigators launched the hunt for a serial killer after several young women were assaulted or had disappeared in Oregon and Washington State. The remains of two who had vanished on the same day from Lake Sammamish, east of Seattle, were found near bones from another. Witnesses described a slender man named "Ted," who'd approached the girls.

By this time, Bundy was in law school in Utah, where several more female corpses turned up. Then a failed kidnapping attempt got him prison time. There, Bundy endured extensive testing, including brain scans, as psychologists analyzed his life story.

Born to Louise Cowell in a home for unwed mothers on November 24, 1946, Bundy was raised in Philadelphia with his mother's parents--as her brother. In 1950, Louise took him to Tacoma, Washington, where she married Johnnie Bundy. To psychologists, Bundy claimed he'd had a stable childhood with caring, church-going parents. His grandfather had been rough, but Bundy recalled only good memories.

Eventually he discovered the humiliating fact that he was a bastard. Highly insecure, Bundy sought to raise his status. He graduated college with honors, dated a classy young woman, and comported himself so well during a political campaign that some friends thought he'd run for office. But then his girlfriend dumped him. He floundered. Convicted of kidnapping, Bundy was also suspected in several murders.

After officials transported him to Colorado to face charges there, Bundy escaped and went to Tallahassee, Florida. On January 15, 1978, he attacked five women, killing two in the Chi Omega sorority house. A month later, Bundy raped and murdered twelve-year-old Kimberly Leach.

He resisted an insanity defense and refused to exchange an admission of guilt for life in prison. Instead, Bundy represented himself right into three convictions and death sentences. Despite protesting his innocence, just before his execution on January 24,...