The Stranger Beside Me

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Summary: This is a Ted Bundy As I Knew Him by Ann Rule....
Review: After studying what makes a serial killer the way he is/was... I had a lot of books on Ted Bundy, but they were only by Chroniclers, men who were journalists, who only wanted to chronicle Ted's crimes as he sat on death row, they never knew him personally... and had made their judgments of his crimes in that manner... they didn't know the OTHER SIDE of Ted Bundy. Just the person he became sitting on Death Row.

This is the first Ann Rule book I bought ever. She gives insight that other journalists that have "talked to bundy on death row" have not. She not only gives insight as a True Crime Writer and friend of every police precinct in Washington, but she also gives insight as a close friend and co-worker (in a Crisis Center) of Ted Bundy.

We not only see how Ted was before and after he was caught in 3 states, but also what she thought of him during those times. She never sensationalize Ted the Monster, nor catered to "Poor Boy Ted", she just stated what she witnessed of him, and news articles on him.

I must admit though, of all the serial killers I have books on from Women Who Kill to Jack Olsen's books... this one... after I was finished reading the last page, I couldn't go to sleep, I was wondering what would I do if someone came through my window, and didn't sleep well at all. The frightening thing about this book... is... What would you do in Ann's situation if you suspected, and knew there were investigations of serial sex murders on YOUR Best Friend... a very chilling account of "Ted Bundy As I Knew Him"-type of book. I highly recommend this.

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Summary: the best book I've read on Bundy
Review: This isn't a book to read if you're just looking for a lot of gory details about what Bundy did to his victims. There is very little discussion about his necrophilic activities, his obsession with dead bodies, etc. This is, however, the book to read if you want an accurate, well-rounded portrayal of Bundy as a person and as a killer.

Like another reviewer already stated, this book was fascinating on several levels. Just as interesting as the Bundy case is watching how Ann Rule herself changed over time. She went from steadfastly believing in her dear friend (as most people would if they were truly friends), to seesawing back and forth, to throwing up when she realized he was guilty after the Miami trial. Her account in this edition of what she felt like when he was executed (the original book was released prior to Bundy's execution) was thought provoking to say the least. She admittedly wouldn't have stopped his execution even if she could, but her grief over losing a man she cared about was also very evident and is just one instance of how multi-dimensional this book is.

Also as another reviewer pointed out, I appreciated getting to know the victims as more than statistics. For all the books that come out, not just about Bundy but about killers in general, the victims the authors claim to care so much about are brushed over and given about as much thought in death as their killers gave them in life. This is not the case with The Stranger Beside Me. This is a well-rounded, multi-dimensional book that you won't be able to put down.

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Summary: Brilliant In-Depth Study of Ted Bundy's Life and Mind
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Author Ann Rule did not know at the time she was working with Ted Bundy on a Seattle suicide prevention hot line that he was simultaneously stalking and murdering beautiful young women. He had also worked with a Washington State crime bureau and authored a pamphlet on rape prevention.

Author Rule's background in criminology and as a crime writer, as well as her long-standing personal relationship with Ted Bundy, perhaps qualifies her better than any other biographer of Ted Bundy.

Rule points out that Bundy was born in a home for unwed mothers in 1946 to a young woman from a Methodist Pennsylvania family, who left him there for three months, before returning to take him home with her.

WHO KNOWS WHAT TRANSPIRED during the three months that Ted remained in The Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers before his mother returned to take him home with her. An infant needs instant bonding, to be held and nurtured by his mother. The fact that Ted was deprived of this may have been an important factor in his peronality development.

His mother was obviously made to feel guilty and shame by her Church over having sired Ted, which is not Louise Bundy's fault but the fault of society and the pressures society puts on women.

From the onset, Ted was apparently reared in an unsettling home environment, in which the family was apparently continuously trying to cover up the actual circumstances of Ted's out-of-wedlock birth from other members of the community. This obviously created a high level of psychological tension in the household Ted grew up in.

Bundy's maternal Grandfather Cowell, who reared him for the first four years of his life as his own son, was a hard working landscaper, who was described as, although loving and protective of Ted, tyranical in his relationships with females members of the household. Ted had two aunts, one a teenager, living in the same household. In addition, Ted's maternal Grandmother Cowell, whom Ted was told was his mother, reportedly suffered from mental problems (possibly bipolar disorder or schizohrenia) and was in and out of mental hospitals.

It is possible that Grandmother Cowell was the one who resented Ted early on, and may have been a source of Ted's anger towards women.

At the age of four Ted's mother moved with Ted cross country to Washington, primarily to give Ted a new life in an environment where he would be less likely, she thought, to be ostracised by the circumstances of his birth. Her uncle reportedly was a well-educated and polished music professor at a college in Washington. However, she married a Navy veteran and VA Hospital cook by the name of Bundy, who adopted Ted at the age of five.

Ted, according to Ann Rule, was unsettled over the fact that prior to his mother's marriage to Mr. Bundy when he was five, Ted Bundy had been told that his Grandfather Cowell was his father and that Louise Bundy was his sister, not his mother. He apparently had resentments against his stepfather, the man his mother married when he was five.

Ted also suspected he was "illigimate" as a teenager because a cousin told him so, but he did not learn for sure until he was about 22 years old, when he obtained his birth records.

In junior high school he was humiliated by other boys in the school locker room merely because he preferred to shower alone.

Ann Rule mentions that while Ted admired powerful, successful men, that he had difficulty identifying with such men, and that because women found Ted attractive they were easier for him to deal with. Yet women, in Ann Rule's opinion, also "HELD THE POWER TO HURT AND HUMILIATE." Ted was thus constantly on guard in his relationships with women, as well as with men, and his behavior was apparently very superficial, in that he tried to demonstrate feelings for others that he really did not have, possibly because he was so constantly overwhelmed by a secret dread of being humiliated and rejected and abandoned.

His first romantic involvement at the age of about 21 with a girl he met at college, who was attractive and from a properous upper income well-connected family. According to Ann Rule,"She hurt him badly. She did not MAKE Ted an antisocial personality; she EXACERBATED what was also smouldering there. When she walked away from him after there first year together, he was ashamed and humiliated, and the rage he felt was all out of proportion."

It was only three days after Ted's girlfriend left that Ted allegedly committed his first murder by bludgeoning and raping "symbolically" another girl. Thereafter, all of Ted's victims were prototypes of the girlfriend who jilted him.

However, suspicions later surfaced that Ted MAY have actually committed his first murder at the age of fifteen, because a female child who resided in the same neighborhood disappeared overnight and was never found. Ted Bundy reportedly was the newspaper delivery boy for her family and the girl reportedly knew and followed Bundy around.

Ann Rule states, "I knew that Ted was insane. I cannot justify executing a man who is insane." Others shared Ann Rule's point of view.

Psychologist Al Carlisle reported that "Ted had a fear of being humiliated in his relationships with women." A female analyst, Dorothy Lewis (NYU Medical Center) later claimed she felt Ted suffered from manic depressive psychosis ( bipolar disorder).

Ann Rule also mentions that Ted regularly used ALCOHOL and MARIJUANA, which may have actually triggered the episodic violence that was unleased on innocent young girls and young women.

And all three diagnoses are probably accurate: that Ted was insane, that he did suffer from fears (and rage) over being humiliated by women, and that he probably did indeed sufferer from bipolar disorder. Ted might have also suffered from psychomotor epilepsy that was triggered whenever he used alcohol and marijuana.

Yet there is a tendency in the mindset of the criminal justice system to reject claims of insanity and deny the existence of mental illness in favor of the need by some members of society to seek revenge in the form of "capital punishment." This type of barbaric revenge is justified by using the term "psychopathic personality" as an esoteric method of denying the fact that severe psychosis does indeed exist.

Placing Ted Bundy in a mental hospital could have perhaps done more for psychiatric research than executing him, in the opinion of author Ann Rule and others. Nevertheless, Ted Bundy was indeed eventually executed.

It is an interesting exploration of the human psyche that while Ted abucted, bludgeoned, raped, and murdered dozens of beautiful women, that he reportedly received hundreds of letters from women, expressing their love for him while he was on death row.

As a reviewer and (not for profit) psychoanalyst, it is my opinion that Ted Bundy probably suffered some severely damaging psychological humiliation from hostile females at a very early age, and not necessarily from his mother, who apparently did everything possible to try to give Ted Bundy a good life. It could have been from other females in the Cowell household or outsiders. Nevertheless, there is a common tendency to protect people we "love" and are taught by Christianity to "honor" from the condemnation of others, when even though they may have periodically abused us.

For an individual to face with the stark reality that he was perhaps never really loved unconditionally by his own family is unbearable. Ann Rule's book is a brilliant study of the mind of Ted Bundy.

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Summary: The ONLY True Crime Books I Read!
Review: Although this is one of Ann Rule's first books, it is one of her best. She gives the background of her friendship with Ted Bundy -- and tells how she only gradually was convinced that he was the serial killer 3 states were searching for. She doesn't weight the book down with ALL the details of ALL the deaths (who really knows how many women he killed?), but we learn enough! I especially appreciated the updates at the end -- to tell us the final chapter in this wasted life!

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Summary: The Stranger Beside Me
Review: A fantastic read. Ann Rule managed to bring forth the gruesome tale of Ted Bundy's psychotic behaviour fantastically.

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Summary: Ann Rule Got Lucky
Review: Ann Rule got lucky with this one in that she just happened to be associated with Ted Bundy when they worked together at a crisis clinic. If not for Bundy, Ann Rule would have gone nowhere as a writer. She has no sense of imagination or pace, and her books are always BORING! If you want to read a really great true crime author, read anything by Jack Olsen, may he rest in peace.

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Summary: There are actually monsters out there like this!
Review: I found the book to get a little slow at times because of the legal storyline, but still a strong five star read. This book really kept me going. If your reading this review and have an interest in people who do terrible acts of violence to other human beings, then I recomend this book. There are actually people out there like Ted Bundy - a true human monster. Scary!

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Summary: Rule and Bundy=a fascinating book...
Review: One of the best true-crime writers, Ann Rule, actually knew Ted Bundy, the notorious serial killer. This book is based on his crimes, and on her personal knowledge of Bundy. It's a riveting book, and one of the best true-crime books I've ever read.

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Summary: Bundy: Forever the Enigma?
Review: The sheer number of Ted Bundy's known and suspected victims may well satisfy most people that his execution should be the end of his story, but it should not and "The Stranger Beside Me" does not answer what is begged: why? Did something in society create what truly was a monster or was Bundy truly a human form of pure evil? Ann Rule is not to be criticized for not answering in her book, a masterpiece in detailing the horrors that Bundy inflicted on his known victims and posing the frightening likelihood that others still buried endured his torture. Rule was, after all, blinded like everyone else by Bundy's purported grace and all those other attributes assigned to "decent" people. For anyone seeking the definitive answer, if they care, are likely to be disappointed that "The Stranger Beside Me" doesn't provide it. Illigitemacy? A love relationship gone bad? Can these two simple factors alone or together and which so many other people have undoubtedly experienced so fracture a human psyche that it abandons every shred of humanity? It's doubtful, leading us to conclude that some other horrific force was at work. Still, Ms. Rule's book is a great read for no other reason than to feel the numbing trauma of Bundy's catastrophic acts, even if they aren't satisfactorily explained.

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Summary: Easy-to-follow insight into the boy-nextdoor serial killer!
Review: High applause to Ann Rule! While struggling with her work and
volunteer hours at a Women's Crisis Hotline, she met a charming
young fellow--Ted Bundy the sociopathic murderer. Yet, Ann knew
him as an everyday Joe who sat beside her at the hotline center.
She even rode with him in a car. She enjoyed conversations with this bright young man. And then she was knocked on her tail to find out about his secret horror. She met with him in prison and
gathered the extra clues and details to make this outstanding, unparalleled novel. Highly recommended!!!