Ted Bundy: The local monster who will not die

by Eric Johnson | KOMO News

SEATTLE –

Some monsters simply refuse to die.

Ted Bundy is one of those monsters.

Ted Bundy's disease has consumed the northwestern Pacific and continues to haunt the region to this day.

The interest in the case reached its peak again with a Netflix documentary, a movie starring Zac Efron and a special 20/20 show.

"If it's not you who talk to me, it's someone else," said Bob Keppel, a former homicide detective who helps track the frenzy of Bundy's death.

Bundy went to Tyee High School in Tacoma.

His atrocities occurred in places we know; like Sammamish Lake State Park, Green Row in U District.

When he escaped from prison, he went to an Ann Arbor bar to watch his Huskies play in the Rose Bowl.

In the courtroom, he was wearing a Seattle Mariners t-shirt under a jacket.

He had a mother who lived in Tacoma, like so many other mothers.

"Full and shocked, we do not believe it, it just is not possible, I'm always shaking my head," said his mother.

In the end, he asked that his ashes be spread over the mountains of the Cascade.

Among all these things, he took lives, changed lives and caused inconceivable pain.

And, Ted Bundy may have changed the perception of the Pacific Northwest.

"The city was so much calmer and naive," said Cloyd Steiger, a retired police officer from Seattle.

There was fear in Seattle; in Washington; where he had not been afraid before.

The police would say, "We just want to warn young women in our community against excessive caution."

All the missing girls were white students aged 18 to 21 years old.

"Everything, even the forces of order, was more naive at the time and did not really know how to react to serial killers," said Steiger. "There was not even the term Serial killer in its infancy, it was invented later. "

He is the serial killer that haunts us because he was "of" us.

Some have used the word charming to describe it, Steiger is not one of them.

"I do not stop hearing that Ted Bundy was a charmer," Steiger said. "Ted Bundy was not a charmer, he was an animal that destroyed lives in his way, he left a trail of destruction to all families are still alive … thousands of cases we know that he did. "

Thirty years after his electrocution, Ted Bundy haunts and still torments the Pacific Northwest.

"Oh, I hate him, I hate him," Keppel said. "I knew enough to never let him understand."

He clubbed and beat beautiful young lives until they no longer existed. If ever there was innocence in the Pacific Northwest, Ted Bundy was the end.

"I can not get it out of my head," said Keppel. "He is always there."

Some monsters, especially those of us, simply refuse to die.