The Stranger Beside Me (2 page)

The parking strips were planted with dogwood trees-reminiscent of home-but the rest of the vegetation was strange, unlike that in the places from which he'd come. Live oak, water oak, slash pine, date palms, and towering sweet gums. The whole city seemed to be sheltered by trees. The sweet gum branches were stark and bare in January, making the vista a bit like a northern winter's, but the temperature was nearing 70

already. The very strangeness of the landscape made him feel safer, as if all the bad times were behind him, so far away that everything in the previous four years could be forgotten, forgotten so completely that it would be as if it had never happened at all. He was good at that; there was a place he could go to in his mind where he truly could forget. Not erase; forget.

As he neared the Florida State campus proper, his euphoria lessened; perhaps he'd made a mistake. He'd expected a much bigger operation in which to lose himself, and a proliferation of For Rent signs. There seemed to be very few rentals, and he knew the classifieds wouldn't help him much; he wouldn't be able to tell which addresses were near the university.

The clothing that had been too light in Michigan and Colorado was beginning to feel too heavy, and he went to the campus bookstore where he found lockers to stow his sweaters and hat.

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He had $160 left, not that much money when he figured he had to rent a room, pay a deposit, and buy food until he found a job. He found that most of the students lived in dormitories, fraternal houses, and in a hodge-podge of older apartment and rooming houses bordering the campus. But he was late in arriving; the term had started, and almost everything was already rented.

Ted Bundy had lived in nice apartments, airy rooms in the upper stories of comfortable older homes near the University of Washington and the University of Utah campuses, and he was less than enchanted with the pseudo-Southern-mansion facade of "The Oak" on West College Avenue. It drew its name from the single tree in its front yard, a tree as disheveled as the aging house behind it. The paint was fading, and the balcony listed a bit, but there was a For Rent sign in the window. He smiled ingratiatingly at the landlord and quickly talked his way into the one vacancy with only a $100 deposit. As Chris Hagen, he promised to pay two months rent-$320within a month. The room itself was as dispirited as the building, but it meant he was off the streets. He had a place to live, a place where he could begin to carry out the rest of his plans.

Ted Bundy is a man who learns from experience-his own and others'. Over the past four years, his life had changed full circle from the world of a bright young man on his way up, a man who might well have been Governor of Washington in the foreseeable future, to the life of a con and a fugitive. And he had, indeed, become con-wise, gleaning whatever bits of information he needed from the men who shared his cell blocks. He was smarter by far than any of them, smarter than most of his jailers, and the drive that had once spurred him on to be a success in the straight world had gradually redirected itself until it focused on only one thing: escape-permanent and lasting freedom, even though he would be, perhaps, the most hunted man in the United States.

He had seen what happened to escapees who weren't clever enough to plan. He knew that his first priority would have to be identification papers. Not one set, but many. He had watched the less astute escapees led back to their prisons, and had deduced that their biggest mistake had been that they were stopped by the law and had been unable to produce I.D. THE STRANGER BESIDE ME 5

that would draw no hits on the "big-daddy" computers of the National Crime Information Center in Washington D.C.

He would not make that fatal error; his first chore would be to research student files and find records of several graduates, records without the slightest shadows on them. Although he was thirty-one, he decided that in his new lives, he would be about twenty-three, a graduate student. Once he had that secure cover, he would find two other identities that he could switch to if his antennae told him he was being observed too closely.

He also had to find work-not the kind of job for which he was infinitely qualified: social service, mental health counselor, political aide, legal assistant-but a blue collar job. He would have to have a social security number, a driver's license, and permanent address. The latter, he had; the rest he would obtain. After the rental deposit, he had only

$60 left, and he'd been shocked already to see the inroads inflation had made into the economy while he'd been incarcerated. He'd been sure that the several hundred dollars he'd begun his escape with would last him a month or two, but now it was almost gone.

He would rectify that. The program was simple. First the I.D., next the job, and last, but most important, he would be the most law-abiding citizen who ever walked a Florida street. He promised himself that he would never get so much as a jaywalking ticket, nothing whatever that would cause law enforcement officers to ever glance his way. He was now a man without any past at all. Ted Bundy was dead. As all of his plans had been, it was a good plan. Had he been able to carry it out to the letter, it is doubtful that he would ever have been apprehended. Florida lawmen had homicide suspects of their own to keep tabs on, and crimes as far afield as Utah or Colorado held little interest for them.

Most young4men, among strangers, in a strange land, with only $60 to their names, jobless, and in need of $320 within the month, might be expected to feel a stirring of panic at the unknown quality of the days ahead.

"Chris Hagen" felt no panic. He felt only a bubbling elation and a vast sense of relief. He had done it. He was free, and he no longer had to run. Whatever lay ahead paled in comparison with what the morning of January 9th had meant

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to him as 1977 drew to a close. He was relaxed and happy as he fell asleep in his narrow bed in the Oak in Tallahassee. He had good reason to be. For Theodore Robert Bundythe man who was no more-had been scheduled to go on trial for first degree murder in Colorado Springs, Colorado at

9 A.M. on January 9th. Now that courtroom would be empty. The defendant was gone.

,

The Ted Bundy who "died" and was reborn as Chris Hagen in Tallahassee on January 8, 1978 had been a man of unusual accomplishment. While much of his life had seemed to fit into the flat wasteland of the middle class, there was also much that did not.

His very birth stamped him as different. The mores of America in 1946

were a world removed from the attitudes of the '70s and '80s. Today, illegitimate births make up a substantial proportion of deliveries, despite legalized abortions, vasectomies, and birth control pills. There is only token stigma toward unwed mothers and most of them keep their babies, merging smoothly into society.

It was not that way in 1946. Premarital sex surely existed-as it always has-but women didn't talk about it if they indulged, not even to their best friends. Girls who engaged in sex before marriage were considered promiscuous, though men could brag about it. It wasn't fair, and it didn't even make much sense, but that's the way it was. A liberal at that time was someone who pontificated that "only good girls get caught." Programmed by anxious mothers, girls never doubted the premise that virginity was an end in itself.

Eleanor Louise Cowell was twenty-two, a "good girl," raised in a deeply religious family in northwest Philadelphia. One can only imagine her panic when she found she had been left pregnant by a man she refers to today only as "a sailor." He left her, frightened and alone, to face her strict family. They rallied around her, but they were shocked and saddened.

Abortion was out of the question. It was illegal--carried out in murky rooms on dark streets by old women or doctors who'd lost their licenses. Furthermore, her religious training forbade it. Beyond that, she already loved the baby growing within her. She couldn't bear the thought of putting the child

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up for adoption. She did the only thing she could; when she was seven months pregnant, she left home and entered the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont.

The maternity home was referred to by waggish locals as "Lizzie Lund's Home for Naughty Ladies." The girls who came there in trouble were aware of that little joke, but they had no choice but to live out their days until labor began in an atmosphere which was-if not unfriendly-seemingly heedless of their feelings.

After sixty-three days of waiting there, Theodore Robert Cowell was born on November 24, 1946.

She took her son back to her parents' home in Philadelphia and began a hopeless charade. As the baby grew, he would hear Eleanor referred to as his older sister, and was told to call his grandparents "Mother" and "Father." Already showing signs of brilliance, the slightly undersized little boy whose crop of curly brown hair gave him a faunlike appearance did as he was told, and yet he sensed that he was living a lie.

Ted adored his grandfather-father Cowell. He identified with him, respected him, and clung to him hi times of trouble. But, as he grew older, it was clear that remaining in Philadelphia would be impossible. Too many relatives knew the real story of his parentage, and Eleanor dreaded what his growing-up years would be like. It was a working-class neighborhood where children would listen to their parents' whispered remarks and mimic them. She never wanted Ted to have to hear the word "bastard."

There was a contingent of Cowells living in Washington State, and they offered to take Eleanor and the boy in if they came west. To insure Ted's protection against prejudice, Eleanor-who would henceforth be called Louise-went to court on October 6, 1950 in Philadelphia and had Ted's name legally changed to Theodore Robert Nelson. It was a common name, one that should give him an anonymity, that would not draw attention to him when he began school.

And so, Louise Cowell and her son, four-year-old Ted Nelson, moved 3,000

miles away to Tacoma, Washington where they moved in with her relatives until she could get a job. It was a tremendous wrench for Ted to leave his grandfather behind, and he would never forget the old man. But he soon

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adjusted to the new life. He had cousins, Jane and Alan Scott, who were close to his age and they became friends.

In Tacoma, Washington's third largest city, Louise and Ted started over. The beauty of Tacoma's hills and harbor was often obscured by smog from industry, and the downtown streets infiltrated by honky-tonk bars, peep shows, and pornography shops catering to soldiers on passes from Fort Lewis.

Louise joined the Methodist Church, and there at a social function she met Johnnie Culpepper Bundy-one of a huge clan of Bundys who reside in the Tacoma area. Bundy, a cook, was as tiny as Louise, neither of them standing an inch over five feet. He was shy, but he seemed kind. He seemed solid.

It was a rapid courtship, marked principally by attendance at other social functions at the church. On May 19, 1951, Louise Cowell married Johnnie Bundy. Ted attended the wedding of his "older sister" and the little cook from the army base. He was not yet five when he had a third name: Theodore Robert Bundy.

Louise continued working as a secretary and the new family moved several times before finally buying their own home near the soaring Narrows Bridge.

Soon, there were four half-siblings, two girls and two boys. The youngest boy, born when Ted was fifteen, was his favorite. Ted was often pressed into babysitting chores, and his teen-age friends recall that be missed many activities with them because he had to babysit. If he minded, he seldom complained.

Despite his new name, Ted still considered himself a Cowell. It was always the Cowell side of the family to which he gravitated. He looked like a Cowell. His features were a masculinized version of Louise Bundy's, his coloring just like hers. On the surface, it seemed the only genetic input he'd received from his natural father was his height. Although still smaller than his peers hi junior high school, Ted was already taller than Louise and Johnnie. One day he would reach six feet.

Ted spent time with his stepfather only grudgingly. Johnnie tried. He had accepted Louise's child just as he had accepted her, and he'd been rather pleased to have a son. If Ted seemed increasingly removed from him, he put it down to burgeoning adolescence. In discipline, Louise had the final

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word, although Johnnie sometimes applied corporal punishment with a belt.

Ted and Johnnie often picked beans in the acres of verdant fields radiating out through the valleys beyond Tacoma. Between the two of them, they could make five to six dollars a day. If Bundy worked the early shift at Madigan Army Hospital as a cook-5 A.M. to 2 P.M.-they would hurry out to the fields and pick during the heat of the afternoon. If he worked a late shift, he would get up early anyway and help Ted with his paper route. Ted had seventy-eight customers along his early morning route and it took him a long time to work it alone. Johnnie Bundy became a Boy Scout leader, and he frequently organized camping trips. More often than not, however, it was other peoples' sons who went on the outings; Ted always seemed to have some excuse to beg off.

Oddly, Ixniise had never directly confirmed to Ted that she was, in fact, his mother and not his older sister. Sometimes he called her Mother, and sometimes just Louise.

Still, it was clear to everyone who knew them that this was the child she felt had the most potential. She felt he was special, that he was college material, and urged him on to start saving for college when he was only thirteen or fourteen.

Although Ted was growing like a weed, he was very slender-too light for football in junior high. He attended Hunt Junior High, and did turn out for track where he had some minor successes in the low hurdles. Scholastically, he did much better. He usually managed to maintain a B average, and would stay up all night to finish a project if need be. It was in junior high that Ted endured some merciless teasing from other boys. Some who attended Hunt Junior High recall that Ted invariably insisted on showering in privacy in a stall, shunning the open showers where the rest of his gym class whooped and hollered. Scornful of his shyness, the other boys delighted in creeping up the single shower stall and pouring cold water down on him. Humiliated and furious, he chased them away.