Geoff Nicholson - Still life with Volkswagens

♦

Here is Ted Bundy, comparatively early in his life of crime. He is an accomplished shoplifter, though in general he is fastidious about stealing only what he has use for. But today he is in a garden centre in Seattle, Washington and suddenly he gets an uncontrollable urge to steal an eight foot tall potted Germanica plant that is for sale and is positioned tantalisingly close to the exit. So he simply picks it up as though he owns it, walks out of the garden centre and heads for his car, a light brown Volkswagen Beetle. So far so good. But he’s still got to stash the plant in his car and make his escape. How’s he going to get an eight foot plant into a Volkswagen? Dead easy actually. The car’s a 1968 model, the kind with the canvas sun roof that peels right back. He inserts the plant through the roof so that it rests in the passenger seat and Ted Bundy drives away unchallenged.

It must have been an unusual sight, seeing this Volkswagen bowling along the freeway with three feet of Germanica foliage sticking out of the sun roof, but people who drive Bugs are the sort of people who do that kind of thing. They’re fun guys, individuals, mavericks. Nobody bats an eyelid.

“Christ,” says Ted Bundy to himself, “I love this car.”

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Here is Ted Bundy at Sammaville Beach in Seattle, Washington. It’s a holiday afternoon and the place is crowded with people. He’s dressed in all white sports clothes and he’s got his arm in plaster. He cruises the beach, stopping girls from time to time with a line that goes something like, “Hey babe would you help me lift my sailboat onto the roof of my Volkswagen? You can see I’ve injured my arm. How about it?” So they go to the car park. The Volkswagen’s there but the boat isn’t. “Oh, I forgot to mention,” he says, “my boat’s up at my parents’ house, just a few miles up the coast. Get in the car and I’ll take you there.”

Ted tries this line on a lot of girls. Most of them don’t fall for it, but three do. Later they are raped, violated, murdered.

It is said that Bundy had college boy good looks, that he was charming, intelligent, and a law student. On the one hand this is supposed to explain his ability to pick up girls. On the other it is supposed to surprise us; how strange that a good-looking, charming, intelligent law student should be the one to murder thirty or more young women. Wouldn’t it make life easier if people who are serial killers advertised the fact a little more?

But what did the girls think, the ones who agreed to drive up the coast with this stranger? Certainly they might have thought that he didn’t ‘look like a murderer’, and perhaps they thought that a man with an injured arm wouldn’t be able to attack them. But more than that, it seems somehow likely that they thought a sex killer would be driving a dirty old pick up truck, or a beat up muscle car, or one of those vans with the murals and the padded interior and the bed with the mirrors. Maybe they thought that only nice guys drive Volkswagens.

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And here is Ted Bundy in Utah in 1975. He has a dozen or so killings under his belt by now. He is stoned on marijuana and is driving his Volkswagen for the sheer hell of it, noticing how sharp and clear all the sounds and colours are tonight. And perhaps he’s too stoned to notice that he’s driving well over the speed limit, and too stoned to notice that there’s a police car behind him. And perhaps he doesn’t even see the red stop light that he drives through, but the officer in the car certainly does, and the siren starts sounding and there’s a brief chase before Bundy is forced to come to a halt in a gas station.

The officer gets Bundy out of the car and checks his ID, which appears to be perfectly in order. However, he looks into the car, sees there’s no front passenger seat and that there’s a jemmy lying on the floor. The officer calls for help. More police arrive. They search the car and find an ice pick, a mask made from silk stockings and a pair of handcuffs. Bundy is hauled in, and a more thorough investigation of the car’s interior takes place. They gather up all the dirt and fibre and debris, and send it off for analysis. Eventually they will discover a human hair from the head of one of the murder victims, and, curled at the base of the gear lever, a pubic hair belonging to another dead girl.

But all this takes time. Initially all they can charge Bundy with is the possession of tools that might be used in a burglary. Bundy is let out on bail and one of his first acts is to sell his Volkswagen. It must have broken his little heart.

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The police are gradually putting two and two together. With Bundy in the frame they have the opportunity to see if there is evidence to link him to the murders. They find a girl whom Bundy tried to lure to her death. She identifies him. The charge changes from possessing tools to aggravated kidnapping. Bundy is in trouble, the heat is dosing in, but he is determined to go down in a blaze of blood, death and car theft.

Here is Ted Bundy managing, on two separate occasions, to escape from jail. Here he is hiding in the hills, stealing cars; a Cadillac, an MG, a Toyota, a Dodge van. Here is Ted Bundy the fugitive stalking the corridors of the Chi Omega sorority house, committing two more murders and numerous acts of brutal mutilation. It’s the real thing for Ted, but it’s not the same without a Volkswagen.

On Sunday February 12th in Tallahassee, Florida, he finally gets lucky. He’s walking down the street looking for another car to steal and he comes across a Beetle sitting there with the keys inside. He gets in and drives a few miles. But the car is heavily customised, all fancy body work and dressed up and chromed, and Ted, a Republican at heart, fears the modifications may have impaired the car’s essential reliability. So he ditches it.

And then he finds another Beetle. This is a stock 1972 model, painted orange. He decides it’s the car for him. This too turns out to be a clunker. If he drives over fifty miles an hour the wheels shake as though they’re about to fall off, but he decides he’d better stick with it.

It’s real film noir stuff by now. He steals credit cards, tries to use them for food and accommodation but they’ve already been reported stolen. Ted drives up a dirt road to lie low for a while and finds himself on an airforce base, then the wheels of his Volkswagen get stuck in the soft earth. Bundy tries to steal handbags in a shopping mall and is bounced by the security guards. Finally the police recapture him, not because they recognise him as Ted Bundy the serial sex killer, but because he’s at the wheel of a stolen Volkswagen.

♦

In January 1979 the trial of Ted Bundy begins. He is found guilty of murder, and on January 23rd 1989 he will eventually be executed.

While on Death Row he receives a lot of mail. There are a lot of love letters, women who want to marry Ted Bundy, give him their love, have his children. There are packages containing all kinds of tokens both of love and hate. One contains a bottle of barbecue sauce for when Bundy is ‘fried’.

But the oddest of all comes from a man who bought Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen, the one he sold after his first arrest. The writer of the letter says he hates Bundy and he’ll never drive a Volkswagen again. He’s had the car taken to the scrapyard, but he’s kept the gear lever as a grim souvenir and now, for reasons he only dimly understands, he wants Bundy to have it back.

Of course, the prison authorities open all Bundy’s mail and if they consider the contents unsuitable then Bundy never gets to see them. They never give Bundy the gear lever of his old Volkswagen but it is often rumoured that it found its way into the collection of Carlton Bax, one of the items kept in the famous locked room.