Hollywood heartthrob Efron may seem an odd choice to play one of the most notorious and reviled killers in US history. However, Bundy had legions of female fans who protested his innocence and managed to deceive the mother of his child (who he married while cross-examining her in court) almost until the very end. One of the lawyers of his last defence team called him: “the very definition of heartless evil.” The full extent of his horrifying story is more shocking than any fiction.
The trailer arrived today while Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes is currently streaming on Netflix.
The new film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile shows how terrifyingly charming, attractive and charismatic Bundy was. Even after he became a prime suspect, even after he escaped from jail twice, women still fell for his act and mourned his death in the electric chair on January 24, 1989, at Florida State Prison.
Yet, this is a man who finally confessed to killing over thirty women between 1974 and 1978, on the night before his execution.
He also boasted that the total was far higher with some investigators suspecting he had over 100 victims, starting with the disappearance of eight-year-old Anne Marie Burr when Bundy was just 14.
In 1987 Bundy confided to detective Robert Keppel that there were “some murders” that he would “never talk about”, because they were committed “too close to home”, “too close to family”, or involved “victims who were very young.”
Bundy decapitated at least 12 victims, keeping some of the heads at his apartment. He also returned repeatedly to some of the dead bodies where he had left them, grooming and performing sexual acts on the corpses.
He photographed many of the corpses and explained: “When you work hard to do something right, you don’t want to forget it.”
Biographer Ann Rule described Bundy as “a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human’s pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after.”
Ruel revealed that numerous women contacted her after Bundy’s execution, depressed and grieving the death of a man they have been corresponding with in prison, convinced he loved them and unable to accept that he had committed any crimes.
Bundy was widely reported to be charming and was suspected of suffering from bipolar disorder and then antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). He confessed he drank heavily to suppress the dominant personality which would have stopped his inner “entity” carrying out the attacks.
He started law school, and although he later dropped out, he frequently represented himself during his trials and interfered with his defence team’s strategies and instructions. He also made two successful escapes, once from prison and once from a courthouse and committed further assaults and murders even when he was on the run.
EXTREMELY WICKED, SHOCKINGLY EVIL AND VILE IS COMING SOON TO UK CINEMAS AND SKY CINEMA