The Stranger Beside Me, By Ann Rule

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule was published in paperback in 2009 by First Pocket Books. The paperback edition has 625 pages. The book follows the story of one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, Theodore Robert “Ted” Bundy as it is told by one of his coworkers and his friend, Ann Rule.
The book starts out with the author answering questions that she frequently gets from fans about Bundy, then she goes on to introduce herself and explain why she’s writing this book. She tells the audience that Ted was a friend of hers and that she is writing the book because he would want her, if anyone, to write it.
Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell to Eleanor Louise Cowell in 1946. The identity of his

father has never been determined. In that time period, a young woman having a baby out of wedlock would bring great dishonor to her and the family, so for the first few years of his life, Bundy was made to believe that his maternal grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, were his parents and this his mother was his older sister. After finding his birth certificate, he was devastated to learn that his grandfather wasn’t his dad, but Rule remarks that she thinks he always knew, deep down.
In 1950, Bundy and his mother left their home in Philadelphia and moved to Tacoma, Washington, where she met and married Johnnie Culpepper Bundy in 1951. After marrying his mother, Johnny adopted Ted, which is how he got the last name Bundy. Bundy attended Hunt Junior High where he maintained a B average. He attended Woodrow Wilson High School where his graduating class had 740 people. After graduating in 1965, he went to the University of Puget Sound until 1966. The next summer, he transferred to the University of Washington where he moved into McMahon hall. It was in the spring of 1967 when he met “Stephanie Brooks.” Stephanie was a year older Bundy and richer. Bundy fell in love with her. Bundy once wrote, “She and I had about as much in common as Sears and Roebuck does with Saks. I never considered S with any more romantic interest than I considered some elegant creature on the fashion page.” Stephanie had long blonde hair that was parted in the middle, and Ted was infatuated with her quickly. While in college, Ted worked low-paying jobs.
In August 1967, he befriended Beatrice Sloan, an older lady who worked at the yacht club with him. Ted told her that he desperately wanted to impress Stephanie, so Beatrice let him borrow her car on several occasions. Sloan was sometimes surprised by Bundy’s ability to change his appearance and adapt different personas, but she liked him still.
In the summer of 1968, Stephanie ended her relationship with Ted because she felt that he was immature and indecisive.

Ted was devastated. He had always had doubts about his and Stephanie’s relationship, and still, he could not believe that their relationship was over. After that, Ted set out to prove to himself (and Stephanie) that he was good enough for her. After doing so, he went back to her only to break her heart. This book works to capture Ted Bundy as a human being rather than the serial killer that the world knows him as, but it focuses mainly on his crimes. Ann Rule recalls how nice Ted was and how calm he was when he worked with her in frantic situations at the call center where they met. She remarks on how she noticed how indecisive and unsure of himself Ted was, and how many people believe that she was the basis for the look of his victims. Most of his victims were slim college students, but some were younger. Rule also tells the story of Bundy’s girlfriend, “Meg Anders,” and how much he loved her. Again, the main focus of the book is on his crimes and how her work unknowingly intersected with his crimes. Her retelling of his crimes starts in 1973 with fifteen year old Kathy Devine. Kathy Devine, of Washington, told her friends that she was hitchhiking to Oregon. They reported that they saw her get into a pickup truck with a man and never saw her after

that.
Bundy’s victims in 1974 were: Lynda Ann Healy, Donna Manson, Susan Rancourt, Kathy Parks, Brenda Ball, Georgeann Hawkins, Janice Ott, Denise Naslund, Nancy Wilcox, Melissa Smith, Laura Aimee, and Debbie Kent. Janice Ott and Denise Naslund were abducted on the same day (July 14), only hours apart, at Lake Sammamish Park in Washington. Around 12:30, Janice was approached by an attractive man with a sling on his arm who asked her to help him put his sailboat in his car. She agreed to help him and was never seen alive again. Before abducting Denise, Bundy approached three different girls and asked them to help him with his boat, but they declined. Denise Naslund went to the park accompanied by friends, unlike Janice Ott. Around 4, she got up to use the restroom and was never seen by her friends again. The remains of their bodies were found in September of 1974 two miles from the park.
In 1975, he killed: Caryn Campbell, Julie Cunningham, Denise Oliverson, Lynette Culver, and Susan Curtis. Caryn Campbell was a registered nurse who went on vacation to Aspen, Colorado to ski with her fiancé in January of 1975. After dinner at their hotel, they went back up to their room. Shortly after, Caryn realized that she’d left a magazine in her car, so she went down to get. Her fiancé never saw her again. Her remains were found in February of 1975 near the hotel. Denise Oliverson planned to bike to her parents’ house in April on 1975 after an argument with her husband, but she never made it. Her remains have never been found. Around this time, his girlfriend, Meg Anders, was being told by her friends that the picture on the news of the guy named Ted who was committing these crimes looked like her Ted. Meg broke off a friendship with someone because she got tired of that person insisting that she should alert the authorities. Meg, who had always been naïve, would not believe that HER Ted could do those things. However, she eventually found out otherwise
In 1976, Bundy was sentenced to “1-15 years in prison,” but escaped while he was preparing for trial, and was not caught until 1977. After spending 6 months in prison, he escaped again and went to Florida. In 1978, his victims were: Lisa Levy, Margaret Bowman, and Kimberly Leach. 12-year old Kimberly was last seen in February 1978 after being called down to her classroom to retrieve an item. This is Bundy’s last known victim.
After chronologically mapping out his crimes, Rule focuses on her correspondences with Bundy up until his death. She also touches on how obsessed women were with him and says that he impregnated a woman while imprisoned.
Ann Rule is a crime reporter and novelist, and during this time period, she worked closely with detectives, not knowing that the man she was helping them track was someone she considered a friend. She also worked with Ted Bundy at a suicide crisis hotline. She is more qualified than anyone to write a book about this because she knew him, and she has training in the particular field.
The book was a very interesting one!

I have always been interested in serial killers and to have actual accounts from someone who knew the killer so closely was great. The book is also a really scary one. The type of situations that the women who became Bundy’s victims were in are truly terrifying because they could literally happen to anyone. Yes, readers could very easily implement thins from the book into their lives. The book was helpful to me because after reading it, I feel I am more aware of the people around me. Another scary thing about the book is how easily Bundy was able to blend in with everyone around him and how almost no one who knew him suspected that he was doing anything. It just makes the reader think about and question the people around them. The information was very well-documented and kept in order, so the story was very easy to follow. It was very interesting to have an in depth look at how Bundy thought and

felt.
Even though Ann Rule did a good job telling the story, there was some bias toward Ted Bundy in general. In fact, when the first edition of the book was published in 1989, someone wrote her a letter and asked her if she was physically attracted to him. She said that she wasn’t, but as I was reading the book, I got the feeling that she did like him as more than a friend, and I got that feeling on a few separate occasions such as when she describes him for the first time and when she talks about spending long nights with him at the crisis call center. Also, some of the information that she gave on Bundy made it seem like he didn’t kill close to 40 women. It is understood that Bundy and her were friends, but he is still a criminal. It is also understood that the author did not want to paint friends in a bad light, but he committed horrible crimes. Yes, he is still a human being, but he’s no angel.
This book could be read by many audiences, but people who are interested in serial killers and crime would most benefit from this book. There is a lot of talk about detectives in the book, so police officers and detectives would probably also like this book.