Why Did Kevin Sullivan Revisit The Bundy Murders After Resolving to Leave Them Behind?

Kevin Sullivan, author of KENTUCKY BLOODBATH, VAMPIRE and THE BUNDY MURDERS: A Comprehensive History, has been on the road researching significant sites and talking to key witnesses and people who knew Bundy’s victims in order to create an original account of this infamous multi-year murder spree. Here he describes what led him to revisit this case only a few years after he resolved to leave it behind for good…

When I finished my book on Ted Bundy, The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History, in July of 2008, I was very happy to be free of the project. I took a week off from the subject I’d been immersed within for the past two and one half years (and I mean days, nights and weekends), and just rested and relaxed. It was good to be free of the story of Ted Bundy and his murders. Then, after exactly one week, I hammered out a good query letter and an eighteen page book proposal, and sent it off to six publishers. Within three weeks I’d sold it to one, and had to turn another down when they came inquiring. And for the last six years I’ve been answering questions about Bundy on radio shows, in blogs, and from any direction the questions came to me.

Something I NEVER expected to do was write even one more word about Theodore Bundy in anything other than an article or a blog post. Indeed, it wasn’t six months ago that a fellow I know suggested I write another book about the killer from a particular angle, and I said no, there wasn’t any way I was going down that road again. Putting a magnifying glass once again to the life and killing career of this mad killer was an emotional roller coaster ride I didn’t want to take. No, I said to my friend, I have absolutely no desire to do it.

But all of that changed just weeks ago.

It all started as I contemplated some of the folks who’d contacted me after my book was published; folks who sought me out specifically because I’d written about them, or because they knew a victim of Bundy’s and they had things they wanted to tell me. And each time this occurred, I was touched by what they had to say about their personal connections to the case and experiences. Still, I never considered for a moment doing anything with this information. But an epiphany was coming.

I can’t really say how it happened, but it happened all at once and very quickly. Suddenly, I realized how important

Ted Bundy’s murder kit, as seen by Kevin Sullivan

it was that I write what one might call a retrospective look at the life of Ted Bundy and his victims. Suddenly, and without any prior knowledge of its coming, I had a desire to write about this case once again, and record for posterity many voices that haven’t, for the most part, been heard before, at least not in a literary sense. And so, it has now become an internal quest for me to act as scribe for those willing to tell of their experiences. I will, of course, be adding many facts about Bundy from the case files that will take you down some of the roads I had to turn off from when researching and writing my first book (there isn’t room for everything the first time around). And of course, there will be plenty of photos, both past and present, which will give you, the reader a good sense of what it all was like.

I’m looking forward to the journey, and I’ll keep you posted here at WildBlue press as I travel down the trail of Ted Bundy.

Time to go…