A letter of love and encouragement from Ted’s ‘girlfriend’ and eventual wife, Carole Ann Boone, sent at some point in late 1977 prior to his second escape. Carole seems to be pleading with Ted not to attempt an escape as a “solution” to captivity. This letter was found in Bundy’s jail cell in Garfield Springs, Colorado after his second escape.
Thursday night
Loved One:
This is not another one of my letters of explanation following a telephone conversation. I am able to joke on the phone, conduct business on the phone, but have some difficulty expressing heart and soul on the phone. My thoughts jam up when I’m feeling intense, and without hands and face to complete the expression, I’m helpless. The things I wish to say sound corny inside my head.
Tonight I wanted to say so much to you but didn’t know how to get it across without sounding trite or eccentric. So, my most dear friend, I will try now. I understand the solutions you see to your problems, especially the (your) preferred one. But I keep feeling (even when my mood is black or bleak) so very strongly that there is something else. Another way. Something that hasn’t happened yet. It’s not a mystical sense that some sort of rightness about the Universe will tip the situation over. An extremely unfortunate set of events and people have put you, most unjustly, into your cell in Garfield County, Colorado. There is a way (one at least) to get you back out of that maze. Finding it, making it happen, hasn’t taken place. Yet. But I am dead certain it is there. And am dead certain that it will happen. That, barring your solution, you and I will be able to go out and have a beer. Just like normal folks. Love, I am so positive that even though I have no idea of when or where or how, I am looking forward to it.
Tonight is indescribably bad. I want to be in Glenwood Springs. Wish so much I could be with you. For both of us. I do worry, get frantic and frustrated. It would help to be closer. And I have thought about relocating. Would up and do so if you were scheduled to be there on a more permanent basis. And I toy with applying for work at the Utah Energy Office. If there is one. At one time, a couple of years ago, I planned to pass the Foreign Service Officer’s test- no educational requirements on it. I’m bright enough to make it (given that I could drive myself to acquire an understanding of ECONOMICS). But I’ve come to such a caring and commitment to you that I don’t want it. I want to be close enough to at least make phone calls, and visit now and then. Be there if I can help. And be in the same part of the world as you, for me. It’s hard to explain, but I need you. Don’t need hardly anything or anybody, independent frivolous person that I am. But I need you, the affection that I get, and that which I feel. I’ve been around enough (been upstairs enough) to know that such affection, such caring is a blessed, treasurable thing. The only way I wish to be severed from such a rarity is at your decision. Which I would understand, and learn to live with, naturally.
But the despair that I feel tonight is not the hopeless variety. It is that, at the moment, you have such a heavy load to carry. That I can’t ease it for you. Would that I could. Lord, I do love you, Theodore. And don’t misunderstand- it’s not out of pity, not that I think you’re helpless. I don’t want you to ever think that my caring is for the predicament instead of the person. I couldn’t do that. Anyway you aren’t a helpless man- it would be ridiculous to pity or not love for what you are.
Pit City right now. Enough to overwhelm anybody, no matter how tough or resolute or right. All you can do, all we can do is hang in there. Keep pitching. Ride it out. Hack away at the beast until it falls over dead. And it will. Your freedom is the most important thing in the world right now. I put some stock in Jill’s prediction/premonition. And again, dearest Bunny, even without Jill and what she thinks, or anybody else and what they think, I know you are innocent and I know there’s a way for you to be free.
Always, all my love-
Carole Ann
If you look at the pictures taken of ted bundy through the years – whether they are friend or foe – you’ll see that bundy looks like the person he is emulating at that moment. This is a case of dissociative disorder. He has no personality – so like a chameleon or other animal, he takes on the personality he’ s currently talking to or maybe thinking about. I’m sure that metaphysical change was what caused him to reach out to kill and live a fantasy which is why on occasion he would awaken from a dream-like state to shift into a reality state of mind after having killed those poor girls.
I never thought of that but you are so right,
Has anyone else noticed the dramatic difference in his eyebrows in the picture with Carole Ann vs the picture at the very top? He went from caterpillar eyebrows, possibly a unibrow, to definitely 2 and they appear to have been shaped? Any insight on this?
It was done so that he would look more well-groomed/less wild in court. The photo above is an early one dating from around the time of the first convictions in the Chi Omega trial, I would venture to guess.
Shared delusional thinking in the face of his overwhelming guilt. Thanks for posting this.