The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy | True Crime | Book Review

The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy, by Ann Rule is a NYT #1 bestseller (and it's one of those books that thankfully hasn't gone out of print; thankfully because I hate when books go out of print and people start selling paperback copies with rips and tears and missing pages for like $75 on Amazon). 

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Although written after Bundy's first murder conviction in Florida, the narrative is very engaging and easy to follow (the first print was almost 40 years ago, incredible!).

Okay, can we just pause a moment to appreciate the awesome name that the author has! It's like Lucy Lawless' having an awesome name — like, these women found ex-husbands with great last names and married them! (Although, there are some last names that I would never want to take, no matter how much in love.)

She's great at writing, but I wouldn't state that Rule's book is the definitive source on Ted Bundy. First, she was 11 years older than him; second, when she did have a regular interaction with him, it was only for a few hours, twice a week — and only for a few months. She has a lot of opinions that have never been sourced or verified; also she's added to the book things that she couldn't possibly know.

For example (and you can personally verify the following by just using Google), Rule filed a libel lawsuit against the Seattle Weekly newspaper in July 2013, saying she was defamed in 2011 when an article accusing Rule of "sloppy storytelling" was published. 

In February 2014, a judge made two rulings dismissing the claims, finding that Rule's suit violated a Washington state law barring lawsuits that target the legal exercise of free speech and public participation, and that Rule had not established that there were any false, defamatory statements about her in the article. 

The judge awarded the defendants and the newspaper an additional $10,000 each in damages, plus attorneys' fees and costs. (Rule apparently admitted that she had never interviewed the person she wrote about or members of that woman's immediate family.)

She was a nobody wannabe author, having had some level of success writing for true crime magazines, but never being realized for her writing potentials back in the 70's. 

I think it was only after Bundy had been arrested in Utah that she tried to capitalize on knowing Bundy, as many have. I'm actually surprised that Boone never did, because she has a daughter with him, even Elizabeth Kloepfer has written a book about him). It seems that the two women of huge significance, Diane Edwards and Carole Ann Boone, are also the two that have decided not to exploit their relationship with Bundy — one is his first love, and what many felt was the initial reaction to why Bundy started his killing spree, and the last one was basically his last love (and only wife and mother of his only child).

I did feel that Rule inflated her relationship with Bundy to sell her book, and it is sensational; but it's hard to tell how truthful and accurate she's being, and what is just creative writing on her part. 

I don't believe that Bundy would share such intimate secrets with her as she would like the reader to believe, especially since she doesn't seem to fit into what he would be attracted to. Youth, wealth, status, etc.

Also, she stated throughout her book that the victims suffered from trauma always on the left side of their skulls, but she also clearly stated that Bundy is left-handed, unless they were always struck from the back, it would have been the right side — I think that's when I started questioning the accuracy of what she was writing. 

I do think Bundy is guilty, but I also believe when he said he didn't kill certain girls too — and Rule was wrong. 

In her 2000 update, she stated quite firmly that she believed that Bundy committed his first murder at 14, and it was Ann Marie Burr, a missing child from his neighborhood; but she also insistently believed he killed a woman named Katherine Devine — however DNA exonerated Bundy in the Devine case, and he was in fact telling the truth when he stated he didn't kill her. 

Why would he need to lie about killing some, when he's already confessed to killing about 36 women during his last days of life?

It was paragraphs like that, and updating and backtracking whenever she published a re-release of her first book (the Bundy book), that made me especially critical of how accurate and truthful she was being — and also because her claim-to-fame is solely because of Bundy. Even in her books she writes about all the interviews and invitations she gets to basically talk about Bundy.

As an ironic side note (especially if you are to believe all of the anecdotes she puts in the book about herself and her criminology "profession" — it was reported in April 2015 that two of Rule's sons, Michael and Andrew Rule, had been charged with crimes related to the theft of money from their own mother. 

King County authorities stated that over time, both sons had taken over $100,000 from Rule; and supposedly one of the sons demanded money while she "cowered in her wheelchair" (according to authorities). 

Rule was granted an order of protection against Andrew Rule in January 2015. He subsequently violated the order on March 27, 2015. The charges against Michael and Andrew Rule were dropped on August 14, 2015 after their mother's death.

The irony that a woman who writes true crime novels, and made her name on her "expertise" and "experience" of Bundy and serial killers, became a "special victim" herself in her golden years. 

Sure, as we age, most of us are not as sharp as we were in our prime (especially in advanced age), but elderly abuse, especially by family, is a special victims category (you only need to watch an episode of Law & Order: SVU to figure that one out!). 

I feel bad for her, because money is the root of all evil, it seems.