The Stranger Beside Me: The Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy (New Edition)

I mean it.I felt every emotion a human being can feel reading this and I genuinely couldn't put it down. It's around 400 pages and I finished it in 2 days.OK, I'm sure it helped Ann Rule by knowing Bundy so well but she is truly one talented woman. Her description, the way she builds suspense, the way she balances her views and her transparency is so forthright. I could hear her voice, her pain as she reflects on each case and on her relationship with the man himself.I think Bundy saw Ann as a mother figure. The book was a 'triple win' situation. Bundy wins because he always wanted the fame and attention, whether it be positive or negative. The second win is for Ann, she gets to sell her book to the masses by telling the truth of a monster and warns the world of those alike. The final win is for the victims and their families because they're given a voice which makes the book that much more emotional and heartbreaking.I'm still in shock that such gorgeous, kind and talented young women died the way they did.I may as well have been watching a film, or better yet, I may as well have been there by Ted's side without him knowing I was there.It's the most destructive story ever told. The world deserves to know about Ted Bundy.

Ann Rule couldn't have been a very good policewoman because she couldn't see how 'Her nice friend Ted' could do such things. The evidence against Bundy was overwhelming and even me who has had no police training at all, knew Bundy was as guilty as sin for the Carol DaRonch case. Plus the police are looking for someone called 'Ted' after the two young women went missing from the beach and the photofit just happens to be Bundy's double but Ann Rule still gives him the benefit of the doubt. Oh and sending cigarettes to him when he was on death row because it was a 'humane thing' to do. He deserved nothing from nobody. He was evil personified and I'm glad they fried him.

I had never read a true crime book before this one, but had heard very positive things about it.I read it in two days, and could barely put it down. It offered a more personal view of Ted Bundy - humanised him in a way that no documentary I'd seen before had. It made me realise how anyone you know could turn out to be a complete monster.I enjoyed her writing style, the first person made it feel very personal and intimate whilst also presenting facts and what happened in the case in an easy to comprehend way.I will say that if you are looking for an indepth explanation of the crimes and what happen to each victim specifically then this is not the book for that. Whilst it did cover each murder, it was not as indepth about them as it was about Ted. However, I found this book extremely interesting and highly recommended

It is a quite remarkable coincidence, I think, that a crime writer should personally know a serial killer before they know that the person in question is indeed a slayer of multiple people. Many crime writers and detectives may come to know a serial killer once he has been apprehended, but Ann Rule considered Bundy a pretty good friend some time before he was first arrested in 1975. So I can't really agree with a number of other reviewers who upbraid Rule for apparently seeking to capitalize commercially on what they say was only a tenuous friendship or for maintaining contact with Bundy once the real horror became apparent. Rule clearly did know him fairly well and subsequently struggled to understand how the sexual deviant that Bundy was revealed to be fitted with the charming and personable young man she had worked with in 1972-3.This dichotomy is present throughout the book and Rule clearly struggles with it. When he was first arrested in 1975, could Rule have simply resolved to ditch Bundy, given that she had already committed to writing a book about the murder victims killed by (up to that point) persons unknown? Could she and should she have simply broken off relations with Bundy once his guilt had been established at his 1979 Miami trial? It is perhaps easy for readers to be critical of Rule for maintaining relations and showing acts of kindness to a murderer, but then this kindness was borne out of concern for someone she had known personally and whom she had liked. Unlike Carol Ann Boone and the Bundy groupies, Rule was not in the grip of some ridiculous infatuation with Bundy. For Rule, as is made clear in the rather moving closing passages of the book, the entire series of events from Bundy's childhood through to his demonic impulses and the horrible fates of the innocent victims, was an utter human tragedy.And this raises the question of who Bundy was and how he became what he did. There is no doubt that he was a sociopath. And there is little doubt that the confusion surrounding his birth and the rejection that he doubtless felt in this regard was a factor in his future offending. So was the rejection he experienced from Stephanie Brooks, which is why he tended to target brunettes with certain hairstyles.And, as with so many serial killers, Bundy did not, despite his characteristically shifty and evasive statements, enjoy an upbringing in a solid Christian home. It is quite possible that Bundy was a child of incest and that his tyrannical and sadistic grandfather (interestingly, himself quite possibly also a devotee of pornography) was actually his father. Whatever the truth of the circumstances of his upbringing, Bundy's was clearly not a conventional one. True, many people go through unconventional and troubled childhoods and yet still turn out to be normal and productive citizens, but we cannot ignore the fact that, with a number of serial killers - Bundy, West, Shipman - the provenance of their offending lies - in part at least - in the turmoil of their childhoods.The psychologist, Oliver James, however, was reproached recently for advancing a few tentative psychological theories as to the origins of Jimmy Savile's prolific sex offending, with some interesting insights as to how such behaviour often has its roots in a dysfunctional family setting and an unhealthy relationship with a child's parents. Too little love, or indeed too much, can be a bad thing in a child's formative years. But reviewers were not interested in understanding, instead preferring to glibly condemn, like the crowds outside Florida State Prison on the morning of Bundy's execution. But to understand is not to excuse or exonerate. Bundy was a monster, to be sure, who understood perfectly well what he was doing and showed no mercy to his victims, especially to poor 12 year old Kimberly Leach.This is a well-written, fast-paced account about a very damaged, hollow and rootless individual. Someone who, in his own words, was a 'vampire' who stalked and relished the midnight hour. It is a creepy and unsettling read and not for the faint of heart. But it has earned its place amongst the true crime classics.

I am not really a 'true crime' fan, but I found this both an informative factual overview of the case, and a fascinating look at the author's relationship with Bundy, with her attempts to reconcile the friend she thought she knew with his monstrous crimes. There are a couple of minor inconsistencies due to later updates (eg the theory that the killings were all some kind of revenge against an ex-lover makes no sense when earlier murders are revealed), but this is a well-written and at times moving book, and not the ghoulish expose I had feared.NB: A review from 2019 mentions terrible print quality - I can report that the paperback edition I received in 2022 has no readability issues, clear printing, and standard layout.