Forensic Science

I’m not quite sure what started me on bite marks maybe one of the true crime programs I enjoy watching in TV – we get the Crime and Investigation Channel here in South Africa so I am intimately familiar with serial killers and a host of forensic science topics from watching reruns of the programs.

I guess it was one of the serial killer programs that focused on Ted Bundy. In this one True Crime writer Anne Rule was talking about the time when she and Ted Bundy were friends.

While a university student in Seattle, Bundy worked all kinds of odd jobs including as a night-shift volunteer at Seattle's Suicide Hot Line. That was where he met and worked with former Seattle policewoman and fledgling crime writer Ann Rule. Who later wrote the most famous biography of Bundy and his crimes, The Stranger Beside Me.

In an interview with Katherine Ramsland, Rule says that she knew that Bundy was a serial killer but s tiny shed of doubt remained and that the bite mark evidence during the trial, which she covered as a reporter, remained the hardest for her:

"To be absolutely sure about his guilt," Rule remembers, "I needed to see direct physical evidence, and there it was, no question. It made me sick to my stomach. I went down to the hall to the ladies' room and threw up. Yet he still maintained this suave, friendly look. It was a bad day for me."

The Stranger Beside Me launched her career.

Being an Anne Rule fan and a writer I wondered at the incredible coincidence of a serial killer and a true crime writer becoming friends before their paths would take them in such opposite, yet similar directions.