“I read his rather prosaic-sounding name for the first time in that moment, but some years ago I vowed to stop using it. This is no symbolic abstinence on my part...I mean, sure, fine, that can be a part of it, but who I want you to remember, every time I say The Defendant, is not him but the twenty-two-year-old court reporter dressed for success in a pussybow blouse. She was the one who recorded him in the official transcripts not by his government name, like the licensed attorneys on the case, but by the two most honest letter combinations her sensitive ear and flying fingers could produce: The Defendant.”
This novel is a thinly disguised interpretation of the infamous story of Ted Bundy. Bundy is, of course, the iconic image of the American serial killer whose story has been retold multiple times in print and on the screen. One of the novel’s two narrators, Pamela, is here explaining exactly why this story does not identify its villain despite quite obviously being arguably the most famous killer in modern American history. Along with the pointed title, this decision has been made purposely for the admirable intent of the author to reclaim the focus of the notorious killing spree and transfer it over to the victims. Throughout the novel, the character based on the man convicted of the Chi Omega sorority house murders in Florida in 1978 is referred to solely as “The Defendant.” This particular passage reveals the extent to which the book is an attempt to make this transfer of ownership. The paragraph makes the argument that the victims of the cult of celebrity that arose around Bundy are not limited to just his murder victims. Even the court reporter who had to listen to every word of the often-gruesome testimony can be said to have been victimized.
“The next day, Saturday, I woke to find The Defendant smiling in handcuffs on the front page of the Tallahassee Democrat, wearing a pretentious alpine-style sweater on his way into circuit court in Pensacola, the westernmost city of the Panhandle. The bizarre tale of his capture had started at one thirty a.m. on Wednesday…how a Pensacola patrolman stopped a man in a Volkswagen that had been reported stolen in Tallahassee earlier this month.”
The term “thinly disguised” is not exactly a precise one. This novel about the Bundy murders that finally led to his execution that does not mention him by name does otherwise feature incidents and references that are non-fictional. The narrator is describing here a newspaper report in the state capital that describes exactly how Bundy was finally caught at the last stop in Florida for the daily sunset. Bundy was caught mostly by mistake—and almost not caught at all—by a uniformed copy in Pensacola who happened to pull over a car for a simple traffic violation. This passage is not alone in introducing a very factual authenticity to the parts of the story that it fictionalizes. Much of the description of “The Defendant” and those involved in the legal maneuvering that finally brought him to justice comes not from the writer’s imagination but—as with this example—the factual evidence of history.
“Without my eyewitness account, all we had was junk science known as bite-mark analysis. Robbie had been bitten on her left breast and buttocks, and an odontologist was prepared to testify that only five sets of teeth in the whole world could have made those marks, of which The Defendant’s was one. The defense would call it guesswork, and they would be right. So right that, in the years since, many states have banned bite-mark analysis in criminal trials.”
In this passage, the novel addresses one of the lesser-known aspects of the actual Bundy trial which is often glossed over in latter-day stories based on the case. In reality, there was no eyewitness to the sorority house murders that could provide irrefutable testimony that Bundy was the killer. The entire guilty verdict actually rested entirely on the matching of a mold of Bundy’s teeth supposedly “matching” the bite mark left on one of the victims beyond all reasonable statistical odds of comparison. This evidence was too powerful for the defense to overcome. The narrator ends this paragraph by stating actual legal history. The bite mark evidence that sealed the guilty verdict for Bundy is no longer admissible after having been confirmed as utterly unreliable. Without the convenient fictional eyewitness account of the narrator, in other words, it is far from certain what the outcome of the very same trial would be today without the bite mark analysis being heard by a jury. This excerpt is an example of how the novel integrates both facts and fiction in its retelling of the infamous murders at Florida State University which finally brought the Bundy serial killing to an end.
