The final death row letters from the world’s most infamous serial killer reveal that he tried to convince his family he was innocent until his final moments alive.
Newly-released handwritten letters show how Ted Bundy berated relatives for believing ‘innuendo, gossip and accusations’ about his crimes – and urged them to ignore the slew grisly evidence against him.
In one extraordinary letter, he even compared his time behind bars to the struggles of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.
Bundy’s cousin Edna Cowell Martin, now in her 70s, spoke to DailyMail.com ahead of the release of her upcoming book ‘Dark Tides: Growing up with Ted Bundy’.
The book contains the letters she exchanged with Bundy as he awaited execution for several murders, with investigators believing his true number of victims far exceeded the 30 he eventually confessed to hours before he died.
‘I will tell you this much, I have not killed anyone,’ Bundy, who Martin described as more of a ‘brother’, said in one death row letter.
‘I have no guilt, remorse or regret over anything I’ve done.
‘What’s done is done.’
Edna (riding a horse) during her childhood in Tacoma, Washington, alongside her brother John (left), a family friend (right), and her cousin, serial killer Ted Bundy (center)
Bundy, seen in his final interview the day before his execution in 1989, maintained his innocence throughout his time on death row – and only confessed to dozens of murders in the hours before he was sent to the execution chamber
‘Realizing he had done it was awful, it was sickening,’ Edna said, after recalling their happy, ‘normal’ childhoods growing up together. ‘It was not the Ted that I knew and loved, I felt betrayed and manipulated by him.’
Edna is the first family member who grew up with Bundy to detail what it was like to have the world’s most notorious serial killer as a family member.
Now, 50 years on from his initial arrest in 1975, she has decided to tell DailyMail.com the stories she ‘bottled up inside’ for decades.
Ted’s first known victim, Washington ski reporter Lisa Ann Healy, was murdered in 1974.
Edna reveals she met her several times while studying at the University of Washington.
Dozens of women were killed or disappeared before he was first charged with murder in 1976.
An original copy of a letter sent by Ted Bundy to his cousin Edna on November 13, 1986, where he told her he had ‘no guilt, remorse or regret over anything I’ve done’
Bundy’s cousin Edna Cowell Martin (pictured in her youth) has now become the first person who grew up with Bundy to write about her infamous cousin 50 years on from his initial arrest, telling DailyMail.com the stories were ‘bottled up inside’ for decades
He then managed to escape prison in Colorado in 1977, and carried out several more murders, including two sorority sisters and a 12-year-old girl in Florida.
For this crime he was sent to the electric chair.
In her letters, Edna pleads with Ted to confess before he is executed, hoping their childhood spent together in Tacoma would convince him.
‘All these years I have written you 100s of letters in my mind… only to tear them up in shreds of frustration,’ she began in a letter dated May 31, 1986, days after Ted’s first execution date was set.
‘Ted, it took me a long time to accept the fact that someone I considered not only a close friend but occasionally a confidant capable of ever committing the acts of violence you are guilty of.
‘Like everyone else near you, I saw only one side of you.’
Ted Bundy (pictured with his longtime girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall in 1974) only confessed to some murders directly before his execution, and newly revealed letters show he furiously denied his crimes to family members while languishing on death row
An original copy of the May 31, 1986 letter from Edna to Ted, as his execution date neared
‘What happened to you, Ted, that you would develop such a deep rage… a deep hatred that you would feel overwhelmed to such an extent that you killed ruthlessly, in cold blood without mercy?’
‘For the sake of your family and especially the families of your victims will you please explain what happened,’ she wrote.
‘Some of the women you murdered have never been found.’
In the letter (seen in a DailyMail.com rendering), Edna was remorseful over how she missed her cousin’s murderous rage, admitting to Bundy that she ‘saw only one side of you’
Edna pleaded with Bundy to finally reveal the locations of his victims, as she told DailyMail.com that she ‘really was trying to go after him to do the right thing’
Edna’s letters offer a chilling insight into Bundy’s life on death row in Florida, at the time after he married Carol Ann Boone (pictured in 1982 with their daughter Rose)
Edna revealed secrets of her childhood with Ted Bundy to DailyMail.com ahead of the release of her upcoming book ‘Dark Tides: Growing up with Ted Bundy’
Edna revealed how her correspondence with Ted – whose true number of victims remains a mystery – ramped up as he neared his execution on Florida’s death row.
‘I really was trying to go after him to do the right thing,’ she told DailyMail.com this week.
‘They had moved him right next to the execution chamber and his time was short… he could have at least given the families an opportunity to know where some of their daughters were buried.’
By June 10 of that same year, Edna received no response – so she wrote another letter, attempting to dig into Bundy’s motivations.
‘By the way, Ted, how did you, and how do you, justify murder? Did you say… Well, these girls deserved it because they came on to me?’ she asked.
‘I’d like to know what it was that made you cross the line. Or did it really start much sooner than anyone knows? Did you start off killing paper girls in your spare time to practice or what?’
An original copy of Edna’s follow up letter on June 10, 1986, after Ted ignored her first
Edna again pleaded with Bundy to offer some closure to his victims’ families
She attempted to delve into what may have motivated her cousin to murder, questioning whether it ‘really started much sooner than anyone knows?’
In his death row letters, Bundy insisted to his cousin: ‘I have not killed anyone’
Offering a glimpse inside the mind of Bundy as he sat on death row, at a time he was already one of the most notorious killers in American history, Edna shared Ted’s eventual response.
In August 1986, he admitted to not replying for some time because after writing a letter, ‘I wasn’t sure it said what I wanted it to say.’
‘I won’t disregard your accusations completely. I will say this much, I have not killed anyone,’ Bundy wrote, before adding two bible verses.
Bundy had an infamous ability to mask his evil – as Edna wrote in one letter that she ‘saw only one side of you’
‘Let the dead bury the dead (Luke 9:60) for he is not a God of the dead but of the living: for all live unto him (Luke 20:38).’
It emerged that his initial lack of response was because his letter was held by prison staffers.
But in the letter, Bundy claimed that his cousin never really ‘knew me.’
‘What you seem to be basing what you said in your letter on is an assortment of random recollections and a multitude of impressions which have been drawn from years of being exposed to the sensational publicity, the rumors, the gossip about some character named Ted Bundy,’ he wrote.
An original copy of Ted’s letter to Edna on August 1, 1986, where he berated her for believing ‘innuendo, gossip or accusations’ against him
Bundy said in the letter that his Friday nights on death row consisted of the choice between writing to her, or watching Miami Vice and The Love Boat
Despite already being one of the most notorious serial killers in history, Bundy insisted to his cousin ‘I have no killed anyone’
Talking of his daily life on death row in another letter on November 13, 1986, Ted even compared himself to Gandhi, writing: ‘What’s life like here? I live in a 9×12 foot space. There is a bunk and toilet and sink.
‘We’re down to basics here. It’s like most everything the experience of being in prison can liberate or entrapped [sic]. Gandhi found his jail experiences to be uplifting, humbling.
‘I’m stripped of so many things and being thus deprived I am free to see myself as I was not able to before. I was awakened at 5:30 a.m. for a breakfast of cold scrambled eggs, grits, white bread, milk.
‘I’m in the cell all day. Sometimes I run back-and-forth and do sit ups and other exercises. Sometimes yoga. I usually take a nap around noon. I sleep well.’
An excerpt of Bundy’s November 13, 1986 letter (pictured), where he offered a glimpse inside his daily life on death row in Florida and compared his struggles to Ghandi
Bundy detailed his day-to-day routine, including being woken up at 5:30am for ‘cold scrambled eggs’ and filling his time by exercising in his cell
Throughout her childhood in Washington, Edna said she remembered Ted being a charismatic, warm person, traits that she went on to fear as they evidenced his eerie double life.
But her closeness to her cousin was still seen in a number of letters behind bars, including one in July 1986 where she told Bundy her family were ‘sighing with relief’ when his scheduled execution was postponed.
‘My dad and I tried to call your mother last night… we wanted to let her know that we are still a family and we care,’ she wrote.
Like many of Bundy’s friends and family, Edna also admitted she once believed his cries of innocence for years, choosing only to remember the cousin she grew close to.
A letter from Edna’s father to her on October 4, 1975, where he says he was ‘really feeling sorry for Ted’ after his arrest
Ted wrote to Edna’s parents Eleanor and Jack following his arrest in 1975, where he gave a surprising insight into his calm demeanor
Ted wrote to Edna’s parents Eleanor and Jack following his arrest in 1975, where he gave a surprising insight into his calm demeanor.
‘I am less preoccupied about the nuances of prison life than I was initially,’ he wrote. ‘I know the ground rules and they are the ground rules which apply to my group of people confined under stress.’
Despite the crimes he was under suspicion of at the time, he said he was merely ‘(doing) my own thing’, including ‘mental calisthenics’ and ‘absorbing myself in a book.’
‘The mind if strong. The fighting spirit lives’ he concluded.
In letters sent by her parents in 1975 immediately after his first arrest, the serial killer was referred to as ‘poor Ted’, and they told Edna how ‘sorry’ they were for him.
‘Oh my God! Cousin Louise just called me. Ted is being held in Utah for the murder-disappearances of a number of women out there,’ her father, John, wrote in one dated October 4, 1975.
‘They are also trying to pin the murder of 8 women in King County on him. I will send you more info. I am really feeling sorry for Ted. This is really bizarre and terrible.’
Days later on October 8, they said in another letter: ‘I called Ginny—she’s gasping about poor Ted… Try to stay very positive and not brood over Ted. Everything will be done.’
The family also shared on November 3, 1975, their joy at finding out Ted’s bail was reduced from $150,000 to $15,000, feeling that ‘it means they didn’t have a real case.’
‘We talked a long time about Ted’s bail being reduced 10 times,’ Edna’s parents, who helped raise Bundy, wrote to her. ‘It shows they don’t consider him a mad killer anymore.’
Bundy’s time on death row captured national attention, with Americans drip-fed pieces of information on his daily life over the years, such as his unauthorized conversations with John Hinckley Jr, who shot Ronald Reagan.
His initial execution was set for 1986 – an unusually short time frame following conviction due to the public outrage at his crimes – although several stays and delays meant it was ultimately carried out on January 24, 1989.
In a final interview the day before he died, Bundy blamed his crimes on an obsession with pornography, which experts have since theorized was another attempt to deflect responsibility.
Crowds gathered outside Florida State Prison on the day of his execution, holding signs such as ‘Fry Bundy, Fry!’ and setting off fireworks when the news of his death was announced.
Following his cremation, Bundy’s last wish was granted as, per his will, his ashes were scattered along a mountain range in Washington State, where he buried a number of his victims.