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The following is an excerpt from Dark Tide: Growing up with Ted Bundy.
Bundy's cousin Edna Cowell Martin revealed how, after initially believing his pleas of innocence when the first charges were brought against him, she realized during one chilling conversation that he was a maniacal killer.
Catching up to me on the sidewalk, Ted asked if I was alright, so I assured him I was fine. I just had to run to (here I looked around wildly, trying to remember where in the world we were) the University Bookstore for a few things.
I’d only be a minute.
Back in the Squire as I accelerated up the hill towards the U-District, there was silence in the cab.
This was it, I knew. No use avoiding it any longer. It was time to ask the question.
“So, Ted.” I stared ahead out the windshield. Why was this so hard?
I tried to take comfort from the cheery pedestrians outside, the storefronts decorated for the holidays, life carrying on as usual. I screwed up my courage.
“Did you do it?”
Serial killer Ted Bundy notoriously conned friends and family into believing his innocence after he came under suspicion for dozens of murders
Bundy's cousin Edna Cowell Martin (pictured in her youth) became the first person who grew up with Bundy to write about her infamous cousin 50 years on from his initial arrest, previously telling DailyMail.com the stories were 'bottled up inside' for decades
That buried voice in my subconscious now screamed. What I was actually asking, but was far too afraid to say, was, “Did you kidnap, rape, and murder all those girls like they’re saying?”
He didn’t respond at first, and in that silence, a part of me died. It struck me then, for the first time, that he could answer yes, and if he did, I had no idea what I’d do. I took my eyes off the road to look at him.
He smiled, a very familiar Cowell smile, and shrugged.
"Edna,” he said, “of course not.”
Completely relaxed, he went on to explain that it was all a case of mistaken identity, and that the truth would come out eventually.
He said exactly what I’d suspected and hoped. Unaware that I’d stopped breathing, I let out a breath so deep I could feel it in my toes. As he continued to reassure me, even teasing me for needing to ask, I experienced a kind of euphoria.
I felt light, filled with helium. What had I been worried about? This was my cousin. The guy who’d gone out of his way to visit us in Arkansas and told me my new drawl was cute.
The guy who’d regularly shown up on my doorstep in the U-District with a bag of groceries, offering to cook dinner.
I looked over at Ted and beamed. Call it confirmation bias, call it familial immunity, but I believed him. Everything would be fine, I knew then. Just fine.
Although Bundy was known as a charming and charismatic person, his cousin revealed that his reveling in attention led her to question his innocence
Despite having grown up with the killer, Bundy's cousin wrote that when the glass shattered, 'suddenly didn’t recognize him in the slightest'
The chilling moment is detailed in Martin's book 'Dark Tide: Growing up with Ted Bundy'
Feeling much better, I parked the Squire in the lot behind the University Bookstore and told Ted I’d only be a minute.
As I shut the door behind me, I felt safer—though I wouldn’t acknowledge why—knowing Ted was securely tucked away in the shaded back parking lot.
Inside the bookstore, I quickly gathered my purchases and brought them to the line of registers, which fronted floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street.
A clerk greeted me and began to ring me up. I dully registered some commotion outside.
As I dug inside my purse for my wallet, in my peripheral view, a small group of co-eds ran southward past the large windows.
It wasn’t until I’d finished paying that the events outside finally penetrated my consciousness.
By then, it seemed all pedestrian traffic was flowing in the direction of 43rd Street, attracted to some magnetic pole.
Many people were pointing and angling for view. Just like that, my head began to throb. I was suddenly in a hurry to leave, and I barely remembered to grab my purchases on my way out.
As I stepped onto the sidewalk, I was immediately engulfed into a throng proceeding down University Way.
“What’s going on?” I asked those around me, but no one seemed to know. I craned my neck to see the other side of the street where the crowds were congealing, but I couldn’t make out the cause.
Reaching the end of the block, I had to wait for the light to change to cross. For a brief moment, the sea of bodies on the other side parted such that I caught one small glimpse into the crowd’s nucleus, and I recognized Ted.
What’s he doing there?
Edna said she realized her beloved cousin was responsible after seeing the way he lapped up attention for the crimes he was accused of. Bundy is pictured striking a pose during his 1978 perp walk in Florida after being charged with further murders in Florida
I looked anxiously at the light, still holding me where I was. I had to get to him. I didn’t know why, but I knew I had to stop him.
Finally the light changed, and the crowd advanced, flowing around Ted like water. Many stopped to stare in fascinated horror, forming a kind of standing-room-only arena surrounding him.
Somehow I pushed through them, and there I got my first good look. This is the image that probably haunts me most, the image that still, fifty years later, makes my heart rate surge.
Ted’s arms were outstretched wide, a street-corner messiah, and he was slowly turning in a circle.
From his smiling lips, he chanted over and over, projecting for all to hear, “I’m Ted Bundy. I’m Ted Bundy. I’m Ted Bundy.”
My first thought was that he, in fact, wasn’t Ted, because I suddenly didn’t recognize him in the slightest.
Then instantly my mind raced back to the moment when I’d experienced the same disorientation - the night Ted slow-danced with Margie in our apartment after dinner.
Bundy was known as a charming and charismatic individual who had the ability to dramatically change his look, which also helped him evade capture for many years
As he turned on the street corner, I could again picture him turning with Margie in his arms. In both cases, the Ted I knew had completely disappeared.
I knew then with certainty, as I watched him speak those horrible words, that Ted had another side, a darker side, and it was that Ted whom I was seeing.
If, up to that point, I’d been viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, this was the moment they shattered.
As my mind reeled, all around me the crowds became a blur, but I was distantly aware they were turning hostile. It was clear that I had to do something.
I felt completely outside myself as I ran into the swarm. “Stop it! Shut up!”
But he didn’t stop.
Desperate—and Don couldn’t believe me when I told him this later—I slapped a hand over Ted’s mouth. Who was I, behaving like this in public?
I didn’t recognize myself at all. All I knew was that I didn’t want the crowds to witness Ted doing whatever it was he was doing.
I didn’t want to witness him doing it any longer. Even then, in the chaos of the moment, I knew it had dislodged something important inside me.
Although he denied the murders at the time, Bundy's cousin said she grew concerned because his behavior after he was accused 'showed that he felt proud' of the crimes
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)
Finally Ted yielded, and the masses parted as I dragged him away, guiding him toward the back lot where I’d parked the car. I knew we had an audience, but I couldn’t think about that then.
I wanted nothing more than to get away.
“What the hell were you doing?” I really needed to get a handle on my emotions, but adrenaline still coursed through my veins as I turned on the engine and sped into the street.
Watching the mob shrink in the rearview mirror, I was finally able to take a breath. But the reprieve, I found, was far worse.
In the silence of the car, I realized that buried voice had been knocked right to the surface, and it was now impossible to ignore as it laid out its case.
Fact 1: I’d witnessed a completely different side of Ted that day, at lunch but especially outside the bookstore. This was a Ted I didn’t recognize or understand. This was a Ted who frightened me.
Fact 2: He operated in a way totally alien to my fundamental moral compass. Women had been brutally raped and murdered, their bodies defiled, yet he seemed to suffer no horror at his association, whether true or not. Indeed, his actions showed that he felt proud.
Fact 3, and this was the one I really didn’t want to face; the one I knew then, without a shade of doubt: Ted was guilty.
My cousin, who was more like a brother. My teaser and protector and confidant. My friend. He’d done it. All of it.
The images I’d conjured of a nightmare beast resurfaced, and a chill passed down my spine as another truth reared its head.
I was alone with a cold-blooded killer.
Bundy's seen on death row in 1982 in Florida with his wife Carol Ann Boone and their daughter Rose
Me, still barely a hundred pounds. Inch by inch, I turned my head to look at Ted. On my life, I swear it seemed that I was looking as if through the wrong end of a telescope— an invisible lens stretching the distance of the Ford’s bench seat—so that Ted appeared a great distance away.
Nothing separated us but vinyl and air. Ted was staring at me. Ted was smiling. But this smile held no family resemblance at all.
No words were spoken, but I knew. Ted knew.
My fear represented a power he had over me, and I could sense he liked it. Suddenly the Squire couldn’t go fast enough.
As I drove on, rigid with terror, I kept replaying a scenario in my head: if he moved toward me, I’d wrench the wheel and ram my precious car straight into a wall.
I’d do it, if I had to. I was ready. I was ready.
I still think about that.
English (US)