The Stranger Beside Me

Ann Rule

4 ideas

1. Crisis line partner was a serial killer

   In 1971 Ann Rule, a former Seattle police officer and aspiring crime writer, worked late-night shifts at Seattle's Crisis Clinic beside Ted Bundy, a warm, attentive psychology student who talked suicidal callers through their calls and walked her to her car afterward for safety. Years later, the 'Ted' wanted for the 1974 Washington disappearances turned out to be him, and she had already contracted to write a book about the unsolved killings before learning the suspect was her friend. Bundy was later linked to dozens of murders in several states, escaped custody twice in Colorado, and was executed in Florida in 1989.

2. Psychopaths pass as the most trustworthy people

   A psychopath does not look like a monster. He studies what people admire and presents it: charm, attentiveness, respectability, even apparent compassion toward the vulnerable. Because people judge danger by surface cues like looks, education, manners and kindness to themselves, the most skilled predators are the ones least likely to be suspected.

3. Exploiting helpfulness as a lure

   Bundy approached victims with a feigned vulnerability: an arm in a sling or a leg in a cast, asking for help carrying books or loading a sailboat into his Volkswagen, or posing as an authority figure. The ploy turns a victim's decency and social obligation into the mechanism of capture, so warnings about aggressive strangers do nothing against a stranger who seems to need help.

4. Personal loyalty blinds even trained observers

   Rule had police training and wrote about violent crime for a living, yet she resisted the evidence against Bundy for a long time because it conflicted with her direct experience of him as a friend. Professional expertise about a category of people doesn't protect you from misjudging a specific person you like, because firsthand warmth outweighs statistical and circumstantial evidence in how we reason.

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