The Riverman: Ted Bundy And I Hunt For The Green River Killer (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
I was between a host of other books when I got my hands upon a stack of some twenty true crime books. The Riverman jumped out of the lot at me. The subtitle killed any doubts left "Ted Bundy and I hunt for the Green River Killer". This sounded like one of those Japanese monster vs monster premises. Moreover, at a point of time, Ted Bundy used to be my "favorite" serial killer. How could I resist?It was a red herring though. This book is neither about The Riverman (the Green River Killer), nor about the central premise of Silence of the lambs, of one serial killer helping law enforcement to catch another. No attempt was made in that direction, also Bob Keppel and Ted Bundy did not catch (or hunt for) the Green River Killer. They had a conversation lasting weeks wherein they try to create a psychological profile of the Green River killer which was eventually not used.That is not a bad thing however, and the book is a very different kind of monster than marketing surmised it to be. This book, in essence is memoirs of Robert D. Keppel, the cop who found himself chasing serial killers again and again after his first success, Ted Bundy. Keppel is an academic (associate professor for criminal justice), he writes books for investigators. As such the tone of the book is essentially passing on experiences by Keppel in understanding and pursuit of serial killers. Undoubtedly this makes the book a goldmine of information for anyone in law enforcement who ever deals with killers, either in understanding motivations or trapping future killers.But the academic tone of the book put me off, as a lay reader, for vast stretches. Keppel is a strange man. He is obsessed by Bundy, as he would be, and this obsession shows in the way his interviews with Keppel have been published in the book. Entire reams of his discussions, repetitions, irrelevancy, et al have been printed. I can understand how valuable Keppel would consider each of those words to be, but to the lay reader, they are boring. The transition between practitioner to academic is also quite evident in the over the top modesty with which Keppel cakes this book. "I was stunned to receive a call from the Chief of Police","I could not believe that I was being called into a national conference to understand serial killers" (you just caught the biggest serial killer to have operated in America in ages, why would you be surprised to be called into a national conference?). Lines like the above feature on every alternate page, and it is frankly exhausting to work through Keppel's insecurities. One comes off the book disgusted with Bundy (and that's brilliant to come from a book where the author has been obsessed by Bundy for more than twenty years. There is an involuntary admiration for Bundy's methods that come across but nowhere does it seem to eulogize him. I think that is a great tight rope walk to have gotten through.) I would still say that the book is an excellent read for anyone interested in serial killers. However, the usual reasons one is interested in a serial killer yarn, the thrill from the gratuitous kills are noticeably absent in this book, the tone is decidedly academic, and it is one hell of a thick tome to finish.
To tell the truth, I never would have even picked up this book if the name "Ted Bundy" hadn't been in the subtitle. My morbid curiosity about Ted Bundy - his crimes and the motivations behind them - made me buy this one.Bob Keppel, the detective who, as he says, "cut his teeth" on the Ted Bundy case, writes a very interesting book which, at times, gets bogged down in the details of a police investigation.The premise of this book is this: there is a serial killer preying on young women in the Seattle area. Sound familiar?That's what Keppel thought, too. And one day he gets a letter in the mail from a surprising penpal: Ted Bundy, writing from death row in Florida offering to provide some insight into the search for the killer he refers to as "The Riverman."Keppel, along with the lead detective on the Green River Killer case, Dave Reichert, decides to go to Florida to interview Bundy, hoping not only to get the promised information, but also some insights into Bundy's own crimes - the ones he refused to confess to until he had no other choice.The accounts of Keppel's and Reichert's interviews with Bundy are absolutely riveting - I couldn't put the book down despite the fact that I felt horrified, terrified, and more than a little creeped out at the same time.Turns out, Bundy's predictions about "The Riverman" were startlingly accurate. Know why he knew so much about the killer who was later discovered to be the unassuming truck painter Gary Ridgway? Because he had been there - he understood the thoughts and feelings of a man who preyed on young women. Bundy could describe why Ridgway chose the dump sites he did, why he chose the victims he did, how he could go undetected for so long. BUNDY WAS THE EXPERT, FIRST-HAND.The book focuses mostly on Bundy, actually. Two-thirds of the book involves the investigation into Bundy's crimes, the interviews with Bundy regarding the Green River Killer, and his last-minute confessions hours before his execution. The rest of the book is about the eventual arrest of Gary Ridgway in 2001, who had been murdering prostitutes without being caught since the 70s. Ridgway eventually confessed to murdering 48 women officially, though he claimed he killed over 60.What struck me the most about this book is the sheer lack of emotion displayed by both Bundy and Ridgway as they confessed to the brutal murders of young women. Any emotion they showed was either contrived for the benefit of the interviewers or was anger at themselves for making the mistakes that eventually got them caught. Remorse for the victims? No way.But I guess it takes a special kind of person to be a cold-blooded killer.Fascinating read.
What do You think about The Riverman: Ted Bundy And I Hunt For The Green River Killer (2004)?
Strange book. It's really about Bundy, not the Green River Killer. And the author also includes all kinds of extraneous material, such as a chapter on the Wayne Williams case. In other words, the book is poorly edited.The interviews with Bundy were somewhat interesting. However, the author failed to deliver on Bundy's confession. After hyping the confession for hundreds of pages, we just get a few scanty details in a rushed interview a few days before Bundy's execution.I would only read this if you just can't get enough of Bundy.
—Ted
This book is really about Bob Keppell's interviews with Ted Bundy to find out what makes a serial killer tick. A terrifying insight into Bundy's mind and a massive wake up call to the authorities who believed they were chasing an all out psychotic maniac; dagger in teeth! Ted was as cool as a cucumber as he plotted, abducted, murdered and carried out necrophilic acts on his victims. This was the only way they were going to pinpoint who was killing Sea-Tac prostitutes and dumping them in various sites, including the Green River. Brilliant!
—Carmel King
While a bit repetitive at times, this book is the not just a record of the hunt for Gary Rigeway (aka "The Green River Killer"). Bob Keppel is a giant in his field, and much has been made of his contribution to Dave Reichert's "Riverman" case. That is, of course, what this book is about. True crime junkies already know all about Keppel's multi-year conversations with Bundy; in these pages we delve super deep into Bundy's madness as Keppel relates, at times, straight transcripts of these discussions.This book is also something of an autobiography of Bob Keppel's career, too. Catching the Bundy case in Washington state and the inventions borne out of that necessity (such as streamlined cross-referenced tip sheets), consulting on the Atlanta Child Murders/Wayne Williams cases, contributing to the creation of VICAP and HITS, and so on. The George Russell (Seattle) and Michigan Child murders are covered, as well. There is much more information in this book than I expected, and it is clearly not a cold, clinical treatment of a horrible subject. At times Keppel's frustration comes through very clearly (referring to Bundy as a "chickenshit", for example), and his frustrations were not just about the murderers he worked so hard to catch. Keppel goes to great lengths to explain the organizational difficulties presented to homicide investigators in the dawn of the information age, as well as the political nightmares involved with funding task forces and his fight to keep the VICAP system out of the FBI's hands, eventually rebuilding with a northwestern system called HITS.To sum up: If you're a true crime fan, you will have a general knowledge of the ways in which the two main cases presented in this book(Bundy and Rigeway) intertwined throughout the eighties. This book gives the specifics.
—Jen Bailey Bergen
