porn and women

[Rev. Rye]

I don't know about that. I feel like if someone has a propensity for sexual violence, watching a ton of porn depicting violence against women will only add fuel to their desire for it, and reinforce their objectification of women. That's what Ted Bundy said.

You do realize that Ted Bundy was trying to appeal to evangelical groups.  He converted to Christianity on his death bed, and I'm sure that helped him get in with groups that would try to help him avoid the death penalty.  Specifically with James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family.  (Apparently Serial Killers go to heaven, gays do not)

Fun fact: I had a criminology teacher who brought up the Ted Bundy and porn point. I was inspired to write up a brief paper about the subject. In fact, I have it on my hard drive:

I remember the fact that you mentioned earlier that Ted Bundy was allegedly inspired to do his crimes by pornography, and in the last lecture, you even went so far as to mention the interview he did with James Dobson before his execution. I have, in fact, read up on this one, and am somewhat familiar with it, as it deals with the intersection between two areas of my interest: the religious right and serial killers. However, I must admit that I have found a lot of holes in this idea, which are detailed below. My main source for this is Channel 4's documentary: Ted Bundy: Natural Porn Killer. If you feel like using the computer labs and watching it (since you said you don't have a computer), it is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5yT_IsIWp0

• One major problem that the James Dobson interview is only the first time that he implicated pornography in his crimes. It would be pretty late of him to mention that important little tidbit after over ten years in prison. Another thing that further undermines the idea is that when he was arrested and his home was raided by the police, they didn't find any conventional pornography (conventional in this case meaning the kind that are made with the intent of being masturbated to.) What they did find were cheerleader and drum majorette magazines written with junior high and high school-aged girls in mind. Even as a growing boy, he actually admitted elsewhere that he didn't actually go into pornographic magazines that other boys his age would have read. There was no Playboy or Belle du Jour for Ted. He much preferred detective magazines that most likely had a plethora of Raymond Chandler imitators, and, more to the point, a lot of images like scantily clad women being rowed to their death like Shelley Winters in A Place in the Sun.In her biography of Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule, a true crime author who knew Ted far better than she would have liked, didn't even mention him having any sort of inclination towards porn until she got around to talking about the Dobson Tape, which leads to the next point. The fact that Ted chose to talk to an anti-porn activist alone would set off warning bells. Even Geraldo Rivera, who had earlier conducted an interview with Charlie Manson, would be a more credible interviewer. The fact that during the interview himself, Dobson actually seems to be coaching Ted, helping ease him from a state of saying “Yeah, I looked at porn when I was younger, but it had nothing to do with my crimes” into a state where his rhetoric seems to say “If it hadn't been for pornography, I'd be a heavenly person today.” The icing on the cake, however, is when Ted Bundy, stone cold psychopath that he is, actually claims to feel remorse for his victims. I rest my case.

Whether or not there is such a thing as a pornography addiction (and I believe that it's plausible that there could be), it seems pretty clear that Ted Bundy didn't have one, and any of his claims that he had one would seem to be just last-ditch attempts at gaining sympathy, and considering that even an experienced criminologist like you can repeat those claims (of course, since you have said that you are Catholic, and are probably a conservative one, I would guess that there is some confirmation bias at work), it would seem like it ended up being successful.

In retrospect, I feel I probably should have been less severe in my call-out of the guy. I like him, he's clearly intelligent, and has been studying criminology since before I was born. And yet, here he is parroting this claim about Ted Bundy uncritically that experts have shown to be unlikely for many reasons, not just because it conflicts with the facts of the case, but because Bundy, the prototypical charismatic and psychopathic serial killer, is not a reliable narrator, especially when he says things that are supposed to make him less culpable for his actions. One would think an experienced criminologist would take this into account, but, then again, he's a devout Catholic and at one point got pissed off at someone on NPR calling the Tea Party "crazy". This sort of thing requires a serious intellectual "what the Hell, hero?" It's like taking a course about the finer details of Catholicism, and the priest in charge starts talking about how Martin Luther ended up becoming a pope.

Here's the documentary I used as my source: