Killer Thriller: The Ted Bundy Mystery That Still Haunts People
misSPELLING
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 31 May 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ted Bundy didn’t look like a monster. He looked like someone you’d trust. Charming, intelligent, and seemingly normal, Bundy fooled friends, girlfriends, neighbors, and even some of the people investigating him.
Bonnie Bartlett joins Elisa Donovan to revisit The Deliberate Stranger and the true story behind one of America’s most notorious serial killers. Decades later, the case still raises unsettling questions about evil hiding in plain sight.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:10.7 | Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes present. |
| 0:13.5 | Killer Thriller with your host, Alisa Donovan. |
| 0:18.9 | Hey everyone, Elisa Donovan here, and this is Killer Thriller. |
| 0:23.0 | Long before today's wave of true crime documentaries and dramatizations, |
| 0:27.5 | one TV movie terrified America by bringing the story of serial killer Ted Bundy |
| 0:33.1 | into millions of living rooms. |
| 0:35.7 | The Deliberate Stranger aired on NBC in 1986 and starred Mark Harmon. |
| 0:41.3 | The two-part miniseries follows Bundy's murders, manipulations, escapes, and eventual capture, |
| 0:47.5 | helping turn him into one of the first true crime figures to become a national media obsession. |
| 0:53.9 | Okay, so for those who might not be as familiar |
| 0:56.1 | with Ted Bundy, he is one of the most notorious serial killers in American history, and he admitted |
| 1:03.0 | to murdering over 30 women, and they do believe that it was more in the hundreds. One of the ways that he was so disturbing is he was known as being very charming, very |
| 1:16.5 | articulate. |
| 1:17.4 | He predominantly approached women on college campuses, and sometimes he would act as though |
| 1:23.5 | he was injured and need a little bit of help or he would ask for their assistance with |
| 1:28.5 | something. And then he brutally, brutally raped and murdered these women. Today, we're joined by |
| 1:35.5 | Emmy-winning actress Bonnie Bartlett, who played Bundy's mother Louise, a woman forced to confront |
| 1:42.2 | the unimaginable truth about her own son. |
| 1:45.8 | Bonnie, welcome to Killer Thriller. |
| 1:48.2 | Thank you so much for being here. |
... |
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