Be it animated comedies, drug-fuelled dramas or true crime documentaries, Netflix have got it down when it comes to binge-worthy series.
The streaming giant have got their next addictive documentary lined up perfectly, just as we’re all recovering from the effects of Making a Murderer Part 2, The Staircase, Evil Genius and, of course, American Vandal.
Slated for release on January 24, 2019, Netflix are bringing the story of one of America’s most notorious serial killers to the small screen in the form of Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes.
The four-part documentary series will drop 30 years to the day since Bundy was executed by electric chair for homicides he committed in Florida during the 1970s. He was executed on January 24, 1989.
Netflix describe the series as a portrait painted by Bundy himself:
Get a unique look inside the mind of an infamous serial killer with this cinematic self-portrait crafted from statements made by Ted Bundy.
Ted Bundy was a notorious serial killer, kidnapper, rapist, burglar and necrophile. He assaulted and murdered a number of young women and girls in America in the 1970s.
Before his execution, he confessed to 30 homicides, which he committed across seven different states between 1974 and 1978. However, it is feared that the real number of victims is much higher, potentially in the hundreds.
During his time on death row, Bundy participated in a number of interviews with Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth, two investigative reporters, in which he spoke openly about the details of his crimes and his thought process during them.
The serial killer reportedly spoke mostly in the third person, in order to avoid ‘the stigma of confession’, according to Michaud and Aynesworth’s book, Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer.
The new series will be constructed around these ‘confession’ tapes, and use interviews never before heard by the public, to shed new light on the killer.
The four-part series will also look at Bundy’s two escapes from prison, as well as the media frenzy surrounding his trial, and the women that became infatuated with him.
Bundy famously married Carole Ann Boone, who testified on his behalf while he was in court. Due to an obscure Florida state law, a declaration of marriage in front of a judge in court constituted a legal marriage. In 1982, Boone gave birth to daughter and named Bundy as the alleged father.
In her biography about Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule describes him as:
A sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human’s pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after.
The documentary series has been created by the Emmy-winning documentary maker Joe Berlinger, who has also directed a feature film chronicling the life and crimes of Ted Bundy, called Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.
The movie will premiere at next year’s Sundance Film Festival. Zac Efron stars as the serial killer, while the film is told from the point of view of his longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, played by Lily Collins. Kloepfer apparently refused to believe the truth about Bundy ‘for years’.
Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes arrives on Netflix on January 24, 2019.
If you have a story you want to tell send it to UNILAD via stories@unilad.co.uk
Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.