By Adam Epstein | 30 January 2019
QUARTZY — Netflix says it wants people to stop lusting after Ted Bundy, because that’s what it has to say. But make no mistake, the streaming service is loving all the memes and tweets about the infamous serial killer’s “hotness.”
Bundy, who raped and murdered dozens of young women in the 1970s, was caught in 1978, and executed in 1989, remains one of the world’s most studied serial killers. That’s in part because he looked and often acted (according to some that knew him) like a normal, well-adjusted person. Since his execution, Bundy has been analyzed in countless films, documentaries, books, and songs, as Americans still struggle to understand how a human being could be capable of such atrocities—especially one as classically handsome as Bundy.
So it was only a matter of time before Netflix, in its quest to be the only entertainment platform you’ll ever need, produced a documentary about Bundy. Last week, the streamer released Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, a four-part docu-series featuring never-before-heard audio of the killer discussing his crimes in the third person. (For years after his capture, Bundy maintained he was innocent, only confessing to the murders shortly before he was executed.) Joe Berlinger, the writer and director of the documentary, also directed the Bundy film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, which stars heartthrob Zac Efron as the vicious killer and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this month. […]
Marc Bernays Randolph is the co-founder and first CEO of Netflix. Randolph’s paternal great-granduncle was psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud and his paternal great-uncle was Edward Bernays, an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda.