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Feb 13 – Feb 19, 2012 Edition E-Book explores Ted Bundy rape-murder saga

SAN FRANCISCO, CA/ February 13, 2012—“OK, armchair sleuths – there’s a new book out about serial killer Ted Bundy, and it features the most extensive explanations yet from the man who caught him,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported last week.

Bundy’s sordid saga will have particular interest in the Bay Area, where investigators have been dredging through their files for the past year to see if the serial murderer can be tied to a string of killings in Santa Rosa and Stanford.

The new volume, “Terrible Secrets,” is actually an e-book that offers 60,000 words of narrative along with dozens of previously unreleased photos and hours of audio and video from the case that unfolded as Bundy raped and killed from coast to coast from 1969 to 1974.

Bundy began his killings in Washington state, and shortly before he was executed in Florida for three murders, he confessed to 27 rapes and killings. He also hinted that the body count actually exceeded 100.

The man who led the hunt for Bundy, now-retired sheriff’s Detective Robert Keppel of Washington’s King County, produced “Terrible Secrets” with crime writer Stephen Michaud. Both have written about Bundy before — Keppel’s “Signature Killers” and Michaud’s  “The Only Living Witness” are classics in Bundy literature — but this latest effort delves into the investigation in more complete detail than ever before.

Included in the book is a map of a hillside body dump that Bundy drew for Keppel during one of his prison interviews, handwritten notes from the killer and tapes of Bundy’s explanation that serial murder is just another way of life.

Read the full report on The Chronicle web site.