How Netflix's Ted Bundy documentary builds an uneasy case against the death penalty

If there's a lingering sense of unease with the electrocution of one of America's worst serial killers, then how can we be certain similar punishments are conscionable?

Ted Bundy.
(Image credit: Netflix)

Thirty years ago today, one of America's most notorious serial killers, Ted Bundy, was executed at the Florida State Prison. Bundy had spent the previous decade on death row maintaining his innocence; only when his execution became inevitable did he finally confess to the brutal murder of upwards of 30 women in seven states between 1974 and 1978.

On Thursday, coinciding with the anniversary of Bundy's death, comes a four-part Netflix series, Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, which draws from more than 100 hours of previously unheard interviews with Bundy while he was awaiting execution. Yet even as director Joe Berlinger invites audiences into the mind of pure human evil, he builds an uneasy case against Bundy's 1989 execution. While never truly explicit — Berlinger also gives Bundy's fiercest critics a chance to justify the nature of his punishment — the documentary doesn't leave you with relief that Bundy was finally destroyed so much as it does an overriding queasiness with the violence in human nature.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.