Ted Bundy
The interview chair is the genre's founding device.
- Confessed to thirty murders before his execution on 24 January 1989; some accounts put the figure at thirty-six.
A voice on tape, sold as access.
He is first among the identified because he supplied the format. The long interview — a man talking, a tape turning, a journalist listening past the point of usefulness — is the device every later production has copied.
The chair flatters both parties. He got the audience he wanted; the trade got a narrator who would work for free and never contradict the edit.
Nothing about the killings explains the ranking. The recording does.
Ted Bundy confessed to thirty murders before his execution on 24 January 1989; some accounts give thirty-six.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Who was Ted Bundy?'retrieved 2026-08-14
The full argument is filed in the anchor piece, and the index to all ten jackets is here.