Ted Bundy's Political Bent

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Former Washington governor and US senator Daniel J. Evans passed away last weekend at the age of ninety-eight.  I read one news article about his passing that said he was the last surviving United States Senator to have been born in the 1920’s.   That, however, will not be the only interesting footnote to the political career of Dan Evans, because he also had a political relationship with one of the most notorious serial killers in American history - although Evans never had a clue as to the true nature of the young man who would go on to become so infamous.  
 
Dan Evans, a Republican, officially entered politics in 1956 when he won a seat in the Washington state legislature.  In November of 1964 he was elected governor of Washington, a position which he held for three terms from January of 1965 through January of 1977.   The former governor was appointed by a later governor to serve the remainder of Scoop Jackson’s US Senate term when the veteran senator died unexpectedly in 1983 leaving almost a full term remaining.    Evans won a special election later in the year to complete the entire term. His career in elective office ended after that one senate term because he chose not to seek re-election out of frustration with the senate which he described as being “too rancorous.”
 
Ted Bundy, who had grown up in Tacoma, Washington, had suffered a couple of false starts in college, and by 1968 the then 21-year-old was exploring an interest in politics.   Bundy volunteered to work in Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign in the state of Washington, and later Bundy was even a Washington delegate for Rockefeller at the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida.  Daniel Evans, the governor of Washington, gave the keynote address at that convention, but did not endorse Richard Nixon, the eventual nominee.   Evans chose instead to support Governor Rockefeller of New York for the nomination.
 
It would seem very likely that Dan Evans and Ted Bundy were acquainted at the time they both were in the Washington state delegation to the Republican National Convention in 1968, particularly since they were both supporting the same candidate.  Four years later Bundy secured a position as a campaign aid to Governor Evans who was then in the process of running for this third and final term as governor of Washington.
 
Some reports say Bundy was employed by the campaign and others credit him as being a volunteer, but whatever his pay status, he wound up with a position where he routinely had the governor’s ear.  Bundy’s job was to stalk the opposition candidate, a former Democratic governor by the name of Albert D. Rosellini, and make tape recordings of his speeches.  The political stalker would report back to Evans where he and the governor would reportedly discuss the young aid’s take on what the opposition candidate had said.
 
Later Governor Evans appointed his former campaign aid, Ted Bundy, to the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Committee, and at one point provided a reference to help Bundy get into law school.
 
The accomplishments of Daniel J. Evans are too numerous to try and list, but he always had an eye toward the environment and meeting the needs of the people of his state.  He was a moderate influence at a time when American politics were beginning to heat-up and get “rancorous.”  A University of Michigan study in 1981 named Dan Evans as “One of the Ten Outstanding Governors in the 20^th Century.”
 
Ted Bundy went on to admit killing thirty women across several states over a time frame that possibly extended back into the late 1960’s, with many of those women also being raped by Bundy and suffering other brutality.  He escaped from prison twice during his long criminal career and was finally executed by the state of Florida on January 24, 1989, at the age of forty-two, three weeks to the day after Dan Evans completed his only term in the US Senate and retired from elective politics.

The fact that Dan Evans seemed to have had a good working relationship with the younger version of Ted Bundy should come as no surprise.  Sociopaths can, and often do, present as very charming individuals.  In 1971 Ted Bundy took a job with the Seattle Suicide Hot Line Crisis Center where he worked alongside a former Seattle police officer by the name of Ann Rule.   Ms. Rule, who would later become an internationally recognized author of “true crime” books, was every bit as surprised as Dan Evans when they each learned that their old friend was a man who had committed dozens of heinous rapes and murders.
 
Ann Rule titled her 1980 book about Ted Bundy “The Stranger Beside Me.”   While she had a background in dealing with criminals, Rule did not have a clue as to the monster Ted Bundy really was.  In the book she referred to her former co-worker 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,” a far cry from the supposedly caring counselor whom she had known and worked with at the hotline.
 
Ted Bundy once offered up a bit of introspection when he described himself as “the most cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch that you’ll ever meet.”
 
Dan Evans and Ann Rule knew the public persona of Ted Bundy, but his victims fell prey to the bloody savage hiding beneath the All-American boy facade.