WAS BUNDY CONFESSION LAST-DITCH EFFORT?
MURDERER'S MOTIVES ARE STILL A MYSTERY 1 YEAR AFTER EXECUTION, DETECTIVES SAY

The motive behind a series of final-hour confessions by serial killer Ted Bundy remain a mystery today, the first anniversary of his death in Florida's electric chair.

Homicide investigators still question whether Bundy's confessions in 23 killings in Washington state, Idaho, Utah and Colorado shortly before his execution date were merely a desperate gamble to prolong his life.An investigator with the attorney general's office in Washington State said Bundy was trying to "save his neck" by exchanging information for time.

"He had two things in mind. One was to get law enforcement to intervene with the governor by saying he'd been cooperative and we need more time and the other was to play on the sympathies of the victims' relatives to have them contact the governor and speak on his behalf," said Bob Keppel, who interviewed Bundy in the days before the execution.

But Dennis Couch, a Utah investigator, said by the time he talked with Bundy 36 hours before the execution, the serial killer "looked like a whipped puppy.

"I had the feeling that he knew he was defeated and it was the end of the line," said Couch, of Salt Lake County. "I felt at the time that he was sincere in trying to find the bodies for the families."

In the end, the confessions won the former law-school student no extra time. He was strapped into electric chair on Jan. 24, 1989, for the 1978 kidnapping, rape and murder of a 12-year-old Lake County girl. Her body was found in an abandoned pigsty. He also was condemned for the slaying of two young women in a sorority in Tallahassee.

Diana Weiner, an attorney who arranged the final interviews with investigators, said the day before his death, Bundy filed a written request for a 30-day to 60-day extension with the governor's office. He had offered to fully answer investigators' questions and be examined by doctors and psychiatrists in hopes they could better understand his behavior, Weiner said.

"He wanted to die having left a more full understanding with the public of what the underlying factors were in his behavior so that we as a society . . . would be able to take steps to prevent the kind of behavior he committed," she said.

Gov. Bob Martinez, who signed the death warrant Jan. 19, did not respond to the request.

Investigators in Idaho, Washington and Utah said the information given by Bundy in his final days has not led them to any more bodies, but helped tie Bundy to killings and disappearances.