A closer look- episode 1

The podcast "A Closer Look" discusses famous serial killers Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, and Jeffrey Dahmer. It explores the fascination with these killers and the theories behind it. Ted Bundy escaped from prison twice before being arrested for multiple murders. Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, targeted various victims and left satanic symbols at the crime scenes. Jeffrey Dahmer killed and dismembered 17 males and engaged in cannibalism. The podcast also questions the morality of shows and movies about serial killers, and asks for listeners' opinions on why people are fascinated by them. Hi and welcome to A Closer Look, your new favourite true crime podcast. Each week we'll be looking into different cases, some which you might know well and some you may have never heard of before. Just a quick disclaimer that we will be talking about violent events that have happened in the past. On today's episode we're going to be talking about Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez and Jeffrey Dahmer. I also want to talk a bit about our fascination with serial killers as I've been researching it and found it quite interesting. So let's get into it. Ted Bundy is a well-known serial killer who in the 70s traveled through the United States killing at least 30 different women. As well as abducting, raping and killing his victims he would also sometimes dismember them and keep their body parts to return to at a later time to violate them further. In 1979 Ted Bundy was convicted of two murders. The murder of two Florida State students and then was found guilty of killing a 12 year old girl in 1980. He was sentenced to death for all three murders. During his time in prison Bundy managed to escape twice and continue his killing spree. His first escape came after he was arrested for the first time. He was arrested for abducting Carol Durange, an 18 year old girl from a shopping mall in Salt Lake City. Bundy approached her claiming he was a police officer and that her car had been broken into in the mall's car park and that they had a suspect in custody. He offered to give her a lift to the police station and she trustingly went as he seemed like a normal guy. Once in his vehicle she realized something seemed wrong. His previous nice demeanor changed into a cold one. He then threatened her with a gun and attempted to handcuff her to the car but she managed to escape and run for her life. This led to her being able to pick him out from a lineup causing his first arrest. He escaped the first time by jumping out of a two-story window in a library and escaped a second time by losing enough weight to squeeze through a hole in his cell ceiling. Ted's final arrest came when police pulled him over and after running the plates on his vehicle and seeing it was marked as stolen ended his final rampage by arresting him. On the 24th of January 1989 after years of delaying that he was finally put on the electric chair. I find it so fascinating especially Ted Bundy because we hear a lot about how girls would show up to his trial supporting him, fangirling over him because they thought he was attractive. They would dye their hair dark brown middle part, wear hoop earrings and just obsess over him and the main theory behind that is because that women are attracted to damaged and dangerous men because they believe that they can fix them. I think that's quite interesting because you see in a lot of TV shows and movies that dynamic for example in The Vampire Diaries everybody is obsessed with Damon just because he's like a dangerous brother and he only shows his soft side to Elena so I feel like a lot of these women want that and they're thinking that they can get the good out of him but it's all a bit weird to me. Richard Ramirez who was also known as the Night Stalker terrorized the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas in the mid-1980s. Ramirez would burgle, rape and kill his victims murdering at least 13 people and raping and assaulting many others. Ramirez had a troubled childhood he grew up in a toxic household so went to live with his military cousin who showed him how to kill and abduct people but when his cousin killed his wife and ended up in jail, Ramirez had to move in with his sister and her husband who didn't turn out to be a great influence either as a husband would take him around to different houses and peep through the window watching people undress. This hobby stayed with him as in his first job which was at a holiday inn he would look through people's curtains and even hide in people's closets to watch them. He ended up getting fired from his job after attempting to rape a woman but luckily her husband returned to stop the attack from happening. The police were called but the charges were dropped as the couple didn't want to travel back to testify. Something about Richard Ramirez that I think really terrified people was that no one was safe. He didn't seem to have a type, his victims were all different ages and gender. He was also known for leaving satanic symbols behind and even in some occasions stopping and having a snack from a victim's fridges. By the summer of 1985 everyone knew about the Night Stalker and were frightened. 13 year old James unknowingly helped catch the killer. James was awake one night in his garage when he heard Ramirez's footsteps approach. Once they made eye contact he was able to run into his house and warn his parents. They called 911 where Ramirez ran and drove off but before he got away James bravely ran outside and took note of the colour of the vehicle and a few letters and numbers from a stolen cars plate. After handing the information over to the police they were able to locate the car with the help of James confirming the right one. This led them to finding fingerprints on the mirror and finally being able to identify the Night Stalker as Richard Ramirez. They held a press conference and spoke to Ramirez directly letting him know that they know who he is and what he's done. It didn't take long for Ramirez to be arrested as he was on the front page of newspapers. Once he realised people were recognising him he went into a panic and started running. This led him to run into the wrong neighbourhood as a group of men started chasing and beating him and held him down until the police came to arrest him. Ramirez was sentenced to death but ended up dying in prison with cancer in 2013 at the age of 53. Ramirez was another one who had groupies. Apparently even one of the female jurors fell for him during his trial going on to talk shows afterwards defending him and claiming that he was a caring guy. While Ramirez was in jail he ended up marrying one of his fans that would send love letters during his incarceration. Her name was Doreen. Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer who killed and dismembered 17 males between 1978 and 1991. He was also known as a Milwaukee cannibal as he was involved in cannibalism as well as necrophilia. When Dahmer was young he had an interest in dead animals, learning how to preserve our bones. This knowledge helped him for his later interest in human bones. When choosing his victims he would go for men whose disappearances he thought would be less noticeable. He would often find these men in gay bars, bus stops and malls which would then lead to him luring them back to his home with the promise of money or sex before drugging and strangling them. He would often keep body parts and photos he would take during his crimes as souvenirs to look back on. In July 1991 Dahmer was arrested after one of his victims escaped and was able to lead the police back to Dahmer's apartment where they found photographs of dismembered bodies and other preserved body parts in different areas around his home. Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms in prison with a 16th one added on in May. On November 28th 1994 Dahmer was beaten to death by a fellow inmate after only serving three years and four months in prison. I'm pretty sure all of you have probably seen the Jeffrey Dahmer show on Netflix. It was really popular when it came out. It was all over my TikTok. But the problem with these is I think it gets me questioning the reason behind these shows are made. Like I find it quite interesting that they get known heartthrobs and celebrities that people have crushes on to play these killers. For example Zac Efron playing Ted Bundy. Like I think there was a lot of other people that could play Ted Bundy and the fact they got Evan Peters to play Jeffrey Dahmer I think that's quite weird because he was known for playing Tate from American Horror Story who was a character who was quite dark and murderous and everybody went wild over him thinking he was amazing and like were so attracted to him. Even now on my TikTok I see there's so many edits getting made of Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer and I just think that's really weird and also like how many shows need to be made about these people. I know that they're to like inform and spread awareness but how much do we actually need of that and how morally right is it? One of the main theories behind our fascination with serial killers is that it's our instinct and because we don't actually think we're in danger of meeting the serial killer we're watching we see it as a bit of a thrill but at the same time we're learning about the threat and understanding it just in case one day we do meet someone dangerous so we know what to avoid or another theory is that just because we can't fathom or imagine what could bring someone to do the stuff that these people do and we watch out of curiosity like why would someone do that? And another one is is it just our morbid curiosity like the way we look at a car crash and we can't look away we know it's horrible but we have to look. So I just find that quite interesting actually and would love to hear about your opinions and what you think why are you fascinated why are you listening to this right now? So if you would go on to our Instagram page A Closer Look Official Podcast then let us know why you think that we as humans have such a fascination with serial killers. Thanks for joining us on today's episode we hope you'll be back again next week to hear the story behind John Wayne Gacy and the Zodiac Killer.