BUNDY DIED--MANY ARE GUILTY
Editorial
January/ February, 1990
Volume 25, Number 1
Early in 1989 Ted Bundy was strapped into Florida's electric
chair and jolted with 2,000 volts of electricity, as punishment for his
1978 kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old Florida girl. Jurors also had
found him guilty of the murder of two Florida State University sorority
sisters. He confessed during his last days that he had murdered at least
30 other young women. The Time magazine report (2-6-89) says
that Bundy was "a silver-tongued charmer who lured women to their deaths,
confounded police pursuers, and clogged the court system for nearly a decade."
His ten years of imprisonment and the many appeals for a stay of execution
cost the Florida taxpayers more than six million dollars.
In a taped interview just before his execution, Bundy
told James Dobson how his involvement over the years with pornography led
to his acting out certain violent and destructive feelings. Bundy
started with "soft-porn" purchased at a local grocery store. This led to
"hard-porn" materials featuring sexual violence, and as Bundy turned to
more explicit and more graphic kinds of materials, he finally turned to
"live" women and girls - and the trail of blood began. Bundy, just before
his execution, warned all of us that sons and husbands who have grown up
even in regular families can be snatched out of reality and drawn into
violent kinds of behavior.
The real tragedy connected with this whole scenario, however,
is the fact that on the day of Bundy's execution, there was a jeering crowd
of about 300 persons who shouted and whistled and set off fireworks to
celebrate the event. They carried signs which said, "Thank God It's Fryday,"
and "Bundy Bar-B- Q," and "Roast in Peace." The writer in Newsweek
(2-6-89) said, "it was the sheer, lighthearted boisterousness of
the event" that seemed out of place. The mood "seemed more appropriate
to a college football rally, than to the exacting of the death penalty."
In this issue of the BRF WITNESS,
Simon Schrock's article
assesses the situation from a Christian point of view. Read it and profit
from the thoughtful analysis.
--H.S.M.
Bundy Died--Many Are Guilty
By Simon Schrock
Ted Bundy was guilty. Now he is dead, and the crowd cheered! But I am
ashamed.
A crowd of about 2,000 gathered to celebrate the execution of Ted Bundy.
According to the Washington Post report, "They laughed and
hooted and, after it was over, they cheered." U. S. A. Todayreported
that "Bundy haters erupted in cheers in a carnival atmosphere of fireworks"
after the execution.
In light of Bundy's crimes, it is understandable why some are glad it
is over and justice has been administered. But fellow citizens, I'm neither
laughing or cheering. I'm still ashamed!
This problem is deeper than "justice" to one killer. Ted Bundy pointed
to the pornography that fed his mind, as the cause "for the dark violence
that bubbled up within him." He declared that it guided and shaped what
he did. He kept craving for something with a still greater sense of excitement.
It even overpowered his religious training and his social mores.
Mr. Bundy's testimony about his own bitter experience agrees with what
Solomon wrote in Proverbs thousands of years ago: "As he thinketh in his
heart, so is he." That means, what a person feeds into his mind, is what
he becomes.
Why should I stand in shame over Bundy's crime, the execution, and the
cheering crowd?
Ted Bundy was one of our fellow travelers on planet earth. He was a
child like all the rest of us with a desire for a fulfilling and meaningful
life. His life is considered a failure. But he did not act alone! Others
directed him to this lifestyle. Bundy wasn't the one who printed those
"soft core" magazines that fed his mind when he was a teenager. He did
not use his mind to "think up" the script for those pornographic videos.
He was not the one who reproduced them by the thousands for others to see.
He was not the wholesaler who took them to the retailer to market them.
He was not the merchant who put them in front of the customers for their
impulse to buy. He was no!the clerk who rang up the purchase at the cash
register.
Who wrote the magazines he read, and filmed the tapes he watched? Who
are the publishers and the producers? Where are the marketing agents who
persuaded the merchants that it is "good profit"? Where are the merchants
that put these products Out for the public to pick up? Who was the clerk
at the cash register who took his money and let him walk away to pollute
his mind? These people all had a part in shaping Bundy's mind. They contributed
to the crimes that led to his execution. And we call it justice when the
one victim is executed because of what pornography has brought about. What
about all the rest who contributed to Bundy's mind defilement?
I know, producers and merchants, you justify it in the name of "profits."
It is "profit margin" for you. "Profit" is the name of the game, you say.
Whatever makes money is what you sell. "Profits" is why you are in business,
at least that is what you keep telling me. I've heard you say it many times.
Profits are priority. Moral and family values are not on your top priority
list. But merchants, you have been feeding minds with the reading material
and videos which you market--and while the cash registers ring and the
"profit margins" go up--we are losing the basic ingredients of life. We
are selling out our morals and family values. Our minds are being shattered
and our lives are being ruined. We are feeding sick minds to murder us
in cold blood on our streets. While we are taking our deposits of "profits"
to the bank, our children and grandchildren are losing the very values
that made it possible for you to enjoy being in business. I know that selling
this destructive mind material brings you "profit margin," but so would
selling atomic bombs.
We excuse ourselves and say, "it was Bundy's own responsibility." He
was responsible for what he did. And that is true to an extent, but it
is a very naive and irresponsible excuse. And really it is not totally
true. We are a united people. We are responsible for one another. We must
take up accountability for our actions and how they hurt and ruin others.
We are not on an island alone.
If we give our allegiance to the gods of "greed" and "profits," we may
soon be without freedom to make profits at all. What good will profits
do if we destroy ourselves?
I'm still not cheering! I'm ashamed! I'm ashamed that the system contributed
to Bundy's mind pollution, his crimes, and his death. I'm ashamed to know
that the "establishment" in which I live makes it possible for my children,
and the community, to slip down the street and pick up the same kinds of
stuff that defiled Bundy's mind.
President Bush made a statement in his inaugural address that deserves
repeating and our serious consideration. "My friends, we are not the sum
of our possessions. They are not the measure of our lives. In our hearts,
we know what matters. We cannot hope to leave our children a bigger car,
a bigger bank account. We must hope to give them a sense of what it means
to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his
neighborhood, and his town - better than he found it. America is never
wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle."
Bundy's execution will be in vain unless citizens of this country take
responsibility to make moral choices a priority. Kenneth Patterson, proprietor
of the Minute Market in Bedford, Virginia, made such a choice and followed
through with action. Patterson saw a television interview in which Bundy
said he was "guided and shaped" by pornography. Patterson then set fire
to hundreds of X-rated video tapes. He called them "rotten filth," and
set fire to a barrel filled with tapes.
Patterson, a father to two children, spoke with emotion: "Bundy said
there are people like him who watch these movies and a part of their brain
snaps. You think of your children and of other people's children. We just
discontinued renting them, and any kind of pornography completely. I don't
need it. Society doesn't need it. We're going to stick with the family
type."
I congratulate Mr. Patterson. He made a positive moral choice. He set
an example. This is not an argument whether justice was done to Bundy.
I'm ashamed and appalled at how America can cheer Bundy's fate, and stand
with blood on her hands. This is a call for people all over this land to
follow the example of Kenneth Patterson, and make right moral choices.
Simon Schrock is a bishop in the
Beachy Amish Mennonite Church,
supervisor for Choice Books in
the Washington, D.C.
area,
and a contributing editor of Calvary
Messenger.
This article has been used by permission
of the author.