40 years later, Ted Bundy’s attorney opens up about the serial killer

SEATTLE - Criminal defense attorney John Henry Browne, who represented Ted Bundy back in the 1970s and early 80s, says the killer’s evil ways began as a child growing up in Tacoma.

The future serial killer would buy mice at a local pet shop and "play God" to determine their fate.

“He’d go to the woods and build a little corral, and then he’d decide which ones to kill and which ones to let go,” said Browne.

Bundy used the same approach later with women.



“There were many, many times he stalked women and did not harm them,” said Browne, noting that it was his way of exerting control.

Browne’s revelations come in his new book, The Devil’s Defender, that details his work for Bundy as well as other notorious death row defendants over his 40 year career.

In an interview with Q13 News, Browne recounts the time that Bundy admitted to him the magnitude of his murderous rampage.



“He was emotional that day, and he started telling me that he killed over 100 people, and one of them was a man,” Bowne said.

Browne now admits that he actually feels partly responsible for some of Bundy’s murders – and even considered his own form of justice against his client.

“Part of me that said, if this guy ever gets out again he is going to kill a lot more people, so maybe I should do something about it,” Browne said.

Prior to Bundy’s second escape from prison in Colorado, Browne advocated for better conditions for his client, which put him in a cell that was easier to slip from.

“I feel somewhat responsible, actually, for the deaths he was involved in in Florida because I helped him get better privileges in jail in Glenwood Springs,” said Browne.

Browne says that writing the book was a way to “purge” himself of the darkness that Bundy brought to his life.

In addition to defending the nation’s most notorious serious killer, Browne's book recounts his work for one of the defendants in the Wah Mee massacure, where 13 people were gunned down in Seattle’s International District, and, more recently, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, who was convicted of killing 16 Afghan civilians while deployed in the Army.