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Imagine growing up with a cousin, sharing parts of a childhood and making memories of good times.

Only later to discover he became one of the country's most notorious serial killers.

That's exactly what happened to Edna Caswell Martin, Ted Bundy's cousin and author of Dark Tide, adding a unique perspective to the story of a man who murdered at least 30 women and girls.

That's the discussion next on northwest.

Now.

You.

Edna Cowell Martin thought of Ted Bundy like a brother, sharing fond childhood memories and rekindling a nice friendship during their college years.

But as the truth of Bundy's true nature was slowly revealed over time, Martin was forced to confront the shattering reality that her cousin, a person she actually admired and looked up to, was a brutal serial killer whose victims were young women just like her.

Bundy was a smart cookie, studying Chinese at Stanford, working for Washington Governor Dan Evans, and going to law school.

But when it all came crashing down and Nicole Martin was left feeling a terrible conflict between love and hate and a lifetime of wondering why Ted went so badly off the rails and living with the echoes of his murderous actions as she raised her own family.

And so great to have you here as a guest for northwest.

Now, as soon as I learned about your book and your backstory, my thinking was, man, we have got to get this person on northwest now, and we're so glad to have you.

You live in Poulsbo now, but you've moved around a bit.

Start with kind of laying the the foundation, if you would, who your family is, who Ted's family is, and how these families came together back in the day.

Yeah.

So, his family, his his mother and my parents both grew up in the Philadelphia area.

And so when my mom's parents moved to the Pacific Northwest for a job for him, my parents followed him.

But leaving behind some family members.

And my father was the youngest of seven kids and his oldest sibling, his his brother Sam had three daughters, the oldest of which was Ted's mom.

Louise and his mother had a child, and this child was born out of wedlock at the time.

And so she was sort of an unwed mother, which was kind of a pejorative term in those days, and which today we wouldn't put that kind of stigma on a person at all.

But he was Ted.

She called him Teddy was four years old at the time, and she was beginning to be concerned about making sure that people didn't start talking to him about stuff, you know?

So when my parents got established in the Tacoma area, my dad taught at the University of Puget Sound.

He wrote her several times and said, hey, really, seriously, think about coming out to the Pacific Northwest where nobody knows you.

Fresh start, fresh start.

You can come stay with us as long as you need to, and you can create your a whole new narrative about who you are and what you're, you know, whatever you want, you could do.

And she took him up on it.

And and you two, for all intents and purposes, you and Teddy at the time.

Yeah.

You were basically, brother and sister had a sibling relationship.

Well, it was it was a great relationship.

Now, he was exactly the same age as my brother at the time.

And when they moved out to Tacoma and stayed with my parents for almost a year, I wasn't born yet.

I was born the following year because for five years I'm five years younger.

But I mean, we were their only relatives on the West Coast, so we hung out and spent a lot of time together, and we eventually got a cabin on lower Puget Sound.

And so they would come visit and we'd have great times on the beach and just playing around.

So we spent a lot of time together as kids.

And because, you know, that five year age difference, you'd naturally tend to look up to kind of the older one a little bit.

You actually, thought he was an attractive, admirable, engaging person at the time.

He was kind of like somebody to look up to a little.

Was he was a he was a really nice kid and grew into what I thought was a really nice guy.

You know, of course, we never suspected anything.

Right, right.

And you hear that all the time from families and family members.

He was such a nice.

We never expected it.

It's a consistent theme.

You're not alone.

I know I've I've discovered that, you know, and a lot of people are curious.

And why didn't the family know?

Well, I think that these people are very successful at living two separate lives.

Master manipulator.

Yeah.

Master manipulators.

And I don't know what happened to Ted.

You moved to Arkansas, but then came back to the northwest as a UW student.

Now, by this time, you're a young woman.

Yes.

You know, you're you're starting to understand the world a little more.

And your place in it.

Talk about that time period, when he'd visit you and your roommates, and you really kind of resumed your friendship.

We did.

We did.

So I came back, as you said, as a young adult at that time, and I was finishing up my junior, excuse me, and my junior and senior year at the University of Washington.

And that was, 1973 and 1974 and 1974 is when things started happening.

I had my, my roommate and I had rented an apartment right in the new district, about six blocks from where Ted lived.

So we saw each other a lot during that time.

Sure.

And he dropped by a lot.

And he was a welcome guest because he would show up with a bag of groceries and we were starving students.

And so that was, you know, and often a bottle of wine, you know, so that that was an immediate entry into our apartment.

But we spent a lot of time together, and he would regale us with stories about what he was doing.

He worked for the reelection campaign for a very popular governor at the time, which was Stan Evans.

And he was he had been he had attended the the Republican convention in 1969.

So he was kind of an up and coming figure in the political party.

He was, going undercover and wearing disguises and going into Albert Rossellini's camp and kind of picking up scoop on what was going on there.

And then he'd come back and let them know what the the Evans camp, what he found out he made friends with a real, I don't know.

Richard Larsen, who is a reporter for the Seattle Times, became a friend of his at that time a political reporter.

Ted also got involved in, crime commission in Seattle.

So he's telling us all these things that were just, like, on the edge of our seats, like, oh, this is what it looks like when you're five years from now, when you have a job and successful and success and charming and good looking.

Yes.

And all the things and get this, Tom, he wrote a pamphlet on rape prevention for women.

Can you believe that?

No.

In a word, no.

So this was there in a time when women were starting to really stand up for themselves, and women's lib was sort of coming out.

And so we were just like, yeah, that is so cool that he was doing that.

I always find this point in a story so interesting, and there is a moment here at in this time period where the story turns, you have your radar because you're a young woman now is activated.

Yes.

Tell us about this moment where you were, what you were doing and what that sensation was when your radar said, time out.

Well, just to give you idea of women started disappearing almost about one a month, starting in January of 1974.

And the first attack took place literally across the street from my apartment and around the corner.

So all you'd have to do from Ted's place is walk by the front door of my apartment building across the street, go around.

And that's.

So that was the first thing that happened.

And that was that was chilling.

Although we didn't get a lot of information about it.

I was working in a restaurant as a server.

They called them a waitress then, and I was afraid to walk home at night because we started hearing about a stalker or something.

And then a mutual friend of ours disappeared, Linda Ann Healy, the beginning of February.

And that just blew everything up.

And meanwhile, Ted's dropping by and we have no idea.

Yeah.

You know, so fast forward to July.

I mean, one by one, there's other girls that have disappeared, George and Hawkins from sorority that two nights before that, we.

I went out for dinner with Ted.

Wow.

You know, then in July, two women, young women in the same day disappeared from Lake Sammamish, right.

And that really got us.

I mean, I hear this guy, he.

And you had the vehicle description, a yellow Volkswagen.

Yes.

So then we start.

You know, we're we're grabbing newspapers.

We think the news is hitting hard on all the major stations, and we pull out the paper and there's a composite drawing because they found out this person said his name was Ted, and somebody had seen him walk towards a Vida bug.

So we're looking at the composite drawing on.

My boyfriend at the time has come up from Tacoma, and this is the weekend, and we're looking at this thing and we're going, Got Ted.

The the bug looks sounds just like his, but the composite drawing to us didn't look anything like Ted.

So you had written in that VW?

Yes, on several occasions.

Yeah, yeah, he and I went out.

He took me out dancing one night and soul.

And I was in that.

Speaking of dancing, he danced with one of your roommates wives, who I'm sure were enthralled when he would come visit because he was a good looking guy.

Yeah, but he was.

And you had a little bit of a a moment of clarity there to talk about that.

Yes.

And looking back, you realized things.

At the time, I didn't connect anything.

Of course.

Why would I?

So one of the nights he shows up, bag of groceries, we're dancing around.

After dinner, I turned to put a record on the record album, and that one's a slower piece.

And I turn around and he's slow dancing with my roommate Margie, and she's got her head leaned against his shoulder, and I look at him and I go, whoa, who is that guy?

Because he's looking down at her and he has his jaw clenched.

His eyes are these normally blue eyes.

They look totally black.

And he has this really mean look at her.

Like he's really angry, looking down.

And I'm.

I'm completely shocked.

I'd never seen this visage.

You know this.

Yeah.

This face before.

And I yell out to him, you know, over the music.

Hey, Ted.

Hey, Ted, are you okay?

And he didn't respond, so I pull the, you know, the stylus off the record and say it again.

I say Ted and he he kind of snaps out of it, and then the smile comes back and he goes, oh, no, no, everything is, oh, everything's fine.

And how do you interpret that now?

What did you what do you think you saw?

Well, I've, I've talked to some people, including a psychologist who, said that when, you know, people get in this stage of whatever it was he was in, their pupils dilate, you know, he was definitely someplace else.

And, Tom, it wasn't more than a couple minutes later, he said, I've got to go.

Yeah.

And he took off.

And we were surprised again about the abrupt departure.

And I have no idea where he went that night.

How did you finally find out the truth?

When talk a little bit about that moment where your suspicions and looking at the newspaper and saying, oh, the sketch doesn't match, and kind of putting it aside, where, when and how were you forced to confront this awful.

Right?

I mean, we even confronted Ted with a sketch in okay, pulled up in front of our house in the VW, and we thrust it in his face and said we felt sorry for him at that point.

Yeah.

And he said, oh, no.

You know, they've interviewed me and I understand why and they need to do this.

But the moment you're referring to is, I had been working up in Alaska and I returned from Alaska in December of 1975 after the Alaska king crab season ended.

And I he had been arrested while I was up there.

And it was a horrible moment for me because I was so I mean, it was devastating.

Shocked, shocked.

He this point, he was living in Utah.

He had moved down to Utah.

Interestingly enough, the disappearances and the abductions stopped for that year in Washington and started up.

But we never made the connection because these jurisdictions, you know, you didn't pick up news from other areas.

Yeah.

So when I came back in December, I was determined to talk to him.

He was out on bail.

And so he and I met up and we were with a I was picked him up and took him to a restaurant and met up with my crew from East Point Seafoods up in Alaska, because we were all meeting there and he I said, if you want to come along, that'd be great.

And someone at the table at the end of the conversation goes, well, hey, Ted, what is your last name?

Ted.

Who?

And he said, Ted Bundy.

And I just went and he sounded so proud instead of being, oh, God, you know.

Yeah.

Upset.

And, you know, some things that you would expect someone to way they would act if they were innocent.

Well, they're narcissist too.

Yeah.

So it's all about me.

Look at the attention.

He loved it.

Yeah.

And the odd thing is the guy that asked him that acted like he was some kind of a rock star, like, oh, wow.

You're.

Yeah.

But and I was.

I looked at him, I looked back at Ted, and I was just like, okay, we got to get out of here.

And so I took Ted with me and we went up to from the University village up the hill to the university bookstore, where I apparently needed something.

I wish I could remember what it was.

And in the car I asked him, well, have you.

Hey, Ted, I mean, did you do any of these things that, you know, you were arrested for?

I mean, I thought, what if he says yes, and but he didn't at that point, he said, absolutely not.

You know, it's just a case of mistaken identity, wrong place, wrong time.

And I was so relieved.

Do you think you narrowly escaped anything or.

No, you were.

You were not part of his M.O., part of his victim profile.

You were family.

I was family.

I'd like to think that.

Yeah, but what really happened next was what blew my mind.

Go on.

So I dropped him.

I left him in my car, in my Ford Esquire wagon, Woody fake woody wagon, and ran into the university bookstore and back then, when you're at the cash register, there's a wall of windows that face the Ave down below in.

So I was ringing up my purchase and I look out the window and people are gesticulating and pointing and crowds are moving down towards the corner.

And I couldn't quite see, but I could see a crowd way down there amassing on the corner across the street.

And I kind of had a bad feeling.

And I went, what's going on?

So as soon as I got my purchase, I ran out front instead of going back out where the car was parked, asking people, hey, what's going on?

They say, sun's going down on down at the corner.

And so I worked my way down and I got stuck at the stoplight waiting to cross the street.

And just for a second, the crowds parted.

And in the middle of that milling crowd was my cousin Ted, and he had his arms out like a messiah.

Tom.

It was the most chilling thing I'd ever seen, and almost like he was in a trance, he was turning and proclaiming as loudly, I'm Ted Bundy!

And he's slowly rotating it, even telling this story now, I get chills thinking about it, because at that moment it says so much.

It said so much.

So I got across the street and I had to elbow my way through the crowd, and people are starting to get a little hostile.

As you can imagine.

And I finally got up to him and he's still doing his thing, and I literally slap my hand across his mouth and grab him and say, we've got to go.

And I pull him through the crowd and people are shaking their fists at him, and I take him back behind and throw him in the car, and we start heading back to where I was going to drop him off at his girlfriend's place, and that's when it hit me.

I went, oh my God, he did it!

Yeah, and I met alone in the car with him, and the gravity of it hit me at that moment, and I'm driving along and I'm conceal like I'm breaking out in a sweat and I'm going, oh my God, he did this.

And I'm driving.

And I look over at him and he's smiling and he's looking back at me and man, oh God, he knows, I know.

And I at that point, that was one of the most terrifying moments I've ever experienced.

And I thought, if he makes a move on me, what am I going to do?

And I okay, I'll crash the car on his side.

Yeah.

You know, if I have to drive it into a parked car or do something, he he didn't make a move, but I was trying to figure out I only weighed about 100 pounds.

I, after coming back from Alaska, you know, it was despite all this and after his arrest and this revelation that you had, you still continued to communicate with him.

But and you said that was hard on you.

Why did you continue to communicate with him?

And I would say this goes back to your childhood.

It's hard, you know, you're you're struggling between these two ideas.

Yeah.

So after he's arrested it, it's not for about a year and a half.

My daughter by then is just getting ready to have her first birthday.

So it was.

It was 19, like December of 19, the very end of December, December 30th of 1977.

I get a phone call from him and he's in jail in Colorado, and he calls and he goes, hi.

And and I'm completely shocked that he's called me.

We're living out in the boonies at this time, in the peninsula.

And I don't even really know what to say because I have I'm all these things have been coming down.

Yeah, but he's in Colorado.

He's escaped, attempted to escape once and was caught.

Yep.

So he calls me and he and his the gist of his conversation is, well, what what would you think if I tried to escape?

I said, oh my God, why would you tried that once?

That didn't work out so well.

He's looking for your help.

Well, that's what we thought afterwards.

But at the time I didn't believe it could possibly.

He could be serious.

I, I we assumed that his conversations were being monitored and he was just kind of, you know, yanking the chain of his keepers.

Yeah, but it turns out he had a call a phone card so he could.

And he was representing himself so he could do this.

And that's the night he escaped.

And and that was so that was one of the times we talked.

And then he did escape and made it all the way to Florida.

But Florida, we were terrified that he would come to us.

But in Florida is when and when it was pretty sure he was never going to get out again.

And he was.

It looked like he was going to be executed.

That's when I started corresponding with him.

Yeah.

Why?

Because I thought he's not going to get out, that the end is inevitable.

And he needed to do something for the families of his victims.

At that point, you're trying to get him to be a little forthcoming.

Not such a gaslighter get help, right?

Yeah.

And that was my main goal, is some of these young women that he murdered and abducted.

They've they haven't even found the the remains of all of them yet.

And I thought maybe, maybe at this point, if I had any influence left on him that I was going to try my hardest to do something for the families.

Was this execution hard on you, or was it a relief?

How did how did it wash over you?

It was it was hard.

It was really hard because you remember I mean, it seems like, you know, hard to believe, but I, you know, I was mourning the person that he could have been.

Yeah.

And and yet I completely understood why people felt like they wanted to end his life, but it was awful.

Yeah.

You go through that.

You identified and cared for the idea of Ted, not the real Ted.

Yeah, not the well put.

Yeah, yeah.

You mentioned your daughter.

How do you handle this story with her?

What is how did you dole that out over the years?

Yeah.

How did you manage that?

That.

You know, I found out by doing this project and writing this book that, she was very affected by it as a young teenager.

She was 12 years old, roughly when, the execution took place.

And she wanted to know a lot of she wanted to know about it.

She was curious, but she never felt she could ask me about it because I was so traumatized by the whole thing that I never wanted to talk about it.

So we've we've a lot of things came out by doing this project, by keeping trauma, you know, contained like I did.

I was withholding and I didn't realize that.

So it was hard on her, too, because she knew about this, but she was afraid to ask.

And this has been good for you.

Yeah I, I couldn't even talk about it.

You know, before I started this book.

I didn't talk about it.

I kept it under wraps for 50 years.

It was, I felt like it was a story to tell and I wanted to get it out there.

And, you know, I thought about the families, too, that still don't know where their loved ones are.

And also, for young women out there, I still I'm an avid walker, and I see so many young women out walking in sort of remote areas with earbuds in their ears, and I've come up behind them and they don't hear me.

And I think one of the major services you provide in this book, too, is if this isn't a the boogeyman, this isn't some unattractive, somebody you'd immediately suspect to think, oh my gosh, stay away from that cat.

No, he was a very attractive person.

You liked him.

You were friends.

You looked up to him, you admired him.

And look what happened.

It's a it's a cautionary tale.

It is a cautionary tale that to be careful and not accept people right off, you know, take time to get to know what's behind you.

Everybody has a mask.

And Ted had one of the best ultimately.

And here's the here's the big question and a tough one.

What do you think drove Ted what's behind him?

You know, if I had an answer to that question, I think that that would be the ultimate thing.

But of course, I've I've wondered because when we were in Arkansas, Ted made a big effort to head back East because he wanted to find out who was biological.

Father was.

And he stopped on his way to visit us, and we had a great time.

He and I hung out and I showed him all around, but his big goal was to go to the Philadelphia area and see if he could find out more, you know, go dig up the documents or whatever it was.

He never was successful.

I think that really, really disturbed him and I would say never received his father's blessing.

Yeah.

If you're familiar with that concept.

Yeah.

That can that can really drive some people.

You talked about him.

You think he felt insufficient as a result of that?

I really I really think that there must have been some things that he was already detecting about himself that bothered him, and he wanted to to know more about his genealogical background.

Yeah.

No, father.

I mean, Johnny Bundy stepped in and my dad was a great was a very important figure to Ted in his life.

Yeah, but but I think he had a lot of unanswered questions, and I think he was angry about it.

I don't know, I mean, I'm just.

Yeah.

Speculating.

Yeah.

Last 60s here.

The big question for you, what is the big take away from this that you want us to get from this book.

What would that be?

You know, I think that, you know, not only with this, but in everything and in my life, in my professional life, I've found that everybody has a story and that it's important that if if there's any trauma in your life to not, suppress it, that it's important to talk about it and get it out.

It's been an unbelievable experience for me to do this, to write this book and to be able to talk about this and to explain that, that there's so many different levels and aspects to people's personalities and to be careful.

I don't want people to be freaked out, but yeah, but word to the wise, yes.

Just don't willy nilly go off with people you don't know.

And and that's thanks so much for sharing your story.

It is an amazing story.

It's an amazing book.

The book is Dark Tide.

Thank you.

Thank you.

People always wonder why the neighbors or the relatives didn't know the subject of a criminal probe was the bad guy.

The bottom line you can be blinded by closeness, by not being able to wrap your mind around the fact that your friend or loved one is capable of something terrible.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking.

You can find this program on the web at kbtc.org, stream it on the PBS app or listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

That's going to do it for this edition of northwest now.

Until next time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.

You.