Till Kingdom Come. Andrej Nikolaidis

a truth to the detriment of one person and the advantage of another, who probably, or rather certainly, has skeletons of their own in the closet. Such a truth is only a partial truth and therefore not the truth at all. Your most brilliant stroke is just the move of a pawn: You are lifted up and put down again on the board so as to keep playing your paltry role as a fighter for the truth, for which you will of course be paid and perhaps even recognized by society.

      You’ll be the hero of a game in which the media raise the symbolic capital of the interest groups behind them and undermine the symbolic capital of their rivals, who retaliate in kind.

      The thought that anyone could consider me the conscience of society was frightening. I despised society, as deeply as can be, and it choosing me to be a guardian of its conscience was irrefutable proof that I was right to do so.

      One of my really top-notch pieces, or so I considered it at the time, set off a chain of events that saw me leave the safety of home and reject the precious rituals that had given my existence a degree of predictability and structure. The water flowed out of the narrow, concreted channel it had crept along, never to return.

      6

      Do you like anniversaries and find them meaningful? Do they give you a sense of security and continuity? People need something to keep them grounded, you think, and just can’t allow themselves to be swept along by the floodwaters of time?

      Then here’s a good anniversary for you.

      On Sunday it was four decades since Theodore Robert Bundy, nicknamed Ted, killed Lynda Ann Healy and thus began his killing spree. All that remained of the girl were the blood-stained sheets in her basement flat in Seattle. Two and a half months later Ted killed Donna Gail Manson, who was not related to Charles or Marilyn Manson.

      Bundy went on killing, absolutely unhindered, until September of the next year. He was one of the most infamous serial killers. When he was finally arrested, the American authorities were so inept that they allowed him to escape twice: Once only briefly, but the second time, in January 1978, for long enough to break into an isolated house, where he raped two women and beat them to death with a wooden club. One hour later, Ted had moved on and bludgeoned a woman in another house. It was not until July 1979 that he was arrested again and condemned to death.

      Ted diligently penned appeal after appeal and, as a God-fearing American, was able to have his execution postponed for ten whole years. He even acted as a police consultant in the case of the Green River serial killer. That slayer was never caught, but Bundy’s public-private partnership with the police served as a model for the cooperation of the law-enforcement agencies and the maniac in the film we all love – The Silence of the Lambs. Before he was executed, he confessed to twenty murders, although it’s estimated that he left over one hundred victims in his path.

      Apart from being a serial killer, Ted Bundy was a Republican Party activist.

      John Wayne Gacy was... you know, different to Bundy. A Teddy-boy who raped and killed girls – Gacy preferred boys. Bundy was a handsome, charismatic killer, while the namesake of John ‘The Duke’ Wayne was a paunchy, nondescript boy from the block. Bundy behaved like a star, while Gacy did his best to be friendly to everyone and, if possible, to blend into the background.

      Gacy hid the corpses of his victims under his house. When he ran out of space, he threw them in the nearby river. At his trial, he confessed thirty-three murders. He was sentenced to twenty-one life sentences and twelve death penalties.