Imagine finding out that the cousin you spent the best part of your childhood with grew up to be a serial killer.
Edna Cowell Martin, Ted Bundy’s cousin, says in her new memoir, “Dark Tide,” that’s what happened to her in the 1970s.
Martin, 72, is the first of Bundy’s relatives to write a book about growing up with the serial killer, who murdered at least 30 women and girls between 1974 and 1978.
In her memoir, Martin recalled the moment she first learned her cousin was guilty. It was 1975, and Bundy was arrested for kidnapping and released on bail. Martin still wants to believe that the cousin she thought she knew is innocent.
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Ted Bundy was accused of killing at least 30 women and girls between 1974 and 1978. (Bateman/Getty Images)
After lunch one afternoon, Bundy drove her to a bookstore near a university so she could buy what she needed.
“I ran in, got my stuff, and the register was facing the window. So, I could see the street below the back of the store… and all these people were pointing to my left and rushing down,” Martin recalled. “I wonder what happened there. I just had a bad feeling that something wasn’t quite right.”
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Edna Cowell Martin said she was close to her cousin Ted Bundy as an adult. She said she was like his “sister.” (Handout)
She walked out of the bookstore and saw people “circling around someone, and then the crowd parted for a moment.”
“I saw my cousin in the center of it, and he was standing there with his hands outstretched like some kind of savior, and he was talking loudly and slowly turning around and saying, ‘I’m Ted Bundy,’ And then do it again,” Martin said. “That’s when it dawned on me that no one would do this if they were innocent.”
“It was a chilling moment where I went from desperately hoping this was all a big mistake to realizing this man was a monster.”
She said she and Bundy were close throughout their adult lives and lived just a few blocks apart. She would occasionally invite him over and he would hang out with her friends and roommates. That made the news of his crimes harder to digest, she said.
Ted Bundy (center) poses with his half-brothers and sisters. (Handout)
“In January of ’74, young women started disappearing from my neighborhood, within walking distance of where I lived — within walking distance of where Ted lived,” Martin recalled. “Three of them went missing and were later found murdered by him. One of them lived across the street from me and around the corner. So, Ted would be walking out of his apartment and walking by the front door of my apartment building… around when I When I found this out…I felt so bad.
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Martin begins the book with a jarring scene, when she first learns that Bundy was first arrested for attempted kidnapping in 1975, before the bookstore incident.
Martin begins the book with a jarring scene, when she first learns that Bundy was first arrested for attempted kidnapping in 1975, before the bookstore incident. (Handout)
In 1975, she was in her 20s, packing king crab legs in a remote area of Alaska—a humble job she took on with college friends for the sake of adventure—when she heard that she once “worshipped” was arrested when news broke that his cousin had been killed.
She remembers receiving a phone call that changed the course of her family’s lives “in this remote place in the wilderness – things were much more unstable then than they are now… over a ship-to-shore phone call frequency that anyone could listen to.” and overheard her conversation. Martin’s brother called to break the news that their cousin had just been arrested.
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During the summer, Edna Cowell Martin vacationed with her cousins at a remote cabin in Washington state. (Handout)
“It completely turned my life upside down,” Martin said. “That’s how it all started.”
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Martin’s book, a memoir about her life and Bundy’s strange place in it, is a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t quite fit, even though it fits in the same box as all the other pieces.
Her parents were intelligent and accomplished. They served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Her father was a famous pianist and college professor of music.
Martin’s book is a memoir about her life and Bundy’s strange place in it. (Handout)
Martin and her brother were introduced to their cousin, Ted Bundy, at a young age when his mother moved from Philadelphia to Washington state to be with family who would support her on her own Raising a son, Bundy’s father is not in the picture. Martin explained that her aunt Louise Cowell never told the family who her son’s father was.
“This is just a theory I have, that Louise and she were trying to protect [Bundy]never told him who his biological father was, and I know that really bothered him,” Martin said.
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A letter from Edna’s brother, John, sharing the news of Ted Bundy’s arrest. (Handout)
In 1969, she was living in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where her family had moved from Washington in the 1960s after her father found a new job, and Bundy made a “special trip” to visit them on his way to Philadelphia, “looking for Information about his life”. The biological father,” Martin explained.
“I think that answers a lot of his questions,” Martin said. “We don’t know anything about his biological father or if he suffered from any mental illness or any other illness. … That’s a big question mark.”
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Martin’s book looks back at her time with Bundy as a child and the time as an adult when she began to have doubts about Bundy’s behavior. The book contains letters the serial killer wrote to his family from prison before his execution in 1989, which reveal his narcissistic character.
Edna Cowell Martin (left), her daughter and her husband Don. (Handout)
“He even suggested that I was being too emotional about these things and that I should understand myself better and once I understood myself, I would calm down and not be so emotional,” Martin recalled of her relationship with Bundy after his death. Dee’s correspondence. “He made me angrier and angrier, and I wrote him back and he quoted scripture. I got really angry about it.”
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Martin also explained the impact Bundy’s crimes had on her, who she considered a cousin when she was younger, and her family, who had tried to stay out of Bundy’s spotlight for decades.
Martin said of her book: “I hope it helps someone because we don’t get to choose our families, right? They are who they are. Whether they’re good or bad… there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Undertow” will be released on July 23.
