Product Description

As a brand-new lawyer, Polly Nelson was offered serial-kiiler Ted Bundy's case as a pro bono project for her prestigious Washington, DC law firm just weeks before he was scheduled to be executed. Defending the Devil is a unique and candid look at the Bundy case and at Nelson's three-year personal battle to balance her duties as a lawyer, her compassion for human life, and the inhuman crimes her client had committed.

Through the obstacles and setbacks faced by Nelson there was Ted Bundy himself. While his crimes show the extremely violent side of his personality, there were many other sides --many other extreme sides--that the public never saw. Ranging from shy and defensive to a narcissistic performer, Bundy professed his innocence by day while offering confessions to the police and helping the FBI at night. His own worst enemy, Bundy seemed never to understand the severity of his crimes, the punishment, or the public's reaction to them. Through it all stood Nelson, defending him from both the system and himself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #323862 in Books
• Published on: 1994-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Bundy, who admitted to at least 30 murders and was executed in Florida in 1989, was one of America's most publicized serial killers, which perhaps explains the publication of this rather tedious account of the legal maneuvering that preceded his death. Nelson, an inexperienced associate of a Washington firm specializing in corporate law, accepted the case without knowing what it might entail. Yet she came to believe, as she notes twice in the first two chapters, "I was born to represent Ted Bundy." She went to work on the litigation in 1985, six years after Bundy had been convicted, drafting and/or presenting numerous appeals to various courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. But while the legal wrangling may interest lawyers, lay readers will not find it absorbing. The only material of general interest is Nelson's portrait of her client: she found him ingratiating but not especially bright, and adjudged him incompetent in legal matters, contrary to his own view. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
"I was born to represent Ted Bundy," writes lawyer Nelson, the reluctant heroine of this saga of serial killer Bundy's last three years of life. Assigned to the case as a "pro bono" project by her Washington law firm, Nelson details the tactics she used to keep Bundy off death row. The case was impossible to win, and the crimes against women would have repelled almost any female attorney except the humanitarian Nelson, who contends that "all human life is sacred, without judgment or distinction, and...the truly heinous cases...test whether we as a people and as a society really mean that." Like the heroines of the novels of old, Nelson plunges ahead in a battle that almost cost her sanity. Although often tedious, the book is useful as a legal study and a look at the motivations of a serial killer. An optional purchase.
--Frances Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Nelson was a new associate at a prestigious law firm when she was offered the chance to represent mass murderer Ted Bundy during his appeals to avoid execution. She came to feel 100% responsible for saving . . . Bundy's life, even as she experienced revulsion at Bundy's many heinous acts and questioned her own efforts to keep him alive. She tries to discount certain Bundy myths, such as the picture of Bundy as a brilliant, evil genius, able to use and confuse the legal system. Although he had his flashes, in general Nelson portrays Bundy as intellectually shallow. She also describes him as the caring father of a daughter born after he was placed on death row. She concludes that Bundy's execution was tragic because the death penalty lessens all participants; it's an argument many readers will have difficulty accepting, given the homicidal psychopath that Nelson further reveals. Brian McCombie

Customer Reviews

A very good behind-the-scenes look
In early 1986, a young attorney named Polly Nelson took on a case that would catapult her name into the headlines. Yet because the job was to save Ted Bundy from Florida's electric chair, the publicity wasn't favorable. Reporters would invariably ask "what about the victims?" and Nelson would have no answer. In the end, Nelson and her colleagues would fail to persuade the courts that Bundy deserved to live, and he would be put to death in January 1989. Even staunch death penalty foes refused to protest at the prison as Bundy, the very personification of evil, died in Old Sparky.

This is much more than a sob story for Ted Bundy, however. Nelson's book has an agenda, but it really doesn't involve deifying Bundy. Rather, Nelson believes that the American justice system is unfair to convicts facing death sentences, and her passion is clearly not for Ted Bundy but instead for justice. Keep in mind that she was a neophyte attorney with very little experience -- she didn't even know who Ted Bundy was when she took the case. Her story isn't just about a horrible serial killer; it's about the judges and court clerks and prosecutors and public defenders who together held a man's life in their hands. She does put forth some questionable theories, such as Bundy's being mentally ill (manic depressive) and being forcibly tranquilized on the day of his critical May 1979 plea hearing, but to her credit she appears to simply be acting as a good lawyer who is exploring all the evidence -- not as someone who thinks Bundy got a raw deal and should go free.

If you are a true crime fan who also has an interest in jurisprudence, this book will probably interest you. If instead you are primarily interested in Bundy himself, this book still has plenty of relevant information to offer. For example, Nelson exposes the role of Diana Weiner as being more than just Bundy's civil attorney. She discusses Bundy's meetings with psychiatrist Dr. Dorothy Lewis. And she offers a great deal of insight into Bundy's Florida trials where Bundy sometimes acted as his own counsel, essentially signing his own death warrant with his grandstanding. This book is a very good supplement to the other books on Ted Bundy.

Kinda creepy
What got to me most about this book is how attached Nelson becomes to Bundy. Being passionate about your opposition to the death penalty is one thing; speaking of a monster like Bundy as "my Ted" and buying him a Mickey Mouse watch when you go to Disneyland is something else. However, this does give a detailed look at Bundy's case from the judicial perspective, which hasn't been covered much before. Most people seem to want to read about the details of Bundy's gruesome crimes; if you've read all those books and want a new perspective, this is a worthwhile read.

The last and closest look at America's most nororious killer
Just as Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me gave us an eyewitness account of the beginnings and middle of Ted Bundy's gruesome criminal career, Defending the Devil gives us an up-close look at the end. Consider this a companion piece.