‘And expose the sexual predator who made her feel like there was nothing left to live for.’
They run the video, without any commentary or voiceover. And I have to say, it’s pretty damning. Kirstin doesn’t go as far as naming names. But she makes it pretty obvious. Who pushed her into it. Who was responsible.
Bundy.
The video is shot in Kirstin’s bedroom. Through the webcam on her laptop. She’s sitting at her desk and, behind her, everything is white and pink, and My Little Pony, and either fluffy or lace. It looks like a child’s bedroom that’s been outfitted with no expense spared.
But a child’s bedroom inhabited by an adult.
She’s all made-up and wearing her favorite clothes. She looks really, really pretty. So innocent and sweet. She looks like someone’s daughter. Not someone’s one night stand. She looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. And try as I might, I just can’t imagine her mouth wrapped around Bundy’s penis and his semen lying on her tongue. It just doesn’t seem right. Which is the whole point of this little exercise, I guess.
It’s a silent video – in the age of the internet and the smartphone, as if talkies were never invented – with a Nickelback song as the soundtrack. Kirstin holds up a series of cards that she’s already prepared from a pile in front of her. These are the things that she wants to say, that she wants the world to know. These are all her secrets. Written neatly in black marker pen – all caps – on eight by ten pieces of white card, albeit with no regard for grammar, punctuation, or spelling. I wonder how a girl could reach her early twenties and still be writing like a ten-year-old. And I’d hate to be the guy who had to mark her term paper.
As she holds up each card, she acts out an emoticon that seems like it might be appropriate – as if she’s playing a game of charades, where everyone knows the answer before they see the mime.
She holds up the first card.
I MET A GUY
And the next:
HE WAS RILLY CUTE
She gives the thumbs-up sign and a big cheesy grin.
HE HAD A KRISPY KREME DO-NUT TATTOO UNDER HIS EYE
Couldn’t really be anyone else but Bundy.
LOL
She mimes a belly laugh.
I THOUGHT HE LOVED ME
I THOUGHT WEED BE 2GETHER 4EVER
She makes a heart with the finger and thumb of each hand, presses it against her chest and grins again.
AND HED TAKE CARE OF ME
I LET HIM TAKE PICTURES
She shakes her head to mime regret.
HE SAID THEY WERE JUST 4 US
She bites her lower lip and nods.
SO WEED REMEMBER R 1ST TIME 2GETHER
AND LOOK BACK AT THEM WHEN WE WERE RILLY RILLY OLD
AND REMEMBER HOW WE WERE
AND I BELEVED HIM
BUT IT WASNT TRUE
Kirstin shakes her head solemnly.
HE PUT THEM ON A WEBSITE
I NEVER FOUND OUT
UNTIL IT WAS 2 LATE
She frowns and nods her head again – slowly, a can-you-believe-it nod.
UNTIL MY BEST FREND TOLD ME
HER BROTHA HAD SEEN THEM
AND HAD THEM ON HIS FONE
HE TXTD THEM TO ALL HIS FRIENDS
THEN EVERYONE NEW
AND THEY WERE ALL TALKING ABOUT ME ON FACEBOOK
TAGGING MY NAME SO ID SEE IT
She’s given up miming along. Now she’s just throwing the cards up as quickly as she can, because she just wants this to be over. Because it’s really embarrassing airing this stuff in a public forum. Her face is a mask of regret.
THEY SAID TERRIBLE THINGS ABOUT ME
THEY CALLED ME A SLUT
AND A HORE
SAID I WAS A DRUGY.
It seems like the more emotionally devastating the story gets, the more her spelling fails her.
AND I WISH IT NEVER HAPPENED.
THAT ID NEVER MET HIM.
That’s where the video ends. I think back to the night I spent out with Bundy and Anna, watching him at work, and I decide she’s missing out the details, blurring others, to protect her dignity. Only half of it sounds like Bundy. The really bad bits. And I’m not cheapening what she went through, what she felt she had to do, but the rest of it’s a pretty clear-cut case of cyber-bullying, and who really knows which part was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Forrester Sachs is solemnly recounting Kirstin’s final hours, with all the gravitas he might employ if relating the death of a much-loved head of state. And he begins to intone the names of all the other girls who appeared on Bundy’s websites then ended up dead.
When he gets to ‘Daisy Taylor’ the penny drops. Daisy, the girl who worked with Jack in the campaign office. I’m not sure why I didn’t make the connection before. Maybe because things you see on TV never seem real, never seem to have any connection to your own life. They just seem like all the other things you see on TV that are just pretending to be real, pretending to be about real people and real events.