The Stranger Beside Me: She Worked Beside a Killer

Seattle, 1971. Ann Rule takes a volunteer shift at a crisis hotline. Working the phones beside her, night after night, is a charming young law student named Ted Bundy. She likes him. She has no idea what he is.

That's the hook behind The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule's landmark true crime book. Rule was already writing about an unidentified serial killer terrorizing the Pacific Northwest — never guessing the subject of her own manuscript was sitting right next to her. As the body count climbed and suspicion closed in on Bundy, Rule found herself caught between friendship and the growing, horrifying realization that she might know exactly who was responsible.

What makes this book different from the dozens of others written about Bundy is access nobody else had — personal letters, phone calls, and a front-row seat to his unraveling, before and after his arrest. Rule kept revising the book for decades as new details and additional confessions surfaced, right up until Bundy's execution in 1989. It remains one of the most cited true crime books ever written, still assigned in criminology courses and still debated by true crime communities for what it reveals about how easily monsters hide in plain sight.

If you've only seen Bundy through documentaries and dramatizations, this is the one written by someone who actually sat beside him. Add it to your shelf tonight and find it on Goodreads to grab a copy.