Thread by @RiseToLiberty

🧵The Beast & His Savior - FMSF Pt. 5

It was a crisp, overcast & dreary February morning in 1976.
Downtown Salt Lake City, Utah.

Theodore Bundy walks into Salt Lake City’s Third District Court with his then attorney, John D. O'Connell. He was accused of abducting a teenage girl from a mall parking lot in November 1974.

Bundy was arrested August 16, 1975 in SLC for failure to stop for the police. A search of his car revealed his murder kit. The kit included: a ski mask, crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, icepick, & other items that were thought by the police to be burglary tools.

Bundy’s defense attorney, John O’Connell, knew he had to undermine DaRonch's identification. In December 1975, he contacted Elizabeth Loftus (an expert on memory & eyewitness testimony) & convinced her to appear as an expert witness on behalf of Ted Bundy.

Loftus later wrote a book, Witness for the Defense, which she devoted an entire chapter to her experience.

“The thought had occurred to me as I was flying to Salt Lake City earlier that day that Ted Bundy might offer to let me stay in his apartment” (p. 74).

O’Connell admitted to Loftus that Bundy was a suspect in the “Ted cases” from the Pacific Northwest, but said no evidence connected him to DaRonch’s attack; there was just her identification & some type O blood drops on her clothing. Type O matched a large percentage of men. Unfortunately, Bundy could not establish an alibi.

DaRonch was first shown a photo of Bundy in a group of photos, but she wasn’t sure. O’Connell told Loftus that she’d hesitantly said, “I guess it looks something like him.”
A few days later, an officer showed her a driver’s license photo of Bundy without the context of other photos & she said Bundy was the man.

Just an hour after the ordeal, DaRonch couldn’t recall key facts about her assailant, his car or his weapon.
She initially described black shoes but changed to reddish-brown, the fake badge her attacker had flashed was all gold, but she added more colors after an officer showed her a real badge.
She described Bundy’s car as white or light blue, then changed to beige (the actual color).

O’Connell drew Loftus' attention to inconsistencies between DaRonch’s initial description to the police and her later recollections, as well as the increase over time of her level of confidence. She'd been hesitant at first and now she was certain.

“In court the next morning I sat at a table in the judge’s chambers. On the other side of the table, close enough for me to reach across & touch him, sat Ted Bundy. He’s adorable, I thought, surprised at my first impression, because I’d pictured him in my mind as brooding, dark, intense disdain” (p. 83).

Elizabeth Loftus took the stand on Wednesday, February 25, 1976, at the Third District Court in Salt Lake City.

killerinthearchives.blog/trial-transcri…

The stress of DaRonch ordeal & fear for her life, Loftus knew, had likely affected her recollections.

“When people are afraid, their memories slip & slide, neglecting details, rearranging facts. When we remember, we pull pieces of the past out of some mysterious region in the brain – jagged pieces that we sort & shift, arrange & rearrange until they fit into a pattern that makes sense… it is part fact, part fiction, a warped & twisted reconstruction of reality.”

Bundy was tried before a judge, not a jury, & Loftus was the defense’s star witness. She showed the common notion about memory operating as a video-recorder are untrue. Then pointed out the inconsistencies in DaRonch’s statements.

In the end, on March 2, 1976, the judge found Bundy guilty of aggravated kidnapping. Loftus writes that he made his decision based on his own evaluation of Bundy.

Loftus admits she found Bundy’s reactions in court disconcerting. He was smiling, confident. More like a conman.

When Loftus agreed to testify, she stated it was no defense of Bundy; instead, it was an agreement to make a detached presentation of what she knew about memory from research. “It is my job.”

We all know who Bundy is, but who is this Elizabeth Loftus? 🤔

If you don’t know who she is, I wouldn’t blame you. But I guarantee she has significantly effected events that you do know of.

What does Ted Bundy, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, the LAPD who beat Rodney King, Michael Jackson, & O.J. Simpson all have in common?

That’s right. Elizabeth Loftus!

Elizabeth Loftus Ph.D is the country’s leading psychologist, acclaimed for her research into human memory, eyewitness fallibility, the misinformation effect, & her contributions to the study of False Memory Syndrome.

She has published 22 books & over 500 scientific articles…

She has appeared as a expert witness in over 300 high profile trials. Including the ones mentioned above but also testified for Oliver North, Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, & the McMartin Preschool case.

She is the former president of the Association for Psychological Science…

She has done several TedTalks, & my personal favorite accomplishment…

Founding member of The False Memory Syndrome Foundation. Which also gave her a spot on the FMSF Scientific Advisory Board.

Yay! 🥳🥳🥳 Sooo accomplished!

In March of 1992, with 20 prominent “mental health” professionals, such as Paul McHugh, the head of the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins University Medical School (1975 to 2001), Elizabeth Loftus, & let’s not forget Peter & Pamela Freyd co-founded the FMSF.

While Peter & Pamela Freyd coined the term, false memory syndrome, Paul McHugh defined it as “a condition in which a person’s identity & interpersonal relationships are centered around a memory of traumatic experience which is objectively false but in which the person strongly believes.”

According to McHugh, the false memory in question is typically a delayed memory that emerges during the course of psychotherapy. Thus originated recovered memory therapy, a second neologism that is often paired with the false memory syndrome.

In 1989, Washington was the first state to pass a law that enabled people to sue for damages suffered as a result of childhood sexual abuse within three years of the time that they remembered the incidents. By the end of 1992, 18 other states had passed similar laws.

The accused were looking for a defense, & Loftus’s work provided them with exactly that.

In a 1999 FMSF newsletter, Pamela Freyd stated these changes were the reason for the FMSF, saying: “The Foundation came into existence because of the many lawsuits that were being brought against families based on no other evidence than a claim of recovered repressed memories.”