For those of you who’ve read my work, you’ll know I’m no stranger to controversy. So, this next piece, will be a little, well, dark, shall we say? In the above picture, what do you see? It’s a classic VW Beetle. Nothing bad there. But this particular Beetle has caused a huge amount of grief stateside, followed by controversy. It was hidden under a black cloth and when it came off what people saw at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment was a 1968 VW Beetle, exactly like what you’re seeing. But it wasn’t so much what it was as WHO it was.The Washington Post reports that this hitlerite vehicle belonged to another serial killer: Ted Bundy. What you see here isn’t a cheap reliable car, but the death sentence for many people. And speaking of sentence, the same car became Bundy’s undoing: A routine stop of the Volkswagen that looked out of place in a suburb of Salt Lake City, led to Bundy’s arrest.
This is not where the story ends, and there are more cars, enough to fill a museum: After his trial and conviction, Bundy escaped and stole a Cadillac. Again, a traffic stop led to his arrest: He was weaving in and out of the lane and was pulled over. Back in custody, he escaped again. He stole a MG, bad choice: The MG broke down. He had to take public transportation. In Ann Arbor; he stole a car “of Japanese manufacture.” On to Florida, where he redeveloped his brand loyalty to the Volkswagen. He helps himself to another Bug. Another routine stop. Plate is called in, comes up as stolen. Bundy is arrested again. At 7:06 a.m. local time on January 24, 1989, Ted Bundy was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida.
The sight of the first VW’s unveiling made the Washington Post wax morbid poetry, “Bundy’s Bug may be the most notorious because it was so intimately connected to its owner’s crimes. Bundy killed in this car is the frisson you’re supposed to feel when looking at something that was not just a tool, but a container for death. ”
“This was kind of like a death wagon,” said Wyndell C. Watkins Sr., a retired D.C. police deputy chief. D.C. has museums galore, but it lacks an antique car museum. The National Museum of Crime and Punishment fills that void, with a sordid twist: The museum is also home to O.J Simpson’s Ford Bronco and the Washington D.C Sniper’s Chevrolet Caprice, complete with retrofitted gun emplacements. Bundy’s Bug is real, the sniper Chevy is a replica, a mock-up, used at trial.
TTAC is not adverse to morbid subject matter, but this being a week-end, I offer to you a little upper for your brooding mood by clicking on this link here to see the stunt pulled on O.J Simpson by the BBC.
So my question to the B&B is this. Should morose motorised monuments like this have a place in a museum? Or should it be consigned to the scrap heap – of history, if you insist?
hitlerrite?
Ok. Whatever you say.
Porsche is also hitlerrite and always has been. Especially now that they are back in the hitlerrite VW fold.
How about destroying most of the Mercedes-Benz 770Ks that were made. A healthy percentage was used by the Nazi high command. They killed more people in 1 second than Bundy did in his whole life. The cars should be confiscated and crushed because the cars are a symbol and a reminder of Nazis.
While we are at it, Grand Prix Auto Unions and Mercedes of that era were nothing but advertising to show the superiority of Nazi Germany.
It’s a private museum co-owned by John Walsh. I’ll give the guy a pass any day of the week.
As important as it is to remember the lessons of history, attempts to link today’s builders of VW and Porsche to the Third Reich are tiresome, and downright cheap shots…and that’s coming from someone with European relatives who were imprisoned, enslaved and tortured by the Nazis. Let’s face it, at one time many (if not most) of our trading partners were at war with the U.S., but that’s why wars typically come to an end with treaties.
Funny how these finger-pointers never mention GM’s Opel or Ford-Werke GmbH, yet both were equally involved in the production of Nazi wartime materiel. Or for that matter, Bayer AG.
This constant Nazi fetish makes about as much sense as mentioning that we should boycott British goods because of that “little tax issue” in the 18th century and attempts to topple the United States in the early 19th century.
Oh, and if a vehicle is produced in one of 11 U.S. states, I suppose we should always mention that slavery was once allowed…
And everyone is spelling Hitlerite wrong.
a. The Hillside Strangler is the media epithet for two men, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono not Bundy.
b. Why does everyone always need to bash the Nazi’s? Sure they lacked certain social skills but they had some great vehicles.
Duly corrected. That was my boss getting a little mixed up.
Listen; one Nazi, two Nazis! If you want to say something belonged to a Nazi you write (or say) Nazi’s. There is no apostrophe for plural, which means more than one Nazi!
The idea kinda creeps me out. I’d rather know they were in private collections, but we are a capitalist society and I don’t doubt that publicly displaying them would draw a certain segment of the population willing to pay to see them. Fair enough. It still creeps me out. I wonder what the families of the victims think…..
What you see here isn’t a cheap reliable car, but the death sentence for many people…
Do you get paid to write this stuff? Oh well, my expectations are not high, anyway. This sort of thing underscores the general decline of journalism and logic today. Where the object replaces the actor. How often do we read in our newspapers: “Man Killed by SUV?”
Bundy’s Bug is just a bug. It has no significance for belonging to him. It wasn’t modified for killing, it just happened to be his car.
I don’t want to see Bundy’s Bug anymore than I’d care about seeing Hitler’s fountain pen.
The caprice, even though just a mock up, is maybe museum worthy, as the snipers made holes in the car from which to sight and shoot.
Why not display the Bug in a museum? The car in which Bonnie and Clyde were shot–and shot–and shot, etc., toured the country for years to entertain gawkers. There’s a museum in D.C. that features the blood-soaked pillow that supported Lincoln’s head as he died. Most anything connected to fame or infamy can wind up in a museum.
Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI: Letter from Clyde praising the performance of Ford V-8’s (some dispute its authenticity), (blood-stained) chair in which Lincoln was shot (nobody disputes its authenticity).
Most major aeroplane museums: Nazi planes, jets, rockets.
Deutschs museum: All kinds of Nazi-era stuff.
Kz-camps: All are memorials, but some are pure memorials (e.g. Bergen-Belsen), the buildings having been levelled and replaced with memorials, while others (e.g. Mauthausen, Dachau, Auschwicz) have a 2nd-ary museum function). Holocaust museums.
Would it were otherwise, but there is also evil in this world, and its history, and the proper display and interpretation of the objects that bore witness to this history, serve as reminders and lessons.
Even if we were to destroy every object or record of the sadder or nastier parts of human history, we would come no closer to happiness or virtue, nor to preventing the very evil we abhore (and probably quite the opposite).
While not everybody’s cup of tea, such artifacts, properly displayed and interpreted, perform a learning function.
p.s. I think I would be more creeped-out if the Bug were not in this museum, but were being honoured in some “private collection” (kinda like Napoleon’s penis.)
The Bonnie and Clyde car is bullet ridden, so there is something marking it as different from a run of the mill car.
Bundy’s Bug could be replaced by any tan ’68 Bug and no one would no the difference.
Ted Bundy’s last arrest occured in Pensacola, Florida which is my hometown. I was still living in Pensacola when Bundy was executed. One of the local rock radio stations used to have a daily feature called the Ultimate Six Pack. Once a day they would play six songs that were selected based on a particular theme. The day Bundy was executed they did a Ted Bundy Ultimate Six Pack. This set included Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey” and Styx’s “Renegade.”
These vehicles now lead redeemed lives by earning their new owners cash, rather than being tools of death or owned by ghouls. Even better if someone wants to pay to see them.
The video is great.
I have never understood why they cleaned and then rebuilt the SS-100-X within days of the Kennedy assasination. Couldn’t they just had commissioned a new one, and left this one for the history? Imagine to see the real car, with blood stains and bulletholes, right as it was. If not for the public, so at least for all the conspiracy buffs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-100-X
Why was this car cleaned and repaired so quickly? The conspiracy buffs would attribute this to a post-assasination cover-up aimed at destroying physical evidence.
There is also the fact that this limo was practically brand new and would soon be needed to transport President Johnson. Building a replacement would have taken some time. This is a reasonable, non-conspiracy explaination for why Ford and the Secret Service got the car back into service as quickly as possble.
Oh yeah, I forgot this one … it too is in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI…
This car was owned by Ford Motor and leased to the U.S. gov’t. I presume the actions taken were two fold, clean and re-do the interior so it could get back into service for Pres. Johnson (govt’s wish) and try to break the negative association with the assination and reinforce the positive association with presidential use (Ford’s wish.)
Oops… while I was reading and then typing mine, Joe beat me; needless to say I agree with his statements! ;O)
Did the guy that mows the “grassy knoll” ever write a book about his career?
The Texas School Book Depository is now too a museum.
No, but some nutcase who worked with Oswald at a coffee company in New Orleans wrote a tome in which she claims that she and Lee Harvey were anti-communist CIA operatives, and that they carried out a torrid affair.
This was during or slightly after the time that she claimed to be on the verge of finding a cure for cancer.
And no, I’m not making this stuff up…
I think his lawn mower is on display somewhere.
+100 BuzzDog,
As might be surmised from the handle, I’m aware of Porsche’s wartime service. I’m also well aware that the current Catholic Pope served in the the Luftwaffe.
‘Tis always half amusing, half scary when the uninformed start picking out groups or companies inside the Third Reich to villify, while being (willfully) ignorant of the fact that who/whatever the targeted offender, there’s a collaborative connection to you, your company, your friends, or your money.
Historical objects are just that – objects. The object didn’t kill anybody, a human using or directing that object did.
That being said, some places or objects are evocative on some level. Bundy’s Bug? Might be interesting as part of a collection of his personal effects.
The bullet-riddled 1933 Ford sedan in which Bonnie and Clyde met their end is on display at a casino in Primm, Nevada, as well as some Chicago prohibition-era Lincoln, which doesn’t have nearly the perforations.
I would classify Hitler as a mass murderer, not as a serial killer. Invoking Hitler here strains Godwin’s Law to its absolute limits.
Nonetheless, cars can function as important historical artefacts. Mussolini was captured in his mistress’s Alfa, was he not? And I seem to remember that the Imperial Palace car museum in Vegas had (maybe still has) this car as well as one of Hilter’s enormous Benzes. Seeing those cars was certainly a powerful experience…
What, no mention of “VW are” doing this or that?
You guys leave the lady alone.
I edited in the hitlerite reference – sorry, too bad a pun to pass up. I have amassed enough license to do that: I worked for that company for 30 years, and sordid jokes about their founder was daily fair at the factory, like it or not. They made certain parts of the history bearable.
And as the late Werner Butter, formerly Creative Director of Doyle Dane Bernbach, and creator of many timeless VW advertising classics liked to say:
“Rather lose a good friend than pass up on a bad joke.”
One more thing: When I was young and reckless, shocking people was hard work. Now that I’m only reckless, some make the shocking part much too easy.