Imagine what it would be like to find out that the cousin you had fun with as a child grew up to be a serial killer.
That’s exactly what happened to Ted Bundy’s cousin, Edna Cowell Martin, in the 1970s, she writes in her new book, “Dark Tide.”
Martin, 72, is the first member of Bundy’s family to write a book about his experience growing up with the serial killer, who murdered at least 30 women and girls between 1974 and 1978.
In his memoir, Martin recalls first learning his cousin was guilty after Bundy was arrested and released on bail on kidnapping charges in 1975. Martin wanted to believe the cousin he thought he knew was innocent.
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Ted Bundy was accused of murdering at least 30 women and girls between 1974 and 1978. (Bettman/Getty Images)
One afternoon, Bundy was driving her after lunch to a bookstore near her campus to buy some things she needed.
“I ran in, got my stuff, and the register was facing the window, so I could see the back of the store down to the street, and people started running up to my left,” Martin recalled. “I wondered what was going on there. I had a bad feeling.”
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Edna Cowell Martin said she grew close to her cousin, Ted Bundy, as an adult and that she was like a “little sister” to him. (Handouts)
She left the bookstore and saw people “crowd together around someone, and then for a moment the crowd parted ways.”
“I saw my cousin standing in the middle, arms outstretched like a savior, slowly turning around and saying loudly over and over, ‘I’m Ted Bundy,'” Martin said. “That’s when I realized no one would do that if they were innocent.”
“That was the chilling moment when I went from hoping that it was all a huge mistake to realising this man was a monster.”
She said she and Bundy became close as adults and lived just blocks apart — she would occasionally invite him over to her house and he would hang out with her friends and roommates — so the news of his crimes was difficult to accept.
Ted Bundy (center) with his half-brothers. (Handouts)
“In January 1974, young women in my neighborhood began disappearing within walking distance of where I lived, which was where Ted lived,” Martin recalled. “Three of them disappeared and I later found out they had been murdered by Ted. One of them lived across the street, around the corner from me. He had walked from his apartment, past my apartment’s front door, around the corner and walked to her house. When I found that out, I felt horrible.”
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Martin begins the book with a shocking scene of the moment he first learned that Bundy had been arrested for attempted kidnapping in 1975, before the bookstore incident.
Martin begins the book with a shocking scene of the moment he first learned that Bundy had been arrested for attempted kidnapping in 1975, before the bookstore incident. (Handouts)
In 1975, she was in her 20s and packing king crab legs in a remote part of Alaska, a low-key job she’d started as an adventure with a college friend, when she heard the news that a cousin she’d once “adored” had been arrested.
She remembers receiving a phone call that changed the trajectory of her family’s life: “In this remote wilderness area, much more remote than it is now, it was a ship-to-shore call, and anyone who tuned in to that frequency” could hear her conversation. It was Martin’s brother calling to break the news that his cousin had been arrested.
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Edna Cowell Martin and her cousins vacationed together in a remote cabin in Washington state during the summer. (Handouts)
“It completely turned my life upside down,” Martin said, “and that’s how this whole thing started.”
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Martin’s book is a memoir about her life and Bundy’s odd place in it, a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t quite fit together, even though it’s in the same box as all the other pieces.
Her parents were intelligent and talented: they served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and her father was a renowned pianist and college professor of music.
Martin’s book is a memoir of her life and Bundy’s strange place in it. (Handouts)
Martin and her siblings were introduced to their cousin, Ted Bundy, at a young age when Bundy’s mother moved from Philadelphia to Washington state to live with supportive family members to raise her son alone. Bundy’s father was not there. Martin explains that her aunt, Louise Cowell, never told the family who her son’s father was.
“This is just my theory, but Louise and her attempts to protect [Bundy]”I never told my son who his biological father was and I know that really bothered him,” Martin said.
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A letter from Edna’s brother, John, informing her of Ted Bundy’s arrest. (Handouts)
In 1969, while she was living in Fayetteville, Arkansas (her family had moved there from Washington in the 1960s when her father took a new job), Bundy “went out of his way” to visit his parents on his way to Philadelphia and “look for information about his biological father,” Martin explained.
“I think that would have cleared a lot of questions for him,” Martin said. “We don’t know anything about his biological father, we don’t know if he had any mental illness or anything like that. … That’s a big question.”
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Martin’s book looks back on his time with Bundy as a child and his time with him as an adult when he began to question his actions. The book includes letters the serial killer wrote to his family while in prison before his execution in 1989, which give a glimpse into his narcissistic personality.
Edna Cowell Martin (left) with her daughter and husband, Don. (Handouts)
“He even went so far as to suggest that I was getting too emotional about these things, that I should know myself better, and that if I knew myself I would calm down and not get so emotional,” Martin recalled of her interactions with Bundy after his arrest. “He kept making me more and more angry, and I would write him back, and he would quote the Bible, and I got so upset about that.”
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Martin also describes the impact Bundy’s crimes have had on her, both as a young woman who once looked up to him as a cousin, and as a family that for decades tried to turn a blind eye to Bundy’s crimes.
“I hope this book helps somebody,” Martin said of her book. “We don’t get to choose our family, you know? Family is family. Good family or bad family. … There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Dark Tide” was released on July 23rd.
