Criminal Justice Professor to be Portrayed in TV Movie

Today@Sam Note---The Arts & Entertainment network, which has enjoyed success in the genres of biography, documentary and drama, has developed several projects for the upcoming television season highlighting the accomplishments of extraordinary individuals.

On Labor Day at 7 p.m. local time, Robert Keppel, SHSU associate professor of criminal justice and a serial killer expert, will be portrayed in the A&E-TV movie "The Riverman." Information about the movie is available online. The following is a story which was featured in the Huntsville Item on Aug. 29.

SHSU prof to be featured in 'killer' movie
By Matt Pederson/Staff Writer

Before Hannibal Lecter helped Clarice Starling capture serial killer Buffalo Bill in the movie "Silence of the Lambs," Ted Bundy helped Robert Keppel find the Green River killer, Gary L. Ridgway.

The only difference was with Keppel, it really happened.

And now, Keppel, an associate professor at Sam Houston State University, is getting his movie.

On Sept. 6, A&E cable network will premiere "The Riverman," a movie based on Ted Bundy helping investigators find the Green River Killer, a person suspected in nearly 50 murders in the Seattle-Portland region between 1982 and 1985. Ridgway confessed to 48 of the murders and pleaded guilty to those crimes in 2003.

"The movie is kind of an intense story about the duel between Ted Bundy and myself," Keppel said. "And that duel went on for 15 years."

Bundy, himself a convicted serial killer, confessed to 30 murders of young women that occurred between 1974 and 1978 in Washington, Utah, Colorado and Florida. However, some people estimate he may have killed more than 100 women.

Bundy was executed in Florida in 1989.

But while he was alive, the Green River case was not the first time he and Keppel were involved with each other. Keppel was on the investigative team that caught Bundy in 1975. Bundy escaped in 1977, though, and went on another killing spree before being arrested again in 1978.

In 1982, while on death row in Florida, Bundy offered to help find the Green River Killer, but he said he would only work with Keppel.

"He was not the easiest person in the world to deal with," Keppel said. "One thing is he was lying, cheating and stealing his whole life. He doesn't know when he's lying and when he isn't. The very first time that I met him in a Florida prison, he had just gotten out of segregation for having escape mechanisms in his cell. He ended up being very frail-looking to me."

It was hard to trust Bundy, but Keppel said he had ways to tell facts from fiction.

"What we would do is create a circumstance where he would tell us something that only he would know and the police would know," Keppel said. "Plus, you get a pretty good inclination of what he looks like when he tells the truth and what he looks like when he's lying."

Bruce Greenwood will be playing Keppel in the film. Greenwood recently played John F. Kennedy in "Thirteen Days," and was also in "I, Robot," "Double Jeopardy" and "Hollywood Homicide."

Keppel has already seen the movie, and is very happy with how it turned out. He also thought Greenwood did an excellent job of portraying him, even getting down some of his most subtle characteristics.

"He had to maintain his cool in circumstances that were really stressful," Keppel said. "He was able to speak with, I suppose, scholarly authority because he was a professor and did a lecture in the beginning of the movie about the signature characteristics of killers, and he did a very good job at that."

Part of the reason Greenwood was able to portray Keppel so well was the amount of research he put into the character.

"I know he read 'The Rivermen' and he was given a presentation by me on both 'The Rivermen' and the Green River cases," Keppel said, referring to the book he wrote about he and Bundy working together. "I went up to Halifax, Nova Scotia where they filmed it. I was up there for three days and I gave them presentations on Bundy and the Green River Killer. He also got the advantage of seeing me on various news clips."

The movie will be shown at 7 p.m. on Sept. 6 and again at 8 p.m. Sept. 9. In addition to Keppel being portrayed by Greenwood, Bundy will be played by Cary Elwes, who starred in "The Princess Bride."

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Media Contact: Julia May
August 30, 2003
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