Robert D. Keppel
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Robert D. Keppel (born 1944) is a former Seattle, Washington police detective most known for his work tracking serial killers Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer.
Keppel first encountered the "Ted Murders" just one week after beginning work as a homicide detective. He investigated Bundy and his crimes extensively, and continued an erstwhile correspondence with him from the time of his initial imprisonment to his execution in 1989, at one point consulting him in order to form a profile of the then at-large Green River Killer. While Bundy was of little help to that investigation, Keppel was able to get him to confess to several unsolved murders.
Together with forensic psychologist and criminal profiler Richard Walter, Keppel published a groundbreaking article which groups sexual murderers into 4 distinct sub-types: power-assertive, power- reassurance, anger-retaliatory, and anger-excitation or sadism. Walter and Keppel also created the HITS database, which provides crime and offender characteristics for law enforcement.
Keppel has a Ph.D. in criminology from the University of Washington (1995). Keppel retired as chief criminal investigator for the Washington State Attorney General's Office. He joined the faculty of the University of Washington. As of 2006, Keppel was an associate professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University in Texas. He currently teaches class at Sam Houston State from his home in Washington, through the use of teleconference.
Keppel is author of The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer, published in 1995 and made into a made-for-TV movie in 2004, starring Bruce Greenwood as Keppel and Cary Elwes as Bundy. He is also the author of many textbooks regarding criminal justice and related topics.
Author Thomas Harris based the relationship between FBI trainee Clarice Starling and serial killer Hannibal Lecter in his novel The Silence of the Lambs in part upon interviews between Keppel and Bundy.
