It was probably only a matter of time before someone made this documentary.

As the true crime genre ballooned in mainstream popularity, the odds of avoiding Ted Bundy became slimmer. He is a pillar of American true crime. He once called himself the only man "with a Ph.D. in serial murder," as if that was something to be proud of.

Perhaps if Netflix’s “Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” didn’t get it so wrong, another documentary would have. But “Conversations With a Killer,” with all its considerable hype, is now the biggest docuseries we have about the Washington killer, and it falls right into a trap Bundy set 30 years ago.

Bundy has long held an almost mythical status, in part because of the horror of his crimes, but also because he seemed to possess an intricate understanding of his own psychology. He was the eloquent, sophisticated serial killer, a trope societies the world over have elevated in pop culture. Jekyll and Hyde, Jack the Ripper, H.H. Holmes. They are gentleman killers, so gripping because their duplicity seems superhuman.

But this is all a lie. There is no such thing as a gentleman killer. Bundy was not special. He was not a genius. He was a pathetic misogynist so wounded by rejection he killed young women to feel powerful. In allowing his jailhouse interviews to narrate the show, the documentary allows Bundy — all over again — to wrap his meaningless life in self-aggrandizing fictions.

By asking Bundy to speak in the third-person, as a reporter did in the 1980s, we’re told Bundy could safely explore his own psyche without implicating himself in the 30-plus murders he is suspected of committing. If there’s anything we know with the benefit of hindsight, it’s that Bundy’s greatest skill was manipulation. The tapes are not truth; they are Bundy’s preferred version of events.

The effect is an infuriating whitewashing throughout “Conversations With a Killer.” In the second episode, Bundy’s explanation for why he killed is presented unchallenged.

“He realized that he couldn’t let the girl go [after raping her],” Bundy says. “So killing, to a degree, would become a way of destroying evidence.”

What the documentary fails to inform viewers until the final 15 minutes — and even then, it’s glossed over — is that Bundy didn’t kill as a method of evidence disposal. He loved the power death gave him. Those unfamiliar with Bundy’s story might walk away from “Conversations With a Killer” thinking Bundy’s methods were (sadly) run-of-the-mill: rape, then a quick death.

This is what “Conversations With a Killer” leaves out, whether because of narrative laziness or because it’s so disturbing, once known, it makes watching four hours of Bundy tapes absolutely intolerable:

Ted Bundy killed at least 30, but perhaps up to 100, young women across the United States in the 1970s. He would engage in necrophilia with their corpses, often for days after he’d killed them. He visited their bodies, too, enjoying watching them decompose.

Sometimes he cut off their heads with a hacksaw so he could admire them in his apartment. When he tired of them, he’d throw their heads and bodies in the woods for the animals. He said he burned one head in the fireplace of his then-girlfriend’s home.

Most of his victims were so badly decomposed, autopsies revealed little information. But in one case where the victim’s body still yielded some forensic evidence, police determined she’d been kept alive for days while Bundy repeatedly raped and strangled her. Other women’s bodies showed evidence of freshly shampooed hair and newly painted fingernails. Police believe Bundy did this.

You will not hear most of these facts in “Conversations With a Killer.” They were left out in favor of scenes with church elders, family and friends saying how normal, how handsome Ted was. Or, in the case of episodes three and four, an inordinate number of scenes covering Bundy’s complaints about jail. Knowing what Bundy did to an untold number of women, the documentary’s time spent on these moments — like the one where Bundy bemoans his daily cheese sandwich — are sickening. Who benefits from mentioning Bundy’s sandwich preferences? Who benefits from humanizing any bit of this monster’s life?

"I don't like being treated like an animal and I don't like people walking around and ogling me like I'm some kind of weirdo,” Bundy snarls in one tape. “Because I'm not."

Of course he was. He was the definition of abnormal. Every minute “Conversations With a Killer” spends on yet another anecdote about Bundy’s normal life is a minute wasted. We could learn about his victims — most of whom get barely a passing name-drop — but instead, the documentary legitimizes Bundy’s fantasy of normalcy. Bundy knew he wasn’t normal. Every action was a performance, from getting good grades to volunteering at a suicide hotline. He didn’t do nice things because he had a grain of goodness inside of him. He did them because they helped him blend in. Even from beyond the grave, he is manipulating us into believing this lie.

"Conversations With a Killer" focuses on building up this myth of Bundy, the attractive, ordinary man with the devil inside. Or, as Bundy puts in the closing moments of the show:

“The really scary thing is you can’t identify them. People don’t realize there are potential killers among them. How could anyone live in a society where people they liked, loved, lived with, worked with, and admired could the next day turn out to be the most demonic people imaginable?”

Bundy wanted us to live in fear. He wanted us to believe he could have lurked, handsome and normal, among us forever. But the cracks were always going to show. We found him out. He is wrong, as his capture and conviction show.

In ending on this quote, “Conversations With a Killer” wants you to be afraid.

But it has been three decades since we buried Ted Bundy. We don't have to give him that power anymore.