On TV, he's all affable goofiness. But Late Night host Conan O'Brien has a taste for the dark side.

"I like true crime," says the gabmeister, whose show (weeknights, 12:35 am/ET, NBC) celebrates its fifth anniversary with a prime-time special on Tues., Sept. 15 (10 pm/ET). "I like that HBO show Autopsies. That is just a fascinating show. You don't know how it's going to turn out. They'll tell you they found this body, and they didn't know who it was. Then they figure out who it is, but they're not sure what happened to them. And gradually you realize that the wife did it. You see actual footage of her on the news, saying, 'Please help me find my husband.' But then you realize... How can you beat that? That's so fascinating."

O'Brien's interest in the sinister is nothing new. "I'm very morbid," he says. "Even when I was a kid I was fascinated with crime. I was the guy who would go to the library and look up [John] Dillinger and all that kind of stuff."

Since he confessed his interest in the topic, it had to be asked: Does Conan have a favorite serial killer?

"I don't want to say favorite, because obviously that's horrible, but the one I think is the most fascinating is Ted Bundy, because he doesn't fit the profile. Most of them are loners. They're socially maladapted. A lot of them are not able to have a conversation with a woman, and that's one of the reasons that they become evil. He was this guy who was well-educated, good-looking - everybody loved him, terrific guy. And when they first suspected him of being a serial killer, he was, like, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I'm as shocked as the rest of you.' "

Copyright TV Guide 1998