Ted Bundy

Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered numerous young women across the United States between 1974 and 1978. His total number of victims is unknown. After over a decade of vigorous denials, Bundy eventually confessed to over 30 murders. Bundy is considered by some to be the prototypical serial killer.

Bundy is believed to have been a sociopath. He is usually described as an educated, handsome and charming young man despite the brutality of his crimes. Typically, he murdered young women and girls by bludgeoning them, and sometimes by strangulation.

According to Robert D. Keppel, Ted Bundy was a necrophiliac and, for most of his criminal "career", the act of murder was secondary to post-mortem rape and mutilation. Bundy would often visit the dump sites of his victims to re-live his crimes and commit necrophilia. He was also known to keep severed heads in his home for a period of time and perhaps even an entire corpse. Bundy used necrophilia as a means to keep controlling his victims (his ultimate goal and means of sexual stimulation) after they had been murdered.

Biography

Youth

Bundy was born on November 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont. His mother, Eleanor Louise Cowell, was a young department store clerk. His father's identity has never been authoritatively established. For the first nine years of his life, Bundy and his mother lived with his maternal grandfather (who, according to some family members, was mentally unstable and prone to violence) in Philadelphia. To avoid the stigma of an illegitimate pregnancy, many neighbors and friends were told that Eleanor's parents had adopted Bundy, and that he was actually Eleanor's younger brother. According to some sources, Bundy may have believed his mother was actually his older sister throughout most of his childhood and adolescence. When he was three years old, Bundy is alleged to have appeared at his aunt Julia's bedside, smiling as he brandished several knives and laid them beside her on the bed.

Bundy and his mother eventually moved to Tacoma, Washington, where Eleanor's uncle Jack taught music at the University of Puget Sound. Not long thereafter, she married Johnny Culpepper Bundy, a hospital cook from North Carolina, whom she met at a church social function.

Bundy was a good, if not spectacular, student at Woodrow Wilson High School, and was active in the local Methodist Church and the Boy Scouts. However, as he told Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth, authors of The Only Living Witness, he had no natural sense of how to get along with other people. "I didn't know what made people want to be friends", he told the authors. "I didn't know what made people attractive to one another. I didn't know what underlay social interactions." Bundy remained shy and introverted throughout most of his high school and early college years.

Bundy's criminal activities began at an early age, before he was even out of high school. He was a compulsive thief, a shoplifter, and on his way to becoming an amateur con man, and also claims to have indulged in voyeurism and window-peeping as a young teenager.

Bundy described the part of himself that, from a very young age, was fascinated by images of sex and violence, as "the entity", and kept it very well hidden. It should be noted, however, that by the time Bundy was talking about "other selves" he was trying to appeal his death sentence. Later, friends and acquaintances would remember a handsome, articulate young man. Bundy worked and campaigned for the Washington State Republican Party as an adult. He also worked as a volunteer at a Seattle suicide crisis center, alongside fledgling crime reporter Ann Rule who, ironically, wrote articles on the "Ted" murders that, unbeknownst to her, her young friend was committing. (Rule would go on to write a biography of Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me.)

Bundy had one serious relationship with a college freshman whom Rule referred to by the pseudonym "Stephanie Brooks". She ended the relationship, fed up with what she described as Bundy's immaturity and lack of ambition, and they separated for a period of roughly two years. He eventually came back into her life, courted her once more, and then proposed, an offer she accepted. Two days later, he unceremoniously dumped her by ceasing to return her phone calls. It was shortly after this final breakup that Bundy began a homicidal rampage lasting three years.

Rule theorized that "Stephanie" formed the archetype for Bundy's preferred victim: young, white, female, with long dark hair parted in the middle.

Murders

While some Bundy experts, including Rule and former King County detective Robert D. Keppel, believe Bundy may have started killing as far back as his early teens (an eight-year-old girl from Tacoma, Ann Marie Burr, vanished from her home when Bundy was 15), his earliest confirmed murders were committed in 1974, when he was 27.

Shortly after midnight on January 4, 1974, Bundy entered the basement bedroom of Joni Lenz, an 18-year-old student at the University of Washington, and bludgeoned her with a crowbar while she slept. Bundy also removed a steel rod from Lenz's bed frame and sexually assaulted her with it. She was found the next morning, in a coma, lying in a pool of her own blood. Lenz survived the attack, but suffered permanent brain damage.

Bundy's next victim was Lynda Ann Healy, a senior at the University of Washington. On January 31, 1974, Bundy broke into Healy's basement room, knocked her unconscious, dressed her in jeans and a shirt, wrapped her in a bed sheet, and carried her away. A year would pass before her decapitated remains were found in the mountains east of Seattle.

Between January and June of 1974, Bundy stalked and killed at least eight young women in Washington State alone, a spree that culminated in July with the abduction, in broad daylight, of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund from Lake Sammamish State Park near Seattle. Bundy had a remarkable advantage as his facial features were attractive, yet not especially memorable. In later years, he would often be described as a chameleon, able to look totally different by making only minor adjustments to his appearance, e.g., shaving or changing his hairstyle.

That autumn, Bundy moved to Utah to attend law school in Salt Lake City, where he resumed killing in October. Nancy Wilcox disappeared on Oct. 2. On Oct. 18, Bundy murdered Melissa Smith, the 17-year-old daughter of Midvale police chief Louis Smith. Bundy raped, sodomized, and strangled Smith. Her body was found nine days later.

Next was Laura Aime, also 17, who disappeared on Halloween. Her remains were found nearly a month later, on Thanksgiving Day, on the banks of a river.

Further murders, first trial, and Bundy's escapes

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Bundy waves to reporters before the first trial, February 1976

In Murray, Utah, on November 8, 1974, Carol DaRonch narrowly escaped with her life. Claiming to be Officer Roseland of the Murray Police Department, Bundy lured DaRonch into his car where he then attempted to slap a pair of handcuffs on her. Fortunately for DaRonch, he only got one wrist. She wrenched her door open with the other hand, rolled out of the car onto the highway and escaped with contusions to the head given to her via a blunt instrument which Bundy had taped underneath the car seat. Frustrated in his attempt to kill DaRonch, Bundy snatched Debbie Kent, who was attending a school play in Bountiful, Utah, mere hours later. She was never found.

In 1975, while still attending law school at the University of Utah, Bundy shifted his crimes to Colorado. Caryn Campbell disappeared from the Wildwood Inn at Snowmass, Colorado, where she had been vacationing, on January 12. Her body was found on February 17. Julie Cunningham disappeared on March 15, and Denise Oliverson on April 6. Lynette Culver went missing in Pocatello, Idaho on May 6. Back in Utah, Susan Curtis vanished on June 27.

Bundy was arrested on August 16, 1975, in Salt Lake City, for failure to stop for a police officer. A search of his car revealed a ski mask, a crowbar, and other items which were thought by the police to be burglary tools. Bundy was arrested for this charge on August 21. Utah police connected Bundy and his Volkswagen with the DaRonch kidnapping and with the murdered and disappeared women in Utah and Colorado. Following a week-long trial, Bundy was convicted of DaRonch's kidnapping on March 1, 1976. He was sentenced to 15 years in Utah State Prison. Colorado authorities, however, were pursuing their murder cases.

On June 7, 1977, in preparation for a hearing in the Caryn Campbell murder trial, Bundy was transported to the Pitkin County, Colorado, courthouse. During a court recess, he was allowed to visit the courthouse's law library. Bundy then jumped out of the building from a second-story window and escaped. The two-story fall injured Bundy's ankle, which caused him to remain in the area, and he was recaptured a week later. Back in jail awaiting the start of his trial, Bundy escaped again. He somehow acquired a hacksaw and, over time, sawed a square hole in the ceiling of his cell in the Glenwood Springs, Colorado, lockup. On the night of December 30, 1977, Bundy climbed out of the hole, managed to walk right out of the jail's front door (the jailer was out for the evening) and reach the main hallway. Bundy stole a car in the parking lot and drove off.

Bundy goes to Florida

With around $500 in cash given to him by his friends during jail visits, Bundy bought a one-way plane ticket and flew TWA from Denver to Chicago the night he escaped. He then caught an Amtrak train to Ann Arbor, Michigan, then stole a car which he ditched in Atlanta before boarding a bus for Tallahassee, Florida. There, in the early hours of Super Bowl Sunday in January 1978, he bludgeoned to death two sleeping women, Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, and seriously wounded two others inside their Florida State University Chi Omega sorority house.

On February 9, 1978, Bundy traveled to Lake City, Florida. While there, he abducted and murdered 11-year-old Kimberly Leach, throwing her body under a small shed. She would be his final victim. Shortly after 1 a.m. on February 15, Bundy was stopped by a police officer in Pensacola, Florida. When the officer called in a check of Bundy's license plate, the orange VW he was driving came up as stolen. Before long, Bundy was identified and taken to Miami to stand trial for the FSU murders.

Conviction and execution

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Bundy in court.

Bundy's trial for the Chi Omega murders was held from June 25 to July 31, 1979. Despite his five court-appointed defense lawyers, Bundy wanted to represent himself as his own legal counsel. After being convicted, Bundy was sentenced to death by Judge Edward Cowart. During his trial for the Kimberly Leach murder, while Bundy was acting as his own attorney, he married former coworker Carole Ann Boone in the courtroom as the trial was being conducted. During his incarceration, Bundy received hundreds of fan letters from female admirers.

Judge Edward Cowart said, when sentencing Bundy to death:

"It is ordered that you be put to death by a current of electricity, that current be passed through your body until you are dead. Take care of yourself, young man. I say that to you sincerely; take care of yourself. It's a tragedy for this court to see such a total waste of humanity as I've experienced in this courtroom. You're a bright young man. You'd have made a good lawyer, and I'd have loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went another way, partner. Take care of yourself. I don't have any animosity to you. I want you to know that. Take care of yourself."

In October 1982, Boone gave birth to a girl. Eventually, however, Boone moved away, divorced Bundy, and changed her and her daughter's last name.

In the years Bundy was on death row (at Florida State Prison), he was often visited by Special Agent William Hagmaier of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit. Bundy would come to confide in Hagmaier, going so far as to call him his best friend. Eventually, Bundy confessed to Hagmaier many details of the murders that had until then been unknown or unconfirmed.

In 1984, Bundy contacted former King County homicide detective Robert D. Keppel and offered to assist in the ongoing search for the Green River Killer by providing his own insights and analysis. Keppel and Green River Task Force detective Dave Reichert traveled to Florida's death row to interview Bundy. Both detectives later stated that these interviews were of little actual help in the Green River investigation; they provided far greater insight into Bundy's own mind, and were primarily pursued in the hope of learning the details of unsolved murders that Bundy was suspected of committing but had never been charged with, let alone tried or convicted.

Bundy contacted Keppel again in 1988. With his appeals exhausted and execution imminent, Bundy confessed to eight official unsolved murders in Washington State, for which he was the prime suspect. Bundy also hoped to manipulate the confessions into another stay of execution, as Keppel reported that he frequently gave scant detail and promised to reveal more and other body dump sites if he were given "more time", but the ploy failed and Bundy was executed on schedule.

The night before Bundy was executed, he gave a television interview to Dr. James Dobson, head of the Christian organization Focus on the Family. Bundy claimed that consumption of violent pornography helped "shape and mold" his violence into "behavior too terrible to describe". Bundy said that he felt that violence in the media, "particularly sexualized violence", sent boys "down the road to being Ted Bundys". According to Hagmaier, Bundy also contemplated suicide in the days leading up to his execution, but eventually decided against it.

The morning of his execution, Bundy enjoyed a last meal consisting of steak, fried eggs, hash browns and coffee. At 7:06 a.m. on January 24, 1989, 42-year-old Ted Bundy was executed in the electric chair by the State of Florida for the murder of Kimberly Leach. His last words were, "I'd like you to give my love to my family and friends." Then, a voltage of over 2,000 volts was applied across his body for less than two minutes. He was pronounced dead at 7:16 a.m..

List of victims

The following is a chronological list of the victims of Ted Bundy. This list is drawn from the 1992 Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report (PDF format). The "Team Report" lists twenty named murder victims, two unknown hitchhikers dated in the report's timeline to May 1973 and September 1974, and seven other unknown, undated homicides (not listed below), for a total of twenty-nine victims. Asterisks (*) indicate murder victims whose full or partial remains were found by police.

1973: Unknown hitchhiker (May)

1974: Lynda Healy* (Jan. 31), Donna Manson (March 12), Susan Rancourt* (April 17), Roberta Parks* (May 6), Brenda Ball* (June 1), Georgeann Hawkins (June 11), Janice Ott*, Denise Naslund* (both on July 14, at Lake Sammamish State Park), Unknown hitchhiker (Sept.), Nancy Wilcox (Oct. 2), Melissa Smith* (Oct. 18), Laura Aime* (Oct. 31), Carol DaRonch (Nov. 8, escaped and survived), Debbie Kent (Nov. 8, a few hours after DaRonch escaped)

1975: Caryn Campbell* (Jan. 12), Julie Cunningham (March 15), Denise Oliverson (April 6), Melanie Cooley (April 15), Lynette Culver (May 6), Susan Curtis (June 28)

1978: Margaret Bowman*, Lisa Levy*, Karen Chandler (survived), Kathy Kleiner (survived) (all on Jan. 15, the Chi Omega sorority killings), Cheryl Thomas (Jan. 15, immediately after the Chi Omega killings, survived), Kimberly Leach* (Feb. 9)

Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me lists three victims not mentioned in the multiagency report: Joni Lenz, who survived an attack in her home from an unknown assailant on January 4, 1974 (see this article, above), Brenda Baker, who ran away from home on May 25, 1974 and was found dead on June 17 of that year, and Shelley Robertson, who disappeared forever on July 1, 1975. Bundy never made a comprehensive confession of his crimes, so the true number of victims will never be known.

Movies about Ted Bundy

Three TV movies and one feature film have been produced about Bundy and his crimes.

The Deliberate Stranger, a two-part network TV movie aired in 1986 and starred Mark Harmon as Bundy.
Written by Stephen Johnston and Directed by Matthew Bright, Ted Bundy was released in 2002. Michael Reilly Burke starred as Bundy.
The Stranger Beside Me aired on the USA Network in 2003, and starred Billy Campbell as Bundy and Barbara Hershey as Ann Rule.
In 2004 the A&E Network produced an adaptation of Robert Keppel's book Riverman, which starred Cary Elwes as Bundy and Bruce Greenwood as Keppel.

References in popular culture

For his novel The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris based the character of Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb in part on Bundy. (His other inspirations were Gary M. Heidnik, Edmund Kemper, and Ed Gein.) Like Bundy, Bill would put his arm in a sling, approach the women he intended to murder by asking them for help, and then incapacitate them.

In American Psycho, Christian Bale who portrayed serial killer Patrick Bateman makes a reference to Ted Bundy, asking his friend if she knew that Ted had a dog named Lassie.

The Jane's Addiction song "Ted, Just Admit It" on their 1988 album Nothing's Shocking features sound bites of Ted Bundy speaking.

The song titled "Meticulous Invagination", by the Gore Metal band Aborted, is about the crime he(Ted Bundy) committed on January 4.

KoRn lead vocalist, Jonathan Davis owns Bundy's old VW car as part of his serial killer memorabilia.

Ted Bundy was mentioned in the lecture given by Dr. Helen Hudson in the movie Copycat, but the killer never actually copycatted the murders themselves - though he does drive a VW bug identical to Bundy's.

In the 1997 film Con Air, Steve Buscemi's character Garland Greene makes reference to Bundy amongst other famed murderers as, "one of the real greats".

In the 1997 film Scream 2, Randy (Jamie Kennedy) mentions Bundy as being "one of the big boys" in terms of killers. He also mentions Charles Manson and O.J. Simpson.

His last name is mentioned as one of the disembodied brain in the book Krokodil Tears by Jack Yeovil as part of the Dark Future series

External links