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Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was one of the most notorious murderers in U.S. history, 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. 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.
Youth Bundy was born on November 24, 1946, at the Elizabeth Lund Home For Unwed Mothers 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 Pasquotank County, 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 many 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 in Bundy's neighborhood 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' 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. She survived the attack, but suffered permanent brain damage. Bundy's next victim was Lynda Ann Healy, a senior at the University of Washington and roommate of a friend of Bundy's. 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. Five different women would testify that day about a man calling himself "Ted" and wearing a sling on his arm, who approached them and asked them for help unloading a sailboat from his car. One went with Bundy as far as his Volkswagen, where there was no sailboat, before refusing to accompany him further. Two more witnesses testified to seeing the man approach Janice Ott with the story about the sailboat, and to seeing Ott walk away from the beach in his company--the last time she was ever seen alive. From this, King County detectives were able get a description both of the suspect and his brown VW bug. Both Bundy's girlfriend and Ann Rule reported him as a possible suspect, but the King County police, deluged with hundreds of tips, did not pick out Theodore Bundy from the long list of leads to be investigated. That autumn, Bundy moved to Utah to attend law school in Salt Lake City, where he resumed killing in October. Nancy Wilcox disappeared on October 2. On October 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 Bundys escapes
Bundy goes to Florida With around $510 in cash given to him by his friends during jail visits, Ted 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 on January 15, 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. He then clubbed and severely injured another young woman in her home a few blocks away. On February 9, 1978, Bundy traveled to Lake City, Florida. While there, he abducted and murdered 12-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. Bundy then scuffled briefly with police before he was finally subdued. Before long, Bundy was identified and taken to Miami to stand trial for the FSU murders. Conviction and execution
Modus operandi and victim profile When discussing the Green River Killer with Bob Keppel, Bundy said that serial killers are not automatons, but will change their modus operandi as time passes and circumstances change. This was true of Bundy himself. For example, he entered into the homes of his first two known victims, Karen Sparks and Lynda Healy, but would not attack a victim in her home again until the night of the Chi Omega murders, shortly before his final arrest. Nevertheless, Bundy did have a pattern that held true for most of his criminal career. He would approach a potential victim in a public place, even in daylight or amongst a crowd, as when he abducted Ott and Naslund at Lake Sammamish. Bundy had two ways of gaining a victim's trust. Sometimes, he would feign injury, wearing his arm in a sling or wearing a fake cast. Witnesses saw Bundy with his arm in a sling at Lake Sammamish, asking several women, including Janice Ott, to help him unload a sailboat from his Volkswagen. Another witness was approached by a man with his arm in a sling, asking for help carrying a load of books, on the night Susan Rancourt disappeared. At other times Bundy would impersonate an authority figure. He pretended to be a policeman when approaching Carol DaRonch. The day before Kimberly Leach was murdered, Bundy approached another young Florida girl pretending to be "Richard Burton, Fire Department," but left hurriedly after her older brother arrived. All of Ted Bundy's victims were White American females. Most were of middle-class background. Almost all were between the ages of 15 and 25. All had long, straight hair. Many were college students. After luring a victim to his car, Bundy would hit her in the head with a crowbar he had placed underneath his Volkswagen or hidden inside it. Every recovered skull, except for that of Kimberly Leach, showed blunt force trauma. Every recovered body, again except for that of Leach, showed signs of strangulation. Many of Bundy's victims were transported a considerable distance from where they disappeared (Bundy drove Roberta Parks more than 260 miles, from Oregon to Washington, after abducting her). Bundy often would drink alcohol prior to finding a victim; Carol DaRonch testified to smelling alcohol on his breath. List of victims The following is a chronological list of the victims of Ted Bundy. This list is largely based on the 1992 "Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report", a document assembled by the FBI and various state agencies from states where Bundy committed murders. The Team Report lists Bundy as having confessed to twenty known, identified victims, and nine other unknown, undated victims (not listed below) for a total of twenty-nine murders. Five other women, listed below, are known or suspected to have survived attacks from Ted Bundy. Bundy never made a comprehensive confession of his crimes. The true toll of Ted Bundy's victims will never be known, but the names listed below are victims whom almost all authorities attribute to Bundy. All the victims listed were killed, unless otherwise noted. Movies about Ted Bundy Three TV movies and one feature film have been produced about Bundy and his crimes. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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