Ted Bundy, Theodore Robert Bundy, is known as one of the most violent and notorious serial killers who took pictures of all his victims bodies as a trophy.
During the spring and summer of 1974, police in the US were in panic as women at colleges across Washington and Oregon were disappearing at alarming rates and law enforcements only had a few leads.
In six months, six women had been abducted and fear spread as Janice Ann Ott and Denise Marie Naslund disappeared in broad daylight from a crowded beach at Lake Sammamish State Park. This was the boldest abduction but made the real breakthrough in the case as several women remembered being approached by the man. They told the police about an attractive young man with his arm in a sling. His vehicle was a brown Volkswagen Beetle, and the name he gave them was Ted; he tried to lure many girls to his car but failed. After many police investigations they found Ted Bundy as the killer as four people came forward to give his name up. These four people were Bundy’s ex-girlfriend, a close friend, one of his co-workers, and a psychology professor who had taught Bundy. At first, they dismissed him as he had a clean past and did not fit the ‘killer profile’ (looks). These judgements let Ted Bundy carry on with his murder spree. He had 30 victims all over the states in the 1970s.
Ted Bundy managed to fool everyone including the police, prison guards who he escaped from all the women and the women he married him after he was caught. His last lawyer called him “The very definition of heartless evil.”
Ted Bundy said: “I’m the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet.”
Ted Bundy was born in Vermont, his mother was Eleanor Louise Cowell however his grandparents ashamed of their daughter’s pregnancy and raised Ted as their own. For nearly all his life he believed his mother was his older sister. His grandfather would regularly beat both Ted and his mother, causing her to run away with her son to live with cousins in Tacoma, Washington. Eleanor met and married hospital cook Johnnie Bundy, who formally adopted the young Ted Bundy and gave him his last name.
Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy graduated from high school in 1965 and he went on to enrol in a nearby University of Puget Sound. He spent just one year there before he transferred to University of Washington, he enrolled as a psychology major. He started to date Diane Edwards (also known as Stephanie Brooks) in 1967 who was his classmate. He then started to get interested in local politics and became involved in a republican campaign but in his junior year the campaign he supports crumbles and fails. His girlfriend them leaves him for not being focused. Ted dropped out of school after being heartbroken. He then re-joined university and became in love with a woman named Elizabeth Kloepfer.
Ted’s first victim is Lynda Ann Healy who caught his eye in a local bar. Lynda then left the bar to go home as she had to be up early the next morning. Ted followed her home and broke into her apartment where other girls were sleeping in the early hours of the morning. He knocked her unconscious, redresses her and wraps her in a sheet. Before leaving her room, he makes the bed and hangs her blood-stained nightgown. Ted then took her out to his car. Hours later the radio station she was meant to be at calls her home to see where she is, this is the first time she is thought to be missing. The police arrived not long after and found her blood on bed sheets, pillow and nightgown therefore, they had evidence something had happened to her. Searches took place but her body was not found. Years later a part of her skull (jaw bone) was discovered in the search for his over victims but this is all that has been found.
It was not long before Ted strikes again. Georgann Hawkins was walking down an alley behind her sorority house when Ted asked her to give him a hand with some items as he pretended, he needed crutches. He asked Georgann to place them on his passenger seat of his car but when she got to the inside of the car, she released there was no passenger seat. When she released, he hit her from behind with a crowbar. Ted had taken the passenger seat out of the car so he could place the bodies in. However, not long after being struck, Georgann wakes but she is hit multiple times again. Her body has never been found.
Ted Bundy went on to kill four more: Donna Manson, Susan Rancourt, Roberta Parks and Brenda Ball.
One month after Georgann’s murder Ted visits Lake Sammamish State Park in Washington. Ted tried to get many girls to come help with his car which he said was broken but all rejected. Then he came to Janice Ann Ott who was sunbathing when approached by Ted. Ted asked if she could help get something out of his car and she agreed. After helping him, Ted tells her he has a boat and takes her to a quite location where he kills her. He then beheaded her to leave scattered bones. Just hours later he returned to the lake and repeated the events to Denise Marie Naslund, 18-years-old. This was Ted’s first mistake as a group of women heard Ted introduce himself and they had seen his car giving police some leads to follow.
Police released a sketch of the Ted the women described and set up a special phone line/ number for the case. Once the sketches were released tips started to be given to police. One of the tips was from Ted’s Girlfriend, Elizabeth. Eight women by this time had gone missing. Elizabeth told police everything she knew as she realised Ted was not the ‘normal’ man.
Four skulls/skull parts were found on Taylor Mountain, California but no body parts were anywhere near. They discovered the woman had been either stabbed or a fatal blow to the head.
Police managed to narrow down a long list to 100 men who went by the name Ted. By this time Ted moved to go to law school in Salt Lake City, Utah. The murders stopped happening in Washington and started in Utah. Three young victims were abducted and killed in Utah by Ted Bundy. Ted was getting away with murder as he knew what to do and act to not get caught by the police.
Near Salt Lake City Ted stalks 18-year-old Carol DaRonch in 1974. Ted had approached Carol identifying himself as Officer Roseland of the Murray Police Department and told her that someone had broken into her car. He had asked her to come to the police station with him to give a statement and she joined him to go there. Carol admitted she felt “uneasy” and something did not feel right. She recalled how nothing was missing from her car and Ted smelled of alcohol; the ‘police officer’ (Ted) also was driving a Volkswagen Bug and not a police car. Ted had presented her a fake identification badge which she did not suspect was fake at the time also he admitted he was working undercover. Once she was inside the car, she noticed the passenger side door handle was not easily accessible. Carol also noticed he was going in the wrong direction to the police station therefore, she questioned him. It was then when Ted pulled up next to an elementary school and attempted to handcuff her. He then drew a gun and held it to her head, threatening to kill her. Carol was one of the survivors of Ted Bundy’s killings. Carol then worked with police to help catch Ted. The police now had an eye witness to help them identify Ted and how he is capturing these women also they know what he tries/does to these women once he has abducted them.
Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen Bug
Nine months after the attempted murder of Carol DaRonch police stop Ted Bundy’s car for having no headlights but he failed to stop. Once he decides to stop, the police decide to search his car and what they find is ‘chilling’. They find a ski mask, handcuffs and other things that connect him to all these murders. The police decide to do a line up and included Ted Bundy to see who Carol would pick out. Carol picked Ted with no hesitation or uncertainty. He was arrested for the kidnap and assault of Carol. Once it became news about his arrest Washington police start to connect the murders and disappearances, they have to Ted and they all matched up. Ted’s girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, was interviewed by the two states investigators; she tells them about strange items he has such as crutches (the ones he used on Georgann) and stuff to make a hand cast. Ted Bundy was found guilty of the kidnap of Carol and was sent to Utah state prison.
Ted was then sent to Aspen, Colorado to face a murder charge of Caryn Campbell. Caryn vanished when she was on her way to her room and her body was found a month later next to a dirt road. When they searched Ted’s car, they found a map that had an ‘x’ marked where Caryn was staying at a resort. They found credit card receipts that put him there at the same time as Caryn and the biggest evidence was, they found one of her hairs in the car.
After being in prison for a year, Ted convinced guards to let him study in a law library during court resus, he was alone for less than 60 seconds but is able to jump out a second story window and escape in Aspen. He is now on the run. Six days after his escape he steals a car, but he was caught by police and charged for Caryn Campbell’s murder. Just seven months later Ted manages to escape again through a vent in his jail cell. News medias alerted the public, causing panic and fear across the west of the United States. Every news company across the US was interested about Ted Bundy and how he managed to kill all these women.
Police did not realise that he has escaped for hours therefore he managed to get on a bus to Tallahassee, Florida. On the night of January 14th, 1978 Ted broke into the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University. He attacked four young women and killed two of them, Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy. He managed to miss a girl who became an eyewitness to the crimes. Ted did not stop there he broke into an apartment of Cheryl Thomas, he broke her jaw and partially destroys her hearing. On February 9th Ted had kidnapped and murdered a 12-year-old girl named Kimberly Leach, this is known as the most disturbing and worst murder he committed.
Fearing the police were close to capturing him Ted left Tallahassee. On February 12th he was pulled over as the car he was driving was identified as stolen and he was arrested.
Bite marks on one of the bodies from the Chi Omega murders, were a definitive match to Bundy and helped to sentence him; the witness from that night was able to give a confident description of the man, the description was identical to Ted Bundy. In July 1979, Ted Bundy was convicted for those crimes. He was given the death penalty twice. He later received another death sentence the following year in the murder of Kimberly Leach. He was sentenced to death by electrocution. By this time, he was married to Carol Anne Boone who went on to have a child she claims was Ted’s child even though he was serving his sentences at the time.
Realising he was not going to get out of prison he confesses to all murders just days before his death. He confessed to 30 killings, but many believe he has killed many more. He confessed to authors and law enforcement officer Robert Keppel.
Ted Bundy was executed by an electric chair on January 24th, 1989. Hundreds of people gathered outside the courtroom to celebrate his death.
“For everything he did to the girls — the bludgeoning, the strangulation, humiliating their bodies, torturing them — I feel that the electric chair is too good for him,” said Eleanor Rose, the mother of victim Denise Naslund.
