Theodore Robert Bundy, American serial killer and rapist was one of the most notorious criminals of the late 20th century.
Ted Bundy’s Childhood
Ted Bundy was born in Vermont. His mother was Eleanor Louise Cowell and his father was unknown. His grandparents, ashamed of their daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy, raised him as their own child. For nearly all of his childhood, he believed his mother to be his sister. His grandfather bullied both his mother and Ted . She ran away with her son to live with cousins in Tacoma, Washington, when Bundy was five years old. There, Eleanor met and married hospital cook Johnnie Bundy, who formally adopted the young Ted Bundy and gave him his last name.
Bundy disliked his step-father and would later describe him to a girlfriend disparagingly, saying he wasn’t very bright and didn’t make much money. By the time he was a teenager living in Washington, Bundy already exhibited signs of the sadistic serial killer he would become.
His intelligence and social skills enabled him to enjoy a successful college career, and he developed a series of apparently normal emotional relationships with women.
Ted Bundy graduated from high school in 1965, then enrolled in the nearby University of Puget Sound. He spent just one year there before transferring to the University of Washington to study Chinese.
He dropped out briefly in 1968 but quickly re-enrolled as a psychology major. During his time out of school, he visited the East Coast, where he likely first learned that the woman he believed to be his sister was actually his mother.
Ted Bundy, the serial killer
Ted Bundy’s first known attack was not an actual murder, but instead an assault on 18-year-old Karen Sparks, a student and dancer at the University of Washington. Then he moved east to Utah, Colorado, and finally in Florida, raping and killing women. Bundy would prey on women with a ruse, often wearing his arm in a sling or his leg in a fake cast and walking on crutches. He would then use his charm and faked disability to convince his victims to help him carry books or unload objects from his car.
He was also known to impersonate authority figures, such as police officers and firefighters, to gain victims’ trust before he attacked. Once they got to his 1968 tan Volkswagen Beetle, he would strike them over the head with a crowbar or pipe. After hitting his victims, he would immobilize them with handcuffs and force them into the vehicle. Bundy had removed the passenger seat and often stored it in the backseat or trunk, leaving an empty space on the floor for his victim to lie out of sight as he drove away.
As body counts rose and witness descriptions spread, several people contacted authorities to report Bundy as a potentially matching suspect. However, police consistently ruled him out based on his seemingly upstanding character and clean-cut appearance. He was able to avoid detection even longer by learning how to leave virtually no evidence that could be traced by the still rudimentary forensics techniques of the 1970s.
Bundy Caught Red - Handed
Bundy was finally arrested for the first time on August 16, 1975, in Utah after fleeing from a patrol car. A search of the vehicle yielded masks, handcuffs, rope, and other nefarious items, but nothing definitively linking him to the crimes. He was released but remained under constant surveillance, until he was arrested again for the kidnapping and assault of one of his victims several months later.
Bundy's Escape
Bundy escaped custody a year later after being transferred from Utah to Colorado for another trial but was recaptured within a week. He then managed to escape a second time on December 30, 1977, at which point he was able to reach Florida and resume his killing spree. He raped or murdered at least six more victims, five of them Florida State University students, before he was apprehended again for a traffic violation on February 15, 1978.
Bundy was ultimately convicted and placed on death row at Florida’s Raiford Prison, where he suffered abuse from other prisoners (including a gang rape by four men, some sources say) and conceived a child with Carole Ann Boone, whom he had married while he was on trial .He died on the electric chair on January 24, 1989. At the time of his execution, Bundy had confessed to 30 murders, though the actual number of his victims remains unknown.
Written by - Abija P.B.
Edited by - Gunika Manchanda
Written by - Abija P.B.
Edited by - Gunika Manchanda
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