They had one of the vilest human beings in modern history behind bars, TWICE, and he
somehow managed to escape. It beggars’ belief that such a high-profile killer could do this,
but as you’ll now see, Theodore Robert Bundy had quite a few tricks up his diabolical sleeve.
We don’t think Mr. Bundy needs too much of an introduction,
so here’s an abridged version of his crimes. Bundy was educated, good-looking, and above all,
manipulative. He was charming when he wanted to be, which is why so many people,
mainly young women, fell into his trap. Bundy’s specialty when it came to murder
was cunning and deceit. He would often fake having a broken arm, usually, when trying to carry books,
and then speaking ever so politely, he’d ask for help. His prey in these cases he’d
usually surveilled for some time. His victims were usually educated and pretty, and frequently they
were picked up by Bundy on college campuses. There, he’d do his trick and get someone to
help him carry his books. When close to his car, he’d find his moment when they
turned their backs to him, and BANG, he’d hit them over the head with a heavy object.
Bundy would then finish off his victims, sometimes visiting the dead bodies later.
Before you hear how he escaped from prison, you need to understand that this man thought
he was way more intelligent than the police. He was an avid reader of detective magazines,
which he later stated helped him employ techniques to avoid arrest. The cops, thought Bundy,
were mere servants of the state. He being a narcissist believed he was something far superior.
After all, he worked for politicians when he wasn’t killing. Moreover, unlike some of
the cops that Bundy watched walking around his crime scenes, he was university educated. He was
so brazen that he even worked for the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission, advising
women how not to become victims of violence. Meanwhile, he was going out hunting for the
same women he was supposed to be helping. He would have coffee with his colleagues
and articulately and emotionally expound on the dangers of the streets, and then with a
grin on his face, he’d drive to where he’d stored the head of a woman he’d decapitated.
Even when witnesses came forward and talked about a man they’d seen on campus with his
arm in a sling, Bundy didn’t think he’d be caught. Witnesses talked about a guy who was
fairly handsome, who drove a VW Beetle, and Bundy kept on killing, knowing he’d likely been seen.
From 1974 to 1978, he definitely killed 20 women, although he confessed to 30 murders.
The real number of victims could have been much higher. It didn’t help cops that he moved around
various states. Back in those days, it wasn’t easy connecting murders. There was what police
call “linkage blindness.” There was also the fact that Bundy was a dab hand at hiding bodies.
On top of that, just to look at him, talk to him, and see his educational and work background,
most folks wouldn’t think this was a guy who would sleep with corpses and shampoo their hair.
Bundy killed in plain sight, but his demeanor and background kept him off the radar.
Around the time Bundy was baptized in 1975 into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
police were finally getting ahead of the curve. Now they had a new computer database to work with,
and that meant some connections previously obscured by linkage blindness were made.
Thousands of names were put into that database, and one of them
that was churned out was Ted Bundy. One detective later said Bundy’s name was “top
of the pile.” But that’s not why he was arrested. On August 16, 1975, a patrolman named Bob Hayward
was driving around a suburb in Utah’s Salt Lake City in the wee hours when he noticed a
VW Beetle driving slowly, as if looking for something. When Hayward followed the car,
the driver of the Beetle hit the gas. This happened about nine months
after an 18-year old in Utah named DaRonch had been abducted by Bundy.
She was the only victim ever, at least on record, to get into Bundy’s car and get out
alive. She told cops about the Beetle, and she clearly described what her attacker looked like.
So, that night when Hayward saw a Beetle crawling close to a house where he knew
some young women lived, he was suspicious. That’s why he followed Bundy’s car. Bundy didn’t put up
much of a chase. He was, after all, driving a Beetle. Such a car might have been slow,
but in terms of manipulating women into thinking you’re a nice guy,
it was an excellent choice of vehicle. Hayward became even more suspicious
when he noticed that the passenger seat of the Beetle had been removed.
Bundy did that so he could shove women in easier. Then on checking the car, Hayward discovered what
you might call the serial killer’s starter kit. He found a crowbar, some handcuffs,
some rope, an ice pick, some trash bags, a ski mask, and another mask made from pantyhose.
Some of those items were not too suspicious. Bundy told Hayward they were just regular old
household stuff. Maybe so, but the handcuffs and masks couldn’t be explained away so easily.
As for why he’d been out driving so late, Bundy said he’d been to watch a late-night movie called
“The Towering Inferno,” even though it hadn’t been playing that night. He said he’d driven
away because he’d been smoking marijuana. Back at the station, it was Detective Jerry
Thompson that really started to join the dots. He not only remembered very clearly the DaRonch case,
but he recalled a phone call Utah police had received from a woman named Elizabeth Kloepfer.
She was Ted Bundy’s girlfriend, someone who later wrote, “When I felt his love,
I was on top of the world; when I felt nothing from Ted, I felt that I was nothing.”
That’s why she wanted to believe Bundy when he made excuses to her about having things such
as masks and a meat cleaver in the house. Regardless, she’d told Salt Lake County
Sheriff's Office that the man they were looking for was Ted Bundy. She told Bundy
nothing about her words to the cops, and at the time of his arrest, was planning to marry him.
Police had originally failed to join the dots after hearing her say his name,
but Bundy was at least put down as a possible suspect. In the recesses of her mind, Kloepfer
knew he was the killer, but after the cops didn’t make an arrest, she just fooled herself into
thinking that her lover must be innocent. Now her “warm and loving” boyfriend,
the man that had actually once tried and failed to kill her, was sat in front of detective Thompson.
When cops searched his house, they found some items linking him to being in Colorado close
to where a woman had gone missing. What they failed to find was a bunch of polaroids he
kept of his dead victims. Had they have seen those pictures, Ted Bundy would not have been released.
Thompson just didn’t have enough on Bundy to keep him locked up,
so he let him go and then flew to Seattle. There he talked to the police, and they all
had a word with Kloepfer. She told them about some of the things Bundy kept at home that had always
confused her. Why, she wondered, did he always have plaster of Paris at home? Why the crutches?
Police immediately thought of the description of the man with a broken arm or leg.
Kloepfer told the detectives about the hidden knives, and also about the
bag that contained a bunch of women’s clothes. She also told police that Ted had some funny ways
about him. He wouldn’t let her cut her hair. He loved to watch her sleep. Sometimes she’d wake up
and find him examining her body with a flashlight. Thompson had Bundy rearrested and stand in a
line-up. DaRonch was brought in and hey presto, the man that had fooled her into thinking he was
a cop and clubbed her over the head was standing in front of her. Not only that,
witnesses in Colorado pointed Bundy out as the mysterious person who’d been
hanging around where the woman had gone missing. Now cops had enough evidence to charge Bundy with
the DaRonch crime, but not enough to charge him with any murders. Bundy’s parents bailed him out,
but from then on, police followed him everywhere he went. Bundy spent much of his time staying with
Kloepfer, who still suspected her boyfriend of being a maniac despite her love for him.
Police from various states where Bundy had killed got together. They met in Aspen in
what’s now referred to as the Aspen Summit. After some lengthy discussion and quite a few beers,
they were convinced that Ted Bundy was an interstate serial killer.
Still, Bundy was only sent to prison at first for the kidnapping and assault. A few months passed,
and then they added a murder charge to that. Meanwhile, the imprisoned Bundy spent some
time in solitary confinement for trying to escape. He’d been found hiding with a bag
of tricks on him: a social security card, air flight details, and some road maps.
In June, 1977, Bundy was transferred to Aspen to face his murder charge. There he said he wanted
to represent himself, which wasn’t surprising to some people given Bundy’s excellent understanding
of the law and his boundless confidence. What not having an attorney also meant was
not having to be shackled and handcuffed in court. Bundy of course knew this stipulation very well.
He was already planning his great escape. In his prison cell, he conditioned himself to jump
from a height. He would sit on the top bunk and practice jumping and landing in a way he thought
would prevent him from any future injuries. Bundy had also spoken to reporters any chance
he got. This is what he told one such reporter: “There are a lot of police egos on the
line. The issue a long time ago was whether one was innocent or guilty.
The issue is now: ‘Can we pin it on him?’” Back in court, during a recess period,
Bundy asked if he could go to the courthouse library to look up something for his case. He
was given permission, but a guard stood by the door watching him.
When Bundy saw an opening, he made his way to the window and jumped out. This was the second story,
so not an easy jump. He injured his ankle on the fall, despite his jail cell bunkbed jumps.
The Daily Sentinel newspaper wrote the next day that police had been aware that Bundy
was an escape risk, although no one expected him to do a library lunge. The authorities
told the paper that Bundy was “extraordinarily dangerous” and by no means should be approached.
The story finished, saying, “Bundy was last seen wearing a tan, turtleneck shirt, beige
corduroy trousers, and brown loafer-type shoes.” Now this extremely slippery man had slipped away
from the cops, and they were embarrassed, to say the least. The newspaper article said Bundy had
likely headed in the direction of Smuggler Mountain, which was fitting but also true.
On escaping, Bundy had actually taken off his outer layer of clothes, managed to get
past roadblocks, and gone in the direction of the mountain. He hiked almost all the way to the top,
whereupon he came across a cabin. There he stole some clothes, a bit of food, and a rifle.
But he had trouble getting out of the mountain, at one point becoming lost in a forest. Feeling
tired and hungry and still limping, he found another cabin on Marron Lake. There, he filled
his stomach again and got hold of more clothes. He hiked on to Aspen Golf course and stole a car,
but he was pulled over soon enough and was back in custody. In the car, police found maps that
had been used in his court trial. Bundy had every right to use that evidence, but he also
used it for his escape plan. It proved to police that Bundy had long been planning his escape.
Back in jail, Bundy worked on his case. What he wasn’t aware of at the time was
that prosecutors didn’t have a strong case for the murder, so had he have fought that,
he might have gotten an acquittal and just served a little bit of time for the DaRonch case.
But Bundy knew full well he’d savagely murdered a lot of people, and no doubt
he thought he was going away for a long time. That’s why he made plans to escape again.
This time he was going to do a lot of damage once his free feet touched the ground.
While he was imprisoned again, the press had a field day with Bundy. Many, or even most people
still thought he was an innocent man who was being set up by the police. He was now a celebrity,
a kind of Robin Hood character fighting the bad guys. People walked around wearing T-shirts
that said, “Ted Bundy is a One‐Night Stand.” In one restaurant you could buy a “Bundyburger.”
Now he was kept in a maximum-security cell and given very little time for exercise. Bundy
even filed a complaint, stating that he was being kept in inhumane conditions. He told
the court he had lost 20 pounds (9kg) because of such conditions, but this was just Bundy
lying again. He’d lost the weight on purpose. Suffice to say, with the authorities still wiping
egg off their face from the last escape, the courts didn’t sympathize with Bundy.
He was then transferred to Colorado, which was known to hand down a lot of death sentences.
Speaking to a friend on the telephone, Bundy said, “My Christmas present from the court. A
guaranteed death sentence.” There was nothing else
left to do but escape again. Bundy planned this one meticulously.
If his last escape left him hungry and cold in the mountains, this one was going to be a smooth ride.
First of all, he would need money, and that was smuggled into him over a period
of about six months by those who still loved him – mostly his wife-to-be, Carole Ann Boone.
How he did it, we don’t know, but he managed to get his hands on a floor plan of the jail. Once
he knew where he’d get out of, all he had to do was the cutting part. For that, he used a hacksaw
blade to saw through the ceiling of his cell. The ceiling was reinforced with bars,
so this took some time. Each night, when Bundy knew other inmates were in the shower,
he did a bit of sawing. This eventually made a hole no bigger than one square foot (0.093 m2).
That is tiny, but you already know that Bundy had been losing a lot of weight. By the time he
escaped, he’d lost 35 pounds (16 kg), and that was enough to get him through that hole. Every night,
he went through the hole and beyond to better understand his surroundings. Another
inmate actually informed prison authorities that someone was walking around at night,
but that fell on deaf ears. Bundy waited until around Christmas
time to escape, knowing that the jail was low on staff for the holiday period. Before he set off,
he piled a bunch of books under his bed covers to make it look like he
was sleeping if guards passed by his cell. Once through his hole, he made his way to
the jailer’s apartment, which was empty that night because the jailer was out celebrating
the holidays with his wife. Bundy opened up the jailer’s closet and got into his clothes.
He then simply walked out of the front door. Now a free man again, Bundy planned to travel
as far as was possible. He stole a car, but after that broke down, he hitched for a while. He then
got on a bus that took him to Denver, and later, he boarded a plane that took him to Chicago.
After a period of 17 hours, guards at the jail sounded the alarm. By that time,
Bundy was halfway across the country. The Fort Collins Coloradoan newspaper
ran the headline, “Bundy Escapes, Crawls Through the Roof of His Cell.”
As people celebrated the New Year, Bundy was traveling by train to Michigan. From there,
he drove a stolen car to Atlanta and then got on a bus to Florida.
There he spent one night in relative luxury at a Holiday Inn Hotel and then got himself
a room close to Florida State University. Ted Bundy living next to a college was
tantamount to a fox moving in next to the chicken coop, but he didn’t kill right away. He applied
for at least one job, on a construction site, but quickly realized that landing
employment without ID was next to impossible. So, he stole to survive. Then on January 15,
1978, he entered a sorority house and visited three rooms home to sleeping women. He viciously
bludgeoned all three victims, although two of the women survived the attacks.
Bundy walked eight blocks and attacked another student, leaving her with lifelong injuries.
About three weeks later, a girl at Lake City Junior High School went missing.
She was the last of Ted Bundy’s victims. We won’t tell you everything that happened after,
but Bundy was soon picked up by cops again on a routine traffic stop, and one thing led
to another. He was back behind bars. Meanwhile, some people following the
case still thought the police were wrong. How could such a charming,
educated man be guilty of murder? This guy was an American success story, not a vile maniac.
The New York Times wrote a story with the headline, “ALL‐AMERICAN BOY ON TRIAL.”
The article said, “He seemed so relaxed in the courtroom, which
some onlookers explained was natural for a young man with two years’ experience in law school.”
Bundy was said to have laughed and joked with people in the court, telling reporters at one
point, “I want to clear my name. I want it all out in the open. I want it aired.” The story explained
that still many people thought this nice kid with a winning smile had been entangled in a “monstrous
web of circumstances by a jealous fiancée.” Nonetheless, Bundy eventually confessed to his
crimes once he knew there was no way out of the death sentence. He died in the electric chair at
7:16 a.m. on January 24, 1989. He was 42. It was later noted that he was “white as a sheet”
and obviously frightened as the metal skullcap was fastened to his head and leather strap placed
across his chin and mouth. Outside the building, people screamed the words, “Burn, Bundy, burn!”
Just before he died, he was asked if there was anything he wanted to say.
He thought for a minute and then said, “I'd like you to give my love to my family and friends.”
A psycho to the last, Bundy was still playing the nice guy.
Now you need to watch “America's Most Evil Serial Killer - John Wayne Gacy.” Or, have a look at...