This video contains descriptions of disturbing sexual violence and homocide.
Ted Bundy is the killer we just can't quit.
Just as he had a contingent of female fans who flocked to his murder trial, the morbid
fascination continues today, with countless movies and documentaries made about him.
This video might help you understand why people feel this way.
Is Ted Bundy the most prolific American serial killer of all time, or a somewhat more pedestrian
maniac who convinced the world his crimes were as big as his ego?
Bundy was only convicted of three murders: two women in his notorious attack of the Chi
Omega sorority at Florida State University in 1978, and the kidnapping and murder of
12-year-old of Kimberly Leach, also in Florida that same year.
Bundy maintained his innocence of these crimes, but three days before his execution, on January
21, 1989, the charming killer suddenly admitted to the FBI he had murdered at least 30 people
between 1973 and 1978, in a rampage that spanned Washington state, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, California, and Florida.
Ten of these victims were previously unknown to investigators.
Experts, however, believe the true tally may be as high as 100 victims.
The truth may not even have been known to Bundy himself, as the killer said that the
number 30 was insufficiently, adding that:
"Add one digit to that, and you'll have it."
Bundy was executed via electric chair at age 42, shortly after his most candid talk with law enforcement.
He likely took many secrets to his grave.
The question of motivation among serial killers can be a pointless rabbit hole to ponder.
Why the Ted Bundys of the world are so overwhelmed by violent fantasies that they obsessively
act out their dark desires isn't fully understood.
One notable expert has made the titillating claim that Bundy was simply out for revenge
against an ex, murdering women who reminded him of her.
In the CBS documentary, “Voice of a Serial Killer,” criminologist and author Christopher Berry-Dee said,
"If you were to put all his victims lined up together you would think they were all sisters.'
Berry-Dee says that, as a young man, Bundy was jilted by an attractive brunette with
long straight hair named Diane Edwards.
When he was introduced to the girl's father, the apparently wise man promptly told Bundy to buzz off.
The author explains,
"Ted took a great affront to that.
He was dumped by this girl who was going to become his arm candy for years to come."
The blow to Bundy's psychopathic ego was just too great.
"It was a slap in the face to Ted who was trying to become somebody special."
“The relationship I had with Diane, it had a lasting impact on me.”
In 1974, 18-year-old Carol DaRonch went to a bookstore at a local mall in Salt Lake City, Utah.
DaRonch was beautiful, with thick, flowing brown hair.
That's when she was approached by a man who claimed to be a police officer and said someone
had tried to break into her car.
The man smelled of alcohol and, oddly, was driving a Volkswagen Bug.
But he did have a badge, and despite her better judgment, she got in the vehicle.
Bundy then pulled out a gun and cuffed her.
DaRonch said in “The Ted Bundy Tapes,”
"I had never been so frightened in my entire life.
I know this is cliché, but my whole life went before my eyes."
DaRonch fought Bundy off and escaped, but except for the fact that she survived, her
experience was hardly unique.
Bundy used a variety of ruses to lure women into his vehicle.
Perhaps his favorite tactic was to wear a sling or cast and hobble on crutches.
With this combination of charm and fake disabilities, he'd ask for help carrying books or unloading
items from his car.
That's when he'd bludgeon his victims, most of whom would not be as lucky as DaRonch.
Ted Bundy wasn't just a sadistic killer of women.
After beating his victims to death, Bundy was known to mutilate and desecrate their
bodies, performing bizarre rituals on them and even committing sexual acts with their remains.
Bundy also took polaroids of his victims.
When asked why he did this, he told investigators,
"When you work hard to do something right, you don't want to forget it."
These kinds of revelations led one neuroscientist to conclude that Bundy wasn't merely looking
for sexual gratification from these awful acts, but was rather seeking,
"[A] desire for both sexual and emotional intimacy."
Bundy admitted insecurity around his attempted normal relationship with women like Diane
Edwards, and it was written of him that he,
"[R]ecognizes the potential of the dead body to be anyone he wants them to be.
He also spent extended periods of time with the unconscious [or] semi-conscious victim
lying prostrate in his Volkswagen Beetle."
Like many psychopaths, Ted Bundy sought positions of influence and authority in his professional life.
In 1971, while studying psychology as an undergrad at the University of Washington in Seattle,
he worked at the city's Suicide Hotline Crisis Center.
Darrel Turner, Ph.D. told Women's Health,
"I'm not surprised that he worked at a suicide hotline.
Psychopaths will very often put themselves in a position to, in a weird way, learn what
normal people are like so they can blend in better by faking emotions that they learn from other people."
Maybe most fascinatingly, Bundy ended up working alongside Ann Rule, who became a notable true
crime author, most famous for the excellent memoir of her time with Bundy, aptly titled,
"The Stranger Beside Me."
Rule was so won over by Bundy's charms and his legitimately good work at the hotline,
she would go on to be one of his defenders during his murder trial in Florida.
Rule described Bundy's personality at their sensitive job as, quote, "kind, solicitous,
and empathic" and remarked at the time of his arrest that,
"Ted Bundy took lives, but he also saved lives."
She also recalled how Bundy would walk her to her car after particularly late shifts
to make sure she was okay.
Ted Bundy took, quote, "perverse pleasure," according to friends, in the shady side of election wrangling.
Bundy's first brush with politics was in 1968 when he attended the Republican National Convention
as a delegate for future VP Nelson Rockefeller.
In 1972 he joined the re-election campaign for then-sitting Washington state governor Daniel J. Evans.
He later worked for Ross Davis, head of the state's Republican party.
It was actually this connection that eventually got Bundy into law school.
In 1974, Bundy also worked at the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission, where
he wrote a pamphlet on rape prevention.
But it was working for the governor where he really put his dark traits to work, spying
on his boss's Democratic opponent.
Bundy wore disguises as he recorded stump speeches for dissection and eventual attack ads.
This kind of opposition research is common today, but at the time it was novel.
Bundy was interviewed when the press caught wind.
Bundy brushed off the attention with false humility, telling a reporter,
"It's hard for me to believe that what I did is newsworthy.
My part in the campaign was so insignificant, I'm embarrassed to be getting this publicity from it.
Really embarrassed."
Ted Bundy and his long-time muse Elizabeth Kendall dated from 1969 to 1974 after they
met at a bar in Seattle.
She was a shy single mother, but it was actually Kendall who approached Bundy.
She recalled,
"I saw him sitting at a table.
I went over and talked to him because I told him he looked lonely.”
As shown in the Netflix film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the relationship
was good at first, but by 1974, Bundy started staying out all night.
Kendall's daughter, Molly, recalled hearing her mother read articles out loud about a
local murderer who called himself Ted.
Molly confronted him about the similarities, with Bundy replying,
"No, Monkey, of course, I would never do anything like that."
In 1978, when Bundy was finally caught, he called Kendall.
Bundy admitted he was, quote, "sick."
The truth began to sink in.
Kendall told Vanity Fair,
"It took him telling me himself that he had something wrong with him [...] It was awful,
and yet it took me so long to really fully accept that he did those things."
And maybe this confusion will never totally be over for the woman who knew Bundy best.
As she said:
"I still have moments where I get confused [...] There are a lot of pictures of me [...] and Ted.
I look at those and I remember how in love I was."
"The Silence of the Lambs” was an extremely chilling horror film, and it took
home five Oscars, including Best Picture.
The film's main bad guy, "Buffalo Bill," skins his victims to make their bodies into a kind
of quilted female flesh suit.
That idea was taken from noted American killer Ed Gein, but much of the rest of the film
was inspired by Ted Bundy.
In fact, "The Silence of the Lambs” author, Thomas Harris, attended parts of Bundy's trial,
and even sent the killer his 1981 novel "Red Dragon," a prequel to his more famous work.
Harris has not spoken about borrowing from Bundy, but just as Hannibal Lecter entangles
himself in the FBI hunt for Buffalo Bill, Bundy offers himself up to the FBI's now-famous
Behavioral Analysis team that first coined the term "serial killer."
Harris's Buffalo Bill also borrows from Bundy the tactic of posing as injured with a fake
cast on his arm, and then asking for help moving furniture to lure his unsuspecting
female victims into his van.
After the failed abduction of Carol DeRonch in Utah in 1974, a patrolman spotted Bundy's
Volkswagen Beetle parked in front of the home of two young women.
After a brief chase, police found handcuffs, a ski mask, and pantyhose with holes cut out
for eyes in Bundy’s car.
Bundy was arrested, and even though he attempted to alter his appearance, DaRonch picked him
out of a lineup.
He was found guilty of kidnapping and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Bundy was then transferred to Aspen, Colorado for the murder of Caryn Campbell, a 23-year-old
nurse who went missing while on a ski trip with her fiancé.
Bundy convinced the judge to allow him to participate in his own defense and was granted
mildly supervised access to a law library.
Bundy remarked,
“Over the months, I had noticed a number of opportunities to just walk right out.”
When a guard went out for a smoke, Bundy simply hopped out of an open window and hid in the
frozen mountains for six days, but was again apprehended and arrested.
He was then transferred to another Colorado jail where he began rapidly losing weight.
In December 1977 he slipped through a loose grate in the ceiling, climbed into a jailer's quarters.
He stole some street clothes and fled all the way to Tallahassee, Florida, where he
immediately killed three more women.
After Ted Bundy's two escapes he was put on the FBI's Most Wanted Fugitives list.
Everyone knew what he would do next.
Law enforcement at the time remarked,
“He's going to kill again.
It's just a matter of time.
We don't know where or when but he will kill again.”
January 15, 1978, Bundy broke into the Chi Omega Sorority house at Florida State University.
A patrolman quick to the scene recalled hearing the screams, then finding Kathy Kleiner.
He said,
"Her jaw was actually hanging off one side.
Only one hinge was still attached.
[...] She was totally incoherent and in shock."
Bundy also badly injured Karen Chandler, and killed Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy.
He then entered another home and nearly beat to death a dance major named Cheryl Thomas.
He had suddenly and radically changed his MO from careful, deceptive abductions to rampaging attacks.
Kevin Sullivan, author of "The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History," told ABC News,
"If you were to hear of this attack and you were familiar with Bundy's crimes in Utah
[and] Colorado, you wouldn't think it was the same person because it was a frenzy."
Three weeks after the brutal attack at Chi Omega, Bundy returned to his pattern, abducting
and murdering what is believed to be his last victim: 12-year-old Kimberly Leach.
Then, in February 1978, a police officer noticed a Volkswagen Beetle loitering.
Bundy refused to identify himself.
The anonymity was short-lived.
What followed was the Ted Bundy show.
The killer turned his trial into a sick farce, often representing himself, questioning witnesses,
and generally turning the state's search for justice into a spectacle.
The judge cautioned,
"A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client."
Bundy was unmoved.
It was written that Bundy confidently,
"[B]rought insignificant requests before the judge, and asked for both more exercise time
and a typewriter."
As prosecutor Larry Simpson revealed, he even demanded an updated menu because he was quote,
"sick" of grilled cheese.
His antics captured public attention, but the jury was unmoved.
On July 24, 1979, Ted Bundy was found guilty of the Chi Omega murders.
Ted Bundy was notoriously slippery.
His one-time Seattle suicide-prevention hotline friend and later true-crime author, Ann Rule,
describes him as having something of a chameleonic face.
Widely regarded as handsome, Bundy rarely looked the same twice in photos.
It's possible this made it more difficult for police departments to connect his crimes
across seven states.
And even when he was arrested, it was Bundy who finally told police his real identity.
One thing that was distinctive to the notorious killer was his slight snaggletooth bite.
His lower teeth were crooked, and he had a chipped incisor.
One of his victims in the 1978 Chi Omega attack, Lisa Levy, had a bite mark on her left buttock.
According to the prosecutor's report in Clark County, Florida.
"Once Bundy was identified, impressions of his teeth were taken to compare with bite
marks on the Chi Omega victims, and his fate was sealed."
During the trial, Bundy claimed he chipped his tooth after the murders.
Photographic evidence proved otherwise.
However, in more recent years, bite-mark evidence, along with many other forensic tricks used
by prosecutors, have become seen as dubious.
The California Innocence Project wrote,
"There is no real scientific support or research into the accuracy or reliability of bite mark evidence."
But of course, Bundy later confessed to these murders, and many more.
Ted Bundy's murder trial took another strange turn when he took advantage of an obscure
Florida law that deemed any declaration of marriage in front of a judge in a courtroom legally binding.
Bundy called his then-girlfriend, Carol Ann Boone, as a character witness.
As she sat on the stand, Bundy popped the question.
"Carol, do you want to marry me?"
Boone answered in the affirmative, and Bundy replied,
"And I want to marry you.”
Bundy also fathered a child with Boone while on death row, despite conjugal visits being
prohibited in Florida for condemned men.
It's possible they bribed guards, and there's a rumor Bundy passed a condom full of his
semen in his mouth as the two kissed goodbye, but Boone didn't kiss and tell.
She said in 1981,
"It's nobody's business."
Their daughter, Rose, was born in 1982.
Boone divorced Bundy in 1986, three years before his execution.
Neither Boone nor her daughter had any further contact with Bundy, and both have since changed
their names to live anonymously.
Ann Rule wrote,
"I have heard that Ted's daughter is a kind and intelligent young woman, but I have no
idea where she and her mother may live [...] They have been through enough pain."
The question of how Ted Bundy became among the most notorious monsters in American history
is unanswered.
Bundy himself blamed everything from alcohol, to a police conspiracy, to society at large,
to his own confusing childhood.
Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell in 1946, to his mother Eleanor Louise Cowell, in a
home for unwed mothers in Vermont.
Eleanor named two separate men as Bundy's father, though neither man was ever in Bundy's life.
Since this was considered an enormous scandal in the 1940s, Bundy was then raised in the
Philadelphia home of his mother's parents, his biological grandparents, and told all
along that Eleanor was actually his sister.
Bundy was relentlessly teased by his cousins as a teenager who would call him a bastard
and show him his birth certificate, which listed an Air Force vet named Lloyd Marshal
as his biological father.
Bundy never met Marshal, and many have concluded that the man did not exist.
Bundy's grandfather Samuel Cowell was, allegedly, a terrifying and violent man, who was addicted
to pornography and who even abused neighborhood animals.
Bundy's relatives have openly speculated that Ted was actually the product of incest between
his abusive grandfather and his highly unstable, manic-depressive mother, making his childhood
notion that Eleanor was his sister only half a lie.
“There’s nothing in my background which would lead one to believe I was capable of committing murder.”
Ted Bundy moved from Philadelphia to Tacoma, Washington when he was three years old.
Ted's mother tried starting a new life and married Johnnie Bundy in 1951, but the damage
may already have been done.
His aunt woke up one day with toddler Ted placing knives around her sleeping body.
An expert once said that Bundy reflected behaviors of,
"[S]eriously traumatized children who have either themselves been the victims of extraordinary
abuse or who have witnessed extreme violence among family members."
In 2019, Tacoma police began actively looking for a link between Bundy and an 8-year-old
named Ann Marie Burr who disappeared from her Puget Sound home on August 31, 1961.
Ann's mother woke up to find her daughter had vanished, her window left open.
The only clue was a teenage-sized shoe print left on a bench that had been pulled to the sill.
Ted Bundy was 14 at the time and had a paper route that took him by the missing girl's home.
He was known to be a peeping Tom by this age, and Tacoma police are taking another hard
look at this very old crime.
The Tacoma Police Department said,
"We periodically review all cold cases to determine if new technology and techniques
in forensic science can be utilized."