He was a “shy” man, she said.
He was “dignified and restrained” she contended, not like the other guys.
She said this of the man that brutally attacked young women with iron bars, decapitated some
of them, and sometimes returned to their dead bodies so he could get up close to them one
more time.
She said he was manly, charming, responsible, not like those damned lefty hippies that were
plaguing the good ole USA at the time.
So, we ask you, what the hell was this woman thinking?
Let’s just say, it’s complicated.
The man we are talking about of course was Ted Bundy, perhaps the most accurate embodiment
of a psychopathic serial killer, the quintessential personification of evil.
The woman that thought so highly of him and was eventually impregnated by him was Carole
Boone.
Perhaps the embodiment of recklessly naïve, or maybe something even worse.
Theodore Robert Bundy doesn’t need much of an introduction.
Even people that aren’t that curious about maniacal murderers know something about Ted.
He was, after all, an anomaly even for a serial killer.
He was an educated man, a political man, a guy who held down good white-collar jobs,
and at the exact same time, he was doing unspeakably wicked things to people.
It’s this uncomfortable juxtaposition that makes him so frightening, and more so for
the fact that unlike the vast majority of serial killers, there doesn’t seem to be
any obvious childhood trauma that set him off on his life of killing.
He was good-looking, financially stable, and to those that didn’t see his “sadistic”
side, quite charming and funny.
One minute he was working in an office for a Republican party representative, or perhaps
writing pamphlets on how women could stay safe in the mean streets, or even giving them
advice through a hotline, and the next minute he might be combing the hair and caressing
the face of a decomposing woman he’d earlier strangled.
This makes him the thing of nightmares because Ted Bundy was could have been your buddy,
your colleague or your confidante.
It was this charm of his and his fairly successful career that proved to be the greatest tool
of misdirection.
He was in the FBI’s parlance, an “organized” killer, and it’s these kinds of killers
that prove to be the hardest to catch.
He might have started killing in 1961 with his first victim being a 14-year old girl,
but the jury is still out on that one.
But we know for sure that his urges to kill started young.
He may have been disgusted with himself, but that didn’t stop him from fantasizing about
murder and trying to figure out how he might get away with it.
He was 27 when he officially tried to begin his enterprise of serial killing.
His victim was 18-year old Karen Sparks, a student at Washington University.
We say tried, because, despite his best efforts, which consisted of him savagely attacking
her with an iron rod as she slept in her bed, she survived.
What he did to her was about as beastly as you can imagine, leaving her with catastrophic
injuries including a split bladder and brain damage.
Bundy would employ many tactics in his crimes, and one tactic included stalking his prey
beforehand so he knew when the women would be alone.
He officially opened his murder account on February 1, 1974.
The victim was 21-year old Lynda Ann Healy.
She was a Washington University undergrad who was never seen again by anyone until her
body was discovered close to Seattle’s Taylor Mountain around a year later.
As you already know, Bundy would sometimes return to the bodies, groom them, and despite
their putrefying state…how should we put it…do stuff to them.
Bundy ended up confessing to 30 murders of which 20 were confirmed, but it’s very likely
he committed more murders than we don’t know about - some people say as many as 100.
We won’t go through them all today - been there, done that - but we will say that not
all his murders were the beat-to-death-in-bed routine.
Sometimes he used that charm of his.
He talked to his victims.
He gained their confidence, after all, he was smartly dressed, handsome, well-spoken,
and he even drove a very innocent-looking VW Beetle.
No doubt this car was just another part of his manifold cunningness.
Despite the fact that inside that car was what you might call the ‘Essential Serial
Killer’s Starter Kit’ – ski mask, crowbar, garbage bags, ice pick, gloves, handcuffs
– Bundy was pretty much the opposite of the kind of person movies and TV had back
then described as killers.
Baddies had long hair and tattoos.
They were poor and spoke the language of the gutter.
Thanks to the public’s discrimination, Bundy had an ideal mask to hide behind.
He started killing as if he had a quota to meet, and he also changed his tactics.
This is when the charm kicked in.
The first victim to fall for it was 18-year old Susan Elaine Rancourt.
She’d been walking close to Central Washington State College when she just disappeared.
We know what Bundy must have done because that day he’d unsuccessfully tried to get
other women in his car.
One of them was 21-year old Kathleen Clara D’Olivo.
She later informed the police that she saw Bundy struggling to carry a bag of books.
His arm was in a sling and his hand had a splint on it.
He made sure she saw him struggling, and then he asked her for some help.
Importantly, she never turned her back on him.
This was when he would usually knock women unconscious, or close to it, with an iron
bar.
He dropped the books, as he often did, and she helped him to carry them to his car, but
as she explained to detectives, “I was cautious at this time.
I mean, even while we were walking, I thought well, I’m not going to let him get behind
me.
I’m going to keep an eye on him.”
Unfortunately, not everyone was that careful.
Bundy was persuasive indeed, and that’s why so many people fell for his tricks.
One of his junior high school buddies once said this about Bundy’s ability to sell
Christmas trees during the holiday period, “Ted was the best damned Christmas tree
light salesman I’ve ever seen.”
Ok, you get the picture.
Bundy has often been categorized as a “power/control” serial killer, meaning he got off sexually
on the highest form of control, which is the ability to take someone’s life and let them
know it.
Some killers are more sadistic, wherein the murder part is not as important as seeing
the expressions of pain on people’s faces.
But Bundy was also a sadist, in that he often kept his victims alive for a while so he could
experience their pain.
The domination was more important, though, which is why he returned to the bodies.
It’s why he took photos of his victims; to relish in his work.
Some sexual sadist serial killers meanwhile have said they didn’t really care if the
person lived or died.
Bundy even gave things he’d stolen to other women, the ones he’d decided not to kill.
So, if he stole a ring from a victim, he might hand it to his date.
That way, he could admire his work every time he saw her and get some kind of sick thrill
out of knowing she had no idea she was wearing the jewelry of a woman who was at the time
being eaten by maggots.
We hope this introduction to Mr. Bundy has been efficient enough at outlining what kind
of guy he was.
Now you need to know about the other part of his life.
Carole Boone was by no means the only woman that took part in Bundy’s life in what you
might call his extra-serial killing activities.
As we said, he was pretty popular, especially to a certain kind of woman.
Bundy was definitely not one of those liberal lefties with long hair and Led Zeppelin t-shirts
that were pretty common in the 70s.
He was a proud republican and even worked on Nelson Rockefeller's presidential campaign
and later other Republican campaigns.
Notably, though, it’s said in his university years, he was dumped by a lover.
Needless to say, he didn’t deal well with rejection.
On top of that, sometime later he found out that those people he’d always called mom
and pop were actually his grandparents, and that woman he called his sister was his mother.
So, when the experts talk about his trauma, this is what they often mention.
Although it’s trauma-light compared to what many other serial killers experienced in their
lives before taking up murder as a pastime.
According to the book, “The Stranger Beside Me: The True Crime Story of Ted Bundy”,
one day he went to find his birth certificate and was taken aback when he saw the word “illegitimate”
was stamped over it.
According to some sources, his father may have been a “sailor” or possibly an Air
Force veteran.
So, young Bundy had just been dumped by a young woman for apparently being immature,
and then his hatred for women, or at least his need to have power over women, increased
when he found out what his mother had done.
Some men in this position may have become slightly misogynistic, better men would just
get over it, but Bundy must have decided it was time to smash women’s skulls and sleep
with their dead bodies.
During all those murders, he was actually dating a woman named Elizabeth Kloepfer.
She had been down on her luck, trying to take care of a daughter alone while drinking through
the nights by herself.
Then one night in a bar she met this charming man, Ted.
She told him she had a secretary job at the University of Washington Medical School, and
he didn’t seem bothered one bit when she informed him that a babysitter was presently
looking after her young daughter at home.
Ted didn’t mind this, of course, since she was vulnerable, and also the sound of a young
daughter is never a bad thing for a maniac.
Kloepfer later described their relationship with words that summed up his malignant narcissism.
He was glad to have power over her, and he made sure she was always insecure about their
relationship.
She said, “I handed Ted my life and said, 'Here.
Take care of me.'
He did in a lot of ways, but I became more and more dependent upon him.
When I felt his love, I was on top of the world; when I felt nothing from Ted, I felt
that I was nothing.”
She didn’t, of course, know anything about his murderous activities, but as time went
on, she became suspicious when he went out at night, or when she found women’s underwear
in the house, and what looked like that murder kit we mentioned earlier.
He tormented her as any narcissist would do.
She later said, “We would be getting along fine and then a door would slam and I would
be out in the cold until Ted was ready to let me back in.
I'd spend hours trying to figure out what I had done or said that was wrong.”
She hadn’t done anything wrong.
This was manipulation, him exerting control over her very spirit.
He’d then get all loving again, and this cycle was on repeat for years.
Then when news reports started saying police were looking for a man named Ted who drove
a VW Beetle, well, those pairs of panties, the meat cleaver, and the ski mask started
to feel a bit sketchy to Kloepfer.
Not to mention the drawings the cops put out that looked a lot like her cruel lover.
She eventually called the police and said she might know the man they were looking for,
but unfortunately, at first, her words fell on deaf ears.
Still, when he was eventually arrested in 1975, she helped the cops with their case.
Bundy still wrote to her in prison, sometimes sweetly, but once admitting he’d tried to
kill her by filling the house with smoke.
Another time he said he loved her, and when he felt his maniac urges coming back, he kept
a distance from her.
She later said that he told her whenever he “felt the power of his sickness building
in him” he left her alone.
This brings us to Carole, whom he met again while in prison.
He’d actually dated her in the past, during his killing period.
They’d worked together at the Department of Emergency Services.
This is where they both worked on finding missing women, a job that Ted should have
been pretty good at since he knew where many of the victims were.
Yep, he’d actually killed some of the women they were looking for.
It goes without saying that doing this job was just another part of his sick games, as
well as being a pretty good cover for a woman killer.
Prior to that job, he’d worked as an assistant director at the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory
Commission.
That’s where he wrote a pamphlet on how women could avoid male abuse.
We don’t know much about their early relationship, but it might have been more platonic than
sexual.
Boone had been through two divorces with a kid named James, and so it seems she enjoyed
the company of another fella after long periods of difficulties with men.
In her loneliness Ted saw as an opportunity through her vulnerability.
Many years after they first met, she said: “I liked Ted immediately.
He struck me as being a rather shy person with a lot more going on under the surface
than what was on the surface.
He certainly was more dignified and restrained than the more certifiable types around the
office.”
But it seems that the platonic nature of their relationship lasted right up until he was
sitting in a jail cell in Florida looking at a long time in prison.
He’d recently brutally killed two young women at Chi Omega sorority house in Florida,
and in a series of savage attacks, injured three more women.
He’d done this on the same day that he also kidnapped and killed a Junior High school
student.
At this point, some folks in America were wearing Ted Bundy t-shirts.
To them, he looked like a golden boy, a man who was sailing through the American dream
with flying colors.
Bundy protested his innocence, and Boone took the stand in Florida and served as his character
witness.
Good old Ted, he could never have done the things they were saying.
It was in court that he asked Boone to marry him.
Bundy knew the law and he understood an obscure code found in Florida legislation that said
he was within his rights to do so.
The marriage was binding because all this happened in front of a judge.
On February 9, 1980, Carole Ann Boone and Ted Bundy were legally paired.
Bundy looked around the courtroom, proud of himself, and declared, “We didn’t do this
for your benefit.
It was the only chance to be in the same room together where the right words could be said.
It was something between she and I.” He needed to work on his grammar because the
correct way to say it is “her and me”... if we’re going to be pedantic.
Bundy wasn’t as clever as he thought he was.
He even had a ring, thanks to a writer who’d been visiting Bundy going out and buying one
for him.
The psycho again was getting his own way.
He was making a mockery of the justice system and further tormenting the families of his
victims.
But as always, the media was having a field day.
All over the US, there were eyes on screens and inside newspapers hoping to find anything
about this man Bundy.
A year and a bit later, Boone had Bundy’s child.
How this happened exactly is up for debate, but some media have described the event as
a moment of “cloak and dagger intimacy”.
While Boone might have visited Bundy at every opportunity available, they weren’t permitted
to have conjugal visits, i.e., highly intimate dalliances that can produce babies.
Boone did once say she had sex with him, stating about the guards, “They walked in on us
a couple of times.”
There is an unproven rumor that the two got it on behind a vending machine somewhere in
the visiting room, with another rumor saying they didn’t have sex at all.
Another rumor, probably untrue, is that they kissed one time and she passed him a condom.
He then filled it, later slyly passed it back, and she did the rest.
It’s possible that could work as sperm can live outside the body for a certain amount
of time, and definitely long enough for Boone to say goodbye and head straight to the bathroom
to undergo a kind of artificial insemination.
During her pregnancy she kept on visiting him and sending him so-called care packages,
then on October 24 of 1982, a little bundle of Bundy joy screamed its way into the world,
blissfully unaware she was the product of a man they called a monster.
When asked about the child, Boone told everyone it was none of their business.
“I don’t have to explain anything about anyone to anybody,” she said.
Bundy now had a daughter, a girl named Rose.
This further enamored him to the many women in the USA that became one of his fans.
As you know, some women have a weakness for killers, which is not something we’ll get
into today.
We will tell you, though, that many women turned up to the courtroom with their hair
done the way Bundy liked.
These groupies knew very well what his victims had looked like, so they styled and dressed
to impress when their man stood in front of a judge.
In 1986, Bundy was put on Death Watch, which is the step behind sitting in a chair and
having your body smacked with 2,000 volts of electricity.
Now Boone couldn’t have a contact visit, and it seems talking through a plastic wall
sent little Rose into fits of tantrums.
She didn’t know what her pop had done.
She just wanted a hug.
Bundy’s execution was stayed, but it seems Boone later changed her whole outlook on him,
likely when she heard he’d killed a little girl.
She certainly fell apart when he started making some death-row confessions.
It was a massive loss of face to her, and it also resulted in a broken heart.
This was the woman who once said, “Let me put it this way, I don’t think that Ted
belongs in jail…I’ve never seen anything in Ted that indicates any destructiveness
towards any other people.”
She was the woman who once described Bundy in three words: “kind, warm and patient.”
After she found out the truth, she just took off and kept out of the limelight, possibly
staying with a sick relative.
In 1986, she divorced him.
In 1989, she got a call from Bundy’s lawyer and was informed about his imminent death.
On January 19 that year, Bundy was visited by her son James, who it seems had grown to
like his stepfather.
For the first time, Bundy looked him square in the face and said, “I did all those things
they’ve accused me of, and more.”
January 24 was the day he was executed.
This is how it went, according to a journalist who was there:
“An anonymous executioner pushed the button.
Two thousand volts surged through the wires.
Bundy’s body tensed and his hands tightened into a clench.
A tiny puff of smoke lifted from his right leg.
A minute later, the machine was turned off, and Bundy went limp.”
Boone and James weren’t there.
She didn’t even call to ask if the deed was done.
She knew now, and had for some time, the whole truth about Bundy.
If you’re wondering if she ever had an inkling in the past, the answer is she probably didn’t.
One expert on the matter said in an interview, “She absolutely believed he was innocent.
There were so many people who thought he was innocent and being railroaded.
There wasn't really good evidence against him in any of the cases.
So, Carole Boone was surrounded by people who fed her the idea that he was innocent,
and you know, when you're in love, you want to be fed that.”
Besides the late confessions, it was when Bundy had made an agreement with the authorities
that she started to realize who he was.
He’d been given a plea deal by the cops: Tell us where the bodies are, and we might
not make you sit in a highly electrified chair.
So, he told them.
Boone must have been like, “damn.”
Both Carole and Rose changed their last name because at that time in America being a Bundy
wasn’t exactly cool.
She lived as much as was possible in obscurity and passed away in a retirement home in 2018.
As for Rose, she also kept that head of hers well and truly down.
God knows how many freaks would have wanted to write to her or how many psychiatrists
would have liked to get inside her head.
And you can imagine how life would have been for the girl and the woman if she ever introduced
herself as the daughter of America’s biggest maniac.
Anne Rule, who knew Bundy in life and later wrote about him, once said, “All I know
is that Ted’s daughter has grown up to be a fine young woman.”
Rose is probably out there now, maybe even watching this, although we guess she’s had
enough of hearing about her sick psycho of a pop.
Let’s leave you with something Bundy once said, perhaps the most chilling thing he ever
said: “We serial killers are your sons, we are
your husbands, we are everywhere.
And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.”
Now you need to know more about his murders in “How They Caught Serial Killer Ted Bundy.”
Or, have a look at one of the scariest killers you’ve never heard of in “The Serial Killer
Nobody Talks About - Real Life "Candy Man"