TED BUNDY
Childhood
Theodore Robert Bundy was born on November 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont. He had a very tough childhood, due to his mother having married out of wedlock. His grandparents adopted him and raised him to think that his mother was his sister. His mother moved away to Tacoma, Washington. When Ted was to learn his sister was actually his mother this threw Ted in a whirlwind of future mental issues and trust problems (Micheal ).
Early Signs
Ted Bundy when he was a teenager started to show signs that something was not mentally okay with him, he would go peeping into his neighbor’s windows and look for things to steal. Ted Bundy would also pretend to be something he was not. He was a social outcast and he would lie about who he was to try and make people think that he was something he was not.
Education
Ted would go on to graduate from the University of Washington in 1972 and get a degree in psychology. He then got accepted into law school at the University of Utah but he was never able to finish. While he was attending the University of Washington, Ted Bundy fell head over heels in love with Diane Marjorie Jean from California. Diane Marjorie Jean was Ted’s dream girl; she had money, social status, and major influence. He was heartbroken when she broke things off with him and it would later be determined that his victims all would resemble this woman. All his victims would have long dark hair. Then, after the breakup Ted Bundy completely re-did himself he became more confident socially and became outspoken in social and political matters. He even got a letter of recommendation from the Republican Governor of Washington at the time for the good job he did on his reelection campaign (Fraga).
Killings
First Victim
Ted Bundy confessed to killing a total of thirty-six women across several state lines in the late 1970s but would only be convicted of three. Most experts believe that people need to add another digit at the end of Ted Bundy's confessed killings. The way in which Ted would lure these women to him was by pretending to have some gruesome injury and lure them away from the public and then he would beat them and rape them. The reason that Ted was able to be undetected for a while was the fact that he changed his appearance. He would change his appearance by cutting his hair, growing a beard, gaining weight, or losing weight. He would always change his physical appearance to each woman but always use the same name ‘Ted’ when they asked who he was ( Pedneault).
His first victim was in January of 1974 her name was Karen Sparks. She was in his Literature class at the University of Washington. He attacked her in her sleep, he snuck down to her basement room and beat her with a metal rod from her bed frame. She luckily survived but spent 10 days in the hospital and suffered severe brain damage. It is speculated that Ted Bundy would get his "ideal" victim type from his ex-girlfriend Diane which was dark hair, side part, tall, thin, and of high social status (Pedneault).
Crime without Borders
The first victim of Ted Bundy in Oregon was Roberta "Kathy” Parks. She disappeared from her dorm at Oregon State University. Her skull was later found on Taylor Mountain in Washington. In June of 1974, Ted Bundy struck twice and killed Brenda Carol and Georgann Hawkins. He killed these girls within a two-week period. This is when the police started to put together the whole fake injury scam and were able to connect the crimes back to this one “injured” person (Micheal).
Love Life
In 1969 he met his long-term girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer, they met at a Seattle bar. Klopfer was a single mom of a young child and Elizabeth suffered from alcoholism. Bundy would look after her and take care of her. She described him as “warm and loving.” Kloepfer started to suspect Bundy’s crimes in 1974. When she would confront ted about his odd behavior and that fact he kept a meat cleaver inside a drawer of the desk. The way that Ted was able to deflect her concerns was using his charm and manipulation skills. Kloepfer went to the police behind Ted's back and expressed her concern about Ted maybe being involved. The police said that they didn’t think that he was the killer. The couple would remain together and would eventually grow distant when he moved to Olympia. Kloepfer went to the police once again in 1975 because this time she had evidence that Ted was committing this crime. Bundy had confessed to Kloepfer over a prison phone call saying that he had tried to kill Kloepfer and that he is not able to control his impulses and said that “his sickness building in him.” This was the final straw for her and she broke ties with Bundy for good (Fraga).
A Monster in Plain Sight
In the picture to the left are all the victims of Ted Bundy. He would go on to kill dozens of women from California, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, and even Flordia. At the beginning of the investigation on these murders, Ted Bundy had the upper hand, due to the fact that the investigators weren't connecting his murders they were thinking it was a solo killing or abduction. It wasn't long until Ted Bundy would slip up and the police would realize that all these missing women in all these different states could be connected to one person (Micheal).
First Capture of Ted Bundy
The last year of Ted Bundy's killing spree was in 1975 in Florida. This is when law enforcement was catching up to Ted Bundy and the police were able to find the masks, handcuffs, and weapons used by him to commit these crimes during a routine traffic stop. The police were not able to charge Ted with any crimes due to lacking evidence but were able to place him under surveillance watch. The police were able to track down the Volkswagen that Ted had sold to a teenage boy and were able to find physical evidence that connected him to missing women. Then Carol DaRonch, one of Bundys escaped victims were able to identify him on October 2nd in a lineup. He was convicted of the kidnapping and sentenced in June of 1976 and then a year later while he was in the courthouse awaiting sentencing he was escaped by jumping out of a second story window at the courthouse but then was captured six days later. Then escaped from prison by cutting a hole in the ceiling on December 30, 1977. He then would go state hopping from Colorado to Chicago to Michigan, to Atlanta, and then to Florida where he would commit his most gruesome crime.
Chi Omega Soroity House
While he was still on the run from his previous crime that he had been convicted of Ted Bundy's most brutal crime was when he broke into a Florida State University sorority house where several students were sleeping in the early hours of January 15th and in less than 15 minutes Ted Bundy had turned the peaceful sorority house into a living hell(Pedneault). He would go and sneak into the bedroom of 21-year-old Margaret Bowman and beat her to death with a piece of firewood. He then proceeded to the room of Lisa Levy he beat, strangled, and ripped off one of her nipples. He even bit so deeply into her left buttock that his teeth imprint stayed and he raped her with a bottle of hairspray. Ted Bundy was unsatisfied with his attack on those women so he went on to attack Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, the other roommates within the sorority. He began to beat Kleiner in the head with a club of some kind. He was about to add Chandler and Kleiner to his list of victims but then their roommate Nita Neary arrived home and it scared Bundy off. Even though the girls survived the attack they still have permanent injuries to this day. When the paramedics arrived and at the level of intensity of the attack the paramedics were under the misconception that Kilner was shot in the face by someone Due to how much blood loss she had. (Micheal).
Final Capture
Despite him being on a murderous spree in Florida he was caught purely by the grace of God. A police officer named David Lee noticed that Bundy was recklessly driving in February and pulled him over and he realized that the beetle in which Bundy was driving was stolen and he was in possession of stolen identification of missing women across the country. In July of 1979, he was convicted of the two Chi Omega Murders at FSU, and then he was sentenced to death in 1980 for the murder of Kimberly Leach. This arrest led to his conviction he was sentenced to death three times. The double murder trial took place in Miami which was one of the first trials that were televised across the United States. Bundy was representing himself and he would often refer to himself as Mr. Bundy or in the third person. During the trial, it was noted that Bundy was calm, confident, and nonchalant. He also was known for looking unbothered and having one leg up on the desk or table.
During the Trial
Due to him having some years of law school underneath his belt, he was super cautious about his responses. It was also observed that he was grinning when he was being cross-examined. In the end, Bundy was not able to escape damning evidence, most of which was his teeth. When he was in prison, the prosecutor did a surprise attack on Bundy in his cell to get a mold of his teeth for the defense to use in the trial, and they didn’t let him know so he couldn't change his appearance. During the trial the prosecution had two forensic odontologists analyze the bite marks from the victims and Ted Bundy's teeth pangram. Through the next several years the investigators would see a trickle of Ted Bundy confessing to his crimes and other crimes he committed. He appealed his case to the high US Supreme court but he was turned away. He also offered some help on unsolved cases in Florida to avoid the election chain. Even despite all of his efforts in July of 1989 he was put to death in Florida via Electrocution chair.(Pedneault)
In the photo to the left is what the prosecution used as their main plot of evidence against Bundy. During his Chi Omega murders he bit one of the victim's butt cheek so hard it left an indentation and the examiner was able to do an analysis of the bite mark and Bundy's teeth to show that it was indeed Bundy who committed that murder.
In Recent Years
In recent years there has been a peak interest in Ted Bundy and his case. Netflix has made several documentaries and Movies about him and his trial. The first one to come out and spark interest in Bundy was Conversation with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes Which is a documentary based on a journalist who went to go interview Ted Bundy on Death row in Flordia and try and get a confession out of him. Then Netflix put out a movie called Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Vile, and Evil which was a movie starring Zac Efron that showed Ted Bundys murders through the eyes of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Kendall.
"Jim and Fred I'd like you to Give love to my friends and family." ~Ted Bundy's last words
