Ted Bundy: biography of a serial killer

A man with a broken arm and in a sling, attractive and with a certain charisma, asks a woman for help to load some books in the car. The woman in question decides to help him load those books, accompanying the young man to the car. A month later they find her body in a nearby lake.

This is not a fictional story, but a real event. It is about what happened to more than one of the victims of one of the largest and best-known serial killers of women in the United States, whose life we ​​review in this article. This is the biography of Ted Bundy.

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Biography of Ted Bundy

Theodore Robert Cowell was born in Burlington, an American town located in Vermont., on November 24, 1946. Son of Eleanor Louise Cowell when she was very young and of unknown father, he was raised by her grandparents and he and the rest of society were led to believe that his mother was actually his sister. She rejected him in his early years, being a source of shame for the family. According to later statements by the subject, it appears that his grandfather was violent and mistreated his grandmother, growing up in an aversive environment.

In 1950 he moved with his mother to Washington, and a year later she married John Bundy. Theodore Cowell would be adopted by him and would receive his surname, although despite the presence of Attempts to get closer by his adoptive father failed to maintain a good bond affective

Due, among other things, to the experience of continued rejection and domestic violence, Ted Bundy began already from childhood to manifest a withdrawn and childish personality, with little social contact. He also began to show symptoms of what today would be considered conduct disorder, manifesting cruel behavior and entertaining themselves by capturing, killing, mutilating and butchering animals.

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Academic background and relationship with Stephanie Brooks

Ted Bundy enrolled at the University of Puget Sound and he started studying psychology, an area in which he turned out to be a good student. In 1967 he fell in love and began a relationship with a college classmate, Stephanie Brooks. However, two years later she graduated and ended up leaving the relationship due to her immaturity and lack of clear goals. Bundy became obsessed with her, sending her frequent letters with which he tried to win her back.

During the same year he drops out of school, and at this time he begins to have different jobs in which he does not last very long. In 1969 he began a relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer that would last five years, despite remaining in contact by letter with his previous relationship.

Some time later he would end up graduating, and in 1973 he enrolled at the University of Washington to study law. He is also interested and begins to participate in the world of politics for the Republican Party and join different community activities, him becoming a volunteer at a helpline service for sexually assaulted women and even to be decorated for saving a child from drowning. He would meet Stephanie Brooks again and have a brief relationship with her, which this time he would end after becoming extremely cold.

However, it would be during 1974 when the first confirmed murders of him would begin to be recorded.

the murders begin

Although he had previously committed different thefts, the first documented murders of this serial killer did not occur until 1974 (although it is suspected that he may have been involved in other cases above).

In January 1974, while still in college, Ted Bundy he would enter Joni Lenz's room to later hit her with an iron bar and rape her. Although she survived, she suffered serious injuries and permanent brain damage. She would carry out the same procedure with Lynda Ann Healy, whom in this case she would kill. He made the body disappear, although he did not clean the blood.

This death would start a chain of murders in which numerous young students disappeared, some of them being Carol Valenzuela, Nancy Wilcox, Susan Rancourt, Donna Mason, Laura Aimee, Brenda Ball, Georgann Hawkins, Melissa Smith or Caryn Campbell among others. many.

modus operandi

Bundy's modus operandi was initially based on following and kidnapping his victims to his house to strangle them there. However, over time and seeing that he was easy to manipulate due to his charisma and was attractive to many females, he was gaining confidence and began to look for victims during the day, being usual for him to pretend to have a broken arm to ask for help to carry things to his car.

This killer used to pick on young women, brunettes with long hair., characteristics that resembled both his mother and his former girlfriend Stephanie Brooks.

The victims were often raped and quartered, with the subject keeping parts of their bodies such as their heads as trophies of their crimes. It was not uncommon for him to maintain relations with the bodies once the victim was dead, as well as the presence of bites on them by the murderer.

First reliable clues and arrest

During the month of November of the year 1974, Bundy pretended to be a police officer to get close to Carol DaRonch and get her into his car. The young woman agreed thinking that they were going to the police station, but she found that Bundy stopped her car and tried to handcuff her. Fortunately, Carol DaRonch managed to wriggle free before being restrained and fleeing, after which she went to the police. This led to the first robot portrait of the suspect.

This portrait made various witnesses think of Bundy as a possible perpetrator, including his then-girlfriend Elizabeth. Despite this, he could not be fully identified and the possibility that he was the murderer was dismissed.

Ted Bundy continued to kidnap and kill numerous young women, changing his appearance and traveling to different states in order not to raise suspicions.

But in 1975 a police car stopped Bundy's car and he ended up finding indicative elements such as levers, handcuffs and tape with which to immobilize the victims. Ted Bundy was arrested. In this case, he would be identified by DaRonch as the perpetrator of his kidnapping.

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Trials and escapes

In 1976, the first of the trials to which Ted Bundy would be subjected would begin. In this case he was tried for the kidnapping of DaRonch, resulting in a fifteen year prison sentence.

However, the analysis of the car in which he was arrested allowed evidence of the involvement of Bundy in the disappearance and murder of Melissa Smith and Caryn Campbell (specifically hair was found from both women). This led to him undergoing a second trial.already charged with murder. In this second trial Bundy decided to represent himself as a lawyer, which is why he was allowed to visit the library in order to prepare his defense. However, he took advantage of the situation to escape, although he would be caught by the police forces six days later.

He escaped again in 1977, in this case managing to flee to Chicago and adopting a different identity. During this escape he killed again, this time attacking three young men in a university fraternity (Chi Omega), of which one managed to survive, and another young woman later. Likewise, he also kidnapped and killed Kimberly Leach, a twelve-year-old girl.

He was eventually detained at a Florida hotel after his car license plate was recognized. After being arrested for the second time, he would be tried on June 25, 1979 for murder.

He was allowed to exercise his own defense against him, but the evidence against him (witnesses who saw him leave the fraternity and even survivors of his attacks, along with physical evidence such as the comparison between the bite marks on the bodies and the teeth of Bundy, ended up leading to him being found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair.

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death row and execution

Despite being sentenced to death, Ted Bundy's execution would be years in the making. And it is that Bundy tried to delay the date of his execution as much as possible, confessing to multiple murders (some real and some possibly to buy more time) and offering clues about the location of the victims and pretending to collaborate with the police to obtain extensions of their sentence. While some thirty-six of the murders are considered, it is suspected that there may have been many more victims. He even offered to collaborate in the arrest of other murderers.

Despite his actions, he often received letters from fans saying they love him. During this time he would be charged and tried for the death of little Kimberly Leach, which resulted in a second death sentence. During the same trial, Ted Bundy would marry Carole Ann Boone, one of the many fans who believed in his innocence and with whom he would end up having a daughter.

During his last years he held interviews with psychiatrists in which he narrated his life and his mental state was analyzed. The tests used indicate emotional lability, impulsiveness, immaturity, self-centeredness, inferiority complex and lack of empathy, among other characteristics.

On the other hand, Ted Bundy confessed an addiction to pornography with sadistic overtones, as well as that the murders of young women, brunettes and long hair matched the anger he felt toward the women he felt abandoned by, his mother and his first girlfriend Stephanie Brooks. He was finally executed on January 24, 1989.