Bundy, Ted (1946-1989) | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

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Ted Bundy Summary

Bundy, Ted (1946-1989)

Ted Bundy, perhaps the most notorious serial killer in American history, was executed amidst much media attention in Florida on the morning of January 24, 1989, for the murder of a 12 year-old girl. At the time of his execution, Bundy had also been convicted for the murders of two Florida State University students and was confessing to the murders of more than 20 other women across the length of the United States. Investigators, however, suspect Bundy actually committed anywhere between 36 to 100 murders in a killing spree that may have begun when he was a teenager in the Pacific Northwest and ended in north Florida. The media spectacle and public celebration outside the walls of the Florida death-house where Bundy was executed climaxed a long-term public fascination with one of the country's most photogenic, charismatic, and seemingly intelligent multiple murderers. Details of Bundy's gruesome murders, his remarkable escapes from police custody, and his "fatal attraction" for women have all managed to circulate throughout American popular mythology.

Ted Bundy's early history is at once ordinary and portentous. Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946, to Eleanor Louise Cowell in a home for unwed mothers in Burlington, Vermont. Ostracized by community and family after her pregnancy became an open secret, Louise traveled from her parents in Philadelphia to give birth to Ted, left him at the home in Burlington for a few months to discuss Ted's future with her family, and then finally brought Ted back to the Cowell house. Three years after that, Louise moved with Ted to Tacoma, Washington, to stay with his uncle Jack, a man whose education and intelligence Bundy much admired as he grew up. In Tacoma, Louise met and married a quiet man named Johnnie Bundy, and Ted's last name became Bundy. Much of the literature on Bundy, both popular and academic, focuses on the fact that his mother Louise was unwed and that the father's identity to this day remains a matter of conjecture. Bundy himself frequently downplayed the significance of his illegitimacy to his chroniclers, but he also on occasion implied how his youthful discovery that he was a "bastard" forever changed him.

Also debated in the extensive Bundy literature is the extent to which emotional and/or physical abuse distorted his development. All through the years of Bundy's public notoriety, he and some of his immediate family members insisted that, for the most part, his childhood was a loving, harmonious time. Since a series of psychiatric examinations of Bundy in the 1980s, however, doctors such as Dorothy Lewis have brought to light more of Bundy's early domestic traumas and many have come to believe that Bundy was emotionally damaged by witnessing his grandfather's alleged verbal and sometimes physical rages against family members. In any event, it seems clear that Bundy developed a fascination for knives and stories of murder quite early in his life—as early as three years of age. During his adolescence, Bundy became secretly obsessed with pornography, voyeurism, and sexually violent detective magazines.

As Bundy matured into a young man, he consciously cultivated an image or public face not dissimilar to how he perceived his uncle Jack: refined, educated, witty, public spirited, and stylish. Early on, he became active in community church events and the Boy Scouts. He later achieved modest academic success in high school and college, eventually attaining admission to law school. He became a worker for the Washington State Republican Party, strongly impressing then Governor Dan Evans. He manned the phone lines at a suicide crisis center and (ironically) studied sexual assault for a Seattle investigatory commission.

Much of Bundy's image making seemed designed to manipulate women in particular. Though the level of Bundy's sex appeal has been exaggerated and romanticized by the media, particularly in the highly rated 1986 NBC television movie The Deliberate Stranger (where he was played by handsome actor Mark Harmon), Bundy did engage in a number of romantic relationships during his life. Again, it has become standard in Bundy lore to focus on his relationship with a beautiful, wealthy student when he was a junior in college. When the woman jilted Bundy, he vowed to become the kind of sophisticated man who could win her back. When they subsequently became engaged, Bundy coldly rejected her. According to writers such as Ann Rule, this woman is the physical and cultural prototype of Bundy's victims, who tended to be pretty, longhaired, and privileged co-eds. Another of Bundy's long-term lovers, a woman who wrote about her life with Bundy under the penname of Liz Kendall, has become publicly emblematic of the female intimates in Bundy's life who were so damaged by the revelation that he had killed dozens of women and yet remain strangely compelled by the memory of his personality. Even after his 1976 conviction for kidnapping a Utah woman brought Bundy to the national spotlight as a suspected serial killer, he continued to attract favorable female attention, eventually marrying a woman named Carole Boone in a bizarre courtroom ceremony during his second murder trial in 1980.

Bundy's criminal career stretched from coast to coast. He began murdering young college women in Washington State in 1974, either by sneaking into their homes in the middle of the night to abduct and kill them or by luring them with feigned helplessness and/or easy charm from the safety of a crowd into his private killing zone. He next moved on to Utah, where he attended law school by day and killed women by night. He also committed murders in Colorado and Idaho during this time. In August of 1975, Bundy was arrested for a traffic violation and while he was in custody, police investigators from Utah and Washington compared notes and realized that Bundy was a viable suspect in the multi-state series of murders and kidnappings. Bundy was convicted in the kidnapping and assault of a young Utah woman, sent to prison, and later extradited to Colorado to stand trial for murder. During a lull in the legal proceedings at a courthouse in Aspen in 1977, Bundy escaped from an open window and remained free for five days. Recaptured, Bundy again escaped six months later, this time from a county jail. The second escape was not discovered for hours—time enough for Bundy to be well on his way to his eventual destination at Florida State University (FSU) in Tallahassee. At FSU, Bundy killed two sorority women in the Chi Omega House and shortly thereafter killed a 12 year-old girl in Lake City. These were the last of Bundy's murders.

Ted Bundy (center) at his trial, 1979.

Bundy's arrest and conviction for the Florida murders twice earned him the death penalty: in 1979 and 1980. His appeals lasted for years, but it became apparent in late 1988 that Bundy would be executed in January of 1989. In a desperate ploy to buy more time, Bundy began confessing details of select murders to investigators from across the country, including Robert Keppel, one of the original detectives assigned to Bundy's murders in the Pacific Northwest. Bundy also granted a widely publicized videotaped interview to evangelist James Dobson, during which Bundy blamed the pernicious influence of pornography for the murders. In spite of the last-minute confessions, however, Bundy was executed in "Old Sparky," Florida's electric chair, as a mob of spectators outside Raiford Prison waved signs with such slogans as "Burn Bundy Burn" and "Chi-O, Chi-O, It's Off to Hell I Go."