Ted Bundy
True Crime Case Study
“I’m the most cold blooded son of a bitch you’ll ever meet”
TED BUNDY: THE LIFE AND CRIMES OF A SERIAL KILLER
A gifted law student with political ambitions, Ted Bundy could have been successful in whatever chosen career path he wanted to pursue. Instead, he decided to waste his potential in the pursuit of his twisted sexual desires and psychopathic perversions that led him to become one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. Since 1973, Bundy was living a double life, by day as a cash-strapped student who attended his classes on campus, while at night he hunted for victims in his Volkswagen Beetle, looking for lone women to abduct, rape and murder.
Ultimately, there were two distinct sides to Ted Bundy’s personality, the ‘real Ted’ who was charming, intelligent, polite, personable, ambitious and charismatic. The other side, known as ‘false Ted’, was a manipulative, devious, sexually psychopathic compulsive liar, who held a fascination for sadomasochism and serial murder. It was this other side to Ted Bundy, which he referred to as ‘the entity’ and ”the malignancy’, and the dominant part of his personality that few witnessed, or experienced, except his many victims in their last moments.
TED BUNDY: THE INCARCERATED SERIAL KILLER
When serial killer Ted Bundy was sentenced to death for the two Chi Omega killings and again for the murder of Kimberly Leach, he was sent to Florida State Prison, and there spent the next nine years on death row. His time there was marked by a series of incidents, escape attempts, and a series of interviews conducted with Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth, during which he spoke about his crimes in the third person, in an effort to avoid implicating himself.
Bundy also spoke with the FBI on numerous occasions, firstly to help with the Green River Murder investigation, and later to make a series of confessions, where he finally admitted to some murders he had previously refused to discuss. By early 1989, with his appeals exhausted, Ted Bundy was facing the electric chair. In a last ditch effort to save himself, he attempted to use his victims as a bargain tool to avoid execution.
TED BUNDY: VICTIMS
Serial killer Ted Bundy committed many murders between 1974 and 1978. Of these 20 are confirmed through a combination of evidence and Bundy’s own admission, although he later confessed to murdering 30 young women and girls. Throughout his many interviews, Bundy would claim to have been responsible for many more. When the FBI proposed 36 as the correct number, Bundy said “Add one digit to that, and you’ll have it.”
He told his lawyer Polly Nelson that 35 was accurate, while FBI agent Bob Keppel stated his belief that Bundy was responsible for the murder of as many as 50 to 75 young women and girls. Other estimates are higher, such the number Bundy gave to his lawyer John Henry Browne, who said “Ted told me in that interview that he killed over 100 people.” Over the decades, Bundy has also been proposed as a possible suspect in many different unsolved crimes and serial murders.
TED BUNDY: SURVIVORS
Ted Bundy was a cold and calculated killer, who meticulously planned and carried out his murders in such a manner as to avoid detection. However, like many other serial killers, Bundy made mistakes. One his first victims, who was brutally attacked in 1974, survived but was left permanently brain damaged. Others such as Carol DaRonch, narrowly escaped his clutches when she threw herself from his Volkswagen.
Those women who survived the attack at the Chi Omega Sorority House in Florida, in 1978, were left with life changing injuries. Some, such as singer Debbie Harry, have come forward in the years since Bundy’s execution, to describe how they escaped the same fate as so many of his murder victims. “I had not thought about that night for maybe fifteen years, it was him,” Harry said.
TED BUNDY: SUSPECTED CRIMES
The prolific serial killer Ted Bundy has been suspected of many other crimes, from the abduction and murder of Ann-Marie Burr, when he was only fourteen, to various other murders of young women and un-connected serial killings. Bundy is a suspect in the still unsolved Santa Rosa Hitchhiker Murders, as well as the unidentified killer responsible for the Flat Tire Murders, in which the perpetrator used a similar method to Bundy in luring victims.
When confessing to FBI agent Bob Keppel, Bundy told him there were “some murders” that he would “never talk about”, because they were committed “too close to home”, “too close to family”, or involved “victims who were very young.” The true number of crimes committed by Ted Bundy may never be fully understood.