Theodore Robert Bundy (born Theodore Robert Cowell)—November 24, 1946-January 24, 1989—was an American serial killer and necrophile who kidnapped, raped, and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and maybe even earlier. After more than a decade of denials, before he was executed in 1989, he confessed to 30 homicides that he committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. The true number of Bundy’s victims is possibly even higher.
Ted Bundy At A Glance
Born: Theodore Robert Cowell—November 24, 1946, Burlington, Vermont, U.S.
Died: January 24, 1989 (aged 42)—Florida State Prison, Bradford County, Florida, U.S.
Cause of Death: Execution by electrocution
Resting Place: Body cremated in Gainesville, Florida, ashes scattered at an undisclosed location at Cascade Range, Washington
Nationality: American
Other names: Christ Hagen; Kenneth MIsner; Officer Roseland; Richard Burton; Rolf Miller
Alma mater: University of Puget Sound; University of Washington; Temple University; University of Utah
Political party: Republican
Spouse(s): Carole Ann Boone (m. 1979-1986)
Children: 1
Parent(s): Unknown (father); Eleanor Louise Cowell (mother)
Conviction(s): Aggravated kidnapping; Attempted murder; Burglary; Murder; Rape
Criminal penalty: Death by electrocution
Escaped: June 7, 1977 – June 13, 1977; December 30, 1977 – February 15, 1978
Details: Victims—30 confessed, total unconfirmed; span of crimes—February 1, 1974 – February 9, 1978; Country—United States; State(s)—California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington; Date apprehended—August 16, 1975
Many of Bundy’s young female victims regarded him as handsome and charismatic—traits he used to win their trust. He would typically approach them in public places faking an injury or disability, or impersonating an authority figure, before he overpowered them and assaulted them in secluded locations. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses until putrefaction and destructions by wild animals made any further interactions impossible. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept some of the severed heads as mementos in his apartment. On few occasions, he broke into dwellings at night while his victims slept and bludgeoned them.
In 1975, Bundy was jailed for the first time when he was incarcerated in Utah for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He was a suspect in a longer list of unsolved homicides in several states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults, and three murders, before he was recaptured in Florida in 1978. For the Florida homicides, he received three death sentences in two separate trials.
Bundy was executed by electric chair at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989. Biographer Ann Rule described Bundy as “a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human’s pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after.” He once called himself “the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet.” Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, wrote he was “the definition of heartless evil.”
Early Life
Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946, to Eleanor Louise Cowell (1924-2012; known as Louise) at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont. His father’s identity was never determined with any degree of certainty. Bundy’s birth certificate assigned paternity to a salesman and Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall, but Louise later claimed that she was seduced by “a sailor” whose name may have been Jack Worthington. Years later, investigators would find no record of anyone by that name in Navy or Merchant Marine archives. Some family members expressed suspicions that Bundy may have been fathered by Louise’s own violent, abusive father, Samuel Cowell, but no material evidence has ever been cited to support or refute this.
Bundy lived the first three years of his life in the Philadelphia home of his maternal grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, who raised him as their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied birth outside of wedlock. Family, friends, and even young Ted were told that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. He eventually discovered the truth, but had varied recollections of the events. He told a girlfriend that a cousin showed him a copy of his birth certificate after calling him a ”bastard,” but he told biographers Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth that he found the certificate himself. biographer and true crime writer Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally, believed he didn’t find out until 1969, when he located his original birth record in Vermont. Bundy expressed a lifelong resentment toward his mother for not talking to him about his real father, and for leaving him to discover his true parentage for himself.
Bundy has spoken warmly of his grandparents and to Rule that he “identified with,” “respected,” and “clung to” his grandfather. In 1987, he and other family members told attorneys that Samuel Cowell was a tyrannical bully and a bigot who hated blacks, Italians, Catholics, and Jews, beat his wife and the family dog, and swung neighborhood cats by their tails. He once threw Louise’s younger sister, Julia, down a flight of stairs for oversleeping. He often spoke aloud to unseen presences, and at least once flew into a violent rage when the question of Bundy’s paternity was raised. Bundy described his grandmother as a timid and obedient woman who periodically underwent electroconvulsive therapy for depression and feared to leave their house toward the end of her life. Bundy exhibited disturbing from an early age, once witnessed by Julia, who awakened once from a nap to find herself surrounded by knives from the Cowell kitchen; her three-year old nephew standing by the bed, smiling.
In 1950, Louise changed her surname from Cowell to Nelson, and after urged by several family members, left Philadelphia with Bundy to live with cousins Alan and Jane Scott in Tacoma, Washington. In 1951, Louise met Johnny Culpepper Bundy, a hospital cook, at an adult singles night at Tacoma’s First Methodist Church. They married later that year and Johnny Bundy formally adopted Ted. Johnny and Louise had four children of their own, and despite Johnny attempting to include Bundy in camping trips, Bundy remained distant—complaining to a girlfriend that Johnny wasn’t his real father, “wasn’t very bright,” and “didn’t make much money.”
Bundy gave different recollections of Tacoma when speaking to biographers. To Michaud and Aynesworth, he told them he roamed the neighborhood, picking through the trash looking for pictures of naked women. To Polly Nelson, he told of how he perused detective magazines, crime novels, and true crime documentaries for stories involving sexual violence, particularly stories involving pictures of dead or maimed bodies. A letter to Rule stated he “never, ever read fact-detective magazines, and shuddered at the thought” that anyone would. A conversation with Michaud was told how he would consume large quantities of alcohol and “canvass the community” late at night in search of undraped windows where he could observe women undressing, or “whatever {else] could be seen.”
Bundy also varied his social life to Michaud and Aynesworth as someone who “chose to be alone” as an adolescent because he was unable to understand interpersonal relationships. Bundy claimed he didn’t know how to make friendships, and “didn’t know what made people want to be friends,” and “didn’t know what underlay social interactions.” But classmates at Woodrow Wilson High School told Rule that Bundy was “well known and well liked” and “a medium-sized fish in a large pond.”
Bundy pursued downhill skiing mostly by gaining stolen equipment and forged lift tickets.
Bundy was arrested at least twice during high school on suspicion of burglary and auto theft, but by the time he turned 18, the incidents were expunged from his record, a customary practice in Washington.
University years
After graduating high school in 196, Bundy spent a year at University of Puget Sound (UPS) before transferring to University of Washington (UW) in 1966 to study Chinese. In 1967, he was romantically involved with a UW classmate identified by several pseudonyms in Bundy biographies as “Stephanie Brooks”. In early 1968, Bundy dropped out of college and worked several minimum-wage jobs. Bundy volunteered at the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign and became Arthur Fletcher’s driver and bodyguard during Fletcher’s campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Washington State. In August 1968, Bundy attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami as a Rockefeller delegate. Shortly after Brooks ended their relationship and moved to her family home in California, frustrated by Bundy’s immaturity and lack of ambition. Psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis later pinpoints this crisis as “probably the pivotal time in Bundy’s development.” Devastated by Brooks’ rejection, Bundy traveled to Colorado and farther east, visiting relatives in Arkansas and Philadelphia and enrolling one semester at Temple University. It was during this time in early 1969, according to Rule, that Bundy visited the office of birth records in Burlington and confirmed his true parentage.
Bundy went back to Washington by the fall of 1969 and met Elizabeth Kloepfer (identified in Bundy literature as Meg Anders, Beth Archer, or Liz Kendall), a divorcee from Odgen, Utah who worked as a secretary at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Their stormy relationship would continue well past his initial incarceration in Utah in 1976.
By mid-1970, Bundy was more focused and goal-oriented, re-enrolling at UW as psychology major. Becoming an honor student, he was well regarded by his professors. In 1971, he got a job at Seattle’s Suicide Hotline Crisis Center, where he met and worked alongside Ann Rule, a former Seattle police officer and aspiring crime writer, who would later write one of the definitive Bundy biographies, “The Stranger Beside Me.” Rule saw nothing disturbing in Bundy’s personality at the time, and described him as “kind, solicitous, and empathetic.’
After graduation from UW in 1972, Bundy joined Governor Daniel J. Evans re-election campaign. Posing as a college student, he shadowed Evans’ opponent, former governor Albert Rosellini, and recorded his stump speeches for analysis by Evans’ team. After Evans was re-elected, Bundy was hired as an assistant to Ross Davis, Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. Davis thought well of Bundy and described him as “smart, aggressive … and a believer in the system”. In early 1973, despite mediocre Law School Admission Test scores, Bundy was accepted into the law schools of UPS and the University of Utah on letter of recommendation from Evans, Davis, and several UW psychology professors.
While on trip to California during a Republican Party business in the summer of 1973, Bundy rekindled his relationship with Brooks, who was impressed by his serious, dedicated professional on the cusp of a distinguished legal and political career. Dating Kloepfer as well, neither woman was aware of the other’s existence. In the fall of 1973, Bundy matriculated at UPS law School, while courting Brooks, who flew to Seattle several times to stay with him. Discussing marriage, Bundy introduced Brooks as his fiancée to Davis at one time. In January 1974, Bundy abruptly broke off all contact with Brooks, her phone calls and letter going unanswered and unreturned. Finally reaching him by phone a month later, Brooks demanded to know why Bundy had unilaterally ended their relationship without explanation, and in a flat, calm voice, replied, “Stephanie, I have no idea what you mean” and hung up. Brooks never heard from him again. Bundy later explained that he “just wanted to prove to himself that he could have married her,” but Brooks concludes that he had deliberately planned the entire courtship and rejection in advance as vengeance for the breakup she initiated in 1968.
Soon, Bundy was skipping classes in law school, and by April, he had stopped attending entirely, as young women began disappearing in the Pacific Northwest.
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