Ted Bundy: The saga of a serial killer who wore the mask of a charismatic man with personal charm
He committed at least 36 murders between 1974 and 1978, although it is suspected that the number of his victims could be even higher. He died in the electric chair on January 24, 1989 after showing the world a sinister nature with no room for regret , and his profile has earned him a place as one of the most studied psychopaths in history.
He first denied the facts, but then tried to delay his execution by reporting new murders, revealing the place where the victims were buried and collaborating to obtain extensions.
High-scoring student at the University of Washington and Puget Sound, Tacoma, he earned a BA in Psychology and, later, a BA in Law… rated "brilliant" by more than one professor.
Something, yes, it was strange but charming ... Ted — he would be called from now on, abbreviated — tried various jobs, but did not last long on them.
Who was Ted Bundy
The roots of Bundy's disorder were therefore anchored in his earliest childhood. Born on November 24, 1946 in Burlington, Vermont, Ted was an illegitimate son .
Louise, her mother, became pregnant by an air force veteran whom she never met. His family, who lived in Philadelphia, tried to hide the disgrace at all costs, and Ted grew up thinking that his grandparents were his parents and Louise his older sister.
Theodore Robert Cowell's childhood was marked by an aggressive environment: he was rejected by it and exposed to public shame while they were cared for by their grandparents, a couple where abuse was frequent.
Media inquiries concluded that Bundy had shown the first signs of disturbance at an early age. He was only three years old when he took all the knives from the kitchen and placed them around an aunt of hers who was taking a nap. Upon awakening, the woman found the steel blades pointed at her and Ted smiling tenderly at her.
A traumatic childhood and adolescence
Later, mother and son moved to Washington with her partner, Johnnie Culpepper Bundy, who adopted the boy and gave him his last name although there was never a good relationship between them. Everything indicates that Ted Bundy's rejection of his stepfather was due to being of low social extraction.
Family traumas forged in him an unsociable character that found an escape valve in cruelty. Since he was little, he always lived feeling rejection and domestic violence, so he began to present personality problems and was not sociable, so over time these traits began to develop and increase to the point where he became a cruel and ruthless.
As a teenager, he was emotionally disconnected from his surroundings, both at home and at school. He was shy, introverted and stuttering, but at the same time narcissistic and egotistical. He considered himself above the law, and at 15 he was already a consummate criminal .
Exemplary student
His surly and reserved character, however, did not influence his academic performance. He graduated with a GPA and entered the University of Puget Sound (Washington). .
In the spring of 1967, at the age of 21, he would meet Stephanie Brooks, his first love , in college . As beautiful as she is smart and wealthy. He wore a long hair parted in the middle, a pattern that he would later obsessively search for in his victims.
Ted was deeply in love, but she viewed their courtship as a simple youth affair. The relationship lasted a year, until Stephanie graduated and severed the relationship before returning home to San Francisco.
It is believed, even many years after all that, that Stephanie was Ted's obsession until the end: an obsession that was perpetuated in dozens of letters to win her back ... that were never answered.
Revenge against the female gender
The breakup was devastating for Ted, who decided to drop out of the race to confront other concerns. Heartbroken into a thousand pieces, he mustered the courage to return to the east and check the public records that might shed light on his mysterious origins.
It was not difficult for him to verify what he had always suspected: Louise, his presumed sister, was actually the one who had given birth to him. With the wound from his sentimental failure still to heal, Ted was now discovering his own mother's betrayal. Then, he felt that women had ruined his life and resolved to take revenge on the female gender.
At first, that turning point seemed to have a positive influence on Ted. He returned to Washington and meritoriously finished his studies in Psychology at the University of Seattle. In alliance with the anonymity that the big city offered him, he reinvented himself.
Stuttering gave way to astonishing rhetorical and persuasive skills, and shyness led to confidence. Step by step he forged a charming personality. Suddenly, a new Ted Bundy entered the scene .
Thus whoever judged a person only by their appearance would inevitably become their next victim.
Distinctive features
Until his 28 years, Theodore Robert Cowell, a native of Burlington, Vermont, was a Golden boy , "our best boy" in the praise of teachers, fellow students and friends.
Ted had - to spare - the gifts that open the most insurmountable doors: charisma, smile, culture, soft and enveloping language ...
But the brutal change would still take time. Ted, the charmer, the best dressed, the great talker, spent three years in community work, and naive Seattle residents shed tears when the police decorated Ted for saving a three-year-old from drowning .
It was around this time that Ted began to be active in politics, becoming a young bulwark in the ranks of the Republican Party. He worked in the campaign for the reelection of Governor Daniel J. Evans, who in 1968 had sounded like a possible candidate for the US vice presidency, on Nixon's electoral ticket.
The metamorphosis that had occurred in Ted's personality again attracted the favors of Stephanie Brooks, with whom he had met again during a business trip to San Francisco. The new Bundy gave off security and confidence. It was irresistible.
He proposed to Stephanie and she accepted immediately.
Ted was sending letters to his beloved for a long time, and after five years with another partner, Elizabeth Kloepfer, he returned with his first girlfriend. In 1973 Ted lived his last moment of light: he spent the summer and winter of that year with Stephanie, his eternal dream ... but one day he made the decision to get away from her forever. I would never see her again.
In 1973, after abandoning his beloved Stephanie, he began to drink alcohol and rob houses and shops.
And on January 4, 1974, he raised the curtain and staged an unusual race of blood and death. It would show the world the real Ted Bundy that he so jealously hid.
How did you hook them?
At one point he realized that he was a man with a certain charm, so it was easy for him to establish a relationship with women; in addition, that he had a tactic that did not fail him: he used to use casts, crutches and pretended to have an injured arm to give a false idea of helplessness to his victims.
The victims of Ted Bundy
In 1974, when he was still in law school, Ted Bundy committed the first murder, after which a few dozen more would follow. This cold and calculating serial killer attracted young girls with his charisma that he murdered in a brutal way as if it were hatred what he felt for women.
Joni Lenz and Lynda Ann Healy, the first victims
After discovering the crimes of Ted Bundy, a similar pattern was discovered in all the victims: young, dark-haired and long-haired women , in whom the murderer projected the image of his mother and that of his first girlfriend Stephanie Brooks.
That day he entered the room of 18-year-old college student Joni Lenz, hit her with an iron bar, and raped her… with a leg of the bed. The brutal tear was followed by permanent brain damage.
Almost a month later, he attacked 21-year-old student Lynda Ann Healy in her bedroom, knocked her out, and took her away. Lynda's body turned up a year later, half buried in a mountain near the University of Washington.
Roberta Parks a naive victim of her modus operandi
After the murder of his first victim, many others would come, such as that of Carol Valenzuela, a 20-year-old girl who disappeared in Vancouver, and that of a 16-year-old girl, Donna Masson , who disappeared while going to a jazz concert on the university campus. from Washington.
But one of his most famous crimes for his modus operandi was that of Roberta Parks: an attractive boy with a broken arm and a sling asks this 20-year-old for help to load the books to the car. Then take the opportunity to kidnap her. His body appeared a month later in a nearby lake.
Brenda Ball, the girl who wanted to get home
In June 1974, Brenda Ball was leaving a tavern with the intention of getting home. She had told her friends that she would find someone to carry her, and witnesses say they last saw her talking to a young man in a sling . He never appeared again.
The number goes up: Janice Anne Ott and Denise Naslund
The number of victims was increasing, and the police focused more and more on the profile of a serial killer acting with his arm in a sling . In July of the same year, Janice Ott went for a bike ride around the university campus, and disappeared without a trace. They saw her last talking to a young man with his arm in a cast.
Three days later, Ted Bundy abducted Denise Naslund , her body would later be found along with Janice Ott's.
Modus Operandi
Eight victims registered, the investigators began to find patterns, and to unravel their modus operandi. The criminal attacks both at night and during the day, judging by the time of the reported disappearances.
According to testimonies, he was a handsome young man carrying books, one arm in a cast and in a sling, and asking young women for help getting into his car, a Volkswagen, and sometimes getting it started.
Many of his victims were beheaded. Usually the skulls were smashed and the jaw fractured. He left them naked, took off all their clothes and was throwing them along the road along with personal items.
Registry of victims
February 9: Carol Valenzuela, 20, disappeared in Vancouver, Canada. His body, along with another, was discovered in October.
February 11: Nancy Wilcox, 16, missing and never found.
March 12 : Donna Masson, 19, disappeared while going to a jazz concert on the university campus.
April 17 : Susan Rancourt, 18, disappeared while walking on the grounds of Central Washington State College.
May 17: Roberta Parks, 20 years old, met by some friends for coffee ... never came to the place. A man with an arm in a cast asked her for help loading some things into his car. They never saw her again. They would find his skull on Taylor Mountain, approximately 30 km away. from Seattle at the foot of the Cascade Range.
June first:Brenda Ball, 22, left the Flam Tavern in Burien, Washington, after telling friends that she would find someone to hitchhike her to Sun City, California. The last time they saw her, she was talking to a man… who had one arm in a sling. Twenty days later they reported his disappearance. He never made it to Sun City ... His remains would be found along with those of Roberta Parks.
June 11: Georgann Hawkins, 18, of the Kappa Alpha Theta fraternity, Seatlle, disappeared after saying goodbye to her boyfriend and looking for some books to prepare for a Spanish exam. No one ever saw her again. His skull with the jaw fractured in three parts would be found in Issaquah, Washington, 10 km from Lake Sammamish.
July 14: Student Janice Ott left a note for her roommate: "I'm biking to Lake Sammamish Park." There they saw her talking to a man who had an arm in a cast and asked him for help to put some books in his car.
Hours later, the same man quietly returned and abducted Denise Naslund, who was spending the day with her boyfriend and some friends, in that park. The skulls of these 2 young women would be found along with that of Georgann Hawkins in Issaquah, Washington, 10 km from Lake Sammamish.
October 18: He kidnapped and murdered Melissa Smith, the local sheriff's daughter, when she was going to spend the night at a friend's house. His body was found nine days later in Summit Park.
October 30: Laura Aimee, 17, kidnapped while returning from a Halloween party. His body was found in the Wasatch Mountains. Her head was hit with a metal object, and she had been raped.
Carol DaRonch saved her life because she faced the killer
Ted was unstoppable and committing crimes more and more uncontrollably. After killing the local sheriff's daughter and another young woman, Laura Aimee, by raping and sadistically beating her with an iron bar to the head, Ted Bundy makes a big mistake that will lead the police to him.
As time went by, his attacks became more erratic, leading him to commit blunders, which allowed the authorities to find witnesses to help him develop a pattern of behavior to build a profile that would lead to his capture.
Proud and believing himself unpunished, Ted Bundy made a mistake on November 8, 1974 - the Satanic year - when he approached Carol DaRonch at Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Utah, and pretended to be a police officer: a sudden change in his modus operandi.
"Someone wanted to steal your car. We are going to the police station to make the report," he said. Confident Carol climbed up. Ted advanced a few feet, slammed on the brakes, pulled out his pistol, and tried to handcuff her. But he could only catch a doll. She fought tooth and nail, hit him in the face, jumped out of the car, and got a passing driver to take her to the police station . Once there, he narrated the episode and described the man, his car, and it was possible to detect Ted's blood group among the remains of the fight.
That same night - November 8 - 17-year-old Debbie Kent disappeared from the Viewmont High School parking lot as she was about to see a play with her parents.
A month later, a man reported to the police that on the night of Debby's disappearance he saw a light-colored, possibly beige Volkswagen rush out of the same parking lot ...
Moves to Colorado
Come 1975, Ted Bundy changed scenery: the mountains of Colorado.
January 12: Caryn Campbell, 23, accompanied her boyfriend, Dr. Raymond Gadowski, to a seminar in Aspen. While they were in the hotel lounge, she went back to her room to look for a magazine ... but she didn't come back. Gadowski and her children waited a few hours, and reported her missing. A month later, a worker found Caryn's body in a snow bank several kilometers from the hotel. She had been raped and beaten viciously, furiously…
March 1st: a skull appeared in a wooded area of Taylor Mountain: it belonged to Brenda Ball. The subsequent police raid revealed parts of the bodies of Lynda Healy, Susan Rancourt, Roberta Parks and Donna Mason…
March 15:Julie Cunningham, 26, kidnapped while going to a tavern in Vail. His body was not found.
April 6: After an argument with her husband, Denise Oliverson, 25, went to visit her parents in Grand Junction. He did not arrive, nor did he return home. Disappeared Body never found.
April 15: Melanie Cooley, 18, disappeared when she returned from school. A road worker found his body on the 23rd of that month. Her hands were tied, she had been beaten with an iron bar, and a pillowcase was clutching her neck. Also, raped.
First of July:Shelley Robertson, 24, was traveling the country hitchhiking. Her friends went several days without news of her. Some witnesses said they saw her speaking at a gas station with a man who was driving an old truck. On August 24, his body was discovered by two students in a mine shaft not far from Georgetown.
But it was the beginning of the end ...
He chose to move. Go from one state to another. Change modus operandi. But his attacks grew more and more erratic and reckless: he had lost all the subtlety of the hunter, of the professional assassin. He left footprints everywhere. As is often the case with serial killers, they play cat and mouse ... until they want to be caught . Get rid of that burden ...
And so fell Ted Bundy
On August 16, 1975, a patrol car stopped a Volkswagen for a routine check: checking its license plate. But the man at the wheel fled on full throttle.
Of course, it didn't take long to catch him. His document said Theodore Robert Bundy. In the car there was an iron bar, handcuffs, masks, duct tape, and other objects linked to the crimes, but nothing that definitively incriminated this man .
The trial began on February 23, 1976 for aggravated kidnapping. Ted, 29, confident, smiled,
"They have no evidence against me."
But Carol DaRonch recognized him:
"He's the man who tried to kidnap me and threatened to kill me!"
The sentence was light: fifteen years in prison with the possibility of parole.
Psycho and toxicological tests concluded that he was not psychotic, drug addict or alcoholic, and had no signs of brain damage.
But some woman's hair found by the experts in the Volkswagen was, without a doubt, Melisa Smith and Caryn Campbell and that the bruises on their skulls corresponded to the iron bar used in almost all their crimes.
Escapes for the first time from the Aspen, Colorado Court Library
Thus, Ted Bundy faced a new trial. This time, for murder ...
He turned down the defense attorneys: he decided to represent himself. For this they allowed him to go periodically to the Aspen Court Library ... and on June 7, 1976, he jumped from one of the windows, broke an ankle, eluded the police for a week living off the robbery and sleeping on a bus abandoned ... until he was arrested while trying to steal a Volkswagen with the keys in it ...
Second escape from maximum security cell, Garfield County, Colorado
January 1977 : another escape , this time when the authorities were sure that the prisoner was in good shelter, and only discovered in the middle of the afternoon the following day.
This time, Bundy had other plans. He traveled to Michigan, followed Atlanta and his final destination… Florida.
Now he was spreading terror at the University of Florida.
Within eight days of his escape, he entered the Chi Omega college fraternity building and savagely murdered Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman and attacked Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, leaving them in a serious condition. He would also do the same to a fifth student when he walked into her apartment just a few blocks away.
It was the mark of his teeth on one of the victims, Lisa Levy, which he bit on the chest and buttocks that provided the necessary evidence to take him to death row.
His latest victim was Kimberly Leach , just 12 years old. In total he confessed 36 murders, but specialists believe that the number could be higher.
In the wake of those brutal attacks, Florida police put a price on the head of that killer. There would be no escape for Ted Bundy ...
The trial
At the trial, the testimonies were overwhelming. Nita Neary swore that Ted Bundy. He was the man he saw flee the fraternity. Dentist M. Souviron proved that the tooth bites on Lisa Levy's body matched the defendant's teeth.
On July 31, 1979, after seven hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty on all charges, and Judge Cowart sentenced him to die in the electric chair.
But the monster did not give up: as his own advocate, he achieved three postponements of the death penalty in 1986: March, July and November.
This criminal used and abused his personal charm and did not hesitate to use this ability in his fight to delay his end.
Last moments
His last steps: he phoned his mother and refused the last meal of those sentenced to death.
Months earlier, in interviews with the press, he blamed his criminal instinct on his grandfather, Deacon Samuel Cowell:
—He was an abusive and racist tyrant. He hated blacks, Italians, Jews, Catholics. He tortured animals. And he collected pornography in his greenhouse.
In its latest report, he said:
- I am the son of a bitch harder than you have ever known. But there are people who when looking at you radiate a kind of fear. They invite abuse. They encourage it. Also, what is one less, what does one less mean on the face of the planet?
Words that give reason to criminologist Robert Ressler:
“The press misread Ted Bundy's personal charm. He was not the Rodolfo Valentino of serial killers, as they said. He was a brutal, sadistic and perverted man.
This "sadistic sociopath who took pleasure in the pain of another human being and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even afterward," as biographer Ann Rule described it, used to strangle or beat his victims. and mutilated them after death after obtaining sexual gratification.
In 1987, Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, diagnosed Ted Bundy as manic depressive and later considered that he suffered from multiple personalities.
During his last years, some psychiatrists conducted interviews with him in which he recounted his life; in addition, that he confessed his addiction to pornography. The results of the tests that they did to him classified him as an egocentric, impulsive, immature person, with an inferiority complex, among other characteristics.
The end
Seeking to postpone the execution of his sentence, he confessed to Dr. Bob Keppel, chief investigator of the Washington DC Department of Justice, with whom he had collaborated long ago in the search for Gary Ridgway (a serial killer known as The Green River Killer ), some of the places where he had hidden the remains of several of his victims.
In his house some heads of his victims were discovered. In Ted Bundy it was listed as perversion and necrophilic compulsion (medical opinion).
On January 17, 1989, he obtained the final date, he was electrocuted on January 24, 1989 and declared dead at 07:16 in the morning. He was 43 years old.
Ted Bundy's remains were cremated and he did not have a public funeral; it is known that he had requested that his ashes be scattered in the Cascade Range, in Washington, where at least four of his victims were found, on Taylor Mountain, located at the foot of the Cordillera.
Morbid fascination
During his years in prison, Ted Bundy received dozens of fan letters, starting a phenomenon of attraction to criminals that would be repeated in cases like Charles Manson. In addition to being a predator, this murderer generates a morbid fascination that is also transferred to fiction.
Once in prison, despite all the crimes he had committed, he had fans who sent him letters and told him that they loved him.
Famous quotes of Ted Bundy
What is one less? What does one less person mean on the face of the planet?
We serial killers are their children, we are their husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.
All the anger that I have been venting with the women that I killed, was directed against my mother.
I don't feel guilty about anything. I feel sorry for people who feel guilty.
Society wants to believe that it can identify evil people, or bad or harmful people, but it is not feasible. There are no stereotypes.
I have met people who radiate vulnerability. Their facial expressions say 'I'm scared of you'. These people invite abuse. Waiting to be hurt, do you subtly cheer him on?
The fantasy that accompanies and generates the anticipation that precedes the crime is always more stimulating than the immediate result of the crime itself.
I have the best lawyer I know: me.
I don't think anyone doubts whether I have done some bad things. The question is: what, of course, and how? And, perhaps most importantly, is why?
Countless millions of people have toured this earth before us, they have been through this, so this is just an experience that we all share.
Without a doubt, I deserve the most extreme punishment society has and society surely deserves to be protected from me and others like me.
Men and women do not have visions of the future. They are possessed by them.
I would like you to give my love to my family and friends.
I want to dominate life and death.
What if I have caused physical harm to another person? No, no, that is, no, in the context to which you refer.
I am much more mature now. Believe me, I have learned a lot about myself. During the year that I have spent in prison I have learned a lot.
It seems absurd to me to ask for mercy for something I did not do.
Try to touch the past, try to deal with the past. It's not real. It's just a dream.
Source: Espanadiario.net/ El mundo.es/ Infobae.com/ Serial killers
