Author(s): Somayya Khan
Bundy would impersonate authority figures, such as police officers and firefighters, to gain victims’ trust. So, he was able to rape and murder scores of women this way. He typically strangled or bludgeoned his victims as well as mutilate them after death. Bundy also displayed their decapitated heads in his apartment and slept with their corpses until putrefaction made it unbearable [1]. Serial killer Ted Bundy confessed to at least 30 murders and raped or murdered at least 20 people. He claimed to have a severe hardcore pornographic addiction. His initial sexual fantasies were sparked by the sexual violence depicted in those printed videos or detective magazines. Ted Bundy was a psychopath and extremely manipulative. Before committing those atrocities, he used to drink. He admitted that he was usually half-drunk when he killed and raped those young women. He was able to evade capture for decades by leaving virtually no evidence behind. Bundy died in the electric chair on January 24, 1989, after being convicted of his last murder.
Ted Bundy’s mother never told him about his real father and left it up to him to figure out who he really was. For this reason he had a lifelong resentment towards her. He was never physically or mentally abused by his family. Bundy spent the first three years of his life in the care of his maternal grandparents, Samuel Cowell (1898-1983) and Eleanor Cowell. Bundy periodically showed upsetting way of behaving at an early age. His aunt said that when she awoke from a nap, she saw three-year-old Ted smiling by the bed and surrounded by kitchen knives. Sandi Holt, Bundy’s childhood neighbor, said, “He liked to terrify people... He liked to be in charge.” She referred to him as a bully. He liked to cause fear, suffering, and pain.”
He read detective novels and true crime magazines for stories that involved violence against women, with dead and maimed women being particularly interesting to him. He searched through trash barrels for pictures of naked women and drank heavily, roaming the streets at night to find women undressing behind their windows.
Bundy wanted to retaliate against Diane, his first girlfriend after she broke up with him. When they broke up that same year, it was said that Bundy started hunting, kidnapping, and killing women across the state. According to a criminologist, his victims shared one thing in common. They were reminiscent of Diane Jean Edward. Next came Elizabeth Kloepfer, who was the first person to voice concerns about him to police and eventually began to distance herself from him. Bundy admitted to having once attempted to kill her when he was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping a girl. Carol Anne Boone was his last relationship and the mother of his child. They married in between the preliminary, to which Bundy was going to be viewed as blameworthy. She got a divorce from him in 1986 after he began confessing to his crimes while he was on death row.
Serial killer Ted Bundy studied at a number of universities before killing women, when he dropped out of law school completely and became known to those close to him as a drifter. When or where Bundy started killing those women is debatable, he lied to a variety of people and refused to reveal the specifics of his early crimes. Surprisingly enough, Bundy was the director of the Seattle Crime Prevention advisory commission around 1974. Even a pamphlet about preventing rape is said to have been written by him.
From 1974 to 1978, he led a time of terror in Washington, Colorado, Ohio, California, Idaho, Utah, and Florida. Georgann Hawkins was kidnapped and killed by Bundy in July 1974. In Seattle, she was taken from an alley behind her sorority house, his first victim was her. Bundy then kidnapped two girls from Lake Sammamish State Park in 1974 in broad daylight. In a cellar at Emigration Canyon, he raped and killed two women while he was studying law at Utah Law School. He later tore their bodies apart. His confession claims that he killed and raped nearly 36 women in various states of the United States; however, the police department suggested that the actual number could be more than 100. In 1978, he attacked Chi Omega Sorority House in Tallahassee, Florida, killing two sorority sisters and brutally beating three others during the final days of his killing spree. Kimberly Leach, a 12-year-old schoolgirl, was his final victim. He used to keep the dead bodies of some of his victims for further sexual gratifications and postmortem rituals (including shampooing their hair/applying makeup etc.)
Serial killer Ted Bundy’s preferred methods of assault were strangulation and blunt trauma. He avoided firearms intentionally due to the noise they made and the ballistic evidence they left behind. Bundy was exceptionally adept at reducing physical evidence; his fingerprints were never found at a crime scene [2].
Bundy’s casualty choice would in general be youthful, appealing school ladies, which might have originated from his pornography fixation and as conceivable vengeance on his mom and first sweetheart. Experts later noted that his victims all appeared to be in their early 20s and had long, dark hair parted in the middle, resembling Bundy’s first girlfriend in appearance. Nevertheless, Bundy did not always select his usual victims, with his youngest confirmed victim being a 12-year-old. It’s possible that the decision to switch from killing mostly college women to high school girls was made with the intention of disorienting law enforcement over time [3].
Bundy had a number of mental health examinations done on him, and it was found that mental health issues were a genetic predisposition for him. Psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis initially diagnosed Bundy with bipolar disorder and said that he decided to defend himself in his trial during one of his manic episodes, and later with multiple personality disorder, further confirmed by an aunt of his, who said “Bundy appeared to transform into another, unrecognizable individual.” But Bundy exhibited personality traits typical of “sociopaths” or “psychopaths,” such as charm and charisma with little genuine personality, the capacity to differentiate between right and wrong with little effect on behavior; and a lack of remorse or guilt. The majority of evidence pointed away from bipolar disorder or other psychoses toward antisocial personality disorder [4].
His thinking was heavily influenced by delusions: Because he imagined America to be a place where no one is seen but themselves, Bundy was always surprised when anyone noticed that one of his victims had gone missing. He did not believe that people noticed each other, so he was always surprised when witnesses claimed to have seen him in defamatory settings. Bundy reportedly received a score of 39 out of 40 on the Psychopathy Checklist- Revised (PCL-R) during the assessment process. The 22-item inventory of recorded behavior and perceived personality traits is meant to be completed through a semi-structured interview and a review of “collateral information”. It is used to distinguish people with antisocial personality disorder from those with psychopathy, knowing whether they should be institutionalized in the criminal justice system [5].
Bundy was evaluated by a forensic psychologist after his first arrest, Dr Al Carlisle, as appointed by the court. The Thematic Apperception Test was one of Carlisle’s tools. Serial killer Ted Bundy was interviewed by Dr. William Carlisle who theorized that there were numerous factors that could have contributed to Bundy’s ruthless personality, shaped and influenced by his early experiences. Dr. Carlisle interviewed people who knew Bundy and found that he lied, broke rules, stole, and changed his personality like a chameleon. His mental health records showed the presence of narcissistic personality disorder followed by a disorganized attachment style as well but no sign of medication usages.
Ted Bundy was arrested for the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch in 1975. Police found handcuffs, an ice pick, crowbar pantyhose, and other suspect items in his car. In February 1976, Bundy was found guilty of the attempted kidnapping of DaRonch at his trial. He received a prison term of one to fifteen years. Bundy had also been located in the area where women had vanished in 1975, according to credit card statements.
Bundy was tried for the murder of Caryn Campbell in 1975, but escaped prior to trial and was later captured. He was found guilty on June 25, 1979 for murders of the sorority women in Florida and given an electric chair death sentence. On February 7, 1980, on his another trial, his attorneys settled on an insanity plea as their only hope. He didn’t look like the Bundy that people remembered from the previous trials. He appeared frustrated and enraged this time. He leaned back in his chair. Bundy, who had already received two death sentences, was found guilty once more and sentenced to death.
According to reports, as Bundy made his way to the execution chamber, he was looking for his daughter among witnesses. To quote, he sent love to his loved ones, “Bundy’s eyes showed fear and his head bowed as he was prepared for electrocution.” On the electric chair, at 7.16 a.m. on January 24, 1989, Theodore Robert Bundy was declared deceased.
Ted Bundy confessed to detectives from Idaho, Utah, and Colorado that he had committed numerous additional homicides, some of which were unknown to the police, so the court’s decision to impose the death penalty was not incorrect. He explained that while he was in Utah, he would bring his victims back to his apartment, “where he could reenact scenarios depicted on the covers of detective magazines.” In his early years, he viewed himself as an “amateur” and an “impulsive” killer before transitioning into what he called his “prime” or “predator” phase around the time Healy was killed in 1974. Moreover, as a psychology student, Ted Bundy was annoyed to be at the receiving end of the forensic psychologist’s assessment. He should be held accountable for his crimes, since he was competent in leading his trials without the assistance of a lawyer and was not mentally unstable while executing them.
1. Wikimedia Foundation (2022) Ted Bundy. Wikipedia https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy#Death_row,_confessions_ and_execution.
2. Ted Bundy Serial killers: Crime library, Crime Museum (2021) https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/serial-killers/ted-bundy.
3. Wikimedia Foundation (2022) Psychopathy checklist. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_Checklist.
4. Ted Bundy Case study -Criminal psychology UZSNNC-30- resit case study 18043492 word count: 3204/. StuDocu. (n.d.) https://www.studocu.com/en-gb/document university-of- the-west-of-england/criminal-psychology/ted-bundy-case- study/27971148.
5. The making of a criminal: Case study of Ted Bundy - IJCRT. (n.d.) https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT22A6294.pdf.
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