A Biographical Account of the Life of Ted Bundy

Theodore Robert Cowell, also known as "Ted Bundy," was born on November 24th, 1926, in Burlington, Vermont, and died on January 24th, 1989, in Starke, Florida. Bundy's mother’s name was Eleanor Louise Cowell, but his father's identity remains unknown. Theodore was considered a disgrace to the Cowell family. As a result, they sent Louise to a home where Theodore would later be born. To hide the scandal, Theodore was left at the home and later reunited with the Cowell family, raised by Louise’s parents as their adopted child.

He grew up in Philadelphia, believing his maternal grandparents were his biological parents and that his mother was his older sister. Ted would only learn his true lineage later on.

In the 1950s, Louise and Ted moved to Tacoma to escape her father’s abuse. She thought this move would shield herself and Ted from the family chaos, but she would later find out that the damage was already done. Later on, Louise met Johnny Bundy, a military cook, and they married. Johnny adopted Theodore, after which his surname changed from Cowell to Bundy. The couple had four other children of their own. (thefamouspeople.com)

From afar, Bundy’s life seems idyllic, almost too good to be true — a content, middle-class, working family. However, from an early age of three, Bundy became obsessed with knives, a sign of his many disturbing behaviors to come. Although bright and academically capable, Bundy struggled to connect with his peers and often ended up isolated, showing no interest in developing friendships or understanding interpersonal relationships.

Bundy’s adolescence led to increasingly disturbing behavior and resentment towards his mother regarding his illegitimacy. He had many questions about sex but felt unable to talk to his reserved and untrustworthy mother about them. He was easily angered and began to sneak out of the house to seek out pornographic photos to help satisfy his curiosity. Was Bundy a serial killer in the making? In 1965, Bundy graduated from Tacoma’s Woodrow Wilson High School. As a teenager, he was arrested twice on suspicion of burglary and auto theft (Oxygen.com). Despite these troubled times, his luck would soon change dramatically.

Between 1966 and the mid 1970s, Bundy attended the University of Washington. He eventually fell in love with a young woman from California who had everything - beauty and wealth - attributes that Bundy desperately desired. However, Bundy then dropped out of college and started working as a volunteer for Republican presidential nominee Nelson Rockefeller. In 1972, he finally graduated from the University of Washington with a bachelor's degree in psychology. Bundy’s impressive performance in the presidential campaign led to his hiring as an assistant to the Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party the following year (Oxygen.com). Bundy later enrolled at the University of Puget Sound and began studying law.

Despite all his professional success, Bundy was still heartbroken over his college sweetheart. Many of his later victims resembled his college girlfriend — attractive students with long, dark hair (Biography.com).

Criminal Activity

In several interviews, he recalled how he was antisocial and would wander the streets, looking for discarded pornography or open windows so he could spy on unsuspecting women. His juvenile record was extensive with theft charges, but they were dismissed once he turned 18. By 1974, he had viciously assaulted his first victim. Between 1973 and 1978, he was thought to have murdered at least 30 but admitted to killing 36 women across 7 states, although the final tally may be closer to 100 or more.

In 1974, Bundy’s first known victim was an 18-year-old University of Washington student named Karen Sparks. Bundy snuck into her apartment and brutally beat her with a metal rod while she slept, then sexually assaulted her. For 10 days, she remained in a coma but suffered significant brain damage. Within a month, he assaulted his next victim by breaking into her apartment. Lynda Ann Healy was also beaten unconscious, carried into the night and pieces of her skull were later found buried on Taylor Mountain. This is where Bundy buried many of his victims, all of whom were young white females with long straight hair. He lured his victims to his tan Volkswagen Beetle by wearing an arm sling or fake cast and asking for help, then he would knock them unconscious, restrain them, and take them to another site where they would be ritualistically raped, tortured, and strangled to death. With their bodies being disposed of in wooded areas, Bundy would often go back to perform sex acts with their remains.

Bundy not only killed and raped women, but also children. On February 9, 1978, in Florida, he kidnapped, raped, and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, dumped her body under a pig shed, and skipped town. He also lured 12-year-old Lynette Dawn Culver away from her high school in Pocatello, ID, took her back to his hotel room, raped and drowned her, then threw her body in the river north of Pocatello. In 1962, Anne Marie Burr from Tacoma, Washington disappeared from her bedroom and was never found. Bundy was questioned before his execution about this crime but quickly changed the subject.

On February 9, 1978, Bundy killed again. Within a week, he was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle. Eyewitnesses were able to identify Bundy at the dorm and Kimberly Leach’s school. They also had physical evidence that linked him to the three murders, including the bite marks found on the flesh of one victim. Bundy, still thinking he could beat a guilty verdict, turned down a plea bargain whereby he would have pleaded guilty to killing the two sorority women and Kimberly LaFouche in exchange for three 250-year sentences.

Ted Bundy continued his killing spree to the state of Utah where Nancy Wilcox, a 16-year-old, disappeared from Salt Lake City, Utah. On October 2, 1974, she was last seen riding in a VW bug similar to Ted Bundy’s, and was likely his first victim in Utah. He told detectives before he died that he had left her body along with that of Debi Kent in a secluded area south of Salt Lake City. Her body has never been recovered.

Bundy went to trial in Florida on June 25, 1979, for the sorority sisters' murders. The trial was televised and Bundy, being arrogant, played up to the media on the occasions when he acted as his attorney. He was found guilty on both murder charges and given two death sentences by means of the electric chair.

On January 7, 1980, Bundy went on trial for killing Kimberly Leach. This time, however, he allowed his attorneys to represent him. They decided on an insanity plea, the only defense possible given the amount of evidence against him. His behavior in this trial was remarkably different. He displayed fits of anger, slouched in his chair, and his collegiate look was sometimes replaced with a haunting glare. Bundy was again found guilty and received a third death sentence. Bundy’s behavior became even weirder when during his sentencing phase, he surprised everyone by calling Carol Boone as a character witness and marrying her while she was on the stand. She was convinced of his innocence and eventually gave birth to his child, a girl but divorced him after realizing his guilt of the crimes for which he had been charged.

After appeals ran out, Bundy’s last stay of execution was on January 17, 1989. Before being put to death, he divulged the details of more than fifty women he had murdered to the Attorney General’s chief investigator, Dr. Bob Keppel. Bundy blamed his exposure to pornography at an impressionable age as the stimulant behind his murderous obsessions. It's been said that he spent the night crying and praying, and when led to the death chamber, his face was sullen and gray. As he was moved into the death chamber, his eyes scanned the 42 witnesses, and once strapped into the electric chair, he began mumbling. Bundy’s voice broke and his last words were, “Jim and Fred, I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends.”

His head bowed as he was prepared for electrocution. Once prepared, two thousand volts of electricity surged through his body. His hands and body tightened up and smoke was seen rising from his right leg. He died at 7:16 AM on January 24, 1989, as the crowd outside cheered “Burn, Bundy burn!”

Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen is on display at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Tennessee.

Forensic Psychology

The definition of Forensic Science is the application of scientific methods and techniques to the investigation of crime. There were two cases where forensic science played a key part in the trial of Ted Bundy. Bundy was always meticulous in leaving a clean crime scene, so it was difficult to find ample DNA evidence. However, in 1978, he left a piece of evidence on his victim Lisa Levy - a bite mark on her buttock. Shortly after that murder, he was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle. Investigators seized the opportunity to request dental impressions to compare the bite marks. His crooked and uneven teeth made it easier to match with the bite mark on his victim. Most of the evidence was circumstantial but this piece was relied on by the prosecution to convict him. This bite mark was the first evidence of its kind to be used in a murder trial in the U.S. This match led to his death sentence.

In the case of Kimberly Leach, there was fiber evidence that matched Kimberly's clothes to the van Ted was driving, and to the clothes he was wearing the day of her murder. Fiber analysis matched the fibers. There was hard, physical evidence in both of these trials to convict Ted Bundy. While in prison, he openly admitted to the rape and murder of more than 30 women/girls. However, it is suspected that he committed more than 50 murders.

Ted Bundy was diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder and Psychopathy. Dr. Al Carlisle first encountered Ted Bundy in 1976. He requested that the judge send him to prison for a 90-day evaluation. Over the course of those 90 days, Dr. Carlisle gave Ted many of the usual psychological tests that he had already been given before. Therefore, Ted knew how to manipulate those tests. After reviewing many articles, none of them indicated that Ted Bundy ever received any type of psychological treatment in prison or before his execution.

Serial Killer Type

Ted Bundy was an organized killer. He had a plan of what he was going to do every time, and he carried out that plan very carefully. He would impersonate authority figures or pretend as if he was injured and needed help carrying books (Ted Bundy, 2017). Once the victim was close enough, he would hit her over the head to knock her out, and then put her in his car where he had already taken out one of the seats so that the body could lay down flat. After he raped and killed his victims, he would keep the bodies so that he could revisit them and continue to have sex with them or sleep with them in his bed. He was able to do this numerous times without getting caught. No one suspected the charming, intelligent young man because he was so calculated. There is no known event that triggered his murdering, although Bundy claimed that alcohol and pornography influenced his actions. He was a power-oriented killer and perhaps this came from the fact that he hadn’t had much power in his early life. Although his family was not poor, they were not wealthy either. He would often go after attractive women just so others would notice him more and envy him. He went to a prestigious university and afterwards went to law school, but didn’t finish. His killings satisfied his “need for control and dominance” (Greene & Heilbrun, 2012, p.152). One of his infamous quotes is: “Murder is not about lust and it’s not about violence. It’s about possession” (B, 2018).

Theories of Crime

Biological

The triggers for Bundy began when he not only felt betrayed by his biological mother, whom he discovered was not his sister, but also when his first girlfriend left him. The harsh fact was that Bundy was going nowhere, and his future looked grim. He was introduced to violent, hardcore pornography at a very young age, and later became addicted. In order to perpetuate his addiction to porn, Bundy sought more graphic and violent pornography to fuel his desire. As the years passed, Bundy's addiction became more aggressive, to the point that violent hardcore porn no longer satisfied his cravings. Eventualy, Bundy snapped, and the fantasies became a reality. He needed to get his 'fix' to satisfy his addiction, leading him to perform the heinous acts himself. As for Bundy's adolescent years, it is hard to identify any specific biological theories, as his father was unknown and his biological family showed no signs of psychopathy or any mental disorders. There could have been a biological disorder if his supposed grandfather, who might have been his real father, was diagnosed.

Psychological

The psychological analysis of Ted Bundy reveals that he felt betrayed by his mother when he discovered she wasn't his sister. His girlfriend left him because she thought he had no future, and he was introduced to pornography at a very young age.

He would later become addicted to hardcore porn and violent pornography and had to find more violent, graphic pornography to fuel his addiction. At some point, those fantasies became a reality and, to get his “fix” to satisfy his addiction, he needed to actually perform those acts.

Ted Bundy was classified as a High Factor 1 Psychopath, which means he was intelligent and had very few signs of psychopathy early in his life. A Factor 1 psychopathy is characterized by a grandiose sense of self, pathological lying, conning-manipulative behaviors, a lack of remorse, a lack of empathy, and a failure to accept responsibility—all of which can be attributed to Ted Bundy.

A psychiatrist, Dr. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, who examined Bundy in a last-minute attempt to save him from execution, concluded that he probably started developing psychological problems as an infant. Dr. Lewis said that Bundy lived in the house of his maternal grandparents in Philadelphia with a grandfather who was “an extremely violent and frightening individual.” The grandfather would kick dogs, swing cats by their tails, beat people who angered him, and read pornography. Lewis was told that as a preschooler, Bundy would sneak into a greenhouse where his grandfather’s pornography was kept and read it. At any moment, Bundy could switch from euphoria and compulsive talking to anger, followed by long periods of sullen silence.

He was “horribly traumatized” as a child, and Dr. Lewis determined that Bundy suffered from a “bipolar mood disorder.” Before he was put to death at the age of 42, Bundy stated that pornography fueled his violent thoughts towards women.

Sociological

According to Emile Durkheim, life without moral or social obligations becomes intolerable and results in anomie, a feeling of normlessness that often precedes suicide and crime. Durkheim suggested that unlimited aspirations pressure individuals to deviate from social norms. For example, despite being an intelligent and generally well-behaved student, Bundy struggled to make friends and socialize effectively with his peers. Hence, Bundy seemed to prefer isolation to understanding interpersonal relationships, as he lacked the knowledge of how to develop and nurture friendships. However, in contrast, Bundy lived an average, seemingly perfect, middle-class life within a working family.

Social and Psychological Influences

It's difficult to determine whether social and psychological influences played a role in Bundy's conduct. As a troubled individual from a young age, his behavior could likely be attributed to a combination of his social context and psychological influences. As we know, he was raised by his grandparents until he discovered that his sister was actually his mother (Who Is Ted Bundy?, n.d.). This revelation undoubtedly damaged the trust and credibility between him and his mother, potentially extending to his relationships with women in general. During his childhood, his grandfather—far from being a positive influence—exposed him to pornography and regularly exhibited violent behavior. Knowing these circumstances, one might even suggest that perhaps the manic and outrageous behavior was genetic. In one of his final interviews, Bundy claimed that his issues stemmed from his grandfather showing him violent pornography, which taught him how to treat women. Although it's possible that Bundy learned and internalized his violent behaviors from this environment, it's also plausible that he was merely attempting to buy more time by making this claim.

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