Who was Theodore Robert Bundy?
Ted Bundy came across as a charming and relatively handsome man. He used these obvious traits to lure the over 30 women he kidnapped, raped, and killed. Bundy was also a burglar and a necrophile. A necrophile is someone who has sexual fantasies or dreams with corpses. He was born on November 24, 1946 in Burlington Vermont and died on January 24, 1989 in Florida State Prison by the electric chair. Ted Bundy is one of the most sadistic serial killers of all times. But why?
Theodore Robert Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell to Eleanor Louise Cowell who went by Louise. When Louise was 22 she became pregnant out of wedlock with Bundy. Louise came from a family that was very religious and didn’t approve of her out of wedlock pregnancy. When Bundy was born, he and many others outside the family believed that Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, Louise’s parents, were Bundy’s parents and Louise was just his older sister. When Bundy found out the truth about his grandparents and mother, he continually resisted his mother for never telling him the truth or talking about his father.
In 1950, Louise changed her surname to Nelson and moved to Tacoma Washington with her son. In 1951, she meet a man named Johnny Culpepper Bundy who was a hospital cook. They met at an adults single night at the first Methodist church in Tacoma. They were married shortly after meeting and Johnny legally adopted Bundy. Louise and Johnny had four more children in their marriage. Johnny constantly tried to involve Bundy with the rest of the family and take him on camping trips but Bundy was reluctant to get close to Johnny. Bundy once told an old girlfriend that Johnny wasn't his real father, “wasn't very bright”, and “didn't make much money.”
In 1965, Bundy graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. Bundy spent a year at the University of Puget Sound before transferring to the University of Washington in 1966 to study Chinese. In 1967, Bundy became romantically involved with a classmate from the University of Washington known as Stephanie Brooks. In 1968, he dropped out of college and worked low wage jobs. Later that year, Stephanie Brooks ended things with Bundy because of his lack of maturity and ambition and moved back home to her family in California. Psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis would later state that this break up was “probably the pivotal time in his development”. Bundy, devastated by Brooks's rejection, traveled to Colorado and then farther east, visiting relatives in Arkansas and Philadelphia and attending Temple University for one semester. He returned to Washington in 1969 and met a woman named Elizabeth Kloepfer who was from Ogden, Utah and recently divorced. Kloepfer worked as a secretary at The University of Washington school of medicine. They had a long and rocky relationship that would continue past his first incarceration in Utah in 1976.
In 1970 Bundy enrolled back into The University of Washington as a physiology major. Bundy, being more determined in his education this time around, became an honor student and was well liked by his professors. In 1971 he took a job at Seattle's Suicide Hotline crisis center. There he met co-worker Ann Rule. Rule was a former Seattle police officer and aspiring crime writer. Later, Rule wrote the book The Stranger Beside Me about Ted Bundy. Rule stated in her book that she never saw anything disturbing in Bundy's personality at the time, explaining that he was “kind, solicitous, and empathetic”. After graduating from the University of Washington in 1972 Bundy joined Governor Daniel J. Evans' reelection campaign. After Evans's reelection he was hired as an assistant to Ross Davis, Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. Davis thought well of Bundy, describing him as “smart, aggressive and a believer in the system”. In 1973 Bundy was accepted into the law schools of UPS and the University of Utah even though Bundy didn’t have good test scores. But because of letters of recommendation from Evans, Davis, and several of the University of Washington psychology professors, he was accepted.
In the summer of 1973, Bundy attended a Republican Party business trip and met up with old girlfriend Stephanie Brooks. Brooks was intrigued with his transformation and educated matured new look. Bundy continued to date Kloepfer and Brooks at the same time. Neither of them knew that he was stringing them both along. In 1974, Bundy abruptly ended his relationship with Brooks and cut off all connection with her. Months later Brooks got ahold of Bundy and demand to know why he ended things for no reason, Bundy Responded with “Stephanie, I have no idea what you mean” and hung up. She never heard from him again. He later explained, “I just wanted to prove to myself that I could have married her.” By this time, Bundy had been skipping his law classes and going back to his unmotivated self. By April, he had dropped out of law school entirely and women in the Pacific Northwest began to disappear.
This would start the so called beginning of Ted Bundy’s killings. In a later interview during Bundy’s incarceration, he would admit to killing two women in Atlantic City in 1969 while visiting family in Philadelphia.
On January 4, 1974, shortly after he abruptly ended things with Brook, Bundy entered the basement of 18 year old Karen Sparks who was a student at The University of Washington. He gripped the metal rod above Sparks bed and started brutally beating her with it while she slept. He then sexually violated her with that same rod. Sparks was unconscious for 10 days but survived with permanent disabilities. Less than a month later, on February 1, Bundy broke into the basement of Lynda Ann Healy. He beat her unconscious, dressed her in blue jeans, a white blouse, boots, and carried her out and away.
Female college students continued to disappear. In August of 1974, Bundy received a second acceptance from the University of Utah Law School and moved to Salt Lake City, leaving Kloepfer in Seattle. He stayed with Kloepfer but dated at least a dozen other women at the same time. Within less of a month of being in Salt Lake City, a group of murders occured. On October 2, he attacked 16 year old Nancy Wilcox in Holladay, Utah and dragged her into some nearby woods. Apparently, Bundy only intended to “de-escalate” his pathological urges “by raping and then releasing her; but he strangled her—accidentally, he said—in the process of trying to silence her screams.” Her remains were buried near Capitol Reef National Park, 200 miles south of Holladay, but were never found. On October 18, Melissa Anne Smith, the 17 year-old daughter of the police chief of Midvale, disappeared after leaving a pizza parlor. Her naked body was found in the nearby mountains nine days later. The postmortem examination indicated that she was possibly alive for seven days after her initial disappearance. On October 31 in Lehi, Laura Ann Aime, who was also 17, disappeared after leaving a cafe around midnight. Her naked body was found by hikers in American Fork Canyonon on Thanksgiving Day. “Both of the young girls had been beaten, raped, sodomized and strangled with nylon stockings.” Years later during Bundy’s incarceration, he described his “postmortem rituals with the corpses of Smith and Aime, including hair shampooing and application of makeup.”
This was just the beginning of Bundy’s rapes and killings. He would go on to Colorado, Idaho and then Florida to continue his evil ways. Bundy had rituals and sexual fantasies that he lived out in the most gruesome ways. Bundy would beat his victims with metal bars and sexually assault them with foreign objects. He even ate his victims flesh if he wasn't fully sexually satisfied after the killing and rape. Bundy was also a collector in his “conquests”. He would keep his victims clothing, sentimental items and even body parts. He decapitated at least 12 of his victims and would keep there heads for his “collection”. Bundy would then sleep with the headless bodies for days until the stench of the disintegrating bodies became too over whelming. Bundy would also impersonate police officers and give fake names to his victims such as Chris Hagen, Kenneth Misner, Officer Roseland, Richard Burton and Rolf Miller.
To answer the question as to why Ted Bundy killed and raped so many women; we may never know. Bundy was a sadistic man with a corrupted and disgusting mind that led him to believe what he was doing was fun. People like Ted Bundy are never truly understood and can’t really be explained and like Ted Bundy once said “We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.” Hence, you never truly know if your standing in front of true evil.
Work Cited
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