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Ted Bundy: The first "serial killer"
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who between 1974 and 1978 killed numerous young women in Washington, Utah, Colorado and Florida. His total number of victims is unknown. Bundy confessed to 30 murders but estimates run above 100. Bundy is often considered the quintessential or prototypical serial killer because of the number of victims and his well-publicized escapes from jail —
indeed, the term serial killer was devised in part to qualify his crimes.
Bundy is believed to have been a sociopath. He was an intelligent, educated, handsome and charming young man — who regularly brutally murdered women and girls, usually with a blunt instrument, sometimes by strangulation. He would also often sexually assault his victims before, during, and after their death.
While some Bundy experts, including former King County detective Robert D. Keppel, believe Bundy may have started killing in his early to mid-teens — a twelve-year-old neighbor vanished from her house when Bundy was fourteen — the earliest verified murders began in 1974, when he was 27.
Shortly after midnight on 4 January 1974, Bundy entered the house of Joni Lenz, an 18-year-old student at the University of Washington, and bludgeoned her with a crowbar while she slept. Bundy also removed a bed rod from Lenz's bed and used it to sexually assault her. She was found the next morning, in a coma, lying in a pool of blood. Lenz survived the attack, but suffered permanent brain damage.
Bundy's next victim was Lynda Ann Healy, a senior at the University of Washington. On 31 January 1974, Bundy broke into her room, knocked her unconscious, meticulously removed her clothes and dressed her in jeans and a shirt, folded her nightclothes, wrapped her in the bedsheet, and carried her outside. A single hair would be found at the crime scene which did not belong to the victim. A year would pass before her decapitated, dismembered remains were found.
From that January to June he stalked and killed more than one young woman a month, a spree that culminated in July with the double daytime abduction and murder of two females at Lake Sammamish State Park near Seattle. He murdered approximately ten victims in Oregon, Utah and Washington. Bundy had a remarkable advantage as his facial features were charming, yet not especially memorable. He would be later described as a chameleon, able to look totally different by making only minor adjustments to his appearance, e.g., changing his hairstyle.
That autumn, Bundy moved on to Utah, where he resumed killing in October with the murder in Midvale of Melissa Smith, the 17-year-old daughter of police chief Louis Smith. Bundy raped, sodomized and strangled her. Her body was found nine days later.
Next was Laura Aime, also 17, who disappeared on Halloween. Her remains were found nearly a month later, on Thanksgiving Day, on the banks of a river.
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First trial and Bundy's escapes
In Murray, Utah, on November 8, 1974, Carol DaRonch narrowly escaped with her life. Posing as a police officer, Bundy lured DaRonch into his car where he then attempted to slap a pair of handcuffs on her. Fortunately for DaRonch, he only got one wrist. She wrenched her door open with the other hand, rolled out of the car onto the highway and escaped. Bundy was later captured and convicted of DaRonch's kidnapping on June 30, 1976. He was sentenced to one to 15 years in Utah State Prison. Colorado authorities, however, were pursuing their murder cases.
On June 7, 1977, in preparation for a hearing in his murder trial, Bundy was transported to the Pitkin County, Colorado, courthouse. During a court recess, he was allowed to visit the courthouse's law library. Bundy then jumped out of the building from a second-story window and escaped. The two-story fall injured Bundy's ankle, which caused him to remain in the area, and he was recaptured a week later. Back in jail awaiting the start of his trial, Bundy escaped again. He somehow acquired a hacksaw and, over time, sawed a square hole in the ceiling of his cell in the Glenwood Springs, Colorado, lockup. On the night of December 30, 1977, Bundy climbed out of the hole, managed to reach the main hallway and was able to walk right out the jail's front door (the jailer was out for the evening.) Bundy stole a car in the parking lot and drove off into the night.
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Bundy goes to Florida
He flew TWA from Denver to Chicago, caught an Amtrak train to Ann Arbor, Michigan, then stole a car which he ditched in Atlanta before boarding a bus for Tallahassee. There, in the early hours of Super Bowl Sunday 1978, he bludgeoned two sleeping women to death and seriously wounded two others inside their Chi Omega sorority house.
On February 9, 1978, Bundy traveled to Lake City, Florida. While there, he abducted and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. She would be his final victim. Shortly after 1 AM on February 15, Bundy was stopped by a police officer in Pensacola, Florida. When the officer called in a check of Bundy's license plate, the orange VW he was driving came up as stolen. Before long, Bundy was identified and taken to Miami to stand trial for the Chi Omega murders.
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Conviction and execution
After being convicted, Bundy was sentenced to death by judge Edward Cowart. While under sentence of death, he was tried in Orlando for the Leach murder and was handed another death sentence by Judge Wallace Jopling. During this second trial, he married Carole Ann Boone, a former coworker and admirer. During his incarceration, Bundy received hundreds of fan letters from female admirers.
Judge Edward Cowart said, when sentencing Bundy to death:
"It is ordered that you be put to death by a current of electricity, that that current be passed through your body until you are dead. Take care of yourself, young man. I say that to you sincerely; take care of yourself. It's a tragedy for this court to see such a total waste of humanity as I've experienced in this courtroom. You're a bright young man. You'd have made a good lawyer, and I'd have loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went the wrong way, partner. Take care of yourself. I don't have any animosity to you. I want you to know that. Take care of yourself."'