Theodore Robert Bundy (born Theodore Robert Cowell <24 November 1946 - January 24, 1989) is an American serial killer, kidnapper, rapist, thief, and necrophile who was attacked and killed many women and young girls during the 1970s and possibly before. Shortly before his execution and after more than a decade of denial, he claimed 30 murders he committed in seven countries between 1974 and 1978. The actual number of victims is unknown and could be much higher.
Many young female victims of Bundy consider it handsome and charismatic, which are the traits he uses to win their trust. He will usually approach them in public places, pretending to be injured or disabled, or disguised as authority figures, before attacking and attacking them in more remote locations. He occasionally revisits his crime scenes for hours at a time, caring for and committing sexual acts with decomposing corpses until decay and destruction by wild animals makes further interaction impossible. He beheaded at least 12 of his victims, and for a certain period of time, he kept some heads cut off as a memento in his apartment. On several occasions, he only goes into the houses at night and beats his victims while they are asleep.
In 1975, Bundy was jailed for the first time when he was imprisoned in Utah due to aggravated kidnappings and attempted criminal attacks. He later became suspect in a longer list of unsolved murders in several states. Facing charges of murder in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and carried out further attacks, including three murders, before his final appointment in Florida in 1978. For the Florida murder he received three death penalties in two separate sessions.
Bundy was executed in the electric chair at the Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989. Ann Rule's biography described him as "a sadistic sociopath who takes pleasure from other human pain and controls his victim, to death, and even after". He once called himself "the coldest bastard you've ever met"; Lawyer Polly Nelson - a member of her last defense team - writes: "Ted is a very definition of evil without feeling."
Video Ted Bundy
Initial life
Little
Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946, to Eleanor Louise Cowell (1924-2012) (known for most of his life as Louise) at Elizabeth Lund's House for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont. His father's identity was never determined with certainty. His birth certificate gave his father to an Air Force salesman and veteran named Lloyd Marshall, but Louise later claimed that he had been seduced by a "sailor" whose name was probably Jack Worthington. Years later, investigators will not find anyone's records by that name in Navy archives or Merchant Marine. Some family members expressed suspicion that Bundy might have been Louise's own father, a rough father, Samuel Cowell, but no material evidence has ever been cited to support or deny this.
During the first three years of his life, Bundy lived in Philadelphia's maternal grandparents' homes, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, who raised him as their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied the untimely birth at the time. Family, friends, and even young Ted was told that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his sister. He finally found the truth, though he had various memories of the circumstances. He told a girlfriend that his cousin showed him a copy of his birth certificate after calling him a "bastard", but he told biographers Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth that he found the certificate itself. The real biographer and author of the crime, Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally, believed that she did not know it until 1969, when she found her original birth record in Vermont. Bundy reveals his lifelong hatred of his mother for never talking to her about her real father, and for leaving her to find her true offspring for herself.
In several interviews, Bundy speaks warmly about his grandparents and informs Rule that he is "identified with", "respected", and "holds on" his grandfather. In 1987, he and other family members told lawyers that Samuel Cowell was a tyrannical bully and a fanatic who hates blacks, Italians, Catholics and Jews. Bundy's grandfather beat his wife and family dog ââand swung a neighbor's cat on their tail. He once threw Louise's sister, Julia, down the stairs to sleep soundly. He sometimes speaks loudly to an invisible presence, and at least once he flies into fierce anger when questions about Ted's father are resurrected. Bundy describes her grandmother as a timid and obedient woman who periodically undergoes electroconvulsive therapy for depression and is afraid to leave their home towards the end of her life. Ted occasionally exhibits disruptive behavior, even at an early age. Julia remembered waking up one day from her nap and found herself surrounded by a knife from Cowell's kitchen; his three-year-old nephew stood by the bed, smiling.
In 1950, Louise suddenly changed her surname from Cowell to Nelson, and at the urging of many family members, she left Philadelphia with her son to live with Alan and Jane Scott's cousins ââin Tacoma, Washington. In 1951, Louise met Johnny Culpepper Bundy, a hospital chef, on an adult night at the First Methodist Church in Tacoma. They married later that year and Johnny Bundy formally adopted Ted. Johnny and Louise had four children of their own, and although Johnny tried to put his adopted son on camping trips and other family activities, Ted remained distant. He then complained to his girlfriend that Johnny was not his real father, "not very smart", and "not making much money."
Bundy has a different memory of Tacoma when he talks to his biographer. When he talks with Michaud and Aynesworth, he describes how he explores his surroundings, chooses garbage cans to find nude women's photos. When he talks to Polly Nelson, he explains how he examines detective magazines, criminal novels, and real crime documentaries for stories involving sexual violence, especially when they are illustrated with images of dead or defective bodies. In a letter to Rule, he asserts that he "... never, ever read fact-detective magazines, and shuddered at the thought [that anyone will]". In his conversation with Michaud, he describes how he consumed large amounts of alcohol and "searched" the community "late at night to search for the undamaged window where he could observe the woman who undressed, or" anything that could be seen. "
Bundy also varies his social life account. He told Michaud and Aynesworth that he "chose for himself" as a teenager because he could not understand interpersonal relationships. He claims that he has no natural feelings about how to develop friendships. "I do not know what makes people want to be friends," he said. "I do not know what underlying social interaction." Classmate from Woodrow Wilson High School told Rule, however, that Bundy was "famous and liked" there, "a medium-sized fish in a large pond".
Snow skiing is the only significant athletic sport in Bundity; he enthusiastically pursued the activity by using stolen equipment and forged lift tickets.
During high school, he was arrested at least twice on suspicion of theft and car theft. When he reaches the age of 18, the details of the incident are removed from his notes, which are customary in Washington State and most other states.
Year of university
After graduating from high school in 1965, Bundy spent a year at University of Puget Sound (UPS) before he was transferred to the University of Washington (UW) in 1966 to study Mandarin. In 1967, she became romantically involved with UW classmates who were identified by some pseudonyms in Bundy's biography, most often Stephanie Brooks. In early 1968, he quit college and worked in a number of jobs with minimum wages. He also volunteered at Seattle's presidential campaign office Nelson Rockefeller and in August attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami as a Rockefeller delegate. Soon Brooks ended their relationship and returned home to his family in California, frustrated by what he described as immaturity and Boby lack of ambition. Psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis will then point to this crisis as "probably the most important time of its development". Ruined by Brooks's refusal, Bundy goes to Colorado and then further east, visits relatives in Arkansas and Philadelphia and enrolls for a semester at Temple University. It was at this time that early in 1969, Rule believed, that Bundy visited the birth registry office in Burlington and confirmed his true descendants.
Bundy returned in Washington in the fall of 1969 when he met Elizabeth Kloepfer (identified in the Bundy literature as Meg Anders, Beth Archer, or Liz Kendall), a widow from Ogden, Utah. She works as a secretary at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Their storm relationship will continue through the preliminary detention in Utah in 1976.
In mid-1970, Bundy was now focused and goal-oriented, and he reapplied at UW, this time as a psychology major. He became a student of honor and was highly respected by his professors. In 1971, he took a job at the Seattle Suicide Hotline Crisis Center, where he met and worked with Ann Rule. Rule is a former Seattle police officer and potential crime writer who will then write one of the definitive Bundy biographies, The Stranger Beside Me . He saw nothing disturbing in Bundy's personality at the time and described it as "kind, caring, and empathetic".
After graduating from UW in 1972, Bundy joined the re-election campaign of Governor Daniel J. Evans. Posing as a student, he overshadows opponents of Evans, former governor Albert Rosellini, and records his stump speech for analysis by Evans's team. After Evans was re-elected, Bundy was hired as an assistant to Ross Davis, Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. Davis thinks well of Bundy and describes it as "smart, aggressive... and believing in the system". In early 1973, Bundy was accepted in UPS law schools and the University of Utah despite the mediocre School Entrance Examination score. He gained the power of a letter of recommendation from Evans, Davis, and some UW psychology professors.
During a trip to California on Republican business in the summer of 1973, Bundy rekindled his relationship with Brooks, who marveled at his transformation into a dedicated and serious professional who seemed to be on the cusp of a distinguished political and legal career. He keeps dating Kloepfer too, and no woman is aware of anyone else's existence. In the fall of 1973, Bundy was admitted to UPS Law School and continued to chase Brooks, who flew to Seattle several times to stay with him. They talk about marriage; at one point he introduced it to Davis as his fiancee e. However, in January 1974, he suddenly severed all contacts; phone calls and letters are not replied. Finally contacting him by phone a month later, Brooks demanded to know why Bundy ended their relationship unilaterally without explanation. In a flat and calm voice, he replied, "Stephanie, I do not know what you mean" and hung up. He never heard from him again. He then explained, "I just want to prove to myself that I can marry her"; but Brooks concludes in retrospect that he had planned his entire courtship and previous rejection in retaliation for the breakup he started in 1968.
At that time, Bundy started skipping classes at law school; in April, he had stopped attending completely, as young women began to disappear in the Pacific Northwest. In the year when the killing began, he was the assistant director of the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission and wrote a pamphlet for women on rape prevention.
Maps Ted Bundy
The first two killings
Washington, Oregon
There is no consensus about when or where Bundy started killing women. He told different stories to different people and refused to reveal specifically his earliest crimes, even when he confessed in graphic detail to dozens of murders later in the days before his execution. He told Nelson that he tried his first kidnapping in 1969 in Ocean City, New Jersey, but did not kill anyone until around 1971 in Seattle. He told psychologist Art Norman that he killed two women in Atlantic City in 1969 while visiting family in Philadelphia. He hinted but refused to elaborate the homicide detective Robert D. Keppel that he committed a murder in Seattle in 1972 and another murder in 1973 involving a pedestrian near Tumwater, Washington. Rule and Keppel both believe that he may have started killing as a teenager. The evidence shows that he kidnapped and killed Ann Marie Burr of Tacoma who was 8 years old when he was 14 years old in 1961; this is a charge he repeatedly rejected. His earliest documented murder was committed in 1974 when he was 27 years old. With his own admission, he has mastered the necessary skills - in an era before the DNA profile - to leave incriminating forensic evidence at the scene.
Shortly after midnight on January 4, 1974 (around the time he ended his relationship with Brooks), Bundy entered the underground apartment of 18-year-old Karen Sparks (identified as Joni Lenz, Mary Adams or Terri Caldwell by various sources), a dancer and student at UW. After mesmerizing a sleepless woman with a metal rod from her bed frame, she sexually assaults her with the same trunk, or metal speculum, causing extensive internal injury. He remained unconscious for 10 days, but survived with permanent disability. In the early hours of February 1, Bundy went into the basement of Lynda Ann Healy, a UW scholar who broadcast a morning radio weather report for skiers. She defeated him involuntarily, dressed in blue jeans, white blouse, and boots, and took her away.
Throughout the first half of 1974, female students continued to disappear at a rate of about one per month. On March 12, Donna Gail Manson, a 19-year-old student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, 60 miles (97 km) southwest of Seattle, left the dormitory to attend a jazz concert on campus but never came. On April 17, Susan Elaine Rancourt disappeared while on her way to her dorm room after an evening advisory meeting at Central Washington State College in Ellensburg, 110 miles (180 km) east-southeast of Seattle. Two female students of Central Washington then advanced to report the meeting - one on the eve of Rancourt's disappearance, three nights earlier - with a man wearing a sling sleeve, asking for help bringing many books to his brown or chocolate Volkswagen. Beetle. On May 6, Roberta Kathleen Parks left his dorm at Oregon State University in Corvallis, 85 miles (137 km) south of Portland, for coffee with friends at the Union Memorial, but never arrived.
Detectives from the King County Sheriff's Office and the Seattle Police Department are increasingly worried. There was no significant physical evidence, and the missing women had little in common, apart from the young, attractive, white college students with long hair split in the middle. On June 1, Brenda Carol Ball, 22, disappeared after leaving Flame Tavern in Burien, Washington, near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He was last seen in the parking lot, talking to a brown-haired man with his arm in a sling. In the early hours of June 11, UW Georgann Hawkins's students disappeared as they walked down the bright alley between his girlfriend's dormitory and the college student's home. The next morning, three Seattle homicide detectives and a criminal were combing all the aisles in their hands and knees, finding nothing. After Hawkins's disappearance was published, the witness came forward to report seeing a man that night in the alley behind the nearest dorm; he wears a crutch with a cast and tries to carry the suitcase. A woman remembers that the man asked her to help her carry the bag to her car, a light brown Volkswagen Beetle.
During this period, Bundy worked in Olympia at the Washington State Emergency Services Department (DES), a government agency involved in the search for missing women. There, he met and dated Carole Ann Boone, a divorced double mother of two men who, six years later, would play a pivotal role in the final phase of his life.
Reports of six missing women and brutal beatings of Sparks appeared prominently in newspapers and on television throughout Washington and Oregon. Fear spread among the population; riding by young women down sharply. Increased pressure on law enforcement agencies, and lack of physical evidence greatly hampers them. Police are unable to give journalists little information available for fear of compromising the investigation. Further resemblance between the victims is noted: All disappearances occur at night, usually near the ongoing construction work, within a semester or final examination week; all victims wore trousers or blue jeans; and in most of the scene, there was a sighting of a man wearing a cast or sling, and driving a Volkswagen Beetle chocolate or chocolate.
The killing of the Pacific Northwest culminated on Sunday, July 14, with a broad daylight abduction of two women from a crowded beach at Sammamish Lake Park in Issaquah, 20 miles (32 km) east of Seattle. Five female witnesses described an attractive young man wearing a white tennis outfit with his left hand in a sling, speaking in a mild accent, perhaps Canada or England. Introducing himself as "Ted," he asks for their help in dismantling a sailboat from a brown or bronze Volkswagen Beetle. Four rejected; someone accompanied him as far as his car, saw that there was no sailboat, and fled. Three additional witnesses saw him approach Janice Anne Ott, 23, a probationary worker at King County Juvenile Court, with a sailboat story, and watched him leave the beach at his company. About four hours later, Denise Marie Naslund, a 19-year-old woman learning to become a computer programmer, left a picnic to go to the restroom and never returned. Bundy told Stephen Michaud that Ott was alive when he returned with Naslund - and one was forced to watch when the other was killed - but he later rejected him in an interview with Lewis on the night of his execution.
King County Police were finally given a detailed explanation of the suspect and his car as they posted flyers throughout the Seattle area. A composite sketch was printed in a regional newspaper and broadcast on a local television station. Elizabeth Kloepfer, Ann Rule, a DES employee, and a UW psychology professor, all recognize profiles, sketches, and cars, and reports Bundy as a suspect; but the detective - who receives up to 200 tips per day - thinks that it is impossible for a clean law student with no adult criminal records to be a perpetrator.
On September 6, two mall hunters found the remains of Ott and Naslund skeletons near the service road at Issaquah, 2 miles east of Lake Sammamish State Park. An additional femur and multiple spines found at the site were later identified by Bundy as Georgann Hawkins. Six months later, a forestry student from Green River Community College found the skull and mandibles of Healy, Rancourt, Parks, and Ball in Taylor Mountain, where Bundy often climbs, just east of Issaquah. Manson's body was never found.
Idaho, Utah, Colorado
In August 1974, Bundy received a second acceptance from the Utah University Law School and moved to Salt Lake City, leaving Kloepfer in Seattle. When she often calls Kloepfer, she's dating "at least a dozen" other women. When he studied the first-year law curriculum for the second time, "he was devastated to know that other students had something, some intellectual ability, that he did not do it, he found his classes totally incomprehensible." me, "he said."
A series of new murders began the following month, including two that remained unaccounted until Bundy confessed to them shortly before his execution. On September 2, he raped and strangled an unidentified passenger in Idaho, then dumped his body immediately in a nearby river, or returned the next day to photograph and tear the corpse. On October 2, he arrested a 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox in Holladay, a suburb of Salt Lake City, and dragged him into a forest area, intending to "lower" his pathological insistence, claiming, by raping and then releasing him; but he strangled her - by accident, she said - in the process of trying to silence her screams. His body was buried near Capitol Reef National Park, about 200 miles (320 km) south of Holladay, but was never found.
On October 18, Melissa Anne Smith - daughter of the 17-year-old Midvale police chief (another area of ââSalt Lake City) - disappeared after leaving the pizzeria. Her bare body was found in a nearby mountain area nine days later. Postmortem examination indicates that he may remain alive for up to seven days after he disappears. On October 31, Laura Ann Aime, also 17, disappeared 25 miles (40 km) south of Lehi after leaving the cafe just after midnight. Her naked body was discovered by a 9-mile (14 km) pedestrian to the northeast at American Fork Canyon on Thanksgiving Day. Both women were beaten, raped, sodomized and strangled with nylon stockings. Years later, Bundy describes his postmortem rituals with the corpses of Smith and Aime, including hair shampoo and makeup applications.
On the afternoon of November 8th, Bundy approached 18-year-old telephone operator Carol DaRonch at Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Utah, less than a mile from the Midvale restaurant where Melissa Smith was last seen. He identifies himself as "Roseland Officer" from Murray Police Department and tells DaRonch that someone has tried to get into his car. He asked her to accompany her to the station to file a complaint. When DaRonch showed Bundy that he was driving on a road that did not lead to the police station, he was immediately pulled onto his shoulder and tried to tie it up. During their fight, he accidentally tied the two handcuffs to the same wrist, and DaRonch was able to open the car door and run away. That night, Debra Jean Kent, a 17-year-old student at Viewmont High School in Bountiful, 19 miles (31 km) north of Murray, disappeared after leaving theater production at school to pick up her brother. School drama teacher and a student told police that "strangers" had asked them to get out into the parking lot to identify a car. Another student then saw the same man walking behind the auditorium, and the drama teacher saw him again just before the end of the show. Outside the auditorium, investigators found the key that unlocked the handcuffs released from Carol DaRonch's wrist.
In November, Elizabeth Kloepfer summoned King County police for the second time after she read that young women are now disappearing in towns around Salt Lake City. Detective Randy Hergesheimer from the Primary Crimes division interviewed him in detail. By then, Bundy had risen rapidly in the King's hierarchy of suspicion, but witnesses to Sammamish Lake, considered the most reliable by detectives, failed to identify him from the ranks of photographs. In December, Kloepfer summoned the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office and repeated his suspicions. Bundy's name was added to their list of suspects, but at the time there was no reliable evidence linking it to Utah's crime. In January 1975, Bundy returned to Seattle after his final exam and spent a week with Kloepfer, who did not tell him that he had reported it to the police on three separate occasions. He made plans to visit him in Salt Lake City in August.
In 1975, Bundy diverted much of his criminal activity eastward, from his base in Utah to Colorado. On January 12, a 23-year-old registered nurse named Caryn Eileen Campbell disappeared while walking in a bright hallway between the elevator and her room at Wildwood Inn (now Wildwood Lodge) in Snowmass Village, 400 miles (640 km) southeast of Salt Lake City. Her naked body was discovered a month later next to a dirt road outside the resort. He had been killed with a blow to his head from a blunt instrument that left a typical linear curvy depression in his skull; his body also cuts sharp incision. Hundred miles (160 km) northeast of Snowmass, on March 15, ski instructor Vail Julie Cunningham, 26, disappeared as she walked from her apartment to a dinner date with a friend. Bundy then told Colorado investigators that he approached Cunningham with his crutches and asked him to help carry his boots to his car, where he beat and cuffed him, then struck and strangled him on a secondary site near Rifle, Colorado, 90 miles (140 km). ) to the west of Vail. A few weeks later, he traveled six hours from Salt Lake City to re-visit his body.
Denise Lynn Oliverson, 25, disappeared near the Utah-Colorado border at Grand Junction on April 6 while riding her bicycle to her parents' home; his bikes and sandals were found under a bridge near the railway bridge. On May 6, Bundy captivated 12-year-old Lynette Dawn Culver from Alameda High School in Pocatello, Idaho, 160 miles (260 km) north of Salt Lake City. She drowned and then sexually assaulted her in her hotel room, before throwing her body in the river north of Pocatello (probably Snake).
In mid-May, three Bundy Washington State DES partners, including Carole Ann Boone, visited him in Salt Lake City and stayed for a week in his apartment. Bundy then spent a week in Seattle with Kloepfer in early June and they discussed getting married the following Christmas. Again, Kloepfer did not mention some discussions with King County Police and the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office, and Bundy did not disclose his ongoing relationship with Boone or romance along with a known Utah law student on various accounts such as Kim Andrews or Sharon Auer.
On June 28, Susan Curtis disappeared from Brigham Young University campus in Provo, 45 miles (72 km) south of Salt Lake City. Curtis's murder became Bundy's final acknowledgment, recordings before entering the execution room. The bodies of Wilcox, Kent, Cunningham, Culver, Curtis, and Oliverson were never found.
In August or September 1975, Bundy was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, though he was not an active participant in the ministry and ignored most of the church's restrictions. He was later excommunicated by the LDS Church after the abduction of his abduction in 1976. When asked for his religious preferences after his capture, Bundy replied "Methodist", his childhood religion.
In the State of Washington, investigators are still struggling to analyze the killing in the Pacific Northwest that ended as suddenly as it had begun. In an effort to understand the extraordinary data set, they use a strategy that is then innovative in compiling the database. They use King County's payroll computers, "primitive large machines" by contemporary standards, but the only ones available for them to use. Having included many lists they have compiled - classmates and acquaintances of each victim, Volkswagen owners are named "Teds", known sex offenders, and so on - they ask the computer for coincidence. Of the thousands of names, 26 appear in four separate lists; one of which is Ted Bundy. Detectives also manually compiled a list of 100 of their "best" suspects, and Bundy was also on the list. He was "literally at the top of the pile" of suspects when news came from his capture Utah.
First capture and trial
On August 16, 1975, Bundy was arrested by Utah Highway Patrol officers in Granger (another suburb of Salt Lake City). The officer had observed Bundy sailing in a residential area in the hours before dawn; Bundy escaped from the area at high speed after seeing a patrol car. The officer searched the car after he realized that the front passenger seat of Volkswagen had been removed and placed in the back seat. He found a ski mask, a second mask made of pantyhose, crowbar, handcuffs, garbage bags, rope rolls, ice breakers, and other items that were originally thought of as robbery tools. Bundy explains that the ski mask is for skiing, he has found the handcuffs in the bin, and the rest are ordinary household items. However, Detective Jerry Thompson remembers a similar suspect and car description of DaRonch's November 1974 abduction, which matches Bundy's name from Kloepfer's phone call in December 1974. In Bundy's search for the apartment, the police found a guide to Colorado ski resorts with a check mark by Wildwood Inn and a brochure that advertises the Viewmont High School show in Bountiful, where Debra Kent disappears. The police had insufficient evidence to detain Bundy, and he was released on his own admission. Bundy later said that searchers missed the collection of Polaroid photographs from his victims; he destroyed the pictures after he was released.
Salt Lake City Police placed Bundy under 24-hour surveillance, and Thompson flew to Seattle with two other detectives to interview Kloepfer. He told them that in the year before Bundy's move to Utah, he had found objects that he "could not understand" in his home and in Bundy's apartment. These items included crutches, a bag of Paris plaster that he claimed was stealing from a medical supplies house, and a butcher that was never used for cooking. Additional items include surgical gloves, Oriental knives in a wooden box he keeps in a drawer, and a sack full of women's clothes. Bundy is constantly in debt, and Kloepfer suspects that he has stolen almost all of the significant value it has. When she confronts her on TV and new stereos, she warns him, "If you tell anyone, I'll break your neck." She says Bundy becomes "very angry" whenever she considers cutting her hair, which is long and parted in the middle. She sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night to find her under the bed covers with a flashlight, checks her body. He kept the wrench, tied in the middle of the handle, in the trunk of his car - another Volkswagen Beetle, which he often borrowed - "for protection". Detectives insisted that Bundy was not with Kloepfer on the nights where the victims of the Pacific Northwest had vanished, or on the day Ott and Naslund were kidnapped. Shortly thereafter, Kloepfer was interviewed by Seattle's murder detective Kathy McChesney, and learned of Stephanie Brooks's existence and her brief engagement with Bundy around Christmas 1973.
In September, Bundy sold his Volkswagen Beetle to a Midvale teenager. The Utah police seized it, and the FBI technician broke it open and searched it. They found a suitable hair sample obtained from Caryn Campbell's body. Later, they also identified hair strands "microscopically indistinguishable" from Melissa Smith and Carol DaRonch. FBI laboratory specialist Robert Neill concluded that the presence of strands of hair in one car matching three different victims who had never met each other would be "a coincidence of a surprising scarcity".
On October 2, the detective puts Bundy into line. DaRonch immediately identified him as "Roseland Officer". In the same line, witnesses from Bountiful picked him up as a stranger lurking in a high school auditorium. There is not enough evidence to relate it to Debra Kent (whose body was never found), but more than enough evidence to accuse her of aggravated kidnappings and attempted criminal attacks in the DaRonch case. He was released on bail of $ 15,000, paid by his parents, and spent most of the time between the indictment and the courts in Seattle, who lived at Kloepfer's home. The Seattle police had insufficient evidence to accuse him of the Pacific Northwest killing, but he was closely watched. "When Ted and I stepped out on the porch to go somewhere," writes Kloepfer, "so many unmarked police cars start that it sounds like the beginning of the Indy 500."
In November, three main researchers Bundy - Jerry Thompson of Utah, Robert Keppel of Washington, and Michael Fisher of Colorado - met in Aspen, Colorado [165] and exchanged information with 30 detectives and prosecutors from five states. While the officials left the meeting (later known as the Aspen Summit) convinced that Bundy was the killer they were looking for, they agreed that more solid evidence would be needed before he could be charged with murder.
On 23 February 1976, Bundy was tried for DaRonch's kidnapping. On the advice of his lawyer, John O'Connell, Bundy was released right to the jury because of the negative publicity surrounding the case. On March 1, after a four-day trial and weekend of deliberation, Judge Stewart Hanson Jr. found him guilty of kidnapping and assault. On June 30, she was sentenced to serve at least one to maximum 15 years in Utah State Penitentiary. In October, he was found hiding in the bushes in the prison yard carrying "escape kits" - road maps, flight schedules, and social security cards - and spending several weeks in solitary confinement. Later that month, Colorado authorities charged him with the murder of Caryn Campbell. After the period of resistance, he released the extradition process and was transferred to Aspen in January 1977.
Escapes
On June 7, 1977, Bundy was transported 40 miles (64 km) from Garfield County prison in Glenwood Springs to the Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen for a preliminary hearing. He has chosen to serve as his own lawyer, and as such, is excused by the judge from wearing handcuffs or shackles. During the recess, he requested to visit the law courthouse library to investigate his case. Bundy is hidden behind a bookcase when he opens a window and jumps from a second story, his ankle sprained as he lands. After removing the outer layer of clothing, he wandered through Aspen as a roadblock was installed at his periphery, then climbed south into the Aspen Mountains. Near the summit, he enters the hunting cabin and steals food, clothing, and guns. The next day he left the cabin and continued south toward the town of Crested Butte, but lost in the woods. For two days he walked aimlessly on the mountain, passing two paths pointing down to his intended destination. On June 10, he went into a camper trailer on Lake Maroon, 10 miles (16 km) south of Aspen, took food and ski parka; but instead of going south, he walked back north toward Aspen, avoiding roadblocks and looking for parties along the way. Three days later, he stole a car on the edge of the Aspen Golf Course. Cold, sleep deprived, and in pain from his ankle sprain, he returned to Aspen, where two police officers saw his car drove in and out of its tracks and pulled it. He has been a fugitive for six days. Inside the car there was a map of the mountainous area around Aspen that the prosecutor used to show the location of Caryn Campbell's body (as his own lawyer, Bundy had the right to find), indicating that his escape was not a spontaneous act, but had been planned..
Back in prison in Glenwood Springs, Bundy ignores the advice of friends and legal counsel to stay. The case against which, already weakened, deteriorated steadily as the pretrial movement was consistently resolved for its good and significant amounts of evidence were ruled unacceptable. "A more rational defendant may have realized that he has a good chance to be free, and that defeating the cost of murder in Colorado would probably prevent another prosecutor... by just one and a half years to serve on DaRonch's belief, Ted has survived, he can become a free man. "Instead, Bundy devised a new escape plan. He obtained a detailed floor plan from a prison and a hacksaw blade from another inmate, and collected $ 500 cash, smuggled for more than six months, he later said, by visitors - Carole Ann Boone in particular. During the night, when another prisoner was bathing, he saw a hole about a foot (0.30 m) square between a steel rod that strengthens on the ceiling of his cell and, after losing 35 pounds (16 kg), is able to pass it into a crawl space above. In the weeks that followed, he made a series of exercises, exploring the space. Several reports from a movement informant on the ceiling at night were not investigated.
At the end of 1977, the upcoming trial in Bundy had been the cause of cèè ca in a small town of Aspen, and Bundy filed a motion for a change of venue to Denver. On December 23, an Aspen court judge granted the request - but to Colorado Springs, where the jury was historically hostile to the murder of the suspect. On the night of December 30, with most of the prison staff on Christmas holidays and nonviolent prisoners on leave with their families, Bundy piled up books and files on his bed, covering them with a blanket to simulate his sleeping body, and climbed into the crawl space. He breaks through the ceiling to the apartment of the warden's head - who goes out for the night with his wife - changes clothes from the prison warden's wardrobe, and walks out the front door to freedom.
After stealing the car, Bundy went east from Glenwood Springs, but the car soon broke down in the mountains on Interstate 70. A passing rider gave him a ride to Vail, 60 miles (97 km) to the east. From there he took a bus to Denver, where he boarded a morning flight to Chicago. In Glenwood Springs, the prison frame crew found no escape until noon on December 31, more than 17 hours later. By then Bundy was in Chicago.
Florida
From Chicago, Bundy takes the train to Ann Arbor, Michigan. There, on January 2 at the local tavern, he watched his alma mater beat UW Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Five days later he stole a car and drove to Atlanta, where he took a bus and arrived in Tallahassee, Florida, on the morning of January 8th. He rented a room under Chris Hagen's alias in a boardinghouse near Florida State University (FSU) campus. Bundy later said that he initially decided to seek a legitimate job and refrain from further criminal activity, knowing he might be able to remain free and undetectable in Florida indefinitely as long as he did not attract the attention of the police; but his job application, at a construction site, had to be abandoned when he was asked to make an identification. He goes back to the old habits of shoplifting and stealing credit cards from the purse of the lady left on the shopping cart.
In the early hours of January 15, 1978 - one week after his arrival in Tallahassee - Bundy entered the Chi Omega FSU boarding house through the back door with the wrong locking mechanism. Starting around 2:45 am, she showered Margaret Bowman, 21, with a piece of firewood while she slept, then scratched it with nylon stockings. He then enters Lisa Levy's 20-year-old bedroom and knocks him unconscious, choking him, tearing one of his nipples, biting his left ass, and sexually assaulting her with a hair haze bottle. In the adjoining bedroom, he attacks Kathy Kleiner, breaks her jaw and fouls her shoulders; and Karen Chandler, who suffered a concussion, broken jaw, lost teeth, and index finger. The Tallahassee detectives then decided that the four attacks occurred in less than 15 minutes, within earshot of over 30 witnesses who heard nothing. After leaving the dormitory house, Bundy goes into an underground apartment eight blocks away and attacks FSU student Cheryl Thomas, removing her shoulders and breaking her jaw and skull in five places. He was left with permanent deafness, and the equilibrium damage that ended his dance career. In Thomas's bed, the police found semen stains and "mask" pantyhose containing two strands of hair "similar to Bundy in class and characteristics".
On February 8, Bundy traveled 150 miles (240 km) east to Jacksonville, with a stolen FSU car. In the parking lot he approached the 14-year-old Leslie Parmenter, daughter of the Jacksonville Police Detective Chief, identified herself as "Richard Burton, Fire Department" but retreated when Parmenter's sister came and challenged her. That afternoon, he retreated 60 miles (97 km) westward to Lake City. At Lake City Junior High School the next morning, 12-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach was summoned to his homer by a teacher to retrieve a forgotten wallet; he never returned to class. Seven weeks later, after intensive search, his partially mummified body was found in a pig shed near Suwannee River State Park, 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Lake City.
On February 12, with insufficient cash to pay for the rent due and the growing suspicion that the police approached him, Bundy stole the car and fled to Tallahassee, driving west across the Florida Panhandle. Three days later, around 1:00 am, he was stopped by Pensacola police officer David Lee near the state line of Alabama after a "want and guarantee" check showed that his Volkswagen Beetle was stolen. When told he was detained, Bundy kicked Lee's leg out from under him and ran away. Lee fired warning shots followed by a second round, chasing and dealing with it. Both struggled against Lee's gun before the officer finally subdued and captured Bundy. In the stolen vehicle there are three sets of IDs belonging to female FSU students, 21 stolen credit cards and a set of stolen televisions. Also found a pair of dark-colored prescription glasses and a pair of plaid trousers, later identified as a disguise worn by "Richard Burton, Fire Brigade" in Jacksonville. When Lee hauled his suspect to jail, unaware that he had just caught one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, he heard Bundy say, "I hope you killed me."
Florida court, marriage
After a change of venue to Miami, Bundy was tried for murder and Omega Chi attacks in June 1979. The trial was covered by 250 journalists from five continents and was the first to be broadcast nationally in the United States. Despite the presence of five court-appointed lawyers, Bundy once again handles many of his own defense. From the beginning, he "sabotaged all defense efforts out of spite, mistrust, and delusions", Nelson later wrote. "Ted [is] facing a murder charge, with a possible death sentence, and all that matters to him seems to be that he is responsible."
According to Mike Minerva, a Tallahassee public defender and a member of the defense team, negotiated pre-adjudication bargains in which Bundy will plead guilty to the murders of Levy, Bowman and Leach in exchange for 75-year prison sentences. Prosecutors agree with the deal, with one account, because "the prospect of losing the trial very well." Bundy, on the other hand, sees the defense not only as a means to escape the death penalty, but also as a "tactical step": he can enter his petition, then wait several years for evidence to be destroyed or lost and for witnesses to die, resume or withdraw their testimony. As soon as the case against him is deteriorated and irreparable, he can propose a post-punishment movement to put aside the defense and free a free man. However, at the last minute, Bundy refused the deal. "It made him realize that he had to stand in front of the whole world and say he was guilty," Minerva said. "He can not do it."
In the trial, important testimony came from a member of the Chi Omega student Connie Hastings, who placed Bundy around Chi Omega House that night, and Nita Neary, who saw him leave a house of association holding a murder weapon. Incriminating physical evidence includes the appearance of a bite wound that Bundy wounded on Lisa Lisa's butt, which by forensic odontologist Richard Soubour and Lowell Levine fit the teeth of Bundy. The jury conferred for less than seven hours before sentencing him on July 24, 1979, the murders of Bowman and Levy, three counts of first-degree murder attempts (for Kleiner, Chandler and Thomas) and two charges of robbery. Judge Edward Cowart's court sentenced him to death for the conviction of murder.
Six months later, the second trial took place in Orlando, for Kimberly Leach's kidnapping and murder. Bundy was found guilty once more, after less than eight hours of consideration, mainly due to the testimony of an eyewitness who saw him leading Leach from the schoolyard to his stolen van. Important material evidence including clothing fibers with unusual manufacture errors, found in the van and in Leach's body, matches the fibers of the jacket worn by Bundy when he is arrested.
During the trial sentence phase, Bundy takes advantage of the vague Florida law stating that a marriage statement in court, in the presence of a judge, is a legal marriage. As he questioned former Washington State state colleague Carole Ann Boone - who had moved to Florida to be near Bundy, had testified on his behalf during both trials, and once again testified on his behalf as a character witness - he asked him for his marriage. He accepts, and Bundy declares to the court that they are legally married.
On February 10, 1980, Bundy was sentenced to death for the third time with electricity. When the punishment was announced, he reportedly stood up and shouted, "Tell the jury they are wrong!" The third sentence of death sentence is finally done almost nine years later.
In October 1982, Boone gave birth to a daughter and named Bundy as her father. Although a husband and wife visit is not permitted in Raiford Prison, inmates are known to collect their money to bribe carers so they can enjoy intimate time alone with their female visitors.
Death and recognition
Shortly after the conclusion of Leach's experiment and the beginning of the long application process that followed, Bundy began a series of interviews with Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth. Speaking mostly to a third person to avoid the "recognition stigma", he began for the first time revealing the details of his crime and thought process.
He tells of his career as a thief, which confirms Kloepfer's suspicion for a long time that he has been shoplifting almost all the substance he possesses. "The big rewards for me," he said, "are actually have whatever I've stolen, I really enjoy something... that I want and go and get." Ownership proved to be an important motive for rape and murder as well. Sexual assault, he says, fulfills his need to "really own" his victims. At first, he killed his victim "as a matter of expediency... to eliminate the possibility of being caught"; but then, the murders became part of the "adventure". "The highest nature is, in fact, taking a life," he said. "And then... the physical possession of the remains."
Bundy also confessed in Special Agent William Hagmaier of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit. Hagmaier was struck by the "deep and almost mystical satisfaction" Bundy had taken in murder. "He says that after a while, murder is not just a crime of lust or violence," Hagmaier linked. "It belongs, they are part of you... [the victims] become part of you, and you [two] are one forever... and the reason you kill them or leave them becomes holy to you, and you will always withdrawn to them. "Bundy told Hagmaier that he considered himself an" amateur ", an" impulsive "killer in his early years, before moving on to what he called the" prime "or" predatory "phase at the time the murder of Lynda Healy in 1974. This implies that he started killing well before 1974 - although he never explicitly confessed to doing so.
In July 1984, Raiford's bodyguards found two blades of hacksaws that Bundy had hidden in his cell. A steel rod in one of the cell windows has been completely sawed at the top and bottom and taped back into place with a homemade soap-based adhesive. A few months later, the guards found an unauthorized mirror hidden inside the cell, and Bundy was again moved to a different cell.
Some time during this period, Bundy was attacked by a group of inmates. Although he has denied being attacked, a number of inmates confessed to crime, characterized by a single source as "gang rape". Shortly after, he was charged with disciplinary offenses for unauthorized correspondence with other prominent criminals, John Hinckley, Jr. In October 1984, Bundy contacted Robert Keppel and offered to share his self-proclaimed expertise in serial killer psychology in an ongoing hunt. for his successor in Washington, Green River Killer. Keppel and Green River Task Force detectives Dave Reichert interviewed Bundy, but Gary Leon Ridgway remained free for 17 years. Keppel published detailed documentation of the Green River interview, and subsequently collaborated with Michaud on another examination of the interview material. Bundy created the nickname "The Riverman" for Gary Ridgway, which was later used for Keppel's book titles, The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer .
In early 1986, the date of execution (March 4) was fixed on the belief of Chi Omega; The Supreme Court issued a brief visit, but the execution was promptly rescheduled. In April, shortly after the new date (July 2) was announced, Bundy finally confessed to Hagmaier and Nelson what they believed to be the full range of destruction, including details of what he did to some of his victims after their deaths. He tells them that he visited Mount Taylor, Issaquah, and other secondary crime scenes, often several times, to lie to his victims and commit sexual acts with their rotting bodies until decay forced him to quit. In some cases, he drove for several hours each way and stayed all night. In Utah, she makes up for Melissa Smith's lifeless face, and she repeatedly rinses Laura Aime's hair. "If you have time," he told Hagmaier, "they can be whatever you want." He decapitated about twelve of his victims with a hacksaw, and kept at least one group of disconnected heads - possibly all four found on Mount Taylor (Rancourt, Garden, Ball and Healy) - in his apartment for a period of time before disposing of them.
Less than 15 hours before the July 2 execution schedule, the Court of Appeal of the Eleventh Circuit stayed indefinitely and returned the case of Chi Omega for review on various technicalities - including Bundy's mental competence to stand trial, and wrong instructions by court judges during the sentencing phase requiring the jury severing 6-6 ties between life imprisonment and the death penalty - which, in the end, is never resolved. The new date (November 18, 1986) is then set to implement the Leach sentence; The Eleventh Circuit Court issued a residence permit on Nov. 17. In mid-1988, the Eleventh Circuit came to power against Bundy, and in December the Supreme Court rejected a motion to review the verdict. Within hours of the final rejection, a firm date of implementation on 24 January 1989 was announced. Bundy's journey through the appeals court is very quick for a mass murder case: "Contrary to popular belief, the courts move Bundy as fast as they can... Even the prosecutor admits that Bundy's lawyers never resort to delaying tactics.Although people are everywhere angry." on a real delay in executing the archdemon, Ted Bundy is actually on the fast track. "
With all the stalemate exhausted and no further motivation to deny his crimes, Bundy agrees to speak frankly with the investigators. He confessed to Keppel that he had done all eight murders of Washington and Oregon where he was the prime suspect. He described three additional victims previously unknown in Washington and two in Oregon that he refused to identify (if indeed he ever knew their identity). He says he left the fifth corpse - Donna Manson - on Mount Taylor, but burns his head in Kloepfer's fireplace. ("Of all the things I do to [Kloepfer]," he said to Keppel, "this is probably the least of which he is pardoned to me." Poor Liz. ")
He explained in detail about Georgann Hawkins's abduction of the brightly lit UW tunnel - how he lured him into his car, beat and handcuffed him, pushed him to Issaquah and strangled him, spent the whole night with his body, and revisited him. corpses on three occasions later. He also admitted, for the first time, that he returned to UW in the morning after the kidnapping and murder of Hawkins. There, in the middle of the crime scene investigation, he found and collected Hawkins's earrings and one of his shoes, where he left them in the adjoining parking lot, and left, unobserved. "It was a very brash achievement," Keppel wrote, "that it shocked the police to this day."
"He described Issaquah's crime scene [where Ott bones, Naslund, and Hawkins were found], and it was almost like he was there", said Keppel. "As he sees everything, he's crazy about the idea because he spends so much time there, he's really full of murders all the time." Nelson's impression is similar: "It is an absolute misunderstanding of his crime that shocks me," he wrote, "his real anger toward women, he has no compassion... he is absolutely absorbed in details. His murders are his.. "
Bundy confesses to detectives from Idaho, Utah, and Colorado that he has committed many extra killings, including some unknown to the police. He explained that when he was in Utah he could bring his victim back to his apartment, "where he can relive the scenario depicted on the cover of detective magazine." A new hidden strategy quickly became clear: he held back many details, hoping to sort out incomplete information into yet another execution execution. "There are other remnants buried in Colorado", he admitted, but declined to explain. The new strategy - soon dubbed "Ted's bone-by-time scheme" - only serves to deepen the decision of the authorities to see Bundy executed on schedule, and generate a bit of new detailed information. In the case where he gave details, nothing was found. Colorado detective Matt Lindvall interprets this as a conflict between his desire to delay his execution by divulging information and his need to remain "in total - the only person who knows where his victims rested."
When it became clear that no more lives would come from court, Bundy's supporters began lobbying for the only option left, executive pardon. Diana Weiner, a Florida youth lawyer and the latest love flower, told the families of several Colorado and Utah casualties to petition Florida Governor Bob Martinez to delay giving Bundy time to reveal more information. All rejected. "The family already believes the victim is dead and Ted has killed them," Nelson wrote. "They do not need his confession." Martinez confirmed that he would not approve any further delay in anything. "We will not have a system manipulated", he told reporters. "For him to negotiate for his life over the victim's body is despicable."
Boone has championed Bundy's innocence throughout his ordeal and feels "deeply betrayed" by his confession that he is, in fact, guilty. He moved back to Washington with his daughter and refused to receive his phone call the day he was executed. "He was wounded by his relationship with Diana [Weiner]," wrote Nelson, "and was devastated by his sudden wholesale recognition in his last days."
Hagmaier was present during the last interview with the investigator. On the night of his execution, he spoke of suicide. "He does not want to give the country the satisfaction of seeing him die," Hagmaier said.
Death
Bundy died in Raiford's electric chair at 7:16 am EST on 24 January 1989; he is 42 years old. Hundreds of people reveled - including 20 unofficial police officers, with one account - singing, dancing and lighting fireworks in the meadow across the street from the jail during execution, then cheering as the white hearse of his body left the prison. His body was cremated in Gainesville, and his ashes scattered at an undisclosed location in the Cascade Range of Washington State, according to his will.
The modus operandi and victim profile
Bundy is a highly organized and calculating criminal who uses his vast knowledge of law enforcement methodology to avoid identification and arrest for many years. The crime scene is spread over a large geographical area; the number of victims has risen to at least 20 before it becomes clear that many investigators in very different jurisdictions are hunting down the same man. The method of attack of choice is blunt trauma and strangulation, two relatively silent techniques that can be solved with ordinary household items. He purposely avoided firearms because of the noise they made and the ballistic evidence they left behind. He is a "meticulous researcher" who explores his surroundings in great detail, looking for a safe place to capture and dispose of victims. He is extraordinarily skilled at minimizing physical evidence. His fingerprints were never found at a crime scene, or any other indisputable evidence of evidence, a fact that he often repeated over the years in which he tried to maintain his innocence.
Another important obstacle to law enforcement is the basically anonymous Bundi physical character, and the strange chameleon-like ability to change his appearance almost entirely. Initially, the police complained about the futility of showing his photograph to witnesses; he looked different in almost every photo he'd taken from him. Personally, "his expression will change his entire appearance so there are times when you are not even sure you see the same person," said Stewart Hanson, Jr., judge in the DaRonch trial. "He's really a change." Bundy is very conscious of this unusual quality and he uses it, using a subtle modification of facial hair or hairstyles to significantly alter his appearance as necessary. She hides a sign of her distinctive identification, a black mole on her neck, with a shirt and a sweater tour
Source of the article : Wikipedia