Post by Brad-LaSpirits on May 14, 2007 17:50:54 GMT -5
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was one of the most infamous serial killers in U.S. history. Bundy raped and murdered scores of young women across the United States between 1974 and 1978. After more than a decade of vigorous denials, Bundy eventually confessed to thirty murders, although the actual total of victims remains unknown. Typically, Bundy would rape then murder, or murder then rape, his victims by bludgeoning, and sometimes by strangulation. Bundy was also a necrophiliac.
Despite the brutality of his crimes, Bundy is believed to have had a brilliant mind and was frequently described as educated and charming. His personal friends and acquaintances would remember him as a handsome and articulate young man.
[edit] Early life
Ted Bundy was born in Burlington, Vermont on November 24, 1946, at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers. The identity of Ted's father remains a mystery. Bundy's birth certificate lists a "Lloyd Marshall"[1], while Bundy's mother, Louise, would later tell of being seduced by a war veteran named "Jack Worthington". Ted's adopted family disbelieved this story, however, and expressed suspicion about Louise's violent, abusive father, Samuel Cowell.[2] To avoid social stigma, Bundy's grandparents claimed him as their son, giving him their last name; he grew up believing his mother to be his older sister. Between the two most popular Bundy biographies, Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me and Michaud and Aynesworth's The Only Living Witness, there is some disagreement as to exactly when Ted discovered the truth of his parentage. Michaud and Aynesworth state that Ted learned Louise was actually his mother while he was in high school.[3] Rule's book, however, states that it was much later and after a traumatic breakup with his first love, in 1969.[4]
For the first few years of his life, Bundy and his mother lived in Philadelphia with his maternal grandparents. In 1950, Bundy and his "sister" moved to live with relatives in Tacoma, Washington where Louise had Ted's last name inexplicably changed from Cowell to Nelson.[5] In 1951, one year after their move, Louise met Johnny Culpepper Bundy at an adult singles night held at Tacoma's First Methodist Church.[6] A Navy veteran and cook at a local Veterans Administration hospital, Bundy was eligible and lonely much like single mother Louise. In May of that year, Johnny and Louise were married and soon thereafter Johnny willingly adopted Ted, legally changing his last name to "Bundy".
In time, the Bundy family grew to add four more children, whom Ted spent much of his time babysitting. Johnny Bundy tried to include him in camping trips and other father-son activities, but the boy remained emotionally detached from his stepfather. In Bundy's mind, he felt more like a Cowell than a Bundy and saw Johnny and the rest of the Bundy clan as beneath him. He became increasingly uncomfortable around his stepfather and made it clear that he preferred to be alone.[7] Bundy was a good student at Woodrow Wilson High School, and was active in a local Methodist church serving as vice-president of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. He was involved with a local troop of the Boy Scouts.
Socially Bundy remained shy and introverted throughout some of his high school and early college years. He would later say that he "hit a wall" in high school and that he was unable to understand social behavior, stunting his social development.[8] He maintained a facade of social activity, but he had no natural sense of how to get along with other people: "I didn't know what made things tick. I didn't know what made people want to be friends. I didn't know what made people attractive to one another. I didn't know what underlay social interactions."[9] Years later, while on Florida's death row, Bundy would describe a part of himself that, from a young age, was fascinated by images of sex and violence as "the entity", and worked hard to keep this side of him well hidden during his youth.
Before he was even out of high school Bundy was a compulsive thief, a shoplifter, and on his way to becoming an amateur criminal.[10] To support his love of skiing, Bundy stole skis and equipment and forged ski-lift tickets.[11] He was arrested twice as a juvenile, though these records were later expunged.
[edit] College Years
In 1965, Ted graduated from Tacoma's Woodrow Wilson High School; awarded a scholarship by the University of Puget Sound, he started there in the Fall of that year, taking courses in psychology and Asian studies. After just two semesters at UPS, he decided to transfer to Seattle's University of Washington.
While a college student, Bundy worked as a grocery bagger and shelf-stocker at a Seattle Safeway store, as well as other odd jobs. As part of his course of studies in psychology, Ted would later work as a night-shift volunteer at Seattle's Suicide Hot Line, a suicide crisis center that served the greater Seattle metropolitan and suburban areas. It was there that he met and worked alongside former Seattle policewoman and fledgling crime writer Ann Rule. Familiar with Ted and his crimes from a personal standpoint, Rule would later write the most famous biography of Bundy and his crimes, The Stranger Beside Me.[12]
Bundy had one serious relationship with fellow college student Stephanie Brooks (a pseudonym), whom he met while enrolled at the UW in 1967. Following her 1968 graduation and return to her family home in California, Stephanie ended the relationship. Fed up with what she described as Bundy's immaturity and lack of ambition, they separated, although he obsessively stayed in touch with her through letters.[13] It was at this time that Rule states Bundy decided to pay a trip to Burlington, Vermont, the place of his birth. During this visit, Rule believes, Ted made a fateful visit to the local records clerk in Burlington and finally uncovered the truth of his parentage. Although it is unclear what impact this discovery had on him emotionally, it is clear that following his return from Vermont he began to treat Johnny Bundy with more obvious disdain.[14]
After his discovery, Bundy became a more focused and dominant character. He re-enrolled at the University of Washington, this time with a major in psychology. Bundy became an honors student and was well liked by his professors.[15] In 1969, he started dating Elizabeth Kendall (pseudonym), a divorced secretary who fell deeply in love with Bundy.[16] They would continue dating for over six years, until he went to prison for kidnapping in 1976.
Bundy graduated in 1972 from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology[17], and soon afterward, he began working for the state Republican Party. While on a business trip to California in the summer of 1973, Bundy came back into Stephanie's life with a new look and attitude; this time as a serious, dedicated professional who had been accepted to law school. Bundy continued to date Elizabeth as well, and neither woman was aware the other existed. Bundy courted Stephanie throughout the rest of the year, and she happily accepted his proposal of marriage. Two weeks later, however, he unceremoniously dumped her, refusing to return her phone calls. He would later dismiss the proposal and break-up as part of a challenge he undertook, saying, "I just wanted to prove to myself that I could have her." It was a few weeks after this breakup that Bundy began a murderous rampage in Washington state.[18][19]
[edit] First wave of murders
Many Bundy experts, including Rule and former King County detective Robert D. Keppel, believe Bundy may have started killing as far back as his early teens. Ann Marie Burr, an eight-year-old girl from Tacoma, vanished from her home one summer night in 1961, when Bundy was fourteen years-old. When asked about Burr's disappearance by Keppel shortly before his execution, Bundy denied killing her.[20] While Bundy's involvement in her disappearace appears intriguing on the surface, the possibility is improbable since the Burrs lived on the other side of town from the Bundy's home. During a discussion with his lawyer the day before his execution, Bundy said that his first attempt to kidnap a woman was in 1969[21], and implied that his first actual murder was sometime during the 1972-73 time frame[22]. His earliest known and confirmed murders were committed in 1974, when he was 27.
Shortly after midnight on January 4, 1974, Bundy entered the basement bedroom of 18-year-old Joni Lenz (pseudonym), a dancer and student at the University of Washington. Bundy bludgeoned her with a metal rod from her bed frame while she slept, and sexually assaulted her with a speculum.[23] Lenz was found the next morning by her roommates in a coma and lying in a pool of her own blood. She survived the attack, but suffered permanent brain damage and was unable to continue in her aspirations as a dancer.
Bundy's next victim was Lynda Ann Healy, another University of Washington student. On the night of January 31, 1974, Bundy broke into Healy's room, knocked her unconscious, dressed her in jeans and a shirt, wrapped her in a bed sheet, and carried her away. On March 12, 1974 in Olympia, Bundy kidnapped and murdered Donna Gail Manson, a 19-year old student at The Evergreen State College. She was last seen walking to an on-campus jazz concert. On April 17, Susan Rancourt disappeared from the campus of Central Washington State College in Ellensburg. Later, two different CWSC co-eds would recount meeting a man with his arm in a cast — one that night, one three nights earlier — who asked for their help to carry a load of books to his Volkswagen.[24][25][26] Next was Kathy Parks, last seen on the campus of Oregon State University in Corvallis on May 6. (Oregon State is approximately 250 miles away from the scene of the Washington murders. Consequently, detectives for some time were unsure if they should class Parks with the other disappearances.) Brenda Ball was never seen again after leaving The Flame Tavern in Burien, Washington on June 1. Bundy then murdered Georgeann Hawkins, a student at the University of Washington and a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, an on-campus sorority. In the early morning hours of June 11, 1974, she walked through an alley from her boyfriend's dormitory residence to her sorority house. Hawkins was never seen again. Witnesses later reported seeing a man with a leg cast struggling to carry a briefcase in the area that night.[27] One co-ed reported that the man had asked her help in carrying the briefcase to his car.[28]
Bundy's Washington killing spree culminated on July 14 with the abduction in broad daylight of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund from Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah, Washington. Eight different people that day told the police about the handsome young man with his left arm in a sling who called himself "Ted". Five of them were women that "Ted" asked for help unloading a sailboat from his Volkswagen Beetle. One of them accompanied "Ted" as far as his car, where there was no sailboat, before declining to accompany him further. Three more witnesses testified to seeing him approach Janice Ott with the story about the sailboat, and to seeing Ott walk away from the beach in his company. She was never seen alive again.[29] King County detectives were able to get a description both of the suspect and his tan Volkswagen Beetle. Some witnesses told investigators that the "Ted" they encountered spoke with a clipped, Canadian accent. From the witnesses police obtained descriptions of the man and his Volkswagen, and soon fliers were up all over the Seattle area. After seeing the police sketch and description of the Lake Sammamish suspect in both of the local newspapers and on television news reports, Bundy's girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall (pseudonym), one of his psychology professors at the UW, and former co-worker Ann Rule[30] all reported him as a possible suspect.[31] The police, receiving up to 200 tips per day,[32] did not pay any special attention to a tip about a clean-cut law student.
The fragmented remains of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund were discovered on September 7, off Interstate 90 near Issaquah, one mile from the park.[33] Along with the women's remains was found an extra femur bone and vertebrae, which Bundy shortly before his execution would identify as that of Georgeann Hawkins.[34] On March 2, 1975, the skulls and jawbones (and no other skeletal remains) of Healy, Rancourt, Parks and Ball were found on Taylor Mountain just east of Issaquah.[35] Because Ball was not a college student and had disappeared from a bar rather than a campus, investigators had not initially believed her to be one of the "Ted" victims. Later, they would discover that she had been seen dancing at the Flame on the night of her disappearance with a man that matched the "Ted" description, including the sling on his arm.[36] Years later Bundy claimed that he had also dumped Donna Manson's body there, but no trace of her has ever been found.
[edit] Second wave of murders
Bundy smiles for the cameras and pleads "Not Guilty" during a press conference announcing his indictment on first degree murder chargesThat autumn, Bundy moved to Utah to attend law school in Salt Lake City, where he resumed killing in October. Nancy Wilcox disappeared from Holladay, near Salt Lake City, Utah on October 2. Wilcox was last seen riding in a Volkswagen Beetle.[37] On October 18, Bundy murdered Melissa Smith, the 17-year-old daughter of Midvale 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 when she left a Halloween party in Lehi, Utah on October 31, 1974. Her remains were found nearly a month later by hikers on Thanksgiving Day, on the banks of a river in American Fork Canyon. She was found naked, beaten beyond recognition, sodomized, and strangled with her own sock.
In Murray, Utah, on November 8, 1974, Carol DaRonch narrowly escaped with her life. Claiming to be Officer Roseland of the Murray Police Department, Bundy approached DaRonch at a mall, told her someone had tried to break into her car, and asked her to accompany him to the police station. She got into his car (but refused his instruction to buckle her seat belt), and they drove for a short period before Bundy suddenly pulled to the shoulder and attempted to slap a pair of handcuffs on her. In the struggle, he fastened both loops to the same wrist. Bundy then whipped out his crowbar, but DaRonch caught it in the air just before it would have cracked her skull. She then managed to get the door open and tumble out onto the highway, thus escaping from her would-be killer.[38]
About an hour later, a strange man showed up at Viewmont High School in Bountiful, Utah, where the drama club was putting on a play. He approached drama teacher Raelynne Shepard several times, eventually asking her to go out to the parking lot to identify a car. Shepard declined. The man asked another student in attendance, Katherine Ricks, to come out to the parking lot and help him fix his car. Ricks also declined. Shepard would see the man again shortly before the end of the play, this time breathing hard, with his hair mussed and his shirt untucked. Another student, Tamara Tingley, would see the man lurking in the rear of the auditorium. Debby Kent, a 17-year-old Viewmont High student, left the play at intermission to go pick up her brother, and was never seen again. [39] Later, investigators found a key in the parking lot outside Viewmont High. It unlocked the cuffs taken off of Carol DaRonch.[40]
In 1975, while still attending law school at the University of Utah, Bundy shifted his crimes to Colorado. On January 12, Caryn Campbell disappeared from the Wildwood Inn at Snowmass, Colorado, where she had been vacationing with her fiancé and his children. She vanished somewhere in a span of fifty feet between the elevator doors and her room. Her body was found on February 17.[41] Next, Vail ski instructor Julie Cunningham disappeared on March 15, and Denise Oliverson on April 6. While in prison, Bundy confessed to Colorado investigators that he used crutches to approach Cunningham, after asking her to help him carry some ski boots to his car. At the car, Bundy clubbed her with his crowbar and incapacitated her with handcuffs, later strangling her in a crime highly similar to the Georgeann Hawkins murder.[42]
Lynette Culver went missing in Pocatello, Idaho on May 6 from the grounds of her junior high school. While on Death Row, Bundy later confessed that he kidnapped Culver and had taken the girl to a room he had rented at a nearby Holiday Inn. After raping her, he stated that he had drowned her in the motel room bathtub and later dumped her body in a river. After his return to Utah, Susan Curtis vanished on June 28. (Bundy confessed to the Curtis murder minutes before his execution.)[43] The bodies of Cunningham, Culver, Curtis and Oliverson have never been recovered.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, investigators were attempting to prioritize their enormous list of suspects and, in an innovative use of technology for 1975, using computers to cross-check different likely lists of suspects (classmates of Lynda Healy, owners of Volkswagens, etc.) against each other, and then identify suspects who turned up on more than one list. "Theodore Robert Bundy" was one of 25 people who turned up on four separate lists, and his case file was second on the To Be Investigated pile when the call came from Utah of an arrest. [44]