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Ted Bundy: biography of a serial killer

Ted Bundy: biography of a serial killer

March 4, 2024

A man with a broken arm in a sling, attractive and with a certain charisma, asks a woman for help to carry some books in the car. The woman in question decides to help him load those books, accompanying the young man to the car. A month later, they find her body in a nearby lake.

It is not a story of fiction, but of a real event. It is about what happened to more than one of the victims of one of the largest and best known serial killers of women in the United States, whose life we ​​review in this article. It's about the biography of Ted Bundy .

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Biography of Ted Bundy

Theodore Robert Cowell was born in Burlington, an American town located in Vermont , November 24, 1946. Son of Eleanor Louise Cowell when she was very young and of unknown father, was raised by her grandparents and made to believe both him and the rest of society that his mother was actually his sister . This rejected him in his early years, being a source of shame for the family. According to later statements of the subject, it seems that his grandfather was violent and mistreated his grandmother, growing up in an aversive environment.


In 1950 he moved with his mother to Washington, which a year later married John Bundy. Theodore Cowell would be adopted by him and would receive his surname, although despite the presence of attempts to approach by his adoptive father failed to maintain a good emotional bond.

Due among other aspects to the experience of a continuous rejection and intrafamily violence , Ted Bundy already began from childhood to manifest a withdrawn and childish personality, with little social contact. He also began to show symptoms of what today would be considered a dissocial disorder, manifesting cruel behavior and becoming entertained by capturing, killing, maiming and carving up animals.


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Academic background and relationship with Stephanie Brooks

Ted Bundy enrolled at the University of Puget Sound and He began to study psychology, an area in which he turned out to be a good student . In 1967 he fell in love and began a relationship with a classmate of the university, Stephanie Brooks. However, two years later she graduated and would end up leaving the relationship due to her immaturity and lack of clear objectives. Bundy became obsessed with her, sending him frequent letters with which he tried to win her back.

During the same year he dropped out of school, and at this time he began to have different jobs in which he did not last too long. In 1969 he began a relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer that would last five years, despite continuing to contact by letter with their previous relationship.


Some time later he finished graduating, and in 1973 he enrolled at the University of Washington to study law. It is also interested and begins to participate in the world of politics by the republican party and to be linked to different community activities, becoming a volunteer in a telephone service to help sexually assaulted women and even to be decorated for saving a child from drowning. He would meet Stephanie Brooks again and have a brief relationship with her, which this time would end him after becoming extremely cold.

However, it would be during 1974 when they would begin to register their first confirmed murders.

The murders begin

Although previously he had committed different thefts, the first documented murders of this serial killer did not occur until 1974 (although it is suspected that he could have been involved in other previous cases).

In January of the year 1974, still in the university, Ted Bundy I would enter Joni Lenz's room to later beat her with an iron rod and rape it. Although he survived, he suffered serious injuries and permanent brain damage. He would carry out the same procedure with Lynda Ann Healy, whom in this case he would kill. He made the body disappear, although he did not clean the blood.

This death would start a chain of murders in which many young students disappeared, some of them Carol Valenzuela, Nancy Wilcox, Susan Rancourt, Donna Mason, Laura Aimee, Brenda Ball, Georgann Hawkins, Melissa Smith or Caryn Campbell among many others .

Modus operandi

Bundy's modus operandi was initially based on following and kidnapping his victims to his house to strangle them there.However over time and seeing that he had the ability to manipulate due to his charisma and was attractive to many females, he gained confidence and began looking for victims during the day, being usual to pretend to have a broken arm to ask for help to take things to your car.

This killer used to choose young, long-haired brunettes , characteristics that resembled both his mother and his old girlfriend Stephanie Brooks.

The victims were often raped and dismembered, and the subject kept parts of their bodies as head as trophies of their crimes. It was not unusual for him to maintain relationships with the bodies once the victim died, as well as the presence in them of bites by the murderer.

First reliable tracks and arrest

During the month of November of the year 1974, Bundy pretended to be a police officer to get close to Carol DaRonch and make her get into her car. The young woman agreed thinking that if they directed the commissioner, but found that Bundy stopped the car and tried to handcuff her. Fortunately Carol DaRonch managed to get free before being immobilized and fled, after which she went to the police. This led to the first robot portrait of the suspect.

This portrait made several witnesses think of Bundy as a possible author of the events, including his then-girlfriend Elizabeth. Despite this, he could not be fully identified and ended up dismissing the possibility that it was the killer.

Ted Bundy continued to kidnap and kill numerous young people , varying its appearance and traveling to different states in order not to raise suspicions.

But in 1975 a police car stopped Bundy's car and ended up finding indicative elements like levers, handcuffs and tape with which to immobilize the victims. Ted Bundy was arrested. In this case, he would be identified by DaRonch as the author of his abduction.

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Judgments and leaks

In 1976 the first of the trials to which Ted Bundy would be submitted would begin. In this case, he was judged for the kidnapping of DaRonch, resulting in a fifteen-year prison sentence .

However, the analysis of the car in which he was arrested allowed evidence to be found of Bundy's involvement in the disappearance and murder of Melissa Smith and Caryn Campbell (specifically, both women's hair was found). This led to a second trial , already with murder charges. In this second trial Bundy decided to represent himself as a lawyer, which is why he was allowed to visit the library in order to prepare his defense. However, he took advantage of the situation to escape, although he would be caught by the police forces six days later.

He escaped again in 1977, in this case getting to flee to Chicago and adopting a different identity . During this escape he killed again, this time attacking three young people in a university fraternity (Chi Omega), of which one managed to survive, and another girl later. He also kidnapped and killed Kimberly Leach, a twelve-year-old girl.

He was finally arrested at a hotel in Florida, after the registration of his car was recognized. After being arrested for the second time, he would be tried on June 25, 1979 for murder.

He was allowed to exercise his own defense, but the evidence against him (witnesses who saw him leave the fraternity and even survivors of his assaults, along with physical evidence such as the comparison between the bite marks on the bodies and the denture of Bundy, they ended up driving him to be convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair .

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Runner of death and execution

Despite being sentenced to death, the execution of Ted Bundy would take years to arrive. And is that Bundy tried to delay as much as possible the date of execution , confessing multiple murders (some real and others possibly to obtain more time) and offering clues about the location of the victims and pretending to collaborate with the police to obtain extensions of their sentence. While some thirty-six of the murders are considered, it is suspected that there could be many more victims. He even offered to collaborate in the arrest of other murderers.

Despite his actions, he often received letters from fans who said they loved him . During this time he would be accused and tried for the death of the small Kimberly Leach, which resulted in a second sentence to the death penalty. During the same trial Ted Bundy would marry Carole Ann Boone, one of the many fans who believed in his innocence and with whom he would eventually have a daughter.

During his last years He had interviews with psychiatrists in which he narrated his life and his mental state was analyzed . The tests used indicate emotional lability, impulsivity, immaturity, self-centeredness, inferiority complex and lack of empathy, among other characteristics.

On the other hand, Ted Bundy confessed an addiction to the piografía with sadistic dyes, as well as that the murders of young, dark-haired and long-haired women corresponded with the felt anger towards the women for whom he felt abandoned, his mother and his first girlfriend Stephanie Brooks. He was finally executed on January 24, 1989.


Serial Killer - A&E Biography ''Ted Bundy'' (March 2024).


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