A man with a broken arm and in a sling, attractive and with a certain charisma, asks a woman for help to load some books into the car. The woman in question decides to help him carry those books, accompanying the young man to the car. A month later they found her body in a nearby lake.
This is not a fictional story, but a real event. This 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. This is the biography of Ted Bundy
Theodore Robert Cowell was born in Burlington, an American town located in Vermont, on November 24, 1946. Son of Eleanor Louise Cowell when she was very young and of an unknown father, he was raised by his grandparents and he and the rest of society were made to believe that his mother was actually his sister She rejected him in his early years, being a source of shame for the family. According to subsequent statements by the subject, it appears that his grandfather was violent and mistreated his grandmother, growing up in an aversive environment.
In 1950 she moved with her mother to Washington, who a year later married John Bundy. Theodore Cowell would be adopted by him and would receive his last name, although despite the presence of attempts to get closer by his adoptive father, he was unable to maintain a good emotional bond.
Due, among other things, to the experience of continued rejection and domestic violence, Ted Bundy began to manifest a withdrawn and childish personality from childhood, with little social contact. He also began to show symptoms of what today would be considered a dissocial disorder, manifesting cruel behavior and entertaining himself by capturing, killing, mutilating and dismembering animals.
Academic background and relationship with Stephanie Brooks
Ted Bundy enrolled at the University of Puget Sound and He began studying 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 college classmate, Stephanie Brooks. However, two years later she graduated and she would end up leaving the relationship due to his immaturity and lack of clear goals. Bundy became obsessed with her, sending her 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 remaining in contact by letter with his previous relationship.
Some time later he would end up graduating, and in 1973 he enrolled at the University of Washington to study Law. He also became interested and began to participate in the world of politics for the Republican Party and get involved in different community activities. becoming a volunteer in a telephone help service for sexually assaulted women and even to be decorated for saving a minor from drowning. He would meet Stephanie Brooks again and have a brief relationship with her, which this time he would end after becoming extremely cold.
However, it would be during 1974 when his first confirmed murders would begin to be recorded.
The murders begin
Although he had previously committed different robberies, the first documented murders of this serial killer did not occur until 1974 (although it is suspected that he may have been involved in other previous cases).
In January 1974, still in college, Ted Bundy He would enter Joni Lenz’s room and later hit her with an iron bar and rape her. Although she survived, she suffered serious injuries and permanent brain damage. She would carry out the same procedure on Lynda Ann Healy, whom in this case she would kill. She made her corpse disappear, although she did not clean her blood.
This death would begin a chain of murders in which numerous 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 was easy to manipulate due to his charisma and was attractive to many women, he gained confidence and began to look for victims during the day, it was common for him to pretend to have a broken arm to ask for help to carry things. your car.
This murderer used to choose young women, brunettes with long hair characteristics that made them similar to both their mother and his former girlfriend Stephanie Brooks.
The victims were often raped and dismembered, with the subject even keeping parts of their bodies such as their heads as trophies of their crimes. It was not unusual for him to maintain relations with the bodies once the victim had died, as well as for the presence of bites on them by the murderer.
During the month of November of 1974, Bundy pretended to be a police officer to get close to Carol DaRonch and make her get into his car. The young woman agreed, thinking that they would go to the police station, but she found that Bundy stopped the car and tried to handcuff her. Fortunately, Carol DaRonch managed to escape before being restrained and fleeing, after which she went to the police. This led to the first robotic portrait of the suspect.
This portrait made various witnesses think of Bundy as a possible perpetrator of the events, including his then-girlfriend Elizabeth. Despite this, he could not be fully identified and the possibility that he was the murderer was ultimately ruled out.
Ted Bundy continued kidnapping and killing numerous young women varying his 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 such as 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 perpetrator of his kidnapping.
Trials and leaks
In 1976, the first of the trials to which Ted Bundy would be subjected would begin. In this case he was tried for the kidnapping of DaRonch, resulting in a sentence of fifteen years in prison
However, the analysis of the car in which he was arrested allowed evidence of Bundy’s involvement in the disappearance and murder of Melissa Smith and Caryn Campbell to be found (specifically, hair from both women was found). This led to a second trial, already on 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 managing to flee to Chicago and adopting a different identity During this escape he killed again, this time attacking three young men in a university fraternity (Chi Omega), of whom one managed to survive, and another young woman later. Likewise, he also kidnapped and killed Kimberly Leach, a twelve-year-old girl.
He was finally arrested at a hotel in Florida, after his car’s license plate 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 existing evidence against him (witnesses who saw him leave the fraternity and even survivors of his attacks, along with physical evidence such as the comparison between the bite marks on the bodies and the teeth of Bundy, ended up leading to him being found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair
Death row and execution
Despite being sentenced to death, Ted Bundy’s execution would take years to come. And it is that Bundy tried to delay his execution date as long as possible, confessing to multiple murders (some real and others possibly to buy more time) and offering clues about the location of the victims and pretending to collaborate with the police to obtain extensions of his sentence. Although thirty-six of the murders are considered certain, it is suspected that there could have been 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 little Kimberly Leach, which resulted in a second death sentence. During the same trial Ted Bundy would marry Carole Ann Boone, one of the numerous fans who believed in his innocence and with whom he would end up having a daughter.
During his last years He held interviews with psychiatrists in which he narrated his life and his mental state was analyzed The tests used indicate emotional lability, impulsivity, immaturity, egocentrism, inferiority complex and absence of empathy, among other characteristics.
On the other hand, Ted Bundy confessed an addiction to ponography with sadistic overtones, as well as that the murders of young, dark and long-haired women corresponded with the anger felt towards the women by whom he felt abandoned, his mother and his first girlfriend Stephanie Brooks. He was finally executed on January 24, 1989.
