****For the full and thorough story of Ted Bundy, including each of his victims – click here****
Ted Bundy is an infamous American serial killer who confessed to the kidnapping, rape and murder of 30 young woman and girls across America during the 1970’s. Although the exact number of his victims cannot be confirmed for sure.
Bundy, a budding law student in Utah, preferred his victims to be pretty, with long brown hair that parted in the middle and his murders mostly followed the same MO, his victims were beaten, raped and strangled. This man got a sexual kick out of witnessing the fear that dominated his victims, seeing the terror in their eyes, because they knew their fate, was an aphrodisiac for him. When the “entity” (as he called it) took over, he became an evil vicious predator and vulnerable, innocent, young females were his unsuspecting prey.
The strategy he had in place to capture his victims was almost ingenious. His go-to technique was to approach vulnerable, good looking, unaccompanied females and request their assistance. Often wearing a fake arm cast / sling or feebly hobbling around on crutches, Bundy would appear desperate and in need of help, asking the girl in question to help him carry items to his car. In their naivety and because they wanted to help someone in need, they would agree to assist him, only to be bashed over the head, bundled into his Volkswagen Bug (US) / Beetle (UK), kidnapped, raped and murdered.
Bundy would approach some of his victims and flirt with them. Flattered by the attention and his charming personality they quickly became ‘putty in his hands’. He would invite them to continue the ‘date’ elsewhere, where he would ultimately kill them. Others were just taken from the street and attacked or even attacked inside their own homes, without any of the eerie charm he so often portrayed. Either way, he managed to kidnap and kill many young women and girls without even being on the police radar. They knew of the disappearances and murders but were unaware the cases were all connected because he attacked in different States. (Bundy’s crimes pre-dated the police databases we have now)
After the brutal engagement of killing his victims, Bundy would dump the bodies in the wilderness, often returning to the scene to tend to the lifeless bodies and partake in the act of cleaning them, washing their hair, reapplying their make up and nail varnish. He admitted he would often perform sexual acts with the corpses until they were so decomposed it was no longer possible.
One of Bundy’s victim’s, Carol DaRonch, was instrumental in Bundy’s capture. DaRonch was the first known victim of Ted Bundy to survive and was able to help the police a lot with their case against him. Bundy’s girlfriend at the time, Elizabeth Kloepfer also helped bring him to justice as she informed the police that she believed the “Ted” they were looking for was Ted Bundy. She repeated these suspicions to detectives again in December 1974. Bundy was now firmly on the detectives radar, and they began to consider the possibility of a having a serial killer on their hands.
When the case against him was finally brought to trial, Bundy, who was representing himself, managed to trick court officials and escape out of the court building window. He was soon re-captured and assigned extra security, however, Bundy succeeded in escaping again, this time from his jail cell in solitary confinement – an event which caused major embarrassment and serious criticism for the Garfield County Jail, where he was being held.
He was finally recaptured after embarking on one final killing spree which resulted in the vicious attacks of 6 more victims, 3 of whom were murdered. In an attempt to explain what had caused him to do the unthinkable things he had done, Bundy tried to blame it on a sickness, an entity, within him that he couldn’t control. Sickness or entity, call it what you will, it didn’t help Bundy in the end. He was ultimately served three death by electrocution sentences and was subsequently taken to the electric chair on the 4th January, 1989, at the age of 42.
It beggars belief that there are women, still to this day, that openly fantasise and swoon over the monster that Bundy was, all the while knowing the atrocities he unleashed upon his victim’s. During the murder trials, some women even went as far as to alter their appearance, dying their hair brown and parting it in the middle, so as to become more attractive and noticeable to Bundy. One can only hope they were still ignorant to his guilt at that point.
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Sources:
- abc news: https://abcnews.go.com/US/notorious-serial-killer-ted-bundy-escape-custody/story?id=61032623
- i news: https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/ted-bundy-victims-serial-killer-how-many-murders-zac-efron-film-286996
- wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy
- the crime mag: https://www.thecrimemag.com/ted-bundy-is-the-least-elusive-serial-killer-heres-why/
- crosscut: https://crosscut.com/2019/04/what-do-ted-bundys-serial-killings-mean-today
- cnn: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/09/us/gallery/ted-bundy-how-it-really-happened/index.html
- history collection: https://historycollection.com/40-disturbing-facts-about-ted-bundy/14/
- the denver channel: https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/gallery-newspaper-clippings-from-serial-killer-ted-bundys-time-in-colorado
