Ted Bundy Research Paper

Ted Bundy was born on November 24, 1946 at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont. Bundy’s mother Eleanor Louise Cowell was not married and still to this day does not know who the real father is. His grandparents took him in as if he were their own child and changed his name, he became Theodore Robert
Cowell. Bundy grew up believing that his mother was his older sister. He has never specified when he found out that Louise was his mother, it has been said that he found out in high school or he found out after a traumatic breakup with a college girlfriend. Louise met a man named Johnny Bundy at a singles night and later married him and adopted Ted which changed his last name to Bundy. In Bundy’s that high school
year he would visit the library and look up detective magazines and books that focused on sexual and violent crimes. He became a compulsive shoplifter he was arrested twice as a juvenile offender but these records later were erased. Bundy committed his first murder in 1972 but his earliest known murders were committed in 1974, he was 27. Before he started his murders he was accused of murdering Kathy Devine but DNA evidence led to another mans arrest. He started killing in Washington State his first victim was Joni Lenz. Bundy on January 4, 1974 he entered her dorm room, hit her in the head with a metal piece from her bed from and then sexually assaulted her. She suffered permanent brain damage and was found the next day in a coma lying in a pool of blood. Lynda Ann Healy was his next victim. On February 1, 1974 he broke into her room rendered her unconscious and carried her away in a bed sheet. Many students reported a man with either a cast on his leg or a cast on his arm struggling to carry an object. On July 14, 1974 he abducted Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. Later that day eight different people told the police Ted was with her. He moved to Utah. On October 2, 1947 Nancy Wilcox disappeared she was last seen riding in a Volkswagon Beetle which is the same car owned by Bundy. Carol DaRonch escaped from Bundy on November 8, 1974. Bundy approached her outside of a shopping mall. He told her he would take her to the police. Bundy tried to handcuff her and accidently cuffed the same wrist twice. He tried to hit her with a crowbar but she caught it. She was able to get the door open at get out of the car. The keys for the hand cuffs were later found at a nearby high school. Due to this incident Bundy moved his crimes to Colorado. Bundy was arrested on August 16, 1975 in Salt Lake City for failing to stop for a police officer. In his car they found a ski mask, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, an ice pick, and other items that were thought by the police to be burglary tools.
He was convicted for DaRonch 's kidnapping and was sentences to 15 years in prison. During his hearing on June 7, 1977 at the Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen Bundy was allowed to visit the library during recess he jumped out a second story window spraining his ankle in the process. Bundy walked away casually and stole a car. He was apprehended on June 13, 1977. Bundy escaped again this time from the Glenwood Springs, Colorado Jail on the night of December 30, 1977 he sawed through a bar on the ceiling and climbed through a crawl space over to a spot directly above the jailer 's linen closet. The jailer and his wife were out for the evening. Bundy dropped down into the jailer 's apartment, and walked out the door. The guard didn 't notice he was gone until 17 hours later by that time he was already on a plane to Chicago. Before his escape from the Glenwood Springs jail, Bundy wrote a letter it stated "I have known people who...radiate vulnerability. Their facial expressions say 'I am afraid of you. ' These people invite abuse... By expecting to be hurt, do they subtly encourage it?" In a 1980 interview, speaking of a serial killer 's justification of his actions, Bundy said "So what 's one less? What 's one less person on the face of the planet?" When Florida detectives asked Bundy to tell them where he had left Kimberly Leach 's body for her family 's solace, Bundy allegedly said, "But I 'm the
most cold-hearted son of a bitch you 'll ever meet." Bundy made his way to Florida, on January 15, 1978 Bundy became violent again. Bundy broke into the Florida State University Chi Omega sorority house at 3 a.m. and killed Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman. On February 9, 1978, Bundy went to Lake City, Florida. He abducted, raped, and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Leach and the threw her body under a small pig shed. On February 15, 1978, around after 1 a.m. Bundy was stopped by a police officer. When the officer called in a check of the on Bundy 's vehicle, the vehicle came up as stolen. Bundy then fought with the officer when he was finally subdued Bundy said to the officer "I wish you had killed me." In December 1987, Bundy was examined by Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a professor from New York University Medical Center. Bundy was diagnosed as a manic depressive whose crimes usually occurred during depressive episodes. To further investigate Bundy, Lewis wanted to examine his family life. According to Bundy, his grandfather Samuel Cowell was a deacon in his local church. Bundy described his grandfather as a “tyrannical bully.” Bundy stated that his grandfather was a Racist who hated Catholics, Jews, Blacks, and Italians. He also stated that his grandfather would torture animals, beat the family dog and would also swing neighborhood cats by their tails. Bundy also told Lewis that his grandfather kept an extremely large collection of pornography in his the greenhouse. According to an unnamed relative of Bundy‘s, Bundy and a his cousin would sneak into the greenhouse and look at the pornography for hours. Bundy’s described his grandmother as a timid and obedient wife. He also stated that she was taken to hospitals countless times to undergo shock treatment for her depression. She became agoraphobic toward the end of her life. When Bundy’s Grandfather was asked of Bundy he would break out into a violent rage. Bundy 's aunt recalled a disturbing incident with her young nephew when he was only a child. She was taking a nap in the Cowells ' home, she woke to find herself surrounded by knives from the kitchen. Three-year-old Ted was standing by the bed, smiling at her. During the Dobson interview before Bundy’s execution, Bundy said that violent pornography played a major part in all of the sex crimes that he had committed.
Bundy stated as a young boy he found pornography. He found this in the local grocery store and in a local drug store. He became fascinated with the hard core pornography. Bundy stated that it happened in stages. “My experience with pornography generally, but with pornography that deals on a violent level with sexuality, is once you become addicted to it — and I look at this as a kind of addiction like other kinds of addiction — I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Until you reach a point where the pornography only goes so far, you reach that jumping off point where you begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it would give that which is beyond just reading it or looking at
it." Bundy went to trial for the Chi Omega murders in June 1979. Bundy was convicted and sentenced to execution by electric chair. Bundy married former coworker Carole Ann Boone while still in jail they had a daughter in October of 1982. The whereabouts of this child are unspecified. At 7:06 a.m. on January 24, 1989, Ted Bundy was executed by electric chair at Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida. His last words were, "I 'd like you to give my love to my family and friends." I think that Ted Bundy was a very disturbed man who had a very hard life. I 'm sure if you found out your sister was you mother you would be freaked out too, but that did not give him the right to kill all those women.

Work Cited

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/bundy/index_1.html

http://www.time.com/time/2007/crimes/14.html