Serial Killer of the Month: Ted Bundy

This article appears with condolences to those who died at the hands of Ted Bundy, or any of the other monsters who have been discussed since this series began. It is not the intent of this series or its author to make heroic, or enviable the lives of serial killers. The relatively considerate form of death penalty offered by our country is inadequate to satisfy the repulsion one feels at the crimes committed by serial killers in general, and Ted Bundy in particular.

Ted Bundy’s career as a serial murderer has been the subject of the American imagination since his story first became known after his conviction for the murders of Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy. His bizarre surprise wedding to Carol Anne Boone during the penalty phase of his trial, and his death sentence in Florida’s electric chair.

Bundy’s story was the subject of some discussion and horror much earlier for those of us who lived in Utah, Colorado, Washington, or Oregon. Ted, it seems, was in the news constantly during the summer of 1975 because he was so charismatic, and because he had managed to escape. Twice. From the same police force in the same city. He was, from our perspective, living a movie. Except that this James Dean was really an ice-hearted vicious mass murderer.

Ted Bundy was a smart young man, who attended the University of Washington. He soon fell in love, or in like, with a rich young woman who went to Stanford. Bundy moved to Stanford to be with her, but soon she rejected him. She was a beautiful girl with long brown hair, parted in the middle, to whom all of Bundy’s victims would bear some resemblance. Bundy went away, traveling the country, joining the Republican party as a worker on elections. He returned to Seattle and graduated. With a glowing letter from the governor of Washington, Bundy was accepted as a student at the University of Utah’s Law School. With his status as a law student and Republican operative, Bundy found his way back into the Stanford woman’s heart. When she (her name is not known in order to protect her identity) looked as though she would have married him, he dumped her.

By then the killings had begun. At the University of Washington, in 1974 Bundy killed three girls, Lynda Ann Healy, Georgann Hawkins, and Kathy Parks. By day, Bundy was living with Beth Archer, and carrying on a long distance relationship with the woman from Stanford. Bundy seemed normal enough – a legal assistant waiting for his first year in Law School.

On Sunday July 14, 1974 Bundy lured two women off with him from a crowded beach. He took the first away after she had helped him when he appeared injured. He clubbed her and then cuffed her for later. The second, he gathered in the same way. They were Janice Ott and Denise Naslund, one was made to watch the other die. That was just on a Sunday. Bundy was at the top of his bloody game.

When Bundy finally came to Utah, he was ready for new targets. Being a very good looking man and seeming ambitious, he could pretty much bluff his way into whatever he wanted in a city like Salt Lake, where orthodoxy and following orders are required. It was in the guise of a police man he first failed. After having killed several high school girls, he picked up Carol DeRonch in a mall, insisting that he was a police officer. She followed him out to his Volkswagen. She submitted and they drove off together. Immediately he attacked her and after some blocks – and a violent scuffle – she escaped. Another car stopped for her. She lived.

Bundy’s name finally came up from drawings, and from incidence. His car was stopped by police, and his burglary items were discovered. When he fit the description of the DeRonch assailant, he failed a police line-up. That was the end of Legal Ted. From here on out he would be illegal Ted. (Finally he would become Dead Ted, of course).

Bundy was convicted of the kidnapping of DeRonch, and sentenced to 5 years to life. His next trial was in Colorado.

Being a law student, he insisted upon preparing his trial, and so went to the law library on the second floor of the Parkin County Courthouse. From here he simply jumped out of the window, pulled off one layer of clothes and escaped. He was found the next week, starving, in a stolen car and trying to leave town. Two months later he escaped through a hole he had cut into the ceiling of his cell. He was gone. The next time anyone would hear about Ted Bundy would be in Florida.

Bundy was flying out of control. In Florida he meant to be a new person, a respectable person. But soon enough he was killing.

In the space of 15 minutes in the Chi Omega sorority, he managed to kill two and mutilate two women while thirty other people were in the building, and no-one heard a thing. The horrible way he killed and maimed in this particular instance would help convict him in the end. He had torn apart the bodies like an animal, leaving dangling flesh and deep teeth marks.

His final victim, Kimberly Leach, was only thirteen years old. Not even old enough to satisfy his revengeful rage at some brown-haired beauty. She was killed in a pig-sty. She was butchered while on all fours like a pig. Her body was discovered because, among all the bones that local butchers had left there, was one which came out of a little shoe.

Bundy knew that he would be caught if he didn’t leave. He didn’t. He was pulled over for evading an officer. For two days he wouldn’t reveal his name. Then he started bartering information in order to save his life. It didn’t work.

Ted Bundy went to trial, (the most complex in Florida’s legal history), was convicted, sentenced to death, and on Monday, January 23, 1989, to the relief of many, he was electrocuted.

Read more Serial Killer of the Month from the archives:
Serial Killer of the Month: Arthur Shawcross
Serial Killer of the Month: Edmund Kemper

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