Theodore Robert Bundy 

was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped,

and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly
earlier. After more than a decade of denials, before his execution in 1989 he
confessed to 30 homicides that he committed in seven states between 1974 and
1978. The true number of victims is unknown and possibly higher.
Bundy was regarded as handsome and charismatic, traits that he exploited to win
the trust of victims and society. He would typically approach his victims in
public places, feigning injury or disability, or impersonating an authority figure,
before knocking them unconscious and taking them to secluded locations to rape
and strangle them. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes,
grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses
until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made any further interactions
impossible. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept some of the severed
heads as mementos in his apartment. On a few occasions, he broke into
dwellings at night and bludgeoned his victims as they slept.
In 1975, Bundy was jailed for the first time when he was incarcerated in Utah
for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He then became a
suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in several states.
Facing murder charges in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and
committed further assaults in Florida, including three murders, before his
ultimate recapture in 1978. For the Florida homicides, he received three death
sentences in two separate trials. Bundy was executed in the electric
chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida on January 24, 1989.
Biographer Ann Rule, who had previously worked with Bundy, described him
as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the
control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after."  He once
called himself "the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever
meet." Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, wrote he was
"the very definition of heartless evil."

Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946, to
Eleanor Louise Cowell (1924–2012; known as Louise) at the Elizabeth Lund
Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont. His father's identity has
never been confirmed. His birth certificate is said to assign paternity to a
salesman and Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall, though other accounts
state his father is listed as "Unknown". [11] Louise claimed she had been seduced
by an old money war veteran named Jack Worthington, and the King County
Sheriff's Office has him listed as the father in their files. Some family members
have expressed suspicions that Bundy might have been fathered by Louise's own
violent, abusive father, Samuel Cowell, but no material evidence has ever been
cited to support this.
For the first three years of his life, Bundy lived in the Philadelphia home of his
maternal grandparents, Samuel (1898–1983) and Eleanor Cowell (1895–1971),
who raised him as their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied birth
outside of wedlock. Family, friends, and even young Ted were told that his
grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. He
eventually discovered the truth, although he had varied recollections of the
circumstances. He told a girlfriend that a cousin showed him a copy of his birth
certificate after calling him a "bastard," but he told biographers Stephen
Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth that he found the certificate himself. Biographer
and true crime writer Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally, believed that he
did not find out until 1969, when he located his original birth record in Vermont.
[17]
 Bundy expressed a lifelong resentment toward his mother for never talking to
him about his real father, and for leaving him to discover his true parentage for
himself.
In some interviews, Bundy spoke warmly of his grandparents and told Rule that
he "identified with," "respected," and "clung to" his grandfather. In 1987,
however, he and other family members told attorneys that Samuel Cowell was a
tyrannical bully and a bigot who hated blacks, Italians, Catholics, and Jews, beat
his wife and the family dog, and swung neighborhood cats by their tails. He
once threw Louise's younger sister Julia down a flight of stairs for
oversleeping. He sometimes spoke aloud to unseen presences, and at least once
flew into a violent rage when the question of Bundy's paternity was raised.
Bundy described his grandmother as a timid and obedient woman who
periodically underwent electroconvulsive therapy for depression and feared to
leave their house toward the end of her life. Bundy occasionally exhibited
disturbing behavior, even at that early age. Julia recalled awakening one day
from a nap to find herself surrounded by knives from the Cowell kitchen; her
three-year-old nephew was standing by the bed, smiling.
In 1950, Louise changed her surname from Cowell to Nelson, and at the urging
of multiple family members, she left Philadelphia with her son to live with
cousins Alan and Jane Scott in Tacoma, Washington. In 1951 Louise met
Johnny Culpepper Bundy (1921–2007), a hospital cook, at an adult singles night
at Tacoma's First Methodist Church. They married later that year and Johnny
Bundy formally adopted Ted.  Johnny and Louise conceived four children of
their own, and although Johnny tried to include his adoptive son in camping
trips and other family activities, Ted remained distant. He later complained to
his girlfriend that Johnny wasn't his real father, "wasn't very bright," and "didn't
make much money."
Bundy had different recollections of Tacoma when he spoke to his biographers.
When he talked to Michaud and Aynesworth, he described how he roamed his
neighborhood, picking through trash barrels in search of pictures of naked
women.When he spoke to Polly Nelson, he explained how he perused detective
magazines, crime novels, and true crime documentaries for stories that involved
sexual violence, particularly when the stories were illustrated with pictures of
dead or maimed bodies. In a letter to Rule, he asserted that he "never, ever read
fact-detective magazines, and shuddered at the thought" that anyone would. In
his conversation with Michaud, he described how he would consume large
quantities of alcohol and "canvass the community" late at night in search of
undraped windows where he could observe women undressing, or "whatever
[else] could be seen."
Bundy also varied the accounts of his social life. He told Michaud and
Aynesworth that he "chose to be alone" as an adolescent because he was unable
to understand interpersonal relationships. He claimed that he had no natural
sense of how to develop friendships. "I didn't know what made people want to
be friends," he said. "I didn't know what underlay social interactions."
Classmates from Woodrow Wilson High School told Rule, however, that Bundy
was "well known and well liked" there, "a medium-sized fish in a large pond."
Downhill skiing was Bundy's only significant athletic avocation; he
enthusiastically pursued the activity by using stolen equipment and forged lift
tickets.
During high school, he was arrested at least twice on suspicion of burglary and
auto theft. When he reached age 18, the details of the incidents were expunged
from his record, which is customary in Washington.
Bundy underwent multiple psychiatric examinations; the experts' conclusions
varied. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, Professor of Psychiatry at the New York
University School of Medicine and an authority on violent behavior, initially
made a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but later changed her impression more
than once. She also suggested the possibility of a multiple personality disorder,
based on behaviors described in interviews and court testimony: a great-aunt
witnessed an episode during which Bundy "seemed to turn into another,
unrecognizable person ... [she] suddenly, inexplicably found herself afraid of her
favorite nephew as they waited together at a dusk-darkened train station. He had
turned into a stranger." Lewis recounted a prison official in Tallahassee
describing a similar transformation: "He said, 'He became weird on me.' He did
a metamorphosis, a body and facial change, and he felt there was almost an odor
emitting from him. He said, 'Almost a complete change of personality ... that
was the day I was afraid of him.'
While experts found Bundy's precise diagnosis elusive, the majority of evidence
pointed away from bipolar disorder or other psychoses, and toward antisocial
personality disorder (ASPD). Bundy displayed many personality traits typically
found in ASPD patients (who are often identified as "sociopaths" or
"psychopaths"), such as outward charm and charisma with little true personality
or genuine insight beneath the facade; the ability to distinguish right from
wrong, but with minimal effect on behavior; and an absence of guilt or remorse.[
"Guilt doesn't solve anything, really", Bundy said, in 1981. "It hurts you ... I
guess I am in the enviable position of not having to deal with guilt." [  There was
also evidence of narcissism, poor judgment, and manipulative behavior.
"Sociopaths", prosecutor George Dekle wrote, "are egotistical manipulators who
think they can con anybody." "Sometimes he manipulates even me", admitted
one psychiatrist. In the end, Lewis agreed with the majority: "I always tell my
graduate students that if they can find me a real, true psychopath, I'll buy them
dinner", she told Nelson. "I never thought they existed ... but I think Ted may
have been one, a true psychopath, without any remorse or empathy at
all." Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) has been proposed as an alternative
diagnosis in at least one subsequent retrospective analysis.
On the afternoon before he was executed, Bundy granted an interview to James
Dobson, a psychologist and founder of the Christian
evangelical organization Focus on the Family. He used the opportunity to make
new claims about violence in the media and the pornographic "roots" of his
crimes. "It happened in stages, gradually", he said. "My experience with ...
pornography that deals on a violent level with sexuality, is once you become
addicted to it ... 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 ... where you begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it would give
that which is beyond just reading it or looking at it."  Violence in the media, he
said, "particularly sexualized violence", sent boys "down the road to being Ted
Bundys." The FBI, he suggested, should stake out adult movie houses and
follow patrons as they leave.  "You are going to kill me," he said, "and that will
protect society from me. But out there are many, many more people who are
addicted to pornography, and you are doing nothing about that."
While Nelson was apparently convinced that Bundy's concern was
genuine, most biographers, researchers, and other observers have concluded that
his sudden condemnation of pornography was one last manipulative attempt to
shift blame by catering to Dobson's agenda as a longtime pornography critic. He
told Dobson that "true crime" detective magazines had "corrupted" him and
"fueled [his] fantasies ... to the point of becoming a serial killer"; yet in a 1977
letter to Ann Rule, he wrote, "Who in the world reads these publications? ... I
have never purchased such a magazine, and [on only] two or three occasions
have I ever picked one up." He told Michaud and Aynsworth in 1980, and
Hagmaier the night before he spoke to Dobson, that pornography played a
negligible role in his development as a serial killer.  "The problem wasn't
pornography", wrote Dekle. "The problem was Bundy."  "I wish I could believe
that his motives were altruistic," wrote Rule. "But all I can see in that Dobson
tape is another Ted Bundy manipulation of our minds. The effect of the tape is
to place, once again, the onus of his crimes, not on himself, but on us."
Rule and Aynesworth both noted that for Bundy, the fault always lay with
someone or something else. While he eventually confessed to 30 murders, he
never accepted responsibility for any of them, even when offered that
opportunity prior to the Chi Omega trial, which would have spared him the
death penalty. He deflected blame onto a wide variety of scapegoats, including
his abusive grandfather, the absence of his biological father, the concealment of
his true parentage, alcohol, the media, the police (whom he accused of planting
evidence), society in general, violence on television, and, ultimately, true crime
periodicals and pornography. He blamed television programming, which he
watched mostly on sets that he had stolen, for "brainwashing" him into stealing
credit cards. On at least one occasion, he even tried to blame his victims: "I have
known people who ... radiate vulnerability", he wrote in a 1977 letter to
Kloepfer. "Their facial expressions say 'I am afraid of you.' These people invite
abuse ... By expecting to be hurt, do they subtly encourage it?"
A significant element of delusion permeated his thinking:
Bundy was always surprised when anyone noticed that one of his victims was
missing, because he imagined America to be a place where everyone is invisible
except to themselves. And he was always astounded when people testified that
they had seen him in incriminating places, because Bundy did not believe people
noticed each other.
"I don't know why everyone is out to get me", he complained to Lewis. "He
really and truly did not have any sense of the enormity of what he had done,"
she said. "A long-term serial killer erects powerful barriers to his guilt," Keppel
wrote, "walls of denial that can sometimes never be breached."  Nelson agreed.
"Each time he was forced to make an actual confession," she wrote, "he had to
leap a steep barrier he had built inside himself long ago."