Case File: Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy was born in 1946 in Burlington, Vt., to Eleanor Louise Cowell; the identity of his biological father has never been conclusively determined. Bundy was initially raised by his grandparents in Philadelphia, although his grandfather was by some accounts a violent, abusive alcoholic who resented his grandson’s presence.

By the 1950s, Bundy and his mother had relocated to Tacoma, Wash. Bundy would later describe his childhood as idyllic, but other evidence points to some disturbing trends. Bundy reportedly abused animals and would occasionally get drunk and sneak around his neighborhood, peeking through windows to watch women undress. He also had an expunged juvenile arrest record for crimes like burglary and auto theft.

After high school, Bundy dabbled in politics and then met Elizabeth Kloepfer, a single mother. Her daughter, Molly, later recalled examples of Bundy’s abuse, including indecent exposure, sexual touching and physical violence. 

Bundy began studying at the University of Puget Sound's law school in 1973 while dating Kloepfer and another woman simultaneously. He stopped taking classes within a year—around the time that young women began disappearing from the streets of Seattle and Tacoma.

In later years, Bundy would offer wildly differing accounts of his crimes, their timing and locations. It’s possible that he was involved in the 1961 disappearance of Ann Marie Burr, an 8-year-old girl who lived a few miles from Bundy in Tacoma. Bundy was 14 at the time, and he later admitted that he had strangled and sexually molested his first victim, an 8-year-old girl, in an orchard. The Burr family lived next door to an orchard, but Bundy repeatedly denied any involvement in her disappearance.

Bundy at various times confessed to killing women in New Jersey and Washington State, but his first confirmed murders started in 1974. In January, he entered the apartment of 18-year-old Karen Sparks in Seattle. He brutally beat and sexually assaulted her, leaving her with permanent brain damage.

The following month, he broke into 21-year-old Lynda Ann Healy’s apartment and battered her into unconsciousness, then drove her to a remote area where he raped and murdered her. By June of 1974, six women had disappeared—five from the Seattle-Tacoma area, and one from Corvallis, Ore. All were attractive, college-aged women with hair parted down the middle who went missing while alone at night.

Police were baffled by the near total lack of evidence, though some witnesses described seeing an attractive young man with an arm sling, leg cast or on crutches, asking for help carrying an object to his light brown Volkswagen Beetle.

In July, on a sunny summer day at Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah, Wash., two women disappeared from the crowd in broad daylight: 23-year-old Janice Ann Ott and 19-year-old Denise Marie Naslund. Witnesses again described a young man with his arm in a sling asking for help unloading his sailboat from his light brown VW Beetle.

The disappearance of two additional young women had the entire region in a state of alarm. Women were warned not to go anywhere alone, and police flyers were posted throughout the area with a description of Bundy and his VW Beetle. A somewhat inaccurate composite sketch was also circulated in regional newspapers and on newscasts.

But these efforts yielded few concrete results beyond a flurry of some 200 tips a day. Although a handful of people—including Kloepfer and a professor of Bundy’s—recognized the car and Bundy’s composite sketch, police were dissuaded from questioning a clean-cut, white, college-educated man with no criminal record; he didn’t fit their suspect profile.

Police finally got some physical evidence in September, when hunters came upon the putrefied remains of Ott and Naslund a few miles from Lake Sammamish State Park. And in early 1975, a group of students discovered the skeletal remains of four more women on Taylor Mountain, a popular hiking area; these remains were soon identified as four of the other missing women.

But by that time, Bundy had left the area and relocated to Utah, where he continued his law studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The change of address, however, did nothing to stem Bundy’s bloodlust; by the end of 1974, he had assaulted, abducted, raped and murdered at least four more young women.

In November, Bundy made a serious blunder when he approached 18-year-old Carol DaRonch at a local mall. He pretended to be a policeman, telling DaRonch someone had tried to break into her car in the mall parking lot. She accompanied him to the police station to file a report—but when Bundy turned onto a quiet road nowhere near the police station, she became suspicious and tried to escape from his car, which she managed to do after a physical struggle.

Enraged that his plans had been scuttled, Bundy drove that evening to Bountiful, Utah, where he abducted and killed Debra Kent, a 17-year-old high school student. News of the killings around Salt Lake City reached Kloepfer, who once again called officials in Seattle and Salt Lake City to relay her concerns about Bundy.

But once again, Bundy shifted his locus of activity, this time from Utah to Colorado, where at least five more young women went missing by the summer of 1975. Bundy later confessed to raping and killing the women before disposing of their bodies in isolated rural areas.

In August 1975, a Utah Highway Patrol officer saw Bundy’s VW Beetle driving suspiciously and pulled him over, then found a number of unusual objects in the car, such as handcuffs, rope, a mask made of pantyhose and an ice pick. More incriminating evidence was found in Bundy’s apartment, and he was put under surveillance.

As evidence began to accumulate, Bundy was placed in a police lineup in October; DaRonch immediately identified him as the man from the shopping mall who pretended to be a police officer. By this time, authorities in the Pacific Northwest had begun to share information with their counterparts in Utah, Colorado and elsewhere. In what was called the “Aspen Summit,” investigators met in Aspen, Colo., and agreed to coordinate their activities in order to bring murder charges against Bundy.

Bundy finally stood trial for the DaRonch kidnapping in February 1976. Found guilty, he was imprisoned in Utah, then transferred to Aspen for a murder trial in the death of his first known Colorado victim.

Because he was acting as his own attorney, Bundy was not required to wear shackles or handcuffs. While a guard’s back was turned, Bundy jumped from a second-story window and escaped into the wilderness around Aspen. After six days, he was captured and returned to prison, where he cleverly engineered a second escape. On December 30, 1977, with many prison staff on Christmas break, Bundy once again walked out of jail; his absence wasn’t noticed by staff until the following day.

By that time, Bundy was on his way to Chicago by bus, then south to Florida, landing in Tallahassee in January 1978. One evening soon after his arrival, Bundy committed what were perhaps the most ghastly crimes of his long, murderous career.

He entered the Chi Omega sorority house near the Florida State University campus and proceeded to bludgeon Margaret Bowman to death with a firewood log. Then he went into Lisa Levy’s bedroom, where he strangled her to death and sexually molested her with a bottle. Kathy Kleiner was his next victim, who survived with a broken jaw and other injuries. Karen Chandler also survived, but with a concussion and a broken jaw. Authorities estimate the four attacks took about 15 minutes.

Bundy then walked to the apartment of FSU student Cheryl Thomas, who survived his vicious attack with several fractures and permanent deafness in one ear. The following month, Bundy abducted 12-year-old Kimberly Leach from her school in Lake City, Fla.; her body was discovered several weeks later next to an abandoned pigsty.

Bundy, growing increasingly desperate and running out of money, stole a VW Beetle—his vehicle of choice because they were so ubiquitous at the time—but was stopped by a police officer because the car was reported stolen. After fighting with the officer and trying to steal his gun, Bundy was taken to prison, but not before telling the officer, “I wish you had killed me.”

In May 1978, Bundy was charged in Florida with first-degree murder and other charges related to the Chi Omega attacks. His trial began the following year and—as one of the first trials to be televised nationwide—quickly became a media sensation.

Bundy seemed to relish the attention his trial granted him, although some experts say that he sabotaged himself by insisting on managing his own defense. “I would describe him being as close to being like the devil as anyone I ever met,” defense investigator Joseph Aloi later said.

The overwhelming weight of evidence against Bundy led to his conviction; he was subsequently given the death penalty for the two Chi Omega murders. In a second trial, for the abduction and murder of 12-year-old Leach, he was again found guilty and given the death penalty.

Bundy then started a dizzying array of legal maneuvers, which eventually landed before the U.S. Supreme Court but ultimately failed, and Bundy’s execution date was set for January 1989. During the court delays, Bundy was able to discuss the details of his serial killings with investigators and journalists, providing them with a number of conflicting statements but also helping police to identify some of his victims and close those cases.

The day and night before his Florida execution, Bundy confessed to 30 murders, but authorities suspect even that number is low and that there may be as many as 50 or more victims. Bundy died in the electric chair on January 24, 1989, and was cremated.

Despite the mind-bending horror of Bundy’s crimes—or perhaps because of them—many women found the serial killer fascinating or sexually attractive. Psychologists use the term hybristophilia to describe a dysfunctional attraction to those who have committed illegal or violent acts. During one of his trials, he even proposed to Carole Ann Boone, a woman on the witness stand during his courtroom trial, whom he’d known for years from Seattle.

Boone accepted his proposal, and they were legally married. Despite prison rules prohibiting conjugal visits, Boone later gave birth to Bundy’s daughter, Rosa Bundy, in October 1982.

Bundy’s life and death have been featured in dozens of books, documentaries and fictionalized accounts. Zac Efron played the killer in the 2019 film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Bundy was also the subject of the 2019 docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, and 2020’s Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer.

Authorities believe Bundy may have been responsible for more than a dozen unsolved murders and disappearances, particularly in Washington, Utah and Colorado, where he was known to be active in the 1970s.