Ted Bundy - American Serial Killer

by Read Listen Learn

Ted Bundy was one of the most hated serial killers that America has ever seen. He murdered at least thirty girls and young women, raped them and often visited their bodies again – sometimes days after they were dead. Because he knew a lot about police methods, nobody could catch him for a couple of years after he started killing. There was no DNA testing in those days.

He escaped twice from prison after the police arrested him and killed again. We do not know for sure how many girls he killed because Bundy changed his story many times when he spoke to different journalists.

Ted Bundy was born in 1946 in Vermont, U.S.A. His mother was not sure who Ted’s father was and he lived his first three years with his grandparents. Although Bundy later said that he loved his grandfather, neighbours said that the man hit his wife and dog, hated black people and threw cats by their tails. His grandmother was – perhaps not surprisingly – a quiet woman who was often in psychiatric hospitals.

When he was three, his mother changed her name and left Vermont. She took young Ted with her and moved to Washington. She met and married Johnny Bundy there. Johnny adopted Ted but the boy never liked his new father. He often asked why he was poor, stupid and had no money. Ted’s parents had four children of their own, but Ted later said that he was unhappy and had no friends. It’s hard to know. People at high school with him thought he was ordinary but popular.

Bundy went to many universities but never got a degree. He could not stay interested in one subject. At Washington University, he studied Chinese. He had a girlfriend there but she stopped seeing him when he left university and did dead-end jobs. Bundy was heartbroken. Or that’s what he said later.

We don’t know when Bundy started killing. Before he went to the electric chair, he spoke openly to some journalists about his murders, but he never wanted to talk about the earliest ones. Sometimes he said they happened in 1969 or 1971 or ’72, but at other times he spoke about killing when he was still at school. We know for sure that he attacked girls in 1974, killed them and then had sex with them when they were dead.

Bundy met some of the girls in the street – often in daytime when there were many other people there. He sometimes pretended to have a broken arm or leg and asked for their help. At other times, he told them he was a fireman or a policeman. When they got in his car, he drove them to a forest or another quiet place and killed them. He said he needed to. After they were dead, he often returned and shampooed their hair. He also cut twelve of their heads off and took them to his home for some time.

At other times, Bundy broke into students’ rooms and attacked them while they were sleeping. Some died but others lived, although they were sometimes deaf or handicapped after the attacks.

The police arrested Bundy in 1975 but he escaped in August 1977 while he was using the law library in the courtroom. He escaped again from prison in December. At that time, it was easy for him to get away from Florida but he didn’t. He said he wanted to get a job and stop killing. He thought he could live quietly in Florida and the police could not catch him. But he didn’t live quietly. He stole from shops and decided to attack six or seven university students while they were asleep. The police stopped him after nine days in a stolen car.

In 1978, Bundy went to court in Florida. This time, the jury said he was guilty and the judge said he must die in the electric chair. This finally happened in 1989, when Bundy was forty-two years old. He told different stories about the murders to the end of his life. So, we will never know how many girls died. We also can’t be sure why Bundy killed. What made him different? He said that he didn’t really understand why people had friends. He didn’t know why people wanted them. Was he lonely? How can we know?

We can be certain, however, that he enjoyed hurting and killing young women.