Ted Bundy

This article is about the serial killer. For the 2002 film based on his life, see Ted Bundy (film).

Ted Bundy
In custody, Florida, July 1978
Born	Theodore Robert Cowell (1946-11-24)November 24, 1946 Burlington, Vermont, United States
Died	January 24, 1989(1989-01-24) (aged 42) Florida State Prison Bradford County, Florida, United States
Cause of death	Execution by electric chair
Other names	Kenneth Misner, Chris Hagen, Richard Burton, Officer Roseland, Rolf Miller
Conviction(s)	Murder, Aggravated kidnapping
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Victims	30-35+
Span of crimes	August 13, 1961, or February 1, 1974 – February 9, 1978
Country	United States
State(s)	Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington
Date apprehended	August 16, 1975; escaped December 30, 1977; re-apprehended February 15, 1978

Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy, born Theodore Robert Cowell (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989), was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who forcibly abducted, raped, and murdered at least 30 young women, and possibly many more, in the states of Washington, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Florida between 1974 and 1978. He escaped twice from Colorado jails before his final apprehension in Florida in February, 1978.

After more than a decade of denials Bundy confessed to more than 30 homicides, but the total number of his victims remains unknown; published estimates have run as high as 100 or more. It is known that he traveled to California, New England, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Arkansas, Georgia, and the entire Eastern Seaboard during his documented period of homicidal activity; and anecdotal evidence suggests that he began abducting, and possibly killing, well before that period.

Bundy was superficially handsome, charming, and charismatic, and used these qualities to full advantage. Typically, he would approach an attractive young woman with long hair, parted in the middle — often wearing a plaster leg cast or an arm sling, sometimes hobbling on crutches — and, affecting a British accent, request help carrying or moving something to or from his car. At other times he would identify himself as a police officer or fire fighter. The victim, once near or inside his rusty, light-bronze Volkswagen Beetle, would be overpowered, bludgeoned, sexually assaulted, and strangled, then transported to a secondary site (often a significant distance away) and dumped. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes to lie next to the dead women, and have sex with the corpses, until they had reached an advanced state of decomposition. He also decapitated a number of victims with a hacksaw, and kept some of the heads in his apartment as mementos for a period of time before discarding them. (Skulls were all that was recovered of some of his victims.) He was executed in the electric chair at Raiford Prison in Starke, Florida in January, 1989.

Biographer Ann Rule described Bundy 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 described himself as "...the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet." "This guy was an animal," wrote FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler, "and it amazed me that the media seemed unable to understand that."

Early life

Childhood

Ted Bundy was born at the Elizabeth Lund Home For Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont, to Eleanor Louise Cowell. The identity of his father has never been determined with certainty. His birth certificate lists a salesman and Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall, but Louise would later claim she was seduced by "a sailor." The name "Jack Worthington" is also mentioned, without elaboration, in some Bundy literature. Her family expressed suspicions that the father may actually have been Louise's own violent, abusive father, Samuel Cowell. Whatever his true parentage, Bundy's maternal grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, agreed to raise him as their son to avoid the social stigma attached to illegitimate birth at the time. Family, friends, and young Ted himself were told that his grandparents were his parents, and his mother his older sister. Bundy biographers Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth wrote that Bundy found a copy of his birth certificate at home when he was in high school, but true crime writer Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally, believes he did not learn the truth until he traveled to Vermont in 1969, shortly after a traumatic breakup with his college girlfriend.

Bundy later told a court-appointed psychiatrist that his grandfather, though a deacon in his church, was a tyrannical bully, and a bigot who hated blacks, Italians, Catholics and Jews. He said his grandfather beat the family dog, swung neighborhood cats by their tails, and kept a large collection of pornography in his greenhouse which Ted and a cousin would peruse for hours. Ted's paternity, he said, was a touchy subject; Samuel Cowell once flew into a violent rage when the question was raised. Bundy described his grandmother as a timid and obedient woman who periodically underwent electroconvulsive therapy for depression, and became agoraphobic toward the end of her life. Louise's younger sister, Julia, later recalled a disturbing incident with her young nephew: After lying down in the Cowells' home for a nap, Julia woke to find herself surrounded by knives from the Cowell kitchen. Three-year-old Ted was standing by the bed, smiling at her.

Ted and Louise lived with the Cowells in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania until 1950, when they moved to live with cousins Alan and Jane Scott in Tacoma, Washington. Here, Louise had her son's surname changed from Cowell to Nelson. In 1951 Louise met Johnny Culpepper Bundy, an Army 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 Ted spent much of his pre-teen and teenage years babysitting them. Though Johnny Bundy tried to include him in camping trips and other family activities, Ted remained distant from his stepfather, and later complained contemptuously to his girlfriend that Johnny wasn't his father, "wasn't very bright", and "didn't make much money."

Bundy was "well known and well liked" in high school, "a medium-sized fish in a large pond." He had few close friends, however, and showed little interest in dating. He would later say that he "hit a wall" in high school, that he was simply unable to understand interpersonal relationships. While he maintained a facade of social activity, he had no natural sense of how to develop genuine friendships. "I didn't know what made things tick," he said. "I didn't know what made people want to be friends. I didn't know what made people attractive to one another. I didn't know what underlay social interactions."

During this period Bundy would browse bookstores and libraries in search of detective magazines, crime novels and true crime documentaries, favoring stories that involved sexual violence, particularly when accompanied by pictures of dead or maimed bodies. He also loved skiing and pursued it enthusiastically, using stolen equipment and forged lift tickets. Before finishing high school he had been arrested at least twice on suspicion of burglary and auto theft; but there is no evidence that he was ever convicted or incarcerated, and when he reached the age of 18 the details of the incidents were expunged from his record, as is customary in Washington and most other states.

University years

In 1965, Bundy graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. After one year at the University of Puget Sound, he transferred to the University of Washington (UW), where he studied Chinese intensively, having predicted that China would be "the country we would one day have to reckon with." While at UW Bundy supported himself with several low-paying, menial jobs, including grocery bagging and shelf stocking at a Seattle Safeway store on Queen Anne Hill. He left each of these jobs after a few months. His Safeway personnel file shows an evaluation of "only fair", noting that he simply failed to show up for work one day; but two other employers each hired him back a second time, and described him as a "pleasant and dependable" employee.

He began a relationship with fellow UW student Stephanie Brooks (a pseudonym) in 1967. She ended the relationship after her 1968 graduation and returned to her family home in California, fed up with what she described as Bundy's immaturity and lack of ambition. Devastated by her rejection, Bundy dropped out of college and traveled east, where he visited relatives in Arkansas and Philadelphia, and took some classes at Temple University. It was at this time, Rule believes, that Bundy visited the records office in Burlington, Vermont and discovered his true parentage.

Back home in Washington in 1968, Bundy became a more focused and goal-oriented person. He managed the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller's Presidential campaign and attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida as a Rockefeller supporter. He re-enrolled at UW, this time as a Psychology major, and became an honor student, well-regarded by his professors. In 1969 he met Elizabeth Kloepfer (known in Bundy literature as Meg Anders or Liz Kendall), a divorcée with a young daughter from Ogden, Utah, who worked as a secretary in the UW Medical School. Their relationship continued well past his initial incarceration in Utah in 1976. In 1971 he took a work-study job for two dollars an hour at Seattle's Suicide Hot Line crisis center. There, he met and worked alongside former Seattle police officer and fledgling crime writer Ann Rule, who would later write one of the definitive biographies of Bundy and his crimes, The Stranger Beside Me.

Bundy graduated from UW with a degree in Psychology in 1972, and was hired by the Committee to Re-Elect Governor Daniel J. Evans. During the campaign, Bundy shadowed Evans' Democratic opponent, former governor Albert Rosellini, around the state, tape recording his speeches for analysis by Evans's team. A minor scandal developed when the Democrats found out about Bundy, who had been posing as a college student. After the election, he accepted a job as assistant to Ross Davis, Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. Davis thought well of Bundy, describing him as "smart, aggressive...and a believer in the system." In early 1973, despite mediocre Law School Admission Test scores, he was accepted into the law schools of both the University of Utah and the University of Puget Sound on the strength of glowing letters of recommendation from several UW Psychology professors, Davis, and Governor Evans.

During a trip to California on Republican Party business in the summer of 1973, Bundy came back into the life of ex-girlfriend Stephanie Brooks, who marveled at his transformation into a serious, dedicated professional, influential in political circles, about to begin law school. Bundy continued to date Kloepfer as well; neither woman was aware of the other's existence. In the fall of 1973 he matriculated at UPS Law School, though he had initially committed to Utah at Kloepfer's urging, since her family lived and worked in that state. Why he chose to remain in Washington State in 1973 remains a mystery. During this time he continued courting Brooks, and she flew to Seattle several times to stay with him. They discussed marriage, and at one point he introduced her to Davis as his fiancée. In January 1974, however, he abruptly became cold and distant, ceased calling her, and refused to return her phone calls or letters. Finally reaching him by phone a month later, Brooks demanded to know why he had unilaterally ended their relationship without so much as an explanation. In a flat, calm voice, he replied, "Stephanie, I have no idea what you mean..." and hung up. She never heard from him again. Meanwhile, Bundy had begun skipping classes at law school, and stopped attending entirely during the spring of 1974. A few weeks later, young women began to disappear in the Pacific Northwest.

Murders

Washington

Bundy, as he appeared on his FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives poster

There is no definitive agreement on exactly when and where Bundy began killing women. Bundy himself told different stories to different people, and refused to divulge the specifics of his earliest crimes, even as he confessed in gruesome detail to dozens of later murders in the days leading up to his execution. On the last day of his life he told one of his attorneys that he attempted his first kidnapping in 1969, but did not kill anyone until some time in 1972. Earlier, he told a psychiatrist that he killed two women in 1969 while visiting family in Philadelphia. In his penultimate interview with King County Detective Robert Keppel, he mentioned a homicide in 1972, and another involving a hitchhiker near Tumwater, Washington in 1973, but refused to elaborate. There is some evidence that he killed a young girl in Tacoma in 1961 when he was only 14 years old, although he denied it. His earliest documented homicides were committed in 1974, when he was 27.

Shortly after midnight on January 4, 1974, Bundy entered the basement bedroom of 18-year-old Joni Lenz (a pseudonym), a dancer and student at UW, bludgeoned her with a metal rod from her bed frame, and then sexually assaulted her with the same metal rod, causing extensive internal injuries. She remained unconscious for 10 days, but survived the attack, with permanent brain damage. A month later, again late at night, Bundy broke into the room of UW coed Lynda Ann Healy, who broadcast Seattle's weather reports for skiers on the radio each morning. He beat her unconscious, dressed her in bluejeans, a white blouse and boots, and carried her away.

Young female college students began disappearing at an alarming rate, roughly one per month. In March 1974, Donna Gail Manson, a 19-year-old student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, left her dormitory on the way to a jazz concert on campus, but never arrived. In April, Susan Elaine Rancourt disappeared after an evening advisors' meeting on the campus of Central Washington State College (now Central Washington University) in Ellensburg. Later, two Central Washington coeds came forward to report meeting a man with his arm in a sling — one on the night of Rancourt's disappearance, the other three nights earlier — who asked for their help in carrying a load of books to his Volkswagen Beetle. Once at the car, he attempted to give both a ride, but both became suspicious and left. On May 6, Roberta Kathleen Parks left her dormitory at Oregon State University in Corvallis at about 11pm to have coffee with friends at the Student Union Building, and never arrived.

Detectives from the Crimes Against Persons Unit of the Seattle Police Department were becoming increasingly concerned. The paucity of physical evidence left them little to go on; and the missing women had little in common, other than that they were all young, attractive Caucasian college students, and all had long hair, parted in the middle. On June 1, Brenda Carol Ball, 22, a recent drop-out from Highline Community College in Seattle, disappeared after leaving the Flame Tavern in Burien, Washington, near Seattle-Tacoma Airport. She was last seen talking in the parking lot to a brown-haired man with his arm in a sling. In the early hours of June 11, UW student Georgeann Hawkins vanished while walking down the brightly-lit alley between her boyfriend's dormitory residence and her sorority house. The next morning three Seattle homicide detectives and a criminalist combed the entire alleyway on their hands and knees, finding nothing. After Hawkins's disappearance was publicized, witnesses came forward to report seeing a man on crutches with a leg cast in the alley behind a nearby dormitory that night, struggling to carry a briefcase. One woman said the man asked her to help him carry the case to his car, a light-brown VW Beetle.

Reports of the six missing women, and Lenz's brutal beating, appeared frequently in newspapers and on television throughout Washington and Oregon. Fear spread rapidly among the general population. Hitchhiking among young women dropped sharply. Pressure mounted on law enforcement agencies, but the complete lack of physical evidence hampered them severely. Further similarities were noted: the disappearances all took place at night, usually near ongoing construction work, within a week of midterm or final exams; all of the victims were wearing slacks or bluejeans; and of course, there was the man driving the brown VW Beetle, wearing a cast or a sling. An astrologer identifying herself as "R.L." told police (through Ann Rule) that all of the abductions had occurred when the moon was moving through Taurus, Pisces, or Scorpio; the odds against this occurring randomly, she claimed, were extraordinarily high. If the attacker continued the pattern, she said, the next abduction would occur between July 13 and 15.

During this period, Bundy was working at the Washington State Department of Emergency Services (DES) in Olympia — a government agency which, ironically, was deeply involved in the search for the missing women. There, he met and dated Carole Ann Boone, a twice-divorced mother of two who, six years later, would play a crucial role in the final phase of his life.

Bundy's first killing spree culminated — on July 14 — with the broad daylight abductions of two women from a crowded beach at Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah, Washington. Five female witnesses described a handsome young man wearing what appeared to be a white tennis outfit, with his left arm in a sling, who spoke with a light accent, perhaps Canadian, perhaps British. Introducing himself as "Ted", he asked their help in unloading a sailboat from his tan- or bronze-colored Volkswagen Beetle. Four refused; one accompanied him as far as his car, saw that there was no sailboat, and fled. Three additional witnesses saw him approach Janice Anne Ott, 23, a probation caseworker at the King County Juvenile Court, with the sailboat story, and watched her leave the beach in his company. About four hours later, Denise Naslund, an 18-year-old woman who was studying to become a computer programmer, left a picnic to go to the restroom, and never returned.

Ted Bundy's 1968 VW Beetle, the venue for many of his crimes, on display at the National Museum of Crime & Punishment.

King County detectives, finally armed with a detailed description of the suspect as well his car, posted fliers throughout the Seattle area. A composite sketch was printed in regional newspapers and broadcast on local television stations. Elizabeth Kloepfer, Ann Rule, a DES employee, and a UW Psychology professor all recognized the profile, the sketch, and the car, and reported Ted Bundy as a possible suspect; but police, who were receiving up to 200 tips per day, thought it highly unlikely that a clean-cut law student with no adult criminal record could be their perpetrator.

On September 6, two grouse hunters stumbled across the skeletal remains of Ott and Naslund near a service road, two miles east of Lake Sammamish State Park. Found along with the women's remains were an extra femur and several vertebrae, later identified by Bundy as Georgeann Hawkins'. Six months later, the skulls and mandibles of Healy, Rancourt, Parks and Ball were found on Taylor Mountain (where Bundy frequently hiked), just east of Issaquah. All bore extensive damage due to a blunt instrument. Bundy later claimed that he had also dumped Donna Manson's body there, but no trace of her was found.

Idaho, Utah and Colorado

In August 1974 Bundy, having received a second acceptance from the University of Utah Law School, moved to Salt Lake City, leaving Kloepfer behind in Seattle. He got a job as a night dormitory manager, and later as a campus security officer. While he called Kloepfer often, he dated multiple other women, "at least a dozen" by his own estimate. He also became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Records indicate he was not an active participant in Mormon services, and ignored most church restrictions. His relationship with the LDS Church remains controversial.

A month later, a new murder spree began with two homicides that went undiscovered until Bundy confessed to them shortly before his execution: On September 2 he picked up a hitchhiker in Idaho whom he raped and strangled; her identity remains unknown and no body was ever found. On October 2 he attacked and dragged Nancy Wilcox into a wooded area in Holladay, Utah, intending, he said, to "de-escalate" his pathology by raping but not murdering her. However, he strangled her — by accident, he claimed, in the process of trying to silence her screams and protests.

Caryn Campbell

On October 18, 1974, Melissa Smith, the 17-year-old daughter of Midvale, Utah police chief Louis Smith, disappeared after leaving a pizza parlor to walk home about 10:00pm. Her nude body was found nine days later; she had been brutally beaten, raped, sodomized, and strangled. Postmortem examination indicated that she had been kept alive for at least five days after her disappearance. On October 31, 25 miles south in Lehi, Utah, Laura Aime, also 17, disappeared after leaving a Halloween party just after midnight. Her naked body, displaying extensive injuries similar to Smith's, was found by hikers on Thanksgiving Day, on a riverbank in American Fork Canyon. She had also been raped, sodomized, and strangled.

On a rainy November evening in Murray, Utah, Bundy approached 18-year-old telephone operator Carol DaRonch at a mall less than a mile from the pizza parlor where Melissa Smith was last seen. He identified himself as "Officer Roseland" of the Murray Police Department, told her someone had attempted to break into her car, and asked her to accompany him to the station to file a complaint. When DaRonch pointed out that Bundy was driving away from the police station rather than toward it, he suddenly pulled to the shoulder and attempted to handcuff her. During their struggle, Bundy inadvertently fastened both handcuffs to the same wrist, and DaRonch was able to get the car door open and escape. Later that same evening, Debby Kent, a 17-year-old student at Viewmont High School in Bountiful, Utah, nineteen miles from Murray, disappeared after leaving the school's auditorium, where the drama club was staging a play, to pick up her brother. The drama teacher and a student told police that "a stranger" had asked each of them to come out to the parking lot to identify a car; both declined. Another student later saw the same man pacing in the rear of the auditorium, and the drama teacher spotted him again shortly before the end of the play. Investigators later found a small key in the parking lot outside the auditorium which unlocked the handcuffs taken off Carol DaRonch.

In December, Elizabeth Kloepfer, having read reports of the Utah abductions and recognizing the similarities, called the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office and repeated her suspicions about Bundy. Detectives added his name to their burgeoning list of suspects, but without credible evidence linking him to the crimes, there was little they could do. In January 1975, Bundy returned to Seattle after his final exams and spent a week with Kloepfer, who did not tell him she had reported him to Utah police. She made plans to visit him in Salt Lake City in August.

In 1975, all but one of Bundy's identified homicides took place in Colorado, though Bundy continued to live and attend law school in Utah. On January 12, a 23-year-old registered nurse named Caryn Campbell decided to retrieve a magazine from her room in the Wildwood Inn (now the Wildwood Lodge) at Snowmass. Her fiancée watched her enter the elevator in the hotel's lobby, and colleagues saw her emerge from it upstairs; she vanished somewhere along a well-lighted hallway between the elevator and her room. Her nude body was found a month later next to a dirt road just outside of the resort. She had been killed by repeated blunt instrument blows to her head that left distinctive linear grooved depressions on her skull, and deep cuts from a sharp weapon. A hundred miles away, Vail ski instructor Julie Cunningham, 26, disappeared on March 15 while walking from her apartment to a local bar. Bundy later told Colorado investigators he approached her on crutches and asked that she help him carry his ski boots to his car, where he clubbed her with his crowbar, immobilized her with handcuffs, and strangled her. Denise Oliverson, 25, disappeared in Grand Junction on April 6 while riding her bicycle to her parents' house; her bike and sandals were found abandoned under a viaduct near a railroad bridge. On April 15 Melanie Suzanne Cooley, 18, walked away from her high school in Nederland, 50 miles west of Denver. Road workers found her body a week later in Coal Creek Canyon, 20 miles away. (Evidence of Bundy's involvement in the Cooley homicide is not conclusive, and the case officially remains open.) On May 6 Bundy lured Lynette Culver, a 12-year-old girl, from her junior high school in Pocatello, Idaho, and took her to his room at a Holiday Inn where he raped and drowned her.

Caryn Campbell inexplicably disappeared while walking down this brightly-lit hallway to her hotel room.

In mid-May, three of Bundy's Washington State DES co-workers, including Carole Ann Boone, visited him in Salt Lake City, staying a week in his apartment. In early June, Bundy spent a week in Seattle with Elizabeth Kloepfer, and they discussed getting married the following Christmas. Again, Kloepfer made no mention of her discussions about him with the King County Police and Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office.

On June 28 Susan Curtis vanished from the campus of Brigham Young University in Utah. (Curtis's murder became Bundy's last confession, in the final moments of his life, as he was led down the hall to the execution chamber.) On July 1, Shelley K. Robertson, 24, failed to show up for work in Golden, Colorado. Her nude, decomposed body was found in August, 500 feet inside a mine on Berthoud Pass, near Vail, by two mining students. The bodies of Wilcox, Kent, Cunningham, Culver, Curtis and Oliverson have never been recovered.

Meanwhile, in Washington state, investigators were struggling to understand the murder spree that had ended as abruptly as it had begun. To prioritize their enormous database of suspects they divided them by category — classmates and acquaintances of each victim, owners of Volkswagen Beetles, registered sex offenders, and so on — then compared the lists against each other, singling out suspects on multiple lists for closer scrutiny. Twenty-five men turned up on four separate lists; one of them was Theodore Robert Bundy, and his case file was the next one scheduled for detailed examination when word came from Utah of his arrest.

Arrest and first trial

Items found in Bundy's Volkswagen, Utah, 1975

In August 1975, Bundy was arrested by a Utah Highway Patrol officer in Granger, a suburb of Salt Lake City, after he failed to pull over for a routine traffic stop. A search of his car revealed a ski mask, another mask made from pantyhose, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, a coil of rope, an ice pick, and other items initially assumed to be burglary tools. Bundy calmly explained that the ski mask was for skiing, he had found the handcuffs in a dumpster, and the rest were common household items. However, Detective Jerry Thompson remembered a very similar suspect and car description from the November 1974 DaRonch kidnapping, and Bundy's name from Kloepfer's December 1974 phone call. In a search of Bundy's apartment police found a guide to Colorado ski resorts with a checkmark by the Wildwood Inn, and a brochure advertising the Viewmont High School play in Bountiful, but nothing sufficiently incriminating to hold him. He was released on his own recognizance. (Bundy later said that searchers missed a collection of photographs of his victims hidden in the utility room, which he destroyed after he was released.)

Salt Lake City police placed Bundy on 24-hour surveillance, and Thompson flew to Seattle with two other detectives to interview Kloepfer. She told them that in the year prior to his move to Utah, Bundy was often "out" for much of the night, then "napped" during the day. During that time she had found objects she "couldn't understand" in her house, and in his apartment: a set of crutches; a bag of plaster of Paris, that he admitted he had stolen from a medical supply house; a meat cleaver, which he packed when he moved to Utah; surgical gloves; an Oriental knife in a wooden case that he kept in his glove compartment; and a sack full of women's clothing. She said Bundy became "very upset" whenever she considered cutting her hair — which was long, and parted in the middle. She would sometimes awaken in the middle of the night to find him under the bed covers with a flashlight, examining her body. Other times, he would sleep in his car outside her house. She said he kept a lug wrench, taped halfway up, in the trunk of her car (a tan VW Beetle, which he often borrowed) "for protection." Examination of Kloepfer's calendar and canceled checks revealed that Bundy had never been with her on any of the nights during which the Pacific Northwest victims had vanished, nor on July 14, the day Ott and Naslund were abducted.

1975 Utah mug shot

On September 2, Bundy sold his Volkswagen Beetle to a Midvale teenager (coincidentally a former classmate of Melissa Smith's). Utah police impounded it, and FBI technicians dismantled and searched it. They found hairs that matched Caryn Campbell's, and the ridges of the crowbar confiscated during Bundy's initial arrest matched the blunt-instrument impressions on Campbell's skull.

On October 2, 1975, detectives put Bundy in a lineup before DaRonch, who identified him immediately as "Officer Roseland." The Bountiful witnesses picked him from another lineup as the stranger lurking about the high school auditorium. There was insufficient evidence linking him to Debby Kent (whose body was never found), but more than enough to charge him with aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault in the DaRonch case. He stood trial in February 1976, forfeiting his right to a jury on the advice of his counsel, the well-regarded defense attorney John O'Connell. After a four-day trial the judge found him guilty, and on June 30, sentenced him to one to 15 years in prison. On October 22, Colorado authorities charged him with Caryn Campbell's murder, and he was extradited to Aspen in January 1977.

The escapes

On June 7, 1977, Bundy was transported from the county jail in Glenwood Springs, Colorado to Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen for a preliminary hearing. He had elected to serve as his own attorney, and as such was not wearing handcuffs or leg shackles. During a recess he asked to visit the courthouse's law library to research his case. Concealed behind a bookcase, he opened a window and jumped from the second story, spraining his right ankle as he landed. After walking through the town he hiked southward onto Aspen Mountain, where he broke into a hunting cabin near the summit and stole food, clothing, and a rifle. The following day he continued south toward Crested Butte, but lost his way and for two days wandered aimlessly in circles on the mountain, missing two trails that led downward to his intended destination. On June 10 he broke into a camper on Maroon Lake, taking food and a ski parka, and walked back north toward Aspen, all the while managing to elude search parties. On June 13 Bundy stole a car at the edge of Aspen Golf Course. Cold, sleep-deprived, and in constant pain from his sprained ankle, he drove back into Aspen, and would have escaped but for two police officers who noticed the Cadillac weaving in and out of its lane, and pulled him over. He had been on the lam for six days. In the car were maps of the mountain area around Aspen which prosecutors were using to show the location of Caryn Campbell's body (as his own attorney, Bundy had rights of discovery), indicating that the escape had been planned in advance.

Pitkin County Courthouse. Bundy jumped from the second window from left, second story

Back in the Glenwood Springs jail, Bundy devised a new escape plan. He acquired a hacksaw blade from another inmate, and over $500 in cash that he later said was smuggled in by visiting friends — Carole Ann Boone in particular — over a 6-month period. During the evenings, while other prisoners were showering, Bundy sawed a hole about one foot square in the corner of his cell's ceiling and, after losing 35 pounds, was able to wriggle through the hole into the crawl space above. In the weeks that followed he made multiple "practice runs", exploring the parameters of the space. An informant told officers he heard someone moving around within the ceiling in the middle of the night, but the report was not investigated. Two days before Christmas of 1977, the Aspen trial judge approved a change of venue to Colorado Springs. A week later, the night before he was to be moved, Bundy packed books and files in his bunkbed under a blanket to simulate his sleeping body, and slipped into the crawlspace. He broke through the ceiling into the linen closet of the jailer's apartment — the jailer and his wife were out for the evening — and walked out the front door of the jail.

After stealing a dilapidated MG, Bundy drove eastward out of Glenwood Springs, but the car soon broke down in the mountains on Interstate 70, stranding him in the middle of the night in a snowstorm. A passing motorist gave him a ride into the town of Vail, 60 miles to the east. From there he caught a bus to Denver, where he boarded a morning flight to Chicago. The Glenwood Springs jail officers did not discover that Bundy was gone until noon on New Years Eve, 17 hours after his escape, when he was already in Chicago.

Florida

At press conference in Tallahassee announcing his triple murder indictment, July 1978

From Chicago, Bundy traveled by train to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he rented a room at the local YMCA. On January 2, in an Ann Arbor bar, he watched his alma mater, the University of Washington, defeat Michigan in the 1978 Rose Bowl. Four days later, unprepared and improperly dressed for the bitterly cold winter weather of Michigan, Bundy stole a car and drove south. After the car broke down in Atlanta, Georgia, he boarded a bus, and arrived in Tallahassee, Florida on January 8. There, he rented a room at a boarding house near the Florida State University campus under the alias Chris Hagen. Bundy later said he initially resolved to find honest employment and refrain from further criminal activity, knowing he could probably remain free and undetected in Florida indefinitely, as long as he did not attract the attention of police. However, when he applied for a job at a construction site, the personnel officer asked for identification; he made excuses and departed. This was his only attempt at job hunting, and to support himself he committed numerous petty crimes, including shoplifting and purse snatching.

Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman

One week after his arrival in Tallahassee, at approximately 3 a.m. on January 15, 1978, Bundy entered Florida State's Chi Omega sorority house, and with a branch from an oak tree, bludgeoned to death 20-year-old Margaret Bowman as she slept in her bed. He then turned on her roommate, Lisa Levy, also 20, with the same weapon, after which he tore off one of her nipples, bit deeply into her left buttock, and sexually assaulted her with a hair mist bottle. She died the next morning en route to the hospital. He then entered an adjoining bedroom and beat and severely injured roommates Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner. The entire episode took no more than half an hour. After leaving the Chi Omega house, Bundy broke into another home a few blocks away and severely injured another FSU student, Cheryl Thomas, with the same wooden club.

On February 8, Bundy drove 150 miles east to Jacksonville in a van stolen from the FSU audio-visual department and displaying plates stolen from another vehicle. He approached a 14-year-old girl named Leslie Parmenter in a K-Mart parking lot, identifying himself as "Richard Burton, Fire Department", but retreated when her older brother arrived. After backtracking 60 miles westward to Lake City, he abducted 12-year-old Kimberly Leach from the grounds of Lake City Junior High School on February 9, raped and murdered her, and threw her body under a small pig shed.

On February 12 he fled Tallahassee, heading west across the Florida panhandle. Three days later, near the Alabama state line, Bundy was stopped by Pensacola police officer David Lee after a "wants and warrants" check showed the orange Volkswagen Beetle he was driving was stolen. Bundy kicked Lee's legs out from under him and took off running. Lee fired a warning shot, then fired a second round at the fleeing man. They struggled over Lee's gun before the officer subdued and arrested him. In the Volkswagen were three complete sets of FSU student IDs, 21 stolen credit cards, and a stolen television set. As Lee transported his suspect to jail, unaware that he had just arrested one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted criminals, Bundy reportedly told him, "I wish you had killed me."

Florida trials, marriage

Departing a preliminary hearing, Miami, 1979

Bite mark testimony at the Chi Omega trial

A year later, following a change of venue to Miami, Bundy stood trial for the murders of Levy and Bowman in June 1979. Despite the presence of five court-appointed attorneys, Bundy again insisted on defending himself. Crucial incriminating evidence included the testimony of Chi Omega member Nita Neary, who saw Bundy leaving the sorority house as she returned after a late date; and the bite impressions Bundy left in Levy's left buttock, which a forensics expert was able to match to castings made of Bundy's teeth.

Mike Minerva, a Tallahassee public defender and member of the defense team until Bundy dismissed him, later said a plea bargain agreement was cut mid-trial in which Bundy would plead guilty to killing Levy, Bowman, and Leach in exchange for a 75-year prison sentence. Bundy killed the deal at the last minute. "It made him realize he was going to have to stand up in front of the whole world and say he was guilty," Minerva said. "He just couldn't do it." The jury deliberated less than seven hours before convicting him on all counts, and he was sentenced to death.

Six months later a second trial took place in Orlando for the Kimberly Leach murder. Again he was found guilty after minimal deliberation, principally due to fibers found in the stolen FSU van that matched Leach's clothing and an eyewitness that saw him leading Leach away from the school. Once again, he received the death sentence.

During the penalty phase of the Leach trial, Bundy took advantage of an obscure Florida law which held that a marriage "declaration" in court, in the presence of a judge, constituted a legal marriage. As he questioned former Washington State DES coworker Carole Ann Boone, who had moved to Florida to be near Bundy, had testified in his defense during both trials, and was again testifying on his behalf as a character witness, he asked her to marry him. She accepted, and Bundy declared to the court that they were legally married. In October 1982, Boone gave birth to a daughter. While conjugal visits were not officially permitted at Raiford Prison, prisoners were known to pool their money to bribe guards to allow them intimate time alone with their female visitors. Ann Rule and others believe that Bundy was the father of Boone's child, who appears to resemble him in the one known publicly-available photograph of the three together. Two years before Bundy's execution, Boone filed for divorce and moved back to Washington with her daughter. Their current whereabouts is not a matter of public record.

Confessions and execution

Mug shot, 1980, taken the day after Bundy was sentenced to death for the murder of Kimberly Leach

While awaiting execution at Raiford, Bundy came to confide in Special Agent William Hagmaier of the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit, eventually going so far as to call him his "best friend", and over time, told him details of homicides that had until then been unconfirmed, or in some cases completely unknown. He also told Hagmaier that he considered himself an "amateur" and "impulsive" killer in his early years, before moving into what he called his "prime" or "predator" phase, beginning around the time of the Lynda Healy murder in 1974. This implied that his criminal career began well before 1974, although Bundy never specifically confirmed it.

He told Hagmaier he decapitated some of his victims, and kept one group of severed heads — probably the four later found on Taylor Mountain (Rancourt, Parks, Ball, and Healy) — in his apartment for a period of time before disposing of them. He told him that he revisited the Taylor Mountain site several times to lie with his victims, applying makeup to their faces, and having sex with their decomposing bodies until putrefaction forced him to stop. Later, he alluded to similar behavior with the remains of Georgeann Hawkins.

Bundy's statements concerning the total number of his victims varied as wildly as estimates by investigators and journalists. When told by FBI agents that they believed his murder victim total was 36, Bundy told them, "Add one digit to that, and you'll have it." By some accounts, he once hinted to Florida detectives that there were "at least six other states" that would be "very interested" in him, but there is no official record of that statement. Years later he told attorney Polly Nelson that he never meant to imply that there were over 100 victims, that the common estimate of 35 was accurate; but Robert Keppel, the King County detective, wrote that "[Ted] and I both knew" that the total "was much higher."

The Miami bench docket ordering Bundy's first two (of three) death sentences. Also ordered are two 99-year sentences for non-fatal injuries to other Florida victims.

In July 1984, Raiford guards found two hacksaw blades hidden in Bundy's cell — and a loosened steel bar in one of its windows.

In October 1984, Bundy contacted Robert Keppel to offer his assistance, insights, and analysis in the ongoing Green River Killer manhunt in Washington. Keppel and Green River Task Force detective Dave Reichert interviewed Bundy, and a book was later written, but Gary Leon Ridgway was captured a decade later without Bundy's help.

Keppel questioned Bundy again in 1988, after the Supreme Court had rejected the last of his numerous appeals. With his execution day looming, Bundy confessed at last to all eight of the Washington and Oregon homicides for which he had so long been the prime suspect. He said he dumped a fifth corpse — Donna Manson's — on Taylor Mountain, and that he disposed of her head by incinerating it in Kloepfer's fireplace. ("Of all the things I did to this woman," he told Keppel, "this is probably the one she is least likely to forgive me for. Poor Liz.") He described in detail his abduction of Georgeann Hawkins from the brightly-lit UW alley, how he lured her to his car with the crutches ruse, clubbed her with a tire iron, and drove her to a secondary crime scene where he raped and strangled her. "He described the Issaquah crime scene [where the bones of Ott, Naslund, and Hawkins were found], and it was almost like he was just there," Keppel said. "Like he was seeing everything. He was infatuated with the idea because he spent so much time there. He is just totally consumed with murder all the time."

Bundy was also interviewed by detectives from Idaho, Utah and Colorado in 1988, and confessed to numerous murders in those states — including several that police were unaware of — but gave scant details, hoping to parlay the incomplete information into a stay of execution, or possibly commutation to life imprisonment. In December 1988 a legal advocate working for Bundy asked families of the mountain states victims to write to Florida Governor Robert Martinez requesting yet another stay (he had already been granted two), to give Bundy time to reveal more information. All refused.

Hagmaier was present during Bundy's final interviews with investigators. On the eve of his execution, he talked of suicide. "He did not want to give the state the satisfaction of watching him die," Hagmaier said. Ted Bundy died in the Raiford electric chair at 7:16 a.m., Eastern time, on January 24, 1989. His remains were cremated, and the ashes scattered at an unknown location in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State.

Modus operandi and victim profiles

In court in Florida

Bundy's modus operandi was effective, and he seldom varied it. Potential victims were usually approached in public places, usually late at night, with no witnesses in the vicinity; but he occasionally worked in broad daylight, in a crowd or a school. He gained trust by feigning injuries or disabilities, or by impersonating an authority figure. He often affected a light British accent. He had a remarkable advantage in that his facial features were attractive, yet not particularly memorable. A common description was "chameleon-like", in that he was able to change his appearance significantly with only minor adjustments to his features, such as addition or subtraction of facial hair, or a different hairstyle.

All of Bundy's known victims were white females, most of middle class backgrounds. Almost all were between the ages of 15 and 25, and most were college students. Rule noted that most had long straight hair, parted in the middle — just like Stephanie Brooks, the woman who rejected him, and to whom he was later engaged. Rule speculated that Bundy's animosity toward his first girlfriend triggered his protracted rampage, and caused him to target victims who resembled her. Some criminalists consider rejection an important stimulus on the behavior of serial killers. However, in a 1980 interview Bundy dismissed this hypothesis: "[T]hey...just fit the general criteria of being young and attractive...Too many people have bought this crap that all the girls were similar — hair about the same color, parted in the middle...but if you look at it, almost everything was dissimilar...physically, they were almost all different."

His favorite lethal methods were blunt trauma and strangulation: He usually had a crowbar concealed underneath or just inside his Volkswagen, ready for use as soon as the victim could be coaxed to close proximity. Every recovered skull, except Kimberly Leach's, showed evidence of blunt force trauma. Many also had front teeth broken out. Every corpse on which an autopsy could be performed, except Leach's, also exhibited evidence of strangulation. Many of Bundy's victims were transported a considerable distance from the point of abduction to the secondary crime scene; Kathy Parks was driven more than 260 miles, from Oregon to Washington. Bundy often consumed large quantities of alcohol prior to finding a victim; he told Keppel he was usually "extremely drunk" while on the prowl. Carol DaRonch testified to smelling alcohol on his breath. Elizabeth Kloepfer asserted in her book (written as Elizabeth Kendall) that both she and Bundy were alcoholics.

Pathology

File:Ted Bundy 3.jpg

The characteristic charming mask dissolves in a fit of rage during the Orlando trial

In December 1987, Bundy underwent a seven-hour psychiatric examination by Professor Dorothy Otnow Lewis of New York University Medical Center. She initially made a diagnosis of bipolar (manic/depressive} disorder (most crimes, she thought, occurred during depressive episodes), but later changed her impression more than once, eventually settling on Multiple Personality Disorders. Bundy was also diagnosed as a psychopath. Several mental health professionals interviewed Bundy and experienced similar difficulty in pinpointing a specific diagnosis.

Many observers, including Ann Rule, felt that a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, or any other psychosis, was incorrect because psychotic patients, by definition, cannot distinguish right from wrong, and are not responsible for their actions. "He undoubtedly had multiple personality disorders," Rule wrote, "probably narcissistic, borderline, and sociopathic...One who suffers from personality disorders knows right from wrong, but it doesn't matter because he is special and he deserves to have and do what he wants...He chose a hideous path as he sought power and control." Rule later said that she thought at some point Bundy would confess because he must have felt guilty. "But he never felt guilty," she said. "He had no capacity for guilt. Only survival." Bundy himself said as much in a 1980 interview: "So what's one less?" he said. "What's one less person on the face of the planet?"

The night before he was executed, Bundy granted a taped interview to Dr. James Dobson, psychologist and founder of the Christian evangelical organization Focus on the Family. During the interview, Bundy made new statements regarding the pornographic "roots" of his crimes. As a young boy, he said, he found "in the local grocery store, in a local drug store, the soft core pornography that people called soft core...And from time to time we would come across pornographic books of a harder nature...." "It happened in stages, gradually," he said. "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." Violence in the media, he said, "particularly sexualized violence," sent boys "down the road to being Ted Bundys." "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."

In retrospect, it is generally agreed that Bundy's late insistence upon pornography as a contributing factor in his crimes was but another attempt at manipulation; a vain hope of forestalling his execution by feeding Dobson's own agenda regarding pornography and telling him what he wanted to hear. As Ann Rule wrote, for Bundy, the fault always lay with someone or something else. While he eventually confessed to 35 murders, he never accepted responsibility for any of them, even when, in Miami, he could have avoided the death penalty by doing so. On at least one occasion he tried to blame his victims: In a letter written in the Glenwood Springs jail, Bundy said "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 his final hours, his final scapegoat was pornography.

Victims

Below is a chronological list of Ted Bundy's known victims. Bundy never made a comprehensive confession of his crimes and the true total is not known, but before his execution he confessed to 30 murders; only 20 of the victims could be positively identified. The total included 11 in Washington state (including Kathy Parks) plus three unidentified, eight in Utah (three unidentified), three in Colorado, three in Florida, two in Oregon (both unidentified), two in Idaho (one unidentified), and one in California (unidentified). Included below are the 20 known, identified Bundy murder victims and five women who are known to have survived attacks.

1974

• January 4: "Joni Lenz" (pseudonym) (survived). University of Washington first-year student who was bludgeoned in her bed as she slept.
• February 1: Lynda Ann Healy (21). Bludgeoned while asleep and abducted from the house she shared with other female UW students. Body never found.
• March 12: Donna Gail Manson (19). Abducted while walking to a jazz concert on the Evergreen State College campus, Olympia, Washington. Body never found.
• April 17: Susan Elaine Rancourt (18). Disappeared as she walked across Ellensburg's Central Washington State College campus at night.
• May 6: Roberta Kathleen "Kathy" Parks (22). Vanished from Oregon State University in Corvallis, while walking to another dormitory to have coffee with friends.
• June 1: Brenda Carol Ball (22). Disappeared from the Flame Tavern in Burien, Washington.
• June 11: Georgeann Hawkins (18). Disappeared from behind her sorority house, Kappa Alpha Theta, at the University of Washington.
• July 14: Janice Ann Ott (23) and Denise Marie Naslund (19). Abducted several hours apart from Lake Sammamish State Park, Issaquah, Washington.
• September 2: Unknown teenage hitchhiker, Idaho. Pre-execution confession. No remains found.
• October 2: Nancy Wilcox (16). Disappeared in Holladay, Utah. Body never found.
• October 18: Melissa Anne Smith (17). Vanished from Midvale, Utah after leaving a pizza parlor.
• October 31: Laura Aime (17). Disappeared from a Halloween party in Lehi, Utah.
• November 8: Carol DaRonch (survived). Escaped from Bundy by jumping from his car in Murray, Utah.
• November 8: Debra "Debby" Kent (17). Vanished from the parking lot of a school in Bountiful, Utah, hours after DaRonch escaped from Bundy. Shortly before his execution, Bundy told investigators that he dumped Kent at a site near Fairview, Utah. An intense search of the site produced a human patella that matched the profile for someone of Kent's age and size. DNA testing has not been attempted.

1975

• January 12: Caryn Campbell (23). Campbell, a Michigan nurse, vanished between her hotel lounge and room while on a ski trip with her fiancée in Snowmass, Colorado.
• March 15: Julie Cunningham (26). Disappeared while on her way to a nearby tavern in Vail, Colorado. Bundy told investigators he had buried Cunningham's body near Rifle, Garfield County, but searchers found no remains.
• April 6: Denise Oliverson (25). Abducted while bicycling to visit her parents in Grand Junction, Colorado. Bundy provided details of her murder, but her body was never found.
• May 6: Lynette Culver (13). Snatched from a school playground at Alameda Junior High School in Pocatello, Idaho. Body never found.
• June 28: Susan Curtis (15). Disappeared while walking alone to the dormitories during a youth conference at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Body never found.

1978

• January 15: Lisa Levy (20), Margaret Bowman (21), Karen Chandler (survived), Kathy Kleiner (survived). The Chi Omega crimes, Florida State University, Tallahassee.
• January 15: Cheryl Thomas (survived). Bludgeoned in her bed, eight blocks away from the Chi Omega sorority house.
• February 9: Kimberly Leach (12), kidnapped from her junior high school in Lake City, Florida. She was raped, murdered and her body discarded in Suwannee River State Park. It was the Leach, Levy, and Bowman homicides for which Bundy was specifically convicted and executed.

In the 2009 edition of her book, Ann Rule documented numerous additional survivors of Bundy attacks who have since come forward. There were undoubtedly many more: For every actual victim, Rule believes, there were at least ten "almost-victims" who rejected his advances, or managed to escape by one means or another.

Other possible victims

Bundy remains a suspect in other unsolved homicides, and is likely responsible for others that will remain undiscovered. Rule and Keppel both believe he may have started killing as a teenager. During his 1988 final interviews Bundy hinted that he might discuss additional crimes if granted a third stay of execution; but in 1987 he confided to Keppel that there were "some murders" that he would "never talk about", because they were committed "too close to home", "too close to family", or involved "victims who were very young."

• Ann Marie Burr, an eight-year-old girl from Tacoma, vanished from her home in 1961 when Bundy was 14 years old. Keppel was convinced Bundy was responsible, and the girl's father is certain he saw him in a ditch at a nearby construction site the morning his daughter disappeared; but Bundy repeatedly denied any involvement.

• Two flight attendants were bludgeoned to death in their apartment on Queen Anne Hill in 1966, near the Safeway store where Bundy worked at the time. The crime scene was very similar to Chi Omega, but Bundy denied involvement, and no direct evidence implicates him.

• Melanie Suzanne "Suzy" Cooley disappeared April 15, 1975, after leaving Nederland High School in Nederland, Colorado. Her bludgeoned and strangled corpse was discovered by road maintenance workers on May 2, 1975, in nearby Coal Creek Canyon. While gas receipts place Bundy in nearby Golden on the day Cooley disappeared, and Cooley is classified as a Bundy victim in most Bundy literature, Jefferson County authorities say the evidence is inconclusive, and her homicide remains a cold case.

• Carol Valenzuela disappeared from Vancouver, Washington, on August 2, 1974. Her remains were discovered two months later south of Olympia along with those of an unidentified female. As of May 2010 another suspect was under investigation.

• For 28 years Bundy was widely believed responsible for the 1973 murder of Katherine Merry Devine in Millersylvania State Park in Thurston County, Washington, but DNA analysis led to the arrest and conviction of William E. Cosden in 2002. A woman named Brenda Baker was murdered in the same park around the same time, but Bundy told Keppel he had no knowledge of it.

In film

Three TV movies and two feature films have been produced about Bundy and his crimes.

• The Deliberate Stranger, a two-part TV movie, aired on NBC in 1986 and starred Mark Harmon as Bundy.
• Ted Bundy, released in 2002, was directed by Matthew Bright. Michael Reilly Burke starred as Bundy.
• The Stranger Beside Me, based on Ann Rule's book, aired on the USA Network in 2003, and starred Billy Campbell as Bundy and Barbara Hershey as Ann Rule.
• In 2004, the A&E Network produced an adaptation of Robert Keppel's book The Riverman, which starred Cary Elwes as Bundy and Bruce Greenwood as Keppel.
• In 2008, Feifer Worldwide DVD release Bundy: A Legacy of Evil (previously titled Bundy: An American Icon), starring Corin Nemec as Ted Bundy.

Bibliography

• Foreman, Laura (1992). Serial Killers - True Crime (Hardcover ed.). Time-Life Books. ISBN 978-0-783-50001-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Keppel, Robert (2005). The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (Paperback ed.). Pocket Books. ISBN 978-0-743-46395-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Updated after the arrest and confession of the Green River killer, Gary Ridgway.
• Kendall, Elizabeth (1981). The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy (Hardcover, 1st ed.). Madrona Pub. ISBN 978-0-914-84270-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Larsen, Richard W. (1980). Bundy: The Deliberate Stranger (hardcover ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-130-89185-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Michaud, Stephen; Aynesworth, Hugh (1999). The Only Living Witness (Paperback; Revised ed.). Authorlink. ISBN 978-1-928-70411-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Michaud, Stephen; Aynesworth, Hugh (1989). Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer (Paperback ed.). Signet. ISBN 978-0-451-16355-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) Transcripts of the authors' Death Row interviews with Bundy.
• Nelson, Polly (1994). Defending the Devil: My Story as Ted Bundy's Last Lawyer. William Morrow. ISBN 978-0-688-10823-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rule, Ann (2000). The Stranger Beside Me (Paperback; updated 20th anniversary ed.). Signet. ISBN 978-0-451-20326-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Sullivan, Kevin M. (2009). The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History (Paperback ed.). McFarland and Co. ISBN 978-0-786-44426-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Winn, Steven; Merrill, David (1980). Ted Bundy: The Killer Next Door (Paperback ed.). Bantam. ISBN 978-0-553-20849-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

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• Ted Bundy at IMDb
• Ted Bundy at CrimeLibrary.com, and Crime Library interview with Bob Keppel
• Google news scans of local Florida newspaper coverage of the Chi Omega trial
• Kimberly Leach appeals, briefs, and court ruling, Chi Omega appeals, briefs, and court ruling, 1986 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Leach case, 1989 Leach appeal, brief and court ruling by the Florida Supreme Court
• July 16, 1979 TIME magazine article about the Chi Omega trial
• Audiotapes of Bundy's 1989 confessions
• Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report law enforcement dossier containing detailed timeline of Bundy's life