• Born in Burlington, Vermont on November 24, 1946 to Eleanor Louise
Cowell. His birth certificate assigns paternity to a salesman and Air Force
veteran named Lloyd Marshall.
• For the first three years of his life Bundy lived in the Philadelphia home of
his maternal grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, who raised him as
their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied illegitimate birth at
the time.
• Family, friends, and even young Ted were told that his grandparents were
his parents and that his mother was his older sister.
• Exposed to pornography at a very young age.
• After graduating from high school in 1965 Bundy spent a year at the
University of Puget Sound (UPS) before transferring to the University of
Washington (UW) in 1966 to study Chinese.
• However, he dropped out after becoming depressed from a break-up with
his girlfriend.
• He then reenrolled and graduated from University of Washington with a
degree in psychology in 1972 and had been accepted to law school in
Utah. Bundy even got a letter of recommendation from the Republican
governor of Washington after working on his campaign.
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
He had admitted to thirty-six
killings, across three states, but
experts believe that the final
tally may be closer to one
hundred.
• In 1975, he was pulled over by the police. A search of his vehicle
uncovered a cache of burglary tools—a crowbar, a face mask, rope
and handcuffs. He was arrested for possession of these tools.
• In 1975, Bundy was arrested in the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch, one
of the few women to escape his clutches. He was convicted and received
a one-to-fifteen-year jail sentence in that case.
• Two years later, Bundy was indicted on murder charges for the death of
a young Colorado woman. During a trip to the courthouse library, Bundy
jumped out a window and made his first escape. He was captured eight
days later.
• In December 1977, Bundy escaped from custody again. He climbed out
of a hole he made in the ceiling of his cell and even dropped more than
30 pounds to fit through the small opening.
• January 14, 1978, Bundy broke into the Chi Omega sorority house at
Florida State University. He attacked four of the young female residents,
killing two of them.
• On February 9, Bundy kidnapped and murdered a twelve-year-old girl
named Kimberly Leach.
• In July 1979, Bundy was convicted for the two Chi Omega murders. He
was given the death penalty twice for those crimes.
• Bundy received another death sentence the following year in the murder
of Kimberly Leach.
• On February 15, 1978 Bundy was pulled over for a traffic violation. This
was his last arrest.
Initially incarcerated in Utah in 1975 for aggravated kidnapping and attempted
criminal assault, Bundy became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved
homicides in multiple states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he committed two
dramatic escapes allowing him to assault even more victims, including three
murders, before He was stopped for a traffic violation in Florida leading to his
final arrest, February 15, 1978.
• The most damming evidence came from his own
viciousness. The bite marks on one of the bodies was
a definitive match for Bundy in the Chi Omega
murders.
• According to his credit card statements he was in the
area where several women vanished in early 1975.
• Investigators had eyewitnesses who identified Bundy
at the dorm and at Kimberly Leach’s school.
• He received three death sentences in two separate trials for the
Florida homicides.
• Ted Bundy died in the electric chair at Raiford Prison in Starke, Florida,
on January 24, 1989.
• Biographer Ann Rule 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, agreed.
"Ted," she wrote, "was the very definition of heartless evil.”
• The Campus Killer
• Lady Killer
• Ted
I believe that the Social Control Theory best explains Ted Bundy’s criminal behavior.
In the Social Control Theory the deviants care about what others think about them and then
conform to social expectations because they accept what other expect. Bundy’s true and first
love broke up with him after she felt that he didn’t “have a successful future”. Bundy accepted
this expectation of himself so he dropped out of school. It was during this time that he began
his killing spree to gain confidence.
The Social Control Theory also states that when attachments to social bonds are
weakened that deviance can occur. Bundy had a very unusual family situation. For most of his
young life he grew up believing that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was
his older sister. Finding out that almost everything he thought to be true was a lie, caused
almost all of his family bonds to be completely destroyed. The breakup with his girlfriend also
broke a major social bond. The breaking of these bonds, which represented truth and love, is
most likely the reason that pushed Bundy to not value human life.
In the case of Ted Bundy, I do not believe that rehabilitation would work. Ted was
captured, escaped, continued to hurt others; twice. When Bundy escaped, he had the option
of going into hiding, but instead he couldn’t fight his true and only desire to kill people. I truly
believe that if he was not captured he would continue to kill to this day. His victim count is so
large that it is still unknown. Bundy was also the definition of a sadistic killer, his joy came from
viciously raping, killing, and decapitating his victims. The only way to deal with a killer that is
just completely evil is to simply be punished. There would not have been any amount of
classes or counseling that could have changed Ted Bundy.