Ted Bundy -A Serial Killer

Ted Bundy -A Serial Killer

Image Source:  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Theodore Robert Bundy seemed destined to live a charmed life; he was intelligent, attractive, and polished. He had been a Boy Scout in his youth and later an honor student in psychology at the University of Washington. He also served as a work-study student in a Seattle crisis clinic.

Bundy’s quest for domination may have begun with his shame for having been the illegitimate son of his 22-year-old mother and a sailor with whom she had had a brief sexual encounter-Bundy was born in 1946 in the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont.

One of Bundy’s psychology professors wrote of him: “He conducts himself more like a young professional than a student. I would place him in the top one percent of the undergraduates with whom I have interacted” (quoted in Leyton, 1986). While still in his 20s, Bundy was also named assistant to the chairman of the Washington State Republican Party and was lauded as an “up and comer” in political circles. Of course, this rosy biography omits the fact that Ted Bundy hunted down, raped, and killed young women for the sheer thrill of possessing and controlling them. It was early in January, 1974, when Ted Bundy attacked his first victim: a young woman who Bundy maimed while she was asleep, leaving her with permanent brain damage. 

From 1974 through 1978, Bundy stalked, sexually assaulted, and killed as many as 36 victims in Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado,  and Florida. He used his good looks and charm as lures to trap his victims. Looking helpless and harmless -he would walk on crutches or wear a fake cast on his arm-Bundy would enlist the aid of a young woman and, after securing her trust, would choke her to death
and mutilate and sexually abuse her body before disposing of it in a remote area. No one knows for sure how many women he killed, because he never gave a complete confession.

Beneath the superficial charm of Bundy’s overt behavior lurked a far different person, one who was driven by a lust to dominate people and who was incapable of feeling guilt. In Bundy’s own words, he was the “most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet” who didn’t “feel guilt for anything” and felt “sorry for people who feel guilt”. Like many antisocial personalities, Bundy overestimated his skills; he was convicted of the sorority sisters’ murders and the kidnapping, murder, and mutilation of a 12-year-old Florida girl.

Ted Bundy, one of the United States’s most notorious serial killers, was an extreme example of an antisocial personality disorder. Some clinicians still use the terms psychopath or sociopath to describe such people.

Bundy’s delaying tactics finally came to an end on 24 January 1989, and he was executed at 7 am, taking the secret of his actual victim count with him. His body was cremated and his ashes were spread over the same Washington State mountain area that had served as his favourite dumping ground for the bodies of his victims.

“You feel the last bit of breath leaving heir body. You’re looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God!” -Ted Bundy, on the joy of murder