Ted Bundy
Who was Ted Bundy?
How many people did Ted Bundy kill?
How did Ted Bundy die?
Was Ted Bundy married?
What was Ted Bundy’s last meal?
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Ted Bundy (born November 24, 1946, Burlington, Vermont, U.S.—died January 24, 1989, Starke, Florida) was an American serial killer and rapist, one of the most notorious criminals of the late 20th century. Bundy confessed to 30 murders (some sources say 36), but investigators believe he actually killed hundreds. The majority of the confirmed cases occurred in the western states and in Florida. He was ultimately convicted of three murders, and he was executed in 1989.
- In full: Theodore Robert Cowell
- Born: November 24, 1946, Burlington, Vermont, U.S.
- Died: January 24, 1989, Starke, Florida (age 42)
- Cause of death: Executed by electrocution
Early life
Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell in Burlington, Vermont. After becoming pregnant, his mother, Eleanor Louise Cowell, had moved there from Philadelphia to enter a home for unwed mothers. Bundy’s biological father was reportedly a World War II veteran who called himself Jack Worthington. While Bundy’s birth certificate does not list a father’s name, crime writer Ann Rule claimed to have found the original document, which gives Lloyd Marshall as the father. Some have speculated that Cowell had actually been impregnated by her father. Following Bundy’s birth, mother and child returned to Philadelphia. For a time Cowell’s parents raised the infant, and Bundy was initially led to believe that his mother was actually his sister.
When Bundy was three, he and his mother moved to Tacoma, Washington, where her uncle’s family lived. In 1951 she married a U.S. Navy veteran named Johnnie Culpepper Bundy, with whom she had four more children. Ted had a strained relationship with his stepfather, who adopted him.
As a teenager, Ted Bundy seemed serious and aloof—although he could also be sharp and funny, his friends later told journalists. “He could make me laugh with a gesture or one or two words, where I’d need sentences and pictures and diagrams to get the same thing across,” one former friend told reporter Stephen Michaud. Bundy’s main hobby was skiing.
After high school Bundy attended the University of Puget Sound before transferring to the University of Washington, where he studied Chinese. However, in 1968 he dropped out and moved to Seattle, where he became involved in Republican politics, working on campaigns and for the party office in Olympia. Bundy eventually returned to school, graduating with a degree in psychology from the University of Washington in 1972.
Crimes
It is unclear when Bundy started committing violent crimes, and he gave conflicting accounts of his criminal career. He told one of his attorneys, John Henry Browne, that he committed his first murder as a teenager, killing another boy in the woods while they played a sexual exploration game. The criminologist Matthew DeLisi has argued that it is likely Bundy was telling the truth. He and other investigators also believe that Bundy may have killed eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr, a girl in his neighborhood, when he was 14.
Bundy’s first documented crimes occurred in 1974. On January 4 Bundy severely beat and sexually assaulted Karen Sparks, who had been asleep in her Seattle apartment. Then, in early February he raped and killed Lynda Ann Healy, his first known murder victim. Over the next five months, he sexually assaulted and murdered at least seven other women. Most of these murders occurred in Washington. For much of that time, he was working at the state’s Department of Emergency Services, the agency that coordinated rescue teams for some of his victims.
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Later in 1974, Bundy moved to Salt Lake City, where he started law school at the University of Utah. He continued killing women while enrolled there. Bundy was skilled at covering up the evidence of his crimes, and he tended to kill women in areas where he was only passing through. By the time the bodies were discovered, he would often be hundreds of miles away.
Bundy’s killings were unusual not only for their sheer number but also because of his sadistic methods. He later told Browne, his attorney, that it aroused him sexually to stalk women and decide who to kill and who to let live. After trapping them he often sexually assaulted his victims using foreign objects and strangled them to death. He sometimes decapitated his victims and used their bodies for sexual gratification. At least two of his murder victims were preteens.
The charismatic Bundy often wore an arm sling or used crutches when approaching victims. He would ask them to help move items into his Volkswagen Beetle. When they were near the vehicle, he would hit them—often with a crowbar—and force them inside. In some cases he would pretend to be a police officer.
Arrest and escape
In August 1975 Bundy was driving late at night through a suburb of Salt Lake City. By this time he had murdered at least eight women in Utah, Colorado, and Idaho since starting law school. He was stopped by police, and a search of his car revealed handcuffs, a pantyhose mask, a ski mask, rope, and an ice pick. Bundy was arrested but later let go. However, in October 1975 Carol DaRonch, one of Bundy’s victims who had managed to escape, identified him in a lineup. The following year he was convicted of kidnapping and received a prison sentence of up to 15 years.
In 1977 Bundy was transferred to a county jail in Aspen, Colorado, while he awaited trial for the murder of a nurse. He escaped that summer, jumping from a second-floor window at the local courthouse. Bundy was arrested several days later in Aspen. He went back to jail, but on December 31, 1977, he staged another escape, this time using a hole in his cell’s ceiling. His disappearance was not noted for some 15 hours, and a nationwide manhunt was launched.
Florida and convictions
In 2026 advanced DNA testing linked Bundy to the murders of Laura Ann Aime and Melissa Ann Smith. Both teenagers had been killed in Utah in 1974.
Bundy traveled to Florida, where he resumed his killing spree. On the night of January 15, 1978, he entered the Chi Omega sorority house in Tallahassee and attacked four women, killing two: Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy. Some three weeks later, he killed 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. On February 12, 1978, while driving to Alabama, he was pulled over by police for driving a stolen Volkswagen Beetle. After a brief altercation, he was arrested.
In 1979 Bundy was convicted of killing Bowman and Levy, and he received the death penalty. The following year he was again sentenced to death for the murder of Leach. For the next decade, he lived on death row in Florida. In 1980, amid his court proceedings, he married Carole Ann Boone, a woman he had met while working for the Department of Emergency Services in Washington. They reportedly had several conjugal visits—Bundy likely bribed guards since such visits were prohibited—and Boone later gave birth to Bundy’s daughter. The couple divorced in 1986.
Execution
Throughout his trials Bundy maintained his innocence, but shortly before his execution, he started confessing to his crimes, ultimately admitting to 30 murders. However, the number of people Bundy killed remains a matter of speculation. In his book-length study from 2023, criminologist DeLisi makes a case that Bundy had 100 or more victims. This claim is supported by others.
Despite the appalling nature of his crimes, Bundy became something of a celebrity, particularly following his escape from custody in Colorado in 1977. During his trial his charm and intelligence drew significant public attention. His case inspired a series of popular novels and films devoted to serial murder. It also galvanized feminist criminologists, who contended that the popular media had transformed Bundy into a romantic figure.
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