ted bundy biography

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• Simon Fraser Uniersity - Ted Bundy on the "malignant being": An analysis of the justificatory discourse of a serial killer
• Crime Museum - Biography of Ted Bundy
• ABC News - Timeline of Many of Ted Bundy's Brutal Crimes
• Federal Bereau of Investigation - Serial Killers - Ted Bundy's Campaign of Terror

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 had a difficult childhood; he had a strained relationship with his stepfather, and his shyness made him a frequent target of bullying. Later, however, his intelligence and social skills enabled him to enjoy a successful college career, and he developed a series of apparently normal emotional relationships with women. Despite this apparent stability, he sexually assaulted and killed several young women in Washington, Oregon , Colorado , Utah , and Florida between 1974 and 1978. Although he would ultimately confess to 28 murders, some estimated that he was responsible for hundreds of deaths. Following a well-publicized trial, he was sentenced to death in 1979 for the murder of two college students. In the following year he again was sentenced to death, this time for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. Bundy was executed in Florida’s electric chair in 1989.

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.

Who Was Ted Bundy? Inside The Life Of America’s Most Notorious Serial Killer

From his family to his victims to his death, these surprising facts about ted bundy reveal the full story of who he was and what he did..

Who is Ted Bundy? What did he do — and why? Everyone from the family who raised him to the people who knew him to the police who investigated him has been asking questions like those for decades now.

In just four years between 1974 and 1978, Ted Bundy raped and murdered some 30 women across seven states — before engaging in necrophilia with many of their corpses. His crimes shocked and enraged America to the point that Bundy’s execution brought out cheering crowds in 1989.

Wikimedia Commons Whether it’s recent revelations from those who knew him best or newly-surfaced recordings, the truth about who Ted Bundy was continues to come out — decades after his murders shocked America.

But Ted Bundy’s death surely did little to provide closure for the families of his victims. Nor did it stop all of us from asking some truly disturbing questions about who Ted Bundy was and what motivated him to commit such heinous acts.

From the stories of his girlfriend, his wife, and his daughter to the chilling accounts of his murders, these questions and facts about Ted Bundy reveal everything there is to know about one of American history’s most infamous monsters.

Who Is Ted Bundy And What Did He Do?

Born on November 24, 1946, Ted Bundy was an American serial killer who raped, kidnapped, and murdered approximately 30 girls and women throughout the mid-1970s. Widely described as polite and charming, he evaded detection for years.

However, after multiple escapes from justice, he was ultimately captured for the last time in 1978. Following a trial that ended with a guilty verdict and three death sentences, Ted Bundy was executed at Florida State Prison on Jan. 24, 1989.

Where Was Ted Bundy From?

Ted Bundy was originally born in Vermont to a single mother, Eleanor Louise Cowell . From there, Bundy’s childhood proved turbulent. Because his grandfather routinely beat both Bundy and his mother, Cowell eventually took him across the country to Tacoma, Washington. There, she married Johnny Bundy, and the boy took his stepfather’s name.

Where Is Bundy’s House?

Although Ted Bundy lived in several residences throughout his life, his home at 565 First Avenue in Salt Lake City, Utah, is among the most infamous. Bundy lived at the house from 1974 to 1975 while committing his first murders. He killed four women in 1974, and in 1975 had a near-miss with police — who pulled him over and found masks, handcuffs, and blunt objects in his car. He nevertheless skated by and went on to kill some 20 more women.

How Many People Did Ted Bundy Kill?

Personal Photos via The Times Though we may never know the full truth about what Ted Bundy did, he’s believed to have killed some 30 women in total.

Ted Bundy confessed to killing 30 women in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Florida in the years leading up to his final arrest in 1978. He was subsequently convicted of only three murders, but some suspect that he could have killed up to 100 people.

Were There Any Survivors Of Ted Bundy’s Attacks?

Although Ted Bundy attacked women with terrifying brutality, a few of his victims miraculously managed to escape with their lives . Though we may never know exactly how many, some half-dozen women have come forward with stories of close calls with Bundy.

For example, Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner survived his attack in 1978 because their housemate returned home before he could kill them. In another instance, Brigham Young University student Pam Prine was walking with Bundy on campus when he tried to grab her — but she managed to shake free and run away.

What Was Ted Bundy’s IQ?

Ted Bundy reportedly had an IQ of 136. While classification systems vary, most agree that this puts Bundy well above average and close to “genius” level. What’s more, serial killers generally are understood to have much lower IQs than other people, with some estimates for killers around 95.

Furthermore, Bundy was educated , making it to the honor roll at the University of Washington before enrolling at the University of Puget Sound School Of Law. But that’s when his schooling ended, and his murders began.

How Was Bundy Described By Those Who Knew Him?

Although Ted Bundy described himself as “the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet,” most didn’t see that side of him — until it was too late. Good-looking and charismatic, people described Bundy as a likable and charming young man with an engaging sense of humor. With chilling calculation, these are precisely the attributes he often used to gain his victims’ trust before attacking them.

Was Ted Bundy Married?

Despite his dozens of attacks on girls and women, Ted Bundy did manage to get married in 1980 — while on trial for murder. It was then that he married Carole Ann Boone , a Washington state department of emergency services worker he’d met back in 1974. However, Boone divorced Bundy in 1986 — only after giving birth to a daughter named Rose.

What Happened To Bundy’s Girlfriend, Elizabeth Kendall?

YouTube To this day, some of the most astounding facts about Ted Bundy involve the women in his life, including girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall — who was with him during his first murders in 1974.

Born Elizabeth Kloepfer (only later known as Elizabeth Kendall), she dated Ted Bundy from 1969 to 1974, though the pair were never married.

Although she had her suspicions about her boyfriend — and even once suggested, fruitlessly, that the Seattle Police look into Bundy as a murder suspect — Kloepfer remained with Bundy for years before their relationship ended. During the last months of their relationship, Bundy had already begun raping and murdering his first victims — though Kloepfer is believed to have had no knowledge of this at the time.

Did Ted Bundy Have Kids?

Ted Bundy had a daughter named Rose with his wife Carol Ann Boone. Boone got pregnant while Bundy was in prison, as they were allowed to have intercourse during conjugal visits. Boone gave birth to Rose on Oct. 24, 1982.

Bundy enjoyed a steady relationship with Rose, who would visit him in prison for the first several years of her life. But after Boone and Bundy split in 1986, she took Rose, left the state of Florida, and the pair never reemerged publicly again.

Who Is Ted Bundy’s Daughter?

Almost nothing is known about Rose Bundy. She’s stayed out of the spotlight ever since Boone and Bundy split up in 1986 and her whereabouts today are unknown.

Years before Rose was born, Ted Bundy also helped raise Elizabeth Kloepfer’s daughter, Molly, who later spoke about her experience with the man she had no idea was a budding serial killer.

How Did Ted Bundy Get Caught?

After Ted Bundy was pulled over in 1975 — and a police officer saw the masks, handcuffs, and blunt objects in his trunk — Utah police put him under surveillance. When he sold his car, police found DNA evidence matching three of his victims. And when police put Bundy in a lineup, a woman who had escaped his attack positively identified him, landing him behind bars.

However, he pulled off two dramatic escapes from prison in Colorado in 1977 before fleeing to Florida. There, he killed a few more victims before he was caught for driving a stolen car on Feb. 12, 1978. And this time, Bundy wouldn’t escape.

Did Bundy Confess To His Crimes?

Throughout his many trials, Ted Bundy professed his innocence. However, once on death row, Bundy eventually confessed that he’d murdered 30 women and provided a wealth of chilling details. He hinted, however, that his body count could actually be much higher .

How Long Was Bundy On Death Row?

Ted Bundy was on death row in Florida for nine years, following his death sentence in early 1980. Although his initial execution date was set for March 4, 1986, it was postponed several times after courts issued stays based on minor technicalities with his murder trials — as well as last-minute confessions to further murders to try to buy more time.

Bundy’s last request for review was denied in 1988, and within hours a final execution date was set for January 24, 1989.

How Did Ted Bundy Die?

Bettmann/Getty Images Florida State University’s Chi Phi fraternity celebrates the death of Ted Bundy with a large banner that says “Watch Ted Fry, See Ted Die!”

Following his multiple guilty verdicts in Florida, Ted Bundy was sentenced to death for the third and final time on Feb. 10, 1980. Finally, on Jan. 24, 1989, he was executed by electric chair at Florida State Prison. Outside the prison, crowds cheered Bundy’s death and set off fireworks.

When Did Ted Bundy Die?

Ted Bundy died at 7:16 a.m. on Jan. 24, 1989. His last words were: “I’d like to give my love to my family and friends.”

How Old Was Bundy When He Died?

Born November 24, 1946, Ted Bundy was 42 years old when he was executed.

What Was Ted Bundy’s Last Meal?

Although death row inmates are allowed to pick a last meal , Ted Bundy seemed indifferent to this privilege. He declined to choose and was thus given the default last meal menu in Florida of steak, eggs, hash browns, and toast. However, Bundy didn’t even eat any of it.

Bettmann/Getty Images A number of key details about who Ted Bundy was and what he did came out during his trial in 1980.

Where Is Bundy Buried?

Per his request, Ted Bundy was cremated. His ashes were spread in Washington State’s Cascade Mountains — the same place where he dumped many of his victims.

Does Ted Bundy Have Any Living Relatives?

Ted Bundy does have several living relatives. His daughter Rose is presumably still alive and believed to be 38 years old, though nothing is known publicly of her whereabouts. He also has three half-siblings who rarely speak publicly about him.

After learning all the most shocking Ted Bundy facts about who he was and what he did, discover how Bundy helped police catch serial killer Gary Ridgway . Or, peruse some of history’s most chilling quotes from serial killers .

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How Ted Bundy Helped Catch the Green River Killer

After being given death sentences in 1979 and 1980, Bundy was on death row when murders started happening in Washington state in 1982.

Investigators were stumped by the slayings around south King County, as young women kept disappearing and with their bodies turning up along the Green River.

The murderer on the loose became known as the Green River Killer, but officials couldn’t track down his whereabouts — until they were offered assistance from none other than Bundy, who gave them insight into the mentality of a serial killer.

Eventually, with Bundy's help, Gary Ridgway was caught and admitted to his 49th murder on February 18, 2011, with actual estimates being closer to 80 victims.

Bundy and Ridgway both had Washington upbringings

Born on November 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont, Bundy moved to Tacoma, Washington, as a child — and grew up in the area, showing a fascination with knives at the age of three and an obsession with spying and stealing as a teen.

He graduated with a psychology degree from the University of Washington in 1972 and around 1974, women in the Washington and Oregon area started going missing. The word on the street was that they would be lured into a car by a man named Ted who pretended to be injured with his arm in a sling, needing their help.

Bundy later moved to Utah for law school, where he was caught. He eventually escaped from prison and ended up in Tallahassee, Florida — continuing to kill wherever he went.

Ironically Ridgway was born in Utah on February 18, 1949, but also raised in Washington state, near Seattle’s SeaTac airport. Before graduating high school, he joined the Navy and was sent to Vietnam.

When he returned, he started painting trucks — and around 1982, runaways and prostitutes started disappearing off of State Route 99 in Washington's King County. He tended to bring them to his home, strangle them and then dispose of their bodies in the woods, which is how several ended washing up along the nearby Green River.

READ MORE: Inside Ted Bundy's Troubled and Disturbing Childhood

Bundy offered his assistance from death row

By 1986, a detective named Dave Reichert had been working on the Green River case for years. Despite 40 female victims, he still didn’t have any reliable leads, when he got a fascinating offer to help.

“Don't ask me why I believe I'm an expert in this area, just accept that I am and we'll start from there,” Bundy wrote to Reichert from a Florida jail, where he was on death row. Bundy had been reading about the Green River Killer and saw Reichert’s photo in stories, according to the New York Times .

At the time, Bundy had already been imprisoned for six years and was waiting for this death sentence.

Reichert flew to Florida with fellow investigator Robert Keppel, who was an investigator on Bundy’s case. According to Keppel's book, The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer , he says that Bundy had reached out to him — and that he was the only one the convicted killer would talk to.

Some reports say that at some point, Bundy suggested that the Green River Killer — who he called “Riverman” — might be going back to the sites he left the bodies and performing sexual acts and suggested that the detectives stake out fresh burial sites.

“The sheriff [Reichert], who spent three days interviewing Mr. Ridgway alone, said he quickly realized that serial killers have a lot in common, whether they kill prostitutes, as Mr. Ridgway and Jack the Ripper did, young boys, as John Wayne Gacy did, or young women, as Mr. Bundy did,” the New York Times story said. “Both Mr. Bundy, who was put to death for the murder of three women and had confessed to killing at least 16 others, and Mr. Ridgway were sexual predators who killed during or after sexually assaulting or having sex with their victims.”

READ MORE: How Ted Bundy’s Education Facilitated His Career as a Serial Killer

Investigators felt both killers had 'no remorse'

The information that Bundy provided helped the investigators get inside the mind of a killer — especially one who knew the Washington area well — and eventually they did capture Ridgway in 2001.

“First off, there's no remorse,” Reichert told the New York Times of the serial killer mindset. “He doesn't have any feelings toward anybody, his family included. And that's what I saw in Bundy and what I saw in Ridgway.”

Reichert also said that Bundy would tell him actions he expected Ridgway to do, but in reality, they were veiled confessions of things Bundy had already performed. “It was as if Mr. Bundy was jealous of the attention the Green River killer was getting,” Reichert hypothesized.

Both killers also were proud of their actions. As the Times continued: “Like Mr. Bundy, Sheriff Reichert said, Mr. Ridgway craved attention and control and was prideful when discussing his killings. When detectives presented him with an unsolved murder to see if he would confess it, he told them: ‘Why, if it isn't mine? Because I have pride in...what I do. I don't wanna take it from anybody else.’”

Bundy died in an execution chair nicknamed Old Sparky on January 24, 1989, at the Florida State Prison, as crowds cheered outside. Ridgway was sentenced to life in prison in 2003, having reportedly committed more murders than any serial killer in U.S. history.

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In interviews he recalled being antisocial and wandering the streets looking for discarded pornography or open windows through which he could spy on unsuspecting women; he also had an extensive juvenile record for theft that was dismissed when he turned 18. By 1972 he had graduated college and showed great promise in a career in law or politics. That career would be cut short though when he discovered his true passion, viciously assaulting his earliest confirmed victim in 1974.

He tended to prey on young and attractive college women, first near his home in Washington, then moving east to Utah, Colorado, and finally in Florida. Bundy would prey on these women with a ruse, often wearing his arm in a sling or his leg in a fake cast and walking on crutches. He would then use his charm and faked disability to convince his victims to help him carry books or unload objects from his car. He was also known to impersonate authority figures, such as police officers and firefighters, to gain victims’ trust before he attacked. Once they got to his 1968 tan Volkswagen Beetle , he would strike them over the head with a crowbar or pipe. After hitting his victims, he would immobilize them with handcuffs and force them into the vehicle. Bundy had removed the passenger seat and often stored it in the backseat or trunk, leaving an empty space on the floor for his victim to lie out of sight as he drove away.

Bundy was able to rape and murder scores of women this way. He typically strangled or bludgeoned his victims as well as mutilating them after death. He then prolonged the events by returning to visit the corpses at their dump sites or even taking them home in order to gain further sexual gratification. In some cases, he even shockingly displayed their decapitated heads in his apartment and slept with their corpses until putrefaction made it unbearable.

As body counts rose and witness descriptions spread, several people contacted authorities to report Bundy as a potentially matching suspect. However, police consistently ruled him out based on his seemingly upstanding character and clean-cut appearance. He was able to avoid detection even longer by learning how to leave virtually no evidence that could be traced by the still rudimentary forensics techniques of the 1970s. Bundy was finally arrested for the first time on August 16, 1975, in Utah after fleeing from a patrol car. A search of the vehicle yielded masks, handcuffs, rope, and other nefarious items, but nothing definitively linking him to the crimes. He was released but remained under constant surveillance, until he was arrested again for the kidnapping and assault of one of his victims several months later. Bundy escaped custody a year later after being transferred from Utah to Colorado for another trial but was recaptured within a week. He then managed to escape a second time on December 30, 1977, at which point he was able to reach Florida and resume his killing spree. He raped or murdered at least six more victims, five of them Florida State University students, before he was apprehended again for a traffic violation on February 15, 1978. He was finally sentenced to death and died in the electric chair on January 24, 1989. At the time of his execution, Bundy had confessed to 30 murders, though the actual number of his victims remains unknown.

Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen is on display at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Tennessee.

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