A young woman that was victim to Ted Bundy

Theodore Robert Bundy (né Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of young women and girls during the 1970s. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to thirty murders committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. His true victim total is unknown, with Bundy being linked to a disappearance which occurred during his teenaged years.

Bundy’s modus operandi typically consisted of simulating having a physical impairment to convince his target that he was in need of assistance or duping her into believing he was an authority figure. He would then lure his victim to a vehicle parked in a more secluded area, at which point he would bludgeon her unconscious, then restrain her with handcuffs before driving his victim to a remote location to be sexually assaulted and killed.

Bundy frequently revisited the bodies of those he abducted, grooming and performing sex acts on the corpses until decomposition and destruction by wild animals made further interactions impossible. He decapitated at least twelve of his victims, keeping their severed heads as mementos in his apartment. On a few occasions, Bundy broke into homes at night and bludgeoned, maimed, strangled and/or sexually assaulted his victims in their sleep.

In 1975, Bundy was arrested and jailed in Utah for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He then became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in several states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, Bundy engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults in Florida, including three murders, before being recaptured in 1978. For the Florida homicides, he received three death sentences in two trials, and was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989.

Biographer Ann Rule characterized 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”, a statement with which attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, agreed. “Ted”, she wrote, “was the very definition of heartless evil.”