He was born in November of 1946 as Theodore Robert Cowell and during his life he used several aliases. Some knew him as Chris Hagen or Richard Burton or even Ken Misner.
When he died in the electric chair in January of 1989, America knew him as Ted Bundy and he was the one of the most famous serial killers of the twentieth century.
Authorities believe his killing spree lasted roughly four year from 1974 to 1978, although Bundy himself said that his first was in 1972. They believe he killed anywhere between 30 and 100 people. He confessed to 30 murders while on death row.
Ted Bundy was born and raised by a single mother, Louise, and the identity of his father is pure speculation. Ted and his mother lived with her parents in Philadelphia for the first four years of his life. Bundy grew up thinking his mother was his sister and his grandparents were his parents. At the age of four Ted and Louise moved to Tacoma Washington and Louise soon married Johnnie Culpepper Bundy.
Bundy was a very good student and active as a youth in the First Methodist Church of Tacoma, Washington. However, he was shy and and not very sociable with others. He received a scholarship out of high school and graduated from the University of Washington.
While in captivity, Bundy told authorities that there was an entity within him that has always been fascinated with sex and violence. All of his victims were white female, middle class. All were bludgeoned and then strangled. Once he got started in Washington state he was killing at a rate of about one per month.
The first known victim was Joni Lenz in January, 1974. She survived the ordeal but brain damage prevented her from being any help in capturing Bundy. In February, Lynda Ann Healy was killed by Bundy. On March 12, 1974, in Olympia, Bundy kidnapped and murdered Donna Gail Manson. A month later, Susan Rancourt disappeared and her disappearance has been attributed to Bundy. In May it was Brenda Ball and in June, Georgeann Hawkins. Finally, Bundy's Washington killing spree concluded on July 14, 1974, with the abduction of both Janice Ott and Denise Naslund.
And then the Washington killings stopped!
Bundy moved to Utah to attend the University of Utah law school and picked up the pace of his murders killing three Salt Lake City women in October of 1974.
In 1975 Bundy killed a few women in and around the ski resort areas of Colorado. He was arrested for suspected burglary and subsequently escaped. Whether he killed during the next two years is not really known but in January and February of 1978 he killed three women in Florida using the same modus operandi and was finally captured for good.
Theodore Robert (Cowell) Bundy was put to death by electric chair at the maximum-security prison near the remote Town of Raiford, Florida on January 24, 1989 and will go down in history as nothing but a famous serial killer.
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