The Untold Story of Ted Bundy
Childhood
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On November 24, 1946 in Burlington, Vermont, Eleanor Louise Cowell gave birth to her son Theodore Robert Cowell at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers. To avoid the scandal of having a child out of wedlock, the boy was raised by his maternal grandparents, believing they were his actual parents and that his birth mother was his older sister. He wouldn’t learn the truth until later in life. In 1950, Theodore, now Ted, moved from Philadelphia to Tacoma, Washington with his mother, where she met and married Johnny Bundy within a year. Together, they had four children. Details of Bundy’s troubled adolescence vary, as he gave conflicting accounts later in interviews that usually contradicted what others witnessed.
First Relationships
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In 1965, Bundy graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School and briefly went to University of Puget Sound before going to the University of Washington. By 1968, he had dropped out and started working and volunteering in political campaigns. Around that time, his girlfriend Diane Edwards broke up with him for immaturity and lack of ambition. According to biographer Ann Rule, shortly after this he learned that his ‘sister’ was really his mother. He began dating single mother Elizabeth Kloepfer, a relationship that would last seven years. By the 1970s, he’d returned to the University of Washington and graduated with a degree in psychology. During this time, he worked at a crisis center hotline and served on the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Committee. Unknown to Kloepfer, he had begun to abuse her young daughter Molly. He also started seeing Edwards again, and the two became engaged, before Bundy suddenly cut off all communication. Edwards would later express her belief that Bundy had planned this out as revenge. Many of his eventual victims, as well as Kloepfer, shared similar physical traits to Edwards, such as long straight hair parted in the middle. Bundy would dispute this, claiming that the only commonalities were youth and beauty.
Washington Murders
Bundy’s first known victim was University of Washington student Karen Sparks - although he may have started killing years before. On January 4, 1974, he brutally attacked Sparks in her apartment while she slept. She survived but was left with permanent physical damage. From January to June, more female college students went missing in Washington and Oregon — Lynda Ann Healy, Donna Gail Manson, Susan Elaine Rancourt, Roberta Kathleen Parks, Brenda Carol Ball, and Georgann Hawkins. On July 14, Bundy brazenly abducted two young women from Lake Sammamish Park in Issaquah, Washington. With his arm in a sling, he approached multiple women asking for help unloading his boat from his Volkswagen Beetle. Janice Ann Ott agreed to help him, then later that day Denise Marie Naslund did the same. This was the last time they were seen alive and their remains wouldn’t be found for months. Witnesses came forward with descriptions of him and his vehicle, with one having overheard him introduce himself as Ted. With this information, police were able to get a composite sketch out to the media. His long term girlfriend Kloepfer found the description eerily similar to her seemingly perfect boyfriend, and she reported him to police, as did a University of Washington professor and co-worker at the Department of Emergency Services. Detectives were inundated with other tips however, and Bundy had no criminal record - so he flew under the radar.
Utah Murders
In August 1974, Bundy was accepted into University of Utah Law School in Salt Lake City. Women started to disappear in the area, including Nancy Wilcox, who went missing on October 2. Days later, University of Utah student Rhonda Stapley was assaulted after she accepted a ride from Bundy. When he was distracted, she was able to escape. Within a week, the daughter of a police chief, Melissa Anne Smith also went missing. Authorities found her body 9 days later in Summit Park. That Halloween, Laura Ann Aime vanished, her body discovered in the mountains a month later. On November 8, Bundy approached 18-year-old Carol DaRonch at the Fashion Place Mall in Murray, pretending to be a police officer alerting her about an attempted break-in into her car. She went with him believing they were going to a police station. Instead, he pulled over and attempted to handcuff her. She fought back, managed to get away, and reported the incident to the real police. Roughly four hours later, Bundy abducted and killed high school student Debra Jean Kent. Kloepfer, who was still in a relationship with Bundy, contacted the authorities twice more with her suspicions, but witnesses failed to identify him from a photo lineup. From January to April 1975, three women went missing in Colorado — Caryn Eileen Campbell, Julie Cunningham, and Denise Lynn Oliverson. In later interviews, Bundy confessed to also kidnapping Lynette Dawn Culver from her junior high school in Pocatello, Idaho, and drowning her at his hotel room in May, then disposing of her body in a nearby river.
Arrests & Escapes
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By June 1975, Ted Bundy returned his criminal activities to Utah. On June 28, Susan Curtis vanished from Brigham Young University’s campus. On the night of August 16, Bundy was driving through a quiet residential area likely looking for his next victim. Seeing this, Utah Highway Patrol officer Bob Hayward pulled him over and searched his vehicle, coming across a concerning set of items including a ski mask, rope, handcuffs, a crowbar, and an ice pick. Hayward arrested him, but there wasn’t enough evidence to keep him in custody. Detectives interviewed Kloepfer, and found hairs from Campbell, Smith, and DaRonch in Bundy’s car. On October 2, DaRonch identified him from a lineup as the ‘officer’ she encountered. And in February 1976, Bundy was tried for kidnapping her. He was found guilty in June, and sentenced to 1 to 15 years in Utah State Prison. In January 1977, Bundy was transferred to Aspen, Colorado, to be tried for Campbell’s murder. As a former law student, he insisted on representing himself in court and in turn was allowed library privileges. During a recess on June 7, an unsupervised and unshackled Bundy leapt from the second-story window of Colorado’s courthouse library. Six days later, he was caught once again after being pulled over by cops. He actually stood a good chance of acquittal in trial, but instead plotted another escape. Thanks to visitors, including Carole Ann Boone, one of the many women he had dated while also in a relationship with Kloepfer, he amassed $500 in cash. On the night of December 30, Bundy escaped again after he squeezed his way through an opening in the ceiling of his jail cell, emerging in a jailer’s apartment and changing out of his prison attire.
Florida Murders & Trials
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In the very early hours of January 15, 1978, Bundy entered Florida State University’s Chi Omega sorority house and viciously attacked four sleeping students — Margaret Bowman, Lisa Levy, Kathy Kleiner, and Karen Chandler. While Kleiner and Chandler survived, Bowman and Levy were killed. As sorority sister Nita Neary came home, Bundy left the house and went looking for another victim. He broke into the apartment of student Cheryl Thomas and attacked her, leaving her with permanent injuries. In February, young Kimberly Dianne Leach disappeared from Lake City Junior High School. She would be Bundy’s last victim. On February 15th, Bundy was apprehended in Pensacola driving a stolen car with items belonging to the Florida State University students. He attacked the officer and tried to run, but was tackled to the ground. The trial for the Chi Omega attacks began in June 1979. Though Bundy had multiple public defenders, he chose to represent himself again as co-counsel. Many young women attended the trial, identified by the press as Bundy ‘groupies’. He allegedly received a considerable amount of fan mail. On July 24, Bundy was sentenced to death for the murders of Bowman and Levy. In January 1980, he received another death sentence for Leach’s murder. During the trial, he proposed to Boone, who accepted, and later gave birth to his daughter. He received a third death sentence in February 1980.
Confession & Execution
Throughout the 1980s, Bundy had a variety of interviews with media and law enforcement. He shared his opinions with the FBI on the Green River case. He also met with investigators from Oregon, Idaho, and Utah about some of his unidentified victims. The night before his execution, Bundy confessed to FBI profiler Bill Hagmaier that he murdered at least 30 young women and girls across seven states, though experts close to the case believe the number is much higher. He was only tried and convicted for three of those murders. Ted Bundy died in the electric chair on the morning of January 24, 1989.
In the Media
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As one of the most prolific and talked about serial killers in the United States, Ted Bundy has been the subject of many books, films, documentaries, and TV specials. Former co-worker and friend Ann Rule released “The Stranger Beside Me” in 1980, while his former girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer published her own a year later. In 2019, Netflix released two Bundy projects by Joe Berlinger — “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” starring Zac Efron and its companion docuseries “Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes.” Stories of Bundy have been told from various perspectives including survivors, investigators, attorneys, and people from his life. They paint a picture of a man who, on the outside, appeared normal and charming - but beneath the surface, was anything but.
