Ted Bundy's killing spree began in Seattle in 1974. It ended five years later with at least 30 known women dead. Estimates on the final number vary from 35 to 100. He was born Theodore Robert Cowell in Burlington, Vt. on Nov. 24, 1946, in a home for unwed mothers.
His father's identity is unknown but some of his family members believe that Ted's mother, Louise Cowell was impregnated by her father, Sam. Ted was raised believing that his maternal grandparents were his mother and father and that Louise was his older sister. When Ted was four, he and his sister/mother moved to Tacoma leaving his parents/grandparents behind. She would eventually meet Johnnie Bundy and he would adopt Ted. It wasn't until Ted was in college that he learned the truth about his parents. In the fall of 1966 Ted enrolled at the University of Washington. He was a Chinese major who had transferred from The University of Puget Sound. He lived at McMahon Hall. He met and fell in love with fellow student Stephanie Brooks.
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| Dana Carvey as Ted Bundy |
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| McMahon Hall in 1967 |
They dated until she broke up with him in the fall of 1968, because Ted dropped out of school. Ted remained obsessed with her and many of his future victims had her slim frame and her same long, center-parted brown hair. That Summer, Ted spent time with relatives in Philadelphia and enrolled at Temple University for one semester. He came back to Washington in the fall of 1969 and met Elizabeth Kloepfer, who worked as a secretary at the U Dub School of Medicine. He would eventually rekindle things with Stephanie though, and he secretly dated both women for the next few years. In 1970, Ted re-enrolled at U Dub, this time as a psychology major. In 1971 he took a job at Seattle's Suicide Hotline Crisis Center alongside Ann Rule, a former Seattle police officer and aspiring crime writer. (The crisis center was on the top floor of a four-story Victorian mansion on Capitol Hill. I can't find it. All I know is, it was a block or so off Pine Street. I'm still looking. Any help will be greatly appreciated.) Ted lived at this house at 4123 12th Ave. NE.
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| 4123 12th Ave NE |
He graduated in 1972 and went to work for Governor Dan Evans on his re-election campaign. He would later work as the assistant to the chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. Although Ted would later give varying stories as to when and where he started his crimes, he committed his first known violent attack on January 4, 1974. That night, he broke into the basement apartment of Joni Lenz, a U Dub student who lived at 4325 8th St. NE and bludgeoned her. (An ugly apartment building is there today) She survived the attack but has permanent brain damage. On February 1st, he abducted Lynda Ann Healy from her home at 5517 NE 12th St.
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| Linda Ann Healy's House |
She and a couple friends had been at Dante's Tavern at 5300 Roosevelt Way, just a few blocks from her house. Ted was a regular there, and it's believed he followed her home. Only her skull was found on Taylor Mountain a year later. That mountain is referred to as "Bundy's Graveyard." After his first two attacks, Ted decided to take his killing spree on the road.
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| Dante's Tavern |
Female college students were disappearing at the rate of about one per month. In March, Donna Manson, a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, left her dorm on the way to a jazz concert on campus but never arrived. In April, Susan Rancourt disappeared after an evening meeting on the campus of Central Washington University in Ellensburg. Two female CWU students later came forward to report encounters—one on the night of Rancourt's disappearance, the other three nights earlier. They both described a man wearing an arm sling, asking for help carrying a load of books to his brown or tan Volkswagen Beetle. On May 6th, Roberta Parks left her dorm at Oregon State University in Corvallis, to have coffee with friends. She never made it. By June, Ted was back to hunting King County women. On the 1st, Brenda Ball disappeared after leaving the Flame Tavern at 12803 S. Ambaum Blvd. in Burien. (Now Fiesta Del Mar)
She was last seen in the parking lot talking to a brown-haired man with his arm in a sling. In the early hours of June 11th, U Dub student Georgann Hawkins was visiting her boyfriend at the Beta Theta Pi frat house at 1617 47th Avenue NE.
She was last seen in the parking lot talking to a brown-haired man with his arm in a sling. In the early hours of June 11th, U Dub student Georgann Hawkins was visiting her boyfriend at the Beta Theta Pi frat house at 1617 47th Avenue NE.
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| She left the house in foreground and only had to go just beyond the catwalk. |
She went out the back door and only had to walk six houses down the alley to her house, the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority at 4521 17th Avenue NE. She didn't get there. The next day, a witnesses came forward to report seeing a man that night in the alley behind
a nearby dorm on crutches with a leg cast. One woman said the man
asked her to help him carry his briefcase to his car, a light-brown
Volkswagen Beetle.
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| Back door of sorority house |
On July 14th, Ted abducted two women from Lake Sammamish Park in Issaquah. Five female witnesses described a handsome young man wearing a white tennis outfit with his left arm in a sling. He was introducing himself as "Ted" and asked for their help in unloading a sailboat from his tan or bronze colored Volkswagen Beetle. (Huh?) Four refused; one accompanied him as far as his car, saw that there was no sailboat, and ran. Three additional witnesses saw him approach Janice Ott, 23, with the sailboat story, and watched her leave the beach with him. He took her to some nearby woods. About four hours later Denise Naslund, 18, left a picnic to go to the restroom and never returned. Ted later told detectives that Janice was still alive when he returned with Denise—and that one was forced to watch as the other was murdered. That would be the end of Ted's killing in Washington.
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| Lake Sammamish Park |
In August of 1974, he was accepted to The University of Utah Law School and moved to Salt Lake City. On September 6th, two Issaquah hunters found the remains of Janice and Denise on a service road near the park. They also found a femur and several vertebrae belonging to sorority girl Georgann Hawkins. Susan Rancourt, Roberta Parks, and Brenda Ball were all eventually found over on Taylor Mountain. At the end of 1974, King County detectives finally had a detailed description of their suspect, as well his car. They posted a composite sketch on fliers and newscasts throughout the Seattle area. Ted's now long-distant girlfriend Elizabeth, Ann Rule, and a U Dub psychology professor all recognized the sketch and the car, and reported Ted as a possible suspect. The police thought it was unlikely that a clean-cut law student with no adult criminal record could be the perpetrator. He would go on to commit a couple dozen more murders in Idaho, Colorado, and Utah through the Summer of 1975. That August, he was pulled over by a Utah Highway Patrolman for failing to use a signal. The officer, noting that the front passenger seat was missing, searched his car; he found a ski mask, a second mask fashioned from pantyhose, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, a coil of rope, an ice pick, and other every day murdering tools, but the cops had noting to hold him on. He was released but the Salt Lake cops put him on 24 hour surveillance. Salt Lake detectives flew to Seattle and interviewed Ted's girlfriend Elizabeth. His photo was also shown to Colorado and Idaho assault victims who all identified Ted as their attacker. He was arrested in Aspen and charged with kidnapping, murder, and assault of three women. He would escape custody twice in Colorado. Once from the Aspen courthouse where he was on trial, and again from a jail after he was caught. After his second escape, he fled to Florida where he attacked and/or killed seven more women. He would be on the run until February 15, 1978. In June of 1979, he began his first of two trials in Florida. He was found guilty at both trials. During the second trial, Ted married an old co-worker Carole Ann Boone who had moved to Florida to be near him during the trial. Ironically, she is one of several people who called Seattle police and painted Ted as a suspect in the local murders. In a weird twist, she would be a character witness for his defense at both trials. Ted was sentenced to die in the electric chair on February 10, 1980. In October of 1982, Carole gave birth to their daughter, Rosa (Ted paid the guards with Carole's money for conjugal visits.)
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| Ted and family |
Throughout 1983, Ted would confess to the murders in Washington, Idaho, Colorado, and Utah. He tried to escape prison one last time in July of 1984. Later that Summer, he was attacked and gang-raped by his fellow death-row inmates at Raiford State Prison. (Remember that Lynyrd Skynyrd song "Four Walls of Raiford?") After several appeals and two stays, Ted was finally executed on January 24, 1989 at 7:16 AM. The country cheered. To all the women he killed, RIP.
