Age, Biography, and Wiki
Ted Bundy was born on November 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont. He is known for his horrific crimes as a serial killer, rapist, and necrophiliac, confessing to 28 murders during his lifetime, though some believe he committed many more. Bundy's life is extensively documented on his Wikipedia page, detailing his childhood, education, and the series of crimes that led to his execution on January 24, 1989.
| Occupation | Serial Killers |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 24 November 1946 |
| Age | 78 Years |
| Birth Place | Burlington, Vermont, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Sagittarius |
| Country | U.S |
| Date of death | 24 January, 1989 |
| Died Place | N/A |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is no specific information available on Ted Bundy's height or weight measurements. However, his charismatic and intelligent demeanor often overshadowed his physical appearance during public trials and interviews.
On May 6, Roberta Kathleen Parks, aged 22, left her dormitory at Oregon State University in Corvallis, 260 mi south of Seattle, to have coffee with friends at the Memorial Union, but never arrived. Bundy claimed that he spotted Parks in the cafeteria and persuaded her to go with him to a bar. After they got into his car, he tied and gagged Parks and drove her back to Washington to be killed, raping her twice on the way. On June 1, Brenda Carol Ball, aged 22, disappeared after leaving the Flame Tavern in Burien, near Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. She was last seen in the parking lot, talking to a brown-haired man with his arm in a sling. Bundy later stated he brought Ball back to his residence where they had a "consensual" sexual encounter before he strangled her while she was sleeping; although this failed to explain the damage done to her skull. Investigators from Seattle and King County grew increasingly concerned. There was no significant physical evidence, and the missing women had little in common apart from similar appearance: young, attractive, white college students with long hair parted in the middle.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Ted Bundy maintained a façade of normalcy in his personal life, including relationships with women. His most notable relationship was with Elizabeth Kloepfer, whom he dated for several years while committing his crimes.
His biological father's identity has never been confirmed; his original birth certificate apparently assigns paternity to a salesman and United States Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall, though a copy of it listed his father as unknown. Louise claimed she met a war veteran named Jack Worthington, who abandoned her soon after she became pregnant. Census records reveal that several men by the name of John Worthington and Lloyd Marshall lived near Louise when Bundy was conceived. Some family members expressed suspicions that Bundy was sired by Louise's own father, Samuel Cowell. However, in the 2020 documentary film Crazy, Not Insane, psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis claimed she received a sample of Bundy's blood and that a DNA test had confirmed that he was not the product of incest.
For the first three years of his life, Bundy lived in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia with his maternal grandparents, Samuel Knecht Cowell (1898–1983) and Eleanor Miriam Longstreet (1895–1971). The couple raised him as their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied childbirth outside of wedlock at that time. Family, friends and even young Bundy were told that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. Bundy eventually discovered the truth, although his recollections of the circumstances varied; he told a girlfriend that a cousin showed him a copy of his birth certificate after calling him a "bastard," but he told biographers Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth that he had found the certificate himself. Biographer and true crime writer Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally, wrote that he did not find out about his true parentage until 1969, when he located his original birth record in Vermont. Bundy expressed a lifelong resentment toward his mother for never telling him about his real father, and for leaving him to discover the truth about his paternity for himself.
In some interviews, Bundy spoke warmly of his grandparents and told Rule that he "identified with," "respected" and "clung to" his grandfather Samuel. In 1987, however, he and other family members told attorneys that Samuel was a tyrannical bully who beat his wife and dog, swung neighborhood cats by their tails and expressed racist and xenophobic attitudes. In one instance, Samuel reportedly threw Julia down a flight of stairs for oversleeping. He would sometimes speak aloud to unseen presences, and at least once flew into a violent rage when the question of Bundy's paternity was raised. Bundy described his grandmother as a timid and obedient woman who periodically underwent electroconvulsive therapy for depression and was afraid to leave their house toward the end of her life.
These descriptions of Bundy's grandparents have been questioned in more recent investigations. Some locals in Roxborough remembered Samuel as a "fine man" and expressed bewilderment at the reports of him being violent. "The characterization that [Sam] was a raging alcoholic and animal abuser was a convenient characterization used to make people justify why Ted was the way he was," said one of Bundy's cousins. "From my limited exposure to him, nothing could be farther from the truth. His daughters loved him dearly and had nothing but fond memories of him." In addition, Louise's sister, Audrey Cowell, stated that their mother could not leave her home because she suffered a stroke due to being overweight and was not mentally ill.
In 1950, Louise changed her surname from Cowell to Nelson and, at the urging of multiple family members, left Philadelphia with her son to live with cousins Alan and Jane Scott in Tacoma, Washington. The following year she met Johnny Culpepper Bundy (1921–2007), a hospital cook, at an adult singles night at Tacoma's First Methodist Church. They married later that year and Johnny formally adopted Bundy. Johnny and Louise conceived four children together, and though Johnny tried to include his adopted son in camping trips and other family activities, Bundy remained distant from him. Bundy would later complain to a girlfriend that Johnny "was not his real father," "wasn't very bright" and "didn't make much money."
In August, Bundy attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami. Shortly thereafter, Edwards ended their relationship and returned to her family home in California, frustrated by what she described as Bundy's immaturity and lack of ambition. Lewis would later pinpoint this crisis as "probably the pivotal time in his development." Devastated by the breakup, Bundy traveled to Colorado and then farther east, visiting relatives in Arkansas and Philadelphia and enrolling for one semester at Temple University. During his studies, he frequently visited New York City, where he was drawn to pornography. He immersed himself in violent pornographic literature while nursing his wounds from the breakup. It was also at this time, Rule believed, that Bundy discovered his true parentage in Vermont.
Bundy returned to Washington in the fall of 1969, when he met Elizabeth Kloepfer (identified in Bundy literature as "Meg Anders," "Beth Archer" or "Liz Kendall"), a single mother from Ogden, Utah, who worked as a secretary at the UW School of Medicine. Their tumultuous relationship would continue well past his initial incarceration in Utah in 1976. Bundy became a father figure to Kloepfer's daughter Molly, who was three years old when he started dating her mother; he remained in her life until she was aged 10, after he had been arrested. As an adult, Molly wrote of incidents beginning at age 7 in which Bundy was abusive or sexually inappropriate with her. Her accounts include Bundy hitting her in the face, knocking her down, putting her at risk of drowning, indecent exposure and sexual touching disguised as accidents or "games."
During a trip to California on Republican Party business in the summer of 1973, Bundy rekindled his relationship with Edwards. She marveled at his transformation into a serious and dedicated professional, seemingly on the cusp of a significant legal and political career. Bundy continued to date Kloepfer as well; neither woman was aware of the other's existence. In the fall of 1973, Bundy matriculated at UPS Law School, and continued courting Edwards, who flew to Seattle several times to stay with him. They discussed marriage; at one point he introduced her to Davis as his fiancée.
In January 1974, Bundy abruptly broke off all contact with Edwards; her phone calls and letters went unreturned. When she finally reached him by phone a month later, she demanded to know why he had unilaterally ended their relationship without explanation. In a flat, calm voice, he replied, "Diane, I have no idea what you mean," and hung up. She never heard from him again. Bundy later explained, "I just wanted to prove to myself that I could have married her"; but Edwards concluded in retrospect that "Ted's high-power courtship in the latter part of 1973 had been deliberately planned, that he had waited all those years to be in a position of where he could make her fall in love with him, so that he could drop her, reject her, as she had rejected him." By then, Bundy had begun skipping classes at law school. By April, he had stopped attending entirely, as young women began to disappear in the Pacific Northwest.
Shortly after midnight on January 4, 1974, around the time that he terminated his relationship with Edwards, Bundy entered the basement apartment of 18-year-old Karen Sparks (often identified as "Joni Lenz," "Mary Adams" and "Terri Caldwell" in Bundy literature), a dancer and student at UW in Seattle's University District. After bludgeoning Sparks with a metal rod from her bed frame, he sexually assaulted her with the same rod causing extensive internal injuries and rupturing her bladder. Sparks remained unconscious in the hospital for ten days and although she survived, she was left with permanent brain damage with significant loss to her vision and hearing. In the early morning hours of February 1, Bundy broke into the basement room of 21-year-old Lynda Ann Healy, a UW undergraduate who broadcast morning radio weather reports for skiers. He beat her unconscious, dressed her in blue jeans, a white blouse and boots, and carried her away. He later stated that he drove Healy to a secluded area, where he raped and murdered her before dumping her body.
During the first half of 1974, female college students disappeared at the rate of about one per month. On March 12, Donna Gail Manson, a 19-year-old student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, 60 mi southwest of Seattle, left her dormitory to attend a jazz concert on campus but never arrived. Bundy claimed that he burned Manson's skull in his girlfriend's fireplace "down to the last ash" in "a fit of... paranoia and cleanliness." On April 17, 18-year-old Susan Elaine Rancourt disappeared while on her way to her dorm room after an evening advisors' meeting at Central Washington State College in Ellensburg, 110 mi southeast of Seattle. Two female Central Washington students later came forward to report encounters—one on the night of Rancourt's disappearance, the other three nights earlier—with a man wearing a sling, who was asking for help carrying a load of books to his brown or tan Volkswagen Beetle.
In the early hours of June 11, 18-year-old UW student Georgann Hawkins vanished while walking down a brightly lit alley between her boyfriend's dormitory residence and her sorority house. The next morning, three Seattle homicide detectives and a criminalist combed the entire alleyway on their hands and knees, finding nothing. Bundy later told Keppel that he lured Hawkins to his car and knocked her unconscious with a crowbar. After handcuffing her, he drove her to Issaquah, a suburb 20 mi east of Seattle, where he strangled her and spent the entire night with her body. The next afternoon he returned to the UW alley and, in the very midst of a major crime scene investigation, located and gathered Hawkins' earrings and one of her shoes where he had left them in the adjoining parking lot and departed, unobserved. "It was a feat so brazen," wrote Keppel, "that it astonishes police even today." Bundy said he revisited Hawkins' corpse on three occasions.
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| Husband | Carole Ann Boone (m. 1980-1986) |
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Net Worth and Salary
Ted Bundy's social interactions were limited due to his confinement and eventual execution. His notoriety led to significant media attention, which often portrayed him as a charismatic figure despite his heinous crimes.
In early 1968, Bundy dropped out of college and worked a series of minimum-wage jobs. He also volunteered at the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller's presidential campaign and became Arthur Fletcher's driver and bodyguard during Fletcher's campaign for Lieutenant Governor of Washington State. Edwards graduated in the spring of 1968 and left Washington for San Francisco. Bundy visited her later that year after he earned a scholarship to study Chinese at Stanford University that summer.
Career, Business, and Investments
Ted Bundy's career does not align with the traditional definition of a career. His activities were marked by criminal behavior, including serial murder and burglary. He was a charismatic individual who utilized his intelligence and social skills to manipulate others, which was a key factor in his ability to evade capture initially.
In mid-1970, Bundy, now focused and goal-oriented, re-enrolled at UW, this time as a psychology major. He became an honor student and was well regarded by his professors. In 1971, he took a job at Seattle's Suicide Hotline Crisis Center. There, he met and worked alongside Rule, a former Seattle police officer and aspiring crime writer who would later write one of the definitive Bundy biographies, The Stranger Beside Me. Rule saw nothing disturbing in Bundy's personality at the time; she described him as "kind, solicitous, and empathetic."
There is no consensus as to when or where Bundy began killing women. He told different stories to different people and refused to divulge the specifics of his earliest crimes, even as he confessed in graphic detail to dozens of later murders in the days preceding his execution. Bundy told Nelson that he attempted his first kidnapping in Ocean City, New Jersey, in 1969, but did not kill anyone until some time in 1971 in Seattle. He told psychologist Art Norman that he killed two women in Atlantic City while visiting family in Philadelphia in 1969. Bundy hinted to homicide detective Robert D. Keppel that he committed a murder in Seattle in 1972 and another murder in 1973 that involved a hitchhiker near Tumwater, but he refused to elaborate. Rule and Keppel both believed that he might have started killing as a teenager. Bundy's earliest documented homicides were committed in 1974, when he was 27. By his own admission, he had by then mastered the necessary skills – in the era before DNA profiling – to leave minimal incriminating forensic evidence at crime scenes.
Education
Ted Bundy attended the University of Washington, where he studied psychology and later transferred to the University of Utah to pursue a degree in law. His academic background contrasts sharply with his criminal activities.
Accounts of Bundy's social life also varied. He told Michaud and Aynesworth that he "chose to be alone" as an adolescent because he was unable to understand interpersonal relationships; he also claimed to have no natural sense of how to develop friendships. "I didn't know what made people want to be friends," Bundy claimed. "I didn't know what underlay social interactions." "Some people perceived me as being shy and introverted," he said. "I didn't go to dances. I didn't go on the beer drinking outings. I was a pretty, you might call me straight, but not a social outcast in any way." Classmates from Woodrow Wilson High School, however, told Rule that Bundy was "well known and well liked" there, "a medium-sized fish in a large pond." His only significant athletic avocation was downhill skiing, which he pursued enthusiastically with stolen equipment and forged lift tickets. During high school, Bundy was arrested at least twice on suspicion of burglary and motor vehicle theft. At age 18, the details of these incidents were expunged from his record, as is customary in Washington and many other states.
After graduating from high school in 1965, Bundy attended the University of Puget Sound (UPS) for one year before transferring to the University of Washington (UW) to study Chinese. In 1967, he became romantically involved with a UW classmate, Diane Edwards (identified in Bundy biographies by several pseudonyms, most commonly "Stephanie Brooks"). Bundy later described Edwards as "the only woman I ever really loved."
After graduating from UW in 1972, Bundy joined Governor Daniel J. Evans's re-election campaign. Posing as a college student, he shadowed Evans' opponent, former governor Albert Rosellini, and recorded his stump speeches for analysis by Evans's team. Evans subsequently appointed Bundy to the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Committee. After Evans was re-elected, Bundy was hired as an assistant to Ross Davis, Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. Davis thought well of Bundy and described him as "smart, aggressive ... and a believer in the system." In early 1973, despite mediocre LSAT scores, Bundy was accepted into the law schools of UPS and the University of Utah (U of U) on the strength of letters of recommendation from Evans, Davis and several UW psychology professors.
