Ted Bundy was a clean-cut, charismatic, and educated young man who didn't fit the serial killer stereotype. Or so we thought. But Bundy may have actually exhibited the telltale signs of potential psychopathy and sadism... if only people had known to look for them.
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00:00Sentenced to death for the 1978 murders of two sorority women and a 12-year-old girl,
00:05Ted Bundy maintained his innocence until just days before his execution, when he confessed
00:09to 36 killings in a last-ditch effort to save his own life. It didn't work. Bundy died in
00:15the electric chair on January 24, 1989, but his story may never be over.
00:19All he said is,
00:21"'I'd like you to give my love to my family and friends.' That was Ted Bundy's last statement."
00:26Today, it's believed he may have killed more than 100 victims, most of whom were children,
00:31teenage girls, and college-age women. Bundy didn't fit what we thought was the stereotypical
00:36picture of a serial murder. He was a clean-cut, charismatic, well-educated young man.
00:41"'You'd be the guy next door. Your fiancée, your husband, your boyfriend, your lover.'"
00:46Looking back, the warning signs had always been there, if only someone had known what
00:49they were looking at.
00:51At first, Bundy was raised by his maternal grandparents, with his mother pretending to
00:55be his sister. She later claimed the father was a mysterious army vet who gave her a false
00:59name, then vanished. But according to interviews with family members conducted by Vanity Fair,
01:04that's believed to be a lie.
01:06Bundy's grandfather was an image-conscious tyrant, prone to violent outbursts, though
01:10Bundy himself insisted they had a good relationship.
01:13"'Bundy's grandfather had a real collection of pornography that he was exposed to very
01:19young.'
01:20There's a theory out there that Bundy was the product of incest, which would explain
01:23his grandfather's insistence on raising the boy, but this has never been confirmed.
01:28Whatever the truth, Bundy's issues began at an early age.
01:31"'He liked to scare people.'"
01:34According to his Aunt Julia, when she was 15, she woke up to discover that Teddy, then
01:38just a toddler, had surrounded her with butcher knives. She told Vanity Fair,
01:42"'He just stood there and grinned. I shooed him out of the room and took the implements
01:46back down to the kitchen and told my mother about it. I remember thinking at the time
01:50that I was the only one who thought it was strange. Nobody did anything.'"
01:54At an early age, Bundy exhibited the behavior of a potential psychopath. At school, he was
01:58intelligent and enthusiastic, smart enough to eventually go to law school, but he was
02:02also withdrawn and antisocial. He looked down on his mother and stepfather, whom he considered
02:07both poor and poorly educated, and he fought with his classmates who bullied him for his
02:11speech impediment.
02:12"'Even up at Boy Scout camp, he just couldn't quite get the hang of doing the things the
02:18other kids were doing.'"
02:20Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with being withdrawn or antisocial at school.
02:24There are plenty of people who are naturally introverted, but perfectly well-adjusted.
02:28But Bundy wasn't one of them. And it wasn't just the fighting. He liked building tiger
02:32traps, covered holes in the ground with hidden stakes underneath. If that weren't enough
02:36to raise eyebrows, he was a peeping Tom and a flagrant thief during his adolescence.
02:41Around that time, he also developed some darker hobbies. According to his attorney, John Henry
02:45Brown, Bundy admitted that as an adolescent, he would purchase mice from a local pet store
02:50and take them out to the woods.
02:51"'He'd go to the woods and he'd build a little corral and then he'd decide which one to kill
02:55and which one to let go.'"
02:57Brown suggested Bundy's killing was tied up with a twisted desire to have power over life
03:01and death on those around him.
03:03"'He told me that there were many, many times he stalked women and did not harm them.'"
03:10Bundy's interest in dead bodies foreshadows some of the most sickening aspects of his
03:14life. In addition to being a prolific serial killer, he was a necrophile who dismembered
03:19the bodies of his victims, kept them as trophies, and used their remains for sexual gratification.
03:24Still, Bundy managed to maintain a veneer of normality and respectability during his
03:28early life. The people around him assumed he was simply an intelligent and academic
03:32young man.
03:33Sure, the darker aspects of Bundy's youth have been pored over in retrospect, but many
03:37of the details only came to light on his own admission. Bundy's crimes were such a shock
03:42to those who knew him during his early years that several acquaintances were convinced
03:45he'd been wrongly accused.
03:47Nevertheless, there are those who claim to have seen Bundy transform from his charming
03:52persona into something more menacing.
03:54Robin Leary, a fellow student at the University of Utah, recalled a dance at which she noticed
03:58a manic stare come over Bundy's face.
04:01"'I will never forget the look on his face. I can't describe it. It wasn't evil, but it
04:06was like he was staring.'"
04:08Leary found it so terrifying she had her date take her home.
04:12Her claim was corroborated by private investigator Joe Alloy, who worked for Bundy's defense
04:16team and said that he saw the chilling transformation firsthand.
04:20During his time in prison, Bundy admitted that he'd heard voices in the past, and some
04:24have suggested that his apparent dual nature was evidence that he may have had multiple
04:27personalities.
04:28Regardless, he was never formally diagnosed with schizophrenia or dissociative identity
04:33disorder.
04:34"'What's the right way for Ted Bundy to behave and make sure that people get the right impression?
04:38Am I gonna jump up on the table? Am I gonna scream? That's what I felt like doing.'"
04:43It's possible that Bundy's killing started young, as early as 14, when he was living
04:47in Tacoma, Washington, with his mother and stepfather and peeping through strangers'
04:51windows for entertainment.
04:53At the time, an 8-year-old girl named Anne Marie Burr went missing just a few miles from
04:57Bundy's home. No DNA evidence has ever tied him to her disappearance, but there are similarities
05:02with his later crimes. Notably, she was abducted while her family was at home, and Bundy may
05:07have known her through his paper route. Some experts believe none of this was coincidental.
05:12Bundy for what it's worth denied any involvement. But he is also on record saying that some
05:16cases he would never talk about because the victims were too young.
05:20Countless abductions and attacks against girls and young women occurred within Bundy's potential
05:24area of activity after he came of age. He killed at a ferocious rate, murdering more
05:28than 20 women between 1974 and 1978. Quite a few law enforcement agents now believe this
05:34may have been preceded by many earlier killings, in which he learned to manipulate, incapacitate,
05:39and murder his victims without detection.
05:42For example, we now know that Bundy lived in the San Francisco area right around the
05:45time that the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders happened. They are certainly in his M.O.,
05:50picking up random girls and doing his thing.
05:53Bundy was at one time ruled out as a suspect there, but now investigators are looking at
05:57him squarely as a suspect.