The College Years of Ted Bundy: Education, Ambition, and Descent into Darkness
Theodore Robert Bundy, born on November 24, 1946, was one of America's most notorious serial killers. Between 1974 and 1978, he kidnapped, raped, and murdered dozens of young women and girls. Bundy's methods often involved deception, convincing his targets he needed assistance or posing as an authority figure. His crimes spanned multiple states, including Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho. This article explores Bundy's college years, examining his education, ambitions, and the events that may have contributed to his descent into a life of crime.
Early Life and Education
Born Theodore Robert Cowell in Burlington, Vermont, to Eleanor Louise Cowell, Bundy's early life was marked by uncertainty regarding his biological father. Raised by his maternal grandparents in Philadelphia, he initially believed they were his parents and his mother was his sister. In 1950, Louise changed her surname to Nelson and moved with Bundy to Tacoma, Washington, where she later married Johnny Culpepper Bundy, who adopted Ted.
Bundy's childhood in Tacoma was seemingly normal, though he later recounted disturbing behaviors, such as searching for pictures of naked women in trash barrels and perusing detective magazines for stories of sexual violence. Accounts of his social life varied; he claimed to have been a loner who struggled with interpersonal relationships, while classmates remembered him as well-liked.
After graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School, Bundy's collegiate career began at the University of Puget Sound (UPS). However, his academic path was far from linear. He later transferred to the University of Washington (UW) to study Chinese, but dropped out and worked various minimum-wage jobs.
Academic Pursuits and Political Involvement
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. In August, Bundy attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami.
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Devastated by the breakup with Edwards, 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.
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. 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 …
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. 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.
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The Descent into Crime
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.
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. 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 miles (95 km) 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…
On May 6, Roberta Kathleen Parks, aged 22, left her dormitory at Oregon State University in Corvallis, 260 miles (420 km) 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. 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 miles (30 km) 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. After Hawkins' disappearance was publicized, witnesses came forward to report seeing a man on crutches, with a leg cast and carrying a briefcase, in an alley behind a nearby dormitory on the night of her disappearance. One woman recalled that the man asked her to help him carry the case to his car, a light brown Volkswagen Beetle.
During this period, Bundy was working in Olympia as the assistant director of the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Committee, where he wrote a pamphlet for women on rape prevention. Later, he worked at the Department of Emergency Services (DES), a state government agency involved in the search for the missing women.
Law School and Continued Criminal Activity
In 1974, Bundy began studying at the University of Utah School of Law. He'd been admitted in part because of recommendation letters from his college professor and from the governor of Washington, whose re-election campaign he’d worked on. The school transfer was fortuitously timed, as it gave Bundy a reason to leave Washington and its ongoing murder investigations.
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Soon women in Utah and Colorado began to disappear. While Bundy killed some of his victims quickly, he kept others alive for days to be repeatedly raped and strangled. Even after a victim had died, Bundy would sometimes engage in necrophilia or hack off her head as a temporary trophy. With some, he took the time to apply makeup and wash their hair before disposing of their corpses. His way of killing was time-consuming, so Bundy often didn't attend law classes, though he still managed to do fairly well on exams.
Bundy continued to live as a law student until August 1975, when a police officer stopped him and Bundy's vehicle was found to contain a ski mask, ice pick and handcuffs. He was linked to and charged with the 1974 kidnapping of Carol DaRonch. (DaRonch had been tricked into getting into Bundy's car when he'd pretended to be a police officer, but managed to escape.) Through the trial, he proclaimed his innocence and won over many supporters. In interviews, Bundy called DaRonch a liar and promised to continue his legal studies. But in 1976 he was convicted of kidnapping.
Escapes, Final Crimes, and Execution
Bundy was soon extradited to Colorado to be tried for killing 23-year-old nurse Caryn Campbell. There, he decided to use his legal know-how and act as his own lawyer. Because he was representing himself, officials gave Bundy access to the law library. But when sent to the library during a pretrial hearing in June 1977, he managed to jump from an open window and escape.
Though Bundy was recaptured after eight days, the people guarding him didn't learn from the experience. Bundy escaped again on December 30, 1977. This time he made it to Florida, where he took the lives of two college students and one 12-year-old, as well as severely injuring three other women, before being arrested once more.
When put on trial in Florida, Bundy again defended himself. (A lawyer advising him felt it was because Bundy couldn't relinquish control or admit guilt.) And though Bundy managed to marry his girlfriend when she came to testify, thanks to a legal loophole, the rest of his case didn't go as he'd hoped. He was found guilty of three murders (in two separate trials) and sentenced to death.
He never received his law degree. Bundy was reportedly surprised by the outcomes of his Florida trials. Despite his education, he was neither smart enough nor a good enough lawyer, to accurately assess the strengths of the prosecution's case and his likelihood of conviction. He'd never finished law school, and even before dropping out had been too busy committing multiple murders to hit the books.
Bundy had turned down a plea deal with Florida prosecutors that would have resulted in a life sentence instead of capital punishment. Though appeals kept his execution from being carried out for years, and Bundy tried to trade information about the murders he'd committed in order to delay the sentence, his time eventually ran out. On January 24, 1989, he was put to death by electric chair.
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