Disturbing Facts About Serial Killer Ted Bundy

In the early morning hours of August 16, 1975, Utah highway patrolman Bob Hayward saw a tan Volkswagen Beetle parked outside a home where it didn't belong. Residing at the home were teenage girls whose parents were away. It was an ominous scene at a time when women were being murdered with terrifying frequency. The driver bolted after noticing Hayward but stopped at an abandoned gas station. Hayward had unknowingly caught Ted Bundy.

Bundy was a nightmare with a nice smile who used his charming veneer to lure, rape, and kill his victims. By the time he crossed paths with Hayward, he had murdered at least 25 women across four states. "I didn't want to shoot the guy," Hayward later recalled. "I wish I had." Instead, he arrested Bundy after uncovering incriminating items in the Volkswagen.

Twice in 1977, Bundy eluded justice, once by leaping from a courthouse window and later by sawing a hole in the ceiling of his jail cell, per Oxygen. He continued killing until he was apprehended for good in 1978. Prior to his execution in 1989, he admitted to raping and murdering 36 people, including a 12-year-old girl, according to Biography. Yet he somehow enjoyed a grotesque celebrity that persists to this day. Here we attempt to explore Ted Bundy's origins, his possible motivations, and the jarring stardom he garnered.

Ted Bundy was unsettling on many levels, and the way he behaved toward corpses made his crimes all the more disturbing. A rapist and self-confessed necrophile, he violated his victims before and sometimes days after killing them. When asked by psychologist Al Carlisle about his necrophilia, Bundy explained that he wanted to possess "the essence of the victim" (per A&E True Crime Blog). Why his urge to "possess" people took such a ghastly form is anyone's guess, but neuroscientist Jack Pemment had a pretty intriguing idea.

Based on recordings featured in "Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes," Pemment concluded that Bundy's acts were rooted in a "desire for ... intimacy" (via Psychology Today). Specifically, he suggested the killer was trying to recreate the closeness he lost after a traumatic breakup with girlfriend Diane Edwards. Bundy placed their relationship on a pedestal, idealizing Edwards' looks and the time they spent together. He later felt that a corpse could "be anyone he [wanted] them to be."

Bundy enjoyed watching his victims decompose. SFGATE reports that, in some instances, he apparently shampooed their hair and painted their fingernails. Sometimes he kept their severed heads until he no longer wanted to be near them. Perhaps in some twisted, sadistic way, he viewed his victims as romantic partners who couldn't leave him.

Growing up, Ted Bundy struggled with loneliness. According to psychologist Al Carlisle, as a kid Bundy felt overshadowed by his step-siblings after his mother married Johnnie Bundy (per A&E True Crime Blog). Though he later claimed on tape he had plenty of friends to keep him company, one of his actual childhood friends said Bundy "had a horrible speech impediment, so he was teased a lot," according to "Conversations with A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes" (via USA Today).

Often feeling insignificant, Bundy retreated into his own mind where he imagined being "someone important." He listened to the radio and imitated the accents of politicians he heard. In high school, he was known to try to trick people. Perhaps tellingly, as a serial killer he would sometimes attempt to trick women by mimicking a "British or Canadian accent" and pretending to be injured, according to Inside Edition. 

As a teen, Bundy began peeping through women's windows. He didn't date in high school, and when he finally fell for someone, she dumped him for being dishonest and nonassertive. Emotionally shattered, he coped by breaking the law. After a failed foray into politics and a failed stint at Temple University, he felt even lonelier and spiraled into violence. Obviously, loneliness didn't cause Bundy to kill, but it seems related, especially when you consider that he claimed that killing women made them a part of him forever, per Katherine Ramsland's "The Mind of a Murderer."

Ted Bundy's string of rapes and murders partly overlapped with a serious relationship in which he nearly married and tried to murder his girlfriend. That unlucky soul was Elizabeth Kloepfer (also known as Liz Kendall), who dated Bundy for six years, according to her book "The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy" (via Biography). When they became acquainted in 1969, Kloepfer was a lonely single mother consumed by alcoholism. She had moved from Utah to Washington after divorcing a man she discovered was a convicted felon (per Oxygen). Ironically, she introduced herself to Bundy at a bar in order to dodge a different "creepy guy."

Perhaps as the lonely son of a troubled unwed mother (per ThoughtCo.), Bundy felt at home with Kloepfer. He later claimed in a taped interview that he loved her in a "destabilizing" way (via Oxygen). Each year, he celebrated the day they met by giving her a rose. He behaved like a father to her daughter. However, his warmth was interspersed with unpredictable coldness and fury. He even ripped up what would have been their marriage license because she worried about her old-fashioned parents seeing his belongings in her apartment. When evidence of Bundy's crimes mounted, an emotionally dependent Kloepfer remained in denial. However, she ultimately warned law enforcement. While behind bars, Bundy told Kloepfer he fought the urge to murder her but once blocked a chimney in hopes of killing her through smoke inhalation.

No matter how good you are at hiding your true self, your performative mask will eventually crack. Marylynne Chino saw it happen with former friend Ted Bundy. She first saw the infamous killer at Seattle's Sandpiper Lounge in 1969. At the time he didn't seem evil, Chino told KUTV. Instead, "Ted was charismatic, he was nice."

Chino's best friend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, got into a serious long-term relationship with Bundy, which she detailed in her book "The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy" (via Biography). Inevitably, indications of his dangerousness began to stand out. As Chino recalled, Kloepfer called her after discovering women's undergarments and the plaster of Paris, which Bundy ostensibly used to make casts to fake injuries and abduct women, according to Oxygen. He reportedly warned Kloepfer, "If you ever tell anyone this I'll break your effing head" (per KUTV).

When women started vanishing and police released a sketch of the suspect, Chino and Kloepfer thought it was Bundy. Though they eventually alerted law enforcement, initially they backtracked when an officer they contacted misidentified the color of Bundy's car. That didn't mean they trusted Bundy, though. When he insisted on driving Chino home one night, she was petrified, calling it the longest 30-minute ride of her life. Decades later, she still questioned why he didn't kill her.

In 1971, Ann Rule was a 40-something-year-old mother of four whose marriage was on the rocks. Previously a police officer, she was trying to get by as a crime reporter. Per The Washington Post, once a week she volunteered at a suicide crisis hotline, where she bonded with fellow hotline worker Ted Bundy.

According to The New Yorker, Bundy opened up to Rule about his grandmother pretending to be his mother and even discussed his love life. He likely wasn't a full-blown murderer back then but had probably attempted to abduct women. You might think someone with Rule's police training would've spotted the monster behind Bundy's smile from a mile away. But as she would later write in "The Stranger Beside Me," "As far as his appeal for women, I can remember thinking that, if I were younger and single — or if my daughters were older — this would be almost the perfect man."

As Vice reports, Rule would later be assigned to write about a series of murders that turned out to be Bundy's doing. When he was arrested, she held out hope for his innocence, but that hope faded when he broke out of jail and went on a killing spree. Even then, she remained his friend and became his biographer.

For many people, Zac Efron is the kind of eye candy that can make you weak in the knees with a single, smoldering glance. So the thought of Hunky McHotness playing a manipulative rapist and murderer might be a tad disconcerting. But that's exactly what Efron did in the 2019 film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, wherein he portrays Ted Bundy. As described by the Washington Post, detractors of the film argued that it rightly highlights Bundy's "disturbing celebrity" but "doesn't do enough to confront it." Viewers reportedly felt "awkward" lusting after "Hot Ted Bundy." Some critics accused the movie of "romanticizing" the serial killer.

It makes sense to be concerned about glorifying a monster. But maybe the real problem is the underlying assumption that being good-looking makes you a good person. This isn't simply something we do with movies. It's part of a real-life phenomenon known as the halo effect, whereby people use a single trait to judge the totality of a person. The real-life Bundy benefited greatly from this bias. His defense attorney, Margaret Good, said female admirers wrote notes to Bundy during his murder trial. As one woman put it, "He just doesn't look like the type to kill somebody."

In Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth's "Conversations With a Killer," Ted Bundy paints a picture of his high school years as lonely, isolated, and tainted by his inability to make friends. He felt as if his social development between junior high and high school had been inexplicably stunted, and he watched helplessly as his old friends grew and changed. He was painfully aware of his small frame, which impeded his ability to forge a path in sports. He was also bitter about the socioeconomic gaps between him and his peers, who lived in better houses. Most of all, he was confused that he couldn't grasp the new social mores that high school presented. It was as if his social development peaked in junior high.

However, Bundy's account doesn't completely jive with the memories of his classmates. According to Ann Rule's "The Stranger Beside Me," a former female classmate recalled that although Bundy was somewhat reserved, he had no trouble making friends or finding dates. People liked him and found him pleasing to the eye, and he would partake in school dances. Even if he didn't participate in the student council or other in-crowd groups, his friends certainly did.

In 1974, Ted Bundy began working at the Washington State Department of Emergency Services, which had organized hunts for some of Ted's missing victims, according to Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth's "The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy." Bundy was popular in the office; his male coworkers admired him and were even envious. He raised interest among his female coworkers, to say the least, one of whom was Carole Boone, his future wife and mother of his lone child. At the time they were only close friends, as Boone's love life was a mess, and Bundy was attached to Liz Kendall. But they would soon reunite, their bond stronger than ever.

When Bundy was on trial, Boone was perhaps his biggest ally. She believed he was innocent and testified to his good character during the trial in 1979, per Women's Health Magazine. She even did embarrassing favors for him, like smuggling drugs that she placed in her vagina into prison. They married in the courtroom while Bundy was on trial. The romance ended when Bundy eventually admitted to his crimes, which shocked Boone, according to Polly Nelson's "Defending the Devil: My Story as Ted Bundy's Last Lawyer."

Ted Bundy found various ways to get unwitting women to trust him and lead them into isolation. One strategy was impersonating a police officer, which itself is a crime, but this tactic would soon lead to his first arrest. It was November 8, 1974, when Bundy approached Carol DaRonch at a shopping mall in Murray, Utah, notes ABC News. Posing as a cop, he told DaRonch that someone had tried to break into her car and requested that she ride with him to the Murray Police Department. She agreed, but as soon as he pulled over too soon and handcuffed her, she knew something was wrong. Quick on her feet, she managed to escape Bundy's car and hitched a ride to the police department to report Bundy. A description of Bundy and his car was now on file, and he would be identified a year later by a highway patrol trooper, leading to his overdue arrest.

Bundy used other disguises to trick women. He would use crutches to appear vulnerable and then ask others for help, reports AP News. These were likely the same crutches that Bundy's girlfriend Liz Kendall once spied in his apartment, as detailed by Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth's "The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy."

Fears that Ted Bundy would strike again and target new women after escaping prison a second time were justified. In the early hours of January 15, 1978, Bundy broke into the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University with a wooden club, details ABC News. Wearing pantyhose over his face, Bundy snuck into the home and murdered two students, Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman. Two other students, Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, were severely beaten. One sorority member, however, managed to catch a good look at Bundy's face, and the resulting sketch helped investigators connect him to the incident.

But that wasn't the end of Bundy's crime spree that night. Once he left the sorority house, he sought his next victims a few blocks away. Bundy climbed in through student Cheryl Thomas' kitchen window and physically assaulted her. Fortunately, her neighbor heard the commotion and saved her life. Bundy managed to escape, and three weeks later, he kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Leach in Lake City, Florida, in what his believed to be his last attack. Bundy was sentenced to death twice: once for the murders of Bowman and Levy and the second time for the murder of Leach, reports ABC News.

There have been plenty of women who have survived Ted Bundy's horrific crimes and have gone on the record. His first known survivor is Karen Sparks-Epley, who was beaten and sexually assaulted by him in her bedroom in 1974 while she was a student at the University of Washington, per ET Online. She was attacked with her own bed frame and lay helpless for 20 hours. Sparks was left with permanent injuries, including brain damage.

One woman's strange escape revealed Bundy's penchant for a certain type of female. Sotria Kritsonis was offered a ride by Bundy at a bus stop, and once she hopped in, he quickly made it clear she was not meant to make it out alive, per KIRO7. He started yelling threats but suddenly demanded that she take off her hat. It's well-known that Bundy's preferred victim profile, at least in his murder spree of 1974, is a woman with long, dark hair that is parted in the middle, explains History. Kritsonis may have fit that picture at one point but had recently gotten a haircut. Bundy, who likely had been stalking her before, was surprised at her new hairstyle and dumped her off at her destination, KIRO7 reports.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).