The Reason Ted Bundy Sometimes Returned To His Crime Scenes
"Let's just say that he did some things to the bodies that were just as horrible as they could possibly be" — those were the words of FBI Special Agent Bill Hagmaier, who spent the last week of Ted Bundy's life interviewing the serial killer before he was executed in Florida, according to The Buffalo News.
Ted Bundy ultimately confessed to killing dozens of women in several states and one 12-year-old girl, though it's suspected he killed more, and he shared his predatory methods and the stories of his heinous assaults with Hagmaier. Not only did Bundy admit to those crimes, but he also said he would return to where he left some of the bodies.
According to Hagmaier's description to the Buffalo News, like other serial killers, Bundy said his motivation to kill was driven by a desire to have power and control over another person. For Bundy, he chose attractive, well-dressed young women from good homes. He got to know them a little bit and said he only killed women he "considered worthy prey" per The Buffalo News. After he was done perpetrating his horrors on the women he lured with his charm, intelligence, and good-guy persona he would get rid of the evidence of their bodies and wherever that place was, he considered it "hallowed ground" per Hagmaier, and he would go visit as much as he could.
Ted Bundy wasn't done with his victims after he killed them
In fact, Hagmaier told the Free Lance-Star that as a tip, Bundy told him that if investigators wanted to catch killers, they should leave discovered bodies where they lie because "80% of them will go back, to see what they accomplished."
Crime Museum reported that when Bundy would revisit the women he killed, he would perform sex acts on their corpses. Sometimes he would even take them back home where he could defile the bodies more, or simply sleep beside them.
Besides being a serial killer, he was a necrophiliac, or someone who is sexually aroused by having sex with the dead. According to Psychology Today, neuroscientist Jack Pemment thinks Bundy's motivation in those cases was that he realized he had full power over the women once they were dead, and could make them look how he wanted, and do as he pleased to their bodies with no fight — until they got too decomposed, anyway.
Dead people also have no expectations nor do they make demands, so according to Pemment, "Necrophilia gave Ted complete power over his victims, which could have been his answer to never wanting to feel fearful or feel rejected again."