Research Paper On Ted Bundy: Signature Of A Killer

Ted Bundy was born in a house for unwed mothers to an absent father. So to cover up the shame of this he was raised believing his mother was his older sister and his grandparents were actually his parents.
He was a shy reserved child. When he was four his mother posing as his sister took him to live a new life with a new husband it was only until in his adolescent years he eventually found out his sister was actually his mother.
This is believed to be what affected his ability to form attachments, he didn’t know who he was, what he thought he was, was a lie. Bundy struggled to trust and could not form intimate relationships with women.
He began committing petty crimes when he was younger seemingly for the attention. He began dating a bright pretty girl but she eventually dumped him because she didn’t think he was going anywhere. This rejection is seen to be one of the catalysts of his crimes as it was his first rejection and because it was so powerful as he believed this girl was the one for him.
This rejection resulted in complete immersion in his work and studies, Bundy threw himself into politics working for the Republican Party, he became very successful and influential. Until eventually he won what he thought was the love of his life back through his high achieving and they began to even talk of marriage. Then for seemingly no reason he broke off all contact with her.
This began his eponymous spree of killings of which he is now famous for. All his victims had long dark centre parted hair, they were slim and attractive and bright.
They each resembled Bundy’s dream girl, his first girlfriend. It’s believed that it’s a sort of an act of revenge, as if he wanted to kill her but he also wanted to do it over and over again and not be connected to the crime. Which is highly unusual for serial killers as they usually kill someone and use that first kill as a basis for all their other subsequent murders, in an effort to replicate the feeling of the original crime but Bundy instead creates the fantasy of a murder of someone that he loves and then repeats that fantasy over and over on women that look similar to this one person.
Women were literally disappearing without a trace. Bundy would approach women under the pretence of being in need of help. He would wear a cast on one arm and ask for help from a target woman to put something in his car. This and Bundys charm and good looks would establish him as someone weak and unthreatening which is exactly what he wanted, because it would allow them to drop their guard.
This of course was a devious ruse to gain access to these women and present an opportunity to abduct and kill them. He first would get them into his car or to some isolated spot and then using a small crowbar concealed in the cast on his arm he would proceed to bludgeon his victims.
After knocking the women unconscious and sexually assaulting the victim he would then eventually strangle his victim and dump the body in the woods or mountains. The reason for knocking the women he abducted out was so that he could do whatever he wanted to the helpless victim. Ted Bundy was a sexual psychopath who used acts of violence to act out sadistic sexual fantasies. It is noted as well that one of the reasons Bundy claimed to kill was because he was fuelled by fantasies created by watching violent pornography, this was quite a controversial issue at the time of his trial. (Turvey 2010)
He actually abducted two women in one day in broad daylight from a very popular and very crowded public park using this method of abduction but this audacity eventually resulted in a composite sketch mocking up as people saw him leave with one of the victims and heard him refer to himself as Ted.
It amazes people to learn that Ted Bundy was actually a very charming and nice person well liked by most that knew him. His closest friends had no idea that he was a killer. They joked when they heard his name and car in connection with these abductions, never stopping to think Ted capable of such atrocities, this is a great example of what is known as ; ‘The banality of evil’. We find it hard to believe that monsters like that can be as normal as you or I, which is in a way more frightening because it becomes almost impossible to detect or predict.
He was very efficient in his killings and avoiding law enforcement although he was subsequently arrested for possession of burglary equipment. One of his victims Carol Durant escaped as he attempted to handcuff her in his car, this resulted in his subsequent conviction for attempted kidnapping. At this point the police were sure he was a serial killer and his trial of suspected murder began.
Bundy caused a stir when the law graduate decided to be his own council using this freedom he escaped through the law library window in the courthouse while reading legal material for his case. He then fled to reside in the woods in disused cabins stealing from campers to survive.
He was eventually caught but he escaped again through a gap in the ceiling of the jail. Bundy then created a new identity and was essentially free but he couldn’t stop killing, the drama and being the centre of attention was lacking in his life and he wanted that power back.
He was tried a second time and he defended himself again losing, but never confessing to his crimes until years on death row in an effort to prolong his life.
He admitted to killing a total of 36 young girls. Bundy dumped many of the bodies in the mountains and the woods and he returned regularly to the bodies to see if they had been discovered and to commit acts of necrophilia on them. Sometimes he would put make up on the corpses and pose them. Bundy always made sure his victims were either unconscious or dead within minutes of meeting them as was possible to ensure complete control over their bodies. This was believed to be the only relationship his fantasy would allow. (Turvey 2010)
He also admitted to taking some of the heads of his victim’s home. When he was asked why he did all this, he just said because he liked it. Ted Bundy was eventually executed by electric chair.
Ted Bundy - Born To Kill? (2011) retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zriSw1UBqv8
Ted Bundy s Final Interview (2013) retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rymp7zohFw
Turvey, B.E. (2010) Sadistic Behavior: A Literature Review
http://www.scribd.com/doc/44500461/Sadistic-Behavior-Brent-E-Turvey-John-J-Baeza
Reynolds, M. (2012) Ted Bundy: The Boy Next Door
http://ezinearticles.com/?Ted-Bundy:-The-Boy-Next-Door&id=7275271