Institutution:
HEARTLESS EVIL
Ted Bundy was one of the country’s most notorious serial killers. Just before his execution in 1989, he confessed to killing at least 30 young women, though it is uncertain how many other women he may have killed—possibly as many as one hundred, profilers have said.
Biographer Ann Rule, who wrote, “The Stranger Beside Me,” described him as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after." (Rule p. xiv)
One of the main reasons that Bundy could have grown up to be an evil person is that it seems he was raised by an evil person. Bundy was raised by his grandparents. While Bundy spoke fondly of his grandparents in some interviews, and told Ann Rule in an interview that he "identified with", "respected", and "clung to his grandfather,” (Wikipedia) he and other family members also confessed that Samuel Cowell was a tyrant and a bully and a bigot who hated Jews, Catholics, Blacks, and Italians, and, beat the family dog and his wife. He one time threw Julia down a flight of stairs for oversleeping.
Ted occasionally exhibited disturbing behavior, even at that early age. Julia reported awakening one day from a nap to find herself surrounded by knives from the Cowell kitchen; her three-year-old nephew was standing by the bed, smiling. Evil begets evil.
Bundy reported roamed through his neighborhood, picking through trash barrels looking for pictures of nude women.To Polly Nelson, the biographer, he spoke of,“perusing detective magazines, crime novels, and true crime documentaries for stories involving sexual violence, particularly when illustrated with pictures of dead or maimed bodies;” (Wikipedia.)
No one knew when or where Bundy began killing women. He told very different stories to diverse people, and refused to reveal the specifics of his early crimes, even though he confessed in graphic detail dozens of later murders in the days before his execution. Pre-execution, about one college female a month was disappearing in the areas where Ted was known to live.
Nelson's impressions were similar: "It was the absolute misogyny of his crimes that stunned me," she wrote, "his manifest rage against women. He had no compassion at all he was totally engrossed in the details. His murders were his life's accomplishments.” (Wikipedia).
In “I’m Not Guilty: The Development of the Violent Mind: The Case of Ted Bundy,” Al Carlisle, a psychologist at Utah state prison, put forth a different sort of theory than the classic “mistreated as a child” theories. (Psychology Today, 2012)
“He proposes that the ability to repeatedly kill and also function as a seemingly normal person (who aspired to become governor, for example) develops through the gradual evolution of three primary processes: Fantasy – in which the person imagines scenarios for entertainment or self-comfort; Dissociation – the person avoids uncomfortable feelings and memories; and Compartmentalization – in which the person relegates different ideas and images to specific mental frames and keeps boundaries between them.”
Finally, Bundy was very likely a sociopath or psychopath—outwardly charming, perhaps even a charismatic person; but under the outer facade, there is little real personality or genuine insight. Most sociopaths are not obviously psychotic; they can readily tell the difference between
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wrong and right, but at the heart, they are missing all feelings of guilt or remorse, and can commit acts like murder and necrophilia with ease and no conscience.
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Bibliography
Carlisle,Al.“I’m Not Guilty: The Development of the Violent Mind: The Case of Ted Bundy,”Psychology Today, (August 4, 2012).
Nelson, Polly, (1994). Defending the Devil: My Story as Ted Bundy's Last Lawyer.(New York: William Morrow).
Rule, Ann (2009).The Stranger Beside Me. (Paperback; updated 2009 ed., New York: Pocket Books).
Wikipedia, “The Online Encyclopedia,” accessed on 12/21/2014 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy
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Published on August 24, 2012 by Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D. in Shadow Boxing
Crime Museum Ted Bundy
November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989
Bundy was first arrested in Utah but escaped and continued his killing spree. He was stopped for a traffic violation in Florida leading to his final arrest, February 15, 1978. He was finally sentenced to death and died in the electric chair in 1989.
