TED BUNDY (EXECUTED BY THE ELECTRIC CHAIR IN FLORIDA ON 24 JANUARY 1989)

On this date (24 January 1989), one of America’s most notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy was executed by the electric chair. I will post some photos and some information from Wikipedia and other links about him, before giving my thoughts:

In custody, Florida, July 27, 1978
(State Archives of Florida)

Background information
Birth name	Theodore Robert Cowell
Also known as	Chris Hagen Kenneth Misner Richard Burton Officer Roseland Rolf Miller
Born	November 24, 1946 Burlington, Vermont
Died	January 24, 1989 (aged 42) Florida State Prison, Bradford County, Florida
Cause of death	Execution by electric chair
Conviction	Murder, Aggravated kidnapping
Sentence	Death
Killings
Number of victims	30–36+
Country	United States
State(s)	Washington, Utah, Florida, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, California
Motive	Psychopathy
Date apprehended	August 16, 1975; escaped December 30, 1977; re-apprehended February 15, 1978

Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy (born Theodore Robert Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed shortly before his execution to 30 homicides committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978; the true total remains unknown, and could be much higher.

Bundy was regarded as handsome and charismatic by his young female victims, traits he exploited in winning their trust. He typically approached them in public places, feigning an injury or disability, or impersonating an authority figure, before overpowering and assaulting them at a more secluded location. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes for hours at a time, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made further interaction impossible. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept some of the severed heads in his apartment for a period of time as mementos. On a few occasions he simply broke into dwellings in the dead of night and bludgeoned victims as they slept.

Initially incarcerated in Utah in 1975 for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault, Bundy became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in multiple states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and committed multiple additional assaults, including three murders, before his ultimate recapture in Florida in 1978. He received three death sentences in two separate trials for the Florida homicides.

Ted Bundy died in the electric chair at Raiford Prison in Starke, Florida, on January 24, 1989. Biographer Ann Rule 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." He once called himself "...the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet." Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, agreed. "Ted," she wrote, "was the very definition of heartless evil."

Bundy as a senior in high school in 1965.

Florida trials, marriage

Following a change of venue to Miami, Bundy stood trial for the Chi Omega homicides and assaults in June 1979. The trial was covered by 250 reporters from five continents, and was the first to be televised nationally in the United States. Despite the presence of five court-appointed attorneys, Bundy again handled much of his own defense. From the beginning, he "sabotaged the entire defense effort out of spite, distrust, and grandiose delusion," Nelson later wrote. "Ted [was] facing murder charges, with a possible death sentence, and all that mattered to him apparently was that he be in charge."

According to Mike Minerva, a Tallahassee public defender and member of the defense team, a pre-trial plea bargain was negotiated in which Bundy would plead guilty to killing Levy, Bowman, and Leach in exchange for a firm 75-year prison sentence. Prosecutors were amenable to a deal, by one account, because "prospects of losing at trial were very good." Bundy, on the other hand, saw the plea deal not only as a means of avoiding the death penalty, but also as a "tactical move": He could enter his plea, then wait a few years for evidence to disintegrate or become lost, and for witnesses to die, move on, or retract their testimony. Once the case against him had deteriorated beyond repair, he could file a post-conviction motion to set aside the plea and secure an acquittal. At the last minute, however, Bundy refused the deal. "It made him realize he was going to have to stand up in front of the whole world and say he was guilty," Minerva said. "He just couldn't do it."

At trial, crucial testimony came from Chi Omega members Connie Hastings, who placed Bundy in the vicinity of Chi Omega House that evening, and Nita Neary, who saw him leaving the sorority house clutching the oak murder weapon. Incriminating physical evidence included the bite impressions Bundy left in Levy's left buttock, which forensic odontologists Richard Souviron and Lowell Levine matched to castings of Bundy's teeth. The jury deliberated less than seven hours before convicting him on July 24, 1979 of the two murders, three counts of attempted first degree murder, and two counts of burglary. The trial judge imposed death sentences for the murder convictions.

Six months later a second trial took place in Orlando for the abduction and murder of Kimberly Leach. Bundy was again found guilty after less than eight hours' deliberation, principally due to the testimony of an eyewitness who saw him leading Leach from the schoolyard to his van. Other important evidence included clothing fibers with an unusual manufacturing error, found in the stolen van and on Leach's body, which matched fibers from the jacket Bundy was wearing when he was arrested.

During the penalty phase of the trial, Bundy took advantage of an obscure Florida law providing that a marriage declaration in court in the presence of a judge constituted a legal marriage. As he was questioning former Washington State DES coworker Carole Ann Boone—who had moved to Florida to be near Bundy, had testified on his behalf during both trials, and was again testifying on his behalf as a character witness—he asked her to marry him. She accepted, and Bundy declared to the court that they were legally married.

On February 10, 1980 Bundy was sentenced to death by electrocution for a third time. As the sentence was announced he reportedly stood and shouted, "Tell the jury they were wrong!" This third death sentence would be the one ultimately carried out nearly nine years later.

In October 1982 Boone gave birth to a daughter and named Bundy as the father. While conjugal visits were not allowed at Raiford Prison, inmates were known to pool their money to bribe guards to allow them intimate time alone with their female visitors.

Mugshot taken of Ted Bundy, taken following his first arrest for possession of burglary tools. (Utah, 16 August 1975)

Pitkin County Courthouse, Aspen, CO. Ted Bundy escaped from custody by jumping from the second window from left, second story, June 7, 1977.

Ted Bundy's FBI photo when he was placed on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, 1978.

Death row, confessions, and execution

Shortly after the conclusion of the Leach trial and the beginning of the long appeals process that followed, Bundy initiated a series of interviews with Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth. Speaking mostly in third person to avoid "the stigma of confession", he began for the first time to divulge details of his crimes and thought processes.

He recounted his career as a thief, confirming Kloepfer's long-time suspicion that he had shoplifted virtually everything of substance that he owned. "The big payoff for me," he said, "was actually possessing whatever it was I had stolen. I really enjoyed having something ... that I had wanted and gone out and taken." Possession proved to be an important motive for rape and murder as well. Sexual assault, he said, fulfilled his need to "totally possess" his victims. At first, he killed the women "as a matter of expediency ... to eliminate the possibility of [being] caught." Later, however, murder became part of the "adventure." "The ultimate possession was, in fact, the taking of the life," he said. "And then ... the physical possession of the remains."

Bundy also confided in Special Agent William Hagmaier of the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit. Hagmaier was struck by the "deep, almost mystical satisfaction" that Bundy took in murder. "He said that after a while, murder is not just a crime of lust or violence," Hagmaier related. "It becomes possession. They are part of you ... [the victim] becomes a part of you, and you [two] are forever one ... and the grounds where you kill them or leave them become sacred to you, and you will always be drawn back to them." Bundy told Hagmaier he considered himself an "amateur", an "impulsive" killer in his early years, before moving into what he called his "prime" or "predator" phase at about the time of Lynda Healy's murder in 1974. This implied that he began killing well before 1974—though he never explicitly admitted doing so.

In July 1984 Raiford guards found two hacksaw blades hidden in Bundy's cell. A steel bar in one of its windows had been sawed completely through at the top and bottom and glued back in place with a homemade soap-based adhesive. Several months later his cell was changed again after guards found a mirror.

Sometime during this period Bundy was attacked by a group of his fellow death row inmates. Though he denied having been assaulted, a number of inmates confessed to the crime, characterized by one source as a "gang rape." Shortly thereafter he was charged with a disciplinary infraction for unauthorized correspondence with another inmate, John Hinckley.

In October 1984 Bundy, who by then considered himself an expert on serial killers, contacted Robert Keppel and offered to share his self-proclaimed expertise in the ongoing hunt for his successor in Washington, the Green River Killer. Keppel and Green River Task Force detective Dave Reichert interviewed Bundy, but Gary Leon Ridgway remained at large for a further 17 years. Keppel later published a detailed documentation of the Green River interviews, and later collaborated with Michaud on another examination of the interview material.

In early 1986 an execution date—March 4—was set on the Chi Omega convictions; the Supreme Court issued a brief stay, but the execution was quickly rescheduled. In April, shortly after the new date of July 2 was announced, Bundy confessed to Hagmaier and Nelson what they believed was the full range of his depredations, including details of what he did to some victims after their deaths. He told them that he revisited Taylor Mountain, Issaquah, and other secondary crime scenes, often several times, to lie with his victims and perform sexual acts with their decomposing bodies until putrefaction forced him to stop. In some cases he drove several hours each way and remained the entire night. In Utah he applied makeup to Melissa Smith's lifeless face, and he repeatedly washed Laura Aime's hair. Some victims were found wearing articles of clothing they had never worn, or nail polish that family members had never seen. "If you've got time," he told Hagmaier, "they can be anything you want them to be." He decapitated approximately twelve of his victims with a hacksaw, and kept at least one group of severed heads—probably the four later found on Taylor Mountain (Rancourt, Parks, Ball, and Healy)—in his apartment for a period of time before disposing of them.

Less than 15 hours before the scheduled July 2 execution, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals stayed it indefinitely and remanded the Chi Omega case for review of technicalities (such as Bundy's mental competency to stand trial) which, ultimately, were never resolved. A new date, November 18, was then set to carry out the Leach sentence; the Eleventh Circuit Court issued a stay on November 17. In mid-1988 the Eleventh Circuit ruled against Bundy, and in December the Supreme Court denied a motion to review the ruling. Within hours of that final denial a firm execution date—January 24, 1989—was announced. Bundy's journey through the appeals courts had been unusually rapid for a capital murder case: "Contrary to popular belief, the courts moved Bundy as fast as they could ... Even the prosecutors acknowledged that Bundy's lawyers never employed delaying tactics. Though people everywhere seethed at the apparent delay in executing the archdemon, Ted Bundy was actually on the fast track."

With all appeal avenues exhausted and no further motivation to deny his crimes, Bundy agreed to speak frankly with investigators. To Keppel, he confessed to all eight of the Washington and Oregon homicides for which he was the prime suspect. He described three additional previously unknown victims in Washington and two in Oregon whom he declined to identify (if indeed he ever knew their identities). He said he left a fifth corpse—Donna Manson's—on Taylor Mountain, but incinerated her head in Liz Kloepfer's fireplace. ("Of all the things I did to [Kloepfer]," he told Keppel, "this is probably the one she is least likely to forgive me for. Poor Liz.") He described in detail his abduction of Georgeann Hawkins from the brightly lit UW alley—how he lured her to his car, clubbed and handcuffed her, drove her to Issaquah, raped and strangled her, spent the entire night with her body, and revisited her corpse on three later occasions. "He described the Issaquah crime scene [where the bones of Ott, Naslund, and Hawkins were found], and it was almost like he was just there," Keppel said. "Like he was seeing everything. He was infatuated with the idea because he spent so much time there. He is just totally consumed with murder all the time." 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."

To detectives from Idaho, Utah, and Colorado, Bundy confessed to numerous additional homicides, including several that police had been unaware of. He explained that in Utah he could bring his victims back to his apartment, "where he could reenact scenarios depicted on the covers of detective magazines." A new ulterior strategy quickly became apparent: He withheld many details, hoping to parlay the incomplete information into yet another stay of execution. "There are other buried remains in Colorado," he admitted, but refused to elaborate. The new strategy—immediately dubbed "Ted's bones-for-time scheme"—served only to deepen the resolve of authorities to see Bundy executed on schedule, and yielded little new detailed information. In cases where he did give details, nothing was found. Colorado detective Matt Lindvall interpreted this as a conflict between his desire to postpone his execution by divulging information and his need to remain in "total possession—the only person who knew his victims' true resting places."

When it became clear that no further stays would be forthcoming from the courts, Bundy supporters began lobbying for the only remaining option, executive clemency. Diana Weiner, a young Florida attorney and Bundy's last purported love interest, asked the families of several Colorado and Utah victims to petition Florida Governor Bob Martinez for a postponement to give Bundy time to reveal more information. All refused. "The families already believed that the victims were dead and that Ted had killed them," wrote Nelson. "They didn't need his confession." Martinez made it clear that he would not agree to further delays in any case. "We are not going to have the system manipulated," he told reporters. "For him to be negotiating for his life over the bodies of others is despicable."

Hagmaier was present during Bundy's final interviews with investigators. On the eve of his execution, he talked of suicide. "He did not want to give the state the satisfaction of watching him die," Hagmaier said. Ted Bundy died in the Raiford electric chair at 7:16 a.m. Eastern time on January 24, 1989. Several hundred celebrants sang, danced, and set off fireworks in a pasture across the street from the prison as the execution was carried out, then cheered loudly as the white hearse bearing Bundy's body departed the prison. His remains were cremated in Gainesville and the ashes scattered at an undisclosed location in the Cascade Range of Washington State in accordance with his will.

At press conference in Tallahassee announcing his triple murder indictment, July 1978 (State Archives of Florida)

Departing a preliminary hearing, Miami, 1979 (State Archives of Florida)

Odontologist Richard Souviron explaining bite mark evidence at the Chi Omega trial (State Archives of Florida)

Bundy after his convictions in the Chi Omega trial

Mug shot taken the day after sentencing for the murder of Kimberly Leach (State Archives of Florida)

Ted Bundy in custody, Florida, 1978 or 1979. Florida Memory Project, Florida Photographic Collection, #DND0671

Modus operandi and victim profiles

Bundy was an unusually organized and calculating criminal who used his extensive knowledge of law enforcement methodologies to elude identification and capture for years. His crime scenes were distributed over large geographic areas; his victim count had risen to at least 20 before it became clear that numerous investigators in widely disparate jurisdictions were hunting the same man. His assault methods of choice were blunt trauma and strangulation, two relatively silent techniques that could be accomplished with common household items. He deliberately avoided firearms due to the noise they made and the ballistic evidence they left behind. He was a "meticulous researcher" who explored his surroundings in minute detail, looking for safe sites to seize and dispose of victims. He was unusually skilled at minimizing physical evidence. His fingerprints were never found at a crime scene, nor was any other incontrovertible evidence of his guilt, a fact he repeated often during the years in which he attempted to maintain his innocence.

Other significant obstacles for law enforcement were Bundy's "generic", essentially anonymous physical features, and a curious "chameleon-like" ability to change his appearance almost at will. Early on, police complained of the futility of showing his photograph to witnesses; he looked different in virtually every photo ever taken of him. In person, "... his expression would so change his whole appearance that there were moments that you weren't even sure you were looking at the same person," said Stewart Hanson, Jr., the judge in the DaRonch trial. "He [was] really a changeling." Bundy was well aware of this unusual quality and he exploited it, using subtle modifications of facial hair or hairstyle to significantly alter his appearance as necessary. He concealed his one distinctive identifying mark, a dark mole on his neck, with turtleneck shirts and sweaters. Even his Volkswagen Beetle proved difficult to pin down; its color was variously described by witnesses as metallic or non-metallic, tan or bronze, light brown or dark brown.

Bundy's modus operandi evolved in organization and sophistication over time, as is typical of serial murderers, according to FBI experts. Early on this consisted simply of forcible late-night entry followed by a violent attack with a blunt weapon on a sleeping victim. Some victims were sexually assaulted with inert objects; all were left as they lay, unconscious or dead. As his methodology evolved Bundy became progressively more organized in his choice of victims and crime scenes. He would employ various ruses designed to lure his victim to the vicinity of his vehicle where he had pre-positioned a weapon, usually a crowbar. In many cases he wore a plaster cast on one leg or a sling on one arm, and sometimes hobbled on crutches, then requested assistance in carrying something to his vehicle. At other times he identified himself as a police officer or firefighter. Bundy was handsome and charismatic, traits he exploited to win his victims' confidence. "Ted lured females," Michaud wrote, "the way a lifeless silk flower can dupe a honey bee." Once near or inside his vehicle the victim would be overpowered, bludgeoned, and restrained with handcuffs. Most were sexually assaulted and strangled, either at the primary crime scene or (more commonly) after transport to a pre-selected secondary site, often a considerable distance away. Toward the end of his spree in Florida, perhaps under the stress of being a fugitive, he regressed to indiscriminate attacks on sleeping victims.

At secondary sites he would remove and later burn the victim's clothing, or in at least one case (Julie Cunningham's) deposit them in a Goodwill Industries collection bin. Bundy explained that the clothing removal was ritualistic, but also a practical matter, as it minimized the chance of leaving trace evidence at the crime scene that could implicate him. (A manufacturing error in fibers from his own clothing, however, provided a crucial incriminating link to Kimberly Leach.) He often revisited his secondary crime scenes to engage in acts of necrophilia. He took Polaroid photos of many of his victims. "When you work hard to do something right," he told Hagmaier, "you don't want to forget it." Consumption of large quantities of alcohol was an "essential component", he told Keppel, and later Michaud; he needed to be "extremely drunk" while on the prowl in order to "significantly diminish" his inhibitions and to "sedate" the "dominant personality" that he feared might prevent his inner "entity" from acting on his impulses.

All of Bundy's known victims were white females, most of middle-class backgrounds. Almost all were between the ages of 15 and 25 and most were college students. He apparently never approached anyone he might have met before. (In their last conversation before his execution, Bundy told Kloepfer he had purposely stayed away from her "when he felt the power of his sickness building in him.") Rule noted that most of the identified victims had long straight hair, parted in the middle—like Stephanie Brooks, the woman who rejected him, and to whom he later became engaged and then rejected in return. Rule speculated that Bundy's animosity toward his first girlfriend triggered his protracted rampage and caused him to target victims who resembled her. Bundy dismissed this hypothesis: "[T]hey ... just fit the general criteria of being young and attractive," he told Hugh Aynesworth. "Too many people have bought this crap that all the girls were similar ... [but] almost everything was dissimilar ... physically, they were almost all different." He did concede that youth and beauty were "absolutely indispensable criteria" in his choice of victims.

Hagmaier and Bundy during their final Death Row interview on January 23, 1989.

Pathology

Bundy underwent multiple psychiatric examinations; the experts' conclusions varied. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and an authority on violent behavior, initially made a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but later changed her impression more than once. Some evidence supported a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder: A great-aunt witnessed an episode during which Bundy "... seemed to turn into another, unrecognizable person ... [she] suddenly, inexplicably found herself afraid of her favorite nephew as they waited together at a dusk-darkened train station. He had turned into a stranger." A prison official in Tallahassee described a similar transformation to Lewis: "He said, 'He became weird on me.' He did a metamorphosis, a body and facial change, and he felt there was an odor emitting from him. He said, 'Almost a complete change of personality ... that was the day I was afraid of him.' "

While other experts found Bundy's precise diagnosis equally elusive, the majority of evidence pointed away from bipolar disorder or other psychoses, and toward antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Many such people (identified at that time as "sociopaths", and prior to that as "psychopaths") are outwardly charming, even charismatic; but beneath the facade there is little true personality or genuine insight. "It's like ... a storefront that's attractive and lures you in," a DES co-worker told Michaud. But ... inside ... the merchandise is sparse." Most sociopaths can distinguish right from wrong and are not psychotic, but such ability has minimal effect on their behavior. They are devoid of feelings of guilt or remorse, a point readily admitted by Bundy himself. "Guilt doesn't solve anything, really," he said in 1981. "It hurts you ... I guess I am in the enviable position of not having to deal with guilt." Other hallmarks include narcissism, poor judgment, and manipulative behavior. "Sociopaths," prosecutor George Dekle wrote, "are egotistical manipulators who think they can con anybody." "Sometimes he manipulates even me," admitted one psychiatrist.

The afternoon before he was executed, Bundy granted an interview to Dr. James Dobson, a psychologist and founder of the Christian evangelical organization Focus on the Family. He used the opportunity to make new statements about violence in the media and the pornographic "roots" of his crimes. "It happened in stages, gradually," he said. "My experience with ... pornography that deals on a violent level with sexuality, is once you become addicted to it ... I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Until you reach a point where the pornography only goes so far ... where you begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it would give that which is beyond just reading it or looking at it." Violence in the media, he said, "particularly sexualized violence," sent boys "down the road to being Ted Bundys." The FBI, he suggested, should stake out adult movie houses, and follow the patrons as they left. "You are going to kill me," he said, "and that will protect society from me. But out there are many, many more people who are addicted to pornography, and you are doing nothing about that."

Researchers generally agree that Bundy's sudden condemnation of pornography was one last manipulative attempt to forestall his execution by catering to Dobson's agenda as a longtime anti-pornography advocate, telling him precisely what he wanted to hear. While he asserted in the Dobson interview that detective magazines and other reading material had "corrupted" him and "fueled [his] fantasies ... to the point of becoming a serial killer", in a 1977 letter to Ann Rule he said, "Who in the world reads these publications? ... I have never purchased such a magazine, and [on only] two or three occasions have I ever picked one up." He also told Michaud and Aynsworth in 1980, and Hagmaier the night before he spoke to Dobson, that pornography played a negligible role in his development as a serial killer. "The problem wasn't pornography," wrote Dekle. "The problem was Bundy."

Rule and Aynesworth both noted that, for Bundy, the fault always lay with someone or something else. While he eventually confessed to 30 murders, he never accepted responsibility for any of them, even when offered that opportunity prior to the Chi Omega trial—which would have averted the death penalty. He deflected blame onto a wide variety of scapegoats, including his abusive grandfather, the absence of his biological father, the concealment of his true parentage, alcohol, the media, the police (whom he accused of planting evidence), "society" in general, violence on television, and ultimately, true crime periodicals and pornography. He blamed television programming—which he watched mostly on sets that he had stolen—for "brainwashing" him into stealing credit cards. On at least one occasion he even tried to blame his victims: "I have known people who ... radiate vulnerability," he wrote in a 1977 letter to Kloepfer. "Their facial expressions say 'I am afraid of you.' These people invite abuse ... By expecting to be hurt, do they subtly encourage it?"

A significant element of delusion permeated his thinking: "Bundy was always surprised when anyone noticed that one of his victims was missing, because he imagined America to be a place where everyone is invisible except to themselves. And he was always astounded when people testified that they had seen him in incriminating places, because Bundy did not believe people noticed each other."

Blame shifting and outright denial were his principal defense mechanisms: "I don't know why everyone is out to get me," he complained to Lewis. "He really and truly did not have any sense of the enormity of what he had done," she said. "A long-term serial killer erects powerful barriers to his guilt," Keppel wrote, "walls of denial that can sometimes never be breached."

Caryn Campbell: Bundy's 14th documented murder victim and the subject of his first homicide indictment. Caryn Campbell, murder victim of Ted Bundy, killed Jan. 12, 1975.

Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, victims of Ted Bundy, January 1978.

Victims

Bundy confessed to 30 homicides, but the true total remains unknown. Published estimates have run as high as 100 or more, and Bundy occasionally made cryptic comments to encourage that speculation. He told Hugh Aynesworth in 1980 that for every murder that had been "publicized", there "could be one that was not." When FBI agents proposed a total tally of 36, Bundy responded, "Add one digit to that, and you'll have it." Years later he told attorney Polly Nelson that the common estimate of 35 was accurate, but Robert Keppel wrote that "[Ted] and I both knew [the total] was much higher." "I don't think even he knew ... how many he killed, or why he killed them," said Rev. Fred Lawrence, the Methodist clergyman who administered Bundy's last rites. "That was my impression, my strong impression."

On the evening before his execution, Bundy reviewed his confessed victim tally with Bill Hagmaier on a state-by-state basis:

• Eight in Washington (including Parks, abducted in Oregon but killed in Washington), three of them unidentified
• Eight in Utah (three unidentified)
• Four in Colorado
• Three in Florida
• Two in Oregon (both unidentified)
• Two in Idaho (one unidentified)
• One in California (unidentified)

The following is a chronological summary of the 20 identified victims and five identified survivors:

1974

Washington, Oregon

• January 4: Karen Sparks (often identified as Joni Lenz in Bundy literature) (age 18): Bludgeoned and sexually assaulted in her bed as she slept; survived
• February 1: Lynda Ann Healy (21): Bludgeoned while asleep and abducted; skull and mandible recovered at Taylor Mountain site
• March 12: Donna Gail Manson (19): Abducted while walking to a concert at The Evergreen State College; body left (according to Bundy) at Taylor Mountain site, but never found
• April 17: Susan Elaine Rancourt (18): Disappeared after attending an evening advisors' meeting at Central Washington State College; skull and mandible recovered at Taylor Mountain site
• May 6: Roberta Kathleen Parks (22): Vanished from Oregon State University in Corvallis; skull and mandible recovered at Taylor Mountain site
• June 1: Brenda Carol Ball (22): Disappeared after leaving the Flame Tavern in Burien; skull and mandible recovered at Taylor Mountain site
• June 11: Georgeann Hawkins (18): Abducted from an alley behind her sorority house, UW; skeletal remains recovered at Issaquah site
• July 14: Janice Ann Ott (23): Abducted from Lake Sammamish State Park in broad daylight; skeletal remains recovered at Issaquah site
• July 14: Denise Marie Naslund (19): Abducted four hours after Ott from the same park; skeletal remains recovered at Issaquah site

Utah, Colorado, Idaho

• October 2: Nancy Wilcox (16): Ambushed, assaulted, and strangled in Holladay, Utah; body buried (according to Bundy) near Capitol Reef National Park, 200 miles (320 km) south of Salt Lake City, but never found
• October 18: Melissa Anne Smith (17): Vanished from Midvale, Utah; body found in nearby mountainous area
• October 31: Laura Ann Aime (17): Disappeared from Lehi, Utah; body discovered by hikers in American Fork Canyon
• November 8: Carol DaRonch (18): Attempted abduction in Murray, Utah; escaped from Bundy's car and survived
• November 8: Debra Kent (17): Vanished after leaving a school play in Bountiful, Utah; body left (according to Bundy) near Fairview, Utah, 100 miles (160 km) south of Bountiful; minimal skeletal remains (one patella) found, but never positively identified as Kent's

1975

• January 12: Caryn Campbell (23): Disappeared from hotel hallway in Snowmass, Colorado; body discovered on a dirt road near the hotel
• March 15: Julie Cunningham (26): Disappeared on the way to a tavern in Vail, Colorado; body buried (according to Bundy) near Rifle, 90 miles (140 km) west of Vail, but never found
• April 6: Denise Oliverson (25): Abducted while bicycling to her parents' house in Grand Junction, Colorado; body thrown (according to Bundy) into the Colorado River 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Grand Junction, but never found
• May 6: Lynette Culver (12): Abducted from Alameda Junior High School in Pocatello, Idaho; body thrown (according to Bundy) into what authorities believe to be the Snake River, but never found
• June 28: Susan Curtis (15): Disappeared during a youth conference at Brigham Young University; body buried (according to Bundy) near Price, Utah, 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Provo, but never found

1978

Florida

• January 15: Margaret Bowman (21): Bludgeoned and then strangled as she slept, Chi Omega sorority, FSU (No secondary crime scene)
• January 15: Lisa Levy (20): Bludgeoned, strangled and sexually assaulted as she slept, Chi Omega sorority, FSU (No secondary crime scene)
• January 15: Karen Chandler (21): Bludgeoned as she slept, Chi Omega sorority, FSU; survived
• January 15: Kathy Kleiner (21): Bludgeoned as she slept, Chi Omega sorority, FSU; survived
• January 15: Cheryl Thomas (21): Bludgeoned as she slept, eight blocks from Chi Omega; survived
• February 9: Kimberly Diane Leach (12): Abducted from her junior high school in Lake City, Florida; skeletal remains found near Suwannee River State Park

Other possible victims

Bundy remains a suspect in several unsolved homicides, and is likely responsible for others that will never be identified. In 1987 he confided to Keppel that there were "some murders" that he would "never talk about", because they were committed "too close to home", "too close to family", or involved "victims who were very young."

• Eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr vanished from her Tacoma home on August 31, 1961 when Bundy was 14. The Burr house was on Bundy's newspaper delivery route. The victim's father is certain he saw Bundy in a ditch at a construction site on the nearby UPS campus the morning his daughter disappeared. Other circumstantial evidence implicates him, but detectives familiar with the case have never agreed on the likelihood of his involvement. Bundy repeatedly denied culpability and wrote a letter of denial to the Burr family in 1986. Forensic testing of materials from the Burr crime scene, in 2011, yielded insufficient DNA material for comparison with Bundy's.
• Flight attendants Lisa E. Wick and Lonnie Trumbull, both 20, were bludgeoned with a piece of lumber as they slept in their basement apartment in Seattle's Queen Anne Hill district on June 23, 1966 near the Safeway store where Bundy worked at the time, and where the women regularly shopped. Trumbull died. Keppel, in retrospect, noted many similarities to the Chi Omega crime scene. Wick, who suffered permanent memory loss as a result of the attack, later contacted Ann Rule: "I know that it was Ted Bundy who did that to us," she wrote, "but I can't tell you how I know." Bundy denied involvement, and no direct evidence implicates him.
• Vacationing college friends Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry, both 19, were stabbed to death on May 30, 1969 near Somers Point, New Jersey. Their car was found that day abandoned beside the Garden State Parkway, and their bodies—one nude, one fully clothed—were found in the nearby woods three days later. Bundy attended Temple University from January through May, 1969 and apparently did not move west until after Memorial Day weekend. While Bundy's accounts of his earliest crimes varied considerably between interviews, he told forensic psychologist Art Norman that his first murder victims were two women in the Philadelphia area. Biographer Richard Larsen believed that Bundy committed the murders using his feigned-injury ruse, based on an investigator's interview with Julia, Bundy's aunt, in Philadelphia: Ted, she said, was wearing a leg cast due to an automobile accident on the weekend of the homicides, and therefore could not have traveled to the Jersey Shore; there is no record of any such accident. Bundy is considered a "strong suspect", but the case remains open.
• Rita Curran, a 24-year-old elementary school teacher and part-time motel maid, was murdered in her basement apartment on July 19, 1971 in Burlington, Vermont; she had been strangled, bludgeoned and raped. The location of the motel where she worked (adjacent to Bundy's birthplace, the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers) and similarities to known Bundy crime scenes led retired FBI agent John Bassett to propose him as a suspect. No evidence firmly places Bundy in Burlington on that date, but municipal records note that a person named "Bundy" was bitten by a dog that week and long stretches of Bundy's time—including the summer of 1971—remain unaccounted for. Curran's murder officially remains unsolved.
• Joyce LePage, 21, was last seen on July 22, 1971 on the campus of Washington State University, where she was an undergraduate. Nine months later her skeletal remains were found wrapped in carpeting and military blankets, bound with rope, in a deep ravine south of Pullman, Washington. Multiple suspects—including Bundy—have "never been cleared", according to investigators. Whitman County authorities have said that Bundy remains a suspect.
• Rita Lorraine Jolly, 17, disappeared from West Linn, Oregon on June 29, 1973; Vicki Lynn Hollar, 24, disappeared from Eugene, Oregon on August 20, 1973. Bundy confessed to two homicides in Oregon without identifying the victims. Oregon detectives suspected that they were Jolly and Hollar, but were unable to obtain interview time with Bundy to confirm it. Both women remain classified as missing.
• Katherine Merry Devine, 14, was abducted on November 25, 1973, and her body was found the next month in the Capitol State Forest near Olympia, Washington. Brenda Joy Baker, 14, was seen hitchhiking near Puyallup, Washington on May 27, 1974; her body was found in Millersylvania State Park a month later. Though Bundy was widely believed responsible for both murders, he told Keppel that he had no knowledge of either case. DNA analysis led to the arrest and conviction of William E. Cosden for Devine's murder in 2002. The Baker homicide remains unsolved.
• Sandra Jean Weaver, 19, a Wisconsin native who had been living in Tooele, Utah, was last seen in Salt Lake City on July 1, 1974; her nude body was discovered the following day near Grand Junction, Colorado. Sources conflict on whether Bundy mentioned Weaver's name during the Death Row interviews. Her murder remains unsolved.
• Carol L. Valenzuela, 20, was last seen hitchhiking near Vancouver, Washington, on August 2, 1974. Her remains were discovered two months later in a shallow grave south of Olympia along with those of an unidentified female; both had long hair parted in the middle. In August 1974 Bundy drove from Seattle to Salt Lake City and could have passed through Vancouver en route, but there is no evidence that he did. The case remains open.
• Melanie Suzanne "Suzy" Cooley, 18, disappeared on April 15, 1975, after leaving Nederland High School in Nederland, Colorado, 50 miles (80 km) west of Denver. Her bludgeoned and strangled corpse was discovered by road maintenance workers two weeks later in Coal Creek Canyon, 20 miles (32 km) away. While gas receipts place Bundy in nearby Golden on the day Cooley disappeared and Cooley is included on the list of Bundy victims in most Bundy literature, Jefferson County authorities say the evidence is inconclusive and continue to treat her homicide as a cold case.
• Shelly (or Shelley) Kay Robertson, 24, failed to show up for work in Golden, Colorado on July 1, 1975. Her nude, decomposed body was found in August, 500 feet (150 m) inside a mine on Berthoud Pass near Winter Park Resort by two mining students. Gas station receipts place Bundy in the area at the time, but there is no direct evidence of his involvement; the case remains open.
• Nancy Perry Baird, 23, disappeared from the service station where she worked in Farmington, Utah, 20 miles (32 km) north of Salt Lake City, on July 4, 1975 and remains classified as a missing person. Bundy specifically denied involvement in this case during the Death Row interviews.
• Debbie Smith, 17, was last seen in Salt Lake City in early February, 1976, shortly before the DaRonch trial began; her body was found near the Salt Lake International Airport on April 1, 1976. Though listed as a Bundy victim by some sources, her murder remains officially unsolved.

Minutes before his execution, Hagmaier queried Bundy about unsolved homicides in New Jersey, Illinois, Vermont (the Curran case), Texas, and Miami, Florida. Bundy denied involvement in any of them.

Learn more about Ted Bundy on these Links:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy

2. http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/bundy/index_1.html

3. http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/tedbundy.htm

4. http://murderpedia.org/male.B/b1/bundy-ted.htm

5. http://www.executedtoday.com/2009/01/24/1989-ted-bundy-psycho-killer/

Check these two videos on how Ted Bundy was put to death by electric chair:

MY THOUGHTS:

            Ted Bundy was one of the most notorious serial killers in America’s history. Even if I were to be an abolitionist today (I formerly was an abolitionist), I will remain silent about his execution. He has killed again and again and even escape to go and murder again. I hope that young people will learn not to watch pornography as it will get you into trouble too.

            However, I believe that Ted Bundy had repented and has gone to heaven, please hear his last interview with Dr James Dobson. That is why I agree with one of my favourite theologians, Saint Thomas Aquinas who once was quoted: "...a secondary measure of the love of God may be said to appear. for capital punishment provides the murderer with incentive to repentance which the ordinary man does not have, that is a definite date on which he is to meet his God. It is as if God thus providentially granted him a special inducement to repentance out of consideration of the enormity of his crime...the law grants to the condemned an opportunity which he did not grant to his victim, the opportunity to prepare to meet his God. Even divine justice here may be said to be tempered with mercy."