Chapter Text
WARNING: Triggering and graphic information follows.
Ted Bundy was an American serial killer active during the 1970s in seven states.
In 1974, multiple young women, mostly college students, began to go missing from college campuses in Washington and Oregon at a rate of about one a month. In July 1974, the murders stopped after two women went missing on the same day from Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah, Washington. For the first time, some witnesses were able to describe the man that both women were last seen with. They also had a teenage girl who had heard him introduce himself to one of his victims as “Ted.”
Lake Sammamish was the last of the Ted murders in the Pacific Northwest. That same year many of the missing women’s bodies were found in the Washington wilderness. The women had been bludgeoned to death, and some had their heads removed. Most of Bundy’s victims have never been found.
Around the time that the Ted murders stopped in Washington, a law student named Ted Bundy transferred to a law school in the state of Utah. The murders started up again, this time in Utah and Colorado.
Bundy was finally caught after one of his victims managed to escape from him and identify him to the police as her attacker. Bundy was found guilty of kidnapping and sent to prison in Utah.
While serving time for kidnapping, he was indicted for murder in Colorado and transferred to the state to stand trial there. He was allowed to serve as his own attorney and was given access to the courthouse law library to work. He wasn’t adequately supervised and wasn’t in handcuffs or shackles. One afternoon, during a court recess, Bundy jumped out of the window of the law library and ran off. He was captured again about a week later.
Again Bundy was moved to a new prison…and again, he escaped. Only this time, the escape would culminate in the vicious murders and sexual assaults of three people.
Bundy ran to Florida, where he proceeded to murder two young women (raping one of them) in a sorority house. He also attacked a few other women in the house, but they survived. Bundy left the sorority house and attacked a second time that night. He broke into a woman’s apartment and beat her almost to death before being scared off by the ringing of her phone.
Not long after the sorority house murders, a 12-year-old girl went missing from her Florida middle school. Weeks later, her body would be found in an abandoned pig shed. She had been sexually assaulted and her throat slit.
Bundy was eventually apprehended and stood trial for the Florida murders and attacks. He was found guilty in both cases and sentenced to two death sentences.
Bundy would stay on death row for a decade. During that time, he managed to get married and father a daughter.
Ted Bundy’s time was up on January 24, 1989. At 7:16 AM, he was executed in the Raiford Prison electric chair in Florida.
Judging by my knowledge, in this case, you would be right in guessing that I’m an amateur true crime historian. As someone who likes to study these subjects, I have noticed a disturbing trend that started not long after the Zac Efron movie about Bundy came out. There are Bundy fangirls who actually have a CRUSH on a man that was put to death before most of them were even born. If you search ‘Ted Bundy’ on both Wattpad and Archive of Our Own, you will find disturbing fanfiction about him. Ted Bundy is being glorified, and it is beyond sick. This man raped and murdered at least 30 women. He was an admitted necrophile. There is nothing good there to idolize.
I was hoping to show with this story that serial killers victimize even those closest to them by their actions, and no one wins in any of those stories.
Ted Bundy was a fucking evil monster. He basically said as much himself:
“I am the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you will ever meet.”