Life and Times of Ted Bundy, the Sadistic Psychopath

Theodore Robert Cowell aka Ted Bundy (born November 24, 1946) was involved in rapes, kidnappings, murders and even necrophilia. He had a strange childhood with controversies over his parentage. His maternal grandparents raised him as their son, while her mother was introduced as his older sister. In fact, his life was going fine until the ultimate truth about his biological mother come hurling at him. He had this lifelong resentment for his mother and suffered bouts of depression, mostly after his breakup with Stephanie Brooks. According to one of the theories which Ted promoted via interviews is that his love for violent porn was a major influence on how he behaved with his victims. His words explain this aspect clearly – “I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material.” He continued that he reached a point where the next step was actually doing what he felt wasn’t available in the pornographic supplies. Like most sadistic sociopaths, he floated different stories about his killings and the aspects behind it. Most serial killers have difficulty in accepting their fault; for them everything wrong is done by everyone else except them. Ted had once even blamed his victims for the murders. He said that some peoples’ facial expressions radiated vulnerability to the point that these people invite abuse. This was nothing but his last resort at avoiding the blame on himself; his earlier methods included making scapegoats like pornography, difficult childhood etc. His modus operandi was simple; he feigned injuries to get closer to victims at public places mostly at nights and at the right opportunity, he would hit them with a crowbar and then strangulate them (with the exception of Kimberly Leach). He was also known to travel with the dead bodies and even kept heads of his victims. From the reported first victim, Joni Lenz to more than 35 other females, most of his victims were white, between the ages of 15 and 25, mostly college students of middle class backgrounds. Most of his victims had some physical similarities – long straight hair which were partitioned at the center, just like Stephanie Brooks, the girl with whom he was engaged at one point of time. Ann Rule, who authored Ted Bundy’s biography, commented that there were many more victims or possible victims who managed to flee from the advances of this sadistic animal.