THIRTY-FIVE years to the day since his death, Ted Bundy is still known as one of the world’s most sickening serial killers.
The gory details of his horrific crimes, from his rituals to his disguises, make him an impossible figure to forget.
The twisted butcher destroyed the lives of more than 30 young women and girls between 1974 and 1978 – kidnapping, raping and murdering them.
Bundy’s ability to schmooze his audience with his superficial charm saw him easily fool the public and police – and his likeability earned him a legion of adoring fans, and a wife, during his murder trial in 1980.
Even as the true extent of his vile crimes were exposed, some still couldn’t fathom how the handsome law student could be capable of such cruelty.
Bundy was finally executed by electric chair on January 24, 1989 after his sick murder spree.
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Sex with victims after death
After killing his victims, Bundy frequently visited their bodies to groom and perform sex acts on them until they decomposed or were destroyed by wild animals to a point where it was no longer possible.
He is known to have decapitated at least 12 of his victims and kept their severed heads in his apartment, as mementos.
When asked about this ritual, he said: “When you work hard to do something right, you don’t want to forget it.”
One corpse, that of 18-year-old university student Georgann Hawkins, he admitted to revisiting on three occasions.
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Bundy also described shampooing the hair of, and applying makeup to, the corpses of two 17-year-old girls who he had raped and killed.
He is said to have groomed the women he murdered before using their detached heads to perform sex acts on himself.
Targeting children
The sick murderer employed a number of tactics to win the trust of his victims, or gain their sympathy, before kidnapping them.
He even preyed on schoolgirls.
The partially-mummified remains of 12-year-old Kimberly Dianne Leach were found seven weeks after she disappeared from her high school – in a pig farrowing shed 35 miles away.
Forensic experts determined that she was raped, her throat was slit, and her genitals were mutilated with a knife.
Bundy also confessed to killing 12-year-old Lynette Dawn Culver; he abducted and raped her, then drowned her in Idaho.
Murder kit
A chilling collection of items, including a ski mask, a mask fashioned from pantyhose, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, an ice pick, and a coil of rope, were discovered in Bundy’s Volkswagen in 1975.
The murderer was arrested by a Utah Highway Patrol officer who observed him take off at a high speed upon seeing the cop car.
Bundy tried to explain away the items, claiming the ski mask was for skiing and that he had found the handcuffs in a dumpster.
Police searched his apartment and found some other items related to his crimes, although the murderer later said they missed a hidden collection of Polaroid photographs he had taken of his victims.
Biting his victims
Bundy’s incomprehensible, animalistic actions included him leaving bite wounds on his victims.
It was this habit, for which he earned the nickname “The Love-Bite Killer”, that ultimately led to his conviction.
Horrifically, after entering a sorority house through a faulty door, he tore the left nipple of 20-year-old Lisa Janet Levy, also biting deeply into her left buttock, strangling her, and beating her unconscious.
At trial, incriminating physical evidence included impressions of the bite wounds he inflicted on the young woman, which forensic experts matched to castings of Bundy’s teeth.
The link ultimately helped convict him for his crimes.
Practising before murders
There was no denying Bundy derived pleasure from his killings.
He himself once described the urge he felt to kill as a “chemical tidal wave washing through his brain”, and seemed to view murder as a sport – which required practice.
During periods when he was not actively killing, he refined his techniques by luring women into his traps, only to later let them go.
His huge ego fascinated the world so much, that his brain was removed after his execution in a bid to find out more about his twisted mind.
However, the scientists discovered that his brain was completely “normal” with no legions, injuries or deformities.
Bundy’s original obsession
Diane Edwards, also known as Stephanie Brooks, is said to have been Bundy’s first love, his original obsession.
He was an insecure student when he met her at the University of Washington.
The pair entered into a relationship and were briefly engaged in 1973, but she dumped him, and the rejection cut Bundy to the core.
Some say it is what inspired his spree of violence against women and have drawn similarities between the appearances of his victims and that of Edwards.
He seemed to target young white females, mostly from middle-class backgrounds, with dark hair – much like his first love.
Impersonating cops
One way the serial killer gained the trust of his victims was to impersonate authoritative figures such as cops and firefighters.
This, paired with his charming personality, would often win the women over and get them to follow him to his car.
It was there that he would strike them over the head with a crowbar or pipe and unleash his brutality.
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He used the tactic when he abducted Carol DaRonch in 1974.
She was one of the few who survived his attacks
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