Ted Bundy: The Charming Killer

Charismatic, handsome, and elusive—that’s how people described Ted Bundy, one of America’s most infamous serial killers. Everyone knows the name Ted Bundy, but not many know about his early years as Theodore Cowell. In this episode, we explore the transformation from young Ted Cowell to the notorious killer, Ted Bundy. Join us as we uncover the chilling journey of this silver-tongued predator.

In 1979, a courthouse in Miami overflowed with a captivated audience. Those who couldn’t fit inside sat and watched from their televisions at home, but those fortunate to make it into the courtroom that day witnessed firsthand one of the most notorious and infamous criminals in our collective history brought to justice.

He stood between the judge and the jury, confidently representing himself against his multiple charges of brutal and callous first degree murder.

His name was Thedore Robert Bundy.

Ted Bundy came into the world as Ted Cowell on November 24th, 1946, at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers. Given the name of the facility, it’s perhaps no surprise that Ted Bundy never found out who his biological father really was, but his birth certificate stated that his father was a salesman and a United States Air Force veteran.

But Ted actually spent the first three years of his life living with his maternal grandparents. The Cowells raised him as their own so their daughter, and his mother, Louise Cowell, could avoid the scandal of everyone knowing that she’d had a child out of wedlock. 

For all Ted knew himself, his grandparents were his parents and his mother was actually his older sister.

Ted Bundy’s story has been through various stages of embellishment, but if accounts are to be believed, he began showing signs of his future tendency for violence at a very early age. His aunt recounted a time when he was only three years old and she woke up from a nap to find herself surrounded by kitchen knives while her nephew smiled down at her. Perhaps this is a case of the truth being stranger than fiction, but where Ted’s childhood begins to get a bit clearer is when it comes to his grandparents.

Ted adored his grandparents: the people who at the time he still believed to be his parents.

But if rumors and accounts are to be believed, Ted’s particular attitude towards women could have been something that he picked up from his maternal grandfather Samuel Cowell. Ted and other members of the family would later admit that Samuel had a mean and vicious temper. He was allegedly racist and xenophobic. He was known to beat his wife Eleanor and their dog and to swing neighborhood cats around by their tails. He once reportedly threw his younger daughter Julia down a flight of stairs and would sometimes talk to people in the room that no one else could see.

In comparison, his wife Elenor was quiet and timid and was known to go for electrotherapy to cure her depression. 

In 1950, when Ted was around three years old, his mother Louise changed her surname to Nelson and took Ted to Tacoma, Washington, for a fresh start. There she met a hospital cook named Johnny Culpepper Bundy and that was that. A year later, the two were married and Johnny officially adopted Ted.

That was how Ted Cowell became Ted Bundy, but he still had a long way to go before he would become the infamous serial killer that the world would come to know.

Again, Ted’s childhood growing up in the Bundy household has been subjected to years of gossip and rumor, many of which started with Ted himself. Some accounts say that he had a picturesque childhood. Some say that Ted would stalk the streets in the dead of night and seek out opportunities to spy on neighborhood women.

A friend and neighbor, Sandi Holt, claimed that Ted was a bully. She later said that he would take younger neighborhood children into the woods. There he would allegedly “strip them down” and “take their clothes…” She said: “You’d hear them screaming for blocks, I mean no matter where we were here, we could hear them screaming.”

In 1965, Ted studied at the University of Puget Sound for one year before transferring to the University of Washington and it was there that he would meet a woman that would change Ted Bundy forever. Diane Edwards was in Ted’s own words: “the only woman I ever really loved.” 

Bright and sweet, Diane got a hold of Ted’s heart and the young man was smitten. For three years, they were joined at the hip until 1968 when Diane left for San Francisco.

Still deeply in love, Ted dropped out of his own studies and followed Diane. He worked a series of odd jobs and even volunteered at the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign, but for Diane, things had changed. 

Now that she had graduated from her own studies, she found Ted’s lack of direction and ambition frustrating and infuriating and she called the relationship off. For many who have studied Ted Bundy and his life, this was the pivotal point of his story because the breakup absolutely devastated Ted.

Untethered, Ted left to travel the states and it was during this period of restlessness and change that some biographers believe that Ted was hit with one more unsettling piece of information. Some accounts say that it was only now that Ted found out about his real parentage. The story goes that Ted had been trying to track down his biological father and had recovered his birth certificate only to find out the truth about Louise.

His childhood had been a lie that Ted could never forgive.

Ted’s world had now officially turned upside down and many believe that his anger and resentment towards his biological mother Louise is what spurred his actions later on.

By the autumn of 1969, Ted had returned to Washington where he met and began dating a secretary and single mother, Elizabeth Kloepfer. Elizabeth’s daughter Molly was three years old when she was introduced to Ted, a man who would stay in her life for the next seven years. According to Molly, Ted began abusing and molesting her shortly after she’d turned seven, although these were accusations he would never be officially charged with.

From the outside looking in, returning to Washington and his relationship with Elizabeth seemed to put Ted back on track. He graduated from college and managed to find work as an assistant to the Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party, Ross Davis.

And it was when Ted was in California on official party business that he met Diane Edwards again. What Diane saw in Ted then was a man completely changed. Ted had an education, a good job and he was as characteristically charismatic as ever.

This time it was Diane who fell head over heels for Ted.

The two of them picked up right where they’d left off, with Ted conveniently failing to mention his girlfriend Elizabeth back in Washington. He kept both of his romantic relationships going for a long while and even introduced Diane as his fiancee to his boss Ross Davis.

And then overnight, Ted stopped all contact with Diane. A month went by of missed calls and unanswered letters and finally Diane managed to get Ted on the phone. He then denied having ever rekindled their relationship before hanging up.

He later said: “I just wanted to prove to myself that I could have married her.”

After that, Ted began missing classes at the law school he had recently enrolled in and young women began vanishing across the state.

The first one that investigators can officially attribute to Ted was on February first, 1974, shortly after Ted had called things off with Diane. Her name was Lynda Ann Healy, a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Washington. According to testimony, Ted broke into her apartment in the middle of the night. He then beat her until she lost consciousness, dressed her in blue jeans and a white shirt before driving her to a remote and secluded area. There, Ted claimed, he raped and murdered her.

This was a cycle that would continue for years. Ted Bundy showed an incredible capacity for evading law enforcement and suspicion. His crimes were committed across states and over a huge area, making it harder for law enforcement offices to communicate and compare notes. It was actually only when the victim count ranged in the twenties that multiple sets of investigators realized that they were actually looking for the same perpetrator.

Ted also had a knack for eliminating forensic evidence. He killed his victims either through strangulation or with blunt force trauma, specifically to avoid ballistics. His technique was silent and usually involved common household items: items that no one would find suspicious or unusual at first glance.

He also often lured his victims in by feigning injuries or asking for help in busy and highly populated areas, making himself look harmless and unassuming. He was also known to use accents to further throw and disorientate witnesses, who would then give misleading descriptions to law enforcement.

In the first half of 1974 alone, about one female college student disappeared every month. One witness remembered seeing a man with his leg in a cast and using crutches while trying to carry a briefcase. Another recalled a man matching that description asking her to help him carry his briefcase to his car: a light brown Volkswagen Beetle.

With news of the missing girls spreading across Washington and Oregon, the noose began to tighten. Women were on high-alert. They stopped hitchhiking and travelled together to watch each other’s backs.

Ted tried to cover his tracks and sold his Volkswagen Beetle to a local teenager.

By then, the investigators had him on their radars and impounded his car. Inside it they found hair samples that matched evidence found on one of the victims.

Ted was arrested and a whirlwind of trials in several states began. Ted flip flopped between denying all charges and making startling, detailed confessions that shocked the nation and shone a light on even more of his crimes. He became infamous for his charm and charisma. He made waves and media headlines as the man with a career in politics and the beginnings of a law degree who was adamant about defending himself at trial. There were escape attempts, a rumored child sired from behind bars and a media frenzy that would put modern media scandals to shame.

And by the end of it all, Ted Bundy had confessed to over thirty homicides.

His true victim count is still unknown as is the true date that he became an active serial killer. Some say that it’s possible that he started as soon as Diane broke up with him back in 1968, but, as it always seems to go with Ted Bundy, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction.

The truth is that even though there was forensic evidence that tied Ted to several of the victims, he never left any fingerprints or any other kind of defining forensic evidence on any of their remains or at the scenes that they would be later found.

Despite his constant, self-incriminating confessions, this was a fact that Ted would often use in his own defense both at trial and when talking to the media. Many believe that it was only his insistence on defending himself that led to his sentence and that this fact could have actually spared him from his fate if it had only been used properly.

But Ted did insist on defending himself and he was sentenced to death for his crimes.

He was executed by electric chair on Tuesday, January 24th, 1989. Outside the prison, people gathered, played music and set off fireworks to celebrate the occasion.