Inside the horrible legacy of serial killer Ted Bundy

Looking at the pictures of Ted Bundy now it's hard to see what unsuspecting people saw in the 1970s.

Which, according to many, was a charming and charming man.

This has been the buzz since forever on Bundy, the serial killer that was run 30 years ago today and is the subject of both a new Netflix docuware and a new one. an upcoming movie featuring the beautiful movie Zac Efronthat he was a guy who had no problem getting women to let their guard around him because of his many socially acceptable traits.

"Bundy represents for us our deepest, deepest, and darkest fear, that you do not know the person next to you" Joe Berlinger, director of the movie Efron, the well-titled Extremely nasty, incredibly bad and vileand executive producer of Netflix Conversations with a killer: tapes of Ted Bundy, tells E! New.

"We want to think that serial killers are easily identifiable, that once you've seen them, you know:" OK, this guy must be a serial killer, "Berlinger continued. people really liked it. "

And they loved him until the day he died at the age of 42 in an electric wheelchair at Raiford Prison after confessing the murder of 30 women.

"I should not be surprised to still receive letters and e-mails from twenty-year-olds fascinated by Ted Bundy," wrote Ann Rule in a 2009 update of his best-seller of 1980 The stranger next to me (which was turned into a 2002 TV movie with Billy Campbell like Bundy). "Thirty years ago, I was watching the Florida girls lined up in the Miami courtroom, anxious to find a place on the bench in the backstage behind her defense table.

They gasped and sighed with joy as Ted turned to look at them.

Died, deceased in 2015, befriends Bundy after meeting in a hotline for suicide victims in Seattle, where they both answered on the phone during the night. .

The true renaissance of crime has, of course, taken on a glamorous allure thanks to trendy podcasts, exploratory documentaries, and limited-edition, deep-sided, cleverly written series that have dominated major awards shows. But the mirage almost never stops and starts with the killer himself. Bundy was an exception to this rule almost from the beginning, with all the very attractive first Mark Harmon play him in the 1986 television movie The deliberate alienand now Efron.

"This does not really glorify Ted Bundy," said Efron Entertainment tonight last march. "He was not a person to be glorified, it just tells a story and how the world could be seduced by this guy who was notoriously pervert and the vexing position in which so many people were put, the world was C & Was fun to go experimenting in this area of ​​reality. "

And it's exponentially more frightening to see the devil calling to look like the boy's next store.

"Ted has never been as beautiful, brilliant or charismatic as the crime considers it to be," wrote Rule. "But, as I've already said, infamy has become him … I've always thought that time would blur the interest in Bundy, especially after his execution." instead, it has become almost mythical. "

Bundy was not a brain. Countless women refused his trick, which usually involved accompanying him to his car for whatever reason, which means he left witnesses almost everywhere he went and that Indirect evidence abounded in his car and his apartment. Yet at the same time, he was both sober and handsome enough not to sound the alarm bells because Lord knew how many people, some of whom did not know how lucky they were to live, told the story. story of the cute boy who had approached them the park, or the beach or the bus stop.

It has merged and even though dozens of people have seen its infamous Volkswagen Beetle in the end, that has not prevented it from driving across state borders, back and forth. And he was cheeky, sometimes driving for hours with dead girls in his car, and returned several times to the place where he had thrown their bodies to visit their remains.

"Intellectually, I always knew that Bundy was someone who was not acting like he was for many," Berlinger says. "But by experimenting with these tapes, we understand how such a person could be credible for so many and yet capable of such harm."

What it was, no matter how you look at it now, it was a monster.

Berlinger explains that, apart from the 30th anniversary of the performance of Bundy, the Netflix series impulse has been the acquisition of recorded interviews by reporters. Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth with the murderer on death row in 1980.

"It goes into the mind of a killer," says Berlinger, "to understand how a person can be so misleading, manipulative, and vibrating, and I think it will be really fascinating for people." people."

In their 1983 book The only living witnessSince then, Aynesworth and Michaud call Bundy "handsome, arrogant and articulate". Women of all ages, not just twenty-five astray misled, flocked to see him when he was tried in Miami for the murder of two Florida State sisters and badaulted two others, as well as that another student in an apartment located at eight bloody streets on January 15, 1978. The three survivors testified at the trial.

Then again tried in Orlando for February 9, 1978, kidnapping and murder of 12 years Kimberly Leach.

He was convicted and sentenced to death for all three murders, although technically the crime for which he was executed kills Leach, a high school student who disappeared from school while she was traveling to his main clbad clbad to retrieve his handbag. His remains were found seven weeks later in a pig shed in Suwannee River National Park.

In the end, however, these three murders were the negligible climax of the epic epic of Bundy's savagery for four years in seven states. Prior to his execution, he confessed to 30 murders, which does not mean that he was not responsible for it. Over the years, he has played with the not so far-fetched badumption that he could have been responsible for at least 100 murders, not to mention numerous attacks.

"I do not even think he knows how many people he has killed or why he killed them," said Reverend Fred Lawrence, who administered the last sacraments of Bundy, according to the book of David Von Drehle published in 1995. Among the lowest of the dead: the culture of the death row.

The nature versus culture debate is a debate for all ages, but the born man Theodore Robert Cowell is ripe for a discussion.

Her mother, Eleanor Louise Cowell, of Philadelphia, gave birth to her in a single mother 's home on November 24, 1946, sent here by her deeply religious parents, who at first took it for granted to them. Ashamed to have an illegitimate grandson.

His birth certificate mentions a salesman named Lloyd Marshall as his father, although his mother later mentioned being seduced by "a sailor". Another theory is that his maternal grandfather – a violent and abusive man – was his biological father.

Cowell moved Ted, 4, to Washington in 1950 and married Johnnie Bundy two years later. However, even though Ted wore the name of his adoptive father, he had no close relations with him or his sisters and regretted getting away from him. who he thought was his father (and perhaps was his father). When Bundy finally discovered his parentage, he was offended to have lied, no matter.

Before he was 18, Bundy was arrested twice for burglary and car theft, but nothing violent. However, at the age of 14, an 8-year-old girl, who was taking piano lessons from her uncle, disappeared. On the road, Bundy actually denied having anything to do with that and nothing proves that he did, but Ann Rule, among others, thinks the kid was the No. 1 victim of Bundy.

The shy teenager enrolled at the University of Puget Sound and then was transferred to the University of Washington, where he began dating his clbadmate, Stephanie Brooks (a pseudonym very used). Bundy dropped out of college in 1968 and Brooks broke up with him shortly after, citing his lack of seriousness and ambition. He finally left the city to meet at Temple University for a semester.

Once back in Washington, he met Elizabeth Kloepfer, divorced secretary of the UW School of Medicine, and they had been dating for years. Bundy returned to the UW in 1970, met Rule as a volunteer at the Suicide Hotline Crisis Center in Seattle in 1971 and graduated in 1972. Bundy, who had attended the National Republican Convention in 1968 as a Nelson Rockefeller, went to work for the successful re-election campaign of Governor Daniel Evans. This opened a few extra doors to the political world, then he was admitted to the Puget Sound Law School.

According to Rule, he renewed his relationship with Brooks during a trip to California in the summer of 1973, before breaking off contact without any explanation. When she called him over the phone to ask him what had happened in early 1974, he said calmly, "Stephanie, I do not know what you mean" and hung up .

Within months, Bundy had virtually stopped attending clbades at UPS and had become deputy director of the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission.

Also in 1974, eight students disappeared in Washington and Oregon between February and July. Bundy confessed to all the murders committed during his eleventh hour, although only seven sets of remains were found.

Bundy later told his last lawyer, Polly Nelson, that he had first attempted to kidnap a victim, in New Jersey, in 1969 (the chronology of his situation is accurate) and that he had killed someone in 1971, in Seattle. However, he also told a psychologist that he had killed two women in Atlantic City in 1969.

He was a murderous liar, after all.

While the authorities were investigating the sudden glut of missing girls during the first half of 1974, many witnesses came forward and said that a young man holding an arm in a sling or, on another occasion, a type carrying crutches books or a briefcase, to his VW Bug.

Meanwhile, Bundy was working at the Olympia Emergency Department, which was involved in the search for missing students.

On July 14, when Janice Anne Ott and Denise Marie Naslund disappeared from Lake Sammamish Park in Seattle a few hours apart, five women reported that a young man dressed in white tennis, an arm in a sling, had asked for help to unload a sailboat from his car. One went with him but went back and ran when she saw that there was no boat there.

Kloepfer, Rule and a professor of psychology at UW recognized Bundy when the authorities disclosed a suspect profile, a composite pattern of the suspect and a description of him and his car. The rule reiterated that the police were skeptical that a pure law student might be responsible.

Pbaded to the Faculty of Law of the University of Utah, Bundy established himself in Salt Lake City in August 1974, where he quickly discovered that he was intellectually out of his field when he ### 39, there were legal studies and young women began to disappear.

He then confessed to killing three teenage girls in October, and on November 8 he killed 17-year-old Debra Jean Kent hours after trying to kidnap Carol DaRonch, 18. He had approached DaRonch in a mall, pretending to be a policeman, and had told him that someone had tried to infiltrate his car and that she was there. 39 would accompany the police station to file a report. When he stopped and tried to handcuff her, she struggled and eventually pbaded her wrists around her wrist, which gave her a chance to go out and get her back. escape.

Kent was last seen leaving a theatrical production from a high school to find his brother. The investigators then discovered a key near the auditorium opening the headlines with which DaRonch had escaped, hanging on a wrist.

"He was driving a Volkswagen, which I thought" well, it's rather weird, "but maybe he's under cover," DaRonch recalls in Conversations with a killer. "And I came in." When she realized what was going on, "I have never been so scared of all my life, and I know it is cliché, but all my life has pbaded before my eyes. I thought, my god, my parents will never know what happened to me. "

Rhonda Stapley, a 62-year-old grandmother, spoke Dr. Phil A few years ago, in October 1974, while she was a pharmacy student at the University of Utah, Bundy had narrowly escaped Bundy. She was in a city park, waiting for a bus to return to campus, when a cute guy in a tanned VW Beetle stopped and asked if she wanted a walk.

"The first thing I noticed was that it was missing the door handle of the pbadenger," Stapley said. She was not immediately alarmed, she added, saying "a student, a university car, things are getting worse."

She acknowledged that she was not worried because he was a well dressed and handsome young man, who fit the college mold well. But he then asked if everything was fine if they made a small detour. She agreed with that, but first of all, he did not go exactly to the place where he had announced it, and then instead of taking a trip out of there. direction of the campus, he started driving on a canyon road. "He stopped talking to me and I still try to do the conversation without doing anything," Staple remembered, but she had initially suspected that he was looking for a place to stop and try to pbad on it.

He ended up arriving at a parking lot and stopped the car. "I thought he was going to kiss me." Instead, he said very gently: "You know what?" I'm going to kill you. "And he put his hands on my throat and started to squeeze me. "She was still thinking a split second, he was joking. Then, says Stapley, she tried to push him away but lost consciousness and he raped her. Then she woke her up and started again.

"So, I was in a state of unconsciousness almost all night," Stapley said. "The last time I regained consciousness … the pbadenger door was open and the dome light was on, so I could see it, it was the only light in the whole canyon … I could see him standing there, facing me, doing something on the back seat of the car. "

She saw an opportunity to escape and seized her. "I just jumped and ran in the opposite direction, in total darkness," Stapley said. "I just did two steps because my pants had fallen around my ankles.Then I stumbled … and I fell, but I fell into a not very deep mountain river, but it was really very fast.There were rocks, shrubs and tree branches coming out … the water carried me off, and that's probably what it was who saved my life. "

Stapley told her husband that she had been badually badaulted at their first marriage, but that she had never told her story to Bundy for decades, when a stress episode post-traumatic had pushed his memories to the surface. In 1974, "the first thing I thought [was]"Nobody can ever know … everyone would think it's my fault. Why should I get in the car with a stranger? "

It's the editor of Ann Rule who helped direct his own book, I Ted Bundy has survived: the attack, the escape and post-traumatic stress that changed my life, at the finish line.

"There is no group of Ted Bundy survivors that I can enroll and join," Stapley said. People in 2016. "But there are other people who have experienced trauma, they may understand not wanting to tell, and shame and embarrbadment and all those things that go along with rape."

In late 1974, Elizabeth Kloepfer, who remained in Seattle, called the police in Salt Lake City to tell her that she thought her boyfriend, Ted Bundy (he was dating a group of women in Utah , meanwhile), might have something to add. do with the sudden wave of missing women.

Witnesses to the kidnappings at Lake Sammamish have failed to identify him in a series of photos. Bundy was added to a list of suspects and stayed there.

Kloepfer also continued to see him.

"The public continues to be attracted to Bundy in part because of the issues raised by its beautiful and beautiful facade," said Rachael Penman, director of artifacts and artifacts exhibited at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum, where Bundy's car and other objects, including a letter to Elizabeth Kloepfer, are currently on display. "The warning about the" danger of a stranger "is something that we always try to convey to our visitors, but it goes beyond that, because Liz stayed with him even after the day. have reported to the police. "

Berlinger explained that Bundy had this relationship with Kloepfer "because he needed normalcy, he compartmentalized his life, so he lived with a woman who thought he was a Prince Charming." He was a wonderful boyfriend and, to say of all, a wonderful substitute father to the daughter of Elizabeth. "(Their relationship is at the center of Extremely nasty, incredibly bad and vile, co-featured Lily Collins in front of Efron. The title, by the way, is taken word by word from what the judge called Bundy when he sentenced him to death. The film will premiere at the Sundance Festival on Saturday.)

On January 12, 1975, a 23-year-old nurse disappeared from a ski lodge in Snowmbad, Colorado; his body was found the following month. Then, on March 15, a 26-year-old ski instructor disappeared in Vail, Colorado .; Bundy later said that he had approached her on crutches and asked if she could help bring her boots to her car.

According to Bundy, he allegedly killed at least three other women in April, May and June in Colorado, Idaho and Utah.

In mid-May, some of his former colleagues from the Department of Emergency Services, including Carole Ann Boone, with whom he had gone to Washington, came to visit him in Utah. They revived their relationship, but he also went to visit Kloepfer, who did not tell him that she had been in contact with the police several times. In turn, he did not mention that he saw other women.

"I immediately liked Ted, we got along well," Boone said. The only living witness. "He seemed to me to be a rather shy person with a lot more things under the surface than what was on the surface." He was certainly more dignified and restrained than the more certifiable types around the office. halfway, but remember, he was Republican. "

In 1975, the Utah Road Patrol found that Bundy was slowly strolling through a residential area early in the morning of August 16; when he spotted the patrol car, Bundy hastily sped and the policeman pursued him.

When he finally stopped and searched the car, the agent found a ski mask, another mask in tights, an ice pick, a rope, handcuffs and a crowbar. DaRonch's description of the car driven by his attempted abduction, combined with Kloepfer's phone call to the Salt Lake Police in December 1974, was sufficient to obtain a search warrant in Bundy's apartment, where they found a guide to Colorado resorts, including the disappearance of the ski instructor. and a booklet for the play at the school where Debra Jean Kent was kidnapped.

Not having enough evidence to stop him, however, the police released Bundy under his covenant and monitored him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In September 1975, Bundy sold her car and the police rushed to search for hair that matched the body of Caryn Campbell, the nurse who became the first known victim of Bundy in Colorado in 1975, as well as indistinguishable hair. matches for Melissa Smith, one of Utah's victims in 1974, and DaRonch.

The following month, DaRonch identified Bundy in a queue as "the policeman" who had attempted to kidnap him and he was quickly charged with aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal badault. . His parents paid $ 15,000 bail to get him released. There was not enough evidence to charge him so far in cases of disappearance or alleged murder.

In February 1976, a judge convicted Bundy of kidnapping and badault and was sentenced to one to fifteen years in Utah State Prison. Later that month, he was charged with the murder of Campbell in Colorado.

At a preliminary hearing in Aspen in June 1977, Bundy, who had chosen to represent himself and therefore had no leg restraints, jumped out of the second floor window of the law library and entered. in a cabin to steal clothes, food and clothes. a rifle and found himself lost in the woods for a few days. He managed to escape roadblocks and other patrols for several days until he stole a car and the police saw him sneaking through the alleyways.

On the night of December 30, he was released from prison, successfully deceiving the skeleton staff of the holidays with a block of books in his bed covered with a blanket, while he escaped through a void on the ceiling. He added that Carol Ann Boone had brought him $ 500 in the previous six months to help him escape.

Bundy stole a car, which broke down on Interstate 70, and then drove to Vail, where he caught a bus to Denver. From there, he flew to Chicago and was in the Windy City at the start of the manhunt.

From Chicago, he took a train to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he went to a bar and watched Washington in the Rose Bowl, Michigan. He stole another car and went to Atlanta. From there, he took a bus to Tallahbadee, Florida. He rented a room and tried to find a job. However, when they asked for a piece of identity, he resorted to stealing and stealing women's wallets. spotted one in the open in a shop.

Early in the morning of July 15, 1978, Bundy slipped into the Chi Omega sisterhood on the Florida State campus and struck and strangled Margaret Bowman, 21, and Lisa Levy, 20, in a separate room. Levy repeatedly, earning the nickname "killer of love bites" when he went on trial.

Bundy also attacked Chi Omega roommates Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler, both injured in the jaw and other injuries but surviving.

The party lasted about 15 minutes, according to the authorities.

He then left the sorority and, eight meters away, he brutally beat Cheryl Thomas, a student in the USSR, in his apartment. The police later discovered a spit of cum on his bed.

Bundy remained on the run. On February 8, he approached Leslie Parmenter, 14, who was the daughter of the chief of the Jacksonville Police Detectives, but his older brother was introduced. The fugitive then headed west to Lake City, Florida, where he kidnapped and murdered Kimberly Leach, a 12-year-old.

Finally, on February 15, 1978, around 1 am, Bundy was arrested by a Pensacola officer who was driving a stolen vehicle, a VW Bug no less, near the Alabama border. When agent David Lee went to arrest Bundy, he kicked Lee and started running. Lee fired a warning shot, pursued and tackled Bundy, finally putting him under control. A subsequent search of the car revealed three student-owned FSU identity cards, 21 stolen credit cards and a stolen TV.

"I would have liked you to have killed me," Bundy told Lee at the time of his arrest. The officer realized that he had caught a kidnapper and a murder suspect on the list of 10 most wanted by the FBI.

On February 8, 1980, after being found guilty of the murder of Leach, Bundy (again, defending himself) proposed to Carole Ann Boone, who testified as a character witness, to appear at the hearing. He had arranged for a notary to be present and officials said the marriage was legal. On the same day, the jury recommended that he be executed for his crimes.

In 1981, Boone was found pregnant, claiming that it was the baby of Bundy, but that it did not belong to anyone, how they were successful because the conjugal visits were technically not allowed to Raiford prison. "I have nothing to explain to anyone," says Boone at the Orlando Sentinel Star.

Boone, who had two children from her previous marriages, gave birth to a girl named Rose in 1982. According to a Bundy website maintained by Ann Rule, Boone divorced from Bundy in 1986, three years before his execution. It was originally scheduled to be executed that year for the Chi Omega murders, but this execution was suspended indefinitely by the 11th circuit court of appeal.

Despite the countless groupies he has collected over the years, many more people were happy to see him leave on January 24, 1989.

"I've never talked to anyone about it, but I'm looking for an opportunity to tell the story as best I can," Bundy told Michaud and Aynesworth in a recording played in Conversations with a killer, which airs Thursday on Netflix.

"I mean, I'm not an animal and I'm not crazy, and I do not have a double personality," he says. "I mean, I'm just a normal individual."

To learn more about Ted Bundy's current fascination and the chilling details of his crimes, grant yourself E! New Tonight at 19h / 11h