"I didn't know what made people want to be friends. I didn't know what made people attracted to one another. I didn't know what underlay social interactions” ( Daniszewska, 2017). This is a quote from Ted Bundy that shows his perception towards social interactions. Indeed as he puts it, Ted never had friends during his schooling period. He chose a lonely life like most criminals. These quotes strongly show his unmoved passion towards killing people without having a second thought. Theodore "Ted" Bundy was an American serial killer and a rapist who became notorious in the late 20 th century for killing young innocent female individuals. To emphasize an extent to which Ted was dangerous, the number of his victims is unclear to date. He admitted killing 36 young ladies. However, there are suspicions that he killed more than one hundred young ladies. Ted was arrested and escaped from prison twice before the law caught up with him and he was executed in the year 1989 on an electric chair.
Ted Bundy’s life was full of suspicion and challenges. His motivation to kill may have stemmed from different factors he underwent as he was growing up, and his experience as an adult. Ted never had a biological father as he was growing up. He grew up under the care of the mother and grandparents. After his birth, the mother was ashamed of herself having gotten a kid out of wedlock. She took Ted to her parents and there, Ted grew up knowing that his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his elder sister (Beard et al., 2014). At the grandparents' home, life was not bad since the family was stable. However, the grandfather was a sadistic fellow who liked violence. Even at this young age, Ted exhibited many suspicious behaviors like admiration of knives and pepping through the windows especially where ladies were undressing. What the kid wanted to see on ladies was beyond imagination.
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Ted was an intelligent fellow, and his academic records were good. He went through primary, secondary, and even college where he studied law. He also joined different political campaigns and was rewarded handsomely by the Republican governor of Washington for having helped him throughout the campaign. He graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology which allowed him to pursue a master degree in law at the law school in Utah. He had a relationship with a lady from California. The two had a torrent relationship full of breakups. Their breakup with this lady is detailed as a significant factor towards understanding his passion of killing young ladies. Ted brandy also had a spouse Carole Ann Boone. He dated this lady before his initial arrest. They had a daughter whom Ted named after himself. His death was through electrocution at the Florida State Prison in an electric chair sometimes known as "Old Sparky" ( Twemlow, 2017). The crowd cheered and lite up fireworks as the electricity went through Ted’s merciless body. His life though has been a history and has motivated many movies and books; the question still lingers as to what prompted him to kill these ladies.
What Made Ted Inhuman?
Ted once referred to himself as "the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet" ( Murray, 2017). Indeed, he cold-heartedly took several innocent lives mercilessly. Reports also indicate that Bundy could visit his unusual places where he placed the victims, and sodomize them and sexually assault their corpse. Other than this, Ted had a unique style of killing his victims. He could rape them first, beat them up and then kill them ( Murray, 2017). What was unique is the type of ladies he selected. They were young beautiful slender ladies with black hairs tied at the middle. These are similar physical traits of a lady he dated and broke up with. There are several factors which could have drugged Ted Bundy to this cruel killing.
The first factor can be the family background. Family background is a critical factor in modifying a child's growth. Children usually look after their elders and parents as a role model as they grow from childhood to adulthood. Furthermore, children get influenced by the environment surrounding their families. A child that grows up where there are honesty and integrity is likely to reflect such virtues when he or she grows up. On the other hand, people who grow up in families where there is domestic violence, racism, ethnic violence, and gender inequity are most likely going to reflect such traits at their adulthood stage. This is a factor which contributed to Ted Bundy’s merciless killings.
Ted Bundy had a fractured family background that could have brew his behaviors of homicide. First, Ted did not know his father while growing up until a later stage of his life when he accidentally found his birth certificate that proved that the one he was staying with was not his biological father. According to his biography, Ted’s mother got pregnant out of wedlock. During this time, any pregnancy out of wedlock was treated as a severe cultural offense. As a result, the mother had to take Ted to his parents and raise him as his elder sister. The whereabouts of the father are unknown, though, there is a glimpse of information stating that Ted’s father was the drunken and violent Samuel Cowell who was his mother’s father ( Crane, 2017). In case this is true, then it is evident that the violent act might have been inherited from the father. Though, this cannot be stated with certainty since it is a mere assumption. As he was growing under the care his grandparents, Ted confessed that he never liked his grandfather. The grandfather was super-violent. He could drag animals such as cats using their ears or tails and throw them away. The grandfather was the notorious person who continuously beat and harassed Ted's grandmother. The grandmother also used illicit brews, and this was the sole reason for the constant violence in the house ( McKinley, Patrick & Verona, 2018). He often fumes with anger when the issue of Ted’s father was brought to question. This has a lot of implication on Ted’s life. It is possible to assume that his grandfather’s actions influenced his violent behaviors as an adult.
The second factor is Ted’s mother. Ted’s mother had to shake off the shame of giving birth to Ted out of wedlock by taking him to his parents. As he was growing up, Ted admitted that at a time, he had to get used to the ‘Basted’ term from the few colleagues he was playing with during his schooling ( Daniszewska, 2017). After marrying another man, she lived with Ted, though, Ted complained that the man was not his biological father. There are grueling acts the mother committed that could have resulted in his son’s act of hatred towards female gender, and this could have been the reason why he preferred killing the ladies instead of men. First, the mother failed to explain to Ted whom his father was and instead, pretended to be his elder sister of instead of his mother. This was severe issues that could have affected anybody at this tender age. The act of betrayal, in this case, is not a minor issue. Ted came to realize that the person whom he was calling the father was the grandfather, and this affected his relationship with the mother. It can be told with the assertion that Ted's hatred towards ladies started at this point. It was after this point that it is alleged that he committed his first killing at the age of 14 years ( Jenkins, 2017). Though he did not assert to this murder, there is a suspicion that his first murder came when he was 14 years. During the series of an interview where he admitted killing numerous ladies, Ted claimed that they did not have a good relationship with his mother. The mother's act of betrayal was a painful situation he had to bear, and this contributed mostly to his hatred for female gender.
After abandoning his child and refusing to accept the mother as a tag, Ted’s mother makes another mistake that could still be traced to the cause of Ted's violent actions towards the female gender. Ted’s mother went ahead a married another man. Though she took Ted with her, she lived with him as an adopted son. Ted was aware of this act, and after realizing that the mother betrayed him, he got even frustrated and hated her mother. This can be a factor that contributed to his cruel behavior towards his mother and female gender in general.
Another factor is his relationship with the lady from California. Bundy, in the year 1969, fell in love with a lady by the name Elizabeth Kloepfer. The lady was already working as a secretary at the University Of Washington School Of Medicine. The lady became the source of happiness for the lonely Ted. She was the source of income, and she provided money and other leisure. However, they had a stormy relationship. They kept on breaking up and engaging for some specific period. The lady was willing to walk away from the relationship citing different factors that were unappealing to her ( Fox & Levin, 2013). She claimed that Bundy was unserious fallow with zero ambitions. He was also unfocused both in his life and also with the relationship they had according to her lover. Based on the physical characters of this lady versus the ladies Bundy killed, there is a sharp similarity that can communicate something mischievous. The lady was tall, slender with black hair that was tied at the central point of the head. Most of the ladies that were victims of Bundy's heartlessness had similar traits. It is an Implication that the willingness of his lover walking out of the relationship without care was painful to Bundy, and affected him psychologically. He developed hatred towards her lady and any other lady who took after her. Maybe, she saw all ladies that were similar to Elizabeth as her and his hatred towards her forced her to kill this ladies thinking that she was punishing Elizabeth. Her manner of killing these ladies can also back up this assertion. She sexually assaulted these ladies, beat them up and killed them.
The last factor could be her passion and obsession with women's nakedness and knives. This was an act that started when Bundy was still in his teens. Bundy was notorious with knives, He liked them and played with them. One day he confessed that he woke up at night and took his grandfathers knives and placed them around her sister’s bed ( Simon, 2015). The lady was extremely terrified after waking up to find knives around her. On the other hand, Ted was obsessed with naked women, in magazines and real-life situations. He developed a habit of looking at women undressing through the window. Also, he confessed that he loved magazines that published sexually molested ladies. She enjoyed the fact that these ladies were naked and were sexually harassed. This could have been one of the motives that drove him into acting in this dangerous manner. There are different ladies that he killed in a way that shows his obsession with sexually harassing women, and enjoyed the scene of their nakedness. For instance, she seized the 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox, dragged her in a wooded area and raped her after which he strangled her to death ( Wiest, 2016). Also, Melissa Anne Smith’s nude body was found after nine days of her disappearance. Also, Laura Ann Aime's naked body was also found after five days of search. The postmortem revealed that the ladies were raped, beaten, sodomized, and strangled before they died. This is an implication that Bundy was so much passionate of seeing naked women, having sex with them, molesting them and killing them.
“ I don’t feel guilty for anything. I feel sorry for people who feel guilt”( Howell, 2018). This was Ted Bundy's famous quote, and it implicates his actions which were a reflection of a cold-hearted mammal he was. He was never guilty of his act, contrary, he enjoyed it when he subjected others to intense pain and sorrow. He killed many ladies merely because of passion for sex and maybe to console his sad life when he was growing up. From his biography, there are different factors which could have contributed to his actions. Among them is his family background, his mother's actions, his relationship as well as his obsession for sex. However, from different murders he committed, it is apparent that he was natural born a murderer.
References
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Daniszewska, A. (2017). Serial homicide: Profiling of victims and offenders for policing . Springer.
Daniszewska, A. (2017). Victims of Serial Murder: Cause and Effect in the Victim-Perpetrator Relationship. In Serial Homicide (pp. 35-47). Springer, Cham.
Fox, J. A., & Levin, J. (2013). Overkill: Mass murder and serial killing exposed . Springer.
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