Born in Burlington, Vermont on November 24, 1946 to Eleanor Louise Cowell. His birth certificate assigns paternity to a salesman and Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall. For the first three years of his life Bundy lived in the Philadelphia home of his maternal grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, who raised him as their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied illegitimate birth at the time. Family, friends, and even young Ted were told that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. Exposed to pornography at a very young age. After graduating from high school in 1965 Bundy spent a year at the University of Puget Sound (UPS) before transferring to the University of Washington (UW) in 1966 to study Chinese. However, he dropped out after becoming depressed from a break-up with his girlfriend. He then reenrolled and graduated from University of Washington with a degree in psychology in 1972 and had been accepted to law school in Utah. Bundy even got a letter of recommendation from the Republican governor of Washington after working on his campaign.

During high school he was arrested at least twice on suspicion of burglary and auto theft. When he reached age 18 the details of the incidents were expunged from his record

He had admitted to thirty-six killings, across three states, but experts believe that the final tally may be closer to one hundred.

In 1975, he was pulled over by the police. A search of his vehicle uncovered a cache of burglary tools—a crowbar, a face mask, rope and handcuffs. He was arrested for possession of these tools. In 1975, Bundy was arrested in the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch, one of the few women to escape his clutches. He was convicted and received a one-to-fifteen-year jail sentence in that case. Two years later, Bundy was indicted on murder charges for the death of a young Colorado woman. During a trip to the courthouse library, Bundy jumped out a window and made his first escape. He was captured eight days later. In December 1977, Bundy escaped from custody again. He climbed out of a hole he made in the ceiling of his cell and even dropped more than 30 pounds to fit through the small opening. January 14, 1978, Bundy broke into the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University. He attacked four of the young female residents, killing two of them.

On February 9, Bundy kidnapped and murdered a twelve-year-old girl named Kimberly Leach. In July 1979, Bundy was convicted for the two Chi Omega murders. He was given the death penalty twice for those crimes. Bundy received another death sentence the following year in the murder of Kimberly Leach. On February 15, 1978 Bundy was pulled over for a traffic violation. This was his last arrest.

Initially incarcerated in Utah in 1975 for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault, Bundy became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in multiple states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he committed two dramatic escapes allowing him to assault even more victims, including three murders, before He was stopped for a traffic violation in Florida leading to his final arrest, February 15, 1978.

The most damming evidence came from his own viciousness. The bite marks on one of the bodies was a definitive match for Bundy in the Chi Omega murders. According to his credit card statements he was in the area where several women vanished in early Investigators had eyewitnesses who identified Bundy at the dorm and at Kimberly Leach’s school.

He received three death sentences in two separate trials for the Florida homicides. Ted Bundy died in the electric chair at Raiford Prison in Starke, Florida, on January 24, 1989.

Biographer Ann Rule described him as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after.“ He once called himself "...the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet." Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, agreed. "Ted," she wrote, "was the very definition of heartless evil.”

The Campus Killer Lady Killer Ted

I believe that the Social Control Theory best explains Ted Bundy’s criminal behavior. In the Social Control Theory the deviants care about what others think about them and then conform to social expectations because they accept what other expect. Bundy’s true and first love broke up with him after she felt that he didn’t “have a successful future”. Bundy accepted this expectation of himself so he dropped out of school. It was during this time that he began his killing spree to gain confidence. The Social Control Theory also states that when attachments to social bonds are weakened that deviance can occur. Bundy had a very unusual family situation. For most of his young life he grew up believing that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. Finding out that almost everything he thought to be true was a lie, caused almost all of his family bonds to be completely destroyed. The breakup with his girlfriend also broke a major social bond. The breaking of these bonds, which represented truth and love, is most likely the reason that pushed Bundy to not value human life.

In the case of Ted Bundy, I do not believe that rehabilitation would work. Ted was captured, escaped, continued to hurt others; twice. When Bundy escaped, he had the option of going into hiding, but instead he couldn’t fight his true and only desire to kill people. I truly believe that if he was not captured he would continue to kill to this day. His victim count is so large that it is still unknown. Bundy was also the definition of a sadistic killer, his joy came from viciously raping, killing, and decapitating his victims. The only way to deal with a killer that is just completely evil is to simply be punished. There would not have been any amount of classes or counseling that could have changed Ted Bundy.