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Caila Bauman

Kevin Kelleher

EN 102-147

2 February 2019

The Mysterious Life of Ted Bundy

After watching the “Conversation’s with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” series on

Netflix, I was astounded by how different Bundy’s mind was, compared to past serial killers. A

serial killer is defined as, “a person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent

motive and typically following a characteristic,

predictable behavior pattern.” (Serial) It is interesting

to look inside the mind of a serial killer to see what

makes them think in a different way, especially when

that person seems so innocent and loved by others that you do not know what could have

triggered their mind to work in this way.

Unlike other serial killers, Ted Bundy was a particularly smart man who could have had a

great life in front of him. He was always seen as an innocent man in the eyes of others. Not being

like other typical convicts, he had a college degree and was attending night school, so he could

become a lawyer. Anybody that had a personal relationship with Bundy tried to believe he was

not capable of crime until he was convicted of committing several homicides. Bundy was a

suspected murderer of around 30 women across the United States. Although Bundy had always

seemed innocent, there were signs and events that took place in his childhood that could have

triggered his later killer behavior.

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Surprisingly, Bundy came from a very involved family. It was important to his parents

that he went to church every Sunday, and he was involved in extracurricular activities, such as

boy scouts. But there was never anything in his family background that could have led him to

commit murders. He expressed the fact that his father was never abusive towards him, and when

asked if he was sure he stated a definitive “no.” Although he did not come from a troubled home,

that did not stop him from being bullied for being “different”. One of Bundy’s childhood friends,

Sandi Holt, mentioned that “he always had trouble fitting in from an early age. He never seemed

to be all there, all present.” (Berlinger) When it came to high school, he was talked about as

being anti-social and did not seem to have many friends. No one ever seemed to talk about him,

so his life was a mystery past his childhood. It is interesting to see how a man, with such a great

life ahead of him, could have gone and done the unimaginable.

Looking into the killings that Bundy committed was very interesting because he did an

impeccable job of covering his tracks. Before they caught Bundy, they were using information

that they had about the killer, which was very little at the time. Lynda Ann Healy was the first

Ted Bundy case. Lynda was a 21-year-old, local student at the University of Washington in

Seattle who suddenly went missing. According to

authorities, “it was a very unique case” and no

one had any knowledge of where she went.

Kathleen McChesney, a detective specifically remembers her disappearance, because, “Lynda

was the local ski reporter for a local radio station, she was someone people relied on five days a

week,” and Detective McChesney happened to listen to her. (Berlinger) The only evidence that

they had was the blood on her sheets where her head had been, and her bed was still neatly made.
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Trying to further the investigation on Healy, they interviewed up to 65 people asking them if

they had seen her but were still left with nothing in the end.

Because Bundy had covered his tracks so well, the detectives were thrown for a loop and

could not really do anything besides sit by the phone and see if anything would come up. This

was until other women went missing in the same way. A girl named Georgann Hawkins was

thought to be a second victim, and she lived two blocks away from Healy. “Hawkins went

missing one night after visiting the Beta house.” (Berlinger) She never made it back home after

that. Her case, just like Healy’s was unlike others because there was no evidence. After starting

out in Seattle, Bundy started moving out to Washington, Oregon, and then slowly continuing his

path along the west coast to Utah, Colorado, and

Idaho. In 1975, Bundy was pulled over by police

while in his light brown Volkswagen Beetle. He

was arrested because he was suspected of Burglary

but when they compared it to the car that one of

his victims described, they investigated it further. He was later arrested under the charges of

attempted kidnapping.

After he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, Bundy escaped from the courthouse library

and went missing for eight days. He reappeared because he claimed he was “in shock from being

alone, hungry, and cold.” When he went back into Aspen, he was arrested once again where he

was put back in jail. Bundy stayed there until he once again escaped. In a strategic manner, he

escaped by piling books on his bed and escaping through the ceiling of his jail cell. Successfully,

Bundy was not to be found for 46 days when he was later discovered in Tallahassee, Florida. Just

like his previous cases out West, there was a similar case being looked at, at the Chi Omega
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Sorority House at Florida State University. At the sorority two women had been killed like Healy

and Hawkins, although no one in Florida knew of Ted Bundy and his history out west.

One day, Bundy was pulled over by police down in Florida because he missed a traffic

stop. When they stopped him, they noticed that the car he was driving was stolen, and the police

wanted to investigate the case further. The car was originally by the Chi Omega house at Florida

State University before it was stolen. At the time, Bundy was

using someone else’s identity, saying he was 29-year-old

Kenneth Misner of Tallahassee. Not knowing who they had in

custody, police discovered he was not Misner when he later

contacted police saying, “That is not me, I am not in jail. I did

not do this.” After a while, Bundy made a deal with the police

that he would share his identity with them, if he could call his

girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer. The phone call with Kloepfer was interesting in that Bundy

admitted something. “He told me he was sick and was consumed by something he didn’t

understand and that he couldn’t contain it.” (Berlinger) After admitting he was sick, he soon was

diagnosed with manic depression. It is interesting to see how long it took for Bundy to realize

that he was not in a good state of mental health, although it was not seemingly something he

liked to talk about.

Ted Bundy was a mysterious man whom many knew very little about. He lived a short

life, but in that time, he impacted so many people in a negative way. His mind was very

complex, and he was very different from any person who has ever committed a mass killing. I do

believe that after watching the “Conversation’s with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” series my

perspective on him has significantly changed because I did not know much about him before I
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watched the series. It makes me wonder if Bundy being bullied as a child could have led to him

acting out like this in his teenage and adult years. A smart man with so much potential turns out

to have one of the most twisted minds in history. The story of Ted Bundy proves that you may

never know someone, even when you think that you do.

Works Cited

Berlinger, Joe. "“Conversation’s with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes”." “Conversation’s with a

Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes”. Netflix. 24 Jan. 2019.

“Serial.” Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/serial--killer. Accessed 12 Feb. 2019.