Forget Zac Efron, the Real Ted Bundy Was a 'Diabolical Destroyer of Women'

Ted Bundy's name is on everybody's lips again, 30 years after he went to the electric chair.

The Bundy Tapes is proving popular on Netflix and Zac Efron plays the handsome serial killer in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, a film which is due out later this year.

Kevin M. Sullivan, the author of The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History and two other books on the killer, said there were more documentaries to come on Bundy, who continues to fascinate viewers and readers.

"Bundy was an exceedingly dangerous killer because he did not look the type.  Even when women were missing in Washington State, and a pattern was forming in the minds of the police and the public that the disappearances were most likely the work of a killer, young women would still go with him because they couldn't imagine someone who looked like him (well-dressed, articulate and handsome) could be the diabolical destroyer of women," Mr. Sullivan told Sputnik.

​Mr. Sullivan said Theodore Robert Bundy committed murders in Washington state, Utah, Colorado, Idaho and Florida and in the 1980s became a byword for depravity.

"Between January and September 1974, Bundy murdered 11 people, with an additional admission of some earlier victims from 1972 and 1973. Now, because his hunting and murdering women in 1974 was relentless, and the police investigators were working overtime to catch him, he decided to quit the law school in Tacoma, Washington and head to one in Utah.  Of course, his move to Utah was not so much about going to law school, but about finding a new killing ground," Mr. Sullivan told Sputnik.

One rainy night in November 1974, Carol DaRonch, 17, was window shopping in Salt Lake City, Utah when she was approached by a man in his twenties, who said he was a policeman.

​The "policeman", who was handsome and authoritative, asked her if she had left her car in the parking lot and said a man had been arrested for trying to break into her car and asked if she could come and see if anything had been stolen.

He then asked her to get into his car, an old Volkswagen Beetle, and said he would take her to the police station to make a statement.

Carol became suspicious, clambered out and began to run.

She got away but the fake policeman was Ted Bundy and he was determined to claim a victim.

​Later that night he abducted and murdered 17-year-old Debbie Kent.

"What makes Bundy so different from the average serial killer has to do with two things: first, he was well-educated, was attending law school, and was a rising star in the Republican Party and apparently, a seemingly overall nice guy. And second, he committed the boldest abductions that I have ever encountered.  For example the Lake Sammamish double abductions — one in the morning and one in the afternoon — where he moved through a crowd of thousands, and still managed to pull it off without leaving any real evidence behind," Mr. Sullivan told Sputnik. 

Mr. Sullivan said Bundy created "pandemonium" in Utah and then moved to Colorado and Idaho.

He was eventually caught, picked out of an identity parade by Carol DaRonch and two other witnesses, convicted of aggravated kidnapping and jailed for 15 years.

​But in June 1977 he jumped out of the window of a court building and escaped, only to be recaptured eight days later.

The authorities in Colorado were confident they could put him on trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell.

In December 1977 Bundy escaped again, this time by cutting a hole in the ceiling of his cell with a hacksaw blade and this time he would not be caught so easily.

​Bundy fled east and by mid-January was in sunny Florida, 1,500 miles from chilly Colorado.

On 15 January 1978 he broke into a sorority house on a university campus in Tallahassee, Florida.

He strangled 21-year-old art history student Margaret Bowman and beat to death Lisa Levy, 20, after assaulting her.

Two other girls who lived in the house were also beaten with a wooden club, but they survived.

A month later Bundy claimed what would be his final victim, 12-year-old Kim Leach. She was abducted from a high school gym, sexually assaulted and strangled.

​Bundy's days as a free man were, however, numbered. Bundy was finally arrested in the early hours of 15 February 1978 as he drove a stolen car towards Pensacola and in June 1979 he went on trial for the sorority house murders.

Bundy protested his innocence and conducted his own defence. But the evidence was overwhelming and Bundy was out of his depth legally. 

"I bear you no animosity. But you went the wrong way, partner. Take care of yourself," Judge Edward Cowart told him as he sentenced him to death.

Bundy spent the next 10 years on Florida's Death Row, using legal tactics to delay his execution and offering confessions to his crimes in exchange for a reprieve.

After years of living in denial, insisting he was innocent, Bundy finally came clean, although he referred to himself in the third person and claimed the killings were carried out by an "entity" within him.

He said he became obsessed by hardcore pornography involving sado-masochism and bondage and said he enjoyed the feeling of being in complete control of his victims.

​Bundy said the primary motive was rape and he had killed the victims simply to prevent them testifying against him.

Mr. Sullivan said Bundy could be classified as a psychopath and whatever happened to him it was not because of his upbringing.

"Most individuals who know the case very well believe Bundy had a fractured personality as a child, but it's a mystery as to why this happened. We know he grew up with a significant rage because his real father abandoned him and his mother was never a part of their lives.  But when Johnny Bundy married Louise when Ted was about four, he adopted little Teddy, and the couple would go on to have four additional children. Their family was an average American family, and outside of Ted, the other children grew up to be normal people. As far as I can tell from my years of research, the Bundy family was a very loving family, and so abuse was not an issue with Ted Bundy," Mr. Sullivan told Sputnik.

​Florida finally lost patience with Bundy's legal manoeuvring and at 7am on 24 January 1989, Bundy, with his head shaved, was strapped to the electric chair inside Starke prison, near Gainesville.

He just had time to nod in the direction of his lawyer before straps were placed over his chest and mouth and a steel cap, full of electrodes, was placed on his head.

​At 7.07am the executioner flicked the switch and Bundy ceased to exist.

Only a handful of people grieved for him, including his mother, Louise Bundy, who described him as "my precious son".