Strange Sight | CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND UNSOLVED CASES

Ted Bundy

[OVERVIEW]

Ted Bundy used his charisma and the fact he was handsome to killer at least 30 women across 7 states.

Even though he only confessed to 30 of the killings it's possible the number is way higher, possibly even as high as 100 victims.

[EARLY LIFE]

Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946, to Eleanor Louise Cowell. His father's identity was never determined with any degree of certainty. His birth certificate assigned paternity to a salesman and Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall, but Louise later claimed that she had been seduced by "a sailor" whose name may have been Jack Worthington. Years later, investigators would find no record of anyone by that name in Navy or Merchant Marine archives. Some family members expressed suspicions that Bundy might have been fathered by Louise's own violent, abusive father, Samuel Cowell.

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 birth outside of wedlock. Family, friends, and even young Ted were told that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. He eventually discovered the truth, although he had varied recollections of the circumstances. He told a girlfriend that a cousin showed him a copy of his birth certificate after calling him a "bastard," but he told biographers Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth that he found the certificate himself. Biographer and true crime writer Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally, believed that he did not find out until 1969, when he located his original birth record in Vermont. Bundy expressed a lifelong resentment toward his mother for never talking to him about his real father, and for leaving him to discover his true parentage for himself.

In some interviews, Bundy spoke warmly of his grandparents and told Rule that he "identified with," "respected," and "clung to" his grandfather. In 1987, however, he and other family members told attorneys that Samuel Cowell was a tyrannical bully and a bigot who hated blacks, Italians, Catholics, and Jews. Bundy's grandfather beat his wife and the family dog and swung neighborhood cats by their tails. He once threw Louise's younger sister Julia down a flight of stairs for oversleeping. He sometimes spoke aloud to unseen presences, and at least once he flew into a violent rage when the question of Bundy's paternity was raised. Bundy described his grandmother as a timid and obedient woman who periodically underwent electroconvulsive therapy for depression and feared to leave their house toward the end of her life. Bundy occasionally exhibited disturbing behavior, even at that early age. Julia recalled awakening one day from a nap to find herself surrounded by knives from the Cowell kitchen; her three-year-old nephew was standing by the bed, smiling.

In 1950, Louise changed her surname from Cowell to Nelson, and at the urging of multiple family members, she left Philadelphia with her son to live with cousins Alan and Jane Scott in Tacoma, Washington. In 1951 Louise met Johnny Culpepper Bundy, a hospital cook, at an adult singles night at Tacoma's First Methodist Church. They married later that year and Johnny Bundy formally adopted Ted. Johnny and Louise conceived four children of their own, and although Johnny tried to include his adoptive son in camping trips and other family activities, Ted remained distant. He later complained to his girlfriend that Johnny wasn't his real father, "wasn't very bright," and "didn't make much money."

Bundy had different recollections of Tacoma when he spoke to his biographers. When he talked to Michaud and Aynesworth, he described how he roamed his neighborhood, picking through trash barrels in search of pictures of naked women. When he spoke to Polly Nelson, he explained how he perused detective magazines, crime novels, and true crime documentaries for stories that involved sexual violence, particularly when the stories were illustrated with pictures of dead or maimed bodies. In a letter to Rule, he asserted that he "never, ever read fact-detective magazines, and shuddered at the thought" that anyone would. In his conversation with Michaud, he described how he would consume large quantities of alcohol and "canvass the community" late at night in search of undraped windows where he could observe women undressing, or "whatever [else] could be seen."