Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy (born Theodore Robert Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed shortly before his execution to 30 homicides committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978; the true total remains unknown, and could be much higher. Bundy was regarded as handsome and charismatic by his young female victims, traits he exploited in winning their trust. He typically approached them in public places, feigning an injury or disability, or impersonating an authority figure, before overpowering and assaulting them at a more secluded location. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes for hours at a time, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made further interaction impossible. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept some of the severed heads in his apartment for a period of time as mementos. On a few occasions he simply broke into dwellings in the dead of night and bludgeoned victims as they slept. 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 engineered two dramatic escapes and committed multiple additional assaults, including three murders, before his ultimate recapture in Florida in 1978. 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."
Bundy underwent multiple psychiatric examinations; the experts' conclusions varied. Dorothy Otnow Lewis, Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and an authority on violent behavior, initially made a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but later changed her impression more than once.While other experts found Bundy's precise diagnosis equally elusive, the majority of evidence pointed away from bipolar disorder or other psychoses, and toward antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Many such people often identified as "sociopaths" or "psychopaths" are outwardly charming, even charismatic; but beneath the facade there is little true personality or genuine insight."It's like ... a storefront that's attractive and lures you in," a DES co-worker told Michaud. "But ... inside ... the merchandise is sparse." Most sociopaths can distinguish right from wrong and are not psychotic, but such ability has minimal effect on their behavior. They are devoid of feelings of guilt or remorse, a point readily admitted by Bundy himself. "Guilt doesn't solve anything, really," he said in 1981. "It hurts you ... I guess I am in the enviable position of not having to deal with guilt." Other hallmarks include narcissism, poor judgment, and manipulative behavior. "Sociopaths," prosecutor George Dekle wrote, "are egotistical manipulators who think they can con anybody." "Sometimes he manipulates even me," admitted one psychiatrist.The afternoon before he was executed, Bundy granted an interview to Dr. James Dobson, a psychologist and founder of the Christian evangelical organization Focus on the Family.
He used the opportunity to make new statements about violence in the media and the pornographic "roots" of his crimes. "It happened in stages, gradually," he said. "My experience with ... pornography that deals on a violent level with sexuality, is once you become addicted to it ... I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of material. Until you reach a point where the pornography only goes so far ... where you begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it would give that which is beyond just reading it or looking at it." Violence in the media, he said, "particularly sexualized violence," sent boys "down the road to being Ted Bundys."The FBI, he suggested, should stake out adult movie houses and follow patrons as they leave. "You are going to kill me," he said, "and that will protect society from me. But out there are many, many more people who are addicted to pornography, and you are doing nothing about that."Researchers generally agree that Bundy's sudden condemnation of pornography was one last manipulative attempt to forestall his execution by catering to Dobson's agenda as a longtime anti-pornography advocate, telling him precisely what he wanted to hear. While he asserted in the Dobson interview that detective magazines and other reading material had "corrupted" him and "fueled his fantasies ... to the point of becoming a serial killer", in a 1977 letter to Ann Rule he said, "Who in the world reads these publications? ... I have never purchased such a magazine, and on only two or three occasions have I ever picked one up." He also told Michaud and Aynsworth in 1980, and Hagmaier the night before he spoke to Dobson, that pornography played a negligible role in his development as a serial killer. "The problem wasn't pornography," wrote Dekle. "The problem was Bundy."Hagmaier and Bundy during their final Death Row interview on January 23, 1989 ,Rule and Aynesworth both noted that, for Bundy, the fault always lay with someone or something else. While he eventually confessed to 30 murders, he never accepted responsibility for any of them, even when offered that opportunity prior to the Chi Omega trial—which would have averted the death penalty. He deflected blame onto a wide variety of scapegoats, including his abusive grandfather, the absence of his biological father, the concealment of his true parentage, alcohol, the media, the police (whom he accused of planting evidence), "society" in general, violence on television, and ultimately, true crime periodicals and pornography.
He blamed television programming which he watched mostly on sets that he had stolen for "brainwashing" him into stealing credit cards. On at least one occasion he even tried to blame his victims: "I have known people who ... radiate vulnerability," he wrote in a 1977 letter to Kloepfer. "Their facial expressions say 'I am afraid of you.' These people invite abuse ... By expecting to be hurt, do they subtly encourage it?" A significant element of delusion permeated his thinking: "Bundy was always surprised when anyone noticed that one of his victims was missing, because he imagined America to be a place where everyone is invisible except to themselves. And he was always astounded when people testified that they had seen him in incriminating places, because Bundy did not believe people noticed each other." Blame shifting and outright denial were his principal defense mechanisms: "I don't know why everyone is out to get me," he complained to Lewis. "He really and truly did not have any sense of the enormity of what he had done," she said. "A long-term serial killer erects powerful barriers to his guilt," Keppel wrote, "walls of denial that can sometimes never be breached."
No comments:
Post a Comment