Ted Bundy

(November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989)

Murderer, Necrophile, Rapist, Kidnapper

Confessed to at least 30-40 murders soon before his electric chair execution in 1989 in a Florida prison.

“We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.” -Ted Bundy

FAMILY & EDUCATION

Growing up, Ted was unsure for quite some time who his father was. There were suspicions that his father may actually have been his own grandfather; (his mother’s father). Family, friends, and the public thought this to be true for a long time. He later found out this was not true. Ted held resentment towards his mother for never fully being honest about who is father was.

Ted’s mother eventually met a man with last name Bundy and married him. He adopted Ted. They conceived four children of their own but Ted’s relationship with his stepfather was distant.

As a young shy boy, Ted liked looking at pictures of naked women which is nothing out of the ordinary. His behavior started to gradually change. As a teen and into his college years he started to become interested in reading sexually explicit stories and consumed alcohol on a regular basis. He would walk the streets at night peeping into windows hoping to find women undressing. He was also intrigued by stealing.

He started dating in college and fell in love with his first girlfriend but she left him because he seemed unmotivated and immature. Ted became depressed and dropped out of school. The break up drastically changed him. He decided after this point to become another Ted. He enrolled in college and received a degree in psychology. Bundy was soon accepted into law school and received a stunning amount of letters of recommendation. He later got a job with a government agency which worked on missing women cases. He was a bright with an excelling career. But this was all a facade.

HIS VICTIMS

Bundy was handsome and very smart, He lured women in using these traits because he knew women would be attracted to him. He would hang out in public places where he would pretend to be a police officer or a figure of authority. He also at times faked injuries to lure women and then began assaulting, raping, and mutilating them. After he killed these women, he would sometimes go back to the bodies and perform sexual acts with them once they started to decompose. He would also keep the heads of some of his victims.

All of Bundy’s known victims were 15-25 years of age. They were all white females of middle class and most of them in college. In addition, many of his victims are said to have a physical resemblance to his college girlfriend, although Bundy protests against this theory. He states that they are all just young and attractive woman which was vital in his selection. This is questionable since Bundy was known to consistently be in denial and shifted blame to make himself feel better about what he’s done.

Overall thoughts

Of course like many killers, Ted took pictures of most of his victims. He felt like the women he killed were his possessions. Possession was a motive. Ted believed that if you want something you need to take it.  The pursuit of ‘taking’ became an evil adventure for him and turned into a sadistic way of life for Ted. Normal on the outside, serial killer on the inside. It reminds me of the movie American Psycho a little bit.

Something interesting that I came across about Ted is that he would always drink alcohol before approaching his victims. He is known to have stated that this is necessary in doing what he does. According to him, the alcohol aids in clouding his moral demons and keeps the ‘old Ted’ from taking over. He was seen as heartless, sadistic sociopath but on the other hand, he needed to drink in order to do what he did.  His history contains a lack of validation from women and failed relationships. No wonder why his victims were all female. And that explains why he wanted to possess them for himself. He wanted to take back what he lacked: Control. This gave him back the power that he believed he never had with the women in his life. He was frequently in denial and made up excuses for his actions. This looks to me like a man who feels guilty about something. He may have looked like a sociopath but I think that was a facade as well.

Also, like Gain’s family history, Bundy had issues with his mother.  This is an interesting pattern and i’m intrigued by it.  I’m excited to see who else has mommy issues.

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy

http://www.dirjournal.com/info/americas-famous-serial-killers/

http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/tedbundy.htm

In real life, there are no villains like there are in the movies and TV shows. There are only disturbed people that become infamous due to their outrageous behavior. The media has a way of building these people up and giving them a name; nicknames.. This in my opinion, drives and motivates these people to continue to do what they do and do it even better to maintain their reputations. These nicknames usually are a combination of location and crime. A few examples would be “The Long Island Ripper” or “The Boston Strangler”. The American media uses this kind of labeling propaganda a lot to make the headline story more interesting. They always come up with a catch phrase or quirk so that people will get reeled in. This may make the news more interesting but at the same time this is also what the serial killer wants; attention. Although It’s actually even weirder when the killer creates his own nickname. In these cases, maybe they don’t want the media mocking them and labeling them as something they don’t want to be.

I’m going on a rant….Back to the task at hand, which is analyzing these killers. Lets first start with Ed Gain. I want to start with him because he was the inspiration for “Buffalo Bill” in Silence of the Lambs, Psycho‘s Norman Bates and “Leatherface” in The Chainsaw Massacre. All movies that I’ve seen and still love.

FAMILY HISTORY

Ed was born August 27, 1906 in Wisconsin. He had an older brother and they resided in Plainfield, Wisconsin permanently. Ed’s mother moved to this small town to make sure her sons were not influenced by the outsiders of society. Ed spent most of his time doing chores on the farm and going to school. His mother was a very religious woman. She would chose the most violent verses out of the bible and read them to her children them daily. She also preached endlessly to her boys about how all women were the devil’s work.

Gain did well in his academics but was bullied in school and didn’t have many friends which is most likely due to his mother’s control over him. He tried to make her happy but she continued to abuse both of her children. She was in an unhappy marriage but didn’t believe in divorce because of religious values. She took out her aggressions on her boys. The boys only had each other, spending their childhood and teen years detached from outsiders.

Both brothers started working when their father died in 1940 by a heart attack. This would make Ed 34 years old. They worked as handymen, but Ed also babysat for people he knew in his town. As Ed’s brother started to verbalize negative feelings toward his mother, Ed always protected her and never went against her. On a night of a fire, Ed’s brother wound up dead but after investigation, it was not the fire that killed him. Some suspected foul play, but no charges were made against Ed

After Gein’s mother passed away in1945, Gein was mentally destroyed. He stayed in the farm house and left his mother’s room untouched. It wasn’t until after her death that he became fascinated about death.

VICTIMS

The first known occurrence of outrageous behavior was In 1957. The hardware store owner went missing. The police found the woman’s body on Gain’s property. She was decapitated and hung upside down by ropes. She had been shot and killed and the mutilations to her body were clearly made after death. After searching Ed’s house, the police found an insane amount of disturbing things such as body parts of other people, human bones and human skin masks, female heads, organs…etc.

Once Gain was interviewed by police, he admitted to digging up graves of women that looked like his mother and took the bodies home. He used their skin to make things. He also decided after his mother’s death that he wanted a sex change so he began to create a suit of skin so he could pretend to be a female.

In 1984, Gein died of cancer. His life and reputation has lived on in books, movies, and TV. In fact, there was also a musical made about Ed Gain which is performed in his birthplace of Wisconsin. I can’t imagine why…

Thoughts…

After reading his story, it proves true, and in this case, almost too true that we are products of our parents. In Ed’s case, he was not able to be any other person because his mother had control over who and what he would become. Ed didn’t hate his mother although he became a slave to her. It mentally took him over and after she died, he felt that he still needed her and logically decided that he needed to become her to survive in the world. I feel sympathy for Gain. Obviously, I don’t agree with what he has done, but this all looks to me like a kid trying to have a mother that was never there for him the way he needed her to be. In my opinion, he was stuck in this limbo and it killed him, which ultimately made him the killer he became.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein

What is a Serial Killer?

Many people can say that at least once in their lives they have wished that someone didn’t exist. Normally, we all figure this is just a way of venting stress and that none of us actually want to kill anyone or wish anyone harm. For a regular person, the thought of killing someone is completely unfathomable. We all have impulses but live by an ethical code of morals and we consider ourselves to be able to differentiate between right and wrong. For others, this is not always so black and white. For some, the only way for them to live, is to kill. How does a person become this way? What drives a person to become a serial killer?

A serial killer is normally defined as an person who has murdered three or more people over a month, with a break in between murders. They are usually driven by their own psychological gratification. The murders are usually done in a similar style and the victims may share something in common. It is usual for the victims to look the same, have the same age, race, sex, or occupation.

It’s safe to say that the United States has the highest percentage of serial killers in the world. In America, the bulk of reported serial killers are white males, usually in their twenties to thirties. The characteristics of a serial killer may or may not be easy to spot. The person may be extremely intelligent and may seem to be pretty normal with a normal job. They could have been raised or currently remain in an unstable family or have been abused as a child. They could have abandonment issues and control issues. Serial Killers may be sadistic and also be interested in unusual sexual fetishes and necrophilia. They could even be psychopathic which means that they lack any kind of empathy towards their victims and feel no guilt. Above this they can also be extremely impulsive people and often live by their own set of rules but usually know how to blend in the the norm of society.  Knowing all of this, the thought of a normal day Joe Schmo possibly being a serial killer is very disturbing.

In today’s society, serial killers are featured as main characters in all types of media, including movies, T.V. , and books. Audiences enjoy viewing the thrilling, the horrific, and the morally distasteful. From TV shows like Criminal Minds and movies like Psycho and Silence of the Lambs, a lot of these movies are based on true events and actual murders. Some of them are also made up fictional stories. One of my favorite movies, Serial mom, is a fictional satire about an all American mother who looks perfectly normal on the outside but she will kill anyone and everyone that makes someone in her family feel bad.

The popular T.V. series, Dexter, revolves around a police blood spatter analyst who is secretly a serial killer. He lives by his own code of ethics by only killing other murderers who have gotten away from the legal system. He believes strongly that these people deserve to die. His character is written in such a way that the audience can feel empathy for him which makes it much harder to be afraid of him.

What is our obsession with this phenomena? Why do we want to hear it, see it, read it? In this blog I plan to introduce and analyze some of America’s most dangerous serial killers and talk about what is most intriguing and disturbing about them.  Is it possible to feel empathy for these people? Is it even possible to understand any of the actions these people have taken? We sometimes fail to remember that they weren’t always killers…