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Notorious for his chilling crimes, Ted Bundy admitted to taking the lives of 30 people, yet his methods of choosing victims varied greatly.
Often described as charismatic with striking looks, Bundy sometimes crept into homes to ambush his victims while they slept.
However, the infamous killer, who will be the focus of Oxygen’s forthcoming special Love, Ted Bundy, frequently used his charm to blend into college environments. He would feign injury or impersonate a police officer to earn the trust of unsuspecting women.
“At the time, Ted Bundy was of college age, drove a Volkswagen Beetle—a popular car in the ’70s—and effortlessly merged into campus life,” former FBI agent Brad Garrett noted in the ABC News special Bundy: 20/20. “This made him appear non-threatening to his victims.”
Although Bundy confessed to 30 murders before his execution in 1989, the actual number of his victims is believed to be higher. Karen Sparks, a college student from Washington, was his first known victim and survived to recount her terrifying ordeal.
Before his 1989 execution, Bundy confessed to killing 30 women, but it’s believed his victim count could be much higher. His first known victim was Karen Sparks, a Washington college student who lived to tell about her horrific encounter.
Sparks had been asleep in a basement bedroom on Jan. 4, 1974 when Bundy snuck into the room and viciously attacked her, using a metal rod to beat and sexually assault her.
“He came into my home, took a bed frame off of my bed and smashed my skull. And he probably used the same bed frame and smashed it into my vagina and into my bladder,” Sparks recalled in Amazon’s Ted Bundy: Falling For a Killer. “My bladder was totally split.”
Sparks suffered permanent brain damage and significant vision and hearing loss, but survived the encounter.
A month later, Bundy struck again, this time targeting Lynda Ann Healy, a 21-year-old college student who worked as a radio ski reporter. When her roommates went into her room later that morning, Healy had vanished, leaving behind bloody sheets and her nightgown, covered in blood, in the closet.
Soon after, other women including Donna Manson, Susan Rancourt, Brenda Ball and Roberta Kathleen Parks began to disappear. The remains of all five were later recovered on a mountainside.
Ted Bundy Detailed Attacking Georgann Hawkins
While discussing the June 1974 disappearance of 18-year-old college student Georgann Hawkins, Bundy revealed just how he overpowered his victims,
“I was moving up the alley using a briefcase and some crutches and the young woman walked down,” Bundy told investigator Robert Keppel from behind bars in tapes replayed in the 20/20 special. “I saw her round the north end of the block into the alley…. And about halfway down the block, I encountered her and asked her to help me carry the briefcase, which she did and we walked back up the alley.”
Bundy had hidden a crow bar behind his right rear tire and reached for it as soon as they got to the car.
“Basically, when I reached the car, what happened was I knocked her unconscious with the crow bar,” he chillingly recounted. “There was some handcuffs there, along with the crowbar and I handcuffed her and put her in the passenger side of the car and drove away.”
According to Bundy, he drove her to a desolate spot he’d already picked out and strangled her to death.
It wasn’t the only time he’d use a ruse to fool his unsuspecting victims. The next month, on July 14, 1974, witnesses reported seeing a man wearing a sling and approaching women at Lake Sammamish State Park to ask if they’d help him unload a sailboat, according to Oxygen’s Snapped Notorious: Ted Bundy. Janice Ott, 23, was the first to fall victim to the scheme. Hours later, Denise Naslund disappeared from the same lake.
Police circulated details and a sketch about the suspect named “Ted,” who drove a tan Volkswagen Bug—and Bundy was even interviewed by investigators—but the next month he slipped away when he headed to Utah to for law school.
Ted Bundy Arrested in 1975 After Utah Traffic Stop
The killings continued across Utah, Idaho and Colorado, according to the FBI, until Bundy was pulled over by police in August 1975 after his vehicle was spotted lurking in a neighborhood without its headlights on, before speeding away.
Sgt. Bob Hayward of the Utah Highway Patrol later told KTVX Bundy’s passenger seat was missing from the vehicle and he found pantyhose, with holes cut into it, burglary tools, a crow bar and a pair of handcuffs inside the car.
After arresting him for evading authorities, investigators realized he matched the description provided nearly a year earlier in November 1974 by 18-year-old Carol DeRonch, who’d escaped an abduction attempt.
Ted Bundy Used Fake Police Badge to Lure Victims
DeRonch later told People she’d been shopping at a Murray, Utah mall when she was approached by a man who claimed to be a police officer investigating a break-in to her car. The man—later identified as Bundy—even showed her a badge to pull off the deception.
DeRonch agreed to go with Bundy to file a police report at the station, but something unnerved her about the encounter.
“I thought he was kind of creepy,” she told the news outlet, adding that he smelled of alcohol. “I thought he was a lot older than he was.”
Once inside Bundy’s vehicle, Bundy tried to put her in handcuffs, but she managed to jump from the car. Bundy followed—brandishing a handgun and crowbar—but she got away and flagged down a passing motorist. Her testimony helped secure his 1976 conviction for kidnapping.
Ted Bundy Escaped From Custody Twice
It could have been the end of Bundy’s reign of terror, but after being extradited to Colorado to stand trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell, he escaped custody twice, ultimately heading to Florida in 1978 to attack the women of Florida State University’s Chi Omega sorority house before kidnapping and killing 12-year-old Kimberly Leach in Lake City.
Bundy was arrested a final time on Feb. 15, 1978 after he was pulled over for another routine traffic stop and tried to run from authorities, according to Snapped Notorious: Ted Bundy.
He was found guilty in a televised trial for the murders of Chi Omega sorority sisters Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman and sentenced to death.
Bundy was sentenced to death a second time in the trial for killing Leach.
Why Did Ted Bundy Kill?
Before his execution in 1989, Bundy finally broke his silence on the killings, admitting to taking the lives of 30 women. The confessed serial killer claimed he was driven by a dark entity, described in the book The Only Living Witness as a “purely destructive power that grew from within.”
Bundy also spoke about the force to his long-time girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer—now often known by the pen name Elizabeth Kendall—just after his arrest in Florida.
“He told me that he was sick and that he was consumed by something that he didn’t understand and that, um, that it — that he just couldn’t contain it,” she told investigators in a recording obtained by the Netflix docuseries Conversations with A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. “He spent so much time trying to maintain a normal life and he just couldn’t do it. He said that he was preoccupied with this force.”
Oxygen’s Love, Ted Bundy, premiering Feb. 15 at 6 p.m. ET/PT, will also explore how Bundy was able to hide his dark side from those closest to him and reveal the letters he wrote from death row to his cousin Edna Martin.
“Through exclusive photographs and first-time interviews with family and friends, Edna reveals stories about her cousin only she can tell,” reads a description of the special. “Love, Ted Bundy offers an intimate and unsettling portrait of one of America’s most notorious serial killers through the eyes of someone who believed she truly knew him.”