Warning Signs Everyone Ignored About Ted Bundy

When Ted Bundy was taken to the electric chair and executed in Florida on January 24, 1989, the event was met with cheers from the crowds of people who had gathered to witness the death of one of America's most notorious serial killers. Sentenced for the murder of two sorority women and a 12-year-old girl in 1978, Bundy had attempted to maintain his innocence in letters to family members and supporters before finally admitting to more than 30 slayings just days before his execution.

Bundy's disturbing crimes and trial continue to draw the intrigue of the American public, not just for the brutality of his killings but also for the fact that he was a clean-cut, charismatic, and educated young man. He did not fit the established stereotype of serial killers up to that point. But despite appearances, it now appears that Bundy exhibited the telltale signals of potential psychopathy and sadism, as well as evidence of killing, which might have provided warning signs had people known to look for them.

Since Ted Bundy's crimes first came to light, investigators, biographers, and true crime enthusiasts have scoured his early life for clues as to what may have underpinned his rampant psychopathy. Some have focused on his difficult upbringing. According to his mother, Bundy's father was an unidentified army veteran, and he was raised by his maternal grandparents, with his mother masquerading as his sister, though she later relocated with her son. Numerous sources have claimed that Bundy's grandfather had anger issues and abused members of the family, though Bundy himself denied any tension in their relationship. Some have claimed that Bundy may have been a product of incest, though this has never been confirmed.

Whatever the truth, testimony from Bundy's aunt, Julia, suggests that his issues began at an early age. She has confirmed that on one occasion, when she was 15, she awoke to find that her nephew, then just a toddler, had surrounded her sleeping body with butcher knives from the kitchen. "He just stood there and grinned," Julia told Vanity Fair. "I shooed him out of the room and took the implements back down to the kitchen and told my mother about it. I remember thinking at the time that I was the only one who thought it was strange. Nobody did anything."

At an early age, Ted Bundy continued to exhibit traits consistent with what we would now consider the typical profile of a potential psychopath. At school, he was an intelligent and enthusiastic student, whose academic ability would later see him study law. But he was also withdrawn and antisocial, having developed antipathy toward his mother and stepfather — whom he considered both poor and poorly-educated, and with whom he would occasionally fight — and his classmates, who would bully him for his speech impediment.

Of course, there is nothing particularly wrong with being withdrawn or antisocial at school. There are plenty of people who are naturally introverted and arrive in adulthood perfectly well adjusted. But Bundy was different. As well as violent attacks on classmates and members of his Boy Scout troop, the future killer was fond of building traps, such as covered holes in the ground with hidden stakes to injure those around him. He also became a peeping tom and flagrant thief during his adolescent years.

Ted Bundy also began to develop an interest in pornography in his teen years, along with darker hobbies. According to his attorney John Henry Browne, who spoke to Fox 13 Seattle about his infamous client, Bundy admitted that as an adolescent he would purchase mice from a local pet store, take them to the woods, and kill them. "He'd go to the woods and build a little corral, and then he'd decide which ones to kill and which ones to let go," Browne said, suggesting Bundy's killing was tied up with a twisted desire to have the power of life and death on those around him.

Browne outlined the claims in his 2016 book, "The Devil's Defender," writing that Bundy would dismember the mice by pulling them apart. The killer's interest in dead bodies also foreshadows the most sickening aspects of his crimes. That as well as being a serial murderer, Bundy was a necrophile who dismembered the bodies of his victims, kept them as trophies, and used their remains for his sexual gratification.

A 1989 Vanity Fair article, which included the testimony of Ted Bundy's mother, Louise, noted that despite bitterness about his upbringing and his bouts of anger and depression, he maintained a veneer of normality and respectability during his early life. Those around him assumed that he was simply an intelligent and academic young man. While the darker aspects of Ted Bundy's childhood and adolescence have been pored over since his crimes came to light, many minute details were only revealed through his own later testimony. Bundy's crimes were such a shock to those who knew him during his early years that several acquaintances were convinced he had been wrongly accused.

Nevertheless, there are those who claim to have witnessed Bundy's transformation from his charming persona into something more menacing. One fellow student at the University of Utah, Robyn Leary, claims that at a university dance, she once saw a staring, manic look come over Bundy's face. She found it so terrifying she had her date take her home. Her claim was corroborated by private investigator Joe Aloi, who worked for Bundy's defense team and said that he saw the chilling transformation firsthand, which was accompanied by a disturbing "odor." After his confinement, Bundy admitted that he had previously heard voices, and some have suggested that his apparent dual nature was evidence that he may have had multiple personalities. Regardless, he was never formally diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Ted Bundy was sentenced to death for three murders and confessed to 36 prior to his execution, but today, he is believed to have potentially had over 100 victims. The majority would have been children, teenage girls, and young women of college age, which fits his modus operandi. It is also now believed that Bundy may have committed his first murder at the age of just 14, when he was living in Tacoma, Washington with his mother and stepfather. 

At the time, he was developing his habit of peeping through strangers' windows, an 8-year-old girl named Ann Marie Burr went missing just a few blocks from Bundy's home. No DNA evidence has tied him to the crime, but circumstantial evidence echoes his other crimes. Notably, she was abducted audaciously with her family in the building, and Bundy potentially knew the girl through his paper route. Some experts believe the future serial killer's proximity to the disappearance was no coincidence.

Countless abductions and attacks against girls and young women occurred within Bundy's potential area of activity after he came of age. Bundy killed more than 20 people between 1974 and 1978 at a ferocious rate. But some now believe they may have been preceded by many years of ad hoc killing in which he learned to manipulate, incapacitate, and murder his victims without detection.