Saturday 30 November 2013

Organized vs Disorganized Serial Killers

Serial killers as a whole can generally be split into two categories according to the level of organization evident in their methods.

Organized killers tend to be intelligent individuals who often lure their victims to secluded locations with a combination of trickery and charm. Ted Bundy, for example, would sometimes wrap his arm in a fake plaster cast and ask young females for assistance. Because he was considered charming and did not look like a deranged killer, plenty of women voluntarily went off with him. Once they were alone, he would hit them over the back of the head, take them somewhere more secluded, kill them, and rape their corpses.

Organized serial killers also tend to dispose of their victims' bodies in a way that hinders detection (e.g. burial) and have an above average understanding of forensic science and other investigative techniques. They usually appear fairly normal on the surface, and friends and family are often shocked when their true nature is revealed. They generally have no real difficulty as far as romantic relationships are concerned, and may even be married with kids (as was the case with the notorious BTK killer, Dennis Raider).

Disorganized serial killers, on the other hand, tend to be more impulsive. They are often found to be suffering from some form of mental illness (though this is not necessarily what causes them to kill - there may be other factors involved) and may be of below average intelligence. They rarely take any real care to hide the bodies and rarely use trickery or charm to put their victims at ease, preferring to attack in more of a 'blitz' fashion. They are less likely to be in a stable romantic relationship and are also less likely to talk to their victims. Jack the Ripper is generally considered to be a good example of a disorganized serial killer.

It should be noted that a large proportion of known serial killers exhibit characteristics of both the organized and disorganized types. Furthermore, it is possible for serial killers to become more disorganized as their compulsion to kill grows stronger, or in times of high stress.

You might also be interested in:

Dennis Rader - The BTK Killer, Ted Bundy - The Charismatic Killer, Richard Trenton Chase - The Vampire of Sacramento

The Zodiac Killer

File:Lbsfsketch.jpg
Image attribution: author unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Zodiac Killer was/is an as yet unidentified serial killer who has been conclusively linked to 7 attacks, though the killer claimed to have taken 37 lives. The 7 confirmed attacks took place between December of 1968 and October of 1969. Two of the 7 victims survived the attacks.

December 20,1968 - Betty Jensen and David Faraday
16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen was out on a first date with 17-year-old David Arthur Faraday. They had stopped their car at a well known lovers' lane in a quiet spot on Lake Herman Road, California. Evidence suggests that a second vehicle pulled up beside Jensen and Faraday. The driver got out and walked round to Faraday's door, before shooting the young man at point blank range. Jensen ran, but was shot 5 times in the back. Betty Jensen died at the scene; David Faraday passed away on route to hospital.

July 4,1969 - Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau
22-year-old Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin and 19-year-old Michael Renault Mageau had parked at Blue Rock Springs Golf Course in California at around midnight. A car pulled in behind them and a man got out. He approached Ferrin and Mageau's car and aimed a flashlight through the window at their faces, temporarily blinding them. He immediately fired 5 shots into the car, hitting both Ferrin and Mageau. He started to walk away, but  heard Mageau cry out in pain. He returned to the vehicle and fired another 4 shots, hitting Mageau once and Ferrin twice. 

Fortunately, three teens stumbled across the crime scene only minutes after the killer had left. They phoned for help, which arrived in time to save Mageau's life. Ferrin, sadly, died on route to the hospital.

Mageau was able to give a partial description of the assailant, describing him as a white male, about 5'8'' and 195 pounds.

Approximately 30 minutes after the attack, police received an anonymous call taking responsibility for it, as well as for the murders of Betty Jensen and David Faraday. The call was made from a public phone booth situated just minutes from the local police station.

September 27, 1969 - Cecilia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell
The next confirmed victims were students Cecilia Ann Shepard and Bryan Calvin Hartnell (who were 22- and 20-years-old, respectively). They were enjoying a picnic at Lake Berryessa in California when a man claiming to be an escaped convict approached with a gun. His face was covered with a hood.

The assailant threw Shepard a piece of clothesline and forced her to hog tie her boyfriend. Then the attacker tied Shepard up in the same manner. He stabbed them both repeatedly and left them for dead.

A fisherman found the victims still breathing and called for help. Hartnell survived but Shepard was not so fortunate: she fell into a coma and died 2 days later.

Again, the killer placed a phone call confessing to the crime. Again, he did so from a public phone booth situated just minutes from the local police station.

October 11, 1969 - Paul Stine
The Zodiac's final confirmed victim was 29-year-old San Francisco cab driver, Paul Stine. The killer shot Stine in the side of the head and walked away. Three youngsters witnessed the crime. They described the shooter as being a heavily built white male between the ages of 25 and 30 with a crew cut. Someone matching this description was spotted by police officers just a stone's throw from the crime scene. But, for an unknown reason, the officers thought they were looking for a black male. They didn't give the man a second thought. Paul Stine died at the scene.

Letters and Ciphers
During the time of the killings, and for many years afterwards, the Zodiac Killer  taunted the police by sending messages and ciphers to local newspapers. One of the letters referred to the possibility of killing school children. The killer could, he wrote, just find a school bus, shoot out the front tire, and "pick off the kiddies as they came bouncing out"[1]. Fortunately, he never acted on this threat.

Four ciphers were also sent to the local newspapers. The killer claimed that if anyone could break the ciphers, then his identity would be revealed. To this day, only one of the ciphers has been conclusively broken. It did not reveal the name of the killer.

Over the years, around 2,500 suspects were interviewed, but none were ever charged. The case remains unsolved to this day.

You might also be interested in:
Madame LaLaurie, Ted Bundy - The Charismatic Killer, Amelia Dyer - The Angel Maker

Sources

Friday 29 November 2013

Madame LaLaurie

File:Lalaurie.gif
Image attribution: author unknown [Public Domain] via Wikimedia Commons

In 1834, a New Orleans fire crew were putting out a fire at the mansion of Madame LaLaurie (c.1775 - c.1842), a well known socialite who often threw lavish cocktail parties. At first, it seemed just like another day's work for the firefighters. But then someone noticed the smell of  burning flesh coming from inside the building. A team was sent to investigate. What they discovered would send shock waves through the entire community.

One 70-year-old female slave was found chained up in the kitchen (it later emerged that she had started the fire as a suicide attempt, in order to escape the constant abuse she suffered at the hands of Madame LaLaurie). In another part of the house, more slaves were found chained up, some of them in deeply unnatural and uncomfortable positions. Some were alive; others were not. All showed signs of prolonged torture.

News of Madame LaLaurie's ghastly torture chamber spread throughout the local community, and a mob of angry citizens descended on the mansion. The police were called, but by the time they arrived the mob had destroyed everything of value that they could lay their hands on, and Madame LaLaurie had escaped. The story goes that she made her way to Paris, where she died in 1842. She was never brought to justice for her crimes.

You might also like:
Amelia Dyer - The Angel Maker, Gary Ridgway - The Green River Killer, Israel Keyes - Alaskan Serial Killer

Richard Trenton Chase - The Vampire of Sacramento

Born on May 23,1950, Richard Trenton Chase displayed disturbing behaviour from a very young age (including the infamous, but disputed, Macdonald Triad of  bedwetting, arson, and animal torture). He abused alcohol and drugs from adolescence onward, and started to develop hypochondriac delusions with regard to his health. On one occasion he became convinced that someone had stolen his pulmonary artery; on another he thought that his stomach was back to front. He also believed that his heart was shrinking, and that the only was to stop this was to eat various animals raw (he would sometimes remove the organs and liquefy them in a blender, adding in some coca cola for good measure).

In 1975, Chase injected animal blood into his veins, which resulted in him developing blood poisoning. After the cause became apparent, he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Staff members nicknamed him 'Dracula' due to his fondness for drinking the blood of animals.

After receiving treatment, Richard Chase was released from hospital into the care of his mother. She gradually weaned him off his medication and helped to get him set up in a place of his own. Perhaps this wasn't the best of moves, considering what came next.

On December 29, 1977, Chase killed a father of two, Ambrose Griffin, in a drive-by shooting. Shortly afterwards, he broke into a family home, urinated in a drawer, and defecated on a child's bed. The family returned and Chase fled the scene.

Chase's second murder occurred on January 23, 1978. Teresa Wallin was three months pregnant at the time. Chase shot her three times, before sexually assaulting the corpse whilst repeatedly stabbing it with a butcher knife. He drained the blood from the corpse, drank some of it, and bathed in the rest. He then went outside and collected some dog feces, returning to the corpse to shove the feces down its throat. At last, he left the premises.

The final murders were committed on January 27, 1978. He entered the home of 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth, shooting her neighbour, 6-year-old son, and 22-month-old nephew, as well as Evelyn herself. Evelyn Miroth's corpse was sodomized, and Chase drank her blood also. Part of the 22-month-old boy's brain was eaten and his corpse was taken back to Chase's apartment for further acts of cannibalism and mutilation.

Richard Trenton Chase was arrested shortly afterwards and charged with 6 counts of murder. Despite his long history of mental illness and the disorganized nature of the crime scenes he left behind, Chase was declared legally sane and sentenced to die in the gas chamber. He claimed that his crimes had been necessary to counter the effects of poison that had been placed under his soap dish by Nazis. He took his own life on December 26, 1980, by overdosing on prison-prescribed antidepressant medication.

You might also like:
Organized vs Disorganized Serial Killers, Edmund Kemper - The Co-ed Killer, Harvey Glatman - The Lonely Hearts Killer




Thursday 28 November 2013

Gary Ridgway - The Green River Killer

File:Gary Ridgway 1982 Mugshot.jpg
Image attribution: By King County Sheriff's Office (http://thegreenriverkiller.tumblr.com/) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Gary Leon Ridgway was born on February 18, 1949 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was an unremarkable child who was once tested as having an IQ of only 82 (100 being the average score), and he was held back two grades in high school. He married at the age of 21 and joined the navy shortly afterwards. It was here that he first started using prostitutes, contracting gonorrhea from one of them. This experience may well have contributed to his later hatred for women of this profession. But he continued to pay for sex.

Returning from sea, Ridgway discovered that his wife had also been sleeping around. The couple filed for divorce. It is interesting to note that Ridgway's second marriage would go a very similar way.

After his arrest, Ridgway's wives were interviewed. They described a man who was torn between staunch religious beliefs and an unusually strong sexual appetite, which would cause him to demand sex several times a day. But all in all he seemed like a fairly regular guy. He wasn't a loner, he was always in employment, and he had several romantic relationships over the course of his life. He didn't really fit the stereotype of a serial killer. But he was one of the worst in American history.

In 2001, Gary Ridgway was arrested after new advances in DNA profiling allowed law enforcement to match his saliva to DNA recovered from semen found on the bodies of women who were believed to have fallen victim to the infamous Green River Killer (the name comes from the river in which the first bodies were dumped). When this was combined with other (circumstantial) evidence, it allowed law enforcement to charge Ridgway with 7 counts of murder. He would later confess to a further 42 murders as part of a plea bargain that saw him avoid the death penalty. Some experts believe that the true number of victims could be higher still, though this has never been conclusively proven.

The majority of Ridgway's confirmed victims were found naked in or near the Green River. All had been strangled; some had been posed. Most of the victims were young female prostitutes or runaways.

Ridgway would spend hours driving around his local area looking for potential victims. Once he had found one, he would approach her and try to put her at ease. Sometimes he would offer to pay her more than the going rate or to help her find a better job. On other occasions he would show her a picture of his son, in an attempt to make her see him as a harmless and caring father, a good man. Next, he would have sex with the woman, before strangling her from behind and disposing of the body. Sometimes he would return to the dump site to check on decomposition and perform sexual acts with the corpse. On one occasion, he had sex with the corpse  whilst his young son was only a very short distance away, sleeping in Ridgway's truck.

For someone in possession of an IQ that was 18 points below average, Ridgway showed a remarkable amount of talent for forensics. He left very little evidence behind (and would sometimes scatter false evidence to confuse the crime scene). If one of the victims managed to scratch him, he would cut her fingernails. He moved from manual strangulation to ligature strangulation after realizing that the former gave the victim ample opportunity to scratch and bruise his arm, something that would surely have drawn attention from family and coworkers. So, perhaps IQ and academic performance aren't everything as far as intelligence testing is concerned.

Gary Ridgway is currently incarcerated in Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. He will never be released.

You might also like:
Ted Bundy - The Charismatic Killer, Jeffrey Dahmer - The Milwaukee Cannibal, Bobby Joe Long - The Want-Ad Rapist/Killer


Amelia Dyer - The Angel Maker

File:Amelia dyer1893.jpg
Image attribution: By Wells Asylum authorities, 1893 (Wells Asylum, 1893) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

In Victorian society, if a child was found to be illegitimate, then the father had no legal responsibilities. Furthermore, the woman would usually be sacked from any employment as soon as the fact became public knowledge. This left the mother-to-be in a virtually impossible situation. In many cases the only way she could keep her baby was to offer herself up for prostitution.

Where there is a problem to be solved there is usually also a profit to be made. A number of so-called 'baby farms' sprang up, ostensibly to help alleviate this social ill. They consisted of a person or group of people who were willing to essentially adopt newborn babies - in exchange for a fee of course. The struggling mother would either hand over her baby for temporary adoption in exchange for a weekly fee, or she would pay a one-off lump sum in exchange for permanent adoption of the child. The babies were often treated poorly; a large percentage would die. But there was one woman who would take baby farming to new, almost unimaginable levels of cruelty.

Amelia Dyer was a seemingly respectable woman of good parentage who was born in the English city of Bristol. She opened her own baby farm in the 1800s, drugging the babies in order to suppress their appetites and keep them quiet, maximizing her profits whilst minimizing her exertions. This abuse would often result in the death of the babies.

Eventually, Dyer allowed one baby too many to pass away before its time. She was arrested and sentenced to 6 months for child neglect.

Once she was a free woman again, Amelia Dyer spent a short while going in and out of psychiatric hospitals, before resuming her work as a baby farmer. But this time she worked with a different MO.

Instead of accepting a weekly fee for temporary adoptions, Dyer started demanding a one-off lump sum for permanent adoption. But once the money had changed hands, Dyer would strangle the infant and either dump his/her body in the River Thames or bury it in the garden of her rented accommodation. She moved around a lot to avoid detection, and operated under several assumed names for the same reason.

It is unclear just how many innocent babies this seemingly ordinary woman murdered. Some people estimate that it could have been as many as 300, or maybe even more. This would probably make her the most prolific serial killer in British history.

That a person could get away with killing hundreds of infants before she was finally caught shows that there was something seriously wrong with society in Victorian Britain. Thousands of children were dying in suspicious circumstances every year, but society as a whole did very little about it. It is shocking from our modern perspective to think of a time when the most vulnerable of our species were also the least protected. For more information about child abuse and how you can help to prevent it, visit the website of the NSPCC.

Amelia Dyer was eventually stopped after bodies were recovered in the River Thames that led back to her. She pleaded insanity, but this was rejected. She was executed by hanging in 1896.

You might also be interested in:
Madame LaLaurie, The Six Motivations of a Serial Killer, Richard Ramirez - The Night Stalker


Wednesday 27 November 2013

John Wayne Gacy - The Killer Clown


File:John Wayne Gacy art.jpg
Image attribution: By The Orchid Club (originally posted to Flickr as John Wayne Gacy) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

John Wayne Gacy was a successful businessman, a husband, and a father. He used to dress up as a clown for fundraising events and to entertain sick children. He regularly threw cocktail parties for the local community. But beneath the mask of a model citizen lay the cold heart of a ruthless serial killer - one of the worst the world has ever known.

Between the years of 1972 and 1978, this well liked and respected man took the lives of some 33 boys and young men. Some of the victims were raped; some were tortured. All were killed on his property and most were buried there also.

The first victim was Timothy Jack McCoy, a 15-year-old boy who Gacy had encountered at a local bus stop. McCoy was lured back to Gacy's house with the promise of a bed for the night and a lift back to the bus stop in the morning. But Gacy killed the boy with a knife and buried the body in his crawlspace. Apparently the experience of murder was sexually arousing for the fledgling killer: he realised afterwards that he had had an orgasm. Gacy would later describe the act of murder as being the ultimate thrill.

The other 32 victims were all strangled or asphyxiated as this produced less mess than the knife. Some of them were picked up from the same bus stop as McCoy, whilst others were lured to Gacy's property with the promise of employment at Gacy's successful construction company, PDM Contractors (Painting, Decorating, Maintenance).

Like a large number of serial killers, Gacy experienced a traumatic childhood. His father was an alcoholic who would regularly beat Gacy's mother and siblings, as well as Gacy himself. On top of that, at the age of 9, Gacy was molested by a friend of the family. He also suffered from persistent medical problems, which resulted in him spending much of his adolescence in and out of hospital.

However, Gacy appeared to cope well with the hand he had been dealt. He got himself a place at Northwestern Business College, before getting married and taking over managerial responsibilities of 3 KFC restaurants. He worked hard, made good money, and even fathered two children. He was the very picture of success in both career and family life. He even managed to earn the approval of his once abusive father.

However, beneath the facade, Gacy was heavily involved in the seedier side of life. He would regularly cheat on his wife, and in 1968 he was arrested for persuading a 15-year-old boy to perform oral sex on him. For this he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

During his incarceration, Gacy was assessed by a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with Anti-Social Personality Disorder (ASPD), a pervasive disregard for the rights and welfare of others. ASPD is closely related to psychopathy (some researchers actually consider the two to be synonymous) and is very difficult - if not impossible - to treat, even with modern drugs and psychotherapy. It should have been a warning sign for the authorities, but Gacy was released after serving only 18 months of his 10 year sentence. He relocated to Chicago, started PDM Contractors, and began murdering boys and men.

For his crimes, John Wayne Gacy was given 12 death sentences. He was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994, after spending 14 years on death row in the state of Illinois. His brain was examined after his death. No obvious abnormalities were detected.

You might also be interested in:
Jeffrey Dahmer - The Milwaukee Cannibal, Richard Ramirez - The Night Stalker, Ted Bundy - The Charismatic Killer



Jeffrey Dahmer - The Milwaukee Cannibal

File:Jeffrey Dahmer HS Yearbook.jpg
Image attribution: author unknown [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

On July 22, 1991, two police officers came across a man wandering nervously in the street, wearing a handcuff on one wrist. He claimed that it was put there by a highly disturbed individual who had proceeded to threaten him with a large knife. The police officers quickly found that their handcuff keys did not fit the handcuffs around the man's wrist. So they escorted him back to the house where he had been held hostage. Nothing could prepare them for what they were about to uncover.

They arrived at the house and the front door was opened by 31-year-old Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer. He was polite and courteous to start with, but when the officers found a large knife in his bedroom, as well as a large collection of sexually explicit and incriminating photos, Dahmer became aggressive. He was quickly subdued, and the house was searched more thoroughly. Human skulls and heads were found, as well as human hearts, skeletons, and male genitalia. Under questioning, Jeffrey Dahmer admitted to being one of the most gruesome serial killers of the 20th Century.

Dahmer's disturbing behaviour began in childhood, when he would search for dead animals on the side of the road which he would then take home and dissect. He also began drinking heavily at the age of 14. He had little interest in schoolwork or, apparently, in life in general. He began to realize that he was gay and would often fantasize about dominating males in a sexual manner. One day, whilst still a teenager, he hid in some bushes with a baseball bat, awaiting the arrival of an attractive male who often jogged in the area. He planned to hit the man over the head and make sexual use of his unconscious body. But the man never showed.

Dahmer graduated high school in 1978. But although he was bright, his apathy towards his schoolwork and his persistent alcohol abuse caused his grades to suffer noticeably. Three weeks after graduation, he committed his first murder.

Steven Mark Hicks was hitchhiking his way to a rock concert when he came across Dahmer, who invited Hicks up for a drink. Hicks said yes, and the two men went to Dahmer's residence, where they drank alcohol and engaged in consensual sex. But then Hicks said that he had better be on his way. Not wanting him to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned Hicks to death with a 10 pound dumbbell. He buried the body in a shallow grave.

Hicks was to remain Dahmer's only victim for another 9 years. During this time, Dahmer spent an unproductive term at Ohio State University before enlisting in the army as a medical specialist. He was discharged after 2 years due to his alcohol abuse, and took a job in a sandwich shop to pay the bills (though he spent a large percentage of his earnings on alcohol).

It was only in November of 1987 that he claimed his 2nd victim. He cut up the flesh and pulverized the skeleton with a sledgehammer, disposing of it in the trash. He kept the head for a while, as a souvenir.

Over the next 4 years, Dahmer killed another 15 boys and young men, carrying out his attacks in increasingly gruesome ways. Some of them had acid or boiling water injected into their skulls whilst they were still alive, apparently in an attempt to create living creatures that would be fully under Dahmer's control. Many of the victims had sexual acts performed upon their corpses. Dahmer also consumed the flesh of some of the corpses.

Jeffrey Dahmer was eventually given 16 life sentences (he was never charged with his second murder as there was insufficient evidence). He was sent to the Columbia Correctional Institute, where he became a born-again Christian. He was bludgeoned to death by a fellow inmate on November 28, 1994.

You might also be interested in:
Richard Trenton Chase - The Vampire of Sacramento, Edmund Kemper - The Co-ed Killer, Ted Bundy - The Charismatic Killer



Tuesday 26 November 2013

Ted Bundy - The Charismatic Killer

File:FBI-360-Ted Bundy FBI 10 most wanted photo.jpg
Image attribution: author unknown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

He was intelligent, charming, handsome, and polite. He had a degree in psychology and was studying law. He had worked at a suicide crisis hotline as well as on a number of political campaigns. He was also a necrophiliac serial killer who claimed the lives of at least 30 young women (though many experts believe that the true number of victims is significantly higher, maybe even as many as 100).

Today, Ted Bundy's name has become synonymous with evil. He is often held up as the perfect example of a charming, psychopathic killer with a heart of ice. And when you examine his crimes it isn't hard to see why.

Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946 in Burlington, Vermont to a single woman by the name of Elanor Louise Cowell. He spent his early years believing that his young, unwed mother was actually his sister and that his grandparents were really his parents. It is unclear how much this deception contributed to the creation of the man Ted would later become.

Ted's grandfather was described as being violent and, after a while, his mother managed to escape by marrying a hospital cook, Johnny Culpepper Bundy. Both mother and son took the name Bundy.

Growing up, Ted was a quiet but seemingly well-balanced child who did reasonably well in school. He liked to keep himself to himself and once placed kitchen knives all around his aunt whilst she was sleeping. But all in all, there were no real indications that he would grow up to become anything other than a productive member of society.

In 1966, Bundy enrolled at the University of Washington to study Chinese. It was here that he would meet Stephanie Brooks, apparently the woman of his dreams. They dated for a while, but Stephanie eventually became dissatisfied with what she perceived as Ted's immaturity and lack of ambition. She dumped him, turning his world upside-down in the process. Bundy promptly dropped out of university and fell into a succession of low paying jobs that were far below his true abilities.

After a while, though, something seemed to change in Ted Bundy. He became more focused and confident. He re-enrolled at the University of Washington and threw himself into the study of his new major, psychology, graduating with honors in 1972, before being accepted into law school. He even managed to win back Stephanie Brooks, who could not help but be attracted to this new, ambitious Ted Bundy. It seemed that he now had everything he could possibly want: academic success, the woman of his dreams, and a promising career just around the corner. But appearances can all to often prove deceptive.

Without warning or explanation, Bundy dumped Stephanie Brooks, leaving her heartbroken. He started skipping classes, eventually dropping out of law school altogether. And young women started to go missing.

A large percentage of serial killers have what is referred to as an ideal victim type (IVT). This is a set of characteristics that a killer looks for in his (or, more rarely, her) victims. He or she may focus exclusively on one race or gender, or only target people working in a certain profession (e.g. prostitutes). For Ted Bundy, the ideal victim was a young, attractive, white female. They were often college students, and they often wore their hair parted down the middle - just like Stephanie Brooks (although lots of women wear their hair in this manner, so there is really no real reason to read too much into it).

Ted Bundy would generally approach his victim in a public place and lure them to a more secluded venue by faking injury (to elicit sympathy) or impersonating an authority figure (e.g. a police officer). Once he had them alone, he would overpower and restrain them, taking them elsewhere for the actual killing part. He would dump the bodies somewhere they would be hard to find and would often revisit the corpses to perform various acts of a sexual nature. He would continue to do this until the effects of decomposition made it no longer feasible.

After a while, police linked the disappearances of some of the women together and began to realize that they had a serial killer on the loose. They gathered together what little evidence they had and used it to create a profile of the killer. It described a good-looking male who called himself Ted and was seen driving a Volkswagen Beetle. Several witnesses stated that he had had his arm in a sling.

This wasn't much to go on, but the police released the profile to the public anyway, an act that resulted in them receiving hundreds of tips daily. Most of these proved to be red herrings, but a few people did phone in to name Bundy as a potential suspect. But the police found it hard to believe that such a charming, well-educated man could be the depraved killer they were hunting. Ted Bundy continued to kill, acting with apparent impunity.

On November 8, 1974, however, one of Bundy's intended victims, Carol DaRonch, managed to escape. He had claimed to be a police officer and had convinced her to get into his car. But she soon grew suspicious. A struggle ensued during which DaRonch managed to jump out of the car and run to safety.

9 months later, in August of 1975, Ted Bundy was pulled over by the police whilst driving. They found masks, handcuffs, and a crowbar in his boot and arrested him on suspicion of burglary. Shortly afterwards, DaRonch identified him as the man who had tried to abduct her. He was sentenced to serve 1 to 15 years for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault.

Slowly but surely, Ted Bundy was linked to other murders. He went on trial, choosing to represent himself. This allowed him to move between the courtroom and its library unshackled. When no one was looking, he jumped out of a second story window and escaped to freedom. He would remain at large for about a week.

After being recaptured, his movements were more restricted. But this didn't stop him. 7 months after his first escape he managed to pull himself up through the ceiling above his cell and crawl until he found a way down into the closet of the apartment of the chief jailer (who happened to be out on a date). Once Bundy was confident he was alone, he changed into some of the chief jailer's's clothes and casually walked out the front door.

This time he managed to elude capture for a couple of months. He made his way to Florida (where he was virtually unknown at the time) and tried to turn his back on crime. But fugitives need money and it is hard to get a legitimate job when you are on the FBI's most wanted list. He turned to petty theft to pay the bills.

On January 14, 1978, Bundy entered Florida State University's Chi Omega sorority house and brutally assaulted 4 women, killing two of them and leaving the others seriously injured. Another woman was attacked later that day.

On February 9, 1978, Bundy claimed his last victim - a 12-year-old girl - who he abducted, killed, and mutilated. He was caught a few days later and given 3 death sentences - one for each of the Florida murder victims. He proclaimed his innocence right to the end, but was nonetheless executed on January 24, 1989.

You might also be interested in:
Edmund Kemper - The Co-ed Killer, Gary Ridgway - The Green River Killer, John Wayne Gacy - The Killer Clown