Running Head: TED BUNDY SERIAL KILLER 1
Ted Bundy: A Serial Killer That Charmed Women to Death
Foundations of Criminal Justice
3 March 2016
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What are appearances? What are personalities? What makes people do the things they
do? What makes people do bad things? What roles do the criminal justice system play in the
crimes people commit? Every person has a different personality and things that make them tick;
so does the criminal justice system. The criminal justice system has had to deal with a variety of
people; some minor criminals and some very serious criminals. One of these serious criminals
the criminal justice system has had to deal with was the serial killer, Ted Bundy.
What started Ted Bundy’s obsession and instigated his criminal desires? Ted Bundy,
originally Theodore Robert Cowell, was born November 24, 1946 in Burlington, Vermont. His
life was very complicated from the day he was born. He was born illegitimately at a home for
unwed mothers. After the birth, Bundy’s mother, Eleanor Louise Cowell, brought Ted to
Philadelphia where her parents then proceeded to adopt Ted as their child to hide the illegitimate
birth, raising Ted to believe Eleanor was his sister (Editors). It was said that Ted’s grandfather
swung neighbor’s cats by their tail and would beat the family dog. Early exposure to violence
like that may have influenced Ted to think violence and abuse of animals and people was
acceptable (Jamet, 2012. Ted first started to become interested in knives when he was about
three years old. This was just the start to his disturbing behaviors. According to Jamet (2012),
“his grandmother once woke up surrounded by kitchen knives, to see the three-year-old Ted
smiling up at her”. With his unusual interest in the grotesque when he was young, Bundy’s
darker character surfaced when he was a teenager, particularly when he was envious of others
and would pick out items in their home that he wanted to steal. The dark side of his character
would show when he spent his time reading pornographic magazines and gruesome books. Ted,
overall, suffered from anti-social personality disorder, as well as, criminal psychopathy. Due to
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his rejection, anger, and frustration as a child from being illegitimate, it contributed to him being
kill driven (Jamet 2012).
Though most serial killers typically suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder, “Hervey
Cleckley identified 16 characteristics of a typical Psychopath, many appearing to be a trait of
Ted: superficial charm and good intelligence, pathological egocentricity, untruthfulness and
insincerity, manipulative, lack of remorse or guilt and impulsive” (Jamet, 2012). Ted Bundy’s
use of these psychopath characteristics is what made him into the serial killer he was. Ted fell
under the category of two different type of serial killer: sexually sadistic serial killer and
necrophiliac serial killer. Some common characteristics of these two types of serial killers are
perversion, lack of conscience, and willingness to sacrifice others lives for one’s own sexual
pleasure. Ted never wanted anyone to know that he was a necrophile, though eventually, he did
