Theodore Robert Bundy (born Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American Serial Killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. He was thought by many to be handsome and charismatic, mostly approaching his victims in public areas while posing as a police officer or feigning a disability to get their assistance before knocking them unconscious and taking them to a secondary location. But on a few occasions, he would break into homes at night and bludgeon his victims to death as they slept.
Bundy is associated with Visible Victimology, due to the perception that his victims generally matched a standard physical type: white women with long, dark hair parted in the middle. That trope will usually come with a Shout-Out to Bundy. However, it's worth noting that Bundy denied this, claiming that his only "type" was conventionally attractive women.
While the true number of his victims is ultimately unknown, Bundy ultimately admitted to thirty-six homicides committed across seven states between 1974 and 1978. Experts, however, suspect that his number of victims could be as much as over 100 and that he may have committed his first murder before he was even in his teens, with several feeling Bundy implied this with his offhand quote "Add one digit to that note "and you'll have it." He was eventually given three death sentences, and finally executed by electric chair in Florida State Prison, Raiford on January 24, 1989 at the age of 42.
Works about Ted Bundy:
Literature- The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History
- Defending the Devil: My Story as Ted Bundy's Last Lawyer
- The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy
- The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy
- The Stranger Beside Me
- Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer
- Violent Mind: The 1976 Psychological Assessment of Ted Bundy
Films
- American Boogeyman
- Bundy An American Icon
- The Capture Of The Green River Killer
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile
- No Man of God
- The Riverman
- The Stranger Beside Me
- Ted Bundy
Series
Fictional Depictions of Ted Bundy:
Literature- The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: James Harris, the main antagonist and a savage vampire who's both a serial molester and a Serial Killer, is modeled after Ted Bundy. Harris is a Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon monster who charms his victims and has an all-American handsome face that hides an an all-American monster. The main four heroines also mention The Stranger Beside Me, which is a novel about Bundy and his murders in relation to Harris, and he gets comparisons with Bundy in the book.
- Tenderness: The Serial Killer Eric Poole is based on Bundy, with some elements of Erik Menendez.
Eric is dark-haired and perceived as charming and handsome, killing girls and women with long dark hair (though, unlike Bundy, Eric attacks women/girls who are Hispanic rather than solely white women) and using a cast on his arm to catch them off guard.
Film
Web Original- Made a Good Lawyer
- In New Deal Coalition Retained, Bundy manages to cover up his murders in Washington and goes into politics, becoming a county prosecutor and later Governor of the state before becoming President in 1996. It's all but outright stated that he continues to kill women all throughout this, and when members of his cabinet uncovers evidence of this in 2001, they assassinate him rather than expose his crimes, to avoid tainting the party's image.
