THE PLANET NERD SOCIETY

Bundy was well educated, ran his own business, had been a noted high-school athlete and worked for both the Republican Party and the Washington State Crime Commission. He even became a councilor at a Seattle rape-crisis centre after having been screened for balanced and maturity. He had one significant problem, however: his sexual impulses were so strong that he could not control them. He later said that after his first attacks he had had to wrestle with his conscience, but had subsequently begun to desensitize himself to his crimes.        

From an early age Bundy had been a compulsive masturbator, and after glimpsing a girl undressing through a window he had become a Peeping Tom. He later became obsessed by sadistic pornography. His long time girlfriend, Meg Andres, described how he liked to tie her up with her own stockings before having anal sex with her, but said that she had to put a stop to this sex game when he almost strangled her. For years they maintained a normal sexual relationship while Bundy indulged his perverse craving elsewhere. And what he craved was total control over an anonymous victim, whom he often strangled during sex. Indeed, his attitude to sex was ambivalent: although his victims were always attractive young women, he liked to defile their bodies by stuffing twigs and dirt into their vaginas or sodomising them with aerosol cans or other foreign objects. When they were discovered, some of the bodies of his victims, although partly decomposed, were found to be wearing newly applied make-up and to have freshly washed hair- he had kept them for the purpose of necrophilia.

Bundy began his murderous career in his home town in Seattle. His first victim was Sharon Clarke, into whose apartment he broke while she was asleep before hitting around her  around the head with a metal rod. Although she survived- albeit with a shattered skull- she could not identify her attacker; nor was there any indication of motivation for the attack. Soon afterwards, young women began disappearing from the nearby campus of University of Washington. Six went missing within seven months. The clue to what may have happened to them came from the lake Sammanish resort in Washington State, when a number of women reported having been approached by a young man calling himself Ted. He had had his arm in a sling and had asked them to help lift his sailing boat off the roof of his car. Once in the car park, however, they had found that there was no boat, whereupon Ted had then said that they would have to go to his house to get it. Although most of the women had declined his invitation to accompany him, it seemed that Janice Ott had agreed to go. And few hours later Denise Naslund went missing from the same area; she had been seen with a good looking, dark haired young man. The remains of Janice Ott, Denise Naslund and other unidentified young woman were later found on waste ground. Their bodies had been dismembered and eaten by animals. Witnesses at the University of Washington subsequently said that they had seen a man wearing a sling, and more bodies were also found on wasteland.

On 2 October he abducted Nancy Wilcox after she had left an all-night party. On 18 October he raped and strangled the 18-year-old Melissa Smith, the daughter of the local police chief; her body was found near Salt Lake City. On February in Lake City, Florida, Bundy abducted the 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, sexually assaulted and strangled her, mutilated her sexual organs and dumped her body in a pig shed.

Bundy was now short of money, so he stole some credit cards, along with a car, and did a moonlight flit by his apartment, on which he owed rent. But the stolen car was a giveaway and he was stopped by a highway patrolman, whereupon Bundy admitted that he was wanted in Colorado. For their part the Florida police had begun to link him to the Tallahassee attack. When they tried to take an impression of his teeth he went berserk and took six men to hold his jaw open. The impression was subsequently found to match the teeth marks on the buttocks of the murdered student, Lisa Levy, as well as those on the body of Kimberly Leach.

Bundy was charged with the murder of the child. At his trial he again conducted his own defense, cannily using points of law with which to prolong the court case and charming the jury with his personality. The evidence against him was too strong, however, and Bundy was found guilty. He managed to postpone his execution for another ten years. Eventually, when all the legal avenues had been exhausted he broke down and confessed to nearly 40 murders, “I deserve to die he said”, he said.

At seven am on 24 January 1989, Bundy went to the electric chair. He is said to have died with a smile on his face on death row Bundy had made a detailed confession, thereby aiding a number of academics who were studying serial killers. He had also received sacks full of mail from young women whose letters dwelt on various cruel and painful ways in which to make love- it seems that even on death row, he had not lost his charm.