Theodore Robert Bundy didn’t fit the stereotype of mass killers. He was a college graduate with a major in psychology, he loved children, read poetry, rescued a child from drowning, loved the outdoors, respected his parents, was a college honour student, worked with people at a suicide prevention centre and even wrote a rxxx prevention pamphlet for women. Many people believed that Ted Bundy was a victim. A bright young man with potential for a positive future working as a solicitor or a politician was unwilling caught up in a web of horrific events that did not match personality of the charismatic and charming Ted Bundy that his friends and colleagues knew but clearly his friends and colleagues did not know what the real Ted Bundy was capable of. “There was nothing in my background that would lead one to think that I was capable of murder”.
Bundy was arrested on the 16th of August 1975 by a highway patrol officer who was suspicious of him driving through a residential area with no headlights on in the early hours of the morning. Following a search of his car, police found a ski mask, crow bar, hand cuffs and ice pick in the car. It was not long before he was linked to the brutal attempted abduction of Carol DaRonch several months earlier as he matched the description of her kidnapper. Bundy had posed as a police officer who claimed that DaRonch’s car had been broken into before luring the 18-year-old in his car. He handcuffed one of her wrists and held a gun to her head. She had managed to escape, and was one the few victims to survive an attack by the killer.
By November 1975, a summit of investigators in Aspen, Colorado, had linked him to a series of murders across five states. They continued to gather evidence to build a murder case against him while Bundy stood trial for kidnapping Carol. On 1 March 1976, Bundy was found guilty, and was sentenced to between one and 15 years in Utah State Prison. He was given a 90 day evaluation by a psychologist to determine if he was to be sent to prison of put on probation depending on whether or not he was capable of violence. Bundy told the psychologist that when he was 14 years old he found his birth certificate which stated that his father was ‘unknown’. He was born in a home the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont. He was in denial, claiming that this did not bother him. His grandfather was also very abusive. Ted suffered some sort of abuse as a child whether psychologically or physically. The prison psychologist came to the conclusion that Bundy would be a threat to the public and was not suitable for probation.
In October of the same year, Bundy was caught hiding in the prison yard carrying an “escape kit”, including a social security card, road maps and airline schedules. He was placed in solitary confinement.
Within a few weeks, authorities decided they finally had enough evidence and he was charged with the murder of 23-year-old Caryn Campbell. Caryn Campbell had disappeared on 12 January 1975 while walking down a well-lit corridor at an inn at a ski resort near Salt Lake City. Her body was found next to a dirt road a month later.
On 7 June 1977, Bundy was taken to Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen for a preliminary hearing ahead of his murder trial.