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Old Sparky, the electric chair used at Sing Sing prison

Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric chair, is an execution method originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes placed on the body. This execution method was created by employees of Thomas Edison, and has been used only in the United States and, for a period of several decades,^[1] in the Philippines (its first use there in 1924 under American occupation, last in 1976).

Historically, once the condemned person was attached to the chair, various cycles (differing in voltage and duration) of alternating current would be passed through the individual's body, in order to cause fatal damage to the internal organs (including the brain). The first jolt of electric current was designed to cause immediate unconsciousness and brain death;^{[citation needed]} the second one was designed to cause fatal damage to the vital organs. Death was frequently caused by electrical overstimulation of the heart.

Although in the United States the electric chair has become a symbol of the death penalty, its use is in decline due to the rise of lethal injection, which is widely believed to be a more humane method of execution. Although some states still maintain electrocution as a method of execution, today it is only maintained as a secondary method that may be chosen over lethal injection at the request of the prisoner. As of 2010, electrocution is an optional form of execution in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Virginia.^[2] They allow the prisoner to choose lethal injection as an alternative method. In the states of Kentucky and Tennessee, the electric chair has been retired except for those whose capital crimes were committed prior to legislated dates in 1998 (Kentucky: March 31, 1998; Tennessee: December 31, 1998) and who chose electrocution. In both states, inmates who do not choose electrocution or inmates who committed their crimes after the designated date are killed by lethal injection. The electric chair is an alternate form of execution approved for potential use in Arkansas and Oklahoma if other forms of execution are found unconstitutional in the state at the time of execution. It is the sole method of execution in Vermont, where treason is the only capital crime. On February 8, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court determined that execution via the electric chair was a "cruel and unusual punishment" under the State's constitution. This brought executions of this type to an end in Nebraska, the only remaining state to retain electrocution as its sole method of execution for murder.^[3]

History[link]

Early development[link]

Electric chair history and laws in the United States
Color key:

  Secondary method only

  Has previously used electric chair, but does not today

  Has never used electric chair

In 1881,^{[verification needed]} the state of New York established a committee to determine a new, more humane method of execution to replace hanging. Alfred P. Southwick, a member of the committee, developed the idea of running electric current through a condemned man after hearing a case of how relatively painlessly and quickly a drunk man died due to touching exposed power lines.^[4] As Southwick was a dentist accustomed to performing procedures on subjects in chairs, his electrical device appeared in the form of a chair^{[original research?][citation needed]} to restrain the inmate while being electrocuted.

The first electric chair was produced by Harold P. Brown and Arthur Kennelly. Brown worked as an employee of Thomas Edison, hired for the purpose of researching electrocution and developing the electric chair. Kennelly, Edison's chief engineer at the West Orange facility was assigned to work with Brown on the project.^[5] Since Brown and Kennelly worked for Edison and Edison promoted their work, the development of the electric chair is often erroneously credited to Edison himself.

Brown intended to use alternating current (AC), then emerging as a potent rival to direct current (DC), which was further along in commercial development.^{[citation needed]} The decision to use AC was partly driven by Edison's claim that AC was more lethal than DC.^{[citation needed]}

To prove the danger of AC electricity and its suitability for executions, Brown and Edison publicly killed many animals with AC for the press in hopes of associating alternating current with electrical death in the midst of the current wars with George Westinghouse. It was at these events that the term "electrocution" was coined. The term "electrocution" originally referred only to electrical execution (from which it is a portmanteau word), and not to accidental electrical deaths. However, since no English word was available for the latter process, the word "electrocution" eventually took over as a description of all circumstances of electrical death with the new rise of commercial electricity. Most of their experiments were conducted at Edison's West Orange, New Jersey, laboratory in 1888. The demonstrations of electrocution apparently had their intended effects, and the committee adopted the AC electric chair in 1889.^[6]

First executions[link]

The first person to be executed by the electric chair was William Kemmler in New York's Auburn Prison on August 6, 1890; the "state electrician" was Edwin F. Davis. The first 17-second passage of current through Kemmler caused unconsciousness, but failed to stop his heart and breathing. The attending physicians, Edward Charles Spitzka and Charles F. Macdonald, came forward to examine Kemmler. After confirming Kemmler was still alive, Spitzka reportedly called out, "Have the current turned on again, quick, no delay." The generator needed time to re-charge, however. In the second attempt, Kemmler was shocked with 2,000 volts. Blood vessels under the skin ruptured and bled, and the areas around the electrodes singed. The entire execution took about eight minutes. George Westinghouse later commented that "they would have done better using an axe,"^[7] and a witnessing reporter claimed that it was "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging."^[8]

The first woman to be executed in the electric chair was Martha M. Place, executed at Sing Sing Prison on March 20, 1899.^[9]

Adoption[link]

The former State of Louisiana execution chamber at the Red Hat Cell Block in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, West Feliciana Parish. The electric chair is a replica of the original.

The electric chair was adopted by Ohio (1897), Massachusetts (1900), New Jersey (1906) and Virginia (1908), and soon became the prevalent method of execution in the United States, replacing hanging. Most of the states that currently use or have used the electric chair lie east of the Mississippi River. The electric chair remained the most prominent execution method until the mid-1980s when lethal injection became widely accepted as an easier and more humane method for conducting judicial executions.

Other countries appear to have contemplated using the method, sometimes for special reasons. Minutes of the British War Cabinet released in 2006 show that in December 1942, Winston Churchill proposed that Adolf Hitler — if caught — should be summarily executed in an electric chair, obtained from the USA. 'This man is the mainspring of evil. Instrument — electric chair, for gangsters, no doubt available on lease-lend'.^[10]

A number of states still allow the condemned person to choose between electrocution and lethal injection. In all, twelve inmates nationwide — six in Virginia, three in South Carolina and one in Arizona, Arkansas and Tennessee — have opted for electrocution over lethal injection. The last use of the chair was on March 18, 2010, when Paul Warner Powell was electrocuted in Virginia. He elected this method.

After 1966, electrocutions ceased for a time in the USA, but the method continued in the Philippines.^[1] A well-publicized triple execution took place in May 1972, when Jaime Jose, Basilio Pineda and Edgardo Aquino were electrocuted for the 1967 abduction and gang-rape of the young actress Maggie de la Riva.

Notable persons and events[link]

Notable deaths by electric chair include: Leon Czolgosz, Bruno Hauptmann, Hans B. Schmidt, Harry Pierpont, Giuseppe Zangara, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Lepke Buchalter, Anna Marie Hahn, Donald Henry Gaskins, Albert Fish, Charles Starkweather, Gerald Stano and Ted Bundy. There was a botched electrocution at Sing Sing in 1903: Fred Van Wormer was electrocuted and pronounced dead, but upon arrival to the autopsy room, Wormer began breathing once again. The executioner, who had gone home, was called back to re-electrocute Wormer; upon his return, Wormer had officially died. Nonetheless, Wormer's corpse was set into the chair again and electrocuted with 1700 volts for thirty seconds.

Maria Barbella was the first woman sentenced to death by the electric chair;^[11] however, she was released on appeal.

The electrocution of housewife Ruth Snyder at Sing Sing on the evening of January 12, 1928, for the March 1927 murder of her husband was made famous when news photographer Tom Howard, working for the New York Daily News, smuggled a hidden camera into the death chamber and photographed her in the electric chair as the current was turned on. The photograph was a front-page sensation the following morning, and remains one of the most famous newspaper photographs of all time.^[12]

A record was set on July 13, 1928, when seven men were executed consecutively in the electric chair at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. In 1942, six Germans convicted of espionage in the Quirin case were killed in one day in the District of Columbia jail electric chair.^[13]

James French was executed on August 10, 1966, the last person electrocuted until 1979. French was the first person executed in Oklahoma since Richard Dare was electrocuted June 1, 1963 and the only person executed in 1966.

On May 25, 1979, John Arthur Spenkelink became the first electrocuted person after the Gregg v. Georgia decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1976. He was the first person to be executed in the United States in this manner since 1966. However, the last person to be executed via the electric chair without the choice of an alternative method was Lynda Lyon Block on May 10, 2002 in Alabama.

Decline[link]

The use of the electric chair has declined as legislators sought what they believed to be more humane methods of execution. Lethal injection became the most popular method, aided by media reports of botched electrocutions in the early 1980s.

The electric chair has been criticized because of several instances in which the subjects were killed only after being subjected to multiple electric shocks. This led to a call for ending of the practice because many see it as cruel and unusual punishment.^[14] Trying to address such concerns, Nebraska introduced a new electrocution protocol in 2004, which called for administration of a 15-second-long application of 2,450 volts of electricity; after a 15-minute wait, an official then checks for signs of life. New concerns raised regarding the 2004 protocol resulted, in April 2007, in the ushering in of the current Nebraska protocol, calling for a 20-second-long application of 2,450 volts of electricity. (Prior to the 2004 protocol change, an initial eight-second application of 2,450 volts was administered, followed by a one-second pause, then a 22-second application at 480 volts. After a 20-second break, the cycle was repeated three more times.)

There have been incidents of a person's head on fire; or of a burnt electrical transformer.^[15] In 1946, the electric chair failed to execute Willie Francis, who reportedly shrieked "take it off! Let me breathe!" as he was being executed. It turned out that the portable electric chair had been improperly set up by an intoxicated trustee. A case was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court (Francis v. Resweber),^[16] with lawyers for the condemned arguing that although Francis did not die, he had, in fact, been executed. The argument was rejected on the basis that re-execution did not violate the double jeopardy clause of the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution, and Francis was returned to the electric chair and successfully executed in 1947.

Recorded incidents of botched electrocutions were prevalent after the national moratorium ended January 17, 1977; two in Alabama, three in Florida, one in Georgia, one in Indiana and three in Virginia. All five states now have lethal injection as the default method if a choice is not made.

As of 2008^[update], the only places in the world which still reserve the electric chair as an option for execution are the U.S. states of Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. (Arkansas and Oklahoma laws provide for its use should lethal injection ever be held to be unconstitutional.) Inmates in the other states must select either it or lethal injection. In the state of Florida, on July 8, 1999, Allen Lee Davis convicted of murder was executed in the Florida electric chair "Old Sparky". Davis' face was bloodied and photographs taken, which were later posted on the Internet. The 1997 execution of Pedro Medina in Florida created controversy when flames burst from the inmate's head. Lethal injection has been the primary method of execution in the state of Florida since 2008. On February 15, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court declared execution by electrocution to be "cruel and unusual punishment" prohibited by the Nebraska Constitution.^[17]

Although the use of electrocution to administer death has waned in recent years, it is not unheard of. Paul Warner Powell, who was electrocuted in Virginia on March 18, 2010, is the most recent individual to choose electrocution over lethal injection.^[18]

See also[link]

Criminal justice portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Electric chairs

• Capital punishment
• Electric shock

Nicknames of various electric chairs

• Yellow Mama
• Old Sparky
• Gruesome Gertie
• Old Smokey

State Electricians

• Edwin F. Davis
• Robert G. Elliott
• Dow Hover

References[link]

External links[link]

• History of the electric chair
• Another electric chair history from "Before the Needles". Includes photos of almost all the chairs^{[dead link]}
• State of Louisiana Ex Rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.S. 459 (1947)
• Film reenactment of the execution of Leon Czolgosz in the electric chair, early film from 1901, Library of Congress archives (.rm format; offline viewable)
• CapitalPunishmentUk.org
• Electric Chair at Sing Sing, a 1900 photograph by William M. Vander Weyde, accompanied by a poem by Jared Carter.

Daryl Keith Holton (November 23, 1961 – September 12, 2007)^[1] was an American convicted child killer, executed by electrocution by the state of Tennessee on September 12, 2007 in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

Crime[link]

Holton, a Gulf War Veteran, was 36 years old when he shot his three young sons and their half-sister (Stephen Edward Holton (12), Brent Holton (10), Eric Holton (6), and Kayla Marie Holton (4)) with a Chinese-made semi-automatic rifle on November 30, 1997, at the garage where he worked in Shelbyville, Tennessee. Holton was divorced, and his ex-wife had custody of the children. About an hour later, Holton turned himself in to the Shelbyville police; he told investigators that he had killed the children because "families should stay together; a father should be with his children." He said he had also planned to kill his ex-wife and then himself, but had changed his mind.^[2][3]

Trial[link]

At his June 1999 trial, Holton declined to testify on his own behalf, although his attorney sought to convince the jury that Holton was mentally incompetent at the time of the killings. Holton was found guilty and sentenced to death.

During his imprisonment, Holton became an amateur legal expert, and he took steps to ignore the automatic and voluntary appeals process afforded to all condemned men and women under state and U.S. law. He also declined to cooperate with the state- or federally-appointed capital defenders who sought to offer him legal assistance and counsel. For this reason, he is often included among the group described as death row "volunteers."^[4]

Execution[link]

He made headlines when he chose to die in the electric chair, rather than by lethal injection, which is now the primary method of execution in Tennessee. Death-row inmates who committed their capital crime when the electric chair was still the official execution method are permitted to choose between the two methods.^[3] Holton was the first person to be executed by electrocution in Tennessee in 47 years.

Moments before his execution, prison warden Ricky Bell asked Holton if he had any final words. He replied: "Two words: I do".^[2] He ate the regular prison meal before his execution which consisted of riblets on a bun, mixed vegetables, baked beans, white cake with white icing and iced tea.

Holton's was the fourth execution in Tennessee since 2000 and first by the electric chair since 1960 (the last Pre-Furman execution). As of the present time, this has been the only use of Tennessee's electric chair after it was retrofitted by now-discredited Holocaust denier Fred A. Leuchter. Holton was the third death row inmate executed under administration of Governor Phil Bredesen. He was also the first American put to death by electrocution since July 20, 2006. The last was Brandon Wayne Hedrick in Virginia, who also chose electrocution over injection.

Controversy[link]

His case raised some controversy because of rumors about his history of mental illness.^[5] Whilst execution of the mentally retarded was prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court case Atkins v. Virginia, the execution of the mentally ill has never been held to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Holton, his motives, and the ethics of his execution are examined in the documentary film Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead.

See also[link]

• List of individuals executed in Tennessee
• Capital punishment in the United States

External links[link]

• Trailer for Robert Blecker Wants Me Dead
• http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/holton1097.htm

References[link]

Ted Bundy
In custody, Florida, July 27, 1978 (State Archives of Florida)
Background information
Birth name	Theodore Robert Cowell
Also known as	Kenneth Misner Chris Hagen Richard Burton Officer Roseland Rolf Miller[1]
Born	(1946-11-24)November 24, 1946 Burlington, Vermont
Died	January 24, 1989(1989-01-24) (aged 42) Florida State Prison, Bradford County, Florida
Cause of death	Execution by electric chair
Conviction	Murder, Aggravated kidnapping
Sentence	Death
Killings
Number of victims	30–100+
Country	United States
State(s)	Washington, Utah, Florida, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho, California
Date apprehended	August 16, 1975; escaped December 30, 1977; re-apprehended February 15, 1978

Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy (born Theodore Robert Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer, rapist, kidnapper, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s, and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed shortly before his execution to 30 homicides committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978; the true total remains unknown, and could be much higher.

Bundy was regarded as handsome and charismatic by his young female victims, traits he exploited in winning their trust. He typically approached them in public places and feigned injury or disability, or impersonated an authority figure, before overpowering and assaulting them at a more secluded location. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes for hours at a time, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made further interaction impossible. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept some of the severed heads in his apartment for a period of time as mementos. On a few occasions he simply broke into dwellings in the dead of night and bludgeoned victims as they slept.

Initially charged in Utah in 1975 and convicted of aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault, Bundy became linked to a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in multiple states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and committed multiple additional assaults, including three murders, before his ultimate recapture in Florida in 1978. He received three death sentences in two separate trials for the Florida homicides.

Ted Bundy died in the electric chair at Raiford Prison in Starke, Florida on January 24, 1989. Biographer Ann Rule described him as "... a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after."^[2] He once called himself "..the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet."^[3][4] Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, agreed. "Ted," she wrote, "was the very definition of heartless evil."^[5]

Early life[link]

Childhood[link]

Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell at the Elizabeth Lund Home For Unwed Mothers (now the Lund Family Center^[6]) in Burlington, Vermont on November 24, 1946, to Eleanor Louise Cowell (known for most of her life as Louise). The identity of his father has never been determined with certainty. His birth certificate assigns paternity to a salesman and Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall,^[7] but Louise later claimed that she was seduced by "a sailor" whose name may have been Jack Worthington.^[8] Her family expressed suspicions that the father may actually have been Louise's own violent, abusive father, Samuel Cowell.^[9] For the first three years of his life Bundy lived in the Philadelphia home of his maternal grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, who raised him as their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied illegitimate birth at the time. Family, friends, and even young Ted were told that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. Eventually he discovered the truth, but how and when is not clear. He told his girlfriend that a cousin showed him a copy of his birth certificate after calling him a "bastard",^[10] but he told biographers Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth that he found the certificate himself.^[11] Biographer and true crime writer Ann Rule, who knew Bundy personally, believes that he tracked down his original birth record in Vermont in 1969.^[12] Bundy expressed a lifelong resentment toward his mother for lying about his true parentage and leaving him to discover it for himself.^[13]

While Bundy spoke warmly of his grandparents in some interviews^[14] and told Ann Rule that he "identified with", "respected", and "clung to" his grandfather,^[15] he and other family members told attorneys in 1987 that Samuel Cowell was a tyrannical bully and a bigot who hated blacks, Italians, Catholics, and Jews, beat his wife and the family dog, and swung neighborhood cats by their tails. He once threw Louise's younger sister Julia down a flight of stairs for oversleeping.^[16] He sometimes spoke aloud to unseen presences.^[17] At least once he flew into a violent rage when the question of Ted's paternity was raised.^[16] Bundy described his grandmother as a timid and obedient woman who periodically underwent electroconvulsive therapy for depression^[17] and feared leaving their house toward the end of her life.^[18] Ted occasionally exhibited disturbing behavior, even at that early age. Julia recalled awakening one day from a nap to find herself surrounded by knives from the Cowell kitchen; her three-year-old nephew was standing by the bed, smiling.^[19]

In 1950 Louise changed her surname from Cowell to Nelson, dropped her first name Eleanor,^[20] and at the urging of multiple family members,^[21] left Philadelphia with her son to live with cousins Alan and Jane Scott in Tacoma, Washington. In 1951 Louise met Johnny Culpepper Bundy, a hospital cook, at an adult singles night at Tacoma's First Methodist Church.^[22] They married later that year and Johnny Bundy formally adopted Ted.^[22] Johnny and Louise conceived four children of their own, and though Johnny Bundy tried to include his stepson in camping trips and other family activities, Ted remained distant from his stepfather. He later complained to his girlfriend that Johnny wasn't his real father, "wasn't very bright", and "didn't make much money."^[23]

Bundy's Tacoma recollections varied from biographer to biographer: To Michaud and Aynesworth he described roaming his neighborhood, picking through trash barrels in search of pictures of naked women.^[24] To Polly Nelson he spoke of perusing detective magazines, crime novels, and true crime documentaries for stories involving sexual violence, particularly when illustrated with pictures of dead or maimed bodies;^[25] yet in a letter to Rule he asserted that he "never, ever read fact-detective magazines, and shuddered at the thought" that anyone would.^[26] To Michaud, he described consuming large quantities of alcohol and "canvass[ing] the community" late at night in search of undraped windows where he could observe women undressing, or "whatever [else] could be seen."^[27]

Accounts of his social life also varied: He told Michaud and Aynsworth that he "chose to be alone" as an adolescent because he was unable to understand interpersonal relationships.^[28] Though he maintained a façade of social activity in school, he claimed he had no natural sense of how to develop friendships. "I didn't know what made people want to be friends," he said. "I didn't know what underlay social interactions."^[29] However, Bundy's friends from Woodrow Wilson High School told Rule that he was "well known and well liked" there, "a medium-sized fish in a large pond."^[30]

His only significant athletic avocation was snow skiing, which he pursued enthusiastically using stolen equipment and forged lift tickets.^[11] During high school he was arrested at least twice on suspicion of burglary and auto theft. When he reached age 18 the details of the incidents were expunged from his record, as is customary in Washington and most other states.^[31]

University years[link]

After graduating from high school in 1965 Bundy spent a year at the University of Puget Sound (UPS) before transferring to the University of Washington (UW) in 1966 to study Chinese.^[32] In 1967 he became romantically involved with a UW classmate who is identified in Bundy biographies by several pseudonyms, most commonly Stephanie Brooks.^[33] In early 1968 he dropped out of college and worked at a series of minimum-wage jobs. He also volunteered at the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller's presidential campaign,^[34] and in August, attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami as a Rockefeller delegate.^[35] Shortly thereafter Brooks ended their relationship and returned to her family home in California, frustrated by what she described as Bundy's immaturity and lack of ambition. Psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis would later pinpoint this crisis as "... probably the pivotal time in his development."^[36] Devastated by Brooks' rejection, Bundy traveled to Colorado and then further east, visiting relatives in Arkansas and Philadelphia, and enrolling for one semester at Temple University.^[37] It was at this time in early 1969, Rule believes, that Bundy visited the office of birth records in Burlington and confirmed his true parentage.^[37][38]

Back in Washington in the fall of 1969, he met Elizabeth Kloepfer (identified in Bundy literature as Meg Anders, Beth Archer, or Liz Kendall), a divorcée from Ogden, Utah who worked as a secretary at the University of Washington School of Medicine.^[39] Their stormy relationship would continue well past his initial incarceration in Utah in 1976. In mid-1970, now focused and goal-oriented, he re-enrolled at UW, this time as a psychology major. He became an honor student, well-regarded by his professors.^[40] In 1971 he took a job at Seattle's Suicide Hotline crisis center. There he met and worked alongside Rule, a former Seattle police officer and aspiring crime writer who would later write one of the definitive Bundy biographies, The Stranger Beside Me. Rule saw nothing disturbing in Bundy's personality at the time, describing him as "kind, solicitous, and empathetic".^[41]

After graduating from UW in 1972,^[42] Bundy joined Governor Daniel J. Evans' reelection campaign.^[43] Posing as a college student, he shadowed Evans's opponent, former governor Albert Rosellini, recording his stump speeches for analysis by Evans' team.^[44][45] After Evans' reelection he was hired as an assistant to Ross Davis, Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. Davis thought well of Bundy, describing him as "smart, aggressive ... and a believer in the system."^[46] In early 1973, despite mediocre Law School Admission Test scores, Bundy was accepted into the law schools of UPS and the University of Utah on the strength of letters of recommendation from Evans, Davis, and several UW psychology professors.^[47][48]

During a trip to California on Republican Party business in the summer of 1973, Bundy came back into the life of ex-girlfriend Brooks, who marveled at his transformation into a serious, dedicated professional, seemingly on the cusp of a distinguished legal and political career. He continued to date Kloepfer as well; neither woman was aware of the other's existence. In the fall of 1973 Bundy matriculated at UPS Law School^[49] and continued courting Brooks, who flew to Seattle several times to stay with him. They discussed marriage; at one point he introduced her to Davis as his fiancée.^[23] In January 1974, however, he abruptly broke off all contact; her phone calls and letters went unreturned. Finally reaching him by phone a month later, Brooks demanded to know why Bundy had unilaterally ended their relationship without explanation. In a flat, calm voice, he replied, "Stephanie, I have no idea what you mean ..." and hung up. She never heard from him again.^[50] Later he explained, "I just wanted to prove to myself that I could have married her."^[51] At about the same time Bundy began skipping classes at law school, and by April he had stopped attending entirely,^[52] as young women began to disappear in the Pacific Northwest.^[53]

First series of murders[link]

Washington, Oregon[link]

There is no definitive consensus on when and where Bundy began killing women. Bundy told different stories to different people, and he refused to divulge the specifics of his earliest crimes, even as he confessed in graphic detail to dozens of later murders in the days preceding his execution.^[54] He told attorney Polly Nelson that he attempted his first kidnapping in 1969 in Ocean City, New Jersey, but did not kill anyone until sometime in 1971 in Seattle.^[55] He told psychologist Art Norman that he killed two women in Atlantic City in 1969 while visiting family in Philadelphia.^[56][57] In an interview with King County Detective Robert D. Keppel he mentioned a homicide in 1972^[58] and another in 1973 involving a hitchhiker near Tumwater, Washington, but refused to elaborate.^[59] Rule and Keppel believe he may have started killing as a teenager.^[60][61] Circumstantial evidence suggests that he abducted and killed eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr of Tacoma in 1961 when he was 14 years old, an allegation he denied repeatedly.^[58] Bundy committed his earliest documented homicides in 1974 when he was 27. By then he had (by his own admission) mastered the skills needed—in the era before DNA profiling—to leave minimal incriminating evidence at a crime scene.^[62]

Shortly after midnight on January 4, 1974—around the same time he terminated his relationship with Brooks—Bundy entered the basement bedroom of 18-year-old Joni Lenz (a pseudonym), a dancer and student at UW. He bludgeoned her with a metal rod from her bed frame and then sexually assaulted her with a speculum, causing extensive internal injuries.^[63] She remained unconscious for 10 days but survived the attack with permanent brain damage.^[64][65] A month later, again late at night, Bundy broke into the room of UW student Lynda Ann Healy, who broadcast Seattle's radio weather reports for skiers each morning. He beat her unconscious, dressed her in bluejeans, a white blouse, and boots, and carried her away.^[66]

Female college students continued disappearing at the rate of about one per month. In March, Donna Gail Manson, a 19-year-old student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, 60 miles (97 km) southwest of Seattle, left her dormitory for a jazz concert on campus but never arrived. In April, Susan Elaine Rancourt disappeared while on her way to a movie after an evening advisors' meeting at Central Washington State College (now Central Washington University) in Ellensburg, 110 miles (180 km) southeast of Seattle.^[67][68] Two female Central Washington students later came forward to report encounters—one on the night of Rancourt's disappearance, the other three nights earlier—with a man wearing an arm sling, asking for help carrying a load of books to his brown or tan Volkswagen Beetle.^[69][70] On May 6, Roberta Kathleen Parks left her dormitory at Oregon State University in Corvallis, 260 miles (420 km) south of Seattle, to have coffee with friends at the Student Union Building. She never arrived.^[71]

Detectives from the Crimes Against Persons Unit of the Seattle Police Department grew increasingly concerned. There was no significant physical evidence, and the missing women had little in common, apart from being young, attractive, white college students with long hair parted in the middle.^[72] On June 1, Brenda Carol Ball, 22, disappeared after leaving the Flame Tavern in Burien, Washington near Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. She was last seen talking in the parking lot to a brown-haired man with his arm in a sling.^[73] In the early hours of June 11, UW student Georgeann Hawkins vanished while walking down the brightly lit alley between her boyfriend's dormitory residence and her sorority house. The next morning three Seattle homicide detectives and a criminalist combed the entire alleyway on their hands and knees, finding nothing.^[74] After Hawkins's disappearance was publicized, witnesses came forward to report seeing a man that night in the alley behind a nearby dormitory, on crutches with a leg cast, struggling to carry a briefcase.^[75] One woman said the man asked her to help him carry the case to his car, a light-brown Volkswagen Beetle.^[76]

During this period Bundy was working at the Washington State Department of Emergency Services (DES) in Olympia—a government agency involved in the search for the missing women. There he met and dated Carole Ann Boone, a twice-divorced mother of two who, six years later, would play an important role in the final phase of his life.^[77]

Ted Bundy's 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, the venue for many of his crimes, on display at the National Museum of Crime & Punishment^[78][79]

Reports of the six missing women and Lenz's brutal beating appeared prominently in newspapers and on television throughout Washington and Oregon.^[80] Fear spread among the population; hitchhiking by young women dropped sharply.^[81] While pressure mounted on law enforcement agencies,^[82] the paucity of physical evidence severely hampered them. Police could not provide reporters with the little information that was available for fear of compromising the investigation.^[83] Further similarities between the victims were noted, however: the disappearances all took place at night, usually near ongoing construction work, within a week of midterm or final exams; all of the victims were wearing slacks or blue jeans; and at most crime scenes there were sightings of a man wearing a cast or a sling and driving a brown Volkswagen Beetle.^[84]

The Pacific Northwest murder string culminated on July 14 with the broad-daylight abductions of two women from a crowded beach at Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah, 20 miles (32 km) east of Seattle. Five female witnesses described a handsome young man wearing a white tennis outfit with his left arm in a sling, speaking with a light accent, perhaps Canadian, perhaps British. Introducing himself as "Ted", he asked their help in unloading a sailboat from his tan- or bronze-colored Volkswagen Beetle. Four refused; one accompanied him as far as his car, saw that there was no sailboat, and fled. Three additional witnesses saw him approach Janice Anne Ott, 23, a probation case worker at the King County Juvenile Court, with the sailboat story, and watched her leave the beach in his company.^[85] About four hours later Denise Naslund, an 18-year-old woman who was studying to become a computer programmer, left a picnic to go to the restroom and never returned.^[86] Bundy later told Stephen Michaud that Ott was still alive when he returned with Naslund—and that one was forced to watch as the other was murdered^[87][88]—an assertion that he would retract on the eve of his execution.^[89]

King County detectives, finally armed with a detailed description of their suspect as well his car, posted fliers throughout the Seattle area. A composite sketch was printed in regional newspapers and broadcast on local television stations. Elizabeth Kloepfer, Ann Rule, a DES employee, and a UW psychology professor all recognized the profile, the sketch, and the car, and reported Ted Bundy as a possible suspect;^[90] but the police, who were receiving up to 200 tips per day,^[91] initially thought it unlikely that a clean-cut law student with no adult criminal record could be the perpetrator.^[92]

On September 6 two grouse hunters stumbled across the skeletal remains of Ott and Naslund near a service road in Issaquah, 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Lake Sammamish State Park.^[93] An extra femur and several vertebrae found on the site were later identified by Bundy as belonging to Georgeann Hawkins.^[94] Six months later the skulls and mandibles of Healy, Rancourt, Parks, and Ball were found on Taylor Mountain (where Bundy frequently hiked), just east of Issaquah. All bore extensive damage from a blunt instrument.^[95]

Idaho, Utah, Colorado[link]

In August 1974 Bundy received a second acceptance from the University of Utah Law School and moved to Salt Lake City, leaving Kloepfer in Seattle. While he called Kloepfer often, he dated "at least a dozen" other women.^[96] As he studied the first-year law curriculum a second time, "he was devastated to find out that the other [law] students had something, some intellectual capacity, that he did not. He found the classes completely incomprehensible. 'It was a great disappointment to me,' he said."^[97] Sometime during the year he lived in Utah he was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, although he was not an active participant in services and ignored most church restrictions.^[98][99] (When asked his religious preference after his arrest, Bundy answered "Methodist", the religion of his childhood.^[100])

A new string of homicides began the following month with two that went undiscovered until Bundy confessed to them shortly before his execution. On September 2 he raped and strangled a still-unidentified hitchhiker in Idaho, then returned the next day to photograph and dismember the corpse.^[101][102] On October 2 he seized 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox in Holladay, a suburb of Salt Lake City,^[103] and dragged her into a wooded area, intending to "de-escalate" his pathological urges, he said, by raping and releasing her. However, he strangled her—by accident, he claimed—in the process of trying to silence her.^[104] Wilcox was buried, he said, near Capital Reef National Park, some 200 miles (320 km) south of Holladay, but her remains were never found.^[105]

On October 18 Melissa Smith, the 17-year-old daughter of the police chief of Midvale, another Salt Lake City suburb, disappeared after leaving a pizza parlor. Her nude body was found in a nearby mountainous area nine days later. Postmortem examination indicated that she may have remained alive for up to seven days following her disappearance.^[106][107] On October 31, 25 miles (40 km) south in Lehi, Laura Ann Aime, also 17, disappeared after leaving a café just after midnight.^[108] Her naked body was found by hikers 9 miles (14 km) to the northeast in American Fork Canyon^[109] on Thanksgiving Day. Both women had been beaten, raped, sodomized, and strangled with nylon stockings.^[110][111] Years later Bundy described his postmortem rituals with Smith's and Aime's remains, including hair shampooing and application of makeup.^[112][113]

On a rainy November evening in Murray, Utah, Bundy approached 18-year-old telephone operator Carol DaRonch at a mall less than a mile from the Midvale restaurant where Melissa Smith was last seen. He identified himself as "Officer Roseland" of the Murray Police Department, told DaRonch that someone had attempted to break into her car, and asked her to accompany him to the station to file a complaint. When DaRonch pointed out that Bundy was driving on a road that did not lead to the police station, he immediately pulled to the shoulder and attempted to handcuff her. During their struggle he inadvertently fastened both handcuffs to the same wrist, and DaRonch was able to open the car door and escape.^[114] Later that evening Debra Kent, a 17-year-old student at Viewmont High School in Bountiful, 19 miles (31 km) north of Murray, disappeared after leaving a theater production at the school to pick up her brother.^[115] The school's drama teacher and a student told police that "a stranger" had asked each of them to come out to the parking lot to identify a car. Another student later saw the same man pacing in the rear of the auditorium, and the drama teacher spotted him again shortly before the end of the play.^[116] Investigators later found a key outside the auditorium which unlocked the handcuffs taken off Carol DaRonch.^[117]

In November Elizabeth Kloepfer, having read that young women were disappearing in towns surrounding Salt Lake City, called King County police a second time. Detective Randy Hergesheimer of the Major Crimes division interviewed her in detail. By then, Bundy had risen considerably on the King County hierarchy of suspicion, but the Lake Sammamish witness considered most reliable by detectives failed to pick him from a photo lineup.^[118] In December, Kloepfer called the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office and repeated her suspicions. Bundy's name was added to their list of suspects, but at that time no credible evidence linked him to the Utah crimes.^[119] In January 1975, Bundy returned to Seattle after his final exams and spent a week with Kloepfer, who did not tell him she had reported him three separate times to police. She made plans to visit him in Salt Lake City in August.^[120]

In 1975 Bundy shifted much of his criminal activity eastward to Colorado from his base in Utah. On January 12, a 23-year-old registered nurse named Caryn Campbell disappeared while walking down a well-lit hallway between the elevator and her room at the Wildwood Inn (now the Wildwood Lodge) in Snowmass, 400 miles (640 km) southeast of Salt Lake City.^[121] Her nude body was found a month later next to a dirt road just outside the resort. She had been killed by blows to her head from a blunt instrument that left distinctive linear grooved depressions on her skull; her body also had deep cuts from a sharp weapon.^[122] A hundred miles (160 km) northeast of Snowmass on March 15, Vail ski instructor Julie Cunningham, 26, disappeared while walking from her apartment to a dinner date with a friend. Bundy later told Colorado investigators that he approached her on crutches and asked that she help carry his ski boots to his car, where he clubbed and handcuffed her, then assaulted and strangled her at a remote secondary site near Rifle, Colorado, 90 miles (140 km) west of Vail.^[123] Weeks later he made the six-hour drive from Salt Lake City to revisit her remains.^[124] Denise Oliverson, 25, disappeared near the Utah-Colorado border in Grand Junction on April 6 while riding her bicycle to her parents' house; her bike and sandals were found under a viaduct near a railroad bridge.^[125] On May 6, Bundy lured 12-year-old Lynette Culver from her junior high school in Pocatello, Idaho, 160 miles (260 km) north of Salt Lake City, and took her to his hotel room, where he drowned and then sexually assaulted her.^[126]

Caryn Campbell disappeared while walking down this brightly lit hallway to her hotel room.