BUNDY
The Childhood of a Serial Killer
Book Introduction

There have been many well documented and highly informed publications describing the crimes, the investigations, the court proceedings, the death row interviews, the information given by personal acquaintances, intimates, and more. This book is not intended to be a scholarly dissection of the information to date. My intention is to clarify once and for all the “why” of his crimes, as well as how according to social sciences his personality was launched.

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Ted himself struggled with the underbelly of his personality disorder, but he was too close to it—too injured by it—to enable or even allow himself to put an end to his behavior. He certainly did not want to give up his sadistic pastime if he could avoid it.

When it came to our subject, Theodore Robert Bundy, when and how did he get his corrupt start, and why didn’t we see the signs? Were they detectable? If they were readily detectable and understood, we would have been alert to his red flags from the get go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Usually, however, we are blind to warnings either because we can’t imagine such a thing could be possible or because we fear that we could have contributed to or prevented it in some way. We must give his friends, family and coworkers grace on this front. We have all missed and misinterpreted signs unknowingly.

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More importantly, the perpetrator will do all in their power to reassure us that they are okay by eliciting our admiration rather than our concern. But there is reason for concern that we overlook or at least optimistically deny. So this is our side of the story too—how we are built and why we can miss aberrant behavior.

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Every infant and child needs the opportunity to feel safe, loved, and certain he or she belongs with and is held responsible to others. This unfortunately did not happen throughout the unfolding of Ted’s developmental years. While reading along, it might be useful for you to spot the warning signals in Ted’s life as they appear. Many of these warning signals are based on what we understand now as attachment failure risk elements, which I submit is what goes awry in criminals such as Ted. At the same time, notice when those around him had blinders on and why.

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In my opinion, the childhood of Theodore Robert Bundy represents the disorganized experiences which bring about angry detachment. This is a condition where bonding with the child is interfered with due to the child being repeatedly emotionally neglected in some way. Enough of this and the child reacts with a rage against others that leads to disordered conduct. Bundy experts may disagree, but I want to explore his detachment since it has never been, as I have stated, considered seriously from stem to stern in the literature regarding Ted’s singular development and his tragic social outcome. This book is my attempt to start a conversation regarding exactly that.
 
“What is it about the human mind that makes this kind of behavior . . . and if there’s anything that can be done to reduce the possibility of a person who’d been predispositioned to this kind of behavior, uh, of actually engaging in it.”
~Ted

 

Considering what information we do have about Ted’s introduction to life, here are some risk factors for us to consider when it comes to children forming detached rage, which can develop into delinquency and culminate into Antisocial Personality Disorder or, in Ted’s case, Narcissistic Psychopathy.

 

The most common risks are:

• Live or have lived in a children’s home or other institution
• Frequently changed foster homes or caregivers
• Have parents with severe mental health problems, criminal behavior, or substance abuse that impairs their parenting
• Have prolonged separation from parents or other caregivers due to repeated out-of-home placement, hospitalization, or death of a primary caregiver

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Yes, all of these risks and their various permutations applied to Ted repeatedly, and each one will be explored in the coming chapters.

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You may already be thinking about other serial murderers that many of these elements apply to, and I will refer to others as we go for the sake of examples, but this volume is most specifically related to TRB.