5 Myths about Serial Killer Ted Bundy: Why They Persist

Ted Bundy has been the subject matter of far more media focus than any other modern-day-working day serial killer. Specific notions present up in several accounts, such as some tested to be phony.

What is the offer? Why do we retain such claims? There might be a personalized financial commitment that feeds resistance, but some persons just accept facts that appears to be to resolve a secret. Consequently, misconceptions persist.

I’ve invited Kevin Sullivan, the author of 6 books about Bundy, to aid with this list. It is not exhaustive, but these 5 myths demonstrate up continuously.

1: Sam Cowell, Bundy’s grandfather, was really his father by using incest: This was conclusively disproven in 2020 when psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow-Lewis experienced a copy of Ted Bundy’s DNA sequence tested for a crucial genetic indicator of incest. She’d obtained the DNA info from Mike McCann, who’d examined a licked stamp from Bundy’s letter to his girlfriend. Cowell was not his father.

2: Bundy’s victim type is a woman with extensive, darkish hair parted in the middle simply because that was the hairstyle of a higher education girlfriend who’d rejected him: I see this just one almost just about every time I read through or see an account about Bundy. However when Bundy heard about this “subconscious sophisticated,” he scoffed.

“They [his victims] just healthy the typical classification of getting youthful and eye-catching,” Bundy told investigator Hugh Aynesworth. Youth and attractiveness ended up “absolutely indispensable,” and Bundy preferred university girls. At any level, he acquired immediate revenge on the female who’d rejected him, so why target symbolic victims? In addition, throughout the 1970s, extended hair parted in the center was the vogue for younger ladies, so it’s probably that his victims would have this design and style. Even so, not all of them did.

3: Bundy was a teenager right before he uncovered that Louise was his mom, not his sister: In actuality, suggests Bundy expert Kevin Sullivan, Bundy uncovered the reality rather younger.

“There apparently was some confusion in the child’s mind for a brief time,” Sullivan claims. “However, this transpired when Bundy was either three or 4 a long time previous. By the time he and his mom Louise left Philadelphia for Washington Point out when Teddy was about 5, he understood that Louise was his mother. When Louise satisfied Johnnie Bundy, he was well aware that Ted was her son. As an alternative of boosting him as a stepson, Johnnie adopted him and gave him the title Bundy. Johnnie and Louise had four small children, and all the kids grew up realizing that Ted was their brother.”

Sullivan adds other proof: “I asked Mike McCann if, in his a long time of working with Monthly bill Hagmaier [an FBI Bundy interviewer], did he at any time question him if Bundy talked about this myth, and Mike mentioned that Hagmaier advised him Bundy referred to it as ‘BS.’”

4: Bundy was buddies with his victim, Laura Ann Aime: This 17-year-aged crossed paths with him following leaving a get together on Halloween, 1971. Several persons who realized Aime claimed that Bundy experienced hung out with her at Brown’s Café in Lehi, Utah, had called Aime his girlfriend, had explained he was likely to rape her (most likely jokingly), and had been released by her to her buddies.

In Ted Bundy: The Yearly Journal, Sullivan disputes these accounts: “Those folks who claimed he [Bundy] was paying a great offer of time in a minor city 30 miles south of Salt Lake Metropolis in September 1974, creating pals, and receiving to know Laura, are in error.”

Sullivan exhibits, day by day, what retained Bundy occupied after he arrived in Salt Lake Metropolis. There was no time for him to have been casually hanging out, notably not in this city.

“We have a very hectic Bundy the 1st 50 percent of the month with his original go, his return residence, his obtaining his condominium in the shape he wished it, as very well as interactions he experienced with the legislation faculty,” Sullivan claims. “Are we to think Bundy arrived in the town and almost immediately commenced wandering down to a pretty smaller town wherever he resolved that he really should commence investing a wonderful offer of time there building ‘friends’? If we’re to use usual deductive reasoning and look at the allegations with people matters we now know about Ted’s comings and goings, then we will have to conclude that this tale is not genuine it [the person they saw] couldn’t have been Bundy.”

5: Bundy picked up singer Debbie Harry (of Blondie fame) in New York in a car or truck well prepared for abduction: Harry has claimed that she encountered Bundy in Manhattan all through the early 1970s. She searched for a taxi a person morning when a person driving a white motor vehicle pulled more than to present her a carry. She received in, then found out the car experienced no window crank or doorway handle to allow her out. (Yet, she did get out, and in a method that Bundy would have thwarted.) When she saw Bundy’s photo yrs later, she “knew” he was the dude.

However, Bundy didn’t have a automobile like this and he wasn’t around Manhattan during this interval. Harry is aware her story has been debunked, but she says, “I feel they are really improper simply because he experienced escaped and was touring down the East Coastline. I imagine that no person has ever seriously investigated that.”

Truly, his escape was in late 1977, not throughout the early 1970s.

Psychologist Martin Davies at the College of London examined belief persistence in the face of discrediting proof. In just one experiment, individuals who’d generated explanations for an party persisted much more robustly in their beliefs just after staying discredited than people who’d browse furnished explanations. Even when the high-quality of the supplied explanations was greater than the generated types, Team One’s beliefs persisted. Hence, when one thing particular is at stake, these kinds of as moi investment in one’s stance, discrediting with details has little impact.

In addition, Davies found, all those topics who rated substantial in a tendency towards dogmatism showed bigger belief persistence, specially when the fake perception included regularity or completeness to a narrative. Topics ended up asked to examine the results of psychological experiments. They have been then informed the outcomes have been fabricated. Individuals high in dogmatism generated extra motives to aid the results. They couldn’t envision how an alternative to their belief about the outcomes could even arise. They’d by now designed up their minds.

Dogmatic cognitive designs could possibly account for the persistence of well known myths about Bundy, far more so if a person has publicly said them as true. A own stake, such as social or economic guidance, can infuse myths with ample force to dismiss the points. If the myth helps make feeling, it can experience like truth of the matter.