Ted Bundy's Education Might Explain How He Became A Serial Killer
Ted Bundy, the infamous serial killer who murdered at least 30 women, was in law school at the University of Utah when he began his murder spree.
Many criminal psychology experts believe that a rejection from Ted Bundy's undergrad girlfriend at the University of Washington influenced his choice of victims.
Ted Bundy was executed in January 1989, but interest in his education lives on.
Ted Bundy may have been a lot of things, but uneducated was not one of them.
The notorious serial killer and rapist-who was executed under the death penalty in 1989 but is back in the spotlight thanks to the recent Ted Bundy Tapes documentary, and upcoming Netflix biopic, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile-went as far as law school before he was eventually convicted for murdering at least 30 women.
Bundy went to Woodrow Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington, according to Ann Rule's 1980 true crime novel on Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me: The True Crime Story of Ted Bundy. After graduating in 1965, he spent a year the University of Puget Sound, a liberal arts college also in Tacoma. He transferred to the University of Washington (UW) in order to study Chinese in '66, but reportedly dropped out two years later.
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It's during this time at UW that Bundy started dating a wealthy brunette woman from California, Diane Edwards (a.k.a. Stephanie Brooks), who "had everything that he wanted: money, class, and influence," Biography.com reported. Many experts believe that their breakup (she dumped him, supposedly due to his lack of motivation) explains why he chose-and brutally raped, beat, and murdered-victims who resembled her.
In 1966, having lost a relationship and an interest in Chinese, Bundy dropped out of UW to volunteer for Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican in Seattle who later served as VP under Gerald Ford. He even attended the Republican National Convention as a Rockefeller delegate, according to Oxygen.
After that, he hopped around the country a bit, reportedly visiting his hometown of Vermont to learn about his birth parents. He took a semester of classes at Temple University in Philadelphia, but then went back to Tacoma to re-enroll at the University of Washington.
This time at UW, though, Bundy majored in the most ironic (or smart?) study possible: psychology. He graduated with his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1972-just two years before his first confirmed murder.
In 1974-yep, the same year as that first official murder-Ted Bundy moved to Utah to study law at the University of Utah Law School. Some say he only got into the school because of his political connections, not for his actual grades, per Business Insider.
Bundy's murder spree is believed to start around October (he'd tried but failed to kill an 18-year-old girl that January), including the murder of a police officer's daughter. By 1975, he'd reportedly killed nine women, according to Biography.com.
Despite attending law school, Bundy never graduated. He was arrested in 1975 for kidnapping one woman, then indicted in 1977 on murder charges. He escaped, was captured, escaped again, then was recaptured after killing two women (but attacking four) inside the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University. That arrest eventually led to his execution in Florida in 1989.
Netflix's Extremely Wicked premieres on May 3 and stars the one and only Zac Efron as Ted Bundy. The movie shares the same director as the Ted Bundy Tapes, Joe Berlinger, but it's a legit dramatization. So expect it to be good...like, scary good.
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