Criminology

In a culture that seems to excel in the production of evil and sadistic serial killers, a perverse phenomenon frequently documented in extraordinarily popular films and novels, the Ted Bundy case stands out as a particularly perplexing case.  The case is perplexing because, although in the popular mind Bundy is almost universally viewed as an evil human being motivated by cruelly sadistic urges, a review of the relevant academic literature suggests that Bundys motivations were much more complex than the evil attributed to him and his crimes.  There emerges, when one compares the popular media characterizations and the academic literature, a deep chasm between appearances and substance.  Criminal profilers and psychologists, for example, tend to view Bundys crimes as being unique to the extant that he was motivated by a need for power and control rather than an underlying need to inflict pain or to behave in a sadistic manner.  This paper will argue that Ted Bundy was not evil in the conventional sense of the word to this end, this paper will examine his personal background and personal attributes, the particular modus operandi of his crimes, the popular culture view that Bundy was an evil monster, and how scholars concerned with criminal profiling and psychology viewed Bundys crimes and motivations.

As an initial matter, the publics absolute fascination with Ted Bundy can in many ways be attributed to the fact that he seemed so normal and well-adjusted.  In many ways, to be sure, he was viewed by those who knew him as the proverbial All-American boy.   It has been noted, for instance, that  Ted has been described as the perfect son, the perfect student, the Boy Scout grown to adulthood, a genius, as handsome as a movie idol.  That this perfect American male may have killed as many as thirty-five women, a speculation never proven beyond a reasonable doubt although before his death Bundy admitted to roughly thirty murders, is therefore shocking.  An analysis of his personal background, from a non-academic perspective makes it seem impossible to determine how such an individual could commit such acts unless he was innately evil.  Bundy was born illegitimately to a religious mother in order to hide this legitimacy problem, Bundys grandparents posed as his real parents.  His mother remarried, had four new children with her new husband, and all of the available evidence suggests that the bright and attractive Ted remained a clear number one in his mothers heart HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod24136526(Bailey 333).  His family moved a couple of times, Ted had his name changed a few times, but he remained well-liked by his peers and a seemingly intelligent young boy and then young man.  He was questioned by police two times as a juvenile these inquiries related to the theft of an automobile and a burglary rather than anything of a violent nature.  He then graduated from high school and attended university in Washington where he fell in love with and was dumped by the daughter of a wealthy family from California.  One scholar has stated, with respect to this disappointing love affair, that  this humiliating experience was a crucial turning point for Ted, a man who considered himself a possible descendant of royalty HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod24136526(Bailey 333).  This event assumes significance because some researchers believe that Bundys crimes were motivated, as will be discussed in more detail below, by deep-seated feelings of insecurity with respect to women and an attendant need to assert power and control over women in order to compensate for these insecurities.  This type of analysis, based in Bundys real-life experiences, therefore provides a rationale alternative explanation to evil in attempting to explain why he killed so many women.

In addition to Bundys personal background, it is also informative and necessary to more carefully understand the precise nature of his crimes rather than assuming that they were all particularly grisly or sadistic.  It is generally agreed, although there are minor disputes and there is a lack of evidence in certain individual cases, that Bundy killed at least 30 victims across five states between 1973 and 1975,  and also that he began his criminal career with a competent, well-thought-out MO.  All of the evidence demonstrates that Bundy was polite to an extreme, that he travelled widely, and that he disarmed his victims by appearing to need help in some way that gave him the appearance of an individual who couldnt possibly pose a threat.  Sometimes Bundy accomplished this appearance of helplessness by posing as a stranded driver with car problems or by even wearing a false sling on his arm to imply that his arm was broken and that he lacked the physical strength to pose any threat.  Visual deception was thus an integral feature of his criminal method and he planned and executed these deceptions intentionally.  Bundy was therefore clearly aware of what he wanted to do and the need to maintain secrecy because what he was doing was clearly wrong.  The second feature of Bundys modus operandi was that he tended to select relatively younger females as his targets, including teenagers, and he also carefully planned where he would hide the bodies after the killing.  It has been noted that Bundys modus operandi changed slightly toward the end of his killing spree, such as his selection of a twelve year old girl, but the aforementioned facts were characteristic of his methods.  A background analysis, both personal and relating to Bundys modus operandi, creates a picture of a superficially wonderful young man who intentionally killed more than thirty females.  It is therefore hardly surprising that he was labeled as an evil monster by the media, a label that the public wholeheartedly embraced.

An analysis of the media coverage following Bundys execution in the state of Florida on January 24, 1989 clearly demonstrates the media portrayed Bundy as an evil monster, that the public agreed, and that only way to cleanse America of this evil was to kill the physical body which housed the evil soul and the sadistic mind.  Indeed, As a front-page report in the Gainesville Sun declared, This was not just any execution. It was THE execution.  The clear implication, in this Florida news coverage of the execution, was that no person needed to be removed from the world than Ted Bundy.  The public adored cars with bumper stickers praising the execution, large crowds showed up for the execution and supported the execution, and one folklore and cultural academic who researched the case has written that Their festive response was more reminiscent of rowdy eighteenth- and nineteenth-century public hangings than the quiet anti-capital punishment.  The American people were effectively whipped into a frenzied joy for the execution and this has in large part been attributed to the manner in which American cultural values and the media tend to ascribe evil to certain acts rather than more carefully examining issues of motivation and causation.  While society uniformly viewed Bundy as having committed these crimes because he was evil, an overly broad characterization that this paper seeks to contest, a very small group of experienced academics instead viewed this attribution of evil to individuals for deviant or nonconformist actions as a predictable and well-established sociological phenomenon that to frequently results in public misunderstanding about criminal motivation and causation.   Society, in this view, needs to create monsters in order to emphasize acceptable behavior and to create severe consequences for behaviors that violate certain social norms the killing of more than thirty women, to be sure, violates some of the most sacrosanct social values.

Specifically, it has been argued that the ongoing stability of any society depends upon the presence of monsters-those unfortunates whom social regulatory systems.  It is therefore in the interests of social unity and harmony to depict and to characterize people like Ted Bundy as being evil monsters to satisfy these types of social needs rather than to examine the underlying nature of the deviant behavior more closely.  In Bundys case, an underlying examination of his personality and the nature of the crimes suggest that American society was and remains incorrect to the extant that society characterizes him as evil and views his crimes as being the result of evil.  A review of the psychological analyses, for instance, is particularly interesting and enlightening in this respect.  In the aftermath of Bundys execution, a number of experts characterized him as being a serial rapist more than a serial killer, as a sadistic type of pervert, and as a sexual sociopath with uncontrollable sexual urges more recent academic commentary, adopting a more sober and objective type of analytical approach, has emphasized the lack of actual sadistic behavior in the commission of Bundys crimes.  Specifically, although There are numerous accounts of Bundys necrophilic and other postmortem fantasy- oriented behavior related in the literature. None of them relates behavior that could be described as sadistic.  Bundys violence was functional rather than sadistic.  He did not torture his victims and he seemed to have been committing these crimes in an effort to assert his power over and control of women generally some recent scholars, for example, trace this need for male control of women to Bundys traumatic experience with the wealth girlfriend who broke his heart in Washington while he was a university student.

All of the evidence suggests, in short, that Bundy was an extraordinarily rational human being.  He rationally selected his victims, he rationally selected the method to be used in luring his victims, and he rationally disposed of the bodies.  For the American public these killings could never be rational in any sense and they therefore felt more comfortable characterizing Bundy as evil, motivated by some irrational supernatural impulse, rather than more carefully analyzing how normal human beings can be transformed into serial killers.  Further, in terms of primary evidence, it has been noted that there is no mention of sexual arousal and gratification, and there is no discussion of prolonged victim agony or suffering.  The most plausible explanation for Bundys behavior, therefore, is a deep-seated anger or insecurity that he could not control and which motivated him, consciously or unconsciously, to assert his power and his control over women in an extraordinarily severe manner.  Bundy may have been angry and insecure.  He was too rational to be called crazy or insane because he clearly understood what he was doing as is evidenced by his carefully planned deceptions and crimes.  The absence of sadistic behavior reinforces the argument that Bundy was evil.

In the final analysis, while it is typical that societies create monsters in order to illustrate and reinforce cultural norms and values, society is incorrect about Ted Bundy to the extant that it ascribes his behavior purely to evil.  Certainly, he committed very bad acts on the other hand, a close examination of all of the evidence suggests that he was a highly intelligent man, that his mothers second marriage and his heartbreak with women affected him profoundly, and that Bundy deliberately sought vengeance against females generally in order to avenge these past traumas with specific females.  Ted Bundy was a socially harmful man, he committed very bad acts in a society that views murder as the ultimate sin, and American society is much safer without people like him roaming about freely.  Evil, however, cannot be relied upon to explain his psychological state or causation if objective analysis is to prevail and society is not to be deluded.  Ted Bundy, after all, was one of us and perhaps that is what is most frightening.