  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, strong drug use, extremely traumatic themes, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
| “ | Hi there, my name's Ted. Nice to meet ya. | „ |
| ~ Ted Bundy's first lines. |
| “ | This is the court of Ted! | „ |
| ~ Ted Bundy terrorizing his victims. |
Theodore Robert "Ted" Bundy is the titular main protagonist of the 2002 film of the same name. He is based on the real-life serial killer and necrophiliac of the same name, who possibly murdered more than one hundred women throughout the United States.
He was portrayed by Michael Reilly Burke.
Biography[]
Ted was raised to believe that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his sister; when he was a teenager, he found out that he was an illegitimate "bastard." He resented his mother for lying to him and grew to hate all women.
In 1974, Ted is a law and psychology student who works at a crisis center and is a dedicated Republican. He has a girlfriend, Lee, who has a daughter named Julie. Ted is friendly and charming, with the beginnings of a bright future in politics, but beneath that attractive surface, he is a violent sociopath with a savage hatred of women.
One night, he found a beautiful woman at a dance club and asked her to dance with him. She initially refused, but Ted managed to convince her. They danced for a bit before she had to go, and Ted discreetly stalked her to her house. He watched the woman through her window while masturbating, but one of her neighbors threw cold water on him and chased him off.
In 1974, Ted committed his first known murder. From this point, Ted started to disguise himself as a police officer or fake an injury, to lure young women inside of his car. Then Ted would knock the women out with a crowbar, tie them up, and go to an anonymous location where he would rape and murder them.
In 1975, Tina Gabler, one of Ted's victims, escaped his car by throwing herself out. Later, Ted got stopped by the police and got arrested. The police found in Ted's car a pantyhose mask, hand saw, crowbar, knives, ropes, and handcuffs. Ted was visited by his girlfriend, Lee, in jail; he told her that a lot of charges were being made against him, for his murders, but stresses the fact that there is no proof and that he will never be convicted. Lee realized that Ted was guilty and severed all contact with him.
Ted then planned an escape from the courthouse library. When the guard who was watching him went to go out for a cigarette, Ted used the opportunity to escape through the window and down on the street below; nobody saw him leaving the premises. However, his freedom was short-lived, as a police officer spotted him attempting to steal a car from a small town. He managed to escape months later, and traveled to Florida, where he went under the alias of Chris Hagen and rented a room in an old couple's home.
A short time later, Ted broke into a nearby sorority and brutally murdered two of the four young women who lived there. The next day, he kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 12-year-old girl. He was apprehended afterward. He stood trial for the murders and was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair. He was still able to charm many women into protesting his innocence.
In 1989, Ted ran out of appeals, and a date was set for his execution. The night of his execution, Ted had to be dragged out of his cell and made a brief statement before he was electrocuted - ironically, by a female executioner. Bundy’s last words were, “I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends.”
Gallery[]
Images[]
Videos[]
Trivia[]
- Ted Bundy is one of three serial killers to have a film based on their crimes released in the same year (2002). The other two are Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy.
- Michael Reilly Burke's portrayal of Ted Bundy is semi-fictionalized, with the victims in the film either renamed or combined into one character, possibly to avoid legal action from the families of the real-life victims and protect their identities. Below are key examples:
- The final victim, Kimberly Diane Leach, was returning to her school's gymnasium to retrieve her forgotten purse when Bundy abducted her; this dramatization renames her as Susan Brewster Moore, and she is depicted rope-skipping at a local park.
- The Tina Gabler character who escapes from Bundy is a composite of Carol DaRonch and Rhonda Stapley.
- Jane Gilchrist (cheerleader victim) is a mashup of Nancy Wilcox and Debra Kent. Both were leaving their school events (cheerleading competition for Wilcox and school play for Kent to pick her younger brother) when Bundy snatched them.
- This incarnation of Bundy flunked out of law and psychology; the real Bundy did not do well in law school but graduated a psychology degree with honors.
- The film Bundy hotwires a car instead of finding keys inside the vehicle.
- Bundy's final arrest in Florida for driving a stolen vehicle was depicted differently:
- The arrest took place in a field during broad daylight instead of a residential neighborhood at past midnight.
- While a chase occurred in both scenarios, the officer beat Bundy to subdue him in the film, but in real-life, a struggle ensured wherein Bundy kicked the officer's legs and ran, causing the latter to go after him and fire a warning shot.
- The stolen vehicle was a van in the film, but it was a Volkswagen Bug in reality.
- Several changes were made in the film's execution.
- Bundy's colon was packed with cotton to avoid soiling; this practice was discontinued during the time of execution.
- The film Bundy wore the regular orange prison uniform as opposed to the blue death row uniform with the right leg cut off.
- The executioner gives one application of current. In Florida's electric chair execution procedures, current is applied thrice.
- A flipped switch operated the chair instead of buttons.
- In keeping with the popular legend of Bundy's executioner being a woman, the movie depicts the executioner as a female prison guard. In reality, while this theory was possible, the identity and gender of the executioner has never been publicly revealed and only the head of the Florida prison system knew the identity of the executioner.
- Another inaccurate depiction is that the executioner wore a hood and was visible to the condemned and the witnesses in the death chamber. In real-life, the executioner was in an adjoining room next to the main chamber; the room, accessed by a curtained doorway adjacent to the door of the electric chair chamber, contained the controls of the electric chair and the executioner, who never wore a hood, had actually been the first to enter the place, remaining there before the witnesses took their seats and the condemned was brought in. After the condemned is executed, the witnesses leave along with the officials, with the executioner departing last.