(2 of 2)
Some of Bundy's relatives might not have been so "regular." The illegitimate son of a Philadelphia department-store clerk, Bundy claimed he spent his early years with a deranged grandfather who assaulted people, tormented animals and had an insatiable appetite for pornography. Bundy talked of being appalled after his first murder. "It was like being possessed by something so awful, so alien," he said. "But then the impulse to do it again would come back even stronger."
Yet a succession of appellate courts ruled that Bundy was not mentally incompetent to stand trial, as he repeatedly claimed. In 1987 a federal judge called Bundy "the most competent serial killer in the country . . . a diabolical genius." His decade of imprisonment and endless appeals eventually cost Florida taxpayers more than $6 million.
In a society increasingly fascinated with violent crime, the Ted Bundy story captured the public imagination. Five books and a television mini-series were produced about the boy-next-door killer. With network-TV broadcasts of the murderer's last interview and scenes of crowds gathered outside the penitentiary, even his execution became a media circus. Whether Bundy intended it or not, his final encounter with death renewed his nightmarish grip on the nation's attention.