Ted Bundy

Beginning in early 1974, nine young women vanished from college campuses and recreation areas in Washington and Oregon. Another young woman was severely beaten in her bedroom but survived after several months in a coma. The women ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-two years old. Two of the women's bodies would never be found. The seven that were eventually recovered had been left to decompose in wooded areas around Seattle, Washington.

All of the women had been assaulted and either bludgeoned (beaten with an object) or strangled to death. The few leads that law enforcement had discovered pointed to a handsome man who drove a Volkswagen and introduced himself as "Ted." He requested some form of help from the women who became his victims. Witnesses said the man's leg was in a cast and he was on crutches or his arm was in a cast and sling. He was very polite and friendly in asking for assistance in some task he was unable to do because of his injury. Public hysteria reached near panic when it became apparent someone was killing young women in the Pacific Northwest.

Authorities in Seattle and surrounding King County formed a multiple agency investigative task force when it The 1968 Volkswagen Bug owned by serial killer Ted Bundy. The few leads that law enforcement had discovered pointed to a handsome man who drove a Volkswagen and introduced himself as "Ted." (AP/Wide World Photos)
became evident a violent killer was on the loose. (The term "serial killer" had not yet been introduced into police investigations but would later be used to perfectly describe Bundy.) Police received hundreds of calls each day on the "Ted Hot-line." People called and turned in acquaintances, strangers, boyfriends, and husbands if they were named Ted, owned a Volkswagen, or vaguely resembled the composite pictures in the media.

Ted Bundy's name was among the first "Teds" reported to the Seattle authorities. The investigating task force received his name from a University of Washington professor, a former coworker, and from one of his girlfriends. He was one of over three thousand possible suspects delivered to the authorities. But the murders in the Northwest suddenly ended in the fall of 1974.