The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy

Media:	Paperback
Author:	Stephen G. Michaud, Hugh Aynesworth, Stephen G Michaud
Publisher:	Authorlink
Release date:	01 August, 1999
Our price:	$14.95

The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy

Average rating: Stars

Ted Bundy

Mention the term serial killer and Ted Bundys name is frequently the first to pop into mind. Before he was executed in 1989, he admitted to murdering 40 young women in almost a dozen states during his four-year reign of terror in the mid 70s. In the process he became one of the most feared and prolific serial killers in U.S. history. But what sets Bundy apart is how different he was from the stereotype of the homicidal madman: He was so mainstream that the Washington State Republican Party hired him, so cunning that he twice escaped from jail so dashing a figure that women sent marriage proposals to him on death row.
What caused Ted Bundy to snap and murder countless young women and girls as young as 12 years old for no apparent reason? The devil is in the details. Many of his early victims bore a physical resemblance to Bundy's first girlfriend, who was tall and slender and wore her long brown hair with a part in the middle.Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946 in Burlington, Vermont. Bundy's mother, Eleanor Louise Cowell was unmarried and just 22 years old at the time of his birth. Bundy's father, Lloyd Marshall apparently wanted nothing to do with him, so he and his mother moved to Philadelphia to live with her parents. In an unusual twist Eleanors parents out of fear that their daughter would be criticized for having a bastard child raised Bundy as their own son, leaving him to believe that his mother was his older sister.In 1950 Eleanor and Bundy moved to Tacoma, Wash. to live with relatives. Once there Eleanor legally changed their names. Ted Cowell became Theodore Robert Nelson and Eleanor became Louise Cowell. A year after their move, Eleanor married a military cook by the name of Johnnie Culpepper Bundy.

The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy - Stephen G. Michaud, Hugh Aynesworth, Stephen G Michaud

Fascinating and terrifying

This is the best account about any serial killer I have yet to read. The only other book that comes close is Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me, but this hews closer to the bone. It's an amazing look into a sick and brilliant mind, and has disturbing parallels to Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Much of it comes from Bundy's own thoughts as he approached the date of his execution, when he knew he had to tell his story or take it to the grave, and therefore has a chilling ring of truth. You'll never look at a "normal" stranger the same way again.

Stephen G. Michaud, Hugh Aynesworth, Stephen G Michaud - The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy

Still One of the Most Chilling Books You'll Ever Read

This book, originally published in 1983, has been a bit overshadowed by later revelations, and it omits or ignores a lot of fascinating character detail about Bundy's victims, but still, as a chilling and unsettling look at the origins of homicidal mania, it has few parallels. I can't think of a work of fiction, or a clinical study, on the topic of murder that is as detailed, thought-provoking, and chilling as this true crime book.

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