Editing Ted Bundy (section)

== Legacy ==
Many of Bundy's young female victims regarded him as handsome and charismatic, traits that he exploited to win their trust. He would typically approach them in public places, feigning injury or disability, or impersonating an authority figure, before overpowering and assaulting them in secluded locations. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made any further interactions impossible. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept some of the severed heads as mementos in his apartment. On a few occasions, he broke into dwellings at night and bludgeoned his victims as they sleep.

In 1975, Bundy was jailed for the first time when he was incarcerated in Utah for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He then became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in several states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults in Florida, including three murders, before his ultimate recapture in 1978.
[[File:Bundy & Hagmaier.jpg|thumb|285x285px|FBI Agent Bill Hagmaier interviewing Ted Bundy before the final Death Row.]]
Ted Bundy was eventually convicted of multiple [[murder]]s and was executed in 1989 by the electric chair - however his legacy continued long after his death, as his name became associated with evil and depravity (like many serial-killers of history).

=== Portrayal in media ===
*The Deliberate Stranger (1986), played by Mark Harmon.
**This was the only film/TV movie about Ted made when he was still alive.

*Ted Bundy (2002), played by Michael Reilly Burke.
**Article on [https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Ted_Bundy_(film) villains wiki on Ted Bundy].

*The Stranger Beside Me (2003), played by Billy Campbell.

*A South Park episode [[wikipedia:Hell on Earth 2006|Hell on Earth 2006]]; features Bundy, [[Jeffrey Dahmer]], and [[John Wayne Gacy]] as a [https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/The_Three_Murderers_(South_Park) Three Stooges gag] trying to get a cake for Satan for his Halloween party.

*The Riverman (2004), played by Cary Elwes.

*The Capture of the Green River Killer (2008), played by James Marsters.

*Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019), played by Zac Efron.
**Article on [https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Ted_Bundy_(Extremely_Wicked%2C_Shockingly_Evil_and_Vile) villains wiki on Ted Bundy].