Campus Killer: Did serial killer Ted Bundy really have a child?

Serial killers are frequently dehumanized, and their actions are monstrous. However, they’re still humans, and further a non-punitive discourse, this means they can reproduce. Everyone knows who Ted Bundy was, thirty-six homicides are hard to hide, also several movies & shows have been created based on him. Ted Bundy was a good-looking man, even Zach Efron played him in Netflix’s The Ted Bundy Tapes.

Bundy’s modus operandi was seductive, he took advantage of being handsome to get his victims, which were all women whose appearance matched his mother’s. Bundy pretended to have an injured arm and asked for help, when his victims were distracted he hit them, took them to a lonely place, and killed them. Their bodies were found later and showed signs of necrophilia, dismemberment, and cannibalism. 

Bundy was no fool and had a strategy to commit his crimes. He used to study at Washington University in Seattle and looked so intelligent & charming that he joined the Republican party. In the decade of 1970, he had everything to achieve a brilliant future, with a great job and a family, he went to jail instead, but did Ted Bundy ever have a child? 

Child murderer & father

The number of Bundy’s victims is still a mystery, however, he confessed a list of thirty-six names of women he killed from 1974 to 1980. Grievously, a lot of Bundy’s victims were children, and this makes it even harder to think that he had a child of his own. However, Rose Bundy is the name of Ted Bundy’s daughter and was conceived on death row. 

It’s complex to understand how a serial killer could hold a romantic-sexual relationship with a woman, have a child with her and not kill her. Ted Bundy’s wife was Carole Ann Boone, they were colleagues in 1974 at the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia. The story tells that Boone fell for Bundy immediately, but the relationship didn’t start as soon as they knew each other.  

Maybe Bundy thought of having an unconditional lover as a strategy. Boone attended Bundy’s trials where he was charged with murder, like the one in Orlando in 1980 for the homicide of two Chi Omega sorority girls. Boone was asked by Bundy to be his witness, and she moved near the prison to be close to him. Besides the visits, she gave him drugs & money. Bundy proposed to Boone once he was in jail. 

Starting a family on death row

It’s intricate to explain how Bundy & Boone created a family, starting with their marriage. The couple couldn’t find a minister to register their vows, and they weren’t allowed to use the chapel. Nevertheless, at the time there was a Florida law that established the declaration of marriage in court as a binding agreement. 

But how did they conceive a child if conjugal visits weren’t a possibility on death row? There are plenty of conspiracy theories around this. It’s speculated for Boone had given Bundy a condom to deposit his sperm and give it back to her. Imagining scenarios is fun, yet, it looks like it wasn’t difficult to bribe a guard at the time, and Bundy & Boone were simply allowed to have sex. 

Boone was never open to clarifying how this happened. She said she had nothing to explain about anyone to anybody. All we have left are pictures the family took inside the prison. 

What happened to Rose Bundy?

Rose Bundy, or Rosa, was born on October 24th of 1982. Bundy was already sentenced to death. Believe it or not, Bundy acted as a father previously before Rose’s birth, however, she was his only biological child. Before Rose, Bundy paternalized his former girlfriend’s child, Elizabeth Kloepfer’s daughter, and Boone’s son. Nevertheless, Boone divorced Bundy in 1989, before his execution. 

It must be hard being the daughter of one of the most known murderers in the world. In those cases, keeping a low profile looks like the right thing to do. Rose Bundy might be a 40-year-old woman living somewhere, but no one knows anything about her or her mother. Some theories say Boone remarried and did a change of identity to both of them. 

Not even Ann Rule, the writer of The Stranger Beside Me, who actually knew Ted Bundy, has ever crossed the line of looking for Rose Bundy. People aren’t their parents, but history has enormous weight. Being the daughter of a murderer with a T.V. show on Netflix, it’s something nobody should be obligated to hold. 

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Wherever she might be, let’s hope Rose Bundy is okay. What do you think of Ted Bundy as a father? Tell us in the comments below!