Serial Killers: Ted Bundy

Theodore Robert Cowell, more commonly known as Ted Bundy, is undoubtedly one of America’s infamous serial killers. Before Bundy was executed in 1989, he confessed that he killed at least thirty women. However, Bundy’s former defense attorney John Henry Browne recently revealed that Bundy had confessed to him that he had killed more than a hundred people, including both women and men. Bundy also admitted that his first victim was a man, who differs considerably from Bundy’s preferred victims: young and attractive females. The exact number of victims Bundy murdered may never be known, mostly because of the lack of availability of DNA analysis during that time. Nevertheless, Bundy would ultimately be convicted for the murders of three females …show more content…
The famous bite mark case of Ted Bundy not only finally created a link to him and his victims, but also set precedent for forensic odontology. Not only was he the first person in Florida to be convicted based on bite marks, but at the time of Bundy’s trial only 17 or 18 states allowed bite mark evidence to be admissible in the court of law and since 1989 all fifty states will now allow bite mark evidence as admissible to the court of law (Tabor 2014). Critics of forensic science techniques and methods often say comment on the inaccuracy of the techniques and methods, and have equated forensic science to just a ‘guessing game’. However, in the Ted Bundy cases, forensic science attached the correct person to the heinous crimes. For instances, the chances of the blood found on Kimberly Leach’s clothes not belonging to Bundy is highly improbable. Besides the blood evidence, handwriting analysis was also used to identify Bundy as Leach’s killer. Bundy stayed at a local hotel in Lake City, Florida before he abducted and murdered Kimberly Leach. The hotel log that Bundy had signed when he checked into the hotel had also proved that Bundy was in Lake City when Kimberly Leach was murdered. Also, the fibers from Kimberly’s clothes were also found in the stolen white van. There is no reason for those fibers to be found in Bundy’s van, besides the fact that Kimberly was in that van. Bite mark evidence is also met with a fair amount of criticism, but with reference with this case specifically, while it is possible that the bite marks that Bundy left on Lisa Levy could belong to someone else, which is highly unlikely due to the uniqueness of Bundy’s dental impressions. Forensic science is not always an exact science, but that does not mean that the forensic science hold no validity in the evidence that is