He used various ruses to coax a female into his car, and from there she was likely never seen alive again.
On November 7, 1974, he abducted Carol DeRonch, 18, from a shopping center in Utah, and he was able to handcuff her wrists but she managed to get away. On July 14, 1974 he abducted two young women (Janice Ott and Denise Naslund) in Utah, and killed them both. His method was to lure them to his car and take them to a remote place and rape them, sometimes torture them, or sodomize them, then strangle them or kill them by another method. He raped and strangled a hitchhiker in Utah in 1974, and killed Nancy Wilcox in Utah in 1974; he raped, sodomized and murdered 17-year-old Melissa Smith also in 1974 (Clark Prosecutor). The list goes on and on, and the methods he used -- also considered the victimology of the situation -- were very similar.
Sometimes he would ask a woman to help him; for example, he was on crutches (faking an injury) in Colorado and asked a female to help him carry ski boots to his car. When they got to the car, he hit the victim, Julie Cunningham, with a crowbar, handcuffed her, and later strangled her (Clark Prosecutor). In Colorado in 1975, he lured a 12-year-old girl (Lynette Culver) from her junior high school in Pocatello, Idaho, took her to a Holiday Inn where he had rented a room; he raped her then drowned her (Clark Prosecutor).
Detectives in Granger, Utah, arrested Bundy in 1975, and in his car were handcuffs, rope, a mask made from pantyhose, an ice pick among other items. Bundy's apartment was searched and a guide to Colorado ski resorts was found with a "checkmark by the Wildwood Inn where Caryn Campbell had disappeared"; also found was a brochure advertising the Viewmont...
His way of finding victims thus varied from just seeing a person in a mall and using a ruse to get her into his car, or actually going to a high school play and lurking around until he spotted a vulnerable young woman. But after two and a half years of "repressed homicidal violence erupted," as he broke into a sorority house in Tallahassee and killed two college women (Clark Prosecutor).
The difference between a serial killer and a spree killer is dramatic: the serial killer "takes extended breaks between slayings" and victims "usually fit a particular profile" (in Bundy's case, vulnerable young women); the spree killer generally will "pack their mayhem into a brief time span" and the victims don't fit "any discernible profile but may be dispatched out of necessity" (the killer may need their car, so he kills them) (Koerner, 2002). The spree killer is usually apprehended or he commits suicide "after a few weeks," Koerner writes. As is known, a serial killer may go for years and not be apprehended.
Works Cited
Clark Prosecutor. "Theodore Robert Bundy: Executed January 24, 1989, by Electric Chair in Florida." Retrieved November 27, 2011, from www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/U.S./bundy106.htm.
Koerner, Brendan. "Is the D.C. sniper a serial killer or a spree killer?" Slate.com. Retrieved November 27, 2011, from http://www.slate.com. 2002.
Michaud, Stephen G., and Aynesworth, Hugh. Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer. Irving,
TX: Authorlink, 2000.
Michaud, Stephen G., and Aynesworth, Hugh. The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy. Irving, TX: Authorlink, 1999.
