Editing Ted Bundy (section)

=== Childhood ===
Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946, to Eleanor Louise Cowell at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers<ref>[http://www.lundvt.org/ Lund Family Center] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170307150638/https://lundvt.org/ |date=March 7, 2017 }}, retrieved September 30, 2015.
</ref> in [[Burlington, Vermont]]. His biological father's identity has never been confirmed; his original birth certificate apparently assigns paternity to a salesman and [[United States Air Force]] veteran named Lloyd Marshall,{{sfn|Rule|2000|pp=8, 17}} though a copy of it listed his father as unknown.{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=62}} Louise claimed she met a war veteran named Jack Worthington,{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|pp=56, 330}} who abandoned her soon after she became pregnant.{{sfn|Barth|2020|p=291}} Census records reveal that several men by the name of John<!-- This is the first name used in the source. Please do not change to "Jack" which is a diminutive anyway --> Worthington and Lloyd Marshall lived near Louise when Bundy was conceived.{{sfn|Barth|2020|pp=292–293}} Some family members expressed suspicions that Bundy was sired by Louise's own father, Samuel Cowell.{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=56}} However, in the 2020 documentary film ''[[Crazy, Not Insane]]'', psychiatrist [[Dorothy Otnow Lewis]] claimed she received a sample of Bundy's blood and that a [[DNA]] test had confirmed that he was not the product of [[incest]].<ref>{{cite web |first=Gina |last=Tron |date=November 20, 2020 |title=What Did A Doctor Learn About Ted Bundy That Made Her Think He Isn't 'Pure Evil'? |url=https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/crazy-not-insane-what-ted-bundy-secret-did-dorothy-lewis-learn |access-date=June 13, 2022 |website=[[Oxygen (TV channel)|Oxygen]] |language=en-US |archive-date=June 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230607051825/https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/crazy-not-insane-what-ted-bundy-secret-did-dorothy-lewis-learn |url-status=live }}</ref>

For the first three years of his life, Bundy lived in the [[Roxborough, Pennsylvania|Roxborough]] neighborhood of [[Philadelphia]] with his maternal grandparents, Samuel Knecht Cowell (1898–1983) and Eleanor Miriam Longstreet (1895–1971). The couple raised him as their son to avoid the [[social stigma]] that accompanied [[Illegitimacy|childbirth outside of wedlock]] at that time. Family, friends and even young Bundy were told that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. Bundy eventually discovered the truth, although his recollections of the circumstances varied; he told a girlfriend that a cousin showed him a copy of his birth certificate after calling him a "bastard,"{{sfn|Kendall|1981|pp=40–41}} but he told biographers Stephen Michaud and [[Hugh Aynesworth]] that he had found the certificate himself.{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=62}} Biographer and [[true crime]] writer [[Ann Rule]], who knew Bundy personally, wrote that he did not find out about his true parentage until 1969, when he located his original birth record in Vermont.{{sfn|Rule|2000|pp=16–17}} Bundy expressed a lifelong resentment toward his mother for never telling him about his real father, and for leaving him to discover the truth about his paternity for himself.{{sfn|Rule|2009|pp=51–52}}

In some interviews, Bundy spoke warmly of his grandparents{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1989|pp=17–18}} and told Rule that he "identified with," "respected" and "clung to" his grandfather Samuel.{{sfn|Rule|2009|p=9}} In 1987, however, he and other family members told attorneys that Samuel was a tyrannical bully who beat his wife and dog, swung neighborhood cats by their tails and expressed [[racism|racist]] and [[xenophobia|xenophobic]] attitudes. In one instance, Samuel reportedly threw Julia down a flight of stairs for oversleeping.{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=330}} He would sometimes speak aloud to unseen presences,{{sfn|Nelson|1994|p=154}} and at least once flew into a violent rage when the question of Bundy's paternity was raised.{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=330}} Bundy described his grandmother as a timid and obedient woman who periodically underwent [[electroconvulsive therapy]] for [[depression (mood)|depression]]{{sfn|Nelson|1994|p=154}} and was afraid to leave their house toward the end of her life.{{sfn|Rule|2000|pp=501–508}}

These descriptions of Bundy's grandparents have been questioned in more recent investigations. Some locals in Roxborough remembered Samuel as a "fine man" and expressed bewilderment at the reports of him being violent. "The characterization that [Sam] was a raging [[alcoholism|alcoholic]] and animal abuser was a convenient characterization used to make people justify why Ted was the way he was," said one of Bundy's cousins. "From my limited exposure to him, nothing could be farther from the truth. His daughters loved him dearly and had nothing but fond memories of him." In addition, Louise's sister, Audrey Cowell, stated that their mother could not leave her home because she suffered a [[stroke]] due to being overweight and was not mentally ill.{{sfn|Barth|2020|p=296–299}}

[[File:Ted Bundy HS Yearbook.jpeg|thumb|right|upright|Bundy as a high school senior in 1965]]
In 1950, Louise changed her surname from Cowell to Nelson{{sfn|Rule|2000|p=8}} and, at the urging of multiple family members, left Philadelphia with her son to live with cousins Alan and Jane Scott in [[Tacoma, Washington]].{{sfn|Nelson|1994|p=155}}<ref name=childhood/> The following year she met Johnny Culpepper Bundy (1921–2007), a hospital cook, at an adult singles night at Tacoma's First Methodist Church.{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=57}} They married later that year and Johnny formally adopted Bundy.{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=57}} Johnny and Louise conceived four children together, and though Johnny tried to include his adopted son in camping trips and other family activities, Bundy remained distant from him. Bundy would later complain to a girlfriend that Johnny "was not his real father," "wasn't very bright" and "didn't make much money."{{sfn|Rule|2009|p=51}}

Bundy exhibited disturbing behavior at an early age. Louise's younger sister, Julia Cowell, recalled awakening from a nap to find herself surrounded by knives from the kitchen, and three-year-old Bundy standing by the bed, smiling.{{sfn|Rule|2000|p=505}} Sandi Holt, a childhood neighbor in Tacoma, recalled Bundy as a "mean-spirited kid" who "liked to inflict pain and suffering and fear."<ref name=childhood>{{cite web|first=Jill|last=Sederstrom|url=https://www.oxygen.com/martinis-murder/what-was-ted-bundys-childhood-like|title=What Was Ted Bundy's Childhood Like?|website=[[Oxygen (TV channel)|Oxygen]]|date=August 11, 2019|access-date=August 9, 2022|archive-date=June 7, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230607025053/https://www.oxygen.com/martinis-murder/what-was-ted-bundys-childhood-like|url-status=live}}</ref> According to Holt, Bundy once engaged in [[animal cruelty]] by hanging a stray cat from his backyard clothesline and setting it on fire with lighter fluid.<ref name=childhood/> She also claimed that Bundy would take younger children from the neighborhood into the woods, force them to strip and proceeded to terrorize them: "You'd hear them screaming for blocks, I mean no matter where we were here, we could hear them screaming."<ref name=childhood/> Bundy reportedly built makeshift [[punji stick|punji traps]] around his Tacoma neighborhood, injuring at least one girl.<ref name=childhood/><ref>''Invisible Monsters: Serial Killers in America''. "Episode 1: First Look." A&E. Broadcast 5 August 2021.</ref>

Bundy varied his recollections of Tacoma in later years. To Michaud and Aynesworth, he described picking through trash barrels in search of pictures of naked women.{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1989|p=22}} To attorney and author [[Polly Nelson]], he said that he perused detective magazines and [[crime novel]]s for stories that involved [[sexual violence]], particularly when the stories were illustrated with pictures of dead or maimed women.{{sfn|Nelson|1994|pp=277–278}} In a letter to Rule, however, he asserted that he "never, ever read fact-detective magazines, and shuddered at the thought that anyone would."{{sfn|Rule|2009|p=612}} He once told Michaud that he would consume large quantities of alcohol and "canvass the community" late at night in search of undraped windows where he could [[peeping tom|observe women undressing]], or "whatever [else] could be seen."{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1989|pp=74–77}} Psychologist Al Carlisle claimed that Bundy "started fantasizing about women he saw while window peeping or elsewhere [and] mimicking the accents of some politicians he listened to on the radio. In essence, he was fantasizing about being someone else, someone important."<ref name=childhood/>

Accounts of Bundy's social life also varied. He told Michaud and Aynesworth that he "chose to be alone" as an adolescent because he was unable to understand interpersonal relationships;{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=64}} he also claimed to have no natural sense of how to develop friendships. "I didn't know what made people want to be friends," Bundy claimed. "I didn't know what underlay social interactions."{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=66}} "Some people perceived me as being shy and introverted," he said. "I didn't go to dances. I didn't go on the beer drinking outings. I was a pretty, you might call me straight, but not a social outcast in any way."<ref name=childhood/> Classmates from [[Woodrow Wilson High School (Tacoma, Washington)|Woodrow Wilson High School]], however, told Rule that Bundy was "well known and well liked" there, "a medium-sized fish in a large pond."{{sfn|Rule|2009|p=13}} His only significant athletic avocation was downhill skiing, which he pursued enthusiastically with stolen equipment and [[forgery|forged]] lift tickets.{{sfn|Michaud|Aynesworth|1999|p=62}} During high school, Bundy was arrested at least twice on suspicion of [[burglary]] and [[motor vehicle theft]]. At age 18 the details of these incidents were expunged from his record, as is customary in Washington and many other states.{{sfn|Rule|2009|pp=13–14}}