THE EXECUTION OF TED BUNDY

As far as serial killers go, Theodore Robert Bundy was as unapologetic as they come. At his trial, he didn’t express remorse, rather that he “felt sorry for those who felt guilt”.  No doubt the guy was a psychopath, fitting the classic description.  He was sentenced to be executed by electric chair for the (confessed) murder of thirty girls on July 30 1979.   The true number of victims, however, he took with him to the grave. Which he went to on January 24 1989, old sparky being his gate to the afterlife.

The electric chair is by no means a pleasant way to die.  Electricity passes through the body for around forty-five seconds, causing the body to jerk and convulse in a way that makes your humble reporter squirm a little bit.  And, like all methods of execution, it can go horribly wrong.   A case where a prisoner set to die, who we should mention had been less than rosie and peaches to his guards, was put in the electric chair, and caught fire.  The executioners had used a synthetic sponge instead of a real one for the headpiece, and thus his head was up in flames for several minutes, a fate that might remind some of Stephen King’s book The Green Mile.  Nasty.  Ted Bundy wasn’t pleased about it, reportedly shouting about the jury being wrong.  He appealed it multiple times, escaped from prison, and only received another death sentence in 1980.

Bundy, if he had any qualms about it after the fact, displayed about as much of that as remorse for his actions.  He had no choice, exhausting his appeal avenues in 1986.  In an interview conducted the day before he was set to be fried, he was calm and composed, friendly even.  Also in this interview, he blamed “a violent obsession with pornography” for the murders that made him a celebrity of sorts.  Prison life wasn’t all bad for Ted Bundy, even in those final days.  During his trial, he’d proposed to a woman named Carole Ann Boone, and married her right there in court.  Boone visited her husband in prison, and Bundy fathered a daughter in 1982.  However, Boone came to her senses and took her daughter, changed their last names, and moved away.

Ted Bundy declined a special request for a last meal, meaning he probably didn’t care.   He was instead given the classic last meal, medium rare steak (delish), eggs over easy, hash browns, some toast with butter and jelly, and some milk.  Ted’s last words seemed sentimental, a part of his likable persona, “Please give my love to my family and friends.”  Bundy was executed at seven in the morning, his head shaved, and cremated.  His ashes were scattered, in a small twist of irony, in his prefered body dumping ground.