Portrait of Ted Bundy

Birthday profile

Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy, American serial killer (died 1989)

Born
November 24, 1946
Died
January 24, 1989
Zodiac sign
Sagittarius
Birth year
1946

About Ted Bundy

Theodore Robert Bundy (né Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of young women and girls between 1974 and 1978. His modus operandi typically consisted of convincing his target that he was in need of assistance or duping them into believing he was an authority figure. He would then lure his victim to his vehicle, at which point he would bludgeon them unconscious, then restrain them with handcuffs before driving them to a remote location to be sexually assaulted and killed. Bundy killed his first definitively-known victim in February 1974 in Washington, and his later crimes stretched to Oregon, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. He frequently revisited the bodies of his victims, grooming and performing sex acts on the corpses until decomposition and destruction by wild animals made further interactions impossible. Along with the murders, Bundy was also a prolific burglar, and on a few occasions he broke into homes at night and bludgeoned, maimed, strangled and sexually assaulted his victims in their sleep. In 1975, Bundy was arrested and jailed in Utah for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He then became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in several states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, Bundy engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults in Florida, including three murders, before being recaptured in 1978. For the Florida homicides, he received three death sentences in two trials and was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989. Biographer Ann Rule characterized Bundy as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death and even after." He once described himself as "the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet," a statement with which attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, agreed. She wrote that "Ted was the very definition of heartless evil."

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Ted Bundy was born

Ted Bundy was born in 1946. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1946

  • #1 song"The Christmas Song" – Nat King Cole
  • Top movieThe Best Years of Our Lives
  • Best-selling bookThe King's General – Daphne du Maurier

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst NBA (BAA) season begins
  • Top headlineUnited Nations General Assembly holds its first session
  • Technology milestoneENIAC — first general-purpose electronic computer
  • Defining fadBaby boom begins
  • Notable inventionTupperware
  • World population2.43 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderHarry S. Truman
  • Sports championSt. Louis Cardinals (World Series)
  • U.S. population141.4M

1946 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Ted Bundy's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19462026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$6,600$435,000
Average income$4,300$67,500
Minimum wage$0.40$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.35$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population141.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.