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Childhood
Theodore Robert Cowell (Bundy) was born on the 24th November, 1946 at The Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers (aka Lizzie Lunds Home for Naughty Ladies) in Burlington, Vermont to Eleanor Louise Cowell. Eleanor Louise Cowell was a respectable young secretary from a strong religious upbringing. when she fell pregnant with Ted she was an unwed woman and in those times, this was just not the done thing. Having disgraced her family, and having no desire to abort or put the child up for adoption on birth, she instead went to The Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers, where she stayed until the child was born. Eleanor and baby Ted were permitted to return to the family home in Philadelphia. Eleanor's parents decided that it would be best for Ted to think they were his parents and Eleanor merely his elder sister. This was firmly enforced and Ted was non the wiser for a great many years, but both his mother and his grandparents suspected that he knew the truth.
Eleanor, fearing the kind of treatment that Ted would recieve when the truth was finally revealed, changed Ted's name to Theodore Robert Nelson when he was age 4. After the name change, she and Ted moved to Tacoma, Seattle where they were going to live with relatives. Eleanor also began to use her Middle name as her first in this period as well.
Louise (Eleanor) joined the Methodist Church in Tacoma where she met John Bundy. John and Louise hit it off immediately and within a short period of time, they were married, thus giving Ted a 3rd name at the age of 5.
John Bundy was a cook in the Madigan Army Hospital situated near Tacoma. He was very accepting of both Louise and Ted. He tried a lot harder with Ted, for Ted was not as accepting of him. Often, John would get up early to help Ted with his paper route and in the afternoons they would pick beans together, sometimes earning as much as $6.00 between them.
Ted Bundy grew up like most other children, he went to school where he excelled as a B grade student. He was popular but not too popular. He had friends that he hung around. All in all, Ted was a well rounded individual for the start that he had been given. Ted was far smarter than he gave himself credit, at graduation, he received a scholarship to the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.
In closing on the childhood of Theodore Robert Bundy, i quote for Ann Rule's Book, "The Stranger Beside Me":
"Ted wrote an unusual note in a classmates copy of 'The Nova,' Wilson High's yearbook:
Dearest V.,
The sweetness of the spring time rain runs down the window pain (sic.) (I can't help it. It just flows out)
Ted Bundy's Pathway to Darkness
The total Killings that Bundy Confessed to
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