Ted Bundy was charged with a crime.
Theodore Robert Bundy ( born Theodore Robert Cowell ; November 24 , 1946 -- January 24 , 1989 ) was an American serial killer , kidnapper , rapist , burglar , and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s , and possibly earlier . Initially incarcerated in Utah in 1975 for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault , Bundy became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in multiple states . Facing murder charges in Colorado , he engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults , including three murders , before his ultimate recapture in Florida in 1978 .