Ted Bundy committed assaults in the seventies.
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 .