Throughout the class we learned on how the serial killers can appear in some instances like heroes. We also learned on how the motives of trying to capture a certain serial killer we are going to condone the acts of other serial killers actions. Two specific serial killers we are going to take a look at are Ted Bundy’s and Ed Gein. In our class the best characters that I think represents them are two specific people Hannibal Lector, and Buffalo Bill.
They were brought up very differently in their childhood Ted wasn’t bullied while growing up. Ed was bullied a lot when growing up either from his family or the kids from school where they are calling him queer or gay. He was showing tendencies that demonstrated that he was queer or gay. Ted after seeing his father being killed he was brought up by his grandparents. Then was readopted by his mother that married a military man which this confused him mentally. I will show on how they were brought up made them psychotic which caused them to kill people.
Up Bringing

Edward Theodore “Ed” Gein was born on 27 August 1906, at La Crosse County, Wisconsin in USA to George Philip and Augusta Wilhelmine Gein. He had an older brother named Henry George Gein (Editors, Ed Gein Biography, 2017). During this time when he was a child, his family moved near Plainfield in Wisconsin. Ed’s family isolated him during his childhood, he was only allowed to go to school. He was shy, had poor social skills and often became a target of bullies. His teachers remembered that he had shown queer movements, such as laughing randomly. His mother was a loyal follower of Lutheranism and shared knowledge on topics like the born-in never dying of the world, the sins of sexual desire and drinking etc., to his brother as well as to him. She discouraged any contact from outsiders to avoid them being influenced.
Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on 24 November 1946 at Vermont, United States of America. His mother’s name was Louise Cowell and his father’s identity remains unknown. Ted Bundy was brought up by his grandparents Samuel Cowell as their own child to avoid the sets of very negative beliefs by others, because their daughter Louise was a young single parent. Ted grew up knowing is Louise as his sister. In 1951, when his mother, Louise, married Johnny Culpepper Bundy, a military cook, and was adopted by and his last name changed from Cowell to Bundy. The couple had four other children of their own. (Editors, Ted Bundy Biography, 2017)
Ted Bundy completed his high education in 1965 from Woodrow Wilson High School and spent the following year in the University of Puget Sound. In 1966, he got moved from one place to another to the University of Washington in order to learn Chinese. However, he dropped out of college in 1968. Sometime after, he enrolled in the Temple University, Philadelphia for a single semester. Later in 1970 he re-enrolled in the university and got honors in the study of thinking and behavior. In 1974 Ted Bundy had enrolled in the University of Utah to study Law. (Editors, Ted Bundy Biography, 2017)
Later Life

A few years later, on 16 November 1957, police suspected Ed Gein for the disappearance of a store clerk named Bernice Worden in Plainfield. He was a person of interest because he was the last customer to leave the store prior to Bernice Worden’s disappearance. The police were able to get a search warrant for Gain’s home and property. When they went inside the shed they made a gruesome discovery. The police first discovered the body of Bernice Worden’s corpse hung upside down with ropes on her wrists and a crossbar at her ankles without her head. The body was dressed up like a deer and gutted and cleaned out like a hunted animal. It was later found that the mutilation was performed after she was killed by a shoot with a rifle. (Serial Killers of Wisconsin, 2017)
Upon searching the house police found several other disturbing items including human skulls on bed corner posts and skull tops used as bowls, human skin used as lampshades and chair covers, a belt made of human nipples, socks from human flesh, a collection of female genitalia and noses. Several items that neighbors remembered being sent by Ed Gein’s cousin who had served in World War II. After further discovery it was realized that they were actually facial skin removed from the skulls and used as masks. (Editors, Ed Gein Biography, 2017)
Ted Bundy dropped out of college in 1968, he worked many odd jobs during this time. He volunteered for the Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential run of public office. In 1971, Ted Bundy was employed at a Suicide Hotline Serious problem Centre in Seattle. Here he worked next to Ann Rule, a well-known crime writer. Here is where he first gained an understanding that others pain was pleasurable to him. (Editors, Ted Bundy Biography, 2017)
Ted Bundy’s first known murder attempts began in January 1974 when he attacked and tried to kill an 18 year old girl in her sleep. (Editors, Ted Bundy Biography, 2017) A few weeks later, he broke into the house of another woman who was beat in the head and carried away. She was later found with no head. Within six months, eight more women in Washington had been killed by him.
During this time, Ted Bundy was working at the Washington State Department of Emergency Services and was dating his fellow worker Carole Ann Boone. In June that year there have been two cases of capturing someone by the use of forces. However, this time he did it during the day among public. There is some debate about when he started his murderous spree but it is generally accepted that he began his murderous destructive behaviors around 1974. On January 4, 1974, he sexually attacked and tried to kill an 18-year-old girl but she survived. (Editors, Ted Bundy Biography, 2017)
In the fall of 1974, Ted Bundy moved to Utah and enrolled at the University of Utah to study Law. He continued his murderous spree, by October 1974, he convinced three girls that he needed assistance he then killed them. One of the girls was the daughter of a police officer. The next month, he persuaded another girl by tricking her to believe he was a policeman. This time the girl escaped. The same day he performed another murder and the body of the girl was never found. By the beginning of 1975, Ted Bundy had killed five more women–four from Colorado and one from Utah. (Editors, Ted Bundy Biography, 2017)
Methodology of their Work
Ed became very interested with the woman’s body. Early on he was fascinated with items created to arouse people sexually like magazines and pictures. Later, he combined the visual aids with the written descriptions of people who died. After his mother died he was over whelmed with a desire to recreate his mother. At this time he developed gender dysphoria and even thought about changing his sex. However, a sex change operation scared Ed so he used other ways to try to create himself into a woman the best he could. He began watching the written descriptions of people who died in the newspaper and would be up to date with the local deaths and crimes. At night, he would go to freshly dug places where bodies are buried and take important parts from the women he wanted. He would then close the place where a body is buried back up and take the parts he gathered back home.
After a while this didn’t make him happy by meeting a need or reaching a desire. His need and want for something a little “fresher” grew each and every day. His first victim was Mary Hogan, a 51 year old tavern owner whom Ed killed in 1954. After shooting her he put her in the back of his truck and took her home. Police were unable to find any clues to Hogan’s killer. In 1957, he killed his next victim who was 51 year old Bernice Worden, an owner of a general store. After he killed her he put her in the back of the store owned truck and took her body home. When Worden’s son, Frank, went to the store to help his mother he found a trail of blood and the missing store truck. He then dug into the sales history and found the lastly sold item was a bottle of antifreeze. Honest remembered Ed was in the store the day before looking at the antifreeze and told the police to check it out. (Editors, Ed Gein Biography, 2017)
Ted Bundy not much is 100 percent known on what was his methodology every time he was interviewed he would change his approach. What is known is that Ted was a kleptomaniac he would steal bigger items each time to try to gain arousal. However, it was not enough when one day when he attacked a women in public to steal her purse and he got her blood on his shirt. That turned him on. That’s when he changed from stealing items to assaulting women. First he knocked them out then raped them, then killed them. After a while he would convince women to get in his car where he would kill them and have sex with them over and over.
Motive

In 1940, Ed Gein’s father died of a heart failure caused by alcoholism. Post the event, he along with his brother began working odd jobs in the neighborhood. He had worked as a useful man and baby supervisor and was carefully thought about reliable in the place. He was known to be very attached to his mother, and this behavior was a cause of concern for his older brother. Henry Gein had begun to argue against his mother’s views on the world. When his mother died he started to look for women that looked like her to kill her. (Editors, Ed Gein Biography, 2017)
Ted Bundy there isn’t really any seen reasons for doing things of why he had started to kill people since he always changed his story. What a lot of people think is that he was having issues with his girlfriend that ended up her leaving him. Since she could no longer take the lies, issues like not seeing his parents that she just left him. He then started to kill women that looked like his late girlfriend this shows the type of girls that he was getting. The other part is that he just doesn’t understand the connection between women and men.
How they got captured

Ed Gein while get questioned by Waushara County sheriff, Art Schley assaulted him by banging his head on the wall, thereby making his initial confession inadmissible. The county sheriff died in 1968 prior to the trial and was believed to have died due to the trauma of the horrific crimes committed by Ed Gein. He was found medically unfit to undergo trial and subsequently was sent to Central State Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin. He was later transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1968, he was declared fit by doctors and upon trial was found not guilty by Judge Robert H. Gollmar on the basis of mental insanity. He spent the rest of his life in prison. Ted Bundy is kind of similar in this aspect. (Editors, Ed Gein Biography, 2017)
In August 1975, Ted Bundy was arrested by the police for disobeying traffic rules and not stopping his car. The police found equipment in the car that included handcuffs, masks and a crowbar and found out that the car matched the description given by the attack survivor the previous year. Ted Bundy was then sentenced to fifteen years of jail on 1 March 1976 for capturing someone by the use of force. But he escaped from prison twice in 1977 even before he could be charged for the more than two, but not a lot of the murders were committed by him. (Editors, Ted Bundy Biography, 2017)
He was able to delay his execution for nearly 10 years through the long appeals process and tried to take his case up to the U.S Supreme Court but in the end he couldn’t change from yes to no or from guilty to not guilty his death time spent punished. (Editors, Ted Bundy Biography, 2017)
Conclusion

In the end the only thing that they have in common is that they both had fascination with killing women. However, their reasons were so very different Ed was to create an over baring mother that he lost and also wanting to become a women himself. Ted he just had an extreme need for gratification. They both had very difficult childhoods that may have guided them do what they did. Other than that they have nothing in common but throughout this paper what we showed is that Ted Bundy was a very sophisticated serial killer and Ed Gein was not very sophisticated except depressed and right down deranged in the head. But they both died the same way in prison either with people killing them or the electric chair.