Introduction

Abstract

The incidence of crime is far greater than is captured by official statistics thus most offenses are never detected, a concept known as the dark figure of crime, and there is asymmetry in the offender population where a cadre of pathological criminals perpetrates most violence in society. One result of these forces is there are currently between 250,000 and 330,000 unsolved murders in the United States. This book revisits the crimes of Ted Bundy to challenge the conventional wisdom that his murders suddenly appeared as he approached age thirty and instead offer compelling evidence including admissions from Bundy himself about the full scope of his murder career. In addition to his psychopathology, the contours of his life of crime and other offenders like him including Samuel Little and Rodney Alcala were molded by the cultural and technological features of the middle to late twentieth, a nostalgic era of limited supervision, itinerant travel, limited surveillance, and technologically primitive criminal justice systems.KeywordsTed BundyMurderDark figure of crimeSerial murderSexual homicide