Did Bundy deserve the death penalty?

Two wrongs dont make a right.

My feelings toward the death penalty are mixed. While it is hypocritical in one sense, what do you do about killers like Bundy who won't stop? He had escaped in the past and he could have done so again. I wouldn't want to be the one to make the decision of execution, I wouldn't want to carry it out or witness it. It's not black and white. Bundy did deserve punishment, and with him dead we don't have to worry about him anymore, and he's not around to see all the adulation that some misguided people have conveyed to him. He killed without conscience, inflicting pain and anguish, not only on his victims but their families, as well as the general public. No one knew what to look for, this was a different time when people were still inclined to trust one another. The term "serial killer" was coined for him after he was captured. We know for sure he murdered at least thirty young women - how many more that we don't know about? For those who were lucky enough to survive his attacks or escape him, I doubt they will ever forget the terror that he put them through. He carefully chose and stalked his victims, because they represented what he felt he couldn't possess - a girl from a good family, intelligent, beautiful - what he had lost when his first serious girlfriend ended their relationship. No question that he was already seriously disturbed beforehand, and had his family known what to look for, perhaps it could have been caught early, but in those days, there was not the knowledge that there is today about sociopathic and psychopathic behavior, as well as severe psychological and mental disorders.

As for the earlier poster who stated, "What were those girls doing out walking around? Did they think they were better than him?"

They didn't know who he was! They were living their lives, going about their business, with a future full of potential in front of them. How were they to know what he was, or what he was planning? Blaming the victims is totally unjustified and unfair, since they are not the ones who committed the crime. Would you know how to react in such a situation? Every perpetrator is different, with diverse MOs. And not all of his victims were conned into going with him (when he would wear his arm in a sling, and ask for assistance to carry things to his car, when he posed as a policeman or a firefighter), some of these girls were sleeping soundly in their own beds, in their own homes, when he broke in (Bundy was an accomplished burgler, and no doubt he had committed rapes and assualts long before he started killing, and he was also a peeping tom) and attacked and/or killed them. Lynda Ann Healy, generally considered to be his first murder victim (or first known victim)was attacked in her basement room (in house that she shared with four other girls who didn't hear a sound), abducted and her skull was later found on Taylor mountain, along with numerous other remains of young women.

To quote famed FBI profiler John Douglas, "As someone who has spent a good part of his career trying to hunt down the Ted Bundys of the world, I can't say that I enjoyed the fact that he went to hell aided by two thousand volts from the Starke electric chair. But I would have to confess a certain satisifaction. Despite his incarceration for more then ten years, when, on the morning of January 24, 1989, I learned that Bundy had been executed, it was the first time I rested easy that we wouldn never kill again."

There is no easy answer to the whole debate - it is very complicated. But I for one am relieved that Bundy is not free to roam today. He escaped detection for far too long, and no doubt he set the stage for many who followed in his footsteps. He could have taken his life in another direction and done something positive, but he chose to do evil and destructive things. I don't argue that he had screws loose, but that does not justify his actions.

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