by Wray Herbert
Published November 3, 2010
Before his execution in the Florida electric chair in 1989, Ted Bundy
confessed to murdering 30 young women, typically by bludgeoning them to
death and often raping them as well. He almost certainly had many more
victims than that, perhaps more than 100. But he avoided suspicion for
much of his five-year killing spree, in part because he was good-looking
and clean-cut, a college grad and a law student.
Despite this outward appearance, Bundy was socially clueless. He was
introverted and by his own description had no sense of how to get along
with people. Near the end of his life he described himself this way: “I
didn’t know what made things tick. I didn’t know what made people want
to be friends. I didn’t know what made people attractive to one another.
I didn’t know what underlay social interaction.”
Psychopaths can be paradox. Some, like Bundy, are intellectually high
functioning, and they clearly know right from wrong. They are not
delusional, but they are socially inept. They seem to lack
normal self-control, and they persistently violate social, legal and
moral rules. They don’t — as Bundy’s words suggest — comprehend the
human social contract.
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