Ted Bundy executed in 1989 after convictions in Florida murders of two students and a girl

On January 24, 1989, Ted Bundy was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison. The sentence closed a decade-long saga that began with a string of disappearances in the Pacific Northwest and ended with convictions for the murders of two Florida State University students and a 12-year-old girl.

The case first drew public attention in January 1974, when a University of Washington student vanished from her off-campus apartment in Seattle. Over the following months, more young women disappeared from college campuses and public areas in Washington and Oregon, often in daylight and from busy places, according to the case file.

In July 1974, two women were abducted from a crowded lake near Seattle in the middle of the day; their bodies were found months later in a wooded area. The disappearances continued into 1975, spreading to Utah and Colorado.

The investigation initially struggled because the victims were spread across multiple jurisdictions. A turning point came in August 1975, when a Utah Highway Patrol officer stopped a driver for a traffic violation and found handcuffs, a ski mask, and other suspicious items in his car. The driver was Theodore Robert Bundy, known as Ted Bundy — a law student and former Republican campaign worker.