Birth

Ted Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell on November 24, 1946, to Eleanor Louise Cowell (1924–2012; known as Louise) at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers in Burlington, Vermont. His birth certificate is said to assign paternity to a salesman and Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall, though other accounts state his father is listed as "Unknown". Louise claimed she had been seduced by an old-money war veteran named Jack Worthington, and the King County Sheriff's Office has him listed as the father in their files. Some family members have expressed suspicions that Bundy might have been fathered by Louise's own violent, abusive father, Samuel Cowell, but no material evidence has ever been cited to support this.