Did Serial Murderer Ted Bundy’s Killing Spree Actually Begin at the Jersey Shore?

Could the murders of two teenage girls at the Jersey Shore be where serial killer Ted Bundy's killing spree actually began? Connections exist.

I'm trying to find something to make me believe Ted Bundy, one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, didn't murder two young women in the South Jersey area in the late 1960s.

If we're being honest, the evidence out there to support my theory (and that of others) is overwhelming, so why is this pair of slaying 'unsolved' even to this day? They are quite realistically two murders Bundy was never brought to justice for. Let's examine.

WHO?

Ted Bundy committed over 30 murders (that he admitted to) between 1974 and 1978. Additionally, he was convicted on charges of burglary, attempted murder, and rape. Ultimately, he was sentenced to death and executed by electric chair in 1989.

Bundy was a student at Temple University in Philadelphia up until May 1969, and was reported to have visited Atlantic City and the surrounding area the weekend two women were killed and discovered off Exit 36 of the Garden State Parkway.

Photos exist of Bundy and his mother spending time on 14^th Street Beach in Ocean City when he was a kid, so he would have been very familiar with the Jersey Shore. It’s an example that was reportedly left out of the both the popular 2019 docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and the movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile.

WHAT?

The murders of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry. The two were friends and recent college graduates from Pennsylvania and possibly the earliest known victims of Ted Bundy right here in New Jersey before he traveled west where he’d go on a killing spree that spanned seven states.

WHEN?

May 1969. Although he never outright confessed to their slayings, Bundy reportedly bragged to psychologist Art Norman that he killed two women in the Atlantic City area that same year.

WHERE?

Davis and Perry had spent some of the 1969 Memorial Day Weekend in Ocean City. The teens, both 19 years of age, hit the road before dawn that May 30th to make their way back to Pennsylvania, according to killerinthearchives.blog, but they never made it.

Sometime after a stop at Point Diner in Somers Point, the girls encountered harm and met their end.

Three days later, the bodies of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry were found beneath piles of leaves approximately 250 feet off the Garden State Parkway Northbound between Somers Point and Northfield. Both had been stabbed to death.

Susan and Elizabeth’s families both believe Bundy took the girls’ lives and reportedly expressed a sense of closure when Bundy was executed.

But Bundy’s own aunt, whom he lived with for a time in South Philly, provided him an alibi for the day Davis and Perry were murdered. She claimed he couldn’t have been at the Jersey Shore the end of May 1969 because he’d allegedly had a car accident and a cast on his leg at that time, so he couldn’t drive. However, Bundy was known to use arm and leg props to feign injury to lure and gain sympathy and assistance from his victims.

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RAISING SUSPICION:

A New Jersey Lawyer named Christian E. Barth has written two books about Ted Bundy and makes a compelling, convincing argument for why the serial killer could be (and most likely is) responsible for the Davis/Perry murders.

In particular, The Garden State Parkway Murders: A Cold Case Mystery takes a deep dive into potential evidence tying Bundy to these two South Jersey unsolved killings.

In Barth’s opinion, Atlantic County Prosecutors just never put much weight into charging Bundy, back then or posthumously, in the slayings of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry, but even Bundy reportedly never denied he didn’t have early victims along the Jersey Shore.

SOURCES: The Philly Voice; Patch.com; Medium.com