What Happened to Ted Bundy's Daughter, Rosa? Inside Her Early Childhood and Why She Couldn’t Say Goodbye to Him By Jessica Sager 14

Ted Bundy is one of the most notorious serial killers of all time — and he was also a husband and father.

Bundy, who brutally raped and murdered at least 30 women and girls across seven states between 1974 and 1978, had one known biological child: A daughter named Rosa, whom he shared with his ex-wife, Carole Ann Boone.

Bundy and Boone welcomed Rosa in 1982 while Bundy was in prison. Although not many details about the couple’s relationship or Rosa’s upbringing were shared at the time, a few have since been revealed. Most notably, different documentaries have featured family photos of the three. Now, Bundy is the focus of Hulu’s new docuseries, Ted Bundy: Dialogue with the Devil, out on August 7.

In the 2020 Amazon Prime Video docuseries Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, Boone’s friend Diane Smith revealed how Bundy and Boone’s relationship unfolded. Smith also shared that they split after Bundy confessed his crimes to Boone, who had believed he was innocent. Because of this, a then-6-year-old Rosa didn’t get to say a final goodbye to her dad before his execution on Jan. 24, 1989.

According to author Ann Rule — who once worked with Bundy and wrote The Stranger Beside Me — Boone and Rosa moved away. Boone later died in 2018, and Rosa grew up to be “a kind and intelligent young woman” who led a private life.

So what happened to Ted Bundy’s family after his death? Here’s everything to know about his ex-wife, Carole Ann Boone, and their daughter, Rosa Bundy.

What did Ted Bundy do?

One of the world’s most prolific serial killers, Bundy confessed to murdering at least 30 women and young girls between 1974 and 1978, and investigators suspect that there may be many more victims, as the extent of his crimes (which also included rape and kidnapping) isn’t fully known.

Bundy was first arrested in 1975, per the FBI, and the following year, he was found guilty of aggravated kidnapping in the Utah case of Carol DaRonch. After he was sentenced to one to 15 years in prison, Bundy was charged with the murder of Caryn Campbell in Colorado, where he unsuccessfully tried to escape in the summer of 1977, according to ABC News.

Bundy became a suspect in a long list of then-unsolved murders across several states. After his second escape from a Colorado prison in December 1977, he traveled to Chicago and made his way to Florida, where he murdered two college students, assaulted at least three others and murdered a 12-year-old girl named Kimberly Dianne Leach.

Bundy was finally recaptured in February 1978. In two separate trials, he was convicted of three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. He received four separate death sentences in the state of Florida and was executed via electric chair on Jan. 24, 1989, per The New York Times.

Bundy’s slayings, as well as his theatrics — including serving as his own attorney — landed him in the headlines.

Who was Ted Bundy’s wife?

Bundy’s wife was Carole Ann Boone, whom he met while they worked together for the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia, Wash., in May 1974 — and while he was still in a relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer.

Boone was described as quick-witted, smart and fun in the 2005 book The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy. She and Bundy began their relationship as friends first, as she was going through a divorce from her second husband when they became acquainted.

Boone said of their early friendship, “I liked Ted immediately. We hit it off well. He struck me as being a rather shy person with a lot more going on under the surface than what was on the surface.”

Their relationship didn’t become romantic until he was in jail and she firmly believed in his innocence and often appeared to support him in court. She moved from her Washington home with her teenage son, Jamey, from a previous marriage, to Florida to be closer to Bundy when he was on trial for the murder of Leach.

Bundy and Boone attempted to get married through the prison chaplain, who denied their request, as well as through the mail and Bundy’s attorneys, who also didn’t want to get involved.

Bundy was convicted of Leach’s murder on Feb. 7, 1980, and two days later, he and Boone married in court due to an obscure Florida law, The Orlando Sentinel reported — and the moment was caught on courtroom cameras and aired on TV.

Prior to his sentencing hearing, Bundy hired a notary to sit in the courtroom. During the penalty phase of Bundy’s trial for the brutal slaying of Leach, he acted as his own attorney and called Boone as a character witness. While she was on the stand, he asked her, “Do you want to marry me?” She replied, “Yes,” to which he responded, “And I do hereby marry you.”

Because the vows were exchanged in the presence of a notary and a judge, the move constituted a marriage in the state.

Who is Ted Bundy’s daughter?

Conceived while Bundy was in prison, Boone gave birth to their daughter Rosa Bundy on Oct. 24, 1982.

Boone and Rosa lived “on the edge of poverty” in Gainesville, Fla., while Bundy was in prison, according to The Only Living Witness.

Although details about Rosa’s childhood and upbringing haven’t been shared, she was in contact with Bundy in her early years.

In Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, a marker drawing and note from Rosa to Bundy was shown and it read, “I love you Daddy.”

Boone would reportedly bring Rosa for visits to see Bundy in prison before they split in 1986, per The Only Living Witness.

What happened to Ted Bundy’s daughter?

In Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, Boone’s friend Smith said that Boone began tiring of Bundy, describing him as “exhausting, obsessive, moody and demanding, as if [Boone] didn’t have enough to do.” Smith said that Boone’s letters to Bundy became less frequent over time.

It wasn’t until the final days before Bundy’s execution that Bundy confessed to her that he did commit the many murders of which he’d been accused, that she left him — and even then, he didn’t admit guilt directly.

Instead, Smith alleges, Bundy asked Boone if, in an effort to get a stay on his execution date, he should offer details on where the victims’ remains were left.

“That was his way of telling her — that there were bodies that he knew about and that he had actually killed all those people. That call was just devastating for her,” Smith said. “She was really angry.”

Smith said that the conversation was Boone’s last with Bundy and that she forbade him from communicating with their daughter and ceased visiting him in prison.

“I am surprised she talked to him at all. And he wanted to talk to Rosa, and she said no,” Smith said. “So there was no goodbye for Rosa.”

After Boone divorced Bundy, she and Rosa reportedly moved to Washington.

In a 2008 reprint of The Stranger Beside Me, author Ann Rule — who worked alongside Bundy at a crisis hotline in the early 1970s — wrote, “I have heard that Ted’s daughter is a kind and intelligent young woman, but I have no idea where she and her mother may live. They have been through enough pain.”

Where is Ted Bundy’s family now?

Little is known about what happened to Boone and Rosa after Bundy’s death.

“I have deliberately avoided knowing anything about Ted’s ex-wife and daughter’s whereabouts because they deserve privacy,” author Rule wrote on her old website. “I don’t want to know where they are; I never want to be caught off guard by some reporter’s question about them.”

She added, “All I know is that Ted’s daughter has grown up to be a fine young woman.”

There has been speculation that Rosa changed her first and last name after Boone remarried, taking her stepfather’s surname, but this information hasn’t been confirmed.

According to Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, Boone died in a Seattle retirement home in 2018.