You probably know who Ted Bundy is-a notorious serial killer who was linked to the murder of thirty-six victims, although many experts believe that number is closer to one hundred. He would approach a woman in a public place, gain trust by feigning injury or impersonating an authority figure, and then abduct her. Once the victim was in his car, he’d hit her in the skull with a crowbar. He strangled all but one of his victims. Many bodies were driven miles away from where they disappeared. While on death row, Bundy admitted that he decapitated over a dozen of his victims and kept their heads for a while. He visited the bodies and applied makeup to the corpses or engaged in sexual acts. He kept souvenirs: photos, women’s clothing. To this day, many of his victims remain unknown.
It is widely believed that the expert testimony by Dr. Richard Souviron, a forensic dentist, was what secured Bundy’s conviction and eventual execution. Bite marks were found on the buttocks of the victim Lisa Levy. The first was a complete bite mark. The second was rotated so that there were two impressions of the lower teeth. This gave authorities more places to compare dental records against the mark, which increased the odds of a match.
The analysis of the bite marks was possible only because a particularly savvy crime scene investigator who was taking pictures at the scene included a ruler in the photo of the bite mark, in order to show scale. Without this photograph, Bundy might have been acquitted. The bite mark had degraded past identifiable by the time the case was presented in court, so the only useful evidence of its original size and shape was that photograph.