Here's the True Story About Ted Bundy's Daughter with Carole Ann Boone

Serial killer Ted Bundy is back in the limelight thanks to a new Zac Efron movie and a four-part Netflix documentary series. Bundy’s crimes—the murder of at least 30 people in the mid-to-late 1970s—along with the subsequent trials and escapes, took America by storm.

Before he was executed at Florida State Prison in 1989, Bundy became a father for what is believed to be the first and only time when his wife Carole Ann Boone gave birth to a daughter. In the decades since Bundy’s death, mentions of his daughter have been few and far between, understandably, but here’s what we know today:

Bundy proposed to Boone while on trial

Carole Ann Boone, played by Kaya Scodelario in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, first met Bundy at the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia, Washington, where they both worked six years before Bundy’s infamous court proposal. While he was on trial in Florida in 1980, Bundy, who was representing himself, straight-up asked Boone if she wanted to marry him during a question period about their relationship.

Bundy’s proposal at the time was considered legal thanks to an arcane Florida law that stated as long as a judge was present for a marriage declaration in court, the transaction would be allowed. Per Ann Rule’s 1980 biography of Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, Bundy proposed a second time after mixing up the terminology (“I do hereby marry you” made it legit). Bundy was subsequently sentenced to death for a third time; he would remain on death row for the next nine years. According to Rule, Boone divorced Bundy three years prior to his execution.

Bundy and Boone’s daughter was conceived in prison

Per a September 1981 Associated Press story published in Utah paper The Deseret News, Boone told reporters “it’s nobody’s business” how the child was conceived. At the time, the AP pointed out that Boone lived (with her son from a previous relationship) and worked near the Florida prison and made frequent visits to Bundy at the prison’s “park.” Conjugal visits were prohibited for inmates on death row, but as Rule revealed in her book, the bribing of guards who patrolled such areas was not uncommon.

A prison superintendent interviewed by the AP in 1981 offered this: “I’m not saying they couldn’t have some sexual contact, but in that park it would be mightly difficult. It’s stopped as soon as it starts.”

Rose (or Rosa) Bundy was born in the fall of 1981

The Orlando Sentinel’s coverage of Bundy’s final days before his execution confirmed that Boone became pregnant in early 1981 and gave birth to a daughter that October. The folks at Oxygen, who identify the daughter as “Rose Bundy (sometimes called Rosa),” claim the birth happened in 1982, which would make the daughter 36 or 37 today.

There’s a good reason why not much is known about Bundy’s daughter today

As Rule pointed out in her book, invasion of privacy was a main issue while writing about Bundy’s ex-wife and their daughter. In a 2008 reprint of her book, Rule did offer this vague update to the curious: “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.”

She also writes on her official website, “I have deliberately avoided knowing anything about Ted’s ex-wife and daughter’s whereabouts because they deserve privacy. I don’t want to know where they are; I never want to be caught off guard by some reporter’s question about them. All I know is that Ted’s daughter has grown up to be a fine young woman.”

Rose is barely mentioned in the Zac Efron movie

Minor spoiler alert: Rose, or rather, the journey Bundy and Boone took to conceive the child, is not a big part of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, as the film is told from the perspective of Bundy’s girlfriend of seven years, Elizabeth Kloepfer (played Lily Collins). What the movie does show is Bundy’s relationship with Kloepfer’s daughter Tina. While he was not Tina’s biological father, Bundy was present for much of Tina’s early years.

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