After Ted Bundy’s execution at the Florida State Prison, officials transported his body under guard to Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Florida. Medical experts, including the forensic anthropologist William Maples, removed Bundy’s brain and examined it for any abnormalities, per “Dead Men Do Tell Tales.” In “The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer,” Robert Keppel, a Washington state investigator, said Bundy’s dark urges “surged over him in chemical tidal waves like a craving for a narcotic.” The thinking went that there might be an abnormality in the killer’s brain that led to his aberrant behavior.
Maples, when examining Ted Bundy’s corpse, noticed the “halo-shaped” scorches on the killer’s head and a deep burn on his leg from the electric chair. Bundy had been in good shape, apparently spending his time in prison working out, and he had self-tanner on his skin. When they removed the top of Bundy’s head, they found “a large mass of congealed blood on the top of the brain,” a side effect of having 2,000 volts coarse through his body. What Maples didn’t find was anything out of the ordinary with the killer’s brain. “When it finally was removed and examined, Ted Bundy’s brain looked like anyone else’s,” he recalled.
