Killers are often characterized as cool and calculating, but in both the crimes of Ted Bundy and those alleged to have been committed by Bryan Kohberger, the brutal immediacy of the attacks is nothing short of savage. Bundy was first captured in 1975, when, despite already having several murders to his name, he was jailed for attempted kidnapping (per Biography). The following year he was finally linked to a murder and extradited to Colorado to stand trial. However, he managed to escape — twice — in 1977, and the serial killer was free to attack again, which he did with shocking abandon. After his second prison escape, he committed his next crime — running rampant in a sorority house, Chi Omega, at Florida State University (per CBS News). Bundy prowled the house armed with a club, bludgeoning and biting female students as he encountered them before fleeing from the scene. The senseless attack left two young women dead and two others seriously injured before Bundy set his sights on another victim, Cheryl Thomas — who survived — at her home six blocks away. Bundy was later identified as the attacker by the bite marks he had left on his victims.

The alleged murders in Idaho were similarly brutal, involving an invasion in the dead of night and close-up violence with a fatal weapon against vulnerable people. Bundy’s former lawyer, John Henry Browne, told FOX 29 that he believed Bundy’s shocking murders were in part fuelled anger, and that the killings in the Idaho case were carried out with similar rage.