Ted Bundy

The backstory

The Chi Omega house

At about 3 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 15, 1978, an intruder entered the Chi Omega sorority house next to the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee, according to the Florida Supreme Court’s statement of facts.¹ Nita Neary, a resident coming home from a date, entered by the back door and saw a man at the front door holding a club, and she saw the right side of his face for several seconds, the court wrote.¹ She described him as wearing light-colored pants, a dark jacket and a skiing cap, with a protruding nose; at trial she pointed to Bundy as the man she saw.¹

Margaret Bowman was killed in the house that night. The court wrote that she and Lisa Levy “were killed by strangulation after receiving severe beatings with a length of a tree branch.”¹

Lisa Levy was also killed in the house. The court wrote that her attacker “bit Lisa Levy with sufficient intensity to leave indentations which could clearly be identified as human bite marks.”¹

Two other residents, Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler, “had been severely beaten,” and the court wrote that the surviving victims “were attacked in their sleep and could not describe their attacker.”¹

Dunwoody Street

About an hour later, at around 4 a.m., two residents of a duplex on Dunwoody Street near the campus heard loud noises and found Cheryl Thomas beaten in her bed, according to the court.¹ She had been attacked in her sleep and could not identify her attacker. A knotted pair of pantyhose that did not belong to her was found in the room, and holes in it “indicated that the pair of pantyhose might have been used as a mask,” the court wrote.¹ A hair analyst testified that hairs found in the pantyhose could have come from Bundy.¹ The two attacks were tried together; the court held that they were connected and that the evidence of each would have been admissible at a trial of the other.¹

Kimberly Leach

On Feb. 9, 1978, Kimberly Leach, 12, was reported missing from her junior high school in Lake City, Florida, according to the court’s statement of facts in her case.² About two months later her partially decomposed body was found in a wooded area near the Suwannee River.² The court wrote that “no specific cause of death could be determined from the autopsy reports”; the trial judge’s sentencing order said that she “died of homicidal violence to the neck region of the body.”²

The state’s case was circumstantial, as the court described it. On Feb. 8, 1978, a man in a white van approached the 14-year-old daughter of a Jacksonville police detective in a shopping center parking lot and drove off when her brother arrived; the children recorded the tag number and later picked Bundy’s photograph.² The tag had been stolen in Tallahassee, and an officer later saw it on the floor of a car Bundy was using.² Two Lake City Holiday Inn employees and a handwriting expert testified that Bundy registered at the motel on Feb. 8 under another name.² A school crossing guard testified that he saw a man he identified as Bundy driving a white van near the school.² A van belonging to the Florida State University media center had bloodstains on its carpet of type B, the victim’s blood type, a type shared by more than 15 percent of people, and an analyst testified that Bundy’s and Leach’s clothing had probably been in contact with the carpet and with each other.²

The state’s one eyewitness to the abduction, Clarence Anderson, came forward in July 1978, almost six months later, after seeing Bundy on television, and identified the girl and Bundy only after two hypnosis sessions arranged by the state.²⁷

The arrest

Bundy was arrested in Pensacola on Feb. 15, 1978, after he struck the officer who stopped him and ran; the officer fired at him and subdued him, and on the way to jail, the court wrote, “Bundy told the officer that he wished the officer had killed him.”¹ Four days earlier he had run from an officer who asked about a car he was standing beside.¹ During interviews after the arrest he revealed his identity, and investigators learned that he was wanted in Colorado for escape and homicide, the court wrote.²

In July 1978 he was indicted for the Chi Omega murders, pleaded not guilty, and was then charged with Kimberly Leach’s kidnapping and murder, according to reports at the time.¹⁵¹¹ A wire report said he would defend himself unless the court allowed an Atlanta lawyer, Millard Farmer, to take his case.¹¹ The trial courts in both cases refused to admit Farmer, and the Florida Supreme Court found no error.¹⁹

The Miami trial

Before trial, his lawyers asked for a competency hearing over his objection, and the state later asked for one too; a hearing on June 11, 1979, ended in a finding that he was competent.³ The trial opened in Tallahassee on June 12 and was moved the same day to Miami on a change of venue that Bundy had requested.³¹ Jury selection ran through June 30.³

Neary identified him in court.¹ A witness placed him in a bar next to the Chi Omega house on the night of Jan. 14, and at about 5 a.m. he was seen standing outside The Oak, the rooming house where he lived, looking toward the campus.¹ Around noon that Sunday, while other residents discussed the killings, he said they were “a professional job,” the court wrote.¹ The state’s chief forensic dentist testified that, comparing the bite marks with casts of Bundy’s teeth, he believed the marks on Lisa Levy were made by Bundy’s teeth, and a second forensic dentist reached the same conclusion using computer-enhanced photographs, according to the court.¹

On July 24, 1979, the jury found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted first-degree murder and two counts of burglary.⁶¹ The jury recommended death for each murder.¹

Why the jury chose death in Miami

The trial judge, Edward D. Cowart, followed the jury’s recommendations and sentenced him to death for each murder on July 31, 1979.¹¹² He also received two consecutive 99-year terms for the burglaries, according to a wire report.¹² Cowart called the crimes “heinous, atrocious and cruel,” the report said.¹²

The judge found four statutory aggravating circumstances, listed in full above: that Bundy was under a sentence of imprisonment, based on a stipulation that he was under sentence for aggravated kidnapping in Utah; that he had been previously convicted of a felony involving violence; that the murders were committed during a burglary; and that they were especially heinous, atrocious and cruel.¹ For the last, the court wrote, the judge “recounted the gruesome manner in which the victims were bludgeoned, sexually battered, and strangled.”¹

For mitigation, “the defense presented several witnesses who testified that Bundy could be rehabilitated and live a useful life,” the court wrote; the trial judge found no mitigating circumstances.¹

On appeal, the Florida Supreme Court upheld all four aggravating circumstances. It held that the evidence of a nonconsensual entry supported the burglary finding and that the circumstances the judge recounted were “more than sufficient” to support the finding that the crimes were especially heinous, atrocious and cruel.¹ It also held that hypnosis of Neary went to the weight of her testimony rather than its admissibility, that the bite-mark evidence was admissible, and that the venue, publicity, jury and counsel rulings were not error.¹ It concluded: “The judgments of conviction and sentences of death are affirmed.”¹

The Orlando trial

The Leach case was set for trial in Columbia County, moved to Suwannee County and then, after jury selection began there, to Orange County, where a jury was chosen in January 1980.⁹⁴ Bundy had waived counsel in that case in September 1978 after the court refused to admit Farmer, and withdrew the waiver in June 1979; Victor Africano represented him from then through his direct appeal.⁹ On Feb. 7, 1980, the jury convicted him of kidnapping and first-degree murder after about seven hours of deliberation, and it recommended death.¹⁵⁴ On Feb. 12, Circuit Judge Wallace Jopling sentenced him to death for the murder and to life imprisonment for the kidnapping.⁴²¹⁰

Why the jury chose death in Orlando

The trial judge found that the murder was committed while Bundy was under a sentence of imprisonment, because his Utah sentence for aggravated kidnapping was unserved, and that he had been previously convicted of violent felonies: the Utah kidnapping and, in Dade County on July 31, 1979, the murders of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman and the attempted murders of Karen Chandler, Kathy Kleiner and Cheryl Thomas.² The judge also found that the crime was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel. He found no mitigating circumstances.² The sources reviewed do not describe the mitigation evidence, if any, presented in the Orlando penalty phase.

The Florida Supreme Court rejected the heinous, atrocious or cruel finding. Because no cause of death could be determined and there was no clear evidence of a struggle, extreme fear or sexual assault before death, it wrote, “we must conclude that this case does not fit in with our previous decisions.”² It upheld the other findings and rejected Bundy’s argument that the first two counted the same conviction twice, holding that each “require[s] proof of a fact that the other does not.”² Comparing the case with other capital cases, it held the death sentence “justified and appropriate under our law.”²

The court also held that hypnotically refreshed testimony is inadmissible in Florida criminal trials, but only for future cases, and found the error in Anderson’s testimony harmless because the tainted details were few and the other evidence was sufficient.² The U.S. Supreme Court denied review on Oct. 14, 1986, over dissents by Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall; Marshall would have reviewed the harmless-error ruling, arguing that “the untainted evidence was far from overwhelming.”⁷

The appeals and the execution

The Chi Omega sentences were the subject of death warrants in 1986. The Florida Supreme Court denied postconviction relief and a stay on June 30, 1986, and a federal district court in Miami denied habeas relief on July 2.⁵⁶ A federal appeals court then stayed the execution.¹⁵

In the Leach case, a death warrant set his execution for Nov. 18, 1986. The Eleventh Circuit stayed it and sent the case back for a hearing on whether Bundy had been competent to stand trial.⁹ After that hearing, a federal judge found that he “was at all times competent to stand trial for the murder of Kimberly Diane Leach,” and on July 7, 1988, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the denial of relief on every claim.⁸⁹

On Jan. 17, 1989, the governor signed a second death warrant in the Leach case, setting the execution for Jan. 24.¹⁰ Bundy’s last motion argued that the Chi Omega convictions used to support that sentence were flawed. The Florida Supreme Court held the claims barred and added that “there were two other valid aggravating circumstances which were unaffected by the Chi Omega convictions.”¹⁰ He was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison in Starke on the morning of Jan. 24, 1989, and was pronounced dead at 7:16 a.m., according to a UPI report from the prison.¹⁴

Personal backstory

Early life

Bundy was born in Burlington, Vermont, on Nov. 24, 1946, according to reference accounts, and grew up in Tacoma, Washington, where he attended Wilson High School.³¹³⁰¹⁹ He lived first with his mother and her parents; his mother later married, and the family settled in Tacoma.³¹ The court records reviewed do not describe his childhood except through expert testimony, described below.

Schooling and work

He graduated “with distinction from the University of Washington with a B.S. in psychology,” a federal judge found.⁸ Asked about his education when he moved to represent himself in the Leach case, he said, “I have a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from the University of Washington and two years of law school.”⁹ He attended the University of Puget Sound law school¹⁹ and later the University of Utah’s, and he volunteered at a crisis clinic in Seattle and worked on Republican Party campaigns.³⁰ The federal judge noted that he did poorly in his first semester of law school.⁸

Utah and Colorado

In 1976 he was convicted in Utah of aggravated kidnapping.² The Florida courts later relied on that conviction, and on the fact that he had not served the sentence, as aggravating circumstances in both death sentences.¹² Sources disagree on the length of the Utah sentence, so it is left out here. Extradited to Colorado to face a murder charge in the death of Caryn Campbell, he jumped from a second-floor window of the Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen on June 7, 1977, was caught six days later, and on Dec. 30, 1977, escaped from the Garfield County Jail in Glenwood Springs.²⁸ The Florida Supreme Court treated testimony from a Colorado investigator about the escape as competent evidence at the Leach sentencing.²

Mental health, as testified

Before the Miami trial, he objected when his lawyers sought a competency hearing, and the trial court found him competent.³ At the federal competency hearing in the Leach case in 1987, two psychiatrists called by his lawyers testified that he had been incompetent to stand trial.⁹ Dr. Dorothy Lewis testified that he “suffers from a bipolar mood disorder,” and suggested that his grandfather, “an allegedly violent person,” may have traumatized him as a child; Dr. Emanuel Tanay testified by deposition that he had “a lifelong personality disorder.”⁸ Two psychiatrists called by the state, Dr. Charles Mutter and Dr. Umesh Mhatre, found no bipolar disorder.⁸⁹ The court credited the state’s experts and noted that family members could not recall depressive episodes; the Eleventh Circuit concluded that if he had the disorder, it “was not manifesting itself so as to affect his competence to stand trial.”⁸⁹ At the hearing, Judge Jopling testified that Bundy’s conduct at trial had been appropriate apart from one outburst outside the jury’s presence, and the prosecutor, George Dekle, testified that he never appeared intoxicated or out of control.⁸

In custody

He spent nearly 11 years in custody in Florida after his arrest.¹¹⁴ In July 1984 prison authorities stopped an escape attempt after finding a loose bar and hacksaw blades, according to a Deseret News chronology.¹⁵ In the days before his execution he confessed to killings in several Western and other states, and the night before, he was interviewed by the religious broadcaster James Dobson, UPI reported.¹⁴ His last words, according to the UPI report, were: “I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends.”¹⁴

The sources reviewed contain no statement from the families of Margaret Bowman, Lisa Levy or Kimberly Leach.