| Show Ogdcn Classifieds Standard-Examine- r Sunday June 22 19S5 fiSS 'Ted' linked to several murders convicted of only three — and sentenced to die By DAN SEWELL Associated Press Wrnef TALLAHASSEE Fla (AP) — He was a living nightmare for the 1970s one of the first "serial killers' to get widespread national attention tantaliz-ingl- y elusive to the law until his long lethal wanderings wound up in Florida's death row There convicted of three slayings the handsome articulate Theodore R Bundy is to be executed July 2 The Supreme Court of the United States rejected his appeal last month From Jan 4 1974 to Feb 15 1978 an engaging young man stalked young women on college campuses at shopping malls in apartment buildings and grade schools in Washington Oregon Utah Colorado and Florida In Washington the sinister stranger with magnetic appeal to women had introduced himself as "Ted" to intended victims and the "Ted case" it became to the small army of investigators who had pursued him ever since The FBI imputed 36 killings to Bundy when it placed him on its Most Wanted list shortly before his arrest in Florida seven years ago He was convicted of killing two Chi Omega sorority sisters in their bedrooms at Florida State University and of killing Kimberly Diane Leach his youngest known victim Most of Ted's victims came from solid families and had good reputations themselves Most were apparently enticed to go along with this irresistible stranger who sometimes appealed for help claiming a broken arm or posed as a police officer or fire investigator His victims all were pretty and wore long hair parted down the middle "AH the girls I ever talked to said they just fell in love with him his personality his smile" recalls Jerry Thompson a Salt Lake City sheriffs detective who led Utah's Ted investigation Usually the victims" skulls were crushed and they were sexually assaulted afterward His ' ' J1' Vv - "!' He helped Gov Daniel Evans' paign and made the newspapers again for trick:" posing as a graduate student while lowed Evans opponent - C July 2 execution date Graham on May 22 signed a second warrant for Bundy setting his execution for July 2 Graham six times has signed a third death warrant for an inmate and three of those six are still alive It's w ideh ly assumed Bundy has some appeals up his sleeve "He's been sitting over there for a long time" in March Lake a who nurse Pat City says Guerry sent a petition with 5600 signatures gathered in less than two weeks to Graham supporting Bundy's execution "People were rabid about it People I didn't know called me and talked about him for half an hour Nobody thought execution was good enough for him" It was in Like City that Bundy's last and younDiane Leach was abgest known victim Kimberly ducted from outside her school brutalized and left dead in a deserted hog shed "It should be a national holiday Fry Bundy Day" says Rona Burley a teacher in Tallahassee She recalled that at the time of the Chi Omega sorority murders at Florida State she was a young woman living alone in a nearby apartment "dim he fol- Moving to Salt Lake City He enrolled in law classes at Pugei Sound but dropped out just before final exams in April 1974 He moved to Salt Lake City in August 1974 after being accepted into the I'niversitv of Utah law i ' - - school He was baplied into the Mormon faith In Seattle a task force was formed to investigate the "Ted" murders That was the name given by a young man with his arm in a cast who asked several women at Lake Sammamish to accompany him to his Volkswagen and help hitch his sailboat Two women disappeared there four hours apart on July 14 1974 In Utah two women disappeared that October On Nov 11 Miss DaRonch escaped from a man who said he was a police officer then tried to hand- cuff her and raised a crowbar to her inside his That same night a handsome heav ily Volkswagen breathing young man attended a high school play and asked a teacher to go with him She refused A girl disappeared from the school Beginning in January 1975 four women disappeared in Colorado That July a woman disappeared near Salt Lake City A Utah state trooper suspicious of the strange Volkswagen in his own neighborhood arrested Bundy after a chase on Aug 12 1974 In the car he found handcuffs a crow bar an ice pick and a mask Bundy escapes twice friends were shocked When Ted was identified as Theodore R Bundy those who knew him were shocked Those who would come to know him through exhaustive news coverage were no less incredulous in"You go before America with a articulate aspiring lawyer" reflected Mike telligent Fisher Colorado's Ted investigator "Then you say: 'Listen ladies and gentlemen this is the guy who is killing your daughters your wives your lovers' It's hard to accept that this guy gets a kick out of killing people" A status" sprang up around Bundy He taunted and outmaneuvercd legions of police Twice he escaped from jail His w inning smile witticisms and confident vows to prove his innocence reached millions through television "Slasher" movies about grotesque sadistic killers were becoming popular with young people and the handsome character accused of mass murder proved chillingly spellbinding "I don't know what it is he has but he's fascinating" said Adys Acosta one of the dozens of attractive young women who daily packed the courtroom for Bundy's 1979 trial in Miami The first death warrant with Bundy's name was signed in March by Gov Bob Graham but the execution was stayed by the Supreme Court On May 5 the same day as the airing of the conclusion of a national network miniseries about Bundy the court rejected appeal of his Miami conviction for the murders of the two Florida State sorority sisters cama United Press International '1 remember as you might remember a Humphrey about it Ell the time' says Ted Bundy Bogart movie When it's over you don't talk "Sure I would have gone out with somebody as as that" she says with a shiver "It just came too close" The precise number of Ted's victims has not been conclusively established Investigators link htm to seven to nine slayings in Washington and the slaying of a coed abducted from Oregon State University In Utah he is blamed for the slayings of two women the disappearances of three others and the 1974 Carol DaRonch who got kidnapping of away and testified against him In Colorado he was charged but never tried in the murder of vacationing Michigan nurse Caryn and was linked to three unsolved disapCampbell pearances A trail of gasoline credit card slips showed Bundy drove his favorite car hundreds of miles a day cruising through California Wyoming Idaho and the other states "I think Theodore may be good for a lot more Remember he just loved to drive that Volkswagen" says Steve Bodiford a sheriffs detective in Tallahassee 'Problem' with women Bundy has never admitted anything worse than credit cards food television sets and cars But his denials have sometimes seemed to dwell more on lack of responsibility than innocence In five sessions with three detectives after his Florida arrest Bundy used euphemisms to discuss a "problem" with women a need to "possess" them Bundy talked of providing information about unsolved cases in exchange for life in prison in Washington The detectives discouraged talk of a deal and said Bundy agreed "Mavbe I don't deserve it" In a book written about him "The Only Living Witness" reporters Stephen G Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth detailed taped interviews with Bundy in prison Using the third person Bundy "speculated" about what the mass murderer responsible for the slavings may have been like He talked of an entity that had grown within stealing No feelings of guilt He talked of interest in v iolent pornography the desire to "possess" women totally and a lack of guilt feelings "I remember as you might remember a Humphrey Bogart movie" Bundy is quoted as saying "When it's over you don't talk about it all the timeI'm in the env iable position of not hav ing to deal with guilt I don't think I need to feel guilty anymore because I try to do what's right right now" In the last interview Aynesworth reported Bundy said the killer he described was always surprised by the publicity about his ictims: "There are so many people What's one less person on the fate of the Earth anyway?" Louise Cow ell w ho gave birth to Theodore Robert on Nov 24 1946 at a home for unwed mothers in Burlington Vt feared the stigma he would face in her family's Philadelphia neighborhood Four years later she joined relatives in Taeoma Wash and soon married John Bundy an Army cook The Bundys had four more children Ted learned that he was illegitimate when he found his birth certificate As a teen he was shy and sensitive a good student who showed little interest in dating After taking classes at two other universities he studied Chinese at Stanford University There he met his first love the daughter of a wealthy family After a yearlong courtship she dropped him because of his apparent immaturity In 196S Bundy worked for Republican candidates in Washington and attended the national party convention in Miami He made the newspapers in Seattle by catching a At a Seattle crisis center he counseled the depressed the alcoholic the suicidal Ann Rule a writer and fellow worker said Bundy saved lives there He returned to the University of Washington and graduated in 1972 with majored in psvchology an average He designed a program for dealing with habitual criminals and wrote a pamphlet on rape for the county crime commission Bundy was convicted of the DaRonch kidnaptrial He was also charged ping in a 1976 with the murder of Caryn Campbell in Aspen Colo but he escaped from the courthouse there He was recaptured a week later in a Cadillac he stole after wandering in the mountains He escaped again this time from the jail iti Glenwood Springs Colo after losing 40 pounds so he could fit through a light fixture opening He made it to Ann Arbor Mich for New Year's Day 1978 then decided to head south He chose Tallahassee where he lived in an apartment house and called himself Chris Hagen Bundy roamed the Florida State campus played racquetball and tennis and sat alone drinking beer On Jan 15 1978 a man wielding an oak limb rampaged through the bedrooms of sleeping women at the Chi Omega house clubbing biting and sexually assaulting them Two of four surv ived as did a fifth woman attacked in her apartment A girl in Jacksonville several dajs later was approached bv a man with a fire department badge The man fled w hen he saw her big brother Kimberly Leach disappeared from Lake City midway between Jacksonville and Tallahassee on Feb 9 Bundy was arrested bv police in Pensacola who had never heard of him on Feb 16 never to be free again Bundy's insistence on acting as a lawyer questioning witnesses and arguing with judges and prosecutors often disrupted efforts to defend him "A little learning is a dangerous thing" says J Victor Africano the Live Oak attorney who represented Bundy in the Leach trial Bundy kept insisting that there wasn't enough evidence against him At the last minute and he rejected a against his attorneys' advice deal for life in prison impressions left on one Chi Omega victim testimony from witnesses who had earlier been hypnotized and fibers and hairs found in his cars were enough to convict him Not enough evidence Washington and I'tah investigators admit they never had enough evidence to charge Bundy in their slayings Millard Farmer an Atlanta attorney says that if everything the state says about Bundy is true it would show him to be mentally ill to a degree that "he isn't culpable" and the state shouldn't execute him Bundy himself refused to consider insanity pleas State psychologists classified him as a sociopath but one who knew the difference between right and w rong "He'll get his just deserts" said Ken Katsaris former sheriff of Leon County here "I remember vividly the morgue scene those beautiful young women lying there their hopes and the hopes of their parents gone No matter how many times you pull the switch on Ted Bundy it won't bring those girls back" very ity resi aents anxious tor an ena to tsunay CITY Fla (AP) — Tim Darby was Kimberly Diane Leach's classmate eight years ago Today he's a desk clerk at the Holiday Inn where Theodore R Bundy stayed the night before the girl disappretty LAKE peared He and others in this North Florida crossroads tow n of 9200 are getting tired of waiting for Bundy's sentence to be carried out "Some people say they wish Iic'd escape so they can get their hands on him" Darby said "Whew I'd hate to see what would happen if they turned him loose here" Pat Guerrv a nurse whose people daughter was also a classmate of felt a rage well up in Kimberly her when Bundy's picture flashed across the television news last March She called up the Lake City Reporter to announce she was gathering signatures on a petition in support of Bundy's execution "I was surprised at my own feelings I've never done anything political" she recalled "But just started thinking that could have been my own daughter I feel awful for that girl's family" Within two weeks she had sent 5600 signatures to Gov Bob Graham supporting the death warrant he signed for Bundy's conviction in the Jan 15 I97S Chi Omega murders and urging Graham to also sign a death warrant for Bundy's conviction in the Feb 9 murder of Kimberly Diane found brutalized in an abandoned hogshed some two months later The first death warrant expired after the US Supreme Court stayed the execution but the high court later rejected Bundy's appeal of the Chi Omega case Graham signed a new death warrant setting a July 2 execution for Bundy "Somebody came up to me today and said: 'Are you selling tickets to the barbecue?'" recounted J Victor Africano Bundy's attorney in the 1 Leach trial Africano who The moved to Live Oak near here because it is his wife's hometown said he wasn't v ery popular during the trial His children and wife took verbal abuse in school and the supermarket but most agree he people now grudgingly was only doing his job Africano said "This is a small quiet southern town" Darby explained "Something like that affected everybody It's like he did it to the whole town" Ton and Freda Leach have comment on their daughters killer They called the Reporter once to complain about repeated use of her photo At the stalely Chi Omega house in Tallahassee some 80 miles west women are also tired of reminders of Bundy conv icted of a v icious early morning rampage with an oak limb in which two sorority sisters died and two more were badly beaten "Every time this comes up the get calls: heavy breathing "This is Ted Bundy"" said Kirk Belle Cocke who lives here and is Chi Omega's national president "One girl got a note on her car It said: "You're Next" It's girls just sick" The year after the attacks the sotoiin sisters discussed moving to another house ingly voted not but overwhelm- to "We've been at that location since 1908 They love the house and they didn't feel the house had anything to do with it One of the girls he attacked Karen Chandler came back to her old room and stayed there until she got her decree" Alumni voluntarily stayed at in the the house overnight months after offering protection and solace The campus ministry provided counseling "This whole thing just con vinced me that there is a devil" Cocke said "And Ted Bundy is one of his Iceions" |
