EVIL PSYCHOPATHS (True Crime) (16 page)

Ted Bundy

On 7 June 1977, Ted Bundy, vicious serial killer of young women, was visiting the library at the Pitkin County courthouse in Aspen during a recess in his trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell in January 1975. Bundy had trained as a lawyer and was doing some research. In a brief unguarded moment, he took advantage of an open window, even though it was a couple of floors up, and jumped, slightly injuring his ankle in the process. He was not wearing handcuffs or leg-irons and so was able to blend in with the shopping crowds in the ski resort of Aspen in Colorado. He walked towards Aspen Mountain, climbing to the top, but lost his way and missed two trails that would have led him to his destination, the town of Crested Butte. On a trail on the mountain, he met one of the search party, but the smooth-talking Bundy easily talked his way out of the difficult situation and carried on his way.

The authorities had immediately set up road blocks at all the town’s main exits, but Ted was no fool. He knew that to try to leave town would result in certain capture. His main chance lay in staying where he was for the time being. Bloodhounds were brought in to sniff him out and a massive search team of 150 people began combing the town.

He lived off food he found in holiday cabins and camper vans for a few days but realised that he needed a car to make good his escape. He knew it would be alright because he believed himself to be invincible, better than everyone else and certainly better than the people who were scouring Aspen for him. On 13 June, having been on the run for six days, he stole a Cadillac but his erratic driving at a checkpoint alerted two deputies to him. He was recognised and re-arrested.

However, he was determined to get away and six months later he did, with murderous consequences.

He was being held in a jail at Glenwood Springs, Colorado where he had managed to accumulate $500 and had acquired a hacksaw blade that he later claimed had been given to him by another inmate. Using the blade, he sawed through the fixings for a small metal plate in the ceiling. Over a period of time, he had been dieting, trying to lose enough weight to be able to squeeze through the narrow opening in the ceiling. He had to be very careful and on one occasion, had come close to discovery when an inmate informed the prison authorities that he had heard someone moving around above him, but the matter was not investigated.

He knew he had to make his move soon when he was told that the trial, due to start on 9 January 1978, was to be held in Colorado Springs. Consequently, he would be moved to another prison for the duration. On 3 January, he bundled up books and files under his blanket to make it look as if he was sleeping in his bed, put on the warmest clothes he could find, removed the metal plate from the ceiling and squeezed up through the hole into the roof-space. He crawled to a spot directly above the linen closet of an apartment occupied by one of the jailers, dropped down into the apartment and strolled out of the prison.

It was bitterly cold and snowing, but he had soon stolen a car, an MG. The MG broke down in a blizzard in the mountains but with the snowstorm raging around him he succeeded in getting a lift from a passing car into the town of Vail. From Vail he took a bus to Denver and then booked a ticket on the 8.55 am flight to Chicago. Meanwhile, back at the prison, they did not discover his absence until noon that day, some seventeen hours after he had walked out the door. He had a good start on them.

From Chicago, he took a train to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he caught up on some sleep at the YMCA and watched a football game on television in a bar. He then stole a car and drove to Tallahassee in Florida where he rented a room in a boarding house, calling himself Chris Hagen. It was 8 January 1978.

Bundy lived off petty theft for a while, shoplifting and purse-snatching. He also stole a student identity card in the name of Kenneth Misner, using it to obtain a birth certificate and social security card. He was set up.

By the time of his initial arrest back in 1975, Ted Bundy had killed more than twenty women, beginning in May 1973 when he had murdered a hitch-hiker. His method was almost always the same. He would pretend that he was incapacitated somehow, wearing a plaster cast on an arm or using crutches and would seek help to carry something, such as books, to his car. When they arrived at the vehicle, he would bludgeon them with a crowbar and bundle them into the car. On one occasion, eight different witnesses came forward to tell police about a man called Ted, his left arm in a sling, who had been approaching people looking for help unloading his sailing boat from the back of his car. One told how she went with him, but on arriving at the car found that there was no boat. Many of them were students and the remains of a number of them were never found. He sometimes decapitated his victims with a hacksaw and kept several of the heads in his room or apartment. Some victims were disposed of on Taylor Mountain in Utah and he confessed to visiting the bodies long after death, applying make-up, lying with them and having sex with them. This would continue until putrefaction had set in.

Once again, as he hid out in Tallahassee in January 1978, he felt the need to return to his old habits. Conveniently, his room was in a building close to Florida State University and much of his time was spent wandering around the campus, even going unnoticed to lectures.

On the night of 14 January, he broke into the Chi Omega sorority house where he took the lives of two sleeping women students – Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman – bludgeoning and strangling them. Levy was also sexually assaulted. He also bludgeoned, but did not kill, two other students as they lay in bed. Within half-an-hour, he was running out of the door of the building. As he did so, another student, Nita Neary, who was returning from a party, caught sight of him running down the stairs. She had been surprised to discover the door to the building lying open and had heard commotion in the rooms above. Hearing footsteps approaching, she ducked back out of sight in a doorway. Bundy, a blue woollen cap pulled low over his eyes and holding a log with a piece of cloth wrapped around it, bolted down the stairs and out of the door.

Nita ran upstairs and rushed to the room of a friend, telling her of the strange man she had seen. The two girls then went to the housemother’s room to report the incident, but en route were shocked by the sight of one of the girls Bundy had failed to kill, staggering along a corridor, blood dripping from her head. They then found the other survivor, again with serious head wounds.

When police arrived, they found the two dead girls. Lisa Levy had been battered about the head with the log the man had been carrying and had then been strangled. There were bite marks on her buttocks and on her nipples. Her attacker had also sexually assaulted her with a bottle of hairspray. The other dead girl had been beaten severely on the head and then strangled with a pair of tights but had not been sexually assaulted or bitten.

Bundy was not finished for the night, however. A few blocks away, he broke into a house, beating and seriously injuring another student, Cheryl Thomas. Police arriving from the Chi Omega house, only minutes away, found her sitting on her bed, blood pouring from head wounds and a mask at the foot of her bed. It would prove to be identical to a mask taken from Bundy’s car when he had been arrested in August 1975.

There was little evidence – only some hair samples on the mask and the teeth marks on Lisa Levy’s body. Forensic science was not as sophisticated as it is today and, anyway, Ted Bundy was completely unknown to the Florida police.

A few weeks later, he struck again. Twelve-year-old Kimberley Leach from Lake City was reported missing. Last seen getting into a car, her body was found in a state park at Suwannee County eight weeks later. A few days earlier, however, a fourteen-year-old girl had a narrow escape when she was approached by a man claiming to be from the Fire Department. Fortunately for her, her brother turned up and she climbed into his car and drove off. The brother was suspicious of the man’s story and took down the registration of the van he was driving. The girl’s father, a policeman, had the number checked, finding it belonged to a man called Randall Regan whose licence plates had recently been stolen. When he discovered that the vehicle had also been stolen, the officer took his children to the police station to show them mug-shots of various villains, amongst which was a picture of Ted Bundy. They recognised him instantly as the man who had approached the girl.

Bundy, meanwhile, was on the move again, heading for Pensacola in a stolen car, an orange Volkswagen Beetle. Officer David Lee spotted this striking-looking car at 10 pm on 15 February and when he ran a check on the car’s registration, found it to be stolen. He set off in pursuit, his blue lights on.

Initially, Bundy fled, but then pulled into a petrol station where he stopped. Officer Lee ordered him out of the car, shouting at him to lie on the ground. As he tried to put the cuffs on Bundy, however, the killer spun round onto his back and began to struggle. He managed to push the policeman off, scrambled to his feet and ran away. Lee took aim and fired his gun at the fleeing figure. He missed, but Bundy staggered and fell to the ground, pretending to have been hit. Officer Lee approached him, but again Bundy got up and started fighting. This time, however, the policeman overcame him, managing to get the handcuffs on him. Bundy was soon in custody again and this time there would be no escape.

They linked him to the disappearance of Kimberley Leach through evidence found in the van he had used – there were fibres of material that originated from his clothes – her blood type was found on the van’s carpet and Bundy’s semen and blood type were found on her underwear. He was charged with her murder and shortly after, with the murders of the two Chi Omega girls.

His past began to emerge. He had been born at a home for unmarried mothers in Vermont and though the true identity of his father remains unknown, many have suspected over the years that his mother Louise’s violent and abusive father, Samuel Cowell, was actually his father. Back then, however, Samuel and his wife, Eleanor, pretended that Bundy was in fact their child. For the first part of his life, therefore, he believed that his mother was his sister.

In 1951, now living in Tacoma with relatives, Louise met and married a man called Bundy and Ted was adopted by him, taking his surname. Bundy was a good pupil at his school but remained shy and introverted, later claiming that he did not understand social behaviour and found it impossible to make friends. He also became fascinated with images of sexual violence and had evolved into a petty crook, twice being arrested for theft.

At Seattle’s University of Washington in 1967, he befriended a fellow student, Stephanie Brooks, but she ended the relationship following her graduation. Bundy is said to have changed around this time, becoming much more assertive and focused. He found work managing the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign while he studied psychology at Washington University. He did well, graduating as an honours student. He also began a relationship with an unmarried mother, Elizabeth Kloepfer, that would continue for six years.

In 1973, he bumped into his former flame Stephanie Brooks again on a trip to California, re-kindling his relationship with her, while still continuing his involvement with Elizabeth Kloepfer. He was very solicitous towards her and they even planned to marry. Two weeks after proposing, however, he unceremoniously dumped her. It was his way of taking revenge on her for dumping him several years previously. Several weeks later, he launched his career as a serial killer and during his rampage, co-eds began disappearing at the rate of roughly one a month.

His eventual downfall occurred on 15 August 1975 after he failed to stop for a police officer. When his car was searched, officers discovered a ski mask, a crowbar, handcuffs, an ice-pick and other material thought at the time to be the tools of a burglar. His car was connected to a failed kidnapping he had perpetrated in November the previous year when he had persuaded Carol DaRonch at a shopping mall that he was a police officer and that someone had been seen trying to break into her car. She went with him back to the car where he asked her to accompany him to the police station. En route, he suddenly tried to put handcuffs on her but she fought him, only just stopping him from bringing the crowbar down on her head. She managed to escape from the car and he drove off, kidnapping and killing seventeen-year-old Debbie Kent at a nearby high school within an hour of leaving DaRonch. Combing the area of the school, however, detectives found a small key. It fitted DaRonch’s handcuffs which, it transpired, were identical to the ones now found in Bundy’s car.

At his trials for the murder of Kimberley Leach and the Chi Omega sorority girls, Bundy used his previous law school experience – he had studied law briefly at Washington University – but the evidence was overwhelming. He was sentenced to die in the electric chair.