Ted Bundy - Part 3
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Welcome to the Serial Killer Podcast. The podcast dedicated to serial killers. Who they were, what they did, and how. I am your Norwegian host, Thomas Weyborg Thun. And tonight, dear listener, part three of the Ted Bundy saga. If you have not listened to part one and part two, please stop listening to this episode and go listen to them first.

It's important to understand Ted Bundy's childhood and young adulthood before exploring his story further. Please check out my fan page on Facebook. Go to facebook.com slash theskpodcast for discussion, bonus content, and frequent interaction with me, your humble host. Also, feel free to visit my website at theserialkillerpodcast.com

and of course my Patreon page at patreon.com/theserialkillerpodcast. Any donation, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated. Imagine, if you will, the summer of 1974. Feel free to hum along to the Smashing Pumpkins song and the lyrics

And we don't know just where our bones will rest. To dust, I guess. Forgotten and absorbed into the earth below. President Richard Nixon was experiencing the hate of the Watergate scandal and would resign in the face of almost certain impeachment on the 9th of August.

Young people had mostly abandoned the hippie fashion, and the idea of free love for all had pretty much ended with the Manson family slaughter in 1969. Disco was almost at its peak of popularity, and George Ann Hawkins was looking forward to a summer break from her studies at Washington State University. But mostly, she plugged away for her Spanish test the very next day.

After a long day studying, she thought she deserved a break, and left her sorority house, the Kappa Alpha Theta, to attend a fraternity party. I have tried, dear listener, to find details about this party, but unfortunately I could not find any.

All we know is that after 1 a.m. on the 11th of June, she was seen in the alley outside of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. She had been to a fraternity party earlier in the evening and visited her boyfriend, Marvin Galatly, on the way back to her sorority house.

As she left Beta Theta Pi, her classmate, Duane Covey, spotted her and yelled out a second-floor window, wanting to know if she was ready for the Spanish test, which he was also scheduled for. Duane later told the police that their conversation lasted no more than ten minutes, but he did report one strange memory from that night.

Both he and George Anne had noticed an ominous, almost maniacal laughter from further up the alley, just out of eyesight. Neither of them thought much of it, and instead spoke further about their plans for the break until fall semester, and then said goodbye for the night. After saying goodbye to her friend, she headed down the alley toward her sorority house.

One of Ted Bundy's more famous quotes is the following: "When you feel the last bit of breath leaving their body, you're looking into their eyes. A person in that situation is God." This quote fits well with Ted's obsession with total domination, control and murder.

Ted Bundy, in a later interview with Robert Keppel, confirmed that it was in fact him in that alley. He had overheard George Ann's entire conversation with Duane Covey, and it was indeed him, gleefully laughing, perhaps out of the idea that this beautiful 1974 summer night would be George Ann Hawkins' last night on earth.

and that Ted's eyes were the last thing she would see before dying. In a series of audio tapes recorded prior to his execution, the abduction of Georgian is one of the few scenarios Ted describes in detail.

Equipped with an arm cast, and watching his victim from further down the alley, Bundy fumbled with a heavy briefcase as they approached each other. When they were near enough to speak without shouting, he asked her to help him to his car. Georgianne agreed.

Bundy also later confirmed that once near his car he removed a crowbar from the undercarriage of the car and struck her with such force that both her earrings and one of her shoes were knocked off. Hazy on much of the other details, or just unwilling to admit them, one of the few other things Bundy would say about Georgianne was how trusting she was.

He told Keppel that at one point she awoke in Bundy's Volkswagen car, weak and delusional from the head wound, and began to speak to him as if he was there to help her study for the Spanish test scheduled for the next day. George Anne's body would never be found. However, Ted later testified that he had severed her head after he had raped and strangled her to death with a cord.

He masturbated over the head, quite possibly had oral intercourse with it, then took the head and corpse with him in the car and drove around with the remains for a bit. He confessed to killing her in a remote area. He described this area as follows, and I quote: "Across Mercer Island, east, past Issaquah, up the hill, down the road, and up the grassy area,

Bunty claimed that George Ann's remains were dumped with two of his other victims. In the previous episode, I told you about Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. They were both dumped by Ted in Lake Sammamish State Park. Investigators had found an extra leg bone and extra vertebrae at the site, but they had been unidentified at the time and...

So far, but never positively identified as George Anse. Ted finally did confirm the owner of those bones as George Anse. The Hungry Earth and carrion beasts had taken the rest of her. There exists an audio tape of Ted Bundy being interviewed two days before his execution. It's a long interview and Ted sounds very tired.

"'Ted also goes on a long tangent about details that has little to do with his crimes, and if so, only in a small way. So I'm not going to play the entire thing for you now, dear listener. However, there are a few minutes of it where he is asked about the killing of a girl he abducted from a schoolyard. He tells details of how he buried her, what he did with her clothes, and where he killed her. So, dear listener—'

Here is this audio recording from inside Florida State Prison in 1989. How deep was the grave? Approximately three feet. Two to three feet deep. Did your clothes remain with her? No.

No. Did this car go before or after you left? Left or there? I don't remember. I don't clearly remember. I don't have a specific recollection. I think what happened was... Is it... Yes. That's what... They were...

cut up and deposited along the side of the roadway. And went back home? You know, it's interesting you should say that. I was going to say something else, but it's... Yeah. Matter of fact, I'll be back home from the side of the road. I'll be back to Salt Lake City from this point. Along the... Along... However you know it. Either down...

as far up as past thistle. You cut them up pretty small pieces? Yeah. You had the kid by your hand? About three inch squares. What was the means or how much you count? This is harder stuff for me to talk about. Well, there's no nice parts.

I don't want to make judgments of quality here, but yeah, it's just simply more difficult to discuss this. Did you use a weapon on her? Did you use it manually? No.

It's right so much easier for me to try to locate the body than it is to talk about the actual thing. Sure. It's just so much more positive, such as it would be. Where, if it didn't take place in the schoolyard, did it take place in your car? No. In the place where I lived. Where you took her home? No.

How many places did you live? I knew you had a place up in the avenues. Is that the only place you ever lived in in Salt Lake? Oh, no. The avenues. They're up by the University of Newark. Right, right. No, the avenues. I'm trying to remember the name of that location. It didn't ring a bell at first. Yes. Would it have been the residence that they searched? No. No, I think, well, we will talk about that later. Yeah, it was at the residence.

So what, did you take it to your residence and then down here all on the same night? No. Or did you keep it there for a period of time? Yes, I did keep it there for a period of time. On the 16th of August 1975, Sergeant Bob Hayward was patrolling an area just outside of Salt Lake County when he spotted a suspicious tan Volkswagen Bug driving past him. He knew the neighborhood well.

and almost all the residents that lived there, and he couldn't remember seeing the tan Volkswagen there before. When he put on his lights to get a better view of the Volkswagen's license plate, the driver of the Beetle turned off his lights and began speeding away. Immediately, Sergeant Hayward began to chase the vehicle. The car sped through two stop signs before it eventually pulled over into a nearby gas station.

Hayward pulled up behind the reckless driver and watched as the occupant got out of his car and approached the police car. Hayward asked the young man for his registration and license, which was issued to Theodore Robert Bundy. Just then, two other troopers pulled up behind the tan Volkswagen. Hayward noticed that the passenger seat in Bundy's car was missing,

With mounting suspicion and Bundy's permission, the three officers inspected the Volkswagen. The officers found a crowbar, ski mask, rope, handcuffs, wire, and an ice pick. Bundy was immediately placed under arrest for suspicion of burglary. There is actually a very famous photo of what Hayward found that night.

It shows the contents lying in Ted's trunk, looking very much like a kit taken straight from a horror film. The ski mask is especially haunting to look at, with the skull-like circular shape of the eye and mouth holes. Soon after Bundy's arrest, police began to find connections between him and the man who attacked Carol D'Aranche.

The handcuffs that were found in Bundy's car were the same make and brand that her attacker had used, and the car he drove was similar to the one she had described. Furthermore, the crowbar found in Bundy's car was similar to the weapon that had been used to threaten Carol earlier that November. They also suspected that Bundy was the man responsible for the kidnapping of Melissa Smith, Laurie Aime, and Debbie Kent.

there were just too many similarities among the cases for police to ignore. However, they knew they needed much more evidence to support the case against Bundy. On the 2nd of October, 1975,

Carol Daronche, along with the director of the Viewmont High School play, and a friend of Debbie Kent, were asked to attend a lineup of seven men, one of whom was Ted, at a Utah police station. Investigators were not surprised when Carol picked Ted from the lineup as the man who had attacked her.

The play director and friend of Debbie Kent also picked Ted from the lineup as the man they had seen wandering around the auditorium the night Debbie Kent had disappeared. Although Ted repeatedly professed his innocence, police were very confident they had their man. Soon after he was picked out of the lineup, investigators launched a full-blown investigation into the man they knew as Theodore Robert Bundy.

During the fall of 1975, police investigators approached Elizabeth Kendall for whatever information she was able to give about Ted. They believed Elizabeth would likely hold the key to Bundy's whereabouts, habits, and personality. What investigators learned would later help link Ted Bundy to the murder victims. On the 16th of September, 1975,

Elizabeth was called into the King County Police Major Crime Unit building in Washington State and interviewed by Detectives Jerry Thompson, Dennis Couch, and Ira Beale. She was visibly stressed and nervous, but willing to offer the police any information necessary to help the case. When asked about Ted, she stated that on the nights of the murders she could not account for him.

Elizabeth also told police that he would often sleep during the day and go out at night, exactly where she didn't know. She said that his interest in sex had waned during the last year, and when he did show interest, he pressured her into bondage. When she told Bundy that she no longer wanted to participate in his bondage fantasies, he was very upset with her.

In a later interview with Elizabeth, investigators learned that Ted had plaster of Paris to make casts for his arm in his room, which she had noticed when they first began dating. She also noticed, on a later occasion, that in his car Ted had a hatchet. But there was something else important to the case that Elizabeth would remember.

She recalled that Ted had visited Lake Sammamish Park in July, where he had supposedly gone water skiing. A week after Ted had gone to Lake Sammamish Park, Janis Ott and Denise Naslund were both reported missing. After long hours of interviews with Elizabeth, investigators decided to shift their focus to Ted's former girlfriend in California, that I covered in episode one of this series.

When police contacted her, she told them of how he had abruptly changed his manner towards her from loving and affectionate to cruel and insensitive. Upon further questioning, police learned that Bundy's relationship with his California girlfriend had overlapped with his relationship with Elizabeth, and neither of them knew of the other woman. Ted seemed to be living a double life, filled with lies and betrayal.

When viewed in retrospect, it seemed he enjoyed toying with people's emotions. He liked to dominate and control his surroundings, and as much as possible obfuscate his own life with lies and half-truths. There was more, a lot more, to Ted than what investigators had initially expected. Further investigation yielded more evidence that would later link him to other victims.

Linda Ann Healy was linked to Bundy through a cousin of his. More eyewitnesses would recognize him from Lake Sammamish Park during the time Otter and Aslund disappeared. An old friend of Bundy's came forward saying he had seen pantyhose in the glove compartment of his car. Plus, Ted had spent a lot of time in the Taylor Mountains, where the bodies of victims had been found.

Bundy's credibility was further dented when police discovered he purchased gas from credit cards in the towns where some of the victims had disappeared. Furthermore, a friend had seen him with his arm in a cast when there was no record of him ever having a broken arm. The evidence against Ted Bundy was building up, yet he still continued to profess his innocence.

On the 23rd of February, 1976, Ted was put on trial for the kidnapping of Carol D'Aranche. Bundy sat in a relaxed manner in the courtroom, confident that he would be found innocent of the charges against him. He believed that there was no hard evidence to convict him, but he couldn't have been more wrong. When Carol D'Aranche took the stand, she told of her ordeal,

that she suffered sixteen months earlier. When asked if she were able to recognize the person who attacked her, she began to cry as she lifted her hand and pointed a finger to the man who had called himself Officer Roseland. The people in the courtroom turned their attention to Ted Bundy, who stared at Durange coldly as she pointed at him.

Later in the trial, Ted had said he had never seen the defendant, but he had no alibi to confirm his whereabouts the day of the attack. The judge spent a weekend reviewing the case before he handed down a verdict. Two days later, he would find Bundy guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of aggravated kidnapping. Ted Bundy was later sentenced on the 30th of June.

to one to fifteen years in prison with the possibility of parole. While in prison, Bundy was subjected to a psychological evaluation that the court had previously requested. Now this, dear listener, is where I have a true treat to offer you. Dr. Al Carlyle was part of the 90-day diagnostic team at a Utah State prison when Bundy was sent there after the trial.

Dr. Carlyle's assignment was specific, determined to the best of his ability, without being biased by any of the reports previously done, whether Ted Bundy had a violent personality. The judge would use this information in deciding whether Bundy should serve time or be released on probation. The very same Dr. Carlyle will be interviewed by me.

in the next and final installment of the Bundy Saga. And you, dear listener, will be able to listen to this interview on the 1st of December. Consider it an early Christmas present from me to you. Now, on with the show.

In Anne Rule's book, The Stranger Beside Me, she stated that psychologists found Bundy to be neither psychotic, neurotic, the victim of organic brain disease, alcoholic, addicted to drugs, suffering from a character disorder or amnesia, and was not a sexual deviant.

The psychologists concluded that he had a strong dependency on women and deduced that the dependency was suspect. Upon further evaluation, they concluded that Ted had a fear of being humiliated in his relationships with women. More details about Ted Bundy's psychological assessment will be fleshed out in the aforementioned upcoming episode.

While Bundy remained incarcerated in Utah State Prison, investigators began a search for evidence connecting him to the murders of Karen Campbell and Melissa Smith. What Bundy did not realize was that his legal problems would soon escalate.

Detectives discovered in Bundy's Volkswagen hairs that were examined by the FBI and found to be characteristically alike to Campbell's and Smith's hair. Further examination of Karen Campbell's remains showed that her skull bore impressions made by a blunt instrument, and those impressions matched the crowbar that had been discovered in Bundy's car a year earlier.

Colorado police filed charges against Bundy on the 22nd of October 1976 for the murder of Karen Campbell. In April of 1977, Ted was transferred to Garfield County Jail in Colorado to await trial for the murder of Karen Campbell. During preparation for his case, Bundy became increasingly unhappy with his representation.

He believed his lawyer to be inept and incapable, and eventually he fired him. Bundy, experienced in law, believed he could do the job better, and he began to take up his own defense in the case. He felt confident that he would succeed at the trial scheduled for the 14th of November 1977. Bundy had a lot of work ahead of him.

He was granted permission to leave the confines of the jail on occasion and utilize the courthouse library in Aspen to conduct research. What police didn't know was that he was planning an escape. On the 7th of June, during one of his trips to the library at courthouse, Bundy managed to jump from an open window, injuring his ankle in the process, and escaped to freedom.

He was not wearing any leg irons or handcuffs, nor was he dressed in prison attire, so he did not stand out among the ordinary citizens in the town of Aspen. It was an escape that had been planned by Ted for a while. Aspen police were quick to set up roadblocks surrounding the town, yet Ted knew to stay within the city limits for the time being and lay low.

Police launched a massive land search using scent-tracking bloodhounds and 150 searchers in the hopes of catching Ted. However, Ted was able to elude them for days. While on the run, Bundy managed to live off the food he stole from local cabins and nearby campers, occasionally sleeping in some of those that were abandoned. Yet Bundy knew that what he really needed was a car.

which would better enable him to pass through police barriers. He couldn't hide in Aspen forever. Ted believed that he was destined to be free. According to an interview with Michaud and Ainsworth, he felt as if he were invincible and claimed that nothing went wrong. If something did go wrong, the next thing that happened was so good it compensated. It was even better.

Sure enough, Bundy found his ticket out of town when he discovered a car with the keys left in it. But his luck would not last long. While trying to flee Aspen in the stolen vehicle, he was spotted. From then on, he was ordered to wear handcuffs and leg irons while conducting his research at the library in Aspen. However, Bundy was not the type of man who liked to be tied down.

Almost seven months later, Bundy again managed to escape. But this time he was more successful. On the 30th of December, he crawled up into the ceiling of the Garfield County Jail and made his way into another part of the building. He managed to find another opening in the ceiling that led down into the closet of a jailer's apartment.

He sat and waited until he knew the apartment was empty, then casually walked out of the front door to his freedom. His escape would go undiscovered until the following afternoon, more than fifteen hours later. By the time police learned of his escape, Bundy was well on his way to Chicago.

Chicago was one of the few stops that Bundy would make along the route to his final destination, sunny Florida. By mid-January of 1978, Ted Bundy, using his newly acquired name of Chris Hagen, had settled comfortably into a one-room apartment in Tallahassee, Florida. Ted Bundy enjoyed his newfound freedom in a place that knew little, if nothing, about him or his past.

Bundy was stimulated by intelligence and youth, and felt comfortable in his new environment nearby Florida State University. He spent much of his free time walking around FSU's campus, occasionally ducking into classes unnoticed and listening in on lectures. When he was not wandering around campus, he would spend his time in his apartment watching the television he had stolen. Theft was second nature to Bundy.

Almost everything in his apartment was stolen merchandise. Even the food he ate was purchased from stolen credit cards. Under the circumstances, Bundy seemed to have enough material things to make him content. What he didn't have, and what he missed the most, was the domination, rape, and murder of beautiful young women.

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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash serialkiller today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash serialkiller. The Chi Omega Sorority House at Florida State University still exists and is a pretty building.

It has a Romanesque style to it, with Corinthian pillars in front of its main entrance. On Saturday night, the 14th of January, 1978, few of the sorority sisters could be found at the Chi Omega house. Most were out dancing or at keg parties on campus. It wasn't unusual for the sisters to stay out late, since there was no curfew.

In fact, it was pretty normal for the girls to return in the early morning hours. However, none of the sisters was prepared to confront the horror that awaited them back at their sorority house later that night. What Ted had done is like taking straight out of a horror teen slasher film.

At 3 a.m., Nita Neri was dropped off at the sorority house by her boyfriend, after attending a keg party on campus. Upon reaching the door to the house, she noticed it standing wide open. Soon after, she had entered the building. She heard some movement, as if someone was running in the rooms above her. Suddenly, she heard the footsteps approaching the staircase near her, and she hid in a doorway, out of view.

She watched as a man with a knit blue cap pulled over his eyes, holding a log with cloth around it, ran down the stairs, paused for a few seconds before slamming the door open and running outside. Nita's first thought was that the sorority house had been burglarized. She immediately ran up the stairs to wake her roommate, Nancy. Nita told her of the strange man she saw leaving the building,

Unsure of what to do, the girls made their way to the housemother's room. Yet before they were able to make it to her room, they saw another roommate, Karen, staggering down the hall. Her entire head was soaked with blood. While Nancy tried to help Karen, Nita woke up the housemother and the two of them went to check on another roommate nearby. They found Kathy in her room, alive,

but in a horrible state. She was also covered in blood that was seeping from open wounds on her head. Hysterical, Nancy ran to the phone and dialed the police. Police later found two more girls dead in their rooms lying in their beds. Someone had attacked them while they slept. Lisa Levi was the first girl that officers found dead.

Pathologists who later performed the autopsy on her found that she had been beaten on the head with a log, raped and strangled. Upon further examination, they discovered bite marks on her buttocks and on one of her nipples. In fact, Lisa's nipple had been so severely bitten that it was almost severed from the rest of her breast.

She had also had a hairspray bottle shoved deep into her vagina. Post-mortem reports on Margaret Bowman showed that she suffered similar fatal injuries, although she had not been sexually assaulted, and she showed no signs of bite marks. She had been strangled by a pair of pantyhose that were later found at the scene of the crime. She had also been beaten on the head.

yet so severely that her skull was splintered and a portion of her brain was exposed. Neither she nor Lisa Levi showed signs of a struggle. This suggests that Ted had incapacitated them first by hitting them hard on the head with a wooden log, causing immediate unconsciousness or at least paralyzing them. Investigators who interviewed the survivors learned nothing.

None of the girls had any memory of the events of that fatal night. Like Levi and Bowman, they too had been asleep when they were attacked. The only witness was Nita Neri, who was able to catch a profile of the killer as he fled. However, the assailant would not travel far before claiming another victim that very same night.

Less than a mile from the Chi Omega house, a young woman was awakened by loud banging noises coming from the apartment next to hers. She wondered what her friend in the adjoining apartment was doing to make so much noise at four in the morning. As the banging noises persisted, she became suspicious and woke her roommate. As they listened, they heard Cheryl next door moaning.

Frightened, they called over to her house to see if she was alright. When no one picked up the phone, they immediately called the police. The police came quickly. After all, they were just blocks away at a Chi Omega house tending to the crime scene there. They entered Cheryl's apartment and walked to her bedroom, where they found her sitting on the bed. Her face was just beginning to swell from the bludgeoning to her head.

She was still somewhat conscious and half-nude, but lucky to be alive. Police discovered the mask at the foot of her bed. According to Anne Rule in The Stranger Beside Me, the ski mask that was found resembled almost exactly the mask taken from Ted Bundy's car when he'd been arrested in Utah in August of 1975.

Police investigators worked diligently on the evidence that was left behind. They were able to get a blood type from the assailant, sperm samples and fingerprints smudges. Unfortunately, most of the evidence that was tested proved to be inconclusive. The only firm evidence investigators were able to obtain were the hairs found in the mask, teeth impressions from the bite marks on the victims and an eyewitness account from Nita Neri.

Investigators did not have a suspect, and Ted Bundy was unknown to them. It would go only a bit over three weeks before Ted Bundy, by now totally out of control, would claim his final victim. On the 9th of February 1978, Lake City Police received a phone call from the distressed parents of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach.

She was a pretty girl, with brown hair and a winning smile. She was a cheerleader at her junior high school and was well liked by both classmates and teachers. Her parents were hysterical and said that their daughter had disappeared that same day. Police launched a massive search to find the missing girl, who disappeared from her school grounds.

The person who last saw her was her friend, Priscilla, who saw Kimberly get into the car of a stranger the day she disappeared. Priscilla thought the man was a family member coming to scold Kimberly because she was crying as she was being led away. Unfortunately, she was unable to accurately remember the car or the driver. They found Kimberly's body eight weeks later.

in a state park in Suwannee County, Florida. The young girl's body yielded little information due to the advanced decomposition. However, police were later to find the evidence they needed in a van driven by Ted Bundy. A few days before Kimberly Leach had disappeared,

A strange man in a white van approached a fourteen-year-old girl as she waited for her brother to pick her up. The man had claimed he was from the fire department and asked her if she attended the school nearby. She found it strange that an on-duty fireman was wearing plaid pants and a navy jacket.

She began to feel uncomfortable. She had been warned on many occasions by her father, who was the chief of detectives for the Jacksonville Police Department, not to talk with strangers. She was relieved when her brother drove up. Suspicious of the man, her brother ordered her into the car, followed the man and wrote down his license plate to give it to his father.

Upon hearing of the stranger in the white van, Detective James Parmenter had the license plate checked out. He learned it belonged to a man named Randall Reagan, and he decided to pay him a visit. Reagan informed the detective that his plates had been stolen, and he had already been issued new ones. The detective later found out that the van his children had seen was also stolen,

and he had an idea who it might have been. He decided to take his children to the police station to show them a stack of mugshots, Ted Bundy's picture being among them. He hadn't realized how close he had been to losing his own daughter. Both of his children recognized the man in the van as Ted Bundy. The van long since discarded.

Ted Bundy set out towards Pensacola, Florida, in a new stolen car. This time, he managed to find a vehicle he was more comfortable driving: a Volkswagen Beetle. Officer David Lee was patrolling an area in West Pensacola when he saw an orange Volkswagen at 10pm on the 15th of February. He knew the area well and most of the residents, yet he had never before seen the car,

Officer Lee decided to run a check on the license plates and soon found out that they were stolen. Immediately, he turned on his lights and began to follow the Volkswagen. Once again, as had happened in Utah several years earlier, Bundy started to flee. Suddenly, Bundy pulled over and stopped. Officer Lee ordered him out of the car and told Bundy to lay down with his hands in front.

To Lee's surprise, as he began to handcuff Bundy, he rolled over and began to fight the officer. Bundy managed to fight his way free and run. Just as soon as he did, Lee fired his weapon at him. Bundy dropped to the ground, pretending to have been shot. As the officer approached him lying on the ground, he was again attacked by Bundy. However, the officer was able to overpower him. He was handcuffed and taken to the police station.

Ted Bundy had finally been caught. Over the months following Bundy's arrest, investigators were able to compile critical evidence to be used against Bundy in the Leach case. The white van that had been stolen by Bundy was found, and they had three eyewitnesses that had seen him driving it the afternoon Kimberley had disappeared.

Forensic tests conducted on the van yielded fibers of material that had come from Bundy's clothes. Tests also revealed Kimberly Leach's blood type on the van's carpet and semen and Ted's blood type on her underwear. Finding this, they now knew that before killing little Kimberly, Bundy had raped her. Further evidence was Ted's shoe impressions in the soil located next to the place Kimberly was found.

Police felt confident with the information they had tying Bundy to the Leach case, and on the 31st of July 1978, Ted Bundy was charged with the girl's murder. Soon after, he would also be charged with the Chi Omega murders. Facing the death penalty, Ted would later plead in his own defense that he was not guilty of the murders.

Theodore Robert Bundy faced two murder trials, both spaced within three years. His first trial was set for the 25th of June 1979 in Miami, Florida. The court case centered on the brutal attacks on the Chi Omega sorority sisters. The second trial was to take place in January 1980 in Orlando, Florida, where Ted was to be tried for the murder of Kimberly Leach.

Both trials would result in less than favorable outcomes for Ted. However, it would be the Chi Omega murder case that would seal his fate forever. The opening of the Chi Omega murder trial sparked immense public interest and a media frenzy.

After all, Ted had been suspected of at least 36 murders in four states, and his name elicited nightmarish images to thousands, perhaps even millions, around the world. He was considered by many to be evil incarnate, a monster, the devil, and his murders initiated the biggest and most publicized trials of the decade.

During the Chi Omega murder trial, Ted acted as his own defense attorney. He was confident in his abilities and believed he would be given a fair trial. The jury, made up mostly of African Americans, looked on as he defended himself against the murder charges. It became clear early on in the trial that Ted was fighting a losing battle.

There were two events in the trial that would sway the jury against Ted. The first was Nita Neri's testimony of what she had seen the night of the murders. While on the stand, she pointed to Ted as the man she had seen fleeing down the stairs and out the door of the Chi Omega house. The second event that swayed the jury during the trial was the testimony of odontologist Dr. Richard Sauviron.

While on the stand, Dr. Sorviron described the bite mark injuries found on Lisa Levi's body. As he spoke, the jury was shown full-scale photographs of the bite marks that had been taken the night of the murder.

The doctor pointed out the uniqueness of the indentations left behind on the victim's buttocks and compared them with full-scale pictures of Ted's teeth. There was no question that Ted had made the bite marks on Lisa Levi's body. The photos would be the biggest piece of evidence the prosecution had linking Ted to the crime.

On the 23rd of July, Ted waited in his cell as the jurors deliberated over his guilt or innocence. After almost seven hours, they returned to the courtroom with a verdict. Showing no emotion, Ted listened as one of the jurors read out guilty. On all counts of murder, Ted was found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In the state of Florida, it is customary to have a separate sentencing trial.

Ted's sentencing took place one week later on the 30th of July before the same jury that had found him guilty. During the brief hearing, Ted's mother testified and tearfully pleaded for her son's life. Ted was also given a chance to address the court and refute a recommendation from the prosecution for the death penalty.

Ted professed his innocence, claiming that the prejudice of the media was responsible for his alleged misrepresentation. He also suggested that the entire proceedings and verdict was nothing short of a farce, which he was unable to accept. In America, it is not uncommon for trials to be televised. There are several videos online where one can see Ted's trial,

And in one you can hear Ted tell a hushed courtroom that it was, and I quote, "'absurd to ask for mercy for something I did not do, and I do not share the burden of the guilt.'" Judge Cowart, who presided over both trials, handed down his final judgment following Ted's statement.

He affirmed the recommendation and imposed the death penalty twice for the murders of Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levi. The method of execution that Ted faced was the electric chair. After many delays, the Leach trial began in Orlando, Florida at the Orange County Courthouse on the 7th of January, 1980.

This time, Ted decided not to represent himself, instead handing over the responsibility to defense attorneys Julius Africano and Lynn Thomsen. Their strategy was to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, a plea that was risky, but one of the few available options open to the defense. The plea of insanity might not have been difficult for the seven-women, five-man jury to believe,

Unlike the other hearings, Ted became increasingly agitated throughout the trial. At one point he even lost control and stood up yelling at a witness with whom he disagreed. Michaud and Ainsworth stated that Ted was just barely able to control himself, expending huge amounts of energy just to keep from blowing apart. It appeared that Ted's facade of confidence was beginning to fade.

Probably because he realized that he had already lost the war, and this legal battle wouldn't make much difference in determining his fate. There was no doubt that the outlook for Ted was bleak. Assistant State Attorney Bob Deckel presented 65 witnesses that had connected Ted either directly or indirectly with Kimberly Leach on the day of her disappearance.

One of the star witnesses had seen a man resembling Ted leading an upset little girl, matching Kimberly's description, into a white van in front of the girls' school. However, the defense team argued the legitimacy of their testimony because the man was unable to recall the precise day he had seen the man and the little girl. Nevertheless, Jekyll continued to press on and present even more convincing evidence.

The most damaging was the fiber evidence, which linked Ted's clothes and the van he had driven that day with the crime scene. Moreover, fibers matching those from Kimberly Leach's clothes were found in the van and on Ted's clothing, that he had allegedly worn on the day of the crime.

The prosecution's expert witness, who testified about the fiber analysis, stated that she believed that at some point Ted and Kimberly Leach had been in contact around the time of her death. Michaud and Ainsworth claimed that the testimony had been, and again I quote, "...literally fatal to Ted's case."

Exactly one month following the opening of the trial, Judge Wallace Jopling asked the jury to deliberate. On the 7th of February, after less than seven hours of deliberation, the jury returned the verdict of guilty. The verdict was immediately followed by jubilation from the prosecution team and their supporters. February 9th marked the second anniversary of Kimberly Leach's death.

It was also the day that the sentencing trial commenced. During the penalty phase of the trial, Ted shocked those in the courtroom while he interviewed defense witness Carol Ann Boone. During his questioning of Carol, the two caught everyone off guard when they exchanged vows.

According to Florida law, the verbal promise made under oath was enough to seal the agreement, and the two were considered officially married. Shortly thereafter, the groom was sentenced to death in the electric chair for the third time in under a year. When this verdict was delivered, Ted dropped his mask of sanity that he had worn for so long during his trial.

He rose up from his chair, raised his arm and shouted, Tell the jury they're wrong! There is a famous photo of this moment where Ted's face looks more demonic than human. But his shouting would not help his case at all, and he would spend his honeymoon alone on death row in Florida State's Ryford Penitentiary.

Ted refused to give up, and believed that he still had a fighting chance to save his own life. In 1982, he enlisted the help of a new lawyer and appealed a Chi Omega murder trial verdict to the Florida Supreme Court. However, his appeal was eventually denied. Shortly following the court's denial of a new hearing, Ted decided to appeal the Kimberly Leach trial verdict.

In May 1985, his request was again turned down. However, he continued to keep up the fight and, in 1986, he enlisted a new lawyer to assist him in escaping the death penalty. Ted's execution date was initially scheduled for the 4th of March 1986.

However, his execution was postponed while his new defense attorney, Polly Nelson, worked on his appeals for his previous murder convictions. Two months later, the appeal was denied, and another death warrant was issued to Ted by the state of Florida. Still, the appeal process continued. According to Polly Nelson's book, Defending the Devil,

The last appeal was made to the U.S. Supreme Court, who eventually denied Ted's last stay of execution on the 17th of January, 1989. In Ted's 11th hour, he decided to confess to more crimes to the Washington State Attorney General's Chief Investigator for the Criminal Division, Dr. Bob Keppel.

Ted had temporarily assisted Dr. Keppel in his hunt for the Green River Killer from Death Row in the mid-1980s, and he trusted him immensely. Keppel went to meet Ted in an interviewing room at a prison, armed with only a tape recorder. What Keppel learned was shocking. Dr. Keppel learned that Ted kept some of his victims' heads at his home as trophies,

However, what was even more surprising was that Ted also engaged in necrophilia with some of the remains of his victims. In fact, Keppel later stated in his book, The River Man, Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer, a book I cannot recommend enough, by the way, that Ted's behavior could be best described as compulsive necrophilia and extreme perversion.

It was a compulsion that led to the deaths of scores of women, many who remained unknown to investigators. Rule and Keppel stated in their books that Ted was likely responsible for the deaths of at least a hundred women, discounting the official count of 36 victims. Whatever the figure, the fact is no one will ever know for certain how many victims actually fell victim to Ted.

Finally, on the 24th of January 1989, at approximately 7 a.m. in the morning, Ted was sitting strapped tight in Florida State Penitentiary's famous old sparky electric chair. The night before entering the death chamber, Ted had turned down a last meal request request

So he had instead been served the prison standard meal consisting of steak, eggs, toast with butter, jelly, milk, coffee, juice and hash browns. Prior to being strapped down, Ted had been ordered to strip down his pants and bend over. He was then held down as a prison guard shoved a lot of cotton balls inside his anus in order to avoid Ted soiling himself too much during execution.

He was also told to put on adult diapers. Ted Bundy's last words was, and I quote, Jim and Fred, I'd like you to give my love to my family and friends. After saying these words, a leather mask was strapped over Ted's face, and a hooded executioner pulled a lever on the wall behind the electric chair. Two thousand volts surged through the wires.

Bundy's body tensed, and his hands tightened into a clench. A minute later, the machine was shut down, and the body went limp. A paramedic unbuttoned Bundy's blue shirt and listened for a heartbeat. A doctor aimed a light into his eyes.

At 7.16 a.m., Theodore Robert Bundy, perhaps the world's most famous serial killer, was pronounced dead. Outside the prison wall stood hundreds of onlookers and scores of news media representatives awaiting the news of Ted's death.

Following the prison spokesman's announcement that Ted was officially dead, sounds of cheers came from the jubilant crowd and fireworks lit the sky. Shortly thereafter, a white hearse emerged from the prison gates with Ted Bundy's remains. Following Bundy's execution, in an unusual twist,

His remains were cremated at the request of his family and spread over the mountains in Washington State, where the bodies of several of his victims had been discovered.

Whoa, easy there. Yeah.

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The next episode will air on the 1st of December. So, as they say in the land of radio, stay tuned. The Ted Bundy Saga will for the first time on the Serial Killer podcast then feature a recorded interview with noted Bundy scholar Dr. Carlyle

And if you want to contribute to that episode, feel free to send in questions at my Facebook page or on Twitter using the hashtag TedBundyTSK. I have been your host, Thomas Weyborg Thun. Doing this podcast is a labor of love. This podcast has been able to bring serial killer stories to life thanks to you, dear listener, and especially those of you that support me via Patreon.

There are especially a few patrons that have stayed loyal for a long time. Maud, Wendy, Thomas, Craig and Charlotte. Your monthly contributions really help keep this podcast alive. And you have my deepest gratitude. As always, thank you, dear listener, for listening.

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