Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019): Season 1, Episode 3 - Not My Turn to Watch Him - full transcript
Not My Turn to Watch Him.
[man] We're up in Aspen.
We're scheduled for a preliminary hearing.
I think Bundy was the only case
on the criminal docket that morning.
I thought the court proceedings
were going very well.
We took the morning recess as always.
So we went our separate directions.
I was out in the hallway
smoking a cigarette,
talking to one of the deputies...
and Ted was in the back of the courtroom,
where the law library is.
He was doing research.
I was sitting out in the hallway,
having a cigarette,
when the Sheriff's deputy came along
and asked if I knew where Bundy was.
My approach to things like that
is usually pretty whimsical,
and I thought that was funny.
And I said, "It's not really my turn
to watch him."
And the next thing I know,
everybody's running into the courthouse.
Somebody from the first floor came up
and said somebody jumped out
of the second floor window.
Before anybody knew, he was gone.
And, uh, that was it
for the court proceedings for the day.
[theme song playing]
[opening song playing]
Good evening. Convicted Utah kidnapper
Theodore Bundy has escaped.
Escaped from an Aspen,
Colorado courtroom
and remains, at this hour,
the subject of a manhunt.
What happened was seemingly inane
but it's what took place.
He jumped out of the courthouse
and he was gone.
[tires screech]
And the next thing I know,
the Sheriffs were running out
of the courthouse and down the street.
I mean, they took off trying to find him.
It-- It was kind of a surreal experience.
[Lucas] I was there in Aspen
after his escape from the courthouse.
Obviously, they weren't paying attention
to how significant this serial killer was.
That was irresponsible.
It's one of those things
that shouldn't have happened.
[reporter] Guards waited outside the room
but Bundy was alone inside
when he decided to open that window
and jump the 25 feet to the ground.
In fact, you can still see
the indentations in the grass here,
where he landed.
From here, Theodore Bundy
decided to head for the hills.
[Leidner]
There was nobody looking after him.
He wasn't shackled, he wasn't chained,
he wasn't handcuffed.
They didn't have a waist chain on him
and they kind of let him roam freely
throughout the, uh-- the courtroom.
It was inconceivable to me
that you would have somebody
accused of first-degree murder,
who by that time
was thought to be involved
in a series of murders
throughout the West,
and that your security level
would be so low.
I really don't know what happened
this morning in terms of the guard.
Basically, uh, as I understand it,
the defendant was in the courtroom
and, uh...
the guard was at the door
and the last time he looked,
the defendant was there,
and the next he looked, he was gone.
[chuckles]
So he didn't keep him inside at all times?
-Apparently not.
-Will he be disciplined for that?
[chuckles] I assume so.
[Bundy]
I remember the beautiful, clear morning.
The mountain top shining
with the first rays of...
the summer morning's light.
I remember psyching myself all the way up
saying to myself again and again,
"You must go.
You must go, you must go, you must go.
Don't hesitate, don't stop, don't stop."
[Leidner] The question is,
does he know where he's going?
Does he know anything
about this area?
There's only two roads out of Aspen.
How is he going to get out of here?
[reporter] Roadblocks have been set up
all around Aspen.
City police and Pitkin County
Sheriff's deputies are checking every car
leaving this mountain community.
[reporter #2] So far these roadblocks
have turned up no sign of Ted Bundy,
but sources report nine others
have been arrested
in connection with other cases
and officers have confiscated
200 pounds of marijuana.
[Lucas] It was crazy.
The cops didn't know what was going on.
We'd go around talking to the police
about the escape,
"What do you know about it?"
And nothing.
My photographer and I spent hours
driving up and down in the woods,
combing the hill trying to--
to locate this idiot.
[Leidner]
People were showing up on horseback
with the bandoleros
strung across their chest, with rifles
probably half lit,
ready to go out and hunt Bundy.
[reporter] The Sheriff's department said
150 men and five bloodhounds
combed the canyons around Aspen.
[Lubeck] This was
a catch-me-if-you-can game
that he was engaged in,
and he was interested in one thing,
and that is doing what he wanted.
[dog sniffing]
[Bundy] It certainly did cause a furor.
They didn't know where in the world I was.
And I was feeling really good.
I had nobody helping me,
I had no money, I had no nothing.
[reporter] Using the scent
from a sweater Bundy left behind,
dogs did track him to a bridge in town,
then they lost the trail.
[Bundy]
Just ran right up into the mountains
and managed to find a cabin.
[reporter] The search around Aspen,
now in its third day, is being wound down.
But the spokesman
for the Pitkin County Sheriff's Department
says the dragnet will definitely continue.
[Michaud] For days and days and days,
he kept the level of interest
and the guessing... uh, going.
At that point, the FBI entered the case
because Bundy became an interstate
fugitive fleeing from justice.
They could throw a lot of bodies
and equipment at the investigation,
manpower, vehicles.
But even then, the FBI was not much help.
They didn't know anything
that the locals didn't already know.
[Bundy] If I could've kept on hiking
I would have been long gone
but a very cold sleet and rain storm
hit me
and I got very cold
and went into a state of shock.
Three, four days of high altitude
and cold got to me and my mind got weak.
I was just totally disoriented.
It was like an experience
I had never known before.
That night I went and walked
back into Aspen
because I was cold and hungry.
And I just said, "Well,
let's just see what happens."
And a fluke actually, they stopped me.
[camera shutters clicking,
reporters shouting indistinctly]
[reporter]
Streets of Aspen are safe again.
Suspected multiple murderer
Theodore Bundy
is back in custody after an absence
of nearly seven days.
Bundy came here Wednesday after spending
a miserable night in the rain.
He told officers he broke into this cabin,
where he ate and slept Wednesday night.
Then last night, Bundy said
he walked into Aspen,
took this car which was unlocked
and had the keys in the ignition.
He was on his way out of town
but for some reason made a U-turn.
That's when Bundy was apprehended.
I noted a vehicle driving erratically
about an eighth of a mile east of Aspen
on highway 82.
We observed this vehicle
for a matter of seconds,
and I turned around and pursued it,
contacted it,
and found Mr. Bundy driving it.
[woman] Did you recognize him right away?
It took about two glances.
He was pretty... altered,
his appearance had been altered
by glasses and, uh...
a minor growth of beard.
[reporter] When Ted Bundy emerged
from the courtroom,
he was barefoot, haggard.
He limped from the blisters on his feet
and he weighed 25 pounds less
than he did last Tuesday,
at the time of his escape.
[Lucas] When he was recaptured in Aspen,
there in the courthouse in the crowd,
in that famous shot where Bundy is walking
into that crowd of reporters,
he came past me,
turned to me and said, "Hi, Ward."
And two or three of the reporters standing
around me said, "Who the hell are you?"
It was very odd. But he obviously
had been watching or listening
paying attention to any time his name
was used on the air, or in print.
[camera shutter clicks]
He was a narcissist
along with being a psychopath,
so I think he watched
every TV newscast he could.
I wouldn't be surprised if he saved
newspaper clippings.
Some people with his mindset do.
[Bundy] I know
of course the officers believed
that I would be depressed.
Dejected as well as...
in a state of physical exhaustion.
And that...
the inevitability of it all would
shake me and that I was just a...
a rotten tomato ready to burst.
And all it would take would be
this extraordinary circumstance
to open me up.
But my exhaustion notwithstanding,
they were barking up the wrong tree.
[Carlisle]
Once he got caught and he was in jail,
he called-- He had a credit card
that he could use.
And he called and we talked
and talked for about 15 minutes or so.
-[Bundy] How you doing?
-Doing pretty good, Ted. How you doing?
[Bundy]
Uh, well, quite well, quite frankly, yeah.
[stammering] There is still the scars
from the blisters on my feet.
-I'm sitting here bare footed. [laughs]
-Uh-uh.
[Bundy]
From running around in the mountains.
Extraordinary experience.
-[Carlisle] They treating you pretty good?
-Um...
They, they have developed
this paranoia about me.
-Like I am going to escape or something.
-[chuckles]
I can't imagine
where they are getting that.
[Bundy laughs]
-Yes, exactly.
-Uh-uh.
[Bundy] You know, we haven't really...
[clears throat]
you know, talked personally, obviously,
since the latter part of January.
[Carlisle] Yeah, right.
[Bundy] Well, the impressions of all that
you have been hearing about me
and you know, the...
[Carlisle] Okay. How do you mean?
[Bundy] Well, like, the escape
and everything like that.
I wonder
what your impression of that was.
[Carlisle] Uh...
I had mixed impressions.
I was wondering
if you were really getting uptight.
And the pressure looked like it was on.
In your own mind, what was happening?
-[Bundy] Well...
-What was the reason for...
[Bundy] I just got sick and tired
of being locked up, and...
I had-- Over the months,
I had noticed a number of opportunities
to just walk right out.
Just longed for freedom for so long
and now I'm like...
like I was living my ultimate dream.
It was just an incredible experience.
[Carlisle]
It's almost like he's talking to a father
and saying, you know:
"I almost did a home run".
You know, in the baseball game.
It was so friendly.
He was really quite proud of that.
[Leidner] He talked about how lucky
the people were to catch him,
and how stupid the people were
who caught him...
and how...
intellectually superior he was
to everybody.
And I thought to myself,
"Those things may be true
but you're the one in jail,
and those are the ones
who are on the outside."
[reporter] Theodore Bundy left here
in the midst of a hearing
concerning his upcoming murder trial.
If that's what he hoped to avoid,
he didn't really accomplish much
by escaping.
He's back in jail,
that hearing resumes Thursday morning,
and now Bundy faces new charges...
of escape.
[Michaud] This is one
of those strange dichotomies with Ted.
He liked being the center of attention,
but did not understand
what kind of trouble came with it.
The better known he was, the more
he put himself under undue risk...
but Ted did not see it that way.
[Bundy] This kind of boldness that we see
from time to time from this personality,
um...
it's probably just being willing
to take the risk.
Or perhaps not even seeing risk.
Just overcome by that boldness and desire
to accomplish a particular thing.
To understand how he thought,
you have to be able to project yourself
into a sociopath's brain.
If you can do that, um...
more power to you. [chuckles]
I'm-- It's a point of pride with me
that I can't.
[Bundy] I think we can say that he--
he felt almost as if he was immune...
-[Michaud] Mm-hmm.
-...uh...
from detection,
as if he were in a dimension
that he just kind of, like,
could walk through doors.
That he had some supernatural powers.
That no matter how much he fucked up,
nothing could go wrong.
[Michaud] December 30th, 1977,
Ted is in prison waiting for trial
for the murder of Caryn Campbell.
That evening a guard, as usual,
brought him his food and left.
The next morning,
the guard returned to Ted's cell,
and found his food uneaten.
He looked over and Bundy appeared
to be in his cot, asleep.
But as he entered the cell
and pulled back the covers,
he finds nothings but a pile of books,
where Ted should have been.
There was no Bundy.
[indistinct shouting]
[reporter] New Year's Eve, 1977.
In the Garfield County Jail,
Bundy walked out.
[female reporter] Bundy starved down
to less than 140 pounds,
slipped through a hole in the ceiling
of his cell and was free again.
[McChesney]
The second escape, Ted was quite creative.
Lost some weight,
and hacked his way through the ceiling.
He managed to climb on some books,
lift himself into the ceiling,
crawl through the ceiling area,
into the apartment of one of the jailers,
which was above his prison cell.
He took some of the jailer's clothing
and walked out the front door.
[Keppel] Bundy's second escape
was pretty much of a nightmare.
That's the one where he just disappeared
and no one knew where he went.
[Leidner] Just could not believe it,
could not believe
that somehow he got out of there.
That's what really was a scary situation.
[Lucas] I was so disgusted
with what had gone on.
I think it was a travesty.
The county commissioners of course
are responsible
ultimately for the safety of prisoners.
The safekeeping of prisoners
in a county facility.
They were derelict in their duty.
I can assure you
that if anybody has been harmed
by Mr. Bundy's leaving Garfield County
on the first of January,
that I intend fully to follow up
uh, and file charges against people
who were perhaps criminally negligent.
[Leidner] It just brought to mind
a little kid who's been denied
candy for however much time,
and this situation,
it was like Bundy
couldn't control himself.
He had this opportunity
and took off.
[Lucas] He was this vicious killer
who was just a complete and total con man,
a psychopath.
And he was running around out there.
People began looking everywhere,
because a serial killer doesn't quit
until he is stopped.
[Yocom]
I got a call from the local authorities
saying that Ted had escaped again.
We were afraid that he might be
coming back to the Salt Lake area
and we certainly didn't want him
back there. [chuckles]
[woman]
I heard about the escape on the news.
I was concerned with him being loose,
on what was going to happen
to someone else.
Just the magnitude of it
was just very overwhelming and shocking.
Well, I'm concerned that this individual
has been on the street,
and we of course take
all necessary precautions and, uh...
with our witnesses that testified
against him in our case here...
and of course will assist any way we can
with Colorado to...
um, see that he's apprehended.
[female reporter] Are you worried
that he might hurt somebody else?
Well, there's always this possibility.
[Keppel] There's law enforcement officers
in Idaho, Colorado, Utah...
all investigating Bundy.
So we contacted everybody
we could think of.
Liz, his friends, his mother.
Basically threatened them all with arrest,
all in an effort to try and get them
to tell us everything they could
about Bundy.
[siren wailing]
Was he coming this way?
We didn't know if he was or not.
[male reporter]
Assistant US Attorney James McConkey
approved processing the document,
which brings
the Federal Bureau of Investigation
into the hunt for Ted Bundy.
[man] Wanted for questioning in connection
with similar type sexual slayings
throughout the Pacific northwest
and into Utah and Colorado.
A federal warrant was issued on January 5,
1978 at Denver, Colorado,
charging Bundy with unlawful flight
to avoid prosecution
for the crime of murder.
[Lucas] If Bundy is ever recaptured,
the Colorado prosecution will continue,
and he could be prosecuted
for one of the Utah murders
before this thing is all over with.
But for the moment, Theodore Bundy
is merely an escaped convicted kidnapper.
And now one of the FBI's most wanted men.
[McChesney] Even with the FBI involved,
sharing information was a real challenge.
There was no central database.
There was no Internet.
[phone rings]
[Michaud] The FBI were limited
in their reach to the general public.
In those days, there was always a delay
between what happened
and getting the story.
And so Ted was just a legend
in his own time zone.
[Bundy] The FBI knows that people
are creatures of habit...
that we have our little things
that we like to do.
And they just wait for a person
to assume those habits again.
The person has to examine his life
and say,
"What parts of my life are distinctive?"
And then change them.
Creating an identity...
is-- is not terribly difficult
to do at all.
Frightened coeds
at Florida State University in Tallahassee
walked to class in groups today
while detectives tried to track a man
who slipped into a sorority house
early yesterday and murdered two women.
[reporter] In the early morning hours,
through a backdoor,
the Intruder came in,
carrying an oak tree limb
[reporter #2]
The killer came in from the night,
and then returned to it with an ease
that has so far baffled police
and left most coeds here terrified.
[man] It all began at about 2:30 a.m.
A call I'll never forget.
The frantic nature of the...
caller on the other end of the phone
saying, "Sheriff, uh...
we may have as many as four dead
at the Chi Omega sorority house,
Florida State University."
-[sirens wailing]
-[indistinct chatter]
As I arrived, they were taking girls out
on stretchers.
I didn't know,
and frankly they didn't either,
whether they were dead or alive.
It appeared that the person
was attempting to be organized
like it was necessary
to do things in order.
[reporter] Most Chi Os had come back
from their dates and gone to bed.
That's where the intruder found
Margaret Bowman asleep.
She never woke up.
She died in her bed,
beaten, strangled, sexually molested.
[Katsaris] But you could tell
that the person that did this
was also losing control.
[reporter] Further down the hall,
Lisa Levy was asleep.
She, too, died without regaining
consciousness.
Still further down the hall, roommates
Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner
survived their attacks.
Both were asleep,
neither saw their attacker.
[Katsaris] When you walk into a room,
with the intentions of harming someone
but then end up brutalizing
one, two,
three, four--
It shocked even all of us who have seen...
brutalization before.
When he hit the girls,
I just don't think they had a chance
to fight back.
I think he just went in and hit.
I just don't think they had
a chance to cry out.
[Katsaris]
That same night, while I was outside,
we got a call
that crackled on my radio and said,
"There are some real unusual noises
coming from a duplex.
The neighbor next door
is calling in and saying,
'It sounds like somebody
is really being beat up.'"
And I said, "Could it be?
Is it possible? Could the same person
have gone to another location?"
And I said, "No,
in all my studies of criminology,
crime, criminals and their methods,
they do something like this,
they're on the lam.
They're gone.
They don't want to be around.
They're certainly not gonna commit
another crime."
I sent an investigator to that scene.
It was only about six blocks away.
Sure enough, there laid a young lady,
a dance major,
brutalized, beaten,
laying in a pool of blood.
Obviously, we had the same individual
who didn't get but a few blocks
and couldn't stop himself.
He brutalized them.
Two to their death
and three to his certainty
that he had killed them.
But he had not.
[reporter] Florida Department
of Criminal Law Enforcement
crime lab experts
are busy sifting through and analyzing
evidence that was collected
from the Chi Omega house.
We were thinking,
"Who could it be and how did he get there?
And what methods were used and why?"
I mean, the questions were just numerous.
So I made my way to the morgue.
There, as I examined the bodies
of the two deceased girls,
I saw that there was mutilation
by mouth, by teeth.
There was a very large,
very imprinted,
double bite mark.
[male reporter] What kind of a person
do you think is at large?
Well, I'd rather say
we've got a very disturbed,
sick individual.
[birds chirping]
[girl] Everybody's scared all the time.
Even just walking to classes.
And today, we've been keeping
our doors locked
during the day too,
which we don't usually do.
[man] There'd never been a crime
like this before in Tallahassee.
There was a tenseness in the air.
A nagging fear, a nagging question,
that could not be just pushed aside.
I was a 28-year-old journalist
down at WFSU TV in Tallahassee.
Across the street from the TV station
was a Chi Omega sorority house.
We had coeds who were savagely attacked.
And nobody knew
who was responsible for this,
but they were still out there.
[helicopter thrumming]
You'd hear helicopters flying overhead
at night,
buzzing across the city.
[reporter] Police continue to guard
the Chi Omega house
around the clock,
but the girls who live there
haven't slept in the house
since last weekend
and there's no word
on when they'll return.
Everybody wanted answers.
Obviously, we didn't have any answers.
We did call the FBI,
but they were not very helpful.
They started working
on getting together a profile
of the type of person we might
be looking for,
but unfortunately a profile
could apply to so many people.
It's good when you have
the person that did it,
and say, "Aha! See? It matches."
But you couldn't take that profile
and go out and find the person.
It just doesn't work that way.
We are trying to establish
the whereabouts, um,
and if certain people and so on could've
been in the Tallahassee area. Yes.
It's just running down
every lead to the nth degree,
rather than allowing anything to slip by.
[Katsaris]
Every County in Florida was frightened.
Window locks, door locks, padlocks.
I mean, the stores
were selling out of everything,
because people thought, "Goodness,
there's a murderer on the loose."
[man] Lake City was,
you know, small town USA.
Everybody knew everybody.
People didn't lock the front door,
left keys in the car in the driveway.
Kids just walked all over town.
And Kim Leach was just a small-town girl.
[reporter] 12-year-old
Kimberly Diane Leach
went to school Thursday, February 9th,
here at Lake City Junior High School.
By mid-morning, she was missing
and no one has seen or heard
from her since.
[Dekle] First I heard
of the disappearance of Kim Leach,
I was driving to the hospital
to visit my wife
who had just delivered our third child
and I heard about it on the radio.
[male reporter] She exited this building
and walked across this basketball court.
But from then on, the whereabouts
of Kimberly Diane Leach
is unknown to the Lake City
Police Department.
[Dekle] It was a real whodunit.
We had a missing person
to begin with,
but we didn't have Kim Leach's body.
It was a monumental task.
[reporter] A wide search is being made
for Leach in Lake City.
More than 75 state troopers,
Florida Division of Forestry workers,
deputies and others
are helping out in that hunt.
[birds chirping]
[Bundy] That day in Pensacola
had been one of the best I'd spent.
It was sunny, I'd gone to the ocean,
laid on the beach.
And I said to myself--
I remember saying to myself that day,
"Boy, you've got it whipped." You know?
"This is the way to start out 1978,
laying on the beach
in the Gulf of Florida."
And just laying there in the sand
and getting a bit of a tan.
I mean, I was super confident
and I was just-- just feeling
really satisfied with the way things were.
[reporter] Police arrested
this 31-year-old man
after a high speed chase
Wednesday morning in Pensacola, Florida.
He claims to be
a Florida State University law student.
[Katsaris] An officer in Pensacola,
doing his job very well,
stopped a car that, in his gut, said,
"This isn't right, it's going slow."
It just didn't look right.
[reporter] Who is this man?
He was arrested driving
a stolen Tallahassee car,
and carrying 21 stolen credit cards,
many of which belonged to FSU coeds.
He refused to give his name to authorities
and he resisted arrest with violence.
[man] He grabbed my wrist and we had
a struggle for control of my revolver.
After several minutes of fighting,
I did manage to subdue him
by striking him with my revolver
and completing the arrest by placing
the cuff on his other hand
and taking him back to the patrol car.
[Katsaris] For the initial period
that he was being held
in Pensacola County Jail,
he had another name.
[reporter] He told police that he was
29-year-old Kenneth Misner of Tallahassee,
and even had ID cards to prove it.
[Katsaris]
That person heard that he was in jail
and notified us and said,
"Hey, that's not me. I'm here.
I'm not over there. I didn't do this."
[Dekle] Police didn't know
who they had in Pensacola.
He handed over a driver's license,
but, you know,
driver's licenses in 1979 in Florida
were printed on a little piece of paper,
almost like, you know,
you'd put the form into a typewriter
and type it out.
There's no picture on them.
[reporter]
When the real Misner was located at home,
he admitted the IDs were phony.
He was ordered held without bond
by a circuit court judge this morning
after he again refused
to identify himself.
[judge] Are you acquainted with
or are you familiar
with the charges against you
as outlined by the state's attorney?
I would like the court
to, um, list them again.
I don't believe I picked everything up
from the state's attorney.
[judge] This is for possession
of stolen property, an automobile,
possession of a stolen television,
uh...
possession of stolen credit cards
on 21 accounts,
possession of stolen tags,
that is automobile tags,
battery of a police officer
and resisting arrest with violence.
[public defender]
He is entitled to a bond on these cases.
[judge] We can't bail him out if we--
We don't even now who he is,
he won't tell us who he is.
Who would be the principal on the bond?
Your Honor, all I know is what they say.
I don't know
whether he's given his name or not.
He's certainly entitled to a bond
in any event I would think.
[prosecutor] Your Honor,
the public defender heard the man admit
that he is not the person
whose name he gave
and he has failed to come forward
with his correct name.
[judge] Well, until we find out who he is,
there's no way we can bail him out.
[public defender] All right.
[reporter]
The mystery man will be kept behind bars
before returning to court to enter a plea.
Officials say by then,
they hope to know who he is.
[Katsaris] We have an individual,
we don't know who he is yet.
So it became
an information-gathering process,
and we focused on the car.
There was no hair fibers.
There were no trace evidence of any kind.
But we did identify
that it was a stolen vehicle,
stolen from nearby...
the Chi Omega house.
I thought, you know,
this might be our first potential suspect.
So I sent investigators to Pensacola
and we started to learn more about him.
[male reporter] Two people
who want most to know who he is
are Tallahassee detectives
Steve Bodiford and Don Pachen.
They have now spent several hours
quizzing Mr. Mystery
about the slayings last month
of two Florida State University coeds
from St. Petersburg.
[Katsaris] We started investigating
and talking to him,
asked him if he would talk to us,
and he was reluctant.
He started playing games.
He's a very careful thinker,
and from what I understand, he--
from the men who've been questioning him--
he says what, uh...
what he wants to, and he's very careful
about how he says it.
[Katsaris] For a while, I let him
play his games with my investigators
until I said, "Enough."
And then it started unraveling.
[Bundy] I was being interrogated
by the police in Pensacola.
And I have no way of measuring...
on a scale of one to ten,
or one to a hundred even what--
what the traumatic effect
on my mind and body was.
And I said I wanted to talk to somebody.
Just someone to talk to--
I needed a friend,
I needed somebody close.
I didn't want a cop or an attorney.
I was sick and tired of cops.
I needed somebody there.
Somebody to talk to.
Somebody to settle me down
and to help me get over this...
reaction I was having
being back in custody.
He finally identified himself
in exchange for a phone call
to his girlfriend Liz.
[male investigator] The date is 2/21/78.
The time is 15:20 hours.
This will be an interview
with Elizabeth Kloepfer.
Could you begin on February 16th, '78
and describe the telephone call
that you received from Ted Bundy?
[woman] Uh, he called collect,
my daughter accepted the charges.
And he said that he was in custody
and I asked him where and he said Florida.
He repeated over and over again
that this was really going to be bad
when it broke.
That it was not going
to break until tomorrow morning
and be in the press,
but it was going to be really ugly.
And I asked him...
if he was referring to the murders
of some sorority girls in Florida,
and he said
that he wouldn't talk about it.
He told me that he wished that we could
sit down and talk about...
things without anyone listening.
About why he was the way he is,
and I said,
"Are you telling me that you're sick?"
And he said-- He was really defensive
and he told me to back off.
Saturday morning at two,
he called again... collect.
And he said that he wanted to talk
about what we'd been talking about.
He told me that he was sick
and that he...
was consumed by something
that he didn't understand
and that, um...
that it--
that he just couldn't contain it.
He spent so much time trying to maintain
a normal life and he just couldn't do it.
He said that he was preoccupied
with this force.
[Michaud] Ted was identified,
and at that point, the jig's up, right?
[reporter]
The police in Pensacola, Florida,
stopped a man driving a stolen car
and found to their surprise,
and perhaps pleasure,
it was Theodore Robert Bundy,
one of the ten most wanted criminals
in this country.
[Michaud] It was remarkable that Ted
was able to elude the police for so long.
But Ted had that sort
of chameleon-like face
that could look 100 different ways,
depending on the angle that you caught it.
He was handsome and smooth-talking.
That allowed him to do what he did.
And Ted told me
that after he escaped Colorado,
he got himself on a bus,
took the bus to Denver.
At Denver, he got a flight to Chicago.
In Chicago he got on an Amtrak train
and went to Ann Arbor,
and was there to watch his alma mater,
the University of Washington,
play the University of Michigan
in the Rose Bowl.
He got drunk watching it in a college bar
and almost got himself beat to shit
by a bunch of Michigan fans.
Spent the night in the sanctuary
of a Methodist church,
stole a car the next day,
and got as far as...
Atlanta, where he abandons it.
He then takes a bus to...
Tallahassee and Florida State University.
[man]
Well, why Florida in the first place?
[Bundy] It was the very opposite end
of the country from the Pacific Northwest.
Not that I disliked the northern climate,
but I didn't have the clothing
and it was...
It'd just be harder to get around
and to live in a cold climate
when you didn't have any money.
I didn't know anybody in Florida,
and I thought the likelihood
that Florida would know anything
about Ted Bundy was remote.
[McChesney] The fact that Ted
was able to escape and get into Florida
through a circuitous route
sounds crazy, but back in the late '70s,
we didn't have the technology
that we have now.
[Michaud] The authorities,
including the FBI,
had a very limited number of tools.
No DNA, you know, no teletypes--
They didn't even have fax machines.
You know, imagine a world
where most of the communication
is done by US mail or rotary telephones.
And so they were always
at least a step behind Ted.
And he believed,
"I can't get caught doing this."
[Katsaris]
After all the grief that he created,
it was a traffic stop!
A traffic stop that we got him on.
[male reporter] Authorities say they can
place Bundy in Tallahassee in January
and he has become a prime suspect
in the Chi Omega sorority house murders.
[indistinct clamoring]
[Keppel] I believe Kathy McChesney
read it in the newspaper
that Bundy had been arrested in Florida.
So we were pleased to know it.
We weren't pleased
that somebody was murdered, but...
certainly it was, uh...
a good start.
[McChesney]
Ted was a absolutely prime suspect
for the Chi Omega,
and he was placed just,
you know, within miles...
of where the offenses occurred.
[reporter] Many of the 21 credit cards
Bundy had with him
were stolen in Sherrod's,
a bar next to the Chi Omega sorority,
on Jefferson Avenue.
[reporter #2] Bundy lived in this house,
which is four blocks
from the Chi Omega sorority.
He was there for several weeks
before and after the killings.
Frances Messier lived
across the hall from Bundy
and knew him as Chris.
What kind of person was he?
Um, a quiet-type person.
Aloof and friendly.
You'd gone out to dinner
with him one time?
We went out to dinner once.
Yes, that, that's kinda... [chuckles]
[Dekle]
At this point, Bundy was also a suspect
as the potential killer of Kim Leach.
We tracked a number
of stolen credit cards
that we found in his possession
and found that he had spent the night
at the Lake City Holiday Inn
two and a half miles from...
the Lake City Junior High School
the night before Kim went missing.
Uh, that's a pretty good indication
you might want to look at him
as a possible suspect.
[male reporter] Bundy allegedly
spent the evening after he checked in
sitting in the motel's bar,
sipping gin while chatting with a man
next to him for several hours.
Bundy checked out
of the Lake City Holiday Inn
the next morning at about 7:30,
the same morning
Kimberly Leach disappeared.
But before we could make
any kind of a homicide case,
we had to find the body.
And some time
about a month and a half later,
we had found what we were looking for.
[reporter]
Eight weeks of searching led to her body.
in a deserted tin shack,
next to an empty hog pen.
[Dekle] Worst thing in the world
a prosecutor can do
is get personally involved in a case.
And, uh... I had not cried
in my entire adult life.
I hadn't cried since I was a teenager.
I cried the day we found Kim Leach's body.
She was just a... smart, intelligent,
obedient,
little girl who, uh...
reminded me of my daughter.
[woman] To actually have
a 12-year-old child
taken from our community
and brutally murdered
by some monster--
Just grabbed her up and took her away--
It's just shock and disbelief.
[Katsaris] I told Ted Bundy,
we now have the evidence
to charge him with both cases.
He looked at me and said,
"When you find the person...
that committed these crimes
that you think I committed...
that person...
is going to be wanted for...
murders of women
in the three digits...
and...
six states."
And he put his fingers up like that.
[Dekle] Ted Bundy was one mad-dog killer
and I wanted him executed,
but he had not been indicted
in either case.
So I spent a good deal of time
in Tallahassee conferring with the, uh,
prosecutors in Tallahassee
about the Tallahassee case.
Which case should be tried first.
I felt that, uh,
Bundy ought to be tried
in Tallahassee first,
because they had a much more secure jail
in Tallahassee.
[Katsaris] My goal was to never...
ever allow him to kill another young lady.
So we put him
into a secure portion of the jail.
And then we had three locks on the door:
the traditional key lock,
the big key, the jail key,
and then two very large, uh...
very, very strong padlocks.
One night, I did something unusual.
And I went to his cell and I said,
"Ted you're coming with me."
And he said, "This is a change-up.
This is different."
I said, "We're going for a ride."
And that didn't go over real well.
I believe he thought I was going
to take him for a ride
from which he would never return,
that I was going to exercise
some kind of authority as the sheriff
to do him in.
We transported him with a series of cars
and as we opened the back door
to go up the stairway, the back entrance,
doors swung open,
and there stood these three doctors
their white smocks on,
and behind them was a dental chair.
And he lost it.
He didn't know that what I had
was a bite mark from the crime scene,
which, I believed at the time,
was Ted Bundy's signature,
and we wanted to search
any and all parts of his mouth
including his teeth.
Well, he started screaming,
"You can't do this without my attorney."
I said, "Oh, yes, we can.
Ted, we have a warrant
and we're serving it on you."
We showed him the devices
that we could use as a degree of force.
Then on a dime, his mindset changed
like it was a different person.
He looked at me...
he turned around...
he sat in the dental chair...
he leaned back...
put a smile on
and said,
"Ken,
you know you don't need all that stuff.
I'm not a violent person."
He opened his mouth.
He said, "Do what you have to do."
[Hula] Everybody realized
that there was somebody very special
being held by the police in Tallahassee.
The dots began to connect
from all across the country.
From Washington State to Utah,
through the Rockies to Florida.
We became a focal point
of criminal justice inquiries
in the weeks that followed.
[Katsaris]
Other investigators came to the jail
to try to interview him for other cases
they were working on,
for which they didn't have evidence.
That had to wait, because we had evidence
and we had Ted Bundy in our custody,
something the other investigators
never had the luxury of.
So I wasn't going to divert
from the path we set. Period.
And I will tell you
I had a personal vengeance
for the person that did this.
I wanted to be the one to tell him
that the grand jurors of this county
have indicted you for murder.
[Bundy] Gentlemen, I'm not gonna
be paraded for Ken Katsaris' benefit.
Step out, Mr. Bundy.
[Bundy]
What do we have here, Ken? Let's see.
Oh, it's an indictment? All right.
Why don't you read it to me?
You're about up for election,
aren't you?
-This is how you got it, didn't you?
-Mr. Bundy--
You told me,
that you were going to get me.
He said he was going to get me, okay?
You got me indicted.
It's all you're going to get.
Just read it. Let's go.
Theodore Robert Bundy,
you are charged, indictment,
two counts of burglary,
and, uh,
two counts murder in the first degree,
three counts
attempted murder in the first degree.
In the name of, and by the authority
of the State of Florida,
the grand jurors of the State of Florida
and panel that's sworn to inquire
and true presentment make.
And therefore the County of Leon
upon their oath do present
that Theodore Robert Bundy,
on the 15th day of January 1978,
in Leon County, Florida, did then there
unlawfully kill a human being
to wit: Margaret Bowman,
by strangling and/or beating her,
and said killing was perpetrated
by said Theodore Robert Bundy,
from or with a premeditated design
or attempt to affect the death
of said Margaret Bowman,
contrary to Section 810-02
Florida Statutes.
-Very good.
-And your grand jurors being present
further give the court
to be informed and understand...
[Hula] It wasn't a press conference.
It was a staged perp walk
by Sheriff Ken Katsaris.
to make a big deal out of him
arresting and charging Theodore Bundy.
Katsaris in his black suit,
and his cowboy boots on.
It was part political theater,
part crime drama.
Said killing was perpetrated
by said Theodore Robert Bundy
from or with a premeditated design
or attempt to affect the death
-of said Lisa Levy...
-My chance to talk to the press.
...contrary to section 780-204
Florida statutes.
I'll plead not guilty right now.
And your grand jurors being present
in said court further gives the court
to be informed and understand
that Theodore Bundy
-on the 15th day of January--
-Can I talk to the press when you're done?
did then and there unlawfully attempt
to kill a human being to wit...
[Bundy] It ceased to be an issue
whether or not I was innocent or guilty.
The issue now is, "Can we pin it on him?"
[stuttering] Can we follow through
and maintain our reputation
as law enforcement officers?
The police aren't willing to accept
what I think they know,
and they know that I didn't do
these things.
That is the indictment handed down
by the grand jury.
-Is that my copy?
-No, it is not.
-Do I get a copy?
-We have your copy. You have the copy?
Can I have a copy?
How about the case?
-You get that.
-Can I talk to the press?
I mean, you had your chance.
You've displayed the prisoner,
now I think it's my turn.
I've been kept in isolation
for six months,
I've been kept away from the press,
I've been buried by you,
you've been talking for six months,
I think it's my turn now.
All right?
We got a court order that there won't
be any press interviews.
Sure there won't be any press interviews.
You've given them up.
I-- I'm gagged, you're not.
All right.
I'll be heard.
We're scheduled for a preliminary hearing.
I think Bundy was the only case
on the criminal docket that morning.
I thought the court proceedings
were going very well.
We took the morning recess as always.
So we went our separate directions.
I was out in the hallway
smoking a cigarette,
talking to one of the deputies...
and Ted was in the back of the courtroom,
where the law library is.
He was doing research.
I was sitting out in the hallway,
having a cigarette,
when the Sheriff's deputy came along
and asked if I knew where Bundy was.
My approach to things like that
is usually pretty whimsical,
and I thought that was funny.
And I said, "It's not really my turn
to watch him."
And the next thing I know,
everybody's running into the courthouse.
Somebody from the first floor came up
and said somebody jumped out
of the second floor window.
Before anybody knew, he was gone.
And, uh, that was it
for the court proceedings for the day.
[theme song playing]
[opening song playing]
Good evening. Convicted Utah kidnapper
Theodore Bundy has escaped.
Escaped from an Aspen,
Colorado courtroom
and remains, at this hour,
the subject of a manhunt.
What happened was seemingly inane
but it's what took place.
He jumped out of the courthouse
and he was gone.
[tires screech]
And the next thing I know,
the Sheriffs were running out
of the courthouse and down the street.
I mean, they took off trying to find him.
It-- It was kind of a surreal experience.
[Lucas] I was there in Aspen
after his escape from the courthouse.
Obviously, they weren't paying attention
to how significant this serial killer was.
That was irresponsible.
It's one of those things
that shouldn't have happened.
[reporter] Guards waited outside the room
but Bundy was alone inside
when he decided to open that window
and jump the 25 feet to the ground.
In fact, you can still see
the indentations in the grass here,
where he landed.
From here, Theodore Bundy
decided to head for the hills.
[Leidner]
There was nobody looking after him.
He wasn't shackled, he wasn't chained,
he wasn't handcuffed.
They didn't have a waist chain on him
and they kind of let him roam freely
throughout the, uh-- the courtroom.
It was inconceivable to me
that you would have somebody
accused of first-degree murder,
who by that time
was thought to be involved
in a series of murders
throughout the West,
and that your security level
would be so low.
I really don't know what happened
this morning in terms of the guard.
Basically, uh, as I understand it,
the defendant was in the courtroom
and, uh...
the guard was at the door
and the last time he looked,
the defendant was there,
and the next he looked, he was gone.
[chuckles]
So he didn't keep him inside at all times?
-Apparently not.
-Will he be disciplined for that?
[chuckles] I assume so.
[Bundy]
I remember the beautiful, clear morning.
The mountain top shining
with the first rays of...
the summer morning's light.
I remember psyching myself all the way up
saying to myself again and again,
"You must go.
You must go, you must go, you must go.
Don't hesitate, don't stop, don't stop."
[Leidner] The question is,
does he know where he's going?
Does he know anything
about this area?
There's only two roads out of Aspen.
How is he going to get out of here?
[reporter] Roadblocks have been set up
all around Aspen.
City police and Pitkin County
Sheriff's deputies are checking every car
leaving this mountain community.
[reporter #2] So far these roadblocks
have turned up no sign of Ted Bundy,
but sources report nine others
have been arrested
in connection with other cases
and officers have confiscated
200 pounds of marijuana.
[Lucas] It was crazy.
The cops didn't know what was going on.
We'd go around talking to the police
about the escape,
"What do you know about it?"
And nothing.
My photographer and I spent hours
driving up and down in the woods,
combing the hill trying to--
to locate this idiot.
[Leidner]
People were showing up on horseback
with the bandoleros
strung across their chest, with rifles
probably half lit,
ready to go out and hunt Bundy.
[reporter] The Sheriff's department said
150 men and five bloodhounds
combed the canyons around Aspen.
[Lubeck] This was
a catch-me-if-you-can game
that he was engaged in,
and he was interested in one thing,
and that is doing what he wanted.
[dog sniffing]
[Bundy] It certainly did cause a furor.
They didn't know where in the world I was.
And I was feeling really good.
I had nobody helping me,
I had no money, I had no nothing.
[reporter] Using the scent
from a sweater Bundy left behind,
dogs did track him to a bridge in town,
then they lost the trail.
[Bundy]
Just ran right up into the mountains
and managed to find a cabin.
[reporter] The search around Aspen,
now in its third day, is being wound down.
But the spokesman
for the Pitkin County Sheriff's Department
says the dragnet will definitely continue.
[Michaud] For days and days and days,
he kept the level of interest
and the guessing... uh, going.
At that point, the FBI entered the case
because Bundy became an interstate
fugitive fleeing from justice.
They could throw a lot of bodies
and equipment at the investigation,
manpower, vehicles.
But even then, the FBI was not much help.
They didn't know anything
that the locals didn't already know.
[Bundy] If I could've kept on hiking
I would have been long gone
but a very cold sleet and rain storm
hit me
and I got very cold
and went into a state of shock.
Three, four days of high altitude
and cold got to me and my mind got weak.
I was just totally disoriented.
It was like an experience
I had never known before.
That night I went and walked
back into Aspen
because I was cold and hungry.
And I just said, "Well,
let's just see what happens."
And a fluke actually, they stopped me.
[camera shutters clicking,
reporters shouting indistinctly]
[reporter]
Streets of Aspen are safe again.
Suspected multiple murderer
Theodore Bundy
is back in custody after an absence
of nearly seven days.
Bundy came here Wednesday after spending
a miserable night in the rain.
He told officers he broke into this cabin,
where he ate and slept Wednesday night.
Then last night, Bundy said
he walked into Aspen,
took this car which was unlocked
and had the keys in the ignition.
He was on his way out of town
but for some reason made a U-turn.
That's when Bundy was apprehended.
I noted a vehicle driving erratically
about an eighth of a mile east of Aspen
on highway 82.
We observed this vehicle
for a matter of seconds,
and I turned around and pursued it,
contacted it,
and found Mr. Bundy driving it.
[woman] Did you recognize him right away?
It took about two glances.
He was pretty... altered,
his appearance had been altered
by glasses and, uh...
a minor growth of beard.
[reporter] When Ted Bundy emerged
from the courtroom,
he was barefoot, haggard.
He limped from the blisters on his feet
and he weighed 25 pounds less
than he did last Tuesday,
at the time of his escape.
[Lucas] When he was recaptured in Aspen,
there in the courthouse in the crowd,
in that famous shot where Bundy is walking
into that crowd of reporters,
he came past me,
turned to me and said, "Hi, Ward."
And two or three of the reporters standing
around me said, "Who the hell are you?"
It was very odd. But he obviously
had been watching or listening
paying attention to any time his name
was used on the air, or in print.
[camera shutter clicks]
He was a narcissist
along with being a psychopath,
so I think he watched
every TV newscast he could.
I wouldn't be surprised if he saved
newspaper clippings.
Some people with his mindset do.
[Bundy] I know
of course the officers believed
that I would be depressed.
Dejected as well as...
in a state of physical exhaustion.
And that...
the inevitability of it all would
shake me and that I was just a...
a rotten tomato ready to burst.
And all it would take would be
this extraordinary circumstance
to open me up.
But my exhaustion notwithstanding,
they were barking up the wrong tree.
[Carlisle]
Once he got caught and he was in jail,
he called-- He had a credit card
that he could use.
And he called and we talked
and talked for about 15 minutes or so.
-[Bundy] How you doing?
-Doing pretty good, Ted. How you doing?
[Bundy]
Uh, well, quite well, quite frankly, yeah.
[stammering] There is still the scars
from the blisters on my feet.
-I'm sitting here bare footed. [laughs]
-Uh-uh.
[Bundy]
From running around in the mountains.
Extraordinary experience.
-[Carlisle] They treating you pretty good?
-Um...
They, they have developed
this paranoia about me.
-Like I am going to escape or something.
-[chuckles]
I can't imagine
where they are getting that.
[Bundy laughs]
-Yes, exactly.
-Uh-uh.
[Bundy] You know, we haven't really...
[clears throat]
you know, talked personally, obviously,
since the latter part of January.
[Carlisle] Yeah, right.
[Bundy] Well, the impressions of all that
you have been hearing about me
and you know, the...
[Carlisle] Okay. How do you mean?
[Bundy] Well, like, the escape
and everything like that.
I wonder
what your impression of that was.
[Carlisle] Uh...
I had mixed impressions.
I was wondering
if you were really getting uptight.
And the pressure looked like it was on.
In your own mind, what was happening?
-[Bundy] Well...
-What was the reason for...
[Bundy] I just got sick and tired
of being locked up, and...
I had-- Over the months,
I had noticed a number of opportunities
to just walk right out.
Just longed for freedom for so long
and now I'm like...
like I was living my ultimate dream.
It was just an incredible experience.
[Carlisle]
It's almost like he's talking to a father
and saying, you know:
"I almost did a home run".
You know, in the baseball game.
It was so friendly.
He was really quite proud of that.
[Leidner] He talked about how lucky
the people were to catch him,
and how stupid the people were
who caught him...
and how...
intellectually superior he was
to everybody.
And I thought to myself,
"Those things may be true
but you're the one in jail,
and those are the ones
who are on the outside."
[reporter] Theodore Bundy left here
in the midst of a hearing
concerning his upcoming murder trial.
If that's what he hoped to avoid,
he didn't really accomplish much
by escaping.
He's back in jail,
that hearing resumes Thursday morning,
and now Bundy faces new charges...
of escape.
[Michaud] This is one
of those strange dichotomies with Ted.
He liked being the center of attention,
but did not understand
what kind of trouble came with it.
The better known he was, the more
he put himself under undue risk...
but Ted did not see it that way.
[Bundy] This kind of boldness that we see
from time to time from this personality,
um...
it's probably just being willing
to take the risk.
Or perhaps not even seeing risk.
Just overcome by that boldness and desire
to accomplish a particular thing.
To understand how he thought,
you have to be able to project yourself
into a sociopath's brain.
If you can do that, um...
more power to you. [chuckles]
I'm-- It's a point of pride with me
that I can't.
[Bundy] I think we can say that he--
he felt almost as if he was immune...
-[Michaud] Mm-hmm.
-...uh...
from detection,
as if he were in a dimension
that he just kind of, like,
could walk through doors.
That he had some supernatural powers.
That no matter how much he fucked up,
nothing could go wrong.
[Michaud] December 30th, 1977,
Ted is in prison waiting for trial
for the murder of Caryn Campbell.
That evening a guard, as usual,
brought him his food and left.
The next morning,
the guard returned to Ted's cell,
and found his food uneaten.
He looked over and Bundy appeared
to be in his cot, asleep.
But as he entered the cell
and pulled back the covers,
he finds nothings but a pile of books,
where Ted should have been.
There was no Bundy.
[indistinct shouting]
[reporter] New Year's Eve, 1977.
In the Garfield County Jail,
Bundy walked out.
[female reporter] Bundy starved down
to less than 140 pounds,
slipped through a hole in the ceiling
of his cell and was free again.
[McChesney]
The second escape, Ted was quite creative.
Lost some weight,
and hacked his way through the ceiling.
He managed to climb on some books,
lift himself into the ceiling,
crawl through the ceiling area,
into the apartment of one of the jailers,
which was above his prison cell.
He took some of the jailer's clothing
and walked out the front door.
[Keppel] Bundy's second escape
was pretty much of a nightmare.
That's the one where he just disappeared
and no one knew where he went.
[Leidner] Just could not believe it,
could not believe
that somehow he got out of there.
That's what really was a scary situation.
[Lucas] I was so disgusted
with what had gone on.
I think it was a travesty.
The county commissioners of course
are responsible
ultimately for the safety of prisoners.
The safekeeping of prisoners
in a county facility.
They were derelict in their duty.
I can assure you
that if anybody has been harmed
by Mr. Bundy's leaving Garfield County
on the first of January,
that I intend fully to follow up
uh, and file charges against people
who were perhaps criminally negligent.
[Leidner] It just brought to mind
a little kid who's been denied
candy for however much time,
and this situation,
it was like Bundy
couldn't control himself.
He had this opportunity
and took off.
[Lucas] He was this vicious killer
who was just a complete and total con man,
a psychopath.
And he was running around out there.
People began looking everywhere,
because a serial killer doesn't quit
until he is stopped.
[Yocom]
I got a call from the local authorities
saying that Ted had escaped again.
We were afraid that he might be
coming back to the Salt Lake area
and we certainly didn't want him
back there. [chuckles]
[woman]
I heard about the escape on the news.
I was concerned with him being loose,
on what was going to happen
to someone else.
Just the magnitude of it
was just very overwhelming and shocking.
Well, I'm concerned that this individual
has been on the street,
and we of course take
all necessary precautions and, uh...
with our witnesses that testified
against him in our case here...
and of course will assist any way we can
with Colorado to...
um, see that he's apprehended.
[female reporter] Are you worried
that he might hurt somebody else?
Well, there's always this possibility.
[Keppel] There's law enforcement officers
in Idaho, Colorado, Utah...
all investigating Bundy.
So we contacted everybody
we could think of.
Liz, his friends, his mother.
Basically threatened them all with arrest,
all in an effort to try and get them
to tell us everything they could
about Bundy.
[siren wailing]
Was he coming this way?
We didn't know if he was or not.
[male reporter]
Assistant US Attorney James McConkey
approved processing the document,
which brings
the Federal Bureau of Investigation
into the hunt for Ted Bundy.
[man] Wanted for questioning in connection
with similar type sexual slayings
throughout the Pacific northwest
and into Utah and Colorado.
A federal warrant was issued on January 5,
1978 at Denver, Colorado,
charging Bundy with unlawful flight
to avoid prosecution
for the crime of murder.
[Lucas] If Bundy is ever recaptured,
the Colorado prosecution will continue,
and he could be prosecuted
for one of the Utah murders
before this thing is all over with.
But for the moment, Theodore Bundy
is merely an escaped convicted kidnapper.
And now one of the FBI's most wanted men.
[McChesney] Even with the FBI involved,
sharing information was a real challenge.
There was no central database.
There was no Internet.
[phone rings]
[Michaud] The FBI were limited
in their reach to the general public.
In those days, there was always a delay
between what happened
and getting the story.
And so Ted was just a legend
in his own time zone.
[Bundy] The FBI knows that people
are creatures of habit...
that we have our little things
that we like to do.
And they just wait for a person
to assume those habits again.
The person has to examine his life
and say,
"What parts of my life are distinctive?"
And then change them.
Creating an identity...
is-- is not terribly difficult
to do at all.
Frightened coeds
at Florida State University in Tallahassee
walked to class in groups today
while detectives tried to track a man
who slipped into a sorority house
early yesterday and murdered two women.
[reporter] In the early morning hours,
through a backdoor,
the Intruder came in,
carrying an oak tree limb
[reporter #2]
The killer came in from the night,
and then returned to it with an ease
that has so far baffled police
and left most coeds here terrified.
[man] It all began at about 2:30 a.m.
A call I'll never forget.
The frantic nature of the...
caller on the other end of the phone
saying, "Sheriff, uh...
we may have as many as four dead
at the Chi Omega sorority house,
Florida State University."
-[sirens wailing]
-[indistinct chatter]
As I arrived, they were taking girls out
on stretchers.
I didn't know,
and frankly they didn't either,
whether they were dead or alive.
It appeared that the person
was attempting to be organized
like it was necessary
to do things in order.
[reporter] Most Chi Os had come back
from their dates and gone to bed.
That's where the intruder found
Margaret Bowman asleep.
She never woke up.
She died in her bed,
beaten, strangled, sexually molested.
[Katsaris] But you could tell
that the person that did this
was also losing control.
[reporter] Further down the hall,
Lisa Levy was asleep.
She, too, died without regaining
consciousness.
Still further down the hall, roommates
Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner
survived their attacks.
Both were asleep,
neither saw their attacker.
[Katsaris] When you walk into a room,
with the intentions of harming someone
but then end up brutalizing
one, two,
three, four--
It shocked even all of us who have seen...
brutalization before.
When he hit the girls,
I just don't think they had a chance
to fight back.
I think he just went in and hit.
I just don't think they had
a chance to cry out.
[Katsaris]
That same night, while I was outside,
we got a call
that crackled on my radio and said,
"There are some real unusual noises
coming from a duplex.
The neighbor next door
is calling in and saying,
'It sounds like somebody
is really being beat up.'"
And I said, "Could it be?
Is it possible? Could the same person
have gone to another location?"
And I said, "No,
in all my studies of criminology,
crime, criminals and their methods,
they do something like this,
they're on the lam.
They're gone.
They don't want to be around.
They're certainly not gonna commit
another crime."
I sent an investigator to that scene.
It was only about six blocks away.
Sure enough, there laid a young lady,
a dance major,
brutalized, beaten,
laying in a pool of blood.
Obviously, we had the same individual
who didn't get but a few blocks
and couldn't stop himself.
He brutalized them.
Two to their death
and three to his certainty
that he had killed them.
But he had not.
[reporter] Florida Department
of Criminal Law Enforcement
crime lab experts
are busy sifting through and analyzing
evidence that was collected
from the Chi Omega house.
We were thinking,
"Who could it be and how did he get there?
And what methods were used and why?"
I mean, the questions were just numerous.
So I made my way to the morgue.
There, as I examined the bodies
of the two deceased girls,
I saw that there was mutilation
by mouth, by teeth.
There was a very large,
very imprinted,
double bite mark.
[male reporter] What kind of a person
do you think is at large?
Well, I'd rather say
we've got a very disturbed,
sick individual.
[birds chirping]
[girl] Everybody's scared all the time.
Even just walking to classes.
And today, we've been keeping
our doors locked
during the day too,
which we don't usually do.
[man] There'd never been a crime
like this before in Tallahassee.
There was a tenseness in the air.
A nagging fear, a nagging question,
that could not be just pushed aside.
I was a 28-year-old journalist
down at WFSU TV in Tallahassee.
Across the street from the TV station
was a Chi Omega sorority house.
We had coeds who were savagely attacked.
And nobody knew
who was responsible for this,
but they were still out there.
[helicopter thrumming]
You'd hear helicopters flying overhead
at night,
buzzing across the city.
[reporter] Police continue to guard
the Chi Omega house
around the clock,
but the girls who live there
haven't slept in the house
since last weekend
and there's no word
on when they'll return.
Everybody wanted answers.
Obviously, we didn't have any answers.
We did call the FBI,
but they were not very helpful.
They started working
on getting together a profile
of the type of person we might
be looking for,
but unfortunately a profile
could apply to so many people.
It's good when you have
the person that did it,
and say, "Aha! See? It matches."
But you couldn't take that profile
and go out and find the person.
It just doesn't work that way.
We are trying to establish
the whereabouts, um,
and if certain people and so on could've
been in the Tallahassee area. Yes.
It's just running down
every lead to the nth degree,
rather than allowing anything to slip by.
[Katsaris]
Every County in Florida was frightened.
Window locks, door locks, padlocks.
I mean, the stores
were selling out of everything,
because people thought, "Goodness,
there's a murderer on the loose."
[man] Lake City was,
you know, small town USA.
Everybody knew everybody.
People didn't lock the front door,
left keys in the car in the driveway.
Kids just walked all over town.
And Kim Leach was just a small-town girl.
[reporter] 12-year-old
Kimberly Diane Leach
went to school Thursday, February 9th,
here at Lake City Junior High School.
By mid-morning, she was missing
and no one has seen or heard
from her since.
[Dekle] First I heard
of the disappearance of Kim Leach,
I was driving to the hospital
to visit my wife
who had just delivered our third child
and I heard about it on the radio.
[male reporter] She exited this building
and walked across this basketball court.
But from then on, the whereabouts
of Kimberly Diane Leach
is unknown to the Lake City
Police Department.
[Dekle] It was a real whodunit.
We had a missing person
to begin with,
but we didn't have Kim Leach's body.
It was a monumental task.
[reporter] A wide search is being made
for Leach in Lake City.
More than 75 state troopers,
Florida Division of Forestry workers,
deputies and others
are helping out in that hunt.
[birds chirping]
[Bundy] That day in Pensacola
had been one of the best I'd spent.
It was sunny, I'd gone to the ocean,
laid on the beach.
And I said to myself--
I remember saying to myself that day,
"Boy, you've got it whipped." You know?
"This is the way to start out 1978,
laying on the beach
in the Gulf of Florida."
And just laying there in the sand
and getting a bit of a tan.
I mean, I was super confident
and I was just-- just feeling
really satisfied with the way things were.
[reporter] Police arrested
this 31-year-old man
after a high speed chase
Wednesday morning in Pensacola, Florida.
He claims to be
a Florida State University law student.
[Katsaris] An officer in Pensacola,
doing his job very well,
stopped a car that, in his gut, said,
"This isn't right, it's going slow."
It just didn't look right.
[reporter] Who is this man?
He was arrested driving
a stolen Tallahassee car,
and carrying 21 stolen credit cards,
many of which belonged to FSU coeds.
He refused to give his name to authorities
and he resisted arrest with violence.
[man] He grabbed my wrist and we had
a struggle for control of my revolver.
After several minutes of fighting,
I did manage to subdue him
by striking him with my revolver
and completing the arrest by placing
the cuff on his other hand
and taking him back to the patrol car.
[Katsaris] For the initial period
that he was being held
in Pensacola County Jail,
he had another name.
[reporter] He told police that he was
29-year-old Kenneth Misner of Tallahassee,
and even had ID cards to prove it.
[Katsaris]
That person heard that he was in jail
and notified us and said,
"Hey, that's not me. I'm here.
I'm not over there. I didn't do this."
[Dekle] Police didn't know
who they had in Pensacola.
He handed over a driver's license,
but, you know,
driver's licenses in 1979 in Florida
were printed on a little piece of paper,
almost like, you know,
you'd put the form into a typewriter
and type it out.
There's no picture on them.
[reporter]
When the real Misner was located at home,
he admitted the IDs were phony.
He was ordered held without bond
by a circuit court judge this morning
after he again refused
to identify himself.
[judge] Are you acquainted with
or are you familiar
with the charges against you
as outlined by the state's attorney?
I would like the court
to, um, list them again.
I don't believe I picked everything up
from the state's attorney.
[judge] This is for possession
of stolen property, an automobile,
possession of a stolen television,
uh...
possession of stolen credit cards
on 21 accounts,
possession of stolen tags,
that is automobile tags,
battery of a police officer
and resisting arrest with violence.
[public defender]
He is entitled to a bond on these cases.
[judge] We can't bail him out if we--
We don't even now who he is,
he won't tell us who he is.
Who would be the principal on the bond?
Your Honor, all I know is what they say.
I don't know
whether he's given his name or not.
He's certainly entitled to a bond
in any event I would think.
[prosecutor] Your Honor,
the public defender heard the man admit
that he is not the person
whose name he gave
and he has failed to come forward
with his correct name.
[judge] Well, until we find out who he is,
there's no way we can bail him out.
[public defender] All right.
[reporter]
The mystery man will be kept behind bars
before returning to court to enter a plea.
Officials say by then,
they hope to know who he is.
[Katsaris] We have an individual,
we don't know who he is yet.
So it became
an information-gathering process,
and we focused on the car.
There was no hair fibers.
There were no trace evidence of any kind.
But we did identify
that it was a stolen vehicle,
stolen from nearby...
the Chi Omega house.
I thought, you know,
this might be our first potential suspect.
So I sent investigators to Pensacola
and we started to learn more about him.
[male reporter] Two people
who want most to know who he is
are Tallahassee detectives
Steve Bodiford and Don Pachen.
They have now spent several hours
quizzing Mr. Mystery
about the slayings last month
of two Florida State University coeds
from St. Petersburg.
[Katsaris] We started investigating
and talking to him,
asked him if he would talk to us,
and he was reluctant.
He started playing games.
He's a very careful thinker,
and from what I understand, he--
from the men who've been questioning him--
he says what, uh...
what he wants to, and he's very careful
about how he says it.
[Katsaris] For a while, I let him
play his games with my investigators
until I said, "Enough."
And then it started unraveling.
[Bundy] I was being interrogated
by the police in Pensacola.
And I have no way of measuring...
on a scale of one to ten,
or one to a hundred even what--
what the traumatic effect
on my mind and body was.
And I said I wanted to talk to somebody.
Just someone to talk to--
I needed a friend,
I needed somebody close.
I didn't want a cop or an attorney.
I was sick and tired of cops.
I needed somebody there.
Somebody to talk to.
Somebody to settle me down
and to help me get over this...
reaction I was having
being back in custody.
He finally identified himself
in exchange for a phone call
to his girlfriend Liz.
[male investigator] The date is 2/21/78.
The time is 15:20 hours.
This will be an interview
with Elizabeth Kloepfer.
Could you begin on February 16th, '78
and describe the telephone call
that you received from Ted Bundy?
[woman] Uh, he called collect,
my daughter accepted the charges.
And he said that he was in custody
and I asked him where and he said Florida.
He repeated over and over again
that this was really going to be bad
when it broke.
That it was not going
to break until tomorrow morning
and be in the press,
but it was going to be really ugly.
And I asked him...
if he was referring to the murders
of some sorority girls in Florida,
and he said
that he wouldn't talk about it.
He told me that he wished that we could
sit down and talk about...
things without anyone listening.
About why he was the way he is,
and I said,
"Are you telling me that you're sick?"
And he said-- He was really defensive
and he told me to back off.
Saturday morning at two,
he called again... collect.
And he said that he wanted to talk
about what we'd been talking about.
He told me that he was sick
and that he...
was consumed by something
that he didn't understand
and that, um...
that it--
that he just couldn't contain it.
He spent so much time trying to maintain
a normal life and he just couldn't do it.
He said that he was preoccupied
with this force.
[Michaud] Ted was identified,
and at that point, the jig's up, right?
[reporter]
The police in Pensacola, Florida,
stopped a man driving a stolen car
and found to their surprise,
and perhaps pleasure,
it was Theodore Robert Bundy,
one of the ten most wanted criminals
in this country.
[Michaud] It was remarkable that Ted
was able to elude the police for so long.
But Ted had that sort
of chameleon-like face
that could look 100 different ways,
depending on the angle that you caught it.
He was handsome and smooth-talking.
That allowed him to do what he did.
And Ted told me
that after he escaped Colorado,
he got himself on a bus,
took the bus to Denver.
At Denver, he got a flight to Chicago.
In Chicago he got on an Amtrak train
and went to Ann Arbor,
and was there to watch his alma mater,
the University of Washington,
play the University of Michigan
in the Rose Bowl.
He got drunk watching it in a college bar
and almost got himself beat to shit
by a bunch of Michigan fans.
Spent the night in the sanctuary
of a Methodist church,
stole a car the next day,
and got as far as...
Atlanta, where he abandons it.
He then takes a bus to...
Tallahassee and Florida State University.
[man]
Well, why Florida in the first place?
[Bundy] It was the very opposite end
of the country from the Pacific Northwest.
Not that I disliked the northern climate,
but I didn't have the clothing
and it was...
It'd just be harder to get around
and to live in a cold climate
when you didn't have any money.
I didn't know anybody in Florida,
and I thought the likelihood
that Florida would know anything
about Ted Bundy was remote.
[McChesney] The fact that Ted
was able to escape and get into Florida
through a circuitous route
sounds crazy, but back in the late '70s,
we didn't have the technology
that we have now.
[Michaud] The authorities,
including the FBI,
had a very limited number of tools.
No DNA, you know, no teletypes--
They didn't even have fax machines.
You know, imagine a world
where most of the communication
is done by US mail or rotary telephones.
And so they were always
at least a step behind Ted.
And he believed,
"I can't get caught doing this."
[Katsaris]
After all the grief that he created,
it was a traffic stop!
A traffic stop that we got him on.
[male reporter] Authorities say they can
place Bundy in Tallahassee in January
and he has become a prime suspect
in the Chi Omega sorority house murders.
[indistinct clamoring]
[Keppel] I believe Kathy McChesney
read it in the newspaper
that Bundy had been arrested in Florida.
So we were pleased to know it.
We weren't pleased
that somebody was murdered, but...
certainly it was, uh...
a good start.
[McChesney]
Ted was a absolutely prime suspect
for the Chi Omega,
and he was placed just,
you know, within miles...
of where the offenses occurred.
[reporter] Many of the 21 credit cards
Bundy had with him
were stolen in Sherrod's,
a bar next to the Chi Omega sorority,
on Jefferson Avenue.
[reporter #2] Bundy lived in this house,
which is four blocks
from the Chi Omega sorority.
He was there for several weeks
before and after the killings.
Frances Messier lived
across the hall from Bundy
and knew him as Chris.
What kind of person was he?
Um, a quiet-type person.
Aloof and friendly.
You'd gone out to dinner
with him one time?
We went out to dinner once.
Yes, that, that's kinda... [chuckles]
[Dekle]
At this point, Bundy was also a suspect
as the potential killer of Kim Leach.
We tracked a number
of stolen credit cards
that we found in his possession
and found that he had spent the night
at the Lake City Holiday Inn
two and a half miles from...
the Lake City Junior High School
the night before Kim went missing.
Uh, that's a pretty good indication
you might want to look at him
as a possible suspect.
[male reporter] Bundy allegedly
spent the evening after he checked in
sitting in the motel's bar,
sipping gin while chatting with a man
next to him for several hours.
Bundy checked out
of the Lake City Holiday Inn
the next morning at about 7:30,
the same morning
Kimberly Leach disappeared.
But before we could make
any kind of a homicide case,
we had to find the body.
And some time
about a month and a half later,
we had found what we were looking for.
[reporter]
Eight weeks of searching led to her body.
in a deserted tin shack,
next to an empty hog pen.
[Dekle] Worst thing in the world
a prosecutor can do
is get personally involved in a case.
And, uh... I had not cried
in my entire adult life.
I hadn't cried since I was a teenager.
I cried the day we found Kim Leach's body.
She was just a... smart, intelligent,
obedient,
little girl who, uh...
reminded me of my daughter.
[woman] To actually have
a 12-year-old child
taken from our community
and brutally murdered
by some monster--
Just grabbed her up and took her away--
It's just shock and disbelief.
[Katsaris] I told Ted Bundy,
we now have the evidence
to charge him with both cases.
He looked at me and said,
"When you find the person...
that committed these crimes
that you think I committed...
that person...
is going to be wanted for...
murders of women
in the three digits...
and...
six states."
And he put his fingers up like that.
[Dekle] Ted Bundy was one mad-dog killer
and I wanted him executed,
but he had not been indicted
in either case.
So I spent a good deal of time
in Tallahassee conferring with the, uh,
prosecutors in Tallahassee
about the Tallahassee case.
Which case should be tried first.
I felt that, uh,
Bundy ought to be tried
in Tallahassee first,
because they had a much more secure jail
in Tallahassee.
[Katsaris] My goal was to never...
ever allow him to kill another young lady.
So we put him
into a secure portion of the jail.
And then we had three locks on the door:
the traditional key lock,
the big key, the jail key,
and then two very large, uh...
very, very strong padlocks.
One night, I did something unusual.
And I went to his cell and I said,
"Ted you're coming with me."
And he said, "This is a change-up.
This is different."
I said, "We're going for a ride."
And that didn't go over real well.
I believe he thought I was going
to take him for a ride
from which he would never return,
that I was going to exercise
some kind of authority as the sheriff
to do him in.
We transported him with a series of cars
and as we opened the back door
to go up the stairway, the back entrance,
doors swung open,
and there stood these three doctors
their white smocks on,
and behind them was a dental chair.
And he lost it.
He didn't know that what I had
was a bite mark from the crime scene,
which, I believed at the time,
was Ted Bundy's signature,
and we wanted to search
any and all parts of his mouth
including his teeth.
Well, he started screaming,
"You can't do this without my attorney."
I said, "Oh, yes, we can.
Ted, we have a warrant
and we're serving it on you."
We showed him the devices
that we could use as a degree of force.
Then on a dime, his mindset changed
like it was a different person.
He looked at me...
he turned around...
he sat in the dental chair...
he leaned back...
put a smile on
and said,
"Ken,
you know you don't need all that stuff.
I'm not a violent person."
He opened his mouth.
He said, "Do what you have to do."
[Hula] Everybody realized
that there was somebody very special
being held by the police in Tallahassee.
The dots began to connect
from all across the country.
From Washington State to Utah,
through the Rockies to Florida.
We became a focal point
of criminal justice inquiries
in the weeks that followed.
[Katsaris]
Other investigators came to the jail
to try to interview him for other cases
they were working on,
for which they didn't have evidence.
That had to wait, because we had evidence
and we had Ted Bundy in our custody,
something the other investigators
never had the luxury of.
So I wasn't going to divert
from the path we set. Period.
And I will tell you
I had a personal vengeance
for the person that did this.
I wanted to be the one to tell him
that the grand jurors of this county
have indicted you for murder.
[Bundy] Gentlemen, I'm not gonna
be paraded for Ken Katsaris' benefit.
Step out, Mr. Bundy.
[Bundy]
What do we have here, Ken? Let's see.
Oh, it's an indictment? All right.
Why don't you read it to me?
You're about up for election,
aren't you?
-This is how you got it, didn't you?
-Mr. Bundy--
You told me,
that you were going to get me.
He said he was going to get me, okay?
You got me indicted.
It's all you're going to get.
Just read it. Let's go.
Theodore Robert Bundy,
you are charged, indictment,
two counts of burglary,
and, uh,
two counts murder in the first degree,
three counts
attempted murder in the first degree.
In the name of, and by the authority
of the State of Florida,
the grand jurors of the State of Florida
and panel that's sworn to inquire
and true presentment make.
And therefore the County of Leon
upon their oath do present
that Theodore Robert Bundy,
on the 15th day of January 1978,
in Leon County, Florida, did then there
unlawfully kill a human being
to wit: Margaret Bowman,
by strangling and/or beating her,
and said killing was perpetrated
by said Theodore Robert Bundy,
from or with a premeditated design
or attempt to affect the death
of said Margaret Bowman,
contrary to Section 810-02
Florida Statutes.
-Very good.
-And your grand jurors being present
further give the court
to be informed and understand...
[Hula] It wasn't a press conference.
It was a staged perp walk
by Sheriff Ken Katsaris.
to make a big deal out of him
arresting and charging Theodore Bundy.
Katsaris in his black suit,
and his cowboy boots on.
It was part political theater,
part crime drama.
Said killing was perpetrated
by said Theodore Robert Bundy
from or with a premeditated design
or attempt to affect the death
-of said Lisa Levy...
-My chance to talk to the press.
...contrary to section 780-204
Florida statutes.
I'll plead not guilty right now.
And your grand jurors being present
in said court further gives the court
to be informed and understand
that Theodore Bundy
-on the 15th day of January--
-Can I talk to the press when you're done?
did then and there unlawfully attempt
to kill a human being to wit...
[Bundy] It ceased to be an issue
whether or not I was innocent or guilty.
The issue now is, "Can we pin it on him?"
[stuttering] Can we follow through
and maintain our reputation
as law enforcement officers?
The police aren't willing to accept
what I think they know,
and they know that I didn't do
these things.
That is the indictment handed down
by the grand jury.
-Is that my copy?
-No, it is not.
-Do I get a copy?
-We have your copy. You have the copy?
Can I have a copy?
How about the case?
-You get that.
-Can I talk to the press?
I mean, you had your chance.
You've displayed the prisoner,
now I think it's my turn.
I've been kept in isolation
for six months,
I've been kept away from the press,
I've been buried by you,
you've been talking for six months,
I think it's my turn now.
All right?
We got a court order that there won't
be any press interviews.
Sure there won't be any press interviews.
You've given them up.
I-- I'm gagged, you're not.
All right.
I'll be heard.