Looking Into His Angel Eyes Part 2

On trial for kidnapping

On February 23, 1976, Ted was put on trial for kidnapping Carol DaRonch. Taking the stand Carol pointed to Bundy as the person who had attacked her. Ted himself said he had never seen the defendant but had no alibi as to his whereabouts on the day of the attack. Bundy was found guilty and sentenced on June 30th from one to fifteen years in prison with the possibility of parole. While in prison he was evaluated by psychologists and they concluded that Ted had a “fear of being humiliated in his relationships with women.” While Bundy remained in Utah State Prison investigators found hairs in Bundy’s VW that were found to be characteristically alike to Campbell’s and Smith’s hair.

They also discovered that the impressions on Caryn Campbell’s skull matched those of Bundy’s crowbar and the Colorado police filed charges against Bundy on October 22, 1976, for the murder of Caryn Campbell. He was transferred to Garfield County Jail in Colorado in April of 1977 to await trial. Bundy was unhappy with his lawyer and decided to defend himself. The trial was scheduled for November 14, 1977, and Bundy was allowed to make use of the courthouse library in Aspen, Colorado to prepare for his trial.

Sudden leap to freedom and recapture

During one of his many trips to the library, Bundy managed to jump from an open window on June 7th and was on the run. The police launched a massive land search, used tracking bloodhounds and 150 searchers. However, Ted eluded them for days. While on the run Bundy stole food from local cabins and nearby campers sometimes sleeping in ones that were abandoned. Bundy managed to find a car with the keys left in it but while trying to flee Aspen he was spotted. He was then made to wear handcuffs and leg irons while doing his research.

Bundy free again and on the run

Seven months later he tried to escape once more. On December 30th he crawled up into the ceiling of the Garfield County Jail and made his way to another part of the building. He wound up in the closet of a jailer’s apartment. He waited until the apartment was empty and then walked out the front door. It would not be discovered that he was missing for another 15 hours. By that time Bundy was on his way to Chicago and by mid-January of 1978 using the name of Chris Hagen he had a one=room apartment in Tallahassee, Florida. Most of the things in his apartment were stolen and he purchased food with stolen credit cards.

The horrific attack at the Chi-Omega House

It was a Saturday night on January 14th and only a few sorority sisters were at the Chi Omega House the others were out partying. Nita Neary’s boyfriend dropped her off at the sorority house at 3 AM. She noticed that the door was wide open. Stepping into the house she heard some movement as if someone was running in the rooms up above. Hearing footsteps approaching the staircase she hid in a doorway, out of view. Nita saw a man with a blue knit cap pulled over his eyes, holding a log with a cloth around it run down the stairs and out the door. Nita’s first thought was that the sorority house had been burglarized and ran upstairs to wake her roommate Nancy. Nita told her about the man she had seen leaving the house and the girl’s headed for the housemother’s room. In the hall way they encountered Karen who was staggering down the hallway. Her head was soaked in blood. While Nancy assisted Karen, Nita woke up the housemother. Together they went to check on another sorority sister. Kathy was alive but was covered in blood which was seeping from open wounds on her head. Nancy ran to the phone and called the police.

The police found two girls lying dead in their rooms having been attacked while they slept. Lisa Levy had been beaten on the head with a log, raped and strangled. There were bite marks on her buttocks and one of her nipples. She had also been sexually assaulted with a hair spray bottle. The other girl Margaret Bowman had suffered similar fatal injuries but had not been sexually assaulted and had no bite marks. Neither girl showed signs of a struggle. The wounded girls had no memory of the events of that fatal night. They had been asleep when attacked.

Another attack

Less than a mile from the Chi Omega House, a young woman awakened to the sounds of loud banging coming from the apartment next to hers. She wondered what her friend could be doing at four o’clock in the morning. Since the noises continued she woke up her roommate. Listening to what was going on next door they heard Cheryl moaning. Frightened the girls called the apartment next door but Cheryl didn’t answer the phone and they called the police. The police responded quickly. They entered Cheryl’s apartment and walked to the bedroom where they found her sitting on the bed. She was half nude and somewhat conscious. The police found a mask at the foot of her bed. Working with the evidence that was left behind the police got a blood type from the assailant, sperm samples and fingerprint smudges. However, most of the evidence tested was inconclusive. The only firm evidence was hair found in the mask, teeth impressions from the bite marks on the victims and the eyewitness account from Nita Neary.

A disappearance and a body found

On February 9th 1978, Lake City police received a call from the distressed parents of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. Their daughter had disappeared. The police launched a massive search. Kimberly had disappeared from her school grounds. Her friend Priscilla had seen Kimberly get into the car of a stranger. Unfortunately, the girl couldn’t precisely remember the car or the driver. Eight weeks later Kimberly’s body was found in a state park in Suwannee County, Florida.

Girl saved

A few days before Kimberly disappeared a fourteen-year-old girl waiting for her brother to pick her up had been approached by a strange man in a white van. He had claimed that he was from the fire department and asked her if she attended the nearby school. The girl was suspicious of him because he wore plaid pants and a navy jacket and besides her father, the Chief of Detective for the Jacksonville Police Department had warned her not to talk to strangers. Luckily her brother drove up and after she got into his car he followed the strange man and took down his license plate number to give to his father.

Discovery of a stolen VW and a chase

Detective James Parmenter checked out the number and learned that it belonged to a man called Randall Ragen. Ragen informed the police that his plates had been stolen and he had had new ones issued. Then they also found out that the van itself had been stolen. The detective decided to bring his children to the station to look at mug shots. Both children recognized the man in the van. He was Ted Bundy. By this time Bundy had discarded the van and was heading toward Pensacola, Florida in another stolen car. This vehicle was a VW bug. While on patrol in West Pensacola Officer David Lee spotted an orange VW at 10 PM on February 15th. This was a strange car never before seen in the area. Running a check on the license plate Lee discovered that the car had been stolen and began to follow the VW.

As he had done once before in Utah Bundy began to flee and then suddenly stopped. Officer Lee ordered Bundy to get out of the car and lay down with his hands in front of him. As Lee began to handcuff him Bundy rolled over and started fighting. Bundy got free and ran. Officer Lee fired his weapon at him and Bundy dropped to the ground as if he had been shot. When the officer approached him he again attacked the officer. Finally, Bundy was handcuffed and taken to the police station. In the stolen van police found Kimberly Leach’s blood type on the van’s carpet, semen and Ted’s blood type on her underwear. On July 31, 1978, Bundy was charged with Kimberly’s murder.

Finally caught and facing two murder trials

Ted Bundy was to face two murder trials. The first one set for June 25, 1979, in Miami, Florida. This case was to be centered on the brutal attacks on the Chi Omega sorority sisters. The second trial was to take place in January 1980 in Orlando Florida for the murder of Kimberly Leach.

Bundy sentenced for execution

There was great public interest when the Chi Omega murder trail began. After all, Ted had been suspected of at least 36 murders in four states. Bundy acted as his own defence attorney and the jury consisted mostly of African-Americans. The things that led to Ted’s downfall were Nita Neary’s testimony and the fact that she pointed him out in the courtroom and the testimony of odontologist Dr Richard Souviron, who was able to prove that the bite marks on the victims had been made by Bundy’s teeth.

On July 23rd the jury came back with a verdict of guilty on all counts of murder. Bundy’s sentencing took place a week later on July 30th before the same jury. Amazingly enough, knowing about the brutality of the murders his mother pleaded for her son’s life. Ted himself told the courtroom that it was “absurd to ask for mercy for something he did not do”. Judge Cowart, who presided over both trials, imposed the death penalty twice for the murders of Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy. The form of execution being the electric chair for Ted Bundy.

Kimberly Leach Trial

The Kimberly Leach trial began in Orlando, Florida at the Orange County Courthouse on January 7, 1980. This time Ted was represented by defence attorneys Julius Africano and Lynn Thompson. The strategy was to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Bundy himself was upset and agitated throughout the trial even going as far as to yell at a witness. In this case, the damaging evidence came from 65 witnesses and from fibers that linked Ted’s clothes and the van he had driven that day with the crime scene.

There were also fibers from Kimberly Leach’s clothing found in the van and on the clothing Ted had worn that day. On February 7th the jury returned with a verdict of guilty and on February 9th came the sentencing. Bundy shocked the courtroom when he exchanged vows with defence witness Carole Ann Boone. According to Florida law, the verbal promise made under oath was enough to seal the agreement and the two were considered officially married. Once again Bundy was sentenced to death in the electric chair and spent his honeymoon alone on Death Row in the Florida State Raiford Penitentiary.

Appeals denied

In 1982 Bundy enlisted the help of a new lawyer and appealed the Chi Omega murder trial verdict in the Florida Supreme Court but his appeal was denied. He then decided in May of 1985 to appeal the Kimberly Leach trial verdict but his request was turned down and once again in 1986 he tried to find a way to escape the death penalty. Here I must say, was a monster who had taken so many young, innocent lives and he himself was trying to find a way to go on living never giving his victims a single thought.

Responsible for the death of at least a hundred women

Bundy’s execution date was set for March 4, 1986, but it was postponed while his new defence attorney Polly Nelson worked on his appeals for his previous murder convictions. And so it went on and on until the last appeal was made to the U.S. Supreme Court, who eventually denied Ted’s last stay of execution on January 17, 1989. Knowing he was doomed Ted decided to confess to more crimes to the Washington State Attorney General’s chief investigator for the criminal division, Dr Bob Keppel. Dr Keppel had learned that Ted had kept some of his victim’s heads at his home as trophies and had engaged in necrophilia with the remains of some of his victims. Dr Keppel decided that Bundy most likely may have been responsible for at least a hundred women’s deaths although the official count was 36.

The killer with the angel eyes is executed

On January 24, 1989, at 7 AM Ted Bundy was finally executed. He was 43 years old. To the sounds of cheers, applause and fireworks Bundy was taken from the prison and brought to the crematorium. The monster that had turned so many lives into a living nightmare was finally dead.