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“Bob Dekle’s so worked up ’bout that little girl,” Larry Daugherty had said, “that I’m worryin’ ’bout him maybe gettin’ a heart attack.”
During those early months of 1978, Dekle, the gangling, tall, rather paunchy, thirty-one-year-old assistant state attorney, a native North Floridian, seemed obsessed by the Kimberly Leach kidnapping. “I ’member the first time I ever saw that picture of Kim,” Dekle remembered later. “She looked ’xactly like my li’l daughter. I saw that daggum thing, and it was like a dagger in the heart.”
Through those weeks of the search for Kimberly’s body, Dekle, Detective Daugherty, J. O. Jackson, investigator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the other men had slept little. A lode of circumstance had been uncovered—but no hard evidence—to involve Ted Bundy in Kimberly’s disappearance from her school the morning of February 9. Step by step, the investigation picked up Bundy’s apparent pattern of travel, driving the white van stolen from Florida State University at Tallahassee.
At a Gulf gasoline station north of Lake City, on Interstate 10, a woman attendant identified Bundy as the man who, using a stolen credit card which had been found in Ted’s possession, bought gas for a white van. That was February 7. The next day, in Jacksonville, 65 miles to the east, fourteen-year-old Leslie Parmenter was approached by the strange, slightly disheveled man in the K-Mart parking lot. He was posing as a fireman. When Danny, her brother, frightened the stranger away, Danny noted the van’s license—13-D-11300, a plate subsequently linked to Bundy in his encounter with the deputy sheriff in Tallahassee.
Then the employees at the Holiday Inn at Lake City positively identified Bundy as the unkempt man, acting peculiarly, who used a stolen credit card for overnight lodging and a meal there the evening of February 8. That was the night before Kimberly vanished from the nearby school.
“His tracks’re all over the place,” grumbled Dekle. “We got ’im in Lake City f’ sure.” But it was circumstance only.
While the searchers trudged across the hundreds of square miles of North Florida forests and swamps, there was steady activity in the FDLE’s regional laboratory at Tallahassee, 105 miles to the west. Specialists in forensic serology, microanalysts, and latent-fingerprint experts, and others were making an exhaustive search of two impounded vehicles and their contents—the white van and the orange Volkswagen in which Bundy had been recaptured at Pensacola.
On the floor of the white van was found a tiny, red-orange price sticker, a label for a $26 item. Investigator Jackson traced it to the Green Acres sporting-goods shop in Jacksonville, where the owner identified it as a tag from a ten-inch Buck hunting knife he’d sold to a rather ragged-looking man in early February. The physical description fit Bundy.
Carefully, the lab technicians at Tallahassee explored the interior of the van. Dirt had been tossed into the carpeted cargo area, perhaps to blot some blood stains. In the dirt were two faint shoe prints and signs that something had been dragged through the dirt. There was also a shoe tread print on the rear bumper. Lynn Henson, a lab microanalyst, reached a tentative conclusion: the treads from two pairs of Bundy’s shoes—an Adidas and a Bass found in the orange VW—could have left the print.
Dirt, lint, hairs, other debris were vacuumed from the van as possible “trace evidence.” Dozens of latent fingerprints were within the much-used van. But Doug Barrow, FDLE print expert, reported gloomily, “It looked like the van was wiped down—on the doors and around the inside.” No fingerprint of Ted Bundy was found in the van.
“If we can just find the body ...” Dekle had uttered that prayerfully, repeatedly. “We’ll make a case against that goddamn Bundy.”
* * *
When it was discovered April 7, Kimberly’s body, protected from the weather under the cover of the hog-pen roof, had been mostly mummified. The small body, with only a stained, soiled turtleneck shirt tugged up around the neck, was sprawled in a grotesque position—bent, mostly face down, with the left arm beneath the body, under the buttocks, the right arm curled over the head. Around the body, on the ground, lay all her clothing—her shoes, white socks, the blue nylon football jersey, her jeans with panties inside, her bra and coat—plus her denim purse with its multi-colored embroidery.
Within minutes of the discovery, FDLE specialists—Henson, the microanalyst, Jack Duncan, the crime-scene control specialist and photographer, and others—were being sped eastward to the scene from Tallahassee. They performed the photography, made the careful measurements, and helped remove the body. Wrapped in a yellow plastic sheet, it was placed in a gray hearse and taken east, to Jacksonville. Floodlights were set up for the crime-scene workers as darkness fell in the mosquito-infested woods. The specialists picked up each garment and placed it in a sealed bag. They plotted, measured, and scooped up surface soil at the scene. The entire hog-pen structure was dismantled and taken to the crime lab in Tallahassee, a place already overflowing with latent evidence picked up during the Kimberly Leach search and from the Chi Omega murders a few weeks earlier.
When Dr. Peter Lipkovic, medical examiner at Jacksonville, performed the autopsy on Kimberly’s body, he noted there had been “a massive loss of tissue in the throat area and in the vaginal-anal area—a continuous loss of tissue, exposing the bones.” He reasoned that there had been some wounding there which attracted insects and created larvae activity, causing the eventual tissue loss. Dekle thought about that knife that had been bought earlier at Jacksonville.
Lipkovic’s opinion: She died of “homicidal violence to the neck region, type undetermined.” Because of the mummification, the deterioration, there was no blood in the body. Serologist Richard Stephens, one of several FDLE specialists who had been flown to the autopsy, later returned westward to the lab at Tallahassee with specimens of Kimberly’s bone and muscle tissue—enough for tests to enable him to determine the girl’s blood type was Type B. (The trace of blood found on the floor of the van, Stephens had concluded, was human—and Type B.)
On April 14, FDLE microanalyst Pat Lasko, using a spatula, carefully scraped the fabric of Ted Bundy’s burgundy shirt—the one found in the VW. (Investigators had noted a tear in the back of the shirt—a tear which, they reasoned, could have been caused by an edge of the low metal roof over the hog pen.)
Those scrapings, plus scrapings from Kimberly’s clothing, were placed in sealed bags and turned over to Lynn Henson. Hour after hour, working in the Tallahassee lab, using the microscope, stereoscope, sometimes employing ultraviolet microscopy, Henson examined the minute strands, comparing them all with the mass of vacuumings from the white van.
That June, in a basement meeting room of the FDLE laboratory at Tallahassee, Bob Dekle, lab chief Dale Heideman, and others gathered around a table to hear, one after another, the lab specialists’ reports.
There had been blood and cut marks on the girl’s coat and blood on her jeans and other garments, reported Stephens. A semen stain on the panties came from a “secretor, with blood type O.” Around the room there were nods and shrugs. Ted Bundy was a secretor, blood type O. Millions of other males were in that same category.
Henson began to describe her comparisons of Bundy’s shoes with the prints found in the van. “That Bass shoe track was unusual,” she said.
“There were very few sold around here. ...” Dekle took notes, absorbing information. Now and then he spat a stream of tobacco into a large paper cup he held. As a small-town prosecutor, he’d never before had any dealings with the intricacies of the work of these microscope sleuths.
Henson, a studious young woman whose dark hair was pulled back into a bun, continued in a husky, matter-of-fact voice, “Now the carpet in the van is unusual. The threads are twisted polypropylene fibers, of turquoise, blue, and black twisted together. I found a match of that with threads on Kimberly’s purse, and her socks and ...” In excitement, reacting to Henson’s words, Dekle began to rise from the chair. She went on, describing how microscopic fibers found on Kimberly’s bra and socks were matches for the van carpet. Suddenly, Dekle moved closer to Henson, slumping his big frame on a table where he leaned forward, staring at her. The young woman technician continued systematically, “Now, we also have in the van carpet these fibers of blue, red, white, green, yellow, and orange cotton, which match the cotton embroidery on her purse.
“And the specimens from the burgundy shirt—we have a burgundy polyester thread and a green cotton thread—are a match for the fibers we found from Kimberly’s socks. ...”
“Damn,” breathed Dekle. He sputtered, almost choking on his tobacco. “That puts Kimberly in the van. And Bundy in the van!” Henson nodded.
“And it can put Bundy in contact with Kim!” Dekle concluded. Henson went on. There were other fiber cross-comparisons.
A few weeks later there would be more. When FDLE obtained, by warrant, a blue jacket Ted Bundy had been wearing in court at Tallahassee, Henson discovered its fibers of blue wool and blue polyester matched fibers on Kimberly’s jeans and socks.
* * *
“I don’t know that it’s possible for Ted Bundy to get a fair trial anywhere in Florida,” said J. Victor Africano, the private attorney who had been appointed by Judge Wallace Jopling to represent Bundy.
Africano, an able lawyer, an urbane man, had moved his law practice from Miami to Live Oak, the hometown of his wife. He was determined to give Ted Bundy the best defense possible—an attitude which sometimes didn’t sit well with some of his neighbors, who loathed Bundy. Africano effectively won some pretrial rounds during suppression hearings.
It was January 1980. The trial was about to begin. Florida and other states had been saturated with publicity about Ted Bundy, the “multiple murder suspect,” convicted killer of the Chi Omega girls. At Tallahassee, there were “Burn Bundy” T-shirts, illustrated with the Florida electric chair.
There had been an unsuccessful attempt to seat a jury at Live Oak, in Suwanee County, not far from where Kimberly’s body had been found. There, one man wore a T-shirt with the message: Free Bundy. The lower line explained: “So We Can Hang the Son of a Bitch.”
So the trial was shifted to Orlando, in central Florida. That tourist crossroads city, home of Disney World, had not escaped the deluge of Bundy publicity. The Orlando Sentinel Star had earlier published a lengthy Sunday magazine profile on Ted. Its headline: The Killing of Kimberly Leach.
“I think it’s inevitable.” Carole Boone muttered the words with a bleak grin. Her man—Ted—had no chance of acquittal, she thought. After his conviction in Miami, Carole had moved with her teenage son from Seattle to Gainesville, where she could be near the prison and have weekend visits with Ted on Death Row. She had found friends among the wives, girlfriends, and other intimates of the men there. “Some really wonderful people around Death Row,” she enthused. But because she wasn’t a relative, Carole noted, each of her visits with Ted had to be approved, individually, in advance. The two of them had talked about marriage, but prison policy forbade that.
The trial began January 7 in a fourth-floor courtroom of the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, and as everyone expected, the jury selection process was long and agonizing. One after another, prospective jurors conceded they had read, seen, or heard much about Ted Bundy and the bloody murders at the Chi Omega house. In all, more than 130 men and women were screened.
By January 18, Bundy and his lawyers, Africano and Lynn Thompson, the defender who had worked quietly, effectively on evidence during Ted’s Miami trial, sensed they were losing the jury battle. All the defense preemptory challenges had been spent. The prosecutors—State Attorney Jerry Blair and Dekle—had several left. “All they’re doing now,” murmured Africano gloomily, “is shopping for a foreman.”
Patrick Wolski, a production employee of the Sentinel Star, a man who remembered reading about the Chi Omega murders (“a pretty gory case,” he said) was tentatively seated as the twelfth juror. During a huddle of the attorneys beside the bench, Africano pleaded in vain that Wolski be dismissed for cause. But, noting that Wolski had promised he could weigh the case on the testimony and facts in evidence, Judge Jopling denied the defense motion.
Bundy pressed past the shoulder of his attorneys and, leaning closer to the judge, began a tirade about “the attempt of the state to put people on this jury ... who have a lot of knowledge about this case—because the state’s case is predicated on knowledge outside this courtroom.
“Use your mind, Your Honor,” Bundy fumed. “Look at what they’re doing here. They want people to bring that prejudice into the court. ... And we’re playing the game!”
There was continuing outburst of anger by Ted. He railed at the judge and the prosecutors and, at one point, took off his coat jacket, as though to fight an approaching bailiff.
Once again courtroom cameras recorded a Bundy flare-up, but, in contrast to the media mob which had been in Miami, fewer than two dozen news reporters were covering the Orlando trial.
* * *
Jerry Blair, Bob Dekle’s new boss, the state attorney for the judicial district covering the Lake City–Live Oak area, delivered the opening statement. “It was just another school day for the students at Lake City Junior High School,” he began. A trim, handsome, graying man, a devout Christian, Blair told jurors that Kimberly “was looking forward to the Valentine dance which was to be held the following Saturday.” But then that morning of February 9, he recounted, after she picked up her blue denim purse from her home room, she began the short walk to the main school building. “Kim was not seen alive by anyone else at the school.”
Blair told the jury a key witness, C. L. (Andy) Anderson, would remember seeing a man leading a girl into a white van parked in front of the school that day. “The girl appeared to be upset and crying at the time,” Blair told the jurors. “Mr. Anderson will identify the young girl as Kimberly Diane Leach” and would say the man who was taking her looked like Ted Bundy.
Opening for the defense, Africano quietly promised the jurors, “There is going to be a defense in this case.” He acknowledged directly that “Ted Bundy was in Lake City at the Holiday Inn on February 8, 1978, and while at the Holiday Inn, he did use credit cards that did not belong to him. ... That is why he is here today.
“The state’s whole case,” the gentle voice of the defense lawyer went on, “is based on circumstantial evidence” and the testimony of eyewitnesses whose identification of Ted Bundy was influenced by all the publicity of his face and name. The state’s case will “rise or fall,” he continued, on the testimony of Anderson, the Lake City fireman, who remembered seeing “something” in front of the school one morning—but whose memory was aided by hypnotists working with eager police.
Clarence Lee (Andy) Anderson, the man characterized by the defense as “the state’s star witness,” a man in his early thirties, testified slowly and in a low voice. He was a fireman for the Lake City Fire Department in early February, he said. On the day of Kimberly’s disappearance, while driving to his home sometime after nine o’clock, his car was stopped because traffic was blocked on West Duvall Street, in front of the school.
“First thing I noticed,” he said, “there was a white van parked in the westbound lanes. ... Several cars were going around it. ... There were two cars sitting behind the van.” Anderson told of seeing a man and a girl leaving the school on his left and crossing the street toward the van. “The girl was crying or appeared to have been crying. The man had a scowl on his face.” Anderson testified what his own thoughts were: “Dad’s going to take the little girl home and probably give her a spanking or something.”
When Blair showed Anderson a photograph of Kimberly Leach, Anderson identified her as “the young girl I saw at that school.”
When asked if he could make a certain identification of the man, Anderson replied, “No, sir, I am not absolutely certain.”
The prosecutor asked, “Is there anyone in the courtroom who closely resembles that man ... ?”
“The defendant,” replied Anderson.
Blair anticipated Africano’s heavy cross-examination of Anderson. Why, asked Blair, didn’t Anderson report what he’d seen to police at Lake City at the time? Why had he waited until July 28? (The unmentioned fact was that Anderson’s memory had been jogged by seeing a telecast of the sheriff in Tallahassee reading to Bundy the indictment in the Chi Omega murders on July 27.)
“I didn’t want to really be involved,” said Anderson, his voice faltering. “I wasn’t sure I saw anything that was that important. I wasn’t sure of the dates. I just knew that I saw a girl who looked like the little girl. ...”
Anderson testified how, at the behest of police, he underwent hypnosis on July 28, then again on July 31. In between those dates, asked Blair, “were you able to recall the date” of the sighting?
During his first hypnosis session, Anderson couldn’t remember what the date was when he’d seen the girl, the man, and the van. He thought it might have been April. He testified that police then told him to “go home and think about it.”
“I went home and talked it over with my wife.” In that conversation, Anderson said, he recalled that, after arriving home that day, “one of the first things I did was to eat a piece of my daughter’s birthday cake.” His daughter’s birthday was February 8, Anderson testified. Thus he was able to place the date he’d seen the man and girl at the school as the following day—February 9.
During the cross-examination of Anderson, Africano brought out the fact that the fire hall, where Anderson worked, was in the same building as the Lake City Police Department, the scene of heavy activity during the search for Kimberly. “Why did you wait five months and three weeks?” asked the defense lawyer.
Anderson’s voice sounded apologetic, sorrowful. “Because I wasn’t sure of what day I saw the girl. I wasn’t sure at all. I didn’t want to become involved in it.”
Prosecution witnesses enumerated the movements of the white van, the identification of Bundy as the driver and user of stolen credit cards. Then came the technical evidence—Lynn Henson’s work on the footprints and fabric, the Stephens’ testimony about the blood and semen stains, other expert testimony.
Africano and Thompson, with probing, thrusting questions sought to show reasonable doubt. They won some concessions—those fabric comparisons weren’t exclusive, Henson said; some of those fabrics were mass-produced. She conceded the tests focused only on Bundy’s garments, no one else’s.
Repeatedly, Africano suggested that eyewitnesses, like Anderson, had their memory, their identifications enhanced by seeing Ted Bundy on television.
John Farhat, the sporting-goods dealer at Jacksonville, when looking at a photo lineup had initially chosen the face of another man—not Bundy—as the purchaser of that knife at his store. But in the courtroom, he identified Bundy—“That gentleman over there,” he said, pointing to the defendant. (“Liar,” Bundy whispered loudly.)
Each side produced experts to debate whether or not two hypnosis sessions involving Anderson had been properly conducted. Dr. Milton Kline, a New York psychologist testifying for the defense, said the two hypnosis sessions had been done improperly by undertrained hypnotists—that perhaps enthusiastic police had helped give Anderson “a pseudo memory.”
As a final rebuttal witness, the prosecution offered testimony of Dr. Raymond La Scola, a Los Angeles doctor and investigative hypnotist, who testified that “standard and acceptable procedures” were used in the memory-heightening recall hypnosis of Anderson.
Sitting beside me in the front row of the courtroom, Carole Boone peered at my note taking. Then she reached over to scribble a comment on my legal pad, beside my notes on La Scola: “Oink”
And she laughed. La Scola was a man whose hypnosis-training work was with police.
That day, Carole went to another floor of the Orange County Courthouse to take out a wedding license. She and Ted had worked out a sly plan.
* * *
Bob Dekle came to that long-planned moment when he began the state’s closing argument, asking the jury to convict Ted Bundy for the murder. He produced a chart which portrayed an inverted triangle. At the upper left was the black silhouette of the killer, at the bottom the photo of the white van, at the upper right the enlarged photograph of the smiling, beautiful Kimberly. Systematically, with intensity in his voice, as Dekle reminded jurors of evidence and testimony, he zipped away paper-backed tape, revealing, one by one, thirty-six circumstances printed on the chart, forming the triangle of interrelationships—circumstances which tied Bundy to the van, the van to Kimberly, and Kimberly to Bundy.
“He did a pretty good job of wipin’ the van,” the tall lawyer told the jury. “Theodore Robert Bundy is pretty smart about coverin’ his tracks.”
From the defense table, Bundy glared at Dekle as the prosecutor graphically tied all the circumstance and evidence together.
It was an effective presentation, a compelling chart. That pretty face of the dead girl (“like a dagger in the heart,” Dekle had said) smiled at the jury from the chart.
In his closing argument for the defense, Africano, in an earnest delivery, struck at each of the circumstances: “There’s not one iota of evidence to show that he committed this crime.”
An expert had testified that the human body, by natural process, loses scores of head and body hairs each day. In the van “there was hair found,” Africano noted, but none of it matched Ted Bundy. ... “Ted Bundy occupied that van for ten days and didn’t leave a fingerprint?” Anderson’s belated “eyewitness” identification, enhanced by a questionable hypnosis, said Africano, could not be credible.
Africano focused his argument on the microanalyst’s testimony about the white van, the shoe, prints, the other trace evidence. “There’s eight hundred thousand pairs of shoes in existence that could have caused those footprints,” Africano began.
For the jurors, intent on Africano’s words, there was a momentary distraction. Bundy, who’d been busily taking notes, rose suddenly from the defense table, walked quickly across the courtroom to the lectern to hand his lawyer a note. Then he returned to the table. Ted couldn’t resist a moment of playing lawyer, walking onstage at the critical moment. Africano glanced at the note and resumed.
“Did Andy Anderson see a burgundy shirt? Did Andy Anderson see a blue coat ... ? The constant publicity, the constant exposure of Mr. Bundy’s face is all the state has needed to ratify, confirm, and secure the identifications that you’ve heard in the courtroom the past week and a half.”
On February 7, shortly after two o’clock in the afternoon, after less than seven hours of deliberation, the jury returned to the courtroom. An obviously caring Africano, in a gesture of comfort, placed a hand on the shoulder of Ted, as the young man sat awaiting the expected.
Wolski, a stern-looking big man, with a flop of hair swept low across his forehead, was, as the defense had predicted, the foreman. The verdict: guilty as charged.
Dekle and Jerry Blair slapped shoulders and hugged. Larry Daugherty, Dale Parrish, J. O. Jackson, the detectives, and the prosecutors’ wives joined in the rejoicing afterward.
* * *
The bride-to-be wore black. Sitting beside me, in a front row of the courtroom the morning of February 9, Carole Boone wore black pants and a black, open-knit sweater over a champagne blouse. It was the day the jury would consider its recommendation of sentence—life or death.
When Ted entered the court, Carole laughed. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “A bow tie!” Ted grinned at her. On the day of solemn arguments to the jury about the death penalty, Ted wore a jaunty, blue polka-dot bow tie, a light-blue sport coat, and below cotton khaki pants, his bold argyle plaid socks were showing.
It was attire with some cynical symbolism. “He was wearing a bow tie the day he was convicted in Utah,” Carole giggled. “I’d thought I’d hidden all his bow ties from him.”
Addressing the jury, Jerry Blair solemnly noted the obvious. The jury was considering the death penalty this day, February 9, 1980, on the second anniversary of the date, February 9, 1978, that Kimberly Leach was murdered. The state attorney, a Sunday school teacher, quoted the Bible: “He that shall offend one of these little ones, it would be better for them if a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea and drown.”
Death, the electric chair. “Any other penalty,” said Blair, “would be a mockery of the system of justice.”
Ted’s mother had not traveled to Orlando for the trial. Carole Boone took the stand as the lone witness for the defense’s penalty-phase presentation to the jury. Her questioner was Ted.
She cheerfully testified how they became acquainted initially while working together at a Washington State government office. Then, she added, “Several years ago our relationship evolved into a more serious, romantic sort of thing ...”
“Can you tell the jury ... if you’ve ever observed any violent or destructive tendencies in my character or personality?” Ted asked.
“I’ve never seen anything in Ted that indicates any destructiveness toward other people,” she told the jury. “I’ve been associated with Ted in virtually every imaginable circumstance. ... I’ve never seen anything in Ted that indicates any kind of destructiveness ... any kind of hostility toward other people.” Ted was, she continued, “a warm, kind, patient man.”
She testified about her opposition to the death penalty. “I would hope that you would come back with a recommendation of life rather than the death penalty.”
Blair and Dekle—and some law-enforcement men sitting behind them—glowered at the scene with anger.
When it happened, it came so quickly, almost no one sensed what had occurred.
“I want to make this very clear,” Ted said solemnly to Carole. “Will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she replied. She was smiling, quietly effervescent, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Then I do hereby marry you,” added Ted. His voice was lawyerlike. “Thank you.” He turned and strode to the defense table.
Carole earlier had arranged for a notary to be in the courtroom at that moment. Thus, with the valid license to wed and the pronouncement, in the presence of a notary—even a judge—the strange wedding was conducted.
Later Ted delivered his own lengthy argument to the jury. He made a reference to the strange wedding which had just taken place. “We didn’t do it for your benefit.” Ted snuffled and swallowed, as though near tears. “It was the only chance to be in the same room together where the right words could be said. It was something between she and I.”
Smiling, gesturing, sometimes choking back tears, he went on with a lengthy review of the trial and a plea for his life. “Was this case sufficient and was your verdict of a kind that ... ,” he faltered for a moment, “that I should be murdered as punishment? Because the bottom line ... is that the person who murdered Kimberly Leach is not in the courtroom today.”
The jury retired to consider its recommended sentence, then returned to the courtroom in less than an hour. The recommendation: death.
* * *
I had frequently contemplated the relationship between Carole and Ted, usually with some puzzlement. It had appeared to me that Carole had really a romantic love for Ted—the underdog Ted, the witty, resilient Ted, the Ted who could speak words of compassion. No one, except those two people, perhaps Ted alone, could know if there was a reciprocal romantic feeling for Carole. His occasional glances, waves, and smiles at her across courtrooms had always seemed to me perfunctory, without a convincing glow of romantic affection. But he needed her.
After that strange day in the courtroom had ended, I encountered Carole in the corridor where she stood, waiting for a hoped-for chance to visit Ted before he was taken to his cell.
As I approached, she grinned. “Aren’t you going to congratulate me?” she asked. “A kiss for the bride?”
“Oh, hell, yes,” I replied. “I’m sorry.” I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. She hugged back. Hard. A hug of, perhaps, loneliness.
I privately wondered if she ever wondered about a stranger which might lurk within the Ted she knew.
“Ted’s been through so much,” she sighed. “I just hope his head’s going to be okay when we get him free from all this mess.” I had no response. I was unable to see whatever ray of hope Carole pretended to see.
“Hey,” I asked, “does this now make you Carole Bundy?”
“No,” she replied. Then, laughing, Carole added: “I’m keeping my name. But he’s thinking about taking mine. He’s sick of his own.”
* * *
That final day in the Orlando courtroom, as Judge Wallace Jopling was about to impose the death sentence—Ted’s third sentence of death—the defendant was permitted to deliver another speech. He went on for twenty-five minutes, attacking the trial procedure—“a sensational and bizarre parody”—especially the jury selection. “While I may bear the awesome consequence of what you’re about to do, I bear none of the guilt. I did not kill Kimberly Diane Leach.”
Jopling, a careful, restrained country judge, echoed the words of Judge Ed Cowart earlier. “You have every ability that a young man could expect to have to succeed in life,” he told Ted. Then he sentenced him to the electric chair. The judge’s final words: “May God have mercy on your soul.”
Ted Bundy was returned to Death Row. Deliberately, as after every other conviction, he had created a record, tearfully protesting his innocence.