Ted Bundy

by Stephen G. Michaud

“I remember saying, during closing arguments, when we went back into the office, to Vic, Lynn, and Don (his defense team), that. . . we made a bet. . . I made a bet. . . that the jury would be back in three hours with a guilty verdict. Again, I was attempting to protect myself. Insulate myself from the terribly harsh consequences of a guilty verdict. Trying, perhaps, in a more personal way, to preserve my own spirit. To preserve my own desire to survive. To keep on struggling. To not be defeated. Rendered helpless by such an outcome.

  “I can recall that we paid close attention to the reactions of the jurors. . . noting how close they paid attention to certain parts of the testimony, or how they might have disregarded other testimony. It’s inevitable that you develop a hope, an optimism. . . that you’re succeeding. That your point of view, arguments, and strategy are not being disregarded. It’s inevitable that you come to believe that you’re actually convincing people that what you say is right.

  “Daily, throughout the trial, I would find myself immersed in the ongoing preparation of the defense. I engaged myself wholeheartedly in assisting my counsel in analyzing prospective jurors. And once again, once I became involved in this process, I required myself to believe in what I was doing. That I was doing it for a purpose. That this would not be a losing game.”

  After pausing for a tape change, he continued: “I was rambling on. . . don’t know how much sense I’m making. Let me see if I can get to the point. And the point is that I became involved in the case for several reasons – not that I am enamored with or greatly enjoy the criminal trial process. Not as a defendant, but as someone who appreciates the law, appreciates the skill of trial attorneys, and the more and more involved I became, the more I came to play the role of the defendant.

  “The defendant who expects the system to do justice – to search for the truth – in which the defendant expects to be free from prejudice, where the defendant expects the jury to depend only on the evidence. By degrees, I lost that overview. That defense mechanism, if you will. This is just a game. The outcome is already predetermined.

  “Pretrial publicity had so thoroughly contaminated every community throughout Florida, there was no hope. “And even now, I am most fascinated with – and angry at – myself for falling into that role. ’cause as my pessimism diminished, my optimism increased. My hope that I might be acquitted or there would be a hung jury began to increase. Still, periodically through the last four weeks, all I knew about how things worked could not dominate my innate enthusiasm.

  “I’ve been tempted, on occasion, to call or to characterize this spectacle, this trial, as a game. And it’s not really a game. It certainly isn’t. The subject matter in this case was terrible and tragic, but the game was that both myself and my attorneys and perhaps all the participants of the trial, including the jurors, the press, and the judge, began to believe that we were actually engaged in the process of seeking the truth.

  “How ludicrous the criminal trial is! Particularly in cases of this type where the evidence is complex and where the evidence takes place over the course of several weeks, involving a hundred witnesses or more. And how equally ludicrous it is when the evidence is of such a complex nature that it is presented before jurors, each of whom expressed during voir dire that they were aware that I had, in the past, been convicted of murder.

  “I suppose that all this rambling I’ve been doing on this particular tape has been gone over before. I’m almost certain we’ve discussed it before. But I bring it up now in reference to what occurred in the last couple days.

  “Beginning with closing argument: We all paid attention to the effectiveness of the State’s closing argument, versus the effectiveness of Vic’s closing argument. We paid attention to which jurors were sitting forward, who paid attention to which portions of which closing argument. All of us, but myself considerably more than the others, would be drawn into this whirlpool of that deceptive process which we call a criminal trial.

  “How many times have I said before that in spite of the fact we took copious notes of what occurred during the trial, that in spite of the fact we had the benefit of police reports in front of us and depositions of the various witnesses and the exhibits that had been introduced – despite all this – we were often confused as to what was said by which witness and which exhibit was introduced and for what purpose.

  “Lynn, Vic, and I have become well acquainted with the manner in which evidence is produced at trial. And if we have all the advantages of refreshing our memory with the statements of witnesses and the evidence on a daily basis, how in the world can we expect lay people to sit there on the jury – without the benefit of reviewing the evidence and without the ability to take notes – to sift carefully through what they’ve heard and weigh and analyze all this and get the truth?

  “The final conclusion is we cannot expect them to come up with even a reasonable approximation. Yet, in spite of our better judgment, we fall into this trap of believing we are convincing jurors of the validity of our point of view. Think about the term ‘reasonable doubt.’ Is there a more vague phrase in the English language? And yet, is there a more crucial phrase used in the criminal trial process? Nowhere in the instructions given to a jury, and I believe nowhere in all the legal literature, is there an adequate definition of what a ‘reasonable doubt’ is.

  “Reasonable doubt. What is it? Is it a doubt with a reason, you know? If one accepts that kind of interpretation, then any reason (sobs), no matter how slight, may suffice. All that I’ve been saying on this tape – and I’ve wondered about trying to recapitulate my criticisms of the type of criminal trial I’ve just gone through – has been a preface (sic) to what has occurred here these past couple days.

  “I mentioned earlier the closing arguments. Following closing arguments I solicited the opinions of a number of people. Was Vic effective? Was the State effective? Did we win any points? Did people really think the State had a case? Did we? Of course, that population of people, that subgroup of individuals to whom I have access, were uniformly telling me that the State’s case was weak. . . that they didn’t have anything but circumstantial evidence.

  “Now, somewhere in my mind I knew that that didn’t make any difference. As deliberations began last evening, we (the defense team) sat back in our little office, just down the hallway from the courtroom where the jury was poring over the evidence. Just sort of relaxing. Believing it would be some time before a verdict came out. Even though I must confess I bet Vic $20 and Don $10 they would come back with a guilty verdict within three hours. I must admit I was wrong. By three hours; they came back in six. I consider my error to be slight, under the circumstances.

  “But, it took a lot to make me a believer. I finally bought it that no matter what had happened, who had testified. . . and what they might’ve said, I had had it. I was doomed (pause and sobs). And I think this was despite the fact that Vic and Lynn did a marvelous job. True, they could have been more eloquent at times; they could have been more forceful. They could have been better prepared on certain points. True, their cross examination could’ve been more crisp – that they would not have opened the doors to some things which allowed the prosecution to embarrass us. We put on some witnesses who weren’t particularly effective. But I think that occurred on both sides.

  “I was not overly impressed with the prosecution, either. So the jury began to deliberate. . . and Vic and Don played gin rummy while I made phone calls, and waited, that first evening. And about forty-five minutes into the deliberations, they asked for a tape recorder. Again, I fell into that trap – believing or accepting the most favorable interpretation – that they were interested in (C. L.) Andy Anderson (a prosecution witness who testified he saw Bundy, driving a white van, abduct Miss Leach) and that they wanted to resolve doubts about his testimony. We had maintained, of course, that his testimony was critical to the case – indispensable. And based on that request, we felt cautiously optimistic.

  “But about nine-thirty we had to go back to the courtro
om, where the judge was to dismiss the jury for the night. They had been deliberating in that courtroom, and evidence – documents, pictures, maps, and so on – was tossed all over the place. It looked like they were really studying everything. Once again, my heart gave this lurch. Could it be? But something gnawed at me. As we watched the jury file in, I noticed that almost all of them were laughing, playing around.

  “That is, with the exception of three women, Mrs. Murphy and the two women who sat directly behind her. On her face was this expression of deep concern, worry, doubt – it’s hard to tell. Clearly she was not happy. Her expression was in stark contrast to the others. (Pat) Walski (the jury foreman) seemed to be in the highest spirits. Something about that put goose bumps on me.

  “But call it what you will, I put it aside and actually got a damn good night’s sleep. At least they’re not completely sure. At least I have a chance, I thought.

  “And then a strange thing happened. The judge (Wallace Jopling) invited us into chambers and said to me, ‘Mr. Bundy, I’d like to have this on the record. Do you consider that you’ve received adequate counsel in this trial?’ Vic had told me the judge was going to ask me that and I told him that my response would be, essentially, ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t know everything that’s gone on.’ Anyway, I told the judge, ‘Well, from what I know, I think I have, but I don’t claim to know everything that’s happened.’

  “Vic promised I could come down (to wait in the defense office) this morning at nine and I was pacing like the proverbial caged animal when they finally got there, some time after ten-thirty. I kept muttering, ‘I hate this waiting! I hate this waiting!’ It’s the worst part of the trial; I can’t imagine how I slept so well. When I awoke, I felt like a man who knew he was going to be struck by lightning but didn’t know if it was going to be in five seconds, five hours, or five years. I just couldn’t sit still!

  “The bastards kept me waiting. . . a long time. I called Vic and he said he thought I was on the way already. The sheriff’s people said there weren’t enough bailiffs. I could have slept this morning. Hell, who am I kidding? After a reasonably serene night, I woke up with a start about five a.m., as the breakfast tray came around. Then took a cat nap after breakfast, then a shower.

  “While I was waiting, the captain in charge of this unit brought me a letter from the director of corrections, telling me that I wasn’t qualified to get married in Orange County. ‘Not in the best interests of the inmate,’ it read. Actually, I knew we had alternate plans, so that didn’t bother me that much, but when it’s all written in stone, put it down that this was less than a wonderful day for Theodore Bundy!

  (Very quietly) “I keep rambling on how I believed I might get a fair trial, but shit, there aren’t any fair trials for someone like me. They just want to put me away – for good. I don’t know why I was so buoyed up four, uh, five hours ago, when I went downstairs. As I walked along, a couple guys down the hall mumbled good wishes, and one said, ‘Hey Bundy, you gonna be okay, man. You got a good chance.’

  “Good chance, shit! I never had a good chance.”

  Part Two

  Bundy was sentenced to death, again, for Kim Leach’s murder on February 12. Because of the time required for the prison to reprocess him back onto Death Row – thirty days prescribed by law – we had to wait a month before beginning the next planned stage of the interviews.

  All his anecdotes and Ted’s occasionally searching recollections of his past had been useful; we had his whole life story to cover. But once he was returned to Death Row it was time to talk about the killings. His letter of the previous November notwithstanding, we had to confront him about his crimes. We intended to hold him to his pledge of complete disclosure.

  The balance of our interviews with Ted were all conducted inside Florida State Prison near Starke.

  March 18

  We decided to start him out with Kim Leach, who disappeared from her Lake City junior high school, about 100 miles east of Tallahassee, on the morning of February 9, 1978. From the available evidence, it seemed certain that Kim had been a victim of opportunity, a twelve-year-old who had just happened onto Ted’s path while he was hunting. The day before, he had tried to lure a different young girl into his stolen van in Jacksonville.

  TB: Uh, why did I go to Jacksonville? (long pause.) Well, some time in that latter part of January. . . I really wasn’t sure where I wanted to go. I still felt I had to get out of state (following the Chi Omega slayings), but I had very little traveling money.

  Jacksonville represented the closest large town to Tallahassee (about 170 miles east, or 70 miles past Lake City).

  SM: Uh huh.

  TB: It was possible to get there without spending a lot of time on the road or spending money. So I decided to check that out. The newspapers looked good. There was a lot more work in Jacksonville than Tallahassee (where Ted had tried, and failed, to get a day-labor job).

  SM: How’d you get there?

  TB: I drove.

  SM (laughing): Is that a fact?

  TB (laughing): Yeah.

  SM: What did you drive, Ted?

  TB: Uh, I drove a van.

  SM: Did you?

  TB: Uh huh.

  SM: Which van did you drive?

  TB: A van I had stolen on the streets.

  SM: It wasn’t the FSU van (the stolen Florida State University van Ted was identified as driving at the time of Kim Leach’s abduction)?

  TB (softly): No.

  Bundy told his first lie just one minute into the interview.

  SM: Did you steal the keys to the FSU van?

  TB: No.

  SM: You were never in the FSU van?

  TB: No. I wasn’t ever in the FSU van. Uh, I hesitated there because I’ve seen it so much. I thought that (pause) the only possibility would have been. . . uh, uh, uh, being taken to it. But, uh, I was never taken to it. The only thing I was ever shown was the photographs of it.

  SM: What van did you take?

  TB (long pause): A van.

  SM: Are you trying to recollect or are you just being silent? (Ted says he is just trying to remember where he had stolen the van from.)

  TB: I think it was on Monroe Street. I’m not sure. But there’s a Salvation Army store there and a number of gas stations and businesses. In any case, there was a van there – and I checked it out several times.

  SM: What was the make and year?

  TB: It was, uh, white. It was a Chevrolet, I believe.

  SM: Do you remember the year?

  TB: No, I don’t recall the year. And I kept my eye on it; that, and several other vehicles. I wasn’t necessarily plugged into a van.

  SM: Uh huh.

  TB: I’d checked out a lot of the other places in town. . . for just any kind of transportation. Like, you know, auto stores, tire stores, where people take their vehicles in to be fixed and leave the keys in them.

  SM: When was this. . . when you started looking?

  TB: I don’t remember the date, but on this Friday or Saturday I decided to go to Jacksonville and went looking again. I saw it there on the street. . . with keys in it.

  SM: Was it at night?

  TB: Yeah.

  SM: Do you recall anything about the (van’s) interior?

  TB: I believe the seats were red. The dash was red the floor was bare. It didn’t have a radio.

  (I assumed Bundy was telling a half-truth. He probably did contemplate stealing a white Chevrolet van at some point. But it was the white FSU van that was found with fibers from Kim’s football jersey and Ted’s blue blazer in it.)

  SM: Did you have more than one vehicle boosted at any one time?

  TB: Yeah.

  SM: How many?

  TB (swallows loudly): Well, this was on the last day I was in Jacksonville – uh, Tallahassee. Technically, I had several.

  SM: Technically?

  TB: I mean, I wasn’t driving several at a time. On that Sunday I picked up one and drove it and it didn’t work. And t
hen I picked up another. And it wasn’t to my liking. So I got a third.

  SM: These were all vans?

  TB: Miscellaneous vehicles, with keys in them.

  SM: This was Sunday, February 5?

  TB: No, it was the Sunday before I left, February 12,

  SM: The 12th? That’s after you returned (to Tallahassee) from Jacksonville. Which means you took this white van the week before.

  TB: Uh huh.

  SM: What day did you take it?

  TB: I believe it was Saturday night. I’m not sure.

  SM: Well, it’d be Saturday night the 4th.

  TB: Okay.

  SM: When did you leave for Jacksonville?

  TB: Not until Monday or Tuesday, I believe.

  SM: Tuesday the 7th you have a charge at the Gulf station at the intersection of I-10 and 441, just north of Lake City.

  TB: That would have been the day I left.

  SM: Okay, and you ate at a Holiday Inn at Orange Park.

  TB: Uh huh.

  SM: Where did you stay that night?

  TB: At a Holiday Inn in Jacksonville. I got in town there Tuesday afternoon.

  SM: And you stayed in Jacksonville how long?

  TB: Well, I stayed there (pause) the next day and then started back in the afternoon – back toward Tallahassee.

  SM: So what did you do? Did you just look the town over?

  TB: Uh huh.

  SM: You bought some gas at a Shell station that day.

  TB: Uh huh.

  SM: The night of the 7th, which is Tuesday night, you were in Jacksonville. You bought gas at a Gulf station on Roosevelt Boulevard.

  TB: Yeah.

  SM: The next day, you bought gas at a Shell station in Jacksonville, but then you bought gas again on that same day in a Gulf station. So you had two on the 8th, one on the 7th (all with stolen credit cards). So, I guess, you gassed up when you got there and drove around Jacksonville for a day. Then you gassed up again and got as far back as Lake City, the Holiday Inn there, on the night of the 8th.

  TB: Uh huh.

  SM: Why didn’t you drive all the way back?