The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History (38 page)

Ted Bundy's very short flight to freedom would be costly in the short run. In addition to the escape charges leveled at him, his court appointed attorneys could no longer represent him as they were witnesses to the escape and would be called to testify. His Seattle attorney John Brown, who flew out to see Bundy after his capture, informed his client of the need to have attorneys representing him, as he was now way over his head legally and would not be able to mount an adequate defense singlehandedly. He could still conduct research, write legal briefs, and otherwise assist in his own defense, but if he wanted any chance at all of beating the charges against him, he'd need experienced lawyers at the helm.

By November 1977, Mike Fisher would begin the numerous trips to Utah in his quest to link Ted Bundy with the murdered and missing women of that state and the killing of Caryn Campbell. The admissibility of such evidence depended on the doctrine of similar transactions. Everyone believed there was a better than even chance Lohr would allow this, but that decision rested with the judge, and Fisher and Blakey had to proceed as if the evidence would be allowed. When word reached Detective Fisher that Judge Lohr had in fact disallowed the similar transactions (apparently based on Bundy's own written briefs in the matter), it was a disappointment, but it was also not the end. Bundy was still on trial for murder, and the former Utah law student still had a one- to fifteen-year sentence to serve back in that state. All was not over, not by a long shot.

As for Bundy, he was healing from the experiences in the Colorado wilderness, and he was enjoying playing lawyer again under the watchful eyes of his attorneys. Escape was always in his mind, and it was clear to him, despite the leg irons and chains he was forced to wear even in court, that the overall laxity in the Garfield County Jail, the guards in particular, had changed only slightly. It was business as usual, and Bundy would take advantage of such dullness at the proper time.

That time would come rather unexpectedly during his late December bid to seek a change of venue for his upcoming trial. Aspen knew him too well and he thought a different location might increase his chances for an acquittal. His attorney, Kevin O'Reily, advised him against this, but the ever-determined attorney wanna-be pressed ahead with his presentation to Judge Lohr. It was Bundy's stage. He was the lead actor and he alone would decide what changes needed to take place. The judge, listening intently to Bundy's legal argument for a change of venue, took his usual line with the former law student. He granted the request: "He was so very proud of himself," Fisher remembered. "He thought the entire courtroom was welling up in admiration of his knowledge of the law, and his formidable oration in support of his arguments. The judge had affirmed that he had won!"3

But when Bundy realized what he had done, his self-congratulatory bubble began to burst. Summing up what must have been an emotionally charged moment in Judge Lohr's court, the investigator added: "It was one of the most powerful exhibits of changed facial expressions and emotions, in the sense of mistaken interpretation, when upon the judge's return to the bench that he announced the trial would be moved to El Paso County, Colorado. Theodore not knowing [the location of] El Paso County leaned over to Kevin O'Reily and asked where it was. O'Reily, in a sullen and irritated tone, whispered in a voice the entire room could hear, `It's Colorado Springs, you dumb shit!' 114

Ted Bundy knew immediately he was in serious trouble. What happened next must have brought a smile to the investigator's face:

The change was in micro seconds, the man that was in the dark had just been exposed to the brilliant light of day. He told the judge he couldn't do that ... the judge himself was sentencing him to death without a trial.... He didn't know when they would transport him from the escape-ready Garfield County Jail to the no-nonsense El Paso County Jail. The biggest chess piece on the board had outwitted him again - and that piece was Theodore Bundy himself.'

Bundy knew it was time to go. He had been planning for another escape for some time and was both mentally and physically ready to make another break for freedom. Having taken advantage of a loose light fixture, Bundy used a small hacksaw provided to him by a fellow prisoner to cut away at the welds until it was possible for him to remove the fixture entirely. He then was able to hoist himself up and enter the crawl space above the cells, where he could move around and investigate just where it would all lead. After returning, he carefully let himself back down and replaced the plate so as not to arouse suspicion. It took him numerous attempts, using his elbows to propel himself along the dusty and narrow crawl space above the other prisoners, who both heard and reported his forays later to the jailors, before he located an area which led to a small apartment used by one of the staff. He knew he'd found his path to the outside world. The much more stringent El Paso County Jail would have to do without him.

What is truly incredible is that the jailors already knew about the illfitting light fixture and were intending to have a welder repair it. But why would you place an alleged murderer with a history of escape in a cell such as this? Mike Fisher, who understood what a successful escape by Ted Bundy would mean to the public, warned the jail staff repeatedly, pointing out that the other prisoners were reporting Bundy rambling around above them each night, and that it was a clear sign of his intentions. But all of this, for the second time, would fall on deaf ears. For some of the lax jailors (whom the local papers amusingly referred to later as the Keystone Kops), it meant the loss of their jobs. But for certain women and a young girl, all going about normal activities in the state of Florida, it was a death sentence in the making.

That same month of December, Carol Boone, whom Bundy knew from his Seattle days and with whom he had been corresponding for months as it became increasingly clear to him that his relationship with Liz Kendall was all but over, came to visit Bundy in the Garfield County Jail. She believed in his innocence, and would continue to trust the man she came to love until his confessions told her otherwise. For Bundy's part, it is clear that he needed to have a woman to be close to, even if that closeness was beyond the prison walls and hundreds of miles away. On the one hand, he was a merciless killer of women, and on the other, an individual who craved some semblance of normalcy with a member of the opposite sex, not just for monetary support. Bizarrely, Theodore Bundy wanted both to destroy the female of the species, and to love and be loved by them as well.

Bundy chose the end of December to make his escape. It was Friday, December 30, and Bundy had prepared his bunk with clothes, law books and anything he could shape into the form of a body. He'd already feigned not feeling well so that his bedridden state would not arouse the suspicion of the guards checking on their infamous and friendly guest. Despite the dire warnings from Mike Fisher and others, Bundy was not in lockdown mode, nor did his jailers hold him any more securely. For as long as Bundy was among them, he was as easygoing as they were. In a matter of hours it would be New Year's Eve day and Bundy knew if he could just get out of the jail without being shot and killed (a very real fear at the time), he just might make it. It was just a short crawl to the little apartment, and if everything still looked good as he reached it, he could easily slip down through the closet.

But as Bundy approached his gateway to freedom, he saw a shaft of light coming from the room below. After considering it for some time, he decided to proceed, having heard the head jailer and his wife leave earlier to attend a movie. He took his first real step towards freedom by dropping down onto the floor. Out of prison garb and into street clothes, Bundy was soon outside the jail and into the cold and snowy night. Having beaten the authorities at their own game for the second time, he felt an unstoppable euphoria come over him, as powerful as any drug. To be out in the night with the wind blowing and burning his face, trudging through the accumulating snow with the lights of Glenwood Springs all around him glowing with expectancy, he was as high as he could be. For Ted Bundy, freedom was like a narcotic, and he was savoring every minute of it. In his pants pocket was as much as $700; money obtained from donations for his defense that would now be used to aid in his escape.

It took Bundy several hours to find a car, which lasted but a short time before giving out. After catching a ride with a soldier, and then a Greyhound bus, the killer made his way to Denver, where he caught a plane for Chicago and the beginning of another life.

As before, no one followed him as he shuffled his feet through the snow, and each time he turned his head for a look back only confirmed this. Unlike before, however, Ted Bundy would have no less than a seventeen-hour head start before the guards discovered they'd been fooled by one of the oldest tricks in the books. What panic must have settled over them as the bed cover was pulled back to reveal, not the ill model prisoner they fully expected to see, but the belongings of an escaped killer who had outfoxed them one more time.

As the sun rose that Saturday morning, Mike Fisher and his wife Dee awakened to an otherwise calm Colorado morning. The recent storm had passed, and as they prepared for a morning workout at the gym, no one had yet realized that Ted Bundy was missing from his cell. When that bombshell exploded on the Garfield County jailers, the news spread quickly to the media and to everyone sitting in front of a TV or listening to a radio. The Fishers, however, still had not heard the news as they left the gym around midday, and after Mike had stopped by his office to check his telephone messages, they headed to their car, which was parked behind the Aspen County Courthouse. As they were walking, they passed the Pitkin County sheriff, who appeared to be heading to the courthouse. The two men acknowledged each other without stopping. Fisher would later remark how odd he thought it was to see the sheriff at that time. What he didn't know but would soon find out was that the sheriff knew all about the escape as they passed each other but chose to say nothing. It wasn't until the Fishers returned to their home some twenty miles outside of Aspen that the sheriff decided to clue him in. "Livid" is the word Mike Fisher uses today to describe his immediate reaction. Listening to that which he knew could have been so easily avoided, the investigator said he "expressed disbelief and went into a rage."6 After calming himself for his lone audience ("my poor wife had to listen to me"), he began making calls. One of those was to Milt Blakey. "I asked Blakey to go to Stapleton Airport in Denver, [as] he knew what Theodore looked like. Then I went to the jail, searched the area between the walls and the bulkhead, started my interviews, went through his mail for leads ... most people gave me a wide berth."'

But despite the hurried efforts of Mike Fisher and others, Theodore Robert Bundy was far away and momentarily safe from their clutches. Very soon, he would again undertake that activity which satisfied him like no other.

After landing in Chicago, Bundy, unrecognized and unmolested, took an Amtrak train to Ann Arbor, Michigan. He had gotten away from his hunters but not the snow. It was after midnight, January 1, 1978, when Theodore Bundy checked into the downtown Ann Arbor YMCA. Here, he would be just one more temporary visitor in an institution with a long tradition of catering to people in limbo. No one paid much attention to anyone else, and even when Bundy heard the first report on the radio about his escape, he shrugged it off as being of no threat to him. For all practical purposes he was alone, an obscure figure among others in that unseen and transitory society.

This marked a change in Bundy's status. His evolution from an unknown murderer (Washington), to a convicted kidnapper and attempted murderer (Utah) had now taken him to an escaped and presumed killer of women (Colorado). Long gone were the days of secrecy for this very popular and wellliked former law student. While he was free for the first time in almost two years, he wasn't really free at all and he knew it. Sitting in a bar surrounded by half-inebriated college kids watching the Rose Bowl game left him feeling out of touch, out of control, and despairing of his situation. Perhaps for the first time, Ted Bundy was starting to realize he could never return to Washington to see family and friends, at least not publicly and without fear of arrest; he would never be a lawyer, or fulfill any of his political dreams, however brief they may have been; and his only option for staying out of prison (which could include death row) depending on what the legions of detectives from the various states might be able to put together) was to remain virtually isolated and apart from everything he had ever known. Only a selfinduced exile from everything familiar could stave off his eventual apprehension.

According to some of his later statements,' Bundy trudged through the snow to the university library and perused the college catalogues for schools on the Gulf Coast. Unable to find a university with an oceanfront, he chose Florida State University at Tallahassee as his destination. Having secured a destination, he now needed to secure a car. Just as Bundy was not the greatest driver in the world, he wasn't the slickest car thief either. Unable to hot wire in the traditional sense, he was relegated to searching for a car asking to be stolen, with the keys either dangling from the ignition or lying nearby. The search could be time-consuming and exhausting.

Spending most of that Tuesday, January 3, searching for such a vehicle without success left him cold, tired, and with feet numb from the wet Michigan snow. He couldn't have known it as he stole a few hours sleep in a darkened church, but he would spend almost the entire day Wednesday doing the same thing before finding an older model Japanese sedan in a repair shop parking lot.

It was about 5:30 P.M. when Bundy slipped into the driver's seat, switched on the ignition, took a quick look around, and, just as night was falling, drove away in what he believed would be a quick departure from Ann Arbor. However, even with the aid of a map, Bundy would lose precious time as he took first one wrong turn and then the next. After getting himself back on track, he entered the freeway and headed south. However, his physical strength depleted from the past two days' activities, he would stop after several hours to get some sleep in the stolen sedan.