The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History (39 page)

Early the next morning, Ted Bundy approached the Ohio River at Louisville. As he crossed the Kennedy Bridge which spans the river between Indi ana and Kentucky, he was hungry and knew it was time to stop for something to eat. Taking the second exit off 1-65, he entered the city of Louisville, and as he descended the winding ramp, he looked to his right and spotted Uncle Hank's Pancake Cottage on West Jefferson Street. Unable to turn right onto Jefferson, he circled the block and quickly found a parking space. Grabbing the keys from the ignition, he slipped them into his pocket and made his way inside the restaurant. A welcome replay of his experience in Ann Arbor, he would be unnoticed by those sitting around him. After finishing his plate of pancakes, Bundy climbed back into the stolen sedan, and in minutes was back on the interstate headed south. Years later, when he was first interviewed by Dr. Ronald Holmes, then a criminology professor at the University of Louisville, Bundy mentioned his brief foray into the city. Holmes, immediately thinking the obvious, asked him if anything had happened while he was there. Bundy, who by this time had grown accustomed to admitting to murder in the third person, smiled and said: "That individual didn't have the time for such things."9

When Bundy reached Atlanta, he ditched his hard-to-find ride and boarded a Trailways bus to Tallahassee. After paying for his ticket, he still had around $160 remaining from his original $700 stash, a clear indicator of the importance of money when planning a successful escape. But that didn't matter, as he intended to seek work when he reached his destination. That destination promised to be very similar to his past environments, if not in a geographic sense, certainly in an academic one. It was a world filled with young people preparing for their futures, and Theodore Bundy wanted to be a part of it. The beautiful coeds and the constant hum of activity which makes a university district what it is is what Bundy always gravitated to. Just being near the university was like a lubricant applied to an engine just starting to run again after a period of inactivity. For Bundy, that activity was murder. Now that he was going to be back in his element, which offered such an array of victims, it was only a matter of time before the horrors visited upon the West would be experienced by the unsuspecting folks of northern Florida.

Going by the name of Chris Hagen, Bundy took an upstairs room in an old house at 409 West College Avenue. It was a quaint, two-story wooden structure, with two supporting columns on either side of the front door and a large oak tree out front, reminiscent (in style at least) of the old Southern mansions. The only distinguishing factor which set it apart from many of the other old homes around it was that it bore a name on its facade: The Oak. Although a bit older than his neighbors (Bundy had mentioned to someone that he was a law student), he attempted to fit in with the group at the house that included undergraduate students at FSU, a member of a local rock band, a graduate student, an ex-military man, and all of their friends and acquaintances. A steady stream of humanity moved through the house both night and day. In such a place, Bundy soon realized, Chris Hagen could fit right in, as most people in such settings had a tendency to leave each other alone. However, some of the residents viewed Chris Hagen as a little odd from the start, and had noticed his aversion to making eye contact. But being odd isn't a crime, and nobody seemed to care, as they all were busy with their own lives.

Relishing his anonymity, Bundy discovered that walking the streets of Tallahassee or around the university itself brought no unwanted stares. It soon became apparent that his new home was like living in another world. If he were to stroll the streets of Seattle, Salt Lake City, or Aspen as he was doing there, he could expect to be tackled by police officers and citizens alike after only a short time. He reasoned that if he could refrain from making any dumb mistakes which could alert the authorities to his presence, he just might have found a haven.

Having burned up most of his money, and remaining a sociopath, Bundy soon began filling up his rather sparse apartment with stolen items. He continued a very successful practice of stealing credit cards from the purses and wallets of unsuspecting Floridians. Any real attempts to obtain work were half-hearted, as Bundy figured he could continue to steal and make ends meet.

The truth was that Theodore Bundy didn't like work. He worked so as not to starve, but he did not enjoy it, and he never worked consistently for long periods of time in the same job or profession. Even in the academic world, Bundy would have periods of forging ahead in his studies, but then backslide. School became a burden and schoolwork something he couldn't face or complete in a timely fashion.

Stealing, on the other hand, was exciting. Bundy learned as a small boy in Tacoma that stealing could provide him with the things he wanted that his parents couldn't afford. Bundy didn't have to delay gratification until he could buy something. He could steal it and have it immediately! By the time Theodore Bundy was an adult, he had literally become an expert at the art of undetected theft. His ability to take advantage of anybody's momentary carelessness and get away unnoticed was second to none. He was also unparalleled at stealing from stores. Bundy thought nothing of entering a store, laying his hands on a particular item (in full view of others) and walking out the front door. Stealing was not only a means of financial support, but it provided him with a type of "high," an adrenalin rush which placed him in a category all by himself.

Back in Colorado, Mike Fisher waited. He fully understood that Bundy was long gone and there would be no repeat scene of locating the weary escapee, beaten by the wilds with little option left to him for escape. Theodore Bundy had succeeded, and more women would die. Fisher didn't know where he would strike, nor when. But he was as certain of that terrible reality as he was the sun would rise. Bundy would kill again, of this Fisher had no doubt.

The Strozier Library at Florida State University. Bundy would often cruise the library for the cash and credit cards of unsuspecting students.

The Colorado investigator was successful in having Bundy placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. It was certainly a step in the right direction, as there was always a chance, however slim, that somebody, somewhere, might see his picture on a poster in some far-away city and recognize him. In any event, he and Bundy were destined to meet again. It was inevitable.

Just as Bundy had been stealing to meet his physical needs, so too, he was undergoing a change internally as well. That dark, inward need to kill was starting to build within him once again. Since his escape, his life had been focused on getting away and establishing a life away from his hunters. His desire to avoid detection had been the single motivating factor of his existence. But now, life was becoming as it was in the days when he lived among his fellow Washingtonians as a normal human being. He was again mingling among people, however distantly, and moving about among them as just any other living soul. But it was an existence which he could not sustain. The need to destroy another life was gnawing away in his thoughts. His desire to kill the beautiful young women of his new-found refuge was becoming too great to ignore, and when the time came, the fury he would unleash would transform this otherwise peaceful community of 75,000 people, leaving it awash in a sea of panic.

Where his murderous intent would fall was all just a matter of chance, really. There was nothing about the Chi Omega sorority house at 661 West Jefferson Street which beckoned the evil that was visited upon it that January of 1978. The building itself was very non-descript, having none of the charm or southern style of The Oak and some of the older homes along that quaint and quiet street where Bundy had found a room two weeks earlier. But it did have the unhappy distinction of being within the very small sphere of the serial killer. Part of that sphere was Sherrod's, a nightclub next door to Chi Omega, frequented by many of the members of the sorority. Bundy was a regular, and it was only a short walk from his rooming house. It was the place where he would once again hunt women; unsuspecting women, who were going about their lives as if their personal futures were endless. No one, not even the few who'd heard of the odd murders of young college girls on the other side of the country, believed anyone so diabolical was in their midst. This was Tallahassee, this was northern Florida, and everything would be as it had always been, they believed. But things were about to change dramatically. Preconceived notions of personal safety and the belief in safety in numbers would soon be gone forever.

But things had changed as well for the formerly sophisticated killer who had so skillfully stalked the enormous crowd at Lake Sammamish State Park on that hot July Sunday in 1974. He was a different person now, and he could no longer move with the same type of confidence he exhibited as he sought the souls of the young and pretty basking under that broiling Washington sun. He would not be approaching his prey in this capital city with a smile, an articulate tongue, and a manner which could disarm even the most distrusting of individuals. Theodore Bundy had left that sort of ploy behind somewhere along his road of murder, and his method of killing in Tallahassee would be different from all his previous attacks. It had been a long time since he had taken a life, and as his violent sexual urges began to rise, Bundy underwent a marked personality change which, as we will see, became visible to those around him, making stalking his victims far more difficult. Theodore Bundy was, for all practical purposes, undergoing his own version of a meltdown, and it would affect even the way he was to commit his next murders. The monster within, he discovered, was getting harder and harder to control.

On Saturday night, January 14, 1978, Bundy's need to kill had become a simmering rage, and he wasn't interested in anything that cool winter evening (it was common for the temperature to dip down into the lower forties at night this time of year), other than destroying the pretty young coeds all around him. The internal homicidal drive now gripping him was so strong that he would make mistakes this night; unusual mistakes, and from a man who had gained a reputation for avoiding them through exceedingly careful planning of his crimes. But during the course of the evening and into the early morning hours, Bundy moved only on instinct, without any plan, and apparently had little concern for his own protection. He needed to kill, and that was all that mattered.

It is not clear how long that night he had been moving in that sexually charged and murderous state of mind, but once entrenched in that mode, he wanted nothing else but to kill and he would not be satiated even after the first attack.

Those who were destined to be touched by his hand were spending that Saturday evening as many American college kids do, hanging out at clubs and discos with their friends or out on dates, generally having a good time away from the classroom. Like Bundy's rooming house nearby, the sororities and fraternities would be busy with returning occupants until the wee hours of the morning. There was nothing unusual about their activity, nor were there any warning signs of the storm of evil about to descend upon them.

Nita Neary, a pretty blond girl of twenty, returned to Chi Omega at about 3:00 A.M. after a date with her boyfriend. As she kissed him goodnight, it was very quiet around them. The pounding music of Sherrod's disco next door had been silenced when it closed an hour before, and its patrons (some of whom were from Chi 0) had either moved on to another location or had long since gone home. Just as she was about to punch in the numbers to the combination lock on the sliding glass door, Neary noticed the door was unlocked. With the steady traffic of Chi 0 members coming and going that night, the door might be properly secured at one moment and unlocked at another. As Neary opened the sliding door she entered a horrific crime scene without even realizing it. Closing and locking the door behind her, she began turning off the lights that others had carelessly left burning, first in the recreation room and then in the living room. As she did so, she heard a thud. Believing that her boyfriend had taken a spill down the steps, she raced back to the window, but a quick look revealed only a deserted parking lot.

As she walked back through the lower level of the sorority house, she heard the sound of feet running along the hallway above her. Believing it was only another resident coming down to see who was downstairs, Nita continued on her way to the foyer, where she abruptly stopped at the sight of a man running down the steps and crouching at the front door. Frozen, she watched as he turned the doorknob with his left hand, while in his right he held some type of club. The next instant he was gone. Nita Neary would later describe the man as wearing a blue, toboggan-like cap pulled down close to his eyes, a blue jacket, and lighter colored pants; the same description would surface later from others who had contact with him. Although she didn't get a really good look at this man, she would tell the first officer on the scene that he was a "white male, young, 5'8", 160#, thin build, clean shaven, dark complex[ion], large nose, dark toboggan cap, dark jacket waist-length, light color pants, carrying large stick" (initial report, Tallahassee Police Department). Theodore Bundy had been seen, though he probably didn't notice the young woman standing in the foyer, as his only real concern at that point was getting away. Nita Neary gave the time of this sighting as 3:15 A.M. As Bundy headed out into the night, he kept the bloody club (which in fact was a log at least two feet long he'd obtained from the stacked woodpile in the back of the sorority house), for he was still feeling the need to kill and was far from being satisfied.