The Stranger Beside Me (36 page)

In retrospect, there is evidence that Carole Ann Boone (who had dropped the "Anderson" from her name) was in constant touch with Ted during this period, that Ted was not without a woman to stand beside him. He did not mention it to me at that point.

If survival was all, then Ted had to build up his body. He felt he had lost about thirty pounds during his days in .the

243

mountains, and he had been twenty pounds underweight to begin with. Jail food wouldn't do it. Every day there was a new cook-a trusty, a hired cook "who quits two days later," a secretary from the front desk, a jailer, a jailer's wife. Ted asked again for help from friends. He was healing much too slowly, and he needed healthy food. My assignment was to locate some powdered protein supplement. He told me I could probably find it in a health food store and that he preferred the two-pound can containing about 15 grams of protein per ounce. "Maybe some dried figs . . . maybe some canned nuts too, if you can afford it."

It seemed, from that letter, that Meg had gone out of Ted's life. Yet I wondered at her telling him she was involved with someone else. I had talked to her on the phone only a few days before and she had said there was no one, but that for her own survival she had to pull away from Ted. Perhaps she had made up a fictitious man, knowing that that was the only way Ted would release her. It must have been that; Meg and I had commiserated with one another over the seeming impossibility of finding a single man who met our qualifications and would also even consider accepting a woman with a child, or-in my case-with four children. No, I didn't think Meg had found anyone, not yet.

I felt sorry for Ted, picturing him all alone at last, and yet he had been largely responsible for his own plight. He'd lied to Stephanie, Meg, Sharon, and even to his casual romantic partners. I needn't have worried about him; Carole Ann visited him in jail whenever she could, worked as an "investigator" to refute the allegations against him. When she finally surfaced as his female defender, I was startled. Who was this woman who was giving countless anonymous interviews in support of Ted? I could never have guessed that it was the same woman who had teased him years before about being the infamous "Ted." In response to Ted's requests, I sent him a large package containing ten pounds of protein supplement, vitamins, fruit, and nuts. When 5

carried it into my local post office, theclerk raised his e|ebrows a bit as he looked at the addressee, but he said nothing. Postal clerks are like priests, doctors, and lawyers; they feel ethically bound to protect privileged information, and they respect their client's privacy.

28

I had no doubt that Ted had planned his escape; he had alluded to escape to me so many times. Although he hadn't wanted to discuss it in his first phone call to me or in his letters, he did tell Pitkin County Sheriff Sergeant Don Davis about his adventures during his week in the mountains. Yes, he had taken the rifle from the cabin, but he had thrown it away in the woods. A man with a rifle in June might have looked too suspicious. He had met few people out there in the wilderness, and when he did bump into some campers, he had pretended to be a man looking for his wife and children, just part of a happy family camp-out. Later, he would tell me how he'd felt when he returned to the cabin.

"They were there, so close I could hear them talking about me. They didn't even know I was watching them from behind some trees." All in all, it had been an adventure for him, albeit a desperate adventure, and had only honed his will to be free. He was the prisoner in Papillon. I didn't think that his escape necessarily marked him as a guilty man; an innocent man, seeing himself railroaded into a lifetime behind bars would have been as likely to run. He had felt trapped by the inexorable grinding of the wheels of justice and, despite his protestations that he felt no pressure, he felt tremendous pressure-not only from Colorado but from Utah and Washington.

Now he was in a hell of a mess. The murder trial in the Campbell case still loomed ahead. Now he was charged with escape, burglary, misdemeanor theft, and felony theft. Charges connected with his escape carried with them a possible ninety more years in sentences. Lawmen had a higher opinion of Chuck Leidner and Jim Dumas as attorneys than Ted did. "They're damned goodalmost awesome," one detective commented. Dumas, who

244

245

had just finished his arguments against the death penalty when Ted made his two-story leap for freedom, also had a sense of humor. When he learned that his client had escaped, he said wryly, "That's the poorest show of faith in this argument that I've seen yet." Ted hadn't wanted the public defenders however, and, with recent events, it was impossible for them to continue; Leidner was named as a potential witness for the prosecution on the escape charges. Ted's longtime supporter and advisor, John Henry Browne from the Public Defender's Office hi Seattle, had flown to Aspen as soon as Ted was captured. Browne, who could not officially represent Ted since he had never been charged in Washington State, had always been offended by the way the "Ted" case was handled and felt Bundy was being convicted in the public's eye through suspicion and innuendo. He spent his own funds to fly to confer with Ted in various states where he was being held.

In mid-June, 1977, it was Browne's mission to serve as an arbitrator between Ted and Leidner and Dumas. Browne was delighted when a new attorney was appointed to defend Ted: Stephen "Buzzy" Ware. On June 16th, Judge Lohr appointed Ware as the new counsel for the defense. Ware looked anything but a winning defense attorney as he stood beside Ted, dressed in jeans and a sports coat. Buzzy Ware's hair was tousled, he wore glasses, and had a luxuriant moustache. Indeed, he looked more like a ski bum from the Aspen après-ski bars than he did a potential F. Lee Bailey. But Ware had made a name for himself; he had never lost a jury trial in Aspen. He flew his own plane and rode a motorcycle and he was known as the man to have on your side in narcotics cases. After being appointed to Ted's case, Ware flew off to Texas as defense counsel in a major federal racketeering case.

Ware was a winner, and Ted sensed that. At last, he again had someone beàde him whom he could respect. In a phone call to me Ted was ebullient as he talked about his attorney. Any residual efjbcts of his failed escape were forgotten by August as he filed a motion for a retrial in Utah in the DaRonch case (based largely on what he felt were Detective Jerry Thompson's suggestions to DaRonch that she pick Ted's picture). The prosecution team in Colorado was attempting to beef 246

up its case against Bundy by bringing in "similar transactions," trying to introduce testimony about the kidnapping conviction, the murders and disappearances of Melissa Smith, Laura Aime, and Debby Kent in Utah, perhaps even the eight Washington cases. Taken in toto, the crimes attributed to Ted Bundy bore a familiar pattern, a commonality; taken separately, each case was lacking in clout.

One can only speculate what might have happened if Ted had had the continued support from Buzzy Ware that fed new energy into the defense. On the night of August llth, Ware and his wife were involved in a motorcycle crash, an accident that killed Mrs. Ware instantly and left the brilliant young attorney will skull and facial fractures, internal injuries, and a broken leg. Ware was in a coma, and there was some question about whether he would be permanently paralyzed, but no question at all about whether he could continue assisting Ted. Ted was desolate; he had counted on Buzzy Ware to extricate him from his Colorado difficulties and now, once again, he was alone. He also felt that he was aging rapidly, that recent newspaper photos of him made him look years older than his true thirty years. I wrote to him in mid-August, commiserating with him about the loss of Ware, and assuring him that the photos in the paper were only revealing the residual effects of his ordeal in the mountains, and that they were also the result of harsh lighting.

His answer was the last letter I would receive from Colorado. Fate does have a way of taking me by surprise, but the past two years have been so filled with surprises and shocking occurrences that my

'down periods' have become progressively shorter. Am I becoming shock proof? Not exactly. There was a definite moistness in my eyes when news of Buzzy's accident arrived. However, they were genuinely tears for him and not for me. He is such a beautiful person. As for my case, my confidence in it could not be diminished if every defense attorney in the country expired.

He wrote that he felt it was almost a sacrilege to continue on with his case without pause, that he should stop for a time

247

in respect for Ware, but that he had to continue. He seemed to see some light far ahead of him, and he was heading directly toward it. In many ways the dark, far corner has been turned.-I sense it now. The escape episode was at the end of a stretch, and the movement made now is toward a return. The media even seems to be humanizing me a little. More important, the DaRonch case has been broken. More later. My love, ted.

But, by September, Ted was screaming "injustice" and "political maneuvering" when El Paso County D.A. Bob Russell sought to include the Utah cases in the Campbell trial by introducing the hairs found in Ted's old Volkswagen-hairs that matched the pubic hair of Melissa Smith in Midvale, and head hairs from Caryn Campbell and Carol DaRonch. Ted countered by saying that his understanding after reading the autopsy reports on Laura Aime and Melissa Smith was that the young murder victims might have been held captive for up to a week before they died. His argument was that this showed a clear lack of commonality since Caryn Campbell was known to have succumbed within hours of her abduction. Further, the Utah women had been struck with a blunt instrument, according to the post mortem reports, and Caryn Campbell with a sharp instrument. Ted argued that these differences made the diverse cases ineligible as "similar transactions."

Despite the vigorous fight going on in his legal arena, despite Carole Ann Boone, Ted did not forget Meg that September. He called me on September 20th and asked that I send a single red rose to Meg, to arrive on the 26th. "It's the eighth anniversary of the night I met her. I want just one rose, and I want the card to read, 'My heart valves need adjusting. Love, ted "

I sent Meg thai last red rose, after arguing with the florist who insisted thatjl could get four red roses for the $9 minimum. Ted had stipulated it be only one. He never offered to pay for the rose. I don't know what Meg's reaction was. I never talked to her again.

Ted spent the fall of 1977 working feverishly on his defense for the trial ahead. He didn't write any longer, but

248

called me when he had something to talk about. Security was tighter now; he was not allowed to dial the phone numbers himself and had to wait for a deputy to do it. On his daily trips to the law library, he wore both handcuffs and leg irons. But again, he began to be so familiar to his captors, so affable, that the cuffs and irons were removed. He seemed to have nothing on his mind but winning in court; the escape several months behind him was dimming in everyone's memory. On November 2, 1977, a suppression hearing was held behind closed doors in Judge Lohr's courtroom. Ted was elated when Lohr refused to allow either the Debby Kent or the Laura Aime cases to be introduced at the Campbell trial.

Two weeks later, a similar hearing was held where pathologists testified pro and con on the similarities of the head wounds suffered by Melissa Smith and Caryn Campbell. For the prosecution, Dr. Donald M. Clark said that such fractures were "unusual-not in the common area," and that the fractures were "strikingly similar" both in the assumed weapon used and in the fractures themselves.

For the defense, Dr. John Wood, the Arapahoe County Coroner, testified that the only similarity in the two skull fractures was that they had occurred in the same spot on the skull. Wood first said that Melissa Smith's wound had been caused by a blunt instrument, while Caryn Campbell's had been dealt with a sharp object. Under cross-examination, however, Dr. Wood admitted that if Ms. Campbell's scalp had been bruised as well as cut (which it had been), then the same weapon could have caused the wounds on both victims' heads. Looking at the pry bar taken from Ted Bundy's Volkswagen, he agreed that it could have caused the injuries sustained by both women.

Lohr pondered on the pathologists' testimony, and finally ruled that the information on the Smith case would be inadmissible in the Campbell trial. Ted had won and won big, in keeping the three Utah cases hidden from jurors' ears, but he lost when Lohr ruled to admit Carol DaRonch's testimony, and the ski brochure found in Ted's Salt Lake City apartment with the Wildwood Inn marked.

In that November week, too, Ted learned that the higher court in Utah had rejected his appeal on the DaRonch kidnapping case. He would try again one day on that. Now, Ted wanted a

249

change of venue before the January 9th trial date. He had once approved the idea of being tried in Aspen-but that was before his escape, before he became a household word and a joke in the wealthy ski resort town. It was unlikely that there was anyone in Aspen now who didn't know exactly who Ted Bundy was, and who hadn't memorized the smallest details of the crime he was accused of. A trial in Aspen would be a circus; it was unthinkable.

Surprising circumstances removed me even further from Ted's world at the end of November; one of my magazine articles had sparked the interest of a Hollywood production company and, after two brief phone calls, I found myself on a plane headed for Los Angeles. After a day-long meeting, it was agreed that I would return for three weeks in December to write the screen "treatment" of the story. I was thrilled, terrified, and unable to believe what had happened. After six years of making an adequate-but somewhat precarious-living for us, I could glimpse an easier life ahead. Of course, I was naive, as unworldly as any Cinderella stepping into the Hollywood ball.