The Stranger Beside Me (44 page)

The criminalists had weeks of work ahead of them, and most of that work would have to wait until they had some shoes, some blood, some fibers for comparison purposes. Police didn't know the man they sought, and they didn't have Kim Leach's body, or the clothes she had worn when she disappeared. Nor could they know the significance of two small bright orange price tags found caught under the front seat of the van. One read $24, and the other, stuck on top of it, read $26. The store name was Green Acre Sporting Goods, a sports equipment dfompany with seventy-five outlets in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. Detective J.D. Sewell was assigned to find whilh store used that reddish-orange type of price sticker, that marking pencil, and what item might have sold for $24 or $26.

Ted had always favored Volkswagen bugs; on that last day in Tallahassee, he spotted a little orange VW, a car belonging

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to a young man named Ricky Garzaniti, a construction worker for Sun Trail Construction. Garzaniti would report to police that someone had stolen his car on February 12th from 529 East Georgia Street. The keys had been in it; it was a sitting duck for Ted. He had a stolen tag, a tag he'd taken off another Volkswagen in Tallahassee: 13-D-0743. He stowed his Raleigh bike and the television set in the back, and left Florida's capital city for what he fully expected would be the last time.

This time, he headed not east, but west. At nine the next morning, a desk clerk, Betty Jean Barnhill, in the Holiday Inn in Crestview, 150

miles west of Tallahassee, had an argument with a man who'd arrived in an orange Volkswagen. When he'd finished his breakfast, he'd attempted to pay for it with a Gulf credit card, a card bearing a woman's name. When he started to sign the woman's name to the charge slip, she told him that he couldn't do that. He became so angered that he threw the card in her face and left hurriedly. Later, when she perused articles about the arrest of Ted Bundy, she recognized him as the man who'd been so furious.

There are no sightings reported of Ted Bundy and the orange car between 9:00 A.M. on February 13th and 1:30 A.M. on the morning of February 15th.

David Lee, a patrolman in the city of Pensacola, a city so far west that it is almost in Alabama, was working "third watch" on February 14-15th-8 P.M. to 4 A.M.--in West Pensacola. He knew his area well, knew the closing hours of most of the businesses in his sector. Lee's attention was drawn to an orange Volkswagen bug emerging from an alley near the Oscar Warner's Restaurant. On that Tuesday evening, Lee knew that Warner's had closed at 10:00 P.M. He also knew what the vehicles of all the employees looked like. There was a driveway all around the building, with the alley leading up to the restaurant's rear door. When the officer first saw the bug, he thought it might have been the cook's-but then saw it was not.

Lee did a U-turn and came back; the Volkswagen cruised slowly as the squad car pulled in behind it. There had been no violations; at this point, Lee was simply curious to see who was driving, since the alley up to the restaurant was not a short cut.

He picked up his microphone and requested a "Wants and Warrants" check on the license plate. Then he flicked on his

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blue lights, signaling the Volkswagen to pull over; the tag came back: stolen.

As the lazy blue beam revolved atop Lee's cruiser, the orange car ahead picked up speed. The chase continued for a mile, over the line into Escambia County, with speeds up to sixty miles per hour. Just past the intersection of Cross and West Douglas Streets, the Volkswagen pulled over.

Lee drew his service revolver and walked up to the driver's side; he suspected there was someone else in the front seat. He was wary, and his back-ups were far behind him.

Ted Bundy's life has a way of running in circles. Once before, he had raced away from a policeman in a Volkswagen; once before, he had finally pulled over. That had been way back in August of 1975, way back in Utah. This was Pensacola, Florida and the officer ordering him out of the car had a deep southern drawl. Otherwise, it was almost a repeat. Only this time Ted was at the end of his rope. This time he would fight. David Lee was a year younger, and about twenty pounds huskier than Ted, but his attention was divided between the man who sat in the driver's seat and the possibility that someone else was hidden in the car. He knew that was the way most cops got killed.

He ordered Ted out and told him to lie face down on the pavement. Ted refused, and Lee couldn't see his hands. Finally, Ted obeyed, but as Lee handcuffed his prone suspect's left wrist, Ted suddenly rolled over and kicked Lee's feet out from under him, and then hit the officer. Now, Ted was on top of the scramble of arms and legs. Lee still had his revolver out; he fired one round-straight up-to get the suspect off him.

And then Ted was running south on West Douglas Street. Lee was right behind him, shouting "Halt! Halt or I'll shoot!" Ted made the intersection and turned left on Cross Street. His only response 1to Lee's shouts was to turn to the left slightly. Lee saw something in his left hand; he'd forgotten about the handcuff in the excitement of the moment and thought the man he was chasing had a gun. He fired another round, this time directly at the suspect. Ted hit the ground, and Lee thought he'd hit him. The officer ran up to see how badly the runner was injured, and his quarry came up fighting again. He hadn't been hit at all, and

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he was struggling to grab Lee's gun. The fight lasted for a long time, at least it seemed a long time to Lee.

Someone was yelling "Help!" over and over. Lee was startled to realize it was the suspect.

As he recalled the incident later in court, he would cornment, "/ was hoping there was help coming for me. Some guy came out of his house and asked me what / was doing to the man on the ground. I was in uniform, too."

Finally, Lee's strength prevailed and he managed to subdue the suspect and cuff his hands behind his back.

He had not the slightest idea in the world that he had just arrested one of the FBI's Ten-Most-Wanted criminals.

Lee took the man to his patrol car, read him his rights under Miranda, and headed for the station. The suspect, all the fight gone out of him, seemed strangely depressed. He kept repeating, "I wish you had killed me."

As they neared the jail, he turned to Lee and asked, "If I run from you at the jail, then will you kill me?"

Lee was puzzled; the man wasn't drunk, and he'd only been arrested for possession of a stolen vehicle. He couldn't understand the black, suicidal mood that had suddenly gripped his prisoner. Detective Norman M. Chapman, Jr. was on call that night. Chapman is a man with a voice like warm maple syrup. If he weighed fifty pounds more, the dark-haired, moustachioed, detective would look like Oliver Hardy's twin; if he weighed fifty pounds less, he could double for Burt Reynolds. When he walked into Pensacola headquarters at 3:00 A.M. on February 15th, he saw the suspect lying on the floor asleep. He woke the prisoner and took him upstairs to an interview room, where he read him his rights again from a Miranda warning card.

The suspect nodded and gave his name: Kenneth Raymond Misner.

"Misner" had three complete sets of identification, all in the names of coeds, twenty-one stolen credit cards, a stolen television set, a stolen car, stolen tags, the bicycle. He gave his address as 509 West College Avenue, Tallahassee.

"Ken Misner" agreed to a recorded statement. He appeared somewhat the worse for wear; he had scratches and bruises on his lips and cheeks, blood on the back of his shirt. He signed his rights' waivers, and admitted that he had stolen the credit cards from women's pocket books, the car, and li-

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cense tags. He'd stolen the I.D.'s from taverns. Why had he attacked Officer Lee? That was simple enough: he'd wanted to get away. At 6:30 A.M. on February 15th, the interrogation was stopped when

"Misner" requested a physician. He was taken to a hospital for treatment of his injuries-injuries that were limited to the cuts and bruises. Then he slept through the morning back in jail.

In Tallahassee, 200 miles away, the real Ken Misner was astounded to learn of his "arrest." The F.S.U. track star had had no idea, of course, that someone had appropriated his name, his life.

Tallahassee Detective Don Patchen, and Leon County Detective Steve Bodiford drove to Pensacola on the afternoon of the 15th; they knew the prisoner was not Misner, but they didn't know who he really was, only that he had some connections in their jurisdiction. They talked briefly with the suspect, saw that he was in good condition, but exhausted. "We know you're not Ken Misner," they told him. "We'd like to know who you are."

He refused to tell them, but said he would talk to them the next morning. At 7:15 A.M. on February 16th, the still unidentified prisoner listened to his rights, and again signed the waivers, "Kenneth Misner." He was quite willing to discuss the thefts. He admitted stealing the credit cards: Master Charge, Exxon, Sunoco, Gulf, Bankamericard, Shell, Phillips

66, many copies of each with different names. He couldn't remember exactly where he'd gotten them, but most of them had come from purses and billfolds in shopping malls and taverns in Tallahassee. Some of the names were familiar; some were not. There had been so many. The interview ended as Bodiford said, "State your name." The suspect laughed. "Who me? Kenneth R. Misner. John R. Doe." The still unknown prisoner asked to make some phone calls. He wanted to call an attorney in Atlanta, explaining that he wanted advice on just when he should reveal his true identity, and what plea he should make.

The attorney was Millard O. Farmer, a well-known criminal defense lawyer whose particular area of expertise is the defense of those indicted in homicide cases where the death penalty was involved. Farmer allegedly told Ted that an asso-304

date would fly down to Pensacola the next day and that he could give his name then, but not to admit to anything.

Until that unveiling, Ted requested that he be allowed to call friends, that no news of his arrest or his identity be released until the next morning, the 17th.

Ted placed a call sometime after 4:30 P.M. on February 16th-a call to John Henry Browne, his old lawyer-friend in Seattle. Browne learned that Ted was in Pensacola, that he'd been arrested, but that no one knew who he was yet. Browne found Ted's condition distraught, had difficulty in eliciting the facts. It took Ted three or four minutes to explain why he was in custody, and Ted didn't much want to talk about that; he wanted instead to talk about the old days in Seattle, to learn what was happening in his hometown.

Browne told him a dozen times not to talk to anyone without the advice of an attorney. Given Ted's rambling state of mind, he felt that Ted would jeopardize himself if he talked to detectives. Ted had always listened to Browne's advice before. That all changed on February 16th. Ted didn't seem to be listening any longer.

Pensacola Public Defender, Terry Turrell, went to Ted's cell at 5:00

P.M. and stayed with him until 9:45 P.M. He could see the man was caving in; his head was bowed, he was crying, smoking cigarettes one after another.

During the time Turrell spent with Ted, Ted made several long distance phone calls-to whom Ted wouldn't say.

And, strangely for a former Protestant, a somewhat-failed Mormon, Ted requested to see a Catholic priest. Father Michael Moody was closeted with him for awhile, and then left, carrying with him whatever privileged information Ted may or may not have given him.

Pensacola detectives say that they shared hamburgers and french fries with him that evening, that he ate. I don't know.

I only know that the carefully constructed facade was cracking apart, falling away in shards of despair. I know, because I talked to Ted Bundy several hours later; for the first time, he wanted to loosen a terrible burden from his soul.

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On that Thursday night, February 16, 1978, I was in my apartment in Los Angeles. Somehow, the news of Ted's arrest had filtered out to the Northwest news sources-even before Pensacola and Tallahassee detectives knew for sure who they had. Ted was being interrogated in Pensacola when my father called me from Salem, Oregon about 11:00 P.M. (Pacific Coast Time) and told me, "They've caught Ted Bundy in Pensacola, Florida. It's on the news up here."

I was shocked, relieved, incredulous-and then, I remembered the single clipping I'd seen about the Chi Omega murders in Florida. I looked at my mother, who had just flown down that day to attend a premiere with me the next night, and said, "They've caught Ted ... and he was in Florida."

That was all the information I had. The details-all the details of the Florida cases-would become known to me over the next eighteen months, but I had a terrible feeling that Ted Bundy was inextricably bound up with those murders on the campus of Florida State University. Until that point, I had always nourished a small hope that the police, the media, the public, might be wrong in their assumption that Ted was a killer. Now, knowing he was in Florida, that hope crumbled. I fell asleep, and dreamed-not dreams, but haunting nightmares.

I was awakened by the shrill ring of the phone just beside the couch where I slept in the one-room apartment. I fumbled for the phone in the dark.

A deep, distinctly southern voice asked if I was Ann Rule. I said I was, and ne told me he was Detective Norman Chapman of the Pensac^ila Police Department.

"Will you speak to Theodore Bundy?"

"Of course. ..." I looked at the clock. It was 3:15 A.M. Ted's voice came on the line. He sounded weary, disturbed, confused. 305

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"Ann ... I don't know what to do. They've been talking to me. We've been talking a lot. I'm trying to decide what I should do."

"Are you all right? Are they treating you all right?"

"Oh yeah . . . we've got coffee, cigarettes . . . they're O.K. I just don't know what I should do."