The Stranger Beside Me (62 page)

It was, of course, from Ted.

"Dear Ann,

Since you have seen fit to take advantage of our relationship, I think it only fair that you share your great good fortune with my wife, Carole Ann Boone. Please send her $2500 -or more-to: (he gave her address) as soon as possible.

Best regards, ted."

Curiously, my immediate reaction was one of guilt. Emotion without rationale: What have 1 done to this poor man? And then I remembered that I had never once lied to Ted. I had my book contract months before he was a suspect, I told him about it when he became a suspect, and I reiterated the details of my contract to him many times in letters. He knew I was writing a book about the elusive "Ted," and still he had chosen to keep in touch with me, to write me long letters and to call often.

I believe that Ted felt that I could be manipulated into writing the definitive "Ted Bundy is innocent" book. And I would have done that-if I could have. But the Miami trial had exposed his guilt with such merciless clarity. I had written what I had to write. Now, he was furious with me, and demanding money for Carole Ann.

That he had lied to me-probably from the first moment I met him-had not occurred to him.

When I reconsidered, I had to smile. If Ted thought that I was basking hi riches, he was woefully mistaken. My advance payment for the Book that one day became The Stranger Beside Me had bjbn ten thousand dollars-spread over five years-with a third of going to pay my expenses in Miami.

I glanced in my checkbook. I had twenty dollars in the bank. There would be more coming, of course; my book was selling very well, but I was learning as all authors do that

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royalty payments come only twice a year. In 1975, I had offered Ted a portion of book royalties-if he should choose to write a chapter or two from his viewpoint, and he had declined.

I reduced his request to a simple equation. I had four children to support; Carole Ann Boone had only one. Even if I had had the money Ted requested, it did not seem fair, somehow, that I should help support Carole Ann. I started to write to Ted to explain my feelings, and, thenfor the very first time-I truly realized that he could not, would not, understand or emphathize or even care what my situation was. I had been meant to serve a purpose in his life; I had been the designated Bundy P.R. person-and I had failed to produce.

For six years, I didn't write to Ted again. Nor he to me. Ted Bundy, who had been all over the news for five years, virtually disappeared for months. The word was that he was in his cell, poring over law books, preparing for appeals. There were three books published about Ted in 1980-mine included-and the man who once yearned to be governor of Washington became instead a nationally-known criminal, his chilling eyes staring back from newstands and bookshelves all over America.

There was yet another book in 1981. The woman I called "Meg Anders"-Meg the woman who had been with Ted longer than any other-published her story, entitled The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy. Meg's real first name is Liz. She used that and a fictitious surname

"Kendall" as her pen name. She did not realize, perhaps, that becoming an author had made her a public figure. Seattle papers immediately printed her true name, and her hope for anonymity for herself and her daughter-fifteen in 1981-was destroyed.

Liz/Meg had received a call from Ted at Pensacola Police headquarters on the same Thursday night in February, 1978 when I did. In her book, she intimated that Ted confessed to her the kidnapings of Carol Da Ronch and Debbie Kentand the murders of Brenda Ball, Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. She quoted Ted as saying that the police were "years off" when they speculated about when he had begun to kill

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Liz wrote that she asked Ted if he ever wanted to kill her, and said he admitted he had tried to kill her once. He had allegedly left her asleep in her hide-a-bed after closing the damper on the fireplace and putting towels against the door crack. She had awakened, she wrote, with streaming eyes, choking in a smoke-filled room. Liz Kendall's book, published by a Seattle firm, may well have caused her more grief than comfort. Families of the victims bombarded radio stations where she was interviewed, demanding to know why-if Ted had confessed to her-she had not told the police. Many callers reduced Liz to tears, as she tried to explain that everything was being taken out of context. No, Ted had never actually confessed to her. At the end of June, 1980, Liz got a last letter from Ted, mailed-not from the Florida State Prison-but forwarded by Carole Ann Boone (Bundy.) Oddly, Ted berated lAz for going to the police and telling them "fairly uncomplimentary" things about him. Why would he have been so angry at that late date? I can remember so well having lunch with Ted in January, 1976 when he told me that he knew it had been Liz who turned him in to the Salt Lake County Sheriff-"but I love her more than ever." Whatever Ted's reason was for castigating Liz, he called her weeks later and apologized. That, she wrote, in the ending of her book, was the last time she heard from him.

Of all the lives that Ted Bundy damaged irrevocably-beyond those of the women he murdered-Liz's may head the list. She was-is-a very nice woman, fighting a hostile world. She loved Ted for a long time. She may still.

There are no authorized conjugal visits in the Florida State Penitentiary, no cozy trailers or rooms where inmates may share intimacy with their spouses. The visitors' room ip-*" Row is well-lighted, utilitarian, with tables and sto^ to the floor, recipient of wax, cigarettes, disK ^/-sweat. k *•"'

But there are ways around the rules. O callers is a woman who visits a relativ £ jï&j

Penitentiary's Death Row. Like w ~ f errv

cinated to catch a glimpse of the ii 4' ?..

she has learned a great deal about gVUligator-accomplished in the Death Row vish g-irelessly for 430

"They bribe the guards," she explains. "Each prisoner who wants sex with his wife or girlfriend puts up five dollars. After they get a kitty of about fifty or sixty dollars, they draw lots. The winner gets to take his lady into the restroom or behind the water cooler and the guards look the other way."

"Have you seen Ted?" I asked her. "What does he look like now?"

"You bet I have. He's real thin. Some of them say he's just gone crazy in there . . . just purely crazy . . . that they have to keep him doped up with Thorazine all the time. . .."

My caller was afraid of Ted Bundy. "His eyes. He just kept staring at me and staring at me and he never blinks."

But Ted had not gone crazy. He was planning and studying and working things out in his head-just as he always had. There was the mythic "Ted" who terrified female visitorsand there was the real Ted, who, if he'd had a white shirt, a tie, and a suit, could still have sat easily at the governor's right hand.

During the summer of 1982, Carole Ann Boone wore a jacket when she went to the prison to visit her husband, despite the baking heat of northern Florida's July and August. Tall and large-boned, it was easier for her to hide a growing secret than it would be for a more petite woman. She was putting on weight. That in itself wasn't unusual. Women whose men are locked behind bars, who subsist on low incomes, frustration and meager hope, often eat too much. But Carole Ann's weight was all around the middle, and to their chagrin, prison authorities saw that her silhouette was unmistakable.

Carole Ann Boone was pregnant, carrying Ted Bundy's child. The two of them, together against the world, had managed lo marry by subterfuge. Now, they had accomplished the conhotion of a child the same way. whfc

her thi,er; 1932, was a landmark month for Ted Bundy. First and the new attorney, Robert Augustus Harper Jr. of Tallalund. She ,3 tjje Florida Supreme Court to overturn Ted's off" when >. the mur(jers of Lisa J^evy and Margaret Bow-kill

Court Case No. 57,772 (Circuit Court No.

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78-670) Harper cited the controversial bite-mark evidence and deemed the hypnosis of a prosecution witness highly suspect. Further, Ted's attorney claimed that his client had had inadequate legal help at the time of the Miami trial. (This, when Ted had told me so gleefully just before trial that that was one area in which he would never have an appeal. He had been delighted with his attorneys then. . . .)

"Bite-mark evidence is here to stay . . . but at the same time, there are certain standards that have to be set out," Harper argued. "Richard Souviron was out to get famous on this case." Harper also attacked Nita Neary's testimony because it came after hypnosis. "You can see that a creation of memory occurred. That point where her memory has been created by a pseudo-scientific process is improper."

Assistant Attorney General David Gauldin argued for the State that fairness of the trial was the bottom line, "I think he got a fair trial, and I think the jury was untainted. . . . He hired and fired lawyers at will, all of them publicly provided."

The six Florida Supreme Court justices did not say when they might make a judgment on whether Ted would get a new trial in the Chi Omega killings. A new cycle had begun. Ted was attacking again, seeking a new trial-back in the game. Carole Ann, ponderously-and proudly-pregnant, visited him regularly that October. As the month neared its close, she entered a private birthing center where she bore Ted his first child: a daughter. That was all even the most assiduous reporter found out. No birthweight. Certainly no name. Only "Baby Girl Boone." Carole took the infant along when she visited Ted. He was very proud of his progeny. Ted's genes had prevailed; the baby looked just like him.

On May 11, 1984, James Adams, a black sharecropper's son, died in the elftctric chair in Raiford Prison. He was,>^~ fourth man to die since John Spenkelink.

A month later, pie Florida Supreme Court ap" findings on Ted Bundy's appeal in a thirtj^ > 2C^

ment \ j ? ferry

Ted had lost. Justices Alderman, Adkii \ ff'dlligatorald, and Ehrlich swept Harper's argumen " «orelessly for been, in their opinion, denied the right 1 f

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the public and press had attended pre-trial hearings. He had been granted a change of venue from Leon County, and the jury had already been selected and sequestered when the crucial pre-trial hearings were held. But then again Ted had claimed he'd been deprived of a fair trial because he had to ask for a change of venue-the press's fault-and lost his right to be tried in the locality where the charged crimes were committed. His two complaints were at counter-purposes. But they were both denied, making it a draw.

On a more salient issue, the Court ruled that Nita Neary's description of the man she'd seen in the Chi Omega house had not materially changed after she was hypnotized. The hypnotist could not have suggested that she describe Ted Bundy; Ted Bundy wasn't even a suspect when Nita Neary was hypnotized. Nor did the Court feel that the newspaper pictures she saw later of Ted Bundy had influenced her. The man she saw opening the front door-with an oak club in one handhad been in profile. The news photos were all full-face.

Ted had also argued-through Harper-that he had been unfairly tried when the Dunwoody Street attack on Cheryl Thomas was being joined with the Chi Omega crimes. The Court found the crimes were "connected by proximity in time and location, by their nature, and by the manner in which they were perpetrated."

Point by point, Ted Bundy lost in this appeal. No, the Grand Jury had not been prejudiced against him when they handed down the original indictment; he had had adequate opportunity to raise his objections in a timely manner. He had always, always had legal counsel. No, he could not have a new trial because he'd been denied Millard Farmer. Nor could he have a new trial because the jury had known that he was an escapee when he arrived in Florida.

The Florida Justices disputed Ted's claim against the Forensic Odontologist, Richard Souviron-that Souviron had erred in saying that it had been Ted Bundy's teeth that left the imprints in Lisa Levy's buttocks. ". . . We find that it was

horoper for the expert to offer his opinion on the issue of a and Mnark match; this was not an improper legal conclusion. lund. S«,ets of appellant's argument on the bite mark evidence off" whei^t merit ,,

kill. ... ntencing phase, the dry legal terminology cannot

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hide the horror: "Next Bundy claims that the trial court erred in finding that the capital felonies were especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel. There is no merit to this argument. The victims were murdered while sleeping in their own beds . . . The trial court also recounted the gruesome manner in which the victims were bludgeoned, sexually battered, and strangled. These circumstances are more than sufficient to uphold the trial court's finding that the capital felonies were especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel...."

Although it would seem a moot point-now that Ted knew that there would be no new trial in the Chi Omega and Cheryl Thomas cases-he proceeded with his appeal on the Kimberly Leach case: Case No. 59,128. But his mind was obviously working on other levels-other possibilities too*

Ted was thin, but he was probably in the best shape he'd been in in years. He did wind sprints, one-hundred yard dashes, whenever he was allowed out in the exercise yard, or into the long corridors. And he cultivated his neighbors, tuning in on the grapevine that blooms so lushly with information throughout a cellblock. Gerald Eugene Stano resided on the cell to one side of Ted; Ottis Elwood Toole was on the other side. Stano, 32, had admitted to killing 39 young women-mostly hitchhikers and prostitutes-between 1969 and 1980. It was rumored that many of his victims wore blue-a color often favored by Stano's brother-whom he hated. Convicted of ten murders, he had, like Ted, been sentenced to death three times over. Toole, 36, most infamous as Henry Lee Lucas* sometime lover/sometime murder partner, had admitted to Jacksonville Detective Buddy Terry that it was he who had kidnapped and murdered Adam Walsh.