The Stranger Beside Me (63 page)

Adam was sixtyears old when Toole spotted him near a Sears store in Holfcrwood, Florida. Toole had, for some reason known only to hiA, decided that he wanted to "adopt" a baby. He had searched all day and found no little babies-so he'd taken Adam. When the little boy resisted, Toole told Terry that he'd killed him and thrown his body into an alligatorfilled canal. Adam's father, John Walsh, searched tirelessly for

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his child, and then relentlessly lobbied before Congress until they passed the Missing Children's Act.

The movie "Adam" has been shown many times on television. Ted's I.Q. alone nearly equaled Stano's and Toole's cornbined. In the summer of 1984-following Ted's heavy losses to the Florida Supreme Court-he came perilously close to repeating his Houdini-like Colorado escapes. Prison officials arrived to do a surprise shakedown of his cell just in time. They found hacksaw blades secreted there. Someone from the outside had to have brought them in to Ted; that person was never named.

But somehow, someone had gotten the metal blades through all the security checks. The bars in Ted's cell looked secure, but careful perusal showed that one bar had been completely sawed through at both the top and bottom, and then "glued" back with an adhesive whose main component was soap. Could Ted have ever reached the outside? Even if he'd managed to cut through another bar or two, and wriggled free of his cell, there were so many obstacles. The entire prison is surrounded by two ten-foot-high fences, with electric gates that are never opened at the same time. Rolls of sharp barbed wire bales top the walls and occupy much of the

"pen" around the Death Row cellblocks. The guards are in the tower . . . waiting.

And that is what Ted would have faced after (and if) he managed to get past all the safeguards inside Death Row itself, a building separated from the rest of Raiford Prison.

If he had somehow managed to shed his bright orange teeshirt that marked him a resident of Death Row and obtained civilian clothing, how would he have passed through the electric gates. When one gate opens, the other has already clanged shut. How would he have gotten the hand-stamp?

Every visitor into these dangerous bowels of the Florida State Prison is required to have his hand stamped-like teenagers leaving a dance. But the colors change from day to day, without any discernible pattern. When the visitor leaves, he must hold his hand under a machine that reveals "the color of the day." Without the stamp-or with the wrong color, the alarm bells sound. . . .

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The hacksaw blades were confiscated, Ted was moved to another cell and it was "tossed" more frequently than before. He had been "inside" for more than four years. His child was almost two. There had been no execution date set. He waited, and studied, and played the games that all prisoners play-but that Ted Bundy, in particular, played. Anything to put something over on those in authority.

On May 9, 1985, the Florida Supreme Court ruled once again on Ted's request for a new trial-this time in the case of Kimberly Leach. Ted's points of law were essentially the same that they had been in the Chi Omega case. Only the characters were different. An eyewitness had been hypnotized, prospective jurors had been excluded because they opposed the death penalty. Ted claimed the judge couldn't bave determined if the child's murder was "heinous and atrocious" because Kimberly's body had been too decomposed to tell, having lain so long in an abandoned pig sty.

Supreme Court Justice James Alderman wrote the unanimous decision,

"After weighing the evidence in this case, we conclude that the sentence of death imposed was justified and appropriate under our law." In that May of 1985, I was on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina-scacely a hundred miles away from Raiford-talking-still talking-about Ted Bundy, showing the same one hundred and fifty slides that I have shown so many times. To cops this time-a two-day seminar on "Serial Murder," sponsored by the University of Louisville's School of Justice Administration. The term "serial murder" was relatively new, and seemed to have been coined for Ted Bundy, even though there had been a few dozen more men who had racked up horrific tolls since Ted's incarceration. Ted Bundy remained the celebrity seriei killer.

As I spoke to ttte three dozen detectives on the South Carolina island in the Atlantic Ocean, I mused that Ted had truly become a coast-to-coast antihero. Less than a month before, I had given the same presentation-on the Pacific Ocean-to the American College of Forensic Psychistry. Hilton Head marked a reunion of sorts. Dr. Ron Holmes of 438

about. And I knew, leadenly, that it must be. If Ted was not executed, he would someday, somehow, find a way to escape.

Ted had fired his last lawyer-Harper-just as he eventually dismissed all the others. He had been representing himself, and he had filed an appeal for new trials with the U.S. Supreme Court-which was to have been heard on March 7 -three days after he was now scheduled to die. On February

18, he represented himself again before the Supreme Court by delivering a hand-written appeal for a stay of execution. Justice Lewis R. Powell refused to block the execution, but he gave Ted a second chance. He turned down Ted's somewhat amateurish request "without prejudice" and instructed him to obtain proper legal counsel "to file an application that cornplies with the rules of this court." No one had ever gone to the Florida electric chair on the first death warrant signed-but that was no guarantee that Ted Bundy would not set a new record.

In Lake City-where Kimberly Leach had been kidnapped ••-thousands of residents signed a petition supporting Ted's execution. A nurse whose daughter had attended Lake City Junior High with Kimberly said, "Many of those who signed said they would like to sign it twice and would pull the switch if given the chance. .. ."

Richard Larsen, the Seattle Times reporter (and now Associate Editor) who wrote one of the 1980 Bundy books, received one of many letters sent to newspapers around America. It appeared to be an official communique from the "Office of the Governor, Florida State Capitol, Tallahassee, Florida,

32304."

It was two pages long, beginning, "Florida Gov. Bob Graham today signed a cooperative agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority for more electricity to be used in the coming execution of convicted killer Theodore Bundy . . . The power sales contract with TVA will provide ten additional megawatts of energy to Florida Power & Light in order to ensure Bundy is executed using the maximum voltage and amperage allowed . . .

"In addition to the temporary contract for electricity, Graham urged Florida residents to reduce their electrical usage for a five-minute period beginning at 6:57 a. m. EST

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March 4, 1986. Bundy is scheduled to be executed at 7:00 a.m. on that date.

"If citizens of the state can turn off all non-vital air conditioning, televisions, electric dryers and washers during that brief period, we could have as much as five additional megawatts to pump into the chair ...

"Reddy Communications of Akron, Ohio-owners of the popular Reddy Kilowatt logo-will prepare a special gold medallion for the event with the inscription, 'Die Quicker Electrically.' The medallions will be on sale . . . Proceeds will help defray the tremendous costs associated with Bundy's prosecution, incarceration, and ultimate execution . .." It was, of course, a macabre prank, and had not come from Graham's office. Yet, it reflected that the feeling in Florida about Ted had not changed much since his Miami trial.

As the March 4th date drew nearer, it seemed that Ted was going to die within the week.

And then, on February 25th, a Washington D.C. law firm announced that it would represent Ted without payment. However, Jolly I. Nelson, an attorney from the firm, said that they had not yet decided if they would request a stay of execution.

"... We're investigating whether it's advisable . .." On February 27, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution-until April 11, 1986. Assistant State Attorney Jack Pottinger-who was Chief of Detectives in Leon County in January, 1978, when the Chi Omega attack took place-predicted that it would be a long time before Ted was actually electrocuted. "Ted's used to manipulating the system all along. He'll do nothing until the llth hour and come forth with a flurry of things." Inside Raiford Prison, the word is that Ted Bundy will probably be executed sometime in the Fall of 1986. One week before the date listed on his final death warrant, the lights will dim in Raiford-as the chair is tested. That is not a macabre prank; that realr&happens. In the early morning of the date itself-whenever that date will be-Ted wil be led down the long, long walk to "Old Sparky," and a black rubber mask pulled down over his face. So that he will not see death coming?

Or, more likely, so that witnesses will not glimpse his face as the electricity jolts through his body.

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It seems ironic that Ted Bundy is in such superb physical condition. He has become a vegetarian. Because Florida State Prison dieticians do not cater to individual requests, it was necessary for him to change his religious affiliation once again. Born and raised a Methodist, converted to Mormonism just before his first arrest, he is now an avowed Hindu. He admits that it is a pragmatic conversion; as a Hindu, he has the legal right to be served a vegetarian and fish diet. His muscles are defined, his lung capacity is excellent, and his vegetarian diet prevents atheromic deposits from clogging his arteries. When he dies, Ted Bundy will be in perfect health. Ted touched so many, many lives-in one way or another. Since this book was published, I have met a hundred people who once knew him-in one segment of his compartmentalized world. All of them look a little stunned still. Not one has confided that he seemed destined for a bad end. And I have met a hundred people-more-who knew the victims. As I bend my head to autograph a book, someone murmurs, "I knew her-Georgeano ... or Lynda ... or Denise." Once someone said, "That was my sister," and twice, "She was my daughter. ..."

I did not know what to say to them.

Nor did I know what to say to Ted when T wrote to him for the first time in six years. I wasn't even sure -why I wrote, except that it seemed to me that we had unfinished business. I mailed my letter the day after his death sentence was announced. I have had no answer. He may have Tom it up.

People go on as best they can. Several of the parents of Ted's victims have died early-succumbing to heart attacks. The remains of Denise Naslund and Janice Ott were lost when the King County Medical Examiner's Office moved; their bones were cremated mistakenly with those of the unidentified dead. For Eleanor Rose, Denise's mother, it was only the last in a series of blows. She had waited years so that she could give her daughter a proper burial. Denise's room and her car remain as they were on July 14, 1974. Shrines.

One of my callers about Ted was the Mormon friend who persuaded Ted to join the church in Utah in 1975. Even though Ted had not obeyed the no-smoking/ no-drinking/

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no-drags tenets of the Mormons, he had seemed earnest and sincere and good. The Mormon missionary remembered how incensed they had both been over the murders of Melissa Smith and Laura Aime.

"We sat there at my kitchen table, and the newspapers were spread out between us, with all the headlines about the dead girls. And I remember how angry Ted was. He kept telling me that he'd like to get his hands on the man that would do something like that-he'd see he never had a chance to do it again.. .."

-Ann Rule March 2, 1986

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ANN R u L E, a former policewoman, has been a crime writer for eighteen years. She is the author of POSSESSION, the "Andy Stack True Crime Annals," and the forthcoming SMALL SACRIFICES, the true story of Oregon's Elizabeth Diane Downs case. Her work has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and the Seattle Times, as well as Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and True Detective. She regularly presents seminars on serial murder to law enforcement groups, has advised the FBI Academy, and testified twice before U.S. Senate judiciary committees. From 1982 to 1985, she was one of five civilian advisers to the VI-CAP (Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) Task Force, which established a network among investigators to track and trap serial killers. Currently at work on a new book, she lives in Seattle, Washington.

A terrifying true story of passion and murder . , . "Superb . . . the most riveting true-crime account since In Cold Blood!"

-Kirkus Reviews

AOTRULE

bestselling author of The Stranger Beside Me

"Somebody just shot my kids!" screamed young Diane Downs, her three wounded children scattered around her. Thus begins the shocking tale of a truly unthinkable crime. For, as police searched for the

"shaggy-haired stranger" Diane had accused, a dedicated district attorney was haunted by a suspicion even more horrifying than the crime itself: Did this young mother shoot her own children? Ann Rule's gripping, powerful tale of the destructive forces that possessed this desperate woman will hold you in thrall as it plumbs the unimagined depths of darkness concealed within a human being-from the time of the shooting to Downs' dramatic escape from prison and recapture. "VIVID . . . EXTRAORDINARY ... A PAGE TURNER!"-The New York Times Book Review Buy it at your local bookstore or use this convenient coupon for ordering.

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