Exactly 47 years ago, one of the most infamous American serial killers reigned his terror over Florida State University in Tallahassee.
Ted Bundy broke into the Chi Omega sorority house and killed two residents: Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy. He also attacked two others who survived.
The murders have gone down as one of the worst in the city’s over 200-year history and have been the subject of countless documentaries, movies, and TV shows. And particularly one novel that seeks to tell a new story from the victim’s perspective.
Who is Ted Bundy?
Ted Bundy’s booking photo
Theodore “Ted” Robert Bundy was a serial killer and rapist who terrorized women throughout the 1970s. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bundy confessed to killing at least 30 women; however, it is widely believed there are more victims.
Born on Nov. 24, 1946, criminologists and true crime authors claim Bundy had an interest in death from a young age. Matt DeLisi, author of the 2023 book Ted Bundy and the Unsolved Murder Epidemic, wrote Bundy would pick apart small animals and try to drown people while swimming.
As for when Bundy first started killing, it is unknown. Experts have determined it began around 1974 with the murders of several women in Washington and Oregon. When he moved to Utah to attend the University of Utah’s law school in late 1974, he continued his murdering spree with women in Salt Lake City.
A chilling piece of Tallahassee history: Ted Bundy and the Chi Omega murders | David Brand
Bundy was arrested the following year for the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch, one of the few women to escape him. He was convicted in 1976 and received a 1-to-15-year jail sentence. However, he escaped twice in 1977 from a Colorado prison. He was caught after six days on his first escape, but his second attempt was successful and led him down to Florida State University.
Bundy was executed on Jan. 24, 1989, at Florida State Prison in Raiford.
What happened to the Chi Omega sorority, students at Florida State University in 1978?
According to past Tallahassee Democrat reports, Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house in the early morning hours of Jan. 15 through a back door with a faulty lock, only a few days after arriving in Tallahassee.
He beat Bowman with a piece of wood as she slept and choked her with a nylon stocking. Next, he entered the room of Levy, beat her unconscious, and sexually assaulted her. He went on to attack Kathy Kleiner, breaking her jaw and deeply lacerating her shoulder; and Karen Chandler, who suffered a concussion, broken jaw, and missing teeth.
Lisa Levy, left, and Margaret Bowman were Chi Omega Sorority members murdered by Ted Bundy in Tallahassee in 1978.
He then fled the sorority house and ran west to Dunwoody Street in a reported psychopathic frenzy. He broke into the apartment of another FSU student and beat her. She survived but was left with permanent disabilities.
Former Tallahassee Police Department detective David Brand previously said Bundy would end up disappearing into the night. The detective referred to the aftermath of the murders as “controlled pandemonium,” in trying to keep the campus secure and find out who committed these acts.
Roughly a month later, he drove a stolen van from Jacksonville back to Tallahassee. On the way, Bundy kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Kimberly Dianne Leach in Lake City. Her body was found weeks later near the Suwannee River State Park.
What happened to Ted Bundy after the FSU murders?
When he returned to Tallahassee, Bundy stole a pastel-colored Volkswagen Beetle. Three days later, a Pensacola police officer stopped him after a check revealed that the Volkswagen he was driving had been stolen. After a foot chase and fight, Bundy was arrested.
The stolen vehicle contained three sets of IDs belonging to female FSU students and 21 stolen credit cards. Investigators would also link him back to the FSU murders with the bite marks left on Levy, a match for Bundy.
In 1979, Bundy was indicted on charges of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and burglary for the Omega Chi killings and assaults. He was sentenced to death twice in the FSU murders. Bundy got another death sentence for the murder of Leach in 1980.
A Leon County resident makes obvious their feelings for Ted Bundy, January 25, 1989.
Novel shines a light on FSU murders. What is the book ‘Bright Young Women’ about?
One of last year’s most talked about novels sheds some light on what Bundy’s victims may have gone through.
“Bright Young Women” is a 2023 true crime novel by Jessica Knoll inspired by the events at Chi Omega in 1978. It tells the story of two women from opposite sides of the country impacted by the same killer and their decades-long search for the truth.
“It proposes a new narrative inspired by evidence that’s been glossed over for decades in favor of more salable headlines — that the so-called brilliant and charismatic serial killer from Seattle was far more average than the countless books, movies, and primetime specials have led us to believe, and that it was the women whose lives he cut short who were the exceptional ones,” Goodreads writes.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Knoll said she was inspired by the 2019 docu-series “Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes,” which led to her writing a novel that prioritizes the victims’ point of view.
“I watched it and there was a lot that I thought that I knew about the case and that I learned and I just was very interested overall,” Knoll said. “I was like, I want to know more and I started researching and realized pretty quickly that a lot of what we knew about Ted Bundy had been grossly exaggerated in terms of his intelligence, his charm, and even his scholastic aptitude.”
Is ‘Bright Young Women’ based on a true story?
Sort of. While the story is heavily inspired by Bundy and his murders, the book is a novel, and fiction.
Knoll told Vanity Fair about her process of reimagining these real-life events and the characters who go through these horrific events. She started with the Lake Sammamish victims, especially since there wasn’t a lot known about them.
“I think that story in particular really grabbed me because again, it’s this idea that you can’t even be safe on a gorgeous summer day surrounded by tens of thousands of beachgoers. That just really stuck with me. I just knew that’s where [her story] would end, but I had total freedom to come up with where she started,” she said.
“And I actually found that to be less of a challenge than Pamela’s story, which felt much more constrained by real-life dates, like the night of the attack, when he was arrested, when he was charged when she was deposed.”
Bundy is also never actually mentioned by name in the story. Knoll only refers to him through her narrator as “the Defendant.”
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Ted Bundy in Florida: It’s the anniversary of his FSU sorority murders