Post-Furman US execution #106
Florida execution #20 since reinstatement
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, the 24th of January, 1989, the State of Florida carried out the execution of 42-year-old Theodore Robert Bundy in the electric chair at Florida State Prison near Starke, Bradford County. Bundy had spent nine years on death row following his conviction for the January 1978 sexually motivated bludgeoning murders of two sorority sisters at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and the February 1978 abduction and murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl in Lake City.
His execution brought to an end the life of modern America’s most infamous serial murderer. A handsome, articulate former law student and political aide, Bundy confessed in the days immediately prior to his death to the abduction, rape, murder, and necrophilic mutilation of at least thirty young women and adolescent girls across seven states—Washington, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, California, and Florida—between 1974 and 1978, with criminologists and detectives estimating the true victim total to exceed fifty. The execution became an unprecedented public event, marked by a festive street carnival of more than two thousand spectators outside the penitentiary walls.
The Murders and Escapes
Theodore Robert Cowell was born on the 24th of November, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont, to an unwed mother, and was raised in Tacoma, Washington, after taking the surname of his stepfather, Johnnie Bundy. He was an intelligent and presentable youth, graduating in psychology from the University of Washington and subsequently enrolling in law school at the University of Puget Sound and later the University of Utah.
Beneath this outwardly ambitious exterior, Bundy was a calculating sexual predator. Beginning in January 1974, young women and co-eds began disappearing from college campuses across the Pacific Northwest. Bundy’s standard modus operandi involved faking a physical disability—frequently wearing a fake arm cast or walking with crutches—and politely soliciting young women to help him carry books or groceries to his tan 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, where he had removed the front passenger seat. Once near the vehicle, he struck them over the head with a crowbar, tyre iron, or wooden club, handcuffed them, and drove them to remote woodland locations where he raped, throttled, and murdered them. He made repeated return visits to the decomposition sites for days or weeks afterwards to commit acts of necrophilia until animal scavenging intervened.
In August 1975, Bundy was stopped by a highway patrolman in Granger, Utah, who found a ski mask, handcuffs, ice pick, and crowbar in his car. He was identified by Carol DaRonch, an 18-year-old woman who had miraculously escaped his vehicle the previous year. In March 1976, Bundy was convicted of aggravated kidnapping in Utah and sentenced to one to fifteen years’ imprisonment.
While in custody, Colorado authorities charged Bundy with the January 1975 murder of nurse Caryn Campbell in Aspen. Transferred to Colorado for trial, Bundy executed two escapes:
- In June 1977, he leapt from a second-storey window of the Pitkin County courthouse library in Aspen, surviving in the mountains for six days before recapture.
- On the 30th of December, 1977, having starved himself to slip through a small crawl space in his cell ceiling at the Garfield County Jail in Glenwood Springs, Bundy escaped entirely, boarding a bus to Denver, a train to Chicago, and eventually arriving in Tallahassee, Florida, under an assumed name.
The Florida Murders and Apprehension
In Florida, Bundy’s predatory violence became uncontrolled:
- Chi Omega Sorority Murders – In the early morning hours of Sunday, the 15th of January, 1978, Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house near the Florida State University campus. In a frenzy of violence lasting less than fifteen minutes, he attacked four sleeping young women with a heavy oak firewood club. Two women—21-year-old Margaret Bowman and 20-year-old Lisa Levy—were bludgeoned to death and strangled, with Levy being subjected to severe sexual mutilation and human bite wounds inflicted upon her left buttock and breast. Two other sisters, Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, sustained shattered jaws and severe cranial trauma but survived. Minutes later, Bundy entered a flat on nearby Dunwoody Street, bludgeoning a fifth student, Cheryl Thomas, who survived with permanent hearing loss.
- Kimberly Leach – On the 9th of February, 1978, Bundy stalked and abducted 12-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach from Lake City Junior High School in Columbia County. Her badly decomposed remains were recovered seven weeks later in an abandoned pig barn at Suwannee River State Park; she had been sexually assaulted and her throat had been cut.
Bundy’s criminal career ended on the 15th of February, 1978, in Pensacola, Florida. Officer David Lee pulled over a stolen orange Volkswagen Beetle. Following a violent physical struggle during which Bundy attempted to draw the patrolman’s sidearm, Bundy was subdued. Detectives swiftly identified him through fingerprinting.
Trials and Sentences
Bundy was subjected to two distinct capital trials in Florida:
- The Chi Omega Trial (Miami, 1979): Due to saturated pretrial publicity, venue was shifted to the Dade County Courthouse in Miami before Judge Edward Cowart. Bundy participated actively in his own defence, cross-examining investigators and forensic pathologists. The prosecution’s case was clinched by groundbreaking forensic odontological evidence: expert odontologist Dr Richard Souviron matched the unique, crooked dentition of Bundy’s lower teeth directly to the bite marks left on the flesh of Lisa Levy. On the 24th of July, 1979, the jury convicted Bundy of two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder, and two counts of burglary. On the 31st of July, 1979, Judge Cowart formally passed two sentences of death by electrocution, observing famously: “You’d have made a good lawyer and I loved to have you practice in front of me, but you went another way, partner.”
- The Kimberly Leach Trial (Orlando, 1980): In February 1980, Bundy was tried before Judge Wallace Jopling in Orlando for the abduction and murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. Forensic microscopic hair and fibre analysis matched car carpet and clothing between Bundy and the child. During the penalty phase, Bundy took advantage of an obscure Florida statute by staging a courtroom marriage to Carole Ann Boone while questioning her on the witness stand. On the 7th of February, 1980, the jury recommended death, and Judge Jopling formally imposed a third sentence of death.
Death Row and the Final Confessions
Bundy was housed in the maximum-security Q-Wing death row unit at Florida State Prison near Starke. While incarcerated, he was segregated in solitary confinement, yet managed to father a child with Boone during unsupervised contact visits.
Over the nine years that followed, his direct appeals and collateral federal habeas corpus petitions were systematically rejected by the Florida Supreme Court, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. He received three previous stays of execution in 1986.
In January 1989, when Florida Governor Bob Martinez signed Bundy’s fourth death warrant for the murder of Kimberly Leach, Bundy abandoned all pretense of innocence. In a calculated attempt to secure a delay of execution, Bundy offered to supply detectives with detailed disclosures regarding unsolved missing persons across the United States.
Over a four-day marathon interrogation between the 20th and 23rd of January, Bundy spoke to homicide investigators Robert Keppel, Bill Hagmaier, and numerous state detectives. He admitted to killing approximately thirty women, detailing hidden dumping locations and describing where he had buried or cremated decapitated skulls in the Taylor Mountain area of Washington.
However, Governor Martinez dismissed Bundy’s strategy, refusing to permit the state of Florida to be bartered with, stating:
“We are not going to allow this killer to manipulate the criminal justice system… The people of Florida have waited long enough for justice.”
On Monday, the 23rd of January, Bundy granted a final televised interview to Christian psychologist Dr James Dobson, in which he sought to deflect blame for his crimes onto violent pornography and alcohol addiction. That evening, the Supreme Court of the United States denied his final two applications for a stay of execution without recorded dissent.
The Execution
Bundy declined to order a special final meal, and prison staff prepared the standard breakfast menu: medium-rare steak, fried eggs over easy, hash browns, buttered toast with strawberry jam, milk, and coffee. Bundy left the meal completely untouched.
Outside the perimeter gates of Florida State Prison on the morning of Tuesday, the 24th of January, 1989, an extraordinary atmosphere prevailed. An estimated crowd of between 2,000 and 2,500 people assembled on the state highway. The scene resembled a festive open-air carnival: spectators consumed alcohol, waved frying pans, set off fireworks, and carried signs bearing slogans such as “Fry Bundy Fry,” “Burn Bundy Burn,” and “Thank God It’s Fryday.” T-shirt vendors did a roaring trade selling merchandise depicting the electric chair.
Bundy spent his final night weeping periodically and telephoning his mother. Shortly after 6:30 a.m., his head and right lower leg were shaved clean by prison barbers to establish clean electrical contact points.
At 7:00 a.m., Bundy was led into the small, white execution chamber on the ground floor of the prison. The apparatus—Florida’s solid oak electric chair, manufactured by inmates in 1923 and known colloquially as “Old Sparky”—occupied the centre of the room. Bundy walked steadily under escort, his expression pale and hollow.
He was strapped into the oak chair by eight heavy leather restraint belts across his chest, waist, forearms, wrists, thighs, and ankles. Technicians attached a brass and copper electrode to his bare right calf, lubricated with conductive electrode jelly. A natural sea sponge soaked in brine was fitted inside the copper skull cap, which was strapped firmly over his shaved crown.
The viewing blind to the witness room was raised at 7:03 a.m. Seated behind the thick glass were forty-two official witnesses, including pool journalists, state officials, and investigators Bob Keppel and Bill Hagmaier. Bundy looked across the viewing room, searching the faces. When Superintendent Richard Dugger asked if he had any final words, Bundy’s voice was quiet and unsteady:
“Jim and Fred, I’d like you to give my love to my family and friends.”
Fred Lawrence, Bundy’s Methodist minister, and Bill Hagmaier of the FBI nodded from behind the glass.
An executioner fitted a heavy black leather face mask over Bundy’s features, buckled it securely behind the headrest, and lowered the leather chin strap.
At 7:06 a.m., Superintendent Dugger nodded to the anonymous executioner, a private citizen hidden behind a one-way mirrored partition who received $150 for the duty. The executioner pushed the heavy master lever, sending a cycle of 2,000 volts at up to fourteen amperes through Bundy’s body.
Bundy’s body snapped instantly rigid against the leather harnesses. His hands clenched into tight fists, his knuckles turned white, and his torso heaved upwards against the chest restraint. A tiny wisp of pale grey vapour curled from the electrode on his right leg. The electrical current surged for sixty seconds before being automatically reduced to 1,000 volts, and then 500 volts, to ensure cardiac arrest while minimising burning of the skin tissue.
The power was shut off at 7:07 a.m. Bundy’s body slumped back heavily into the chair against the loosened straps.
Technicians waited three minutes to allow the electrodes and flesh to cool. At 7:10 a.m., two attending physicians unbuttoned Bundy’s blue work shirt, checked his pulse, listened for heartbeat with stethoscopes, and flashed a penlight into his pupils.
At 7:16 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, the senior physician turned to Superintendent Dugger and formally pronounced life extinct. Theodore Robert Bundy was 42 years of age.
Superintendent Dugger stepped out to the front entrance of the prison to give the formal notification. Upon the announcement, the crowd on Highway 16 erupted into loud cheering, sounding air horns and shooting Roman candles into the morning sky. As the white hearse carrying Bundy’s corpse departed the prison gates toward a private mortuary, spectators cheered and banged against the vehicle’s panels.
In accordance with his final will and testament, Bundy’s body was cremated without a formal public funeral service, and his ashes were scattered by an attorney in an undisclosed sector of the Cascade Range in Washington State—the very mountains where he had buried the remains of numerous victims a decade earlier.
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