The Stranger Beside Me (34 page)

Aspen Investigator Mike Fisher had shown her a lay-down of mug shots a year after that night-and she'd picked Ted Bundy's. Now, during the preliminary hearing in April of

1977, she was asked to look around the courtroom and point out anyone who resembled the man she'd seen.

Ted suppressed a smile as she pointed-not to him-but to Pitkin County Undersheriff Ben Meyers.

The steam had gone out of the state's case. Judge Lohr listened as Tucker pointed out other evidence: Bundy's credit card slips, the brochure on Colorado ski areas found in Ted's Salt Lake City apartment with the Wildwood Inn marked,

Ted Bundy with Stephanie, the woman to whom he was secretly engaged September 2, 1973.

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Captain Herb Swindler of the Seattle Police Department, with photographs of some of the missing women. Lynda Ann Healy (top and bottom left), Donna Manson (top middle), Susan Bancourt (top right), Roberta Kathleen Parks (bottom middle), and Georgeann Hawkins (bottom right). The detective who took this picture was standing next to Brenda Ball's skull on Taylor Mountain near Seattle. In this dense underbrush on the lonely mountain foothill were found the skulls of Brenda, Roberta Kathleen Parks, Lynda Ann Healy, and Susan Rancourt. m

Roger Dunn, King County Po-Bob Keppel King C

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Nick Mackie, head of Task Force to investigate the case Washington State.

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Carol DaRonch testifying in Florida as Judge Cowart listens. WIDE WORLD PHOTOS.

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disappeared from Lake City, Florida on February 9, 1978. She was 12

years old.

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Ted Bundy in court in Florida.

WIDE WORLD PHOTOS.

Ted Bundy waving to reporters while the charges against him are beina read. WIDE WORLD PHOTOS.

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two hairs taken from the old Volkswagen which microscopically matched Caryn Campbell's, the match between Bundy's crowbar and the wounds on the victim's skull.

It was a chancy gamble for the prosecution, unless they could tie in some of the Utah cases. Judge Lohr ruled that Ted Bundy would stand trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell, adding that it was not his job to consider the probability of conviction, or the credibility of the evidence, only its existence.

After the preliminary hearing, Ted summarily "fired" his public defenders, Chuck Leidner and Jim Dumas. He wanted to get involved in his own defense. He was beginning a pattern that he would repeat again and again, a kind of arrogance toward those designated by the state to defend him; if he could not have what he considered the best, then he would go it alone. Judge Lohr was forced to acquiesce to his decision to defend himself, although he assigned Leidner and Dumas to remain on the defense team as legal advisors.

Although Ted opposed it, he was transferred on April 13, 1977 from the Pitkin County Jail to the Garfield County Jail in Glenwood Springs forty-five miles away, in accordance with the order sent down from the state Health Department.

The Garfield County Jail was only ten years old, and considerably more pleasant than his old basement cell in Aspen. We talked often on the phone, and he commented that he liked Garfield County Sheriff Ed Hogue and his wife, but that the food was still lousy. Despite the modern facilities, it was another "Mom and Pop" jail. It wasn't long before Ted began to inundate Judge Lohr with requests for special treatment. Since he was serving as his own attorney, he needed a typewriter, a desk, access to the law library in Aspen, the free and uncensored use of a phone, help from forensic laboratories, investigators. He wanted three meals a day, and said neither he nor the other prisoners could survive without lunch. He pointed out his own weight loss. He wanted an order rescinded forbidding other prisoners to «Ik to him. (Hogue had issued this order soon after Ted arrijed, after jailers intercepted a diagram of the jail, a chart outlming exits and the ventilation system.)

"Ed's a good guy," he told me on the phone. "I don't want to get him into trouble but we have to have more to eat." His requests were granted. Somehow, Ted Bundy had managed to elevate the status of a county jail prisoner to that of

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visiting royalty. He not only had all the paraphernalia he wanted, but he was allowed several trips weekly, accompanied by deputies, to the law library in the Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen. He grew friendly with the deputies, learned about their families, and they liked him. He told me, "They're O.K. They even let me take a stroll along the river because it was such a nice day. Of course, they went with me."

I did not hear from Ted during the first four weeks of May, and I wondered what had happened. Although he seemed to be growing constantly more bitter, more sarcastic-as if he'd developed an impervious outer shell-he had written or called me regularly up until May. I finally got a letter written May 27th.

Dear Ann,

Just returned from Brazil and found your letters piled up in my post office box here in Glenwood. Jesus, you must have thought I got lost in the jungles down there. I actually went down there to find out where the sons of bitches are hiding the 11 billion tons of coffee they say the bad weather destroyed. Didn't find any coffee but brought back 400

pounds of cocaine.

Ted was still in contact with Meg, at least by phone, and she had passed on my concern about not hearing from him. No, he was not angry with me, he assured me. However, someone had told him that I had "developed an opinion relative to my innocence, which opinion was not in any way consistent with my innocence." Now, he wanted me to write to him and make a "frank statement" about how I felt regarding his guilt or innocence. He said he understood that I was very close to the police and that he knew they had convinced many people of his guilt, but he wanted a letter from me spelling out my feelings.

And he had yet another message for Nick Mackie, "Tell Mackie, if he doesn't stop thinking about me that he will end up at Western State

[Washington's State Mental Hospital.] Deals indeed. I have got them up against the wall down here, and there (sic) are eternal optimists talking about deals."

The trial date had been put ahead to November 14, 1977, and Ted was proceeding without counsel. He was most enthusiastic about his new role, and felt he had the instincts of an

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investigator. "But most important, I will persist, and persist, and work and act until I succeed. No one can outwork me, because I have more at stake than anyone else."

He was also elated because he was costing the county a great deal of money. A local reporter had complained in print about the escalating costs of investigators, expert witnesses, extra personnel needed to guard Ted during his library trips, dental costs, supplies, the phone calls; Ted found this criticism "Goddam outrageous. No one asks the prosecutor or the police how much of the people's money they piss away. Dismiss the case, send me home and save all that money is my response." He had used the $20 I'd sent him to pay for a haircut, his first since December 1976, and Judge Lohr had ordered that he be taken to a doctor to see if his loss of weightwhich he blamed on the paucity of food in the Garfield County Jail-was as profound as Ted said. The day after the order, the jail had begun to serve lunch for the first time in its history, and Ted claimed a moral victory for that. Ted suspected that the sheriff was trying to fatten him up before he went to the doctor, but he still termed Hogue a "good man." The sheriff had also consented to having Ted's friends and family send food in from outside. Packages of raisins, nuts, and beef jerky would be appreciated. Although Ted had begun the letter with a touch of suspicious hostility, a request for a declaration of loyalty from me, his mood mellowed as he wrote.

Thank you very much for the money and the stamps. I know your recent successes have by no means put you on easy street, so donations to me no doubt represent sacrifices.

I will not take so long to write again. Promise.

Love, ted.

But he did. He^took a long, long time to write, because Ted Bundy had go^e away. Very suddenly.

27

That letter troubled me; Ted was, in essence, asking me to tell him that I believed wholeheartedly in his innocence, something that I could not do. It was something he had never asked of me before, and I wondered what had happened to make him wary of me. I had not betrayed his confidence. I had continued to keep the letters and calls rolling into Colorado and I had not shown Ted's replies to anyone. If I could not tell Ted that I believed he was innocent of all the charges and suspicions against him, I was maintaining my emotional support as always. It had been the first week in June when I received Ted's questioning letter, and I was wrestling with how I could reply as Ted prepared for a hearing on whether the death penalty would be considered in his trial; it was a decision that was being made individually in each homicide case in Colorado. The hearing was set for June 7th. As usual, Ted was chauffered to Aspen from Glenwood Springs on the morning of June 7th, leaving a little before eight. He was wearing the same outfit he had worn when we had lunch at the Brasserie Pittsbourg in Seattle in December,

1975: the tan corduroy slacks, a long-sleeved turtleneck shirt, and the heavy, variegated brown coat-sweater. Instead of his usually preferred loafers, however, he wore his heavy prisonissue boots. His hair was short and neat, thanks, somewhat ironically, to the twenty dollar check I had sent him.

Pitldn County deputies Rick Kralicek and Peter Murphy, his regular guards, picked him up that morning for the fortyfive-mile ride back to Aspen. Ted talked easily with the two deputies he'd come to know well, asking again about their families.

Kralicek drove with Bundy sitting beside him, and Peter Murphy sat in the back seat. Later Murphy would recall that as they left the outskirts of Glenwood Springs Ted had sud-234

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denly turned around and stared at him, making several quick movements with his curled hands. "I unsnapped the leather strap holding rny .38, and it made a loud unmistakable 'snap!' Ted turned around and stared straight ahead at the road all the way into Aspen." When they reached the courthouse, Ted was handed into the custody of Deputy David Westerlund, a lawman who had ' been his guard for only one day and was not familiar with j him.

Court convened at 9:00 A.M., and Jim Dumas-one of the public defenders fired by Ted earlier but still serving himargued against the death penalty for an hour or so. At 10:30 Judge Lohr ordered a break, saying that the prosecution could give its arguments when they reconvened. Ted moved, as he often did, to the law library, its tall stacks hiding him from Deputy Westerlund's view.

The deputy stayed at his post at the courtroom door. They were on the second floor, twenty-five feet above the street. Everything was normal, or seemed so. Ted was apparently doing some research back in the stacks, while waiting for court to begin again.

On the street outside, a woman passing by was startled to see a figure dressed in tans and browns suddenly leap from a window above her. She watched as the man fell, got to his feet and ran, limping, off down the street. Puzzled, she stared after him for a few moments before entering the courthouse and heading for the sheriffs office. Her first question galvanized the officers on duty into action, "Is it normal for people to jump out of windows around here?" Kralicek heard her, swore, and headed for the stairs. Ted Bundy had escaped.

He wore no handcuffs, and the leg irons he usually wore when he was outside the courtroom had been removed. He was free, and he'd had ample time to observe the area around the Pitkin County Courthouse when the deputies had kindly allowed him to watt; near the river during exercise periods.

Chagrined, Shenff Dick Keinast would admit later, "We screwed up. I feel iiitty about it."

Roadblocks were set up, tracking dogs were called in, and posses on horseback fanned out around Aspen looking for the man who had telegraphed in so many ways that he was going to run for it. Whitney Wulff, Sheriff Keinast's secretary, recalled that Ted had often walked over to the windows during

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hearings, glanced down, and then looked at the sheriff's men j to see if they were watching.

J "I thought he was always testing us. Once he walked up i • close behind a girl court aide, and looked at us. I got worried

• about the possibility of a hostage and alerted the officer es-]H cort to stay closer to the prisoner." m But Westerlund had been a new man on the job, unaware

!JB of others' suspicions that Bundy was perhaps planning a l| break.

Ted had "double-dressed"--in the lingo of the con-wearing extra clothing beneath his standard courtroom outfit. His plan was so audacious that it went off like clockwork at the beginning. He had hit the ground on the front courthouse y| lawn, hit it so hard in fact that he'd left a four-inch-deep

gouge in the turf with his right foot. Officials suspected that he might have injured that ankle-but evidently not enough to slow him down much. Then Ted had headed immediately for the banks of the Roaring Fork River, the spot four blocks from the courthouse where he'd walked often before. There, hidden in the brush, he quickly removed his outer layer of clothing. He now wore a dress shirt; he looked like any other Aspen resident as he strolled with controlled casualness back through town. It was the safest place he could have been; all his pursuers had scattered to set up roadblocks.