The Chi Omega Murders

Content warning: There are descriptions of sexual assault and murder below.

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Evil comes to town
Tallahassee, Florida is a college town that is home to multiple institutions of higher learning, the largest being Florida State University. On January 15, 1978, the Chi Omega sorority house became a house of horrors, and the site of one of the most infamous crimes in American history.

Sometime around 2:45 a.m., a stranger slipped in through a back door, aided by a faulty locking mechanism. He was carrying a large tree limb, likely from one of the many nearby live oaks. Undetected, he made his way to the bedroom of 21-year-old Margaret Bowman, a junior from St. Petersburg, Florida. He bludgeoned her with the limb repeatedly, before strangling her to death with a nylon stocking. Next, he sexually assaulted 20-year-old sophomore Lisa Levy, also from St. Petersburg, with a hairspray bottle before brutally beating her to death. 

Margaret Bowman (left) and Lisa Levy

The Chi Omega House, circa 1978

Kimberly Leach

The killer’s intensity would lead to his eventual undoing, and a vicious bite he left on Levy would be instrumental in helping to secure a conviction. He moved on to other rooms, battering and breaking the jaws of Karen Chandler and her roommate Kathy Kleiner, both 21. Chandler’s skull was also fractured in several places by the frenzied blows. All of the women were initially asleep when they were attacked and none of the estimated 30 people within earshot heard anything. Kleiner credits a sorority sister coming home late with saving her and Chandler’s lives. The girl’s headlights shone through the bedroom window and scared the man away before he could finish the job.

A few blocks away, he broke into the home of dance major Cheryl Thomas, beating her and leaving her with permanent disabilities. The killer then stole an FSU van and fled to Jacksonville, before backtracking to Lake City, where he abducted and murdered 14-year-old Kimberly Leach. Her remains would be found seven weeks later in a hog shed in Suwannee County, and she is his final known victim. The man returned to Tallahassee, but fled for good on February 12th, after he could no longer pay for his room and board. Three days later, he was pulled over in a stolen Volkswagen Beetle (his vehicle of choice) and taken into custody after attempting to flee.

He had multiple stolen IDs in his possession, as well as a uniform that said ‘Richard Burton, Fire Department.' At the time, the officer had no idea that the man was one of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted, in relation to multiple murders in the Western United States, and that his real name was Theodore Robert Bundy.

Bad seed

Ted Bundy, in a Florida courtroom.

Ted Bundy, deranged serial killer, was unleashed upon the world on November 24, 1946. Born Theodore Robert Cowell in a Burlington, Vermont, home for unwed mothers, he was raised by his maternal grandparents and initially believed that his mother Louise was his older sister. The identity of Bundy’s father has never been confirmed, but he was adopted in 1951 by Louise's husband, Johnny Bundy. From a young age, Ted exhibited troubling behavior, terrorizing neighborhood children and torturing and killing animals. Later, he became a peeping tom.

His aunt Julia recounted a particularly disturbing incident in which she woke up to find her nephew standing next to the bed, staring at her. She was horrified to realize that she was surrounded by knives that the three-year-old had slid under the covers near her sleeping form.  

Bundy's first documented murder took place in 1974, but it's unclear when he actually began killing. Bundy himself claimed as early as 1971 in Seattle, though it's not far-fetched to believe he may have begun as a teenager.

Florida fugitive

Bundy had made his way to Tallahassee after escaping from a Colorado jail, where he was being held for a string of murders in the Pacific Northwest. He had managed several escapes from custody, and this one played out like something from a movie plot. He placed books and files under a blanket on his bed to cover his tracks, before climbing into a crawl space and breaking through the ceiling of the head jailer’s apartment. The man was out with his wife for the evening and Bundy stole street clothes from his closet before hitchhiking to Vail. He eventually made his way to Atlanta, where he stole a car and traveled to Tallahassee by bus. 

The boarding house where Ted Bundy stayed during his Tallahassee reign of terror

After being charged with the Chi Omega murders and subsequently granted a change of venue, Bundy went on trial in Miami in June of 1979. True to character, he arrogantly took it upon himself to handle much of his own defense, despite his court-appointed counsel. Bundy had extensive knowledge of the law, but he was not a competent trial attorney, and his antics kneecapped his team. It took only 7 hours of deliberation for jurors to convict Bundy on both counts of first degree murder and all 3 counts of attempted first degree murder on July 24th, 1979. Eyewitness accounts from Nita Neary and Connie Hastings, as well as the matching of a cast of Bundy’s teeth to the bite on Lisa Levy helped to seal Bundy’s fate. He was subsequently sentenced to death for each murder.

Six months later, Bundy was tried and convicted in Orlando for the murder of Kimberly Leach. He was sentenced to die for a third time and sent to Death Row at Florida State Prison in Raiford. During the sentencing phase of the trial, Bundy proposed to girlfriend Carol Anne Boone, taking advantage of a statute that considered a declaration of marriage in open court to be legally binding. Boone, who had testified on Bundy’s behalf at both trials, accepted. In 1982, she gave birth to their daughter Rose. 

The mind of a madman

During his appeal, Bundy sat down for a series of interviews, during which he confessed his gruesome crimes. He told of repeated acts of necrophilia, revisiting his burial sites until advanced decomposition finally made the corpse undesirable. Bundy admitted to temporarily keeping the heads of several of the 12 women he’d decapitated with a hacksaw. To detach himself from the acts, he spoke in the third person. His total body count is unknown, and though the accepted estimate is 35, it is widely believed that the actual number is at least 100. 

Theories about which mental conditions Bundy had vary, though it’s generally agreed that antisocial personality disorder was the primary. He was also a textbook misogynist, with his hatred of women evident in the sheer barbarism of his acts. Bundy desired complete control over his victims, and was obsessed with possessing them. 

A commonly believed piece of Ted Bundy lore is that he targeted women with long dark hair parted down the middle, because they reminded him of a girlfriend who had broken up with him in the past. The rejection did occur, and Bundy and the woman later reconciled. He asked her to marry him, then abruptly broke off the engagement and all contact, his way of getting revenge. However, Bundy denied the theory, claiming that his victims simply fit his definition of young and attractive. 

Bundy's ability to evade capture has often been attributed largely to his charisma and good looks, which is not the case. While he was considered to be conventionally attractive, Bundy was essentially very generic looking, and it was his chameleon-like ability to change his appearance and blend in that played to his advantage. His elusiveness was more a result of his knowledge of law enforcement practices, his organization, and the lack of forensic evidence that he left behind. 

In 1984, Bundy offered to assist the Green River Task Force in pursuing the Green River Killer, later identified as Gary Ridgway. Bundy was interviewed, but Ridgway wasn’t apprehended for another 17 years. During this time, Carol Boone left Bundy and moved back to Washington. She had believed in his innocence until his confession and refused to take his call on the morning of his execution. He had also begun a relationship with another woman. Bundy would continue to bread-crumb information to authorities, in an attempt to delay his final execution date, but he was fast-tracked to the death chamber.

Anti-Bundy slogan on a car parked on Florida State's campus

Two men celebrate Bundy's execution outside Florida State Prison

On January 24, 1989, Theodore Robert Bundy was put to death in Old Sparky, Florida’s electric chair. He looked to his attorney and the Methodist minister who was present to impart his last words: "Jim and Fred, I'd like you to give my love to my family and friends." 

Bundy’s ashes were spread at an undisclosed location in Washington’s Cascade Mountains.