The Stranger Beside Me

  On October 29, 1978, forensic odontologist Dr. Richard Souviron, an expert in matching teeth impressions to bite marks in dental identification, put on a demonstration at a forensic seminar. It was premature, at best. Souviron, from Coral Gables, presented slides, slides he said proved that “this suspect’s” teeth matched the bite marks on the victim’s buttock. Naturally, this information was disseminated throughout the state’s media, and everyone knew that Ted Bundy was the suspect referred to.

  Predictably, Ted screamed, “Foul!”

  Dr. Ronald Wright, chief deputy medical examiner for Dade County, equivocated when he tried to explain how such a gaffe could happen. “You have to balance the kinds of problems which might exist in regards to talking about a case in litigation against teaching the best possible method for correctly identifying murderers or clearing people of murder charges,” he remarked.

  The obvious question of course was why this could not have been done without hinting broadly at the identity of the principals involved. Beyond that, there were other cases which could have been offered as examples where identification had been made through teeth imprints. A Brattleboro, Vermont, killer had been convicted in 1976 of the rape-murder of sixty-two-year-old Ruth Kastenbaum. The twenty-five bite marks on her body matched his teeth.

  Souviron himself had another case where he had made bite-mark matches: he had matched the teeth of a twenty-three-year-old man from Columbia, South Carolina, to the body of seventy-seven-year-old Margaret Haizlip, who lived in a rural area south of Miami.

  But Ted was more newsworthy than an itinerant laborer from South Carolina, and Ted’s teeth got the publicity. The publication of Souviron’s findings seemed to go far beyond normal pretrial publicity. It seemed, for a time, that charges against Ted for murder might well be dismissed because of Souviron’s statements.

  They were not, however, and the state moved ahead, preparing for the two trials. Pretrial publicity is a two-edged sword. It can prejudice potential jurors against an innocent man so that he cannot obtain a fair trial, and it can, occasionally, result in a guilty man’s going free when charges are dismissed. In either instance, such publicity can be tragic.

  Two of Ted Bundy’s most hated antagonists had dropped completely from the picture by late 1978, one through personal disgrace and the other when his health collapsed. I don’t know if Ted knew about either of them, or if it would matter to him any longer.

  Frank Tucker, the district attorney from Pitkin County, Colorado, was convicted in June 1978 of two counts of embezzlement and acquitted of two counts. In December 1978 he was convicted of one count of felony theft and two misdemeanor counts. Tucker cried—as Ted had about his own case—that the charges and convictions were all “politically motivated.” He was disbarred, received five years’ probation, ninety days in jail (to be delayed), and a thousand-dollar fine. According to his attorney, Tucker planned to pursue a new career. He would go to morticians’ school in San Francisco.

  Now-Major Nick Mackie of the King County Police Major Crimes Unit in Seattle suffered a near-fatal heart attack in the spring of 1978, and paramedics had twice pronounced him clinically dead. Mackie survived but was forced to resign from the high-pressure job he’d handled so well for so long. The loss of Mackie would be a blow for the department.

  Ted himself wasn’t doing so well. As the Christmas season approached in 1978, he was again in jail, looking at a solid steel door, just as he had been a year before. But this year, there were no plans to escape. There was no way to escape. Again, he was faced with a murder trial, just as he had been in December 1977. Indeed, he was faced with two murder trials.

  Bundy had moved to have Judge John Rudd removed because of prejudice, and shortly before Christmas the Florida State Supreme Court acquiesced. There had been claims by the defense that Rudd had improperly communicated with the State Attorney’s Office, and that he had evinced hostility toward the defense team. Rudd stepped down. A new judge would be appointed in the coming year. Larry Simpson, an assistant state’s attorney, would be chief prosecutor in the Chi Omega case and announced that he was ready to go to trial at any time, but a trial before February seemed unlikely.

  Ted had grudgingly accepted the aid of the Public Defender’s Office, and his defense team was headed by Mike Minerva. Ted apparently was finally aware that he would be a fool to attempt to defend himself in two murder trials.

  In January, a new judge was appointed: Judge Edward D. Cowart of the Florida Circuit Court. Judge Cowart, fifty-four, is a great St. Bernard of a man, jowls bulging over his judicial robes, with a soothing Southern voice. Cowart had been a navy bosun’s mate and a policeman, before graduating from Stetson University Law School in St. Petersburg. His home court is in Miami, and he controls his courtroom with authority—authority that is often laced with sharp wit and homilies. He is given to saying, “Bless your heart,” to attorneys and defendants alike. When an argument is not clear, he will say, “Cripple that and walk it by me slow.” He is a man both benign and belligerent depending on the circumstance, and he knows his law inside out. In court, Cowart often seems to be giving instruction in law to the attorneys who appear before him.

  Ted wasn’t going to like him much.

  On February 22 Cowart announced that Ted would go on trial for the Chi Omega murders and the Tallahassee attacks on May 21. He also denied Bundy’s request for Millard Farmer. The judge said he would decide in April if a nonprejudiced jury could be empaneled in the capital city. He agreed with the defense that it was unlikely that back-to-back trials could be held without prejudicing the defendant.

  Ted was still, officially, the lead defense attorney. Minerva was there only to advise him as far as Ted was concerned.

  The defendant requested on April 11 that news people be barred from taking his picture when he was brought to the courthouse in chains and wearing his leg brace, and from attending the proceedings leading up to trial. He would be questioning witnesses himself, he said, and he didn’t want the media listening in.

  Judge Cowart denied that request, saying, “If you exclude the press, you exclude the public.”

  A month later, Ted had had enough of Judge Cowart and moved to have him step down just as Judge Rudd had, claiming that Rudd’s prejudice had flowed to Cowart too. Cowart denied the motion, saying it was “legally insufficient.” Anyone who has observed Judge Cowart over time would doubt that he could ever be swayed or prejudiced by other’s opinions. He is a man who patently thinks for himself.

  The Bundy hearings were now being recorded by a television camera and by one still camera, as had been agreed upon in a recent Florida Supreme Court edict. Cowart continued to deny Ted’s request for the barring of all cameras. “We’re conducting the public’s business, gentlemen, and we’re going to conduct it in the sunshine. We’re sitting in Florida.”

  Cowart would rarely display any animosity toward the defendant who railed against him, although, as the months progressed, he would at times chastise Bundy’s temper tantrums as he would a small child. He seemed to bear no particular ill will toward Ted. Even as Ted had asked to have him removed from the case, Cowart remarked on Ted’s suit and tie, “You look nice today.”

  And Ted had responded, “I’m disguised as an attorney today.”

  The pretrial hearings began in May in Tallahassee. The defense wanted the bite-mark testimony out, claiming that there had been insufficient probable cause for the search warrant that brought Ted to a dentist to have his teeth impressions taken. They claimed that he had not been a true suspect in the Chi Omega killings at that time. Cowart delayed his ruling.

  Ted Bundy’s murder trial was to begin on June 11, but on the last day of May there were rampant rumors that he was going to change his plea, that he would plea bargain to a lesser charge than first-degree murder, and thus save himself from the specter of the electric chair.

  Florida’s electric chair was a terribly real threat. Only five days before, Florida had proved that it would carry
out its death sentences. On May 25, John Spenkelink, convicted of the 1973 murder of a fellow ex-con in a Tallahassee motel room, had been executed. It was the first execution in the United States since Gary Gilmore had gone before the firing squad in Utah on January 19, 1977, at his own request.

  Spenkelink’s execution was the first time in America, since 1967, that a condemned man went to the death chamber against his will.

  Ted Bundy had been geographically close to both men, fully aware of their executions, and knew that Spenkelink’s fate might await him in the not-too-distant future.

  Louise Bundy flew to Tallahassee, as did John Henry Browne. Carole Ann Boone joined Ted’s mother and Browne in urging him to plead guilty to lesser charges. There had been a great deal of negotiating back and forth between Tallahassee, Leon County, Lake City, the prosecution and the defense. It was rumored that, if Ted would plead guilty to second-degree murder in the two Chi Omega cases and in Kimberly Leach’s murder, he would avoid the chair. The state would agree that he serve instead three consecutive twenty-five-year terms.

  On May 31, there was a private session in Judge Cowart’s chambers with Ted and his attorneys present. Ted filed a secret motion—a motion believed to be the guilty pleas to second-degree murder. It would mean that he might never walk free again, but he wouldn’t die in the electric chair either.

  According to Florida Deputy State Attorney Jerry Blair (who awaited his day in the courtroom with Ted in the Leach case), Ted acknowledged his guilt to everything he was charged with, in both cases. Blair alleged that Ted, in fact, carried in his hand a written confession. All of his legal advisors, including Millard Farmer and Mike Minerva, had urged him to accept the lifeline held out. But the plea bargaining broke down. Ted tore up the papers and told Cowart, “I’d like to withdraw that motion.”

  Ted moved to have his public defender, Minerva, removed from the case, claiming that Minerva was trying to coerce him into admitting guilt. The state attorneys could not enter into a plea bargain in such a case. With Ted intimating that his own attorney was pressuring him to confess, any plea bargaining would automatically be overturned by an appellate court. Blair vowed that “if he [Ted] wanted a trial, he was going to get it.”

  None of the specifics of Ted’s “almost” guilty plea reached the press, but rumors were strong. And it had been Ted’s last chance. Governor Bob Graham had predicted he would “sign more death warrants,” and Ted’s name seemed to be already written there in invisible ink.

  Minerva wanted out. Ted wanted him out, calling his public defender “incompetent.” It looked like a trial would be postponed once again. Ted himself wanted a ninety-day delay, and the defense team wanted a psychiatric exam to see if he was sane in the legal sense—that is, that he had sufficient mental and psychological competence to participate in his own defense. This latter request angered him as much as anything had angered him before. Ted may have joked in his letter to me about an insanity defense, but he would not seriously go that route, now that he was up and confident again.

  Judge Cowart was not about to stand for endless trial delays. He agreed to the psychiatric examinations and ordered that they be done forthwith. He had 132 prospective jurors on hold. It had already been eighteen months since the stranger crept into the Chi Omega mansion, since the man had beaten Cheryl Thomas at Dunwoody Street, and Cowart felt it was time for the trial to begin.

  Two psychiatrists examined Ted during that first week of June 1979: Dr. Herve Cleckly of Augusta, Georgia, and Dr. Emanuel Tanay, a professor at Wayne State University in Michigan. They agreed with Ted that he was not incompetent, but said he demonstrated certain antisocial behavior. Tanay said that Ted’s personality disorder was such that it could affect his relationship with his attorneys and thus, in that way, hinder his ability to defend himself.

  “He has an extensive history of self-defeating, unadaptable, antisocial behavior,” Tanay said.

  On June 11 Judge Cowart ruled that Ted Bundy was competent to stand trial and said that he would delay his decision on granting a change of venue until he had seen some responses from prospective veniremen in the Leon County area. He denied the defense request for an extension and refused to let Ted fire his attorneys. Temporarily, Bundy had a new attorney, Brian T. Hayes, a respected North Florida criminal defense attorney, but also a man who came with unsettling references at the time. He had been John Spenkelink’s attorney.

  I had written to Ted to tell him that I would be attending his trial, to see if I would be able to visit him, and to warn him that I would probably be wearing a press badge. It was the only way I could be sure of getting into the courtroom. The gallery would be jammed, and there would be long lines of curious court-goers. With Ted’s growing hatred for reporters, I didn’t want him to see me among a sea of media people and think I had defected completely to the fourth estate.

  I had reservations to Tallahassee, but I would never see that city. Judge Cowart granted a change of venue on June 12 when four of the first five prospective jurors said they knew so much about the Chi Omega murders that they could not sit on the jury and be considered unbiased.

  Cowart ordered the trial moved to Miami and said jury selection would begin there on June 25. Mike Minerva would not be joining the defense team. Relations between him and Bundy had become so abrasive that they probably could not hide their antagonism from a jury. Minerva also felt that he might bear Ted some unconscious resentment since Ted had cast so much doubt about his ability.

  The defense team would be Leon County assistant public defenders Lynn Thompson, Ed Harvey, and Margaret Good. They were all young, all determined to do their best, and all woefully inexperienced.

  A Miami attorney, Robert Haggard, not much older than the rest of the team, volunteered to help. In my opinion, Haggard was the least apt of any of the team members. He seemed ill-prepared, and his manner, even his haircut, appeared to grate on Judge Cowart’s nerves. Peggy Good may have been the most effective of all Bundy’s latest team of attorneys. Ms. Good, in her late twenties, impressed the jury simply because she was a woman standing beside a man accused of brutal attacks on other women. Slender, blonde, and bespectacled, she chose loose, almost baggy, clothing that did nothing for her basic attractiveness. Her voice would remain flat and serious. Only when she was tired would she slip into the drawl of a true, down-home Southern girl. Cowart liked her, and she would receive many of his “bless your hearts.”

  Ted was pleased with her too. He was enthusiastic in his phone call to me on the evening of June 28, a call placed from the Dade County Jail in Miami. Ted sounded confident again and exhilarated but admitted that he was exhausted. “They flew me down here in a single-engine plane, rushed me into jail, and we began jury selection the next morning. I lost a little of my momentum. Cowart’s hurrying us through. We work ’til 10:30 every other night, and we’re going to have Saturday sessions.”

  Breakfast in the Dade County Jail was, and God knows why, at 4:30 A.M., and Ted was tired, but elated over his defense team and his budget.

  “The sky’s the limit. The state has given us $100,000 for our defense. I’m glad I don’t have Mike Minerva anymore. I like my defense team, especially the fact that I have a woman on my side. I have an expert on jury selection who’s helping me pick my jury. He can tell by their eyes, their facial expressions, their body language what they’re thinking. For instance, one prospective juror today raised his hand to his heart, and that means something to my expert.”

  Even in Miami, however, most of those in the jury pool had heard of Ted Bundy. One juror selected, Estela Suarez, had never heard of him. “She only reads Spanish-language papers,” Ted said enthusiastically. “She kept smiling at me … she didn’t realize I was the defendant!”

  There was one young woman Ted had felt ill at ease about, a girl he described as “a perfect candidate for a sorority … a nice, fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked, pretty young girl. I was afraid she’d identify with the victims.”

  Ted extolle
d Carole Ann Boone’s loyalty. “She’s thrown in her lot with me, moved down here, given up her job. She has all my files, and I’ve given her my permission to talk to the news media. In order for her to survive, I told her to ask for $100 a day and board and room in payment for interviews.”

  Ted was eager to see me when I got to Miami. He suggested that I contact Sergeant Marty Kratz, the jailer on his floor, to arrange for a visit. “He’s a pretty good guy,”

  He seemed to understand that I would have to be in the courtroom sitting in the press section, and he assured me he would do everything he could to see I got into the trial. “If you have any trouble, you come to me. I’m the ‘Golden Boy.’ I’ll see that you get in.”

  He was confident that we would be able to talk too during court recesses and before evening sessions. He was insistent that I try to get in to see him in jail as soon as I got to Miami. I fully expected that I would get to see him, but things would not work out that way.

  Ted felt that he was going to have a fair trial. He even spoke well of Judge Cowart and said, “I’ll never have an appeal based on the inadequacy of my defense team, because they’re good.”

  “Are you able to sleep?” I asked.

  “I sleep like a baby.”

  The only matter that was really rankling Ted at this point was Dr. Tanay’s testimony. “I only agreed to talk to him because it was my understanding the session was to be tape-recorded for the benefit of the defense. Spenkelink’s lawyer, Brian Hayes, told me to do that. I was appalled and shocked when Tanay got up in open court and said I was dangerous to myself and others, a sociopath, an antisocial personality, that I shouldn’t be allowed to go free. That was when I realized, and only then, that the court had ordered the examination, not the defense.”