In college, I played Miranda in Shakespeare’s The Tempest so my mother came to Tallahassee for opening night. Trussed up in a whale-bone corset that ruthlessly flattened my boobs and compressed my lungs, I was directed to perform gymnastic physical action on a multi-level stage set while speaking unerringly in Elizabethan English.
Mom was proud anyway. After saying goodnight backstage, I saw her stroll away chatting with a group of people going to on-street parking where I assumed she had left her car. The next day, over breakfast, she went on and on about how impressed she was with a friend of mine, the stage manager of the play. How in the world had she met Suzy?
“I got a little turned around. Suzy found me walking along by myself and escorted me to my car. She told me in no uncertain terms, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t ever walk on campus here alone!’ It turned out I had parked right in front of her sorority house. What a coincidence!”
That was Chi Omega, always confused with my sorority, Alpha Chi Omega, at Florida State University.
Both houses were within walking distance of a ramshackle beer joint dive called The Silver Dollar. One January night, the Dollar was smoky, loud, smelly, and stuffed with rowdy frat boys. My theater major boyfriend didn't show, so I was pouty.
My sorority sisters wouldn’t let me leave though, and badgered me to have fun and relax, annoying me even more. I sat at the bar emanating "bug off" vibes, guarding our pitcher and tab. Someone sat next to me, leaned in, and with bold familiarity, placed his hand on the back of my barstool, disallowing escape.
“Hi,” he shouted over the music.
“Hello.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Ted. “
One of the girls headed to the dance floor on the arm of a hooting frat boy. “Hold my purse, Linda?”
“Ok.”
“Linda is it? Want another beer, Linda?” Persistent.
“No.”
“Dance? Linda?”
I finally looked squarely at him, hoping to burn his face off with my stare. He was older, professorial looking, in a black turtleneck and charcoal slacks and Italian slip-on shoes. Probably some grad school dude trying to score. Annoyance turned into fight or flight. Make that fight. I wanted to punch him.
“No. Ted.”
I bit his name off in one crispy syllable and bared my teeth in a cold smile.
His laser beam focus clicked off. He turned and asked my friend Cayla to dance. He moved like a scarecrow, all knees and elbows, bobbing his head around until he made her look at him as he asked questions. He would put his hand to his ear so she would have to get closer to him to talk. My stomach turned.
Once the music changed, Cayla hastily disengaged, narrowly missing a slow dance, and rushed back to our group.
“He’s a creep. Don’t dance with him.”
Someone said, “Isn’t he at the Law School? Thought I saw him there…”
“Yeah, in the library and he jogs down Park in front of the house. He’s around.”
I’d had enough. “That’s it. I’m out of here. See you all back at the house.”
I walked home at midnight alone, navigating rapidly from one puddle of yellow light glazing the wet cobbles to the next. Staying in the glow of the streetlights seemed safe.
By solemn pact, the “sleeping porch” at my sorority was dedicated to sleep. Windows swathed in black out curtains, eight bunk beds decked out with girly comforters, pillows, alarm clocks, and stuffed animals made nests for serious hibernation. Big rule: Do not ever turn on the light.
That night, our sorority chapter president burst through the door and broke that rule into shards. She turned on the light. My eyes tried to focus on the clock. Three thirty in the morning. She called out our names from a list loudly, roll call style.
There was gossip at that time about some of us who would pack our blow dryers and a change of clothes to spend the night “elsewhere” (code: at boyfriend’s). There was frantic pearl clutching and wide-eyed whispering amongst the legacy belles that it reflected poorly on the morals of the sorority. Proudly saving themselves for marriage, they didn’t want to be associated with sluts. The persistent church-lady drum beat ticked off sisters who did spend the night with their boyfriends and thought it nobody’s damn business.
Indignant, I railed like a harpy from my upper bunk.
“What the hell? You’re on a witch hunt, aren’t you?”
“Shut up. I have to account for everybody.”
“Oh, so it comes to this, does it? Everybody who is not here will be kicked out? For something that’s nobody’s business?”
Pale and terrified, she pulled me into the hall where our weeping House Mother and law enforcement were waiting.
“Oh, will you shut up! Just shut up! Greek women have been murdered in their beds tonight. Help me find everybody…”
In the morning, I found a pay phone to reach my folks. The residential phone system couldn’t accommodate the crush of students calling home to say they were fine. Not murdered in their beds.
Mom opened her newspaper to a front page image of Suzy, the safety conscious stage manager, peeking out of the Chi Omega house front window at the police and the roiling press, her eyes haunted and smudged underneath. It was the money shot. Mom said it felt as though Suzy’s haunted eyes were looking right at her, reminding her not to walk alone, ever.
Opaque in her grief, Suzy had seen much. Once in a staccato conversation, our eyes awash but not weeping, our hands clenched together and pressed white hanging on, she told me about the pools and spatters of blood. Soon thereafter, she asked to be called by a different name: Brooke. She said she just liked it, but I always wondered if this was Suzy’s way to render powerless that episode in her life.
Two of Suzy's sorority sisters were dead. Two more were critically injured. A fifth woman, a dance major, was attacked in her duplex not far away. He used a piece of oak firewood to render them helpless. Cruel irony in a town so softened and canopied by those magnificent sheltering trees. Crueler still, when all was revealed, the murderer’s rooming house was called The Oak.
I had a hard time getting through sociology that semester without my classmate, Margaret. She was one of the two who perished.
Frat boys with shotguns began sleeping in sorority house living rooms. Parents came, silently packed up their daughters, and left. Some of us began to sleep “elsewhere” quite a bit more after that. Not another word was spoken about it.
They caught him a month later, the murderer, heading west in his modified yellow VW bug. The passenger seat had been removed. He was not done yet. The press photograph showed a disheveled wild-eyed lunatic version of someone we had all seen around, in the Law Library, on the street. At the Silver Dollar. Ted.
We wordlessly passed his photo among us, confirming permanently, like a bad tattoo, that we had been in the presence of something sentient but empty. We had met something inhuman that, in our blithe naiveté, we thought never could exist in our fairy tale lives.
We had been assessed, researched and catalogued. We had been the focus of a methodical hunter of humans.
Were we rejected as prey? Or next?
Or did we just get cosmically lucky?
Some months after Ted Bundy was imprisoned, we started to settle down. Our collective guard was still up, but things began ordering themselves normally as routine and classes began to blunt the terror.
My boyfriend and some buddies decided to split a cheap hotel room and watch a highly touted prize fight on the hotel TV system. We loaded up beers and food and, while the guys watched the fight, we g.f.’s just hung out making snide comments about how boxing is barbaric and how our men were Neanderthals for liking that blood sport.
When the fight was over, and the wine gone, some friends left. Others of us just fell asleep where we were. I double checked the door lock obsessively until I was told to calm down and cut it out. There was no bolt and that didn’t sit well with me. But I fell asleep.
A click, a screech and the bang of the door forced open snapped me awake. My eyes focused on the stranger in the room, surveying handbags and booze. He had a scar that ran from his hairline diagonally to his chin.
My boyfriend and his pals jumped up and rushed him, shouting, brandishing bottles as weapons.
The intruder calculated his percentages in a nanosecond. Not good. Outnumbered by big, scrappy, streetwise guys, not the frail elderly travelers he was used to robbing. He flew out of that hotel room – right into the arms of the cops. They said he had a long record and they just needed to catch him in the act, so they staked out our party and waited for him to strike. We were the unaware bait of their sting operation. We found out later he was armed.
What no one knew is that I was armed too with a .22 in my purse. I had recently started carrying.
Scar-face was a recidivist loser. Prosecutors saw no need for us to testify at a costly full-blown trial. He was caught red-handed and armed. He pled guilty. But we still had to give our statements by deposition.
I was on my own at the Leon County Courthouse when it was my turn to be deposed. The lobby echoed the hustle-bustle of police, lawyers and court drones. I waited on a cold white marble bench to be called when everything suddenly ground to a halt. People stopped scurrying and focused their attention on the door.
A slow motion processional of soberly suited and uniformed people toted boxes of documents toward the court rooms. The man in the middle of the group was cuffed and shackled, clinking with every hobbled shuffle step. Waving to some, smiling at others, he was having his day. Under other circumstances, he’d have kissed babies and signed autographs. We were his rapt and captive audience.
Ted Bundy’s teeth, set in a tightly controlled smile, glinted and shimmered like waves over asphalt on a hot summer day. His eyes turned toward me, widened a little and he nodded in greeting.
“Hi… Linda, isn’t it? How’ve you been?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Graphics from Google Creative Commons, commercial use with modification allowed license.
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Ralph Tingey
Leysa Lowery
D. Zuch
joanpgage
Jacob Sugarman
Liam ODonoghue
Salon.com
Comments
Hope this makes cover.
WOWWWWWWWWW
rated with hugs
rated
Margaret: No, I haven't read much of anything about him except to fact check my memory to write this. He didn't/doesn't deserve the attention except to encourage people to be cautious of strangers. I am actually kind of pissed at myself for even writing this.
Linda: Ooops. Glad you survived your lunch! Thank you for the kind words dear.
Susie: Yes. Yes I do.
Oh, and Susie, I think Suzy is working hard for me up there. She passed away not long after college. At Disney World. Irony for all!
Rita: It irks me that a perfectly wonderful first name can make us think of him. Luckily, I have known some amazing guys named Ted since then.
kh: I think I was lucky I was in such a bad mood that night. He didn't want any push back.
Thoth: Thank you, sir. And those were the days before the internet - Now we can be in the presence of true cyber evil and not even know it.
Joan: That's 2 holy craps! He's dead and gone and telling this story was hard for me. Almost like an exorcism. You know how you keep a little topic note of things you want to write? This has been haunting mine since '01. Took me that long to even address it.
tr ig: I hear your deep concern and I smile knowing how much you'd have wanted, had you been there, to be a super hero and make all go away...
Be careful!
If in a dangerous trough invested arena call `cops.
Cops usually no like Ted Bundy's like editor's `teeth.
Yellow?
Corn Cob?
Butter tooth.
Send Troth?
`
Send editor?
Buy cigars,
diapers,
scram.
`
e-mail?
amidst stories of e-mails `
no buy erectile malfunction`
alibi.
No respect Spam deceits ilk.
Sit home alone and sip tisane.
I apologize? I sipping sassafras.
It's a root tea. Root beer roots.
I enjoyed this.
"Hi... How Ya been?" Yes mammy?
Mammy? Respectfully, Beware tho.
Beware of hip-hop adults who prey.
Rated for the luckiest ones never know.
Art: "Beware of hip-hop adults who prey." Perfect, dear poet.
Pilgrim: Just a cautionary tale. You understand...
Scarlett: I was torn between something more "out there" for a title, but this one won out. Felt more right.
Seer: I agree. Things like this seem to happen far, far away. When it's in your face, it's terrifying.
scanner: Yeah. Just yeah. Thanks for reading, my friend.
Maurene: No names, no video, no public arena for them. Yes, I totally agree. He played us all in the end.
Matt: This may be the first time anyone has actually spoken of my writing style in any depth. It is just me, I don't have any influences. For you to say you like it, with your keen eye, means I don't suck, so raising a glass to you!
What a spooky, crazy thing. I just had chills run up and down my spine as I'm typing this.
I remember the Richard Speck trial being held here in Peoria. Another sick, sick person, though hardly the boy next door type. That is what was so scary about Bundy. He looked "normal."
I hope you sleep peacefully tonight, thanks for dragging this up.
These men have lost something, or, maybe, never had that 'thing' to begin with. I am so glad you had good radar - it definitely saved your life. And, next time you stay someplace that needs a dead bolt, don't hesitate about your instincts again (which, I'm sure you haven't)!
Colony: Thanks, man.
MAWB: It was something about his eyes. Windows to the soul or lack thereof?
Bleue: Cycling through old incidents for me are often triggered. I think my kids growing up and facing the big bad world does that.
Sally: I wish there was more to learn from the episode. History is sadly too repeatable these days. We don't learn.
Robin: You said plenty, dear. Thanks.
suzie: I kind of thank god for a real bad Irish temper. Had I been in a good mood and more comfortable...
Sparking: They do have a certain pathology, and if they sense you are "on" to them, it gets dangerous. Glad you are here too.
bobbot: From what I have read from you, yes you can. You've had an eventful life too.
Jonathan: I admit that I shopped it around and got no bites. I am not connected nor am I a celebrity with a cookbook. But i love writing for the audience I do have. You all deserve the best any of us have to offer.
Muse: Thanks! Salon had already seen it. So I knew they'd take a bye on it. You all are my broader audience. And I am grateful.
rj: There are plenty of him out there now if you have been following the Long Island news lately. And then there is the internet...
white and black: Thank you for reading!
I also remember hearing about the Florida State murders and at first thinking the victims were members of my sorority, too. That was one time I didn't bristle at the confusion between Chi Omega and Alpha Chi Omega.
Lezlie
Trudge: He was already convicted of Margaret and Lisa's deaths when that happened. He was on his way in to stand about murdering 13 year old Kim Leach when he smiled at me. It's all about power and he knew he was going down, so I think he was enjoying every opportunity he could have to be "powerful" before the inevitable.
You had me going from the first word to the last. I had wondered how that murderous creep's actions had affected the rest of you in that community.
After reading that book, and now this, we will all be wondering if the slightly or seriously creepy person down the street is a hazard.
Three Golden Zumas!
♥R
I haven't ever met a mass murderer to my knowledge. But it's creepy to think how easily almost anybody could have done so.
Great, compelling story telling Linnn.
rated
Fusun: Thank you so much.
Bea: From you, it means a lot. Thanks!
Sheba: They blend in and have evil intelligence. Makes me want to believe in the devil, but I think it's something wholly different.
Shiral: That's what makes it so freaky. You never know when you are dealing with a sociopath...They are chameleons.
Fusun: Thank you so much.
Bea: From you, it means a lot. Thanks!
Sheba: They blend in and have evil intelligence. Makes me want to believe in the devil, but I think it's something wholly different.
Shiral: That's what makes it so freaky. You never know when you are dealing with a sociopath...They are chameleons.
Fusun: Thank you so much.
Bea: From you, it means a lot. Thanks!
Sheba: They blend in and have evil intelligence. Makes me want to believe in the devil, but I think it's something wholly different.
Shiral: That's what makes it so freaky. You never know when you are dealing with a sociopath...They are chameleons.
Fusun: Thank you so much.
Bea: From you, it means a lot. Thanks!
Sheba: They blend in and have evil intelligence. Makes me want to believe in the devil, but I think it's something wholly different.
Shiral: That's what makes it so freaky. You never know when you are dealing with a sociopath...They are chameleons.
There are huge gaps in my knowledge of human behaviour that can only be filled by such accounts - the contrasts here are stark.
" ... we had been in the presence of something sentient but empty. We had met something inhuman that, in our blithe naiveté, we thought never could exist in our fairy tale lives."
... that there are still more out there. Thanks for this.
i've been afraid of this monster since he was first in the news back then, and to think that you had spoken to him, had almost danced with ... and the rest, the awful awful rest of the story. i remember thinking how he went to his death in prison -- crying, begging, hysterical, terrified -- was emblematic of the coward ultimately that he was. what a story, linda.
and written like the pro you are. impeccable writing.
Rated.
A couple of my old time friends were arrested and sent to prison for felony grave robbing. That was as close as I ever wanted to get to 'EEK!!'
Good thing you picked up on his vibe. I think by then he must have had less control about hiding his creepiness, since his first killings involved getting women to trust & help him, but by the end he had to resort to breaking into places...
I have a fascination with psychopathic killers, having met a few (safely, in prison), and what is most alarming is that, tho most of the ones I met were obviously "off", they didn't strike me as frightening - just a little "off". I mean, I wouldn't have danced with any of them (!), but "serial killer" would never have entered my mind.
We here in Canada have a current serial killer of a most baffling kind, recently tried and imprisoned - he was the commander of an airforce base, well thought of, had flown the prime minister (and, I think, the queen), had a loving wife, was very fond of his cat...
It all goes to show that we can't understand human nature...and TRUST NO ONE...but yet we gotta trust, cuz how else to live...
God, I imagine that last scene, "Hi Linda", must haunt you...
Rated.
I'm really not into paranormal or psychic stuff, but I do believe that some people are better than others at picking up on cues that others give off. Still, I have no explanation for what I felt one day, walking down the aisle of a grocery store. A tall and very broad shouldered, otherwise unremarkable, young man walked past me. And I got such a chill, like everything wholesome had been sucked from me and replaced with something filthy. I actually stopped and turned to watch him go. I tell myself it was my imagination, but I haven't felt anything like that before or since.
Myriad: Have you written about your meetings in prison? Yes and no on the haunting. He's dead so...
Unbreakable: Thanks. Mostly torn with the notion of saying yet another damn thing about that time...It finally just became neutral enough for me to frame up.
Bell: You should pay attention to that sense you possess. It's a gift.
Susan: Thank you. I feel fortunate, yes.
Cindy: Didn't we all take risks like that at the time? That boyfriend I had then teased me mercilessly about my fairy tale life and how I didn't know squat. He was right.
RD: So I am told...Thank you!
ANFSCD: It did help to spill it...Thanks for reading.
Matt: He was/is a great guy. Never really thought to thank him for that until now.
Cuss: I think it's a 4 Holy Crap post now. That's huge! I am so glad you are back...Thanks.
many years ago I think it was the History channel that had a show on famous serial killers, and profiled bundy. worth watching. if you have a strong stomach.
Rated! -Erica
It is nice to know that he will never escape jail again - he was in Florida after a jailbreak out of a Colorado jail - to kill again.
I spent a good deal of time in my younger days reading up on Ted, and Charles Manson, Zodiac, David Berkowitz, Albert DeSalvo, Ed Gein - I had this burning need to understand what the common thread was, what was commonly missing in these people that they could so callously kill just for the fun of it. After ten years of poring over everything I could find, I discovered something that made me finally stop - there was no commonality save their desire to kill and belief that they had a right to do it. I realized I would never find any single thing that would help me to recognize someone like Ted should I ever encounter them
Ted was every guy, the boy next door. He happened along at the right time for Ted, when everyone was still naive in their belief that predators like him could never look like that. They all had to look like Charlie, wild-eyed and crazy.
So many in Bundy's life never had a clue. People who were so close to him that it seems impossible they couldn't have suspected had no idea what he was up to.
That was always the scariest part for me - that he could so successfully masquerade as one of us. I'm grateful that you and many of your friends were able to avoid becoming his victims, and I am so very sorry for your loss. Both the loss of your friends, and the loss of innocence.
Didn't entirely get the image you used, though - but get why you don't want to show any of him.
(Oh and when writing on the Internet, single space between sentences. My two editorial cents.)
Would love you to read my Tarot cards, btw.
To hear of his mental filing system that had him remembering your name from month's previous in a noisy bar was noteworthy in that it shows a glimpse at how he made important moments to to others have no significance at all. He felt connected to you in an uncommon way. Creepy.
You might want to pitch this tale to a north Florida newspaper around the anniversary of either the murders or Bundy's getting his just desserts. Papers like a time hook. Again, well done.
'Linda, isn't it? How've you been'. Incredible. R.
I didn't know any of his victims. I was a very stupid and extremely lucky woman.
Here's my hand, Linnnn. *squeeze*
I didn't know any of his victims. I was a very stupid and extremely lucky woman.
Here's my hand, Linnnn. *squeeze*
I got my wish, but was never in any danger. When I first moved to Toledo I worked in a group home operated by my employer's daughter and son-in-law. He is one of the Cook Brothers, the younger whose older brother killed three couples and with the younger one - the one I met - kidnapped, tortured, raped, and killed a twelve year old girl. The younger brother was also involved in the killing of one of the couples. All that happened a few years before I move here, but DNA discovered the younger Brother's involvement years later. The older brother, who'd been seen killing one of the couples, was already in prison. The creepy thing is after he and his wife divorced, the younger brother asked my best friend, then his supervisor, if I was seeing anyone. Luckily I was. Looks like we were both lucky!