Ted Bundy Bludgeoned, Almost Killed Me, Survivor: Serial Killer, Not An 'Evil Genius'
- A Light in the Dark: Surviving More than Ted Bundy, by Kathy Kleiner Rubin, Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, PhD, Good Reads. - The first book by a confirmed survivor of Ted Bundy, and the only memoir to challenge the popular narrative of Bundy as a handsome killer who charmed his victims into trusting him.
In January 1978, I slept in my bed at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University as Ted Bundy stalked nearby. He grabbed an oak log from a stack of firewood, slipped through a back door with a broken padlock, and headed upstairs. He began twisting doorknobs. Room 9 was open, and he quietly and quickly killed one of my sleeping sorority sisters.
Across the hall, he found another unlocked door and murdered again. Then, he turned the knob to my bedroom and found it was open. I remember the attack vividly. Bundy bashed me once in the head with the log and then attacked my roommate. He heard me moaning and came to finish me off. He never let his victims live. But he stopped suddenly when a bright light filled the room. He fled the sorority house and the light disappeared.
Bundy wasnt my first brush with death, and he wasnt my last. Ive long been a survivor.
I was born into a Cuban American family in 1957 in Florida. I had a happy childhood until I received my first death sentence at the age of thirteen. Physicians werent sure why I was always so exhausted and running a low-grade fever. The prognosis was grim after my left kidney started to fail. Then, a physician from Cuba saved my life with a surprise diagnosislupusand treatment chemotherapy. I endured chemotherapy again in my early thirties when I was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer.
This is my story of surviving three death sentences and finding love and happiness along the way. I was saved by a bright light, and I hope my story is one for people who are experiencing their own dark times. I am a victim, but I am also a survivor, and I want to speak up for all the women and girls whom Bundy murdered. He has become a legend, and our voices have been muted or ignored. Its time we were heard.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/122757860
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The Guardian, 'Ted Bundy bludgeoned and almost killed me. I resolved he would not ruin my life,' Feb. 27, 2024. * Excerpts *
..Bundy, the serial killer, rapist, necrophiliac, failed law student, loner, drifter or, as Kleiner sees it, sad little man has been the subject of many books, films, documentaries, plays, even songs. You dont hear so much from the people whose lives he detonated. Bundys killing spree he murdered at least 30 women and girls between 1974 and 1978 coincided with the start of criminal profiling; it was the decade that the term serial killer was first used by law enforcement.
His trial was the first in the US to be nationally televised. All this gave him a spotlight that has only shone brighter in the decades since in the 2019 thriller Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, he was played by heart-throb Zac Efron. In popular culture, he has mythological status, a glamour and gloss never afforded to todays serial killers and sex offenders. Meanwhile, his victims have been largely forgotten and the few who survived, women such as Kleiner, have quietly found their own way forward.
.. Soon after her honeymoon, Kleiner was called to Tallahassee to testify before a grand jury in pre-trial proceedings, where it would be decided whether charges should advance. It was the first time that she had really seen him. Bundy was sitting at the end of a long conference table and I sat at the other end, she says. By then, I knew his history, the case they were building. I wasnt scared. He was a non-thing. Hes remembered as handsome but he was just an average person youd pass him by. He was sitting there, impatient, arrogant, like a bored middle manager, like we were wasting his time.
The fiction that has built around Bundy has been hard for Kleiner to stomach. He wasnt an evil genius or a brilliant legal mind, she says. His grades were, at best, mediocre; he took eight years to get his first degree, then failed at two law schools. He had never rented anything bigger than a single room in a boarding house. He didnt rely on good looks and charm to lure victims into danger. Maybe some women were programmed to be kind and suppress their instincts when he approached on crutches, or with an arm in a sling to ask for assistance. The majority, though, were bludgeoned from behind as they walked alone, or, like Kleiner, in their beds while they slept.
At some point, it became really important to separate out the truth, and I had to do a lot of reading on psychology to know what he was, she says. And now I know....
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/27/ted-bundy-bludgeoned-and-almost-killed-me-i-resolved-he-would-not-ruin-my-life
Wiki, Ted Bundy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy
MustLoveBeagles
(11,632 posts)thucythucy
(8,086 posts)demonstrates to me how much our culture denigrates women and girls and seeks to minimize their pain.
appalachiablue
(41,168 posts)and the monster psychopath is lauded as a clever, charming genius and popularized.
Aristus
(66,446 posts)I thought after his pathetic, weepy last interview in which he claimed to be a porn addict and that this was what was to blame for his actions, I thought everyone saw him as the sleazy, monstrous failure of a demi-human he really was.
hlthe2b
(102,343 posts)The meeting set-up needed help from their on-site maintenance so in going to seek him out (a little office outside the main hotel building) I was startled to see a desk with a framed picture of the guy with Bundy. Ted Bundy murdered a woman from Michigan there in 1975. I was there decades later-- close to or shortly after he was executed.
The maintenance guy was "normal" and friendly, but I guess this was his brush with "infamy" so he kept the photo on his desk. Bizarre, but I never forget that when in the area.
I can imagine how a victim would see him as the moster he was. But for many who encountered him, he apparently came off as anything but. Somehow that makes him even more frightening.
appalachiablue
(41,168 posts)Lunabell
(6,105 posts)This woman is a strong survivor and has my respect.
I watch a lot of ID channel and it really pains me to see the agony of families that are devastated by monsters like him. You never ever find the peace you need and deserve when your loved one is brutally murdered.
I strongly suspect that monsters like bundy have a genetic component to their psychopathy. My brain just can't wrap around what makes anyone do these things.
appalachiablue
(41,168 posts)also think there is something neurological going on with criminals like this beyond their environment.
Lunabell
(6,105 posts)Abuse. Neglect. Sexual assaults.
To my knowledge, none are depraved serial sexual murderers. Look at dahmer. Apparently, a nice typical homelife. And then, monstrous acts of depravity. It's like there's a genetic switch somewhere that is more involved than just being a violent predator.
Like I said, my mind just can't wrap around that kind of thought process.
cab67
(3,002 posts)He was convicted, in part, based on bite mark evidence.
At the time, it was argued that the marks left by someone's teeth would be unique, and that bite marks on a human body could be linked to a single biter. Bundy's was one of the first cases where it was used.
Bite mark analysis is now widely discredited. The few actual scientific studies of bite mark analysis show very low rates of accuracy.
It's been responsible for multiple wrongful convictions.
Scary to think that if Bundy was still alive, he might be able to challenge his conviction.
appalachiablue
(41,168 posts)cab67
(3,002 posts)Bite marks weren't the only evidence. But they were prominent.