Why Did Ted Bundy Make Sure the Country Would Never Get the One Answer That Mattered?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is History's Hidden Killers. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
Summer 1979, Miami. Lisa Levy's parents are sitting in a courtroom gallery. They're there to hear a forensic dentist explain to a jury how the bite mark on their daughter's body matches the defendant's teeth.
And the defendant, who is by his own choice, acting as one of his own attorneys, gets up and cross-examines the dentist himself. So Lisa Levy's parents are sitting in a courtroom watching the man who killed their 20-year-old daughter question the evidence from her own body, from his own teeth. Margaret Bowman's parents are in that room too. A year later, Kimberly Leach's parents will sit through the same thing in Orlando. The Chi Omega survivors are in both courtrooms and for the next 10 years, these families keep showing up because Bundy turns every courtroom he walks into into a stage. And the cost of that doesn't stop with the women who were killed. Their families are paying for it for a decade. Bundy spent the last 10 years of his life making sure of one thing, nobody would ever figure out why he did it.
He gave them a number eventually, he gave them for state task forces, the names in his last week alive. He sat down with James Dobson the night before he died and gave him an explanation. But the actual reason why he did any of it, he took that to the chair on purpose.
That's what this chapter is about. This is the fifth conversation in Ted Bundy, history's hidden killers. If you've not seen the other ones, be sure to press subscribe and check it out here on our channel. Join in the conversation on this case. Substack YouTube, the links are in the description. He was indicted in July of 1978, Chi Omega and Cheryl Thomas in one case, Kimberly Leach in another, the Chi Omega trial had to move out of the Tallahassee area because there wasn't a person in Leon County who didn't already have an opinion. So it went to Miami, went to Judge Edward Cowart. More than 250 reporters showed up from around the world. The trial ran six weeks and became the first criminal trial in American history broadcast live on national television. Bundy was better on camera than anybody else in that room. He fired his attorneys, rehired them, fired them again. He filed his own motions. He cross-examined witnesses, including Nita Neary, the woman who'd seen him on the stairs at Chi Omega with an oak log in his hand. He wasn't trying to win the case. He was putting on a show. The one piece of evidence that cut through all of it was the bite mark.
Dr. Sovereign put the dental casts and photographs in front of the jury. The wear pattern on Bundy's upper teeth matched the bruising on Lisa Levy's body. Reportedly, it was the first time bite mark evidence had convicted somebody of murder in Florida. July 1924, 1979, guilty in all counts. A week later, sentenced to die. And then Cowart does something I still really can't believe. He looks at the man he's just condemned and calls him a bright young man. He says it's a tragedy. He tells him to take care of himself.
This judge just sentenced a man to die for killing a 20 year old woman in her bed. And he's on the record feeling sorry for the guy. That's how good Bundy was at this. He had the judge who just condemned him feeling sorry for him at the same time on the record on national television. You can go back and watch it.
January 1980 Orlando Kimberly Leach trial. Carole Ann Boone had been writing Bundy for years. She'd sat in the gallery in Miami. She told every reporter she could find that he was innocent. The defense calls her as a character witness. Bundy acting as his own attorney gets up, cross examines her and asks her to marry him.
On the witness stand, in front of the jury, in front of the cameras. How romantic. She says yes.
He'd set it up ahead of time. He'd put a notary in the courtroom. He'd found a loophole in Florida law where a declaration in the open court before an officer of the court can be made legally binding. So Ted Bundy gets married in the middle of his own murder trial for a 12-year-old. The jury convicted him anyway. The death sentence, February 1980 I keep coming back to one question about this.
Why did Boone say yes? I don't know. Why do people write Bryan Kohbeger? I don't know. Some people are fundamentally broken in the brain.
The marriage wasn't about love. It was about the audience. He was on camera. He was still playing the version of himself that Cowart had felt sorry for. He never stopped playing that part. Death Row came after that, queuing at Florida State Prison in Ryeford, north of Stark, nine years there. In 1982, journalists named Michaud and Aynesworth started interviewing him for a book. They recorded hundreds of hours. They could never get him to say, I. He talked about the killings in third person calmly, like he was some kind of outside analyst reviewing a stranger's case file. The closest the country ever got to a confession from Ted Bundy was one where Bundy himself wasn't in it. He spent hundreds of hours on tape describing what happened to those women and never once admitted he was the one who did it.