We need to talk about the similarities between Bryan Kohberger and Ted Bundy.
Not only do their booking photos look a lot alike,
but it goes deeper than that.
Brian was a PhD criminology student at Washington State University.
Bundy was a psychology major at the University of Washington 300 miles away,
and he later got his law degree. On December 30th,
Bryan was arrested for the massacre of four University of Idaho College
students, all of them members of sororities and a fraternity. In 1978,
Bundy went on a frenzied killing spree at the Chi Omega sorority house at
Florida State University. And let me tell you what happened there.
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By the fall of 1976 when Kathy Kleiner arrives on campus at FSU
Bundy has already killed 17 young women and tried to kill six others.
Kathy Pledges Chi Omega and her parents really want her to move into the
sorority house come sophomore year. Meanwhile,
Bundy has been sentenced to 15 years at Utah State Prison for
kidnapping Carol DaRonch,
an 18 year old phone operator that he grabbed from a mall in Utah.
So while Kathy skips gleefully through her first semester,
Bundy is sitting in solitary confinement after his first foiled escape attempt.
Authorities in Colorado charge him in the murder of 23 year old nurse Caryn
Campbell, and they transfer him to the Pitkin County Courthouse in Aspen.
Now there Bundy chooses to represent himself in court,
although he never plans on mounting a real defense cause he is only doing it
because he knows the judge won't chain up his wrists and legs. At this point,
he's just biding his time. During a recess,
Bundy asked for some time in the second floor library to research his case.
Instead, he slips behind a bookcase,
pries open a window and jumps the two stories to the ground,
spraining his ankle, but he's otherwise fine, unfortunately.
And then he spends six days on the lamb before his next arrest in Aspen,
but he is not staying in jail for long. Back in Florida,
Kathy's enjoying the summer before her sophomore year at FSU. She and her mother
are super excited about life at the Chi Omega sorority house because for Kathy,
she's about to be surrounded by 40 of her closest friends. And for her mother,
the sorority house sounds way safer than the all girls dorm because it has
combination locks on all the doors. A house mother that looks after the girls,
keeps them out of trouble.
So you know you're having your daughter run off to college,
that's where you want 'em.
So they put their heads together and they plan Kathy's perfect room.
They get her all ready to go. Meanwhile,
Bundy is planning the perfect prison break 1600 miles away.
He's armed with nothing but his charm and that famous smile.
And he gets his hands on a detailed floor plan of the county jail,
$500 in cash and a hacksaw.
While the other prisoners are showering at night,
Ted is sawing a hole in the ceiling about one square foot just wide enough
to squeeze through after losing 35 pounds in jail.
He spends the next few weeks making practice runs through the crawl spaces
above the prison. Some prisoners even said that they heard movement in the
ceiling, but the guards chalked it up to mice.
Fast forward to Christmas time and Kathy has everything she needs to elevate her
room. She's got this beautiful green and white bedspread that she loves.
A yellow flannel nightgown she feels super cozy in.
And her roommate Karen Chandler,
learns to make macrame holders for their plants.
The girls are hanging them from the curtain rod. It looks beautiful,
but it also means that they can't close their blinds at night.
But they don't care. They're not afraid to leave the curtains open.
Their room is on the second floor and the girls love this natural light that
they're getting through these open windows. Open windows. Keep that in mind.
So back in Colorado,
while most of the prison staff is away on Christmas vacation,
Bundy executes his master escape plan. According to Anne Rule's account,
Ted piles books and files on his bed and he covers them with his blanket to make
it look like he's asleep.
And then he climbs into the crawlspace and shimmies his way to the chief
jailer's apartment who was out for the night with his wife,
which probably saved his life and hers. So Bundy drops down,
he raids the jailer's closet for street clothes and he walks out wearing the
jailer's clothes. He steals a car and he drives east.
He catches a bus to Denver, a flight to Chicago, and a train to Michigan.
From there,
Ted steals another car and drives south to Atlanta where he hops on a bus bent
for Tallahassee, Florida. He even gives himself a fake name.
Chris Hagan.
And he rents a room in a boarding house near the F S U campus.
And now he is basically in Kathy Kleiner's backyard. Oh,
according to Anne Rule,
Bundy sees Florida as this chance to turn his life around and he begins his new
journey by looking for work at a construction site.
But since he can't prove he's Chris Hagan,
he abandons the construction gig and he quickly reverts to his old habits.
He's stealing cash and credit cards from purses at the grocery store.
And that's not the only bad habit that he can't shake cause his lust for blood
is still in him. Even in the Sunshine State.
On January 15th, 1978,
Bundy gravitates toward the FSU campus because colleges are his
favorite hunting grounds. He doesn't have a victim in mind.
He doesn't know anyone there, but he knows what he's looking for.
He heads for a building he knows is gonna be full of girls,
the Chi Omega sorority house and he finds what he needs outside.
A pile of firewood and a broken lock on the back door. The handle
turns in his hand,
he slips inside and up this ornate wooden staircase.
As the girls sleep,
he's armed with a solid piece of firewood and he slips into the first room
where he finds 21-year-old Margaret Bowman sleeping alone.
Now Margaret is a legacy Chi Omega who always insisted on being called by her
full name Margaret.
She's this proper young lady who always dressed to impress and could recite
Peter Rabbit from memory.
She studied art history and classic civilizations and had just learned how to
sew before her final moments. In mid-January,
Bundy crushed her skull while she slept,
then strangled her to death with a pair of nylons.
But her brutal murder isn't enough to satisfy him.
So next he slips across the hallway to 20-year-old Lisa Levy's room.
Her Chi-O sister Diane remembers Lisa loving her time at F S U. She
was this avid line dancer.
She tried to teach the other girls everything she knew,
but she would never teach another Line dancing lesson after Ted walked through
her door.
He bludgeons and strangles her before sexually assaulting her with a bottle
of hairspray. Now his hunger is turning literal. He's an actual monster.
This nightmare come to life. One with teeth.
He bites into her left buttock and through her right nipple.
And for all his crimes,
those bite marks were the first trace of himself that he ever left behind.
He leaves Lisa clinging to life and he walks across the hall to Kathy and
Karen's room.
In the darkness he trips over a trunk that the girls had set up like a table
between the two beds. It's the only sound he makes,
but it's enough to wake Kathy from a sound sleep.
She can't see well without her glasses and the room is dark so she can't make
out his face. He's just this ominous black nightmare hovering over her bed.
But she's frozen in fear and she remembers watching as this club-like
thing comes crashing down onto her face. She doesn't feel the white hot pain.
Not at first,
but the club comes down on her face again breaking her jaw in three
places. She's barely holding on. He never utters a word.
The tight room makes it easy for him to spin around and attack Karen the same
way. He brings both girls within an inch of their lives.
But a guardian angel's bright light spares them.
That guardian angel is Nita Neary who just pulled up in her boyfriend's car.
The headlights shine through Karen and Kathy's open window forcing him to run.
He races downstairs and out the back door where Nita gets a good look at him
leaving.
And she would later give Tallahassee police a detailed description of the Chi
Omega killer. Though nobody knew who he really was.
So Nita walks inside to tell her sisters what she saw,
and that's when she spots Karen stumbling out of her room covered in blood.
On a horrifying hunch,
Diane walks into Lisa's room and finds her friend clinging to
life. Paramedics arrive and they're desperately trying to save Lisa,
but her injuries are too much and she dies.
EMTs turn their attention to Kathy. She's still in bed and moaning in pain.
They don't even know what to think. At first was she shot in the face?
They can't imagine any other way that her jaw would be shattered.
Her tongue is nearly bitten in half.
What with all the flashing lights on the emergency vehicles outside,
she remembers thinking that she was at a carnival as paramedics carry her to a
waiting ambulance.
Isn't it amazing what your brain will do to protect you? But Bundy isn't done.
After fleeing the Chi Omega house,
he runs about four or five blocks to a duplex on Dunwoody Street where an F S
U dance major and fellow Chi-O, Cheryl Thomas is asleep in bed.
Her neighbor Debbie,
hears these loud banging noises coming from Cheryl's side of the house and she
can hear her neighbor moaning and whimpering.
So she calls to check on her and she's listening to the phone ringing through
the wall but Cheryl never picks up.
The police find Cheryl on the floor bloodied and beaten, but still alive.
And she has got the most horrifying story to tell.
Bundy crawled through her kitchen wearing a mask made of
nylons. And in Cheryl's words,
if I didn't have my neighbor next door to hear something,
I don't think I would've survived. It was that close.
So Cheryl wakes up in the hospital a few days later and she remembers that the
cops, they're wanting her to ID her attacker,
but it was dark and head trauma is making it hard to remember. So they try Karen
next and she's recovering in the I C U,
but all she can remember are flashes of things,
nothing that accurately describes Ted Bundy. Now Kathy can't help them either.
She spent a week in the hospital with her jaw wired shut and an armed guarded at
the door.
Police led her back to the crime scene to see if her attacker had taken
anything. But she can like barely process what they're asking her.
She can't even see past the blood. All the blood,
her and Karen's covering their room.
The only thing Bundy took that night was their innocence.
In the days that followed, much like the University of Idaho murders,
police had nothing to go on.
The sheriff knew that Bundy had escaped from jail way across the country
basically. But he didn't think he could be involved.
After all the crime didn't even fit his mo cuz Bundy was a cold
but calculated killer. He had a unique understanding of law enforcement
methods and techniques having spent several years in law school in the mid
seventies,
and it took 20 dead bodies for police around the country to learn that they are
all looking for the same guy. He never left behind a trace of physical evidence,
not even a fingerprint.
Not until he left a perfect bite mark on Lisa Levy's backside.
He preferred blunt trauma and strangulation. They're quiet.
There's always something around to use as a weapon.
And he meticulously researched his surroundings for safe places to take
his victims and hide their bodies. And as the killings went on and on,
Bundy stopped breaking into his victim's homes and he started just luring them
into his car. They'd just get right in because he was such a good actor.
He'd pose as an injured man who needed help.
His favorite prop was a fake cast on his arm or leg and his good looks,
his easy charm. This mask of sanity was almost perfect.
Officers out west suggested Bundy as a suspect,
but the sheriff couldn't believe it and nobody could blame him. I mean,
Kevin Sullivan, author of the Bundy Murders,
a comprehensive history said that if you were to hear of this attack and you
were familiar with Bundy's crimes, you wouldn't think it was the same person.
Bundy took his last life three weeks after the Chi Omega murders.
12 year old Kim Leach, she's a student at Lake City, junior high in Florida,
about a hundred miles east of Tallahassee.
She forgets her purse in class and she's on her way to get it when Bundy
snatches her from outside the school.
They find her partially mummified body seven weeks later
near a state park, 35 miles away. But Bundy is already on the run.
He's out of money.
He's paranoid that the police are on his tail. So he steals a car and he drives
West across the Florida panhandle.
He's almost to Alabama when an officer spots the stolen car and pulls him
over. Well, Bundy takes off running,
but the officer catches up to him and tackles him and they struggle.
Bundy's trying to grab his gun,
but the cop is stronger and he overpowers him and he drives Bundy to jail,
not knowing that he just arrested the most wanted man in America.
As the story goes, he heard Bundy utter,
I wish you'd killed me as he slumps in the backseat, but no worries,
because the state of Florida will do that soon enough.
Nita Neary's positive ID and the bite mark on Lisa's buttocks
sealed Ted Bundy's fate. On July 24th, 1979,
he got the death penalty. In January 1989,
Kathy Kleiner and her boyfriend Scott sat together the night the executioner
strapped Bundy into the electric chair. And Kathy remembers this overwhelming
sense of relief when the DA called to tell her that Bundy was dead.
She wept as she thought about her sorority sisters,
their bloodied images playing like a slideshow in her head.
But she said that she finally felt clean after that call.
Like the stain of Ted Bundy had finally been washed away.
She and Scott got dressed.
They went to breakfast and she shopped for a new car that day. Today,
Kathy and Scott are happily married and sometimes she likes to pop into the true
crime section of her local bookstore and scan the Bundy books for her name and
she'll turn to Scott with a grin and say,
now you find a book with your name in it. That girl, dang girl,
she is a survivor. One of the very few.
The Idaho students killer left two girls alive. Why? We don't know,
maybe like Bundy, something spooked him and cut his spree short.
But what do you think about the similarities between America's most notorious
serial killer and Bryan Kohberger,
the accused killer of the Idaho students?
And that's your recap.
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