The Hand of Death Cult
Lucas and Toole of the Narcotics Cult.
Viola Lucas, the mother of Henry Lee Lucas, regularly abused Henry. She even beat him into a coma for a day and essentially caused him to lose one of his eyes. Viola was a prostitute who worked in front of Henry; for the first seven years of his life she dressed him up as a girl to prostitute him out to men. Interestingly, Henry’s mom claimed that she would teach him the beauty of pain and make him her slave for the rest of his life; considering that abuse impacts a person’s dissociative tendencies what she claimed was arguably true.
Henry’s accomplice called Ottis Toole was raised as a ‘Devil’s child’ by his Satanist Grandmother and thus had lots of knowledge about the practices of Satanism. As a child Toole was forced to have sex with his family including his father, stepfather, his older sister Drusilla, and even one of his stepfather’s friends. His grandmother was his father’s wife; she was part of a multi-generational death cult. There is clear evidence that he faced satanic ritual abuse, Toole claimed that this was because of his involvement in the cult. He had urine poured on him and was made to eat dog meat, he was even forced to watch cats fighting to death as they bled on him. Toole went grave robbing with his Grandmother in order to obtain bones for rituals; including from a fresh rotting corpse. He was often dosed with barbiturates (a CNS depressant and hypnotics) and ‘heard voices’.. Toole had been forced to dress as a girl too. The mainstream narrative is that Toole was severly retarded and juvenile and was therefore led by Henry, yet whilst Toole was uneducated he was clearly not retarded.
In 1970, Henry was released after serving 10 years of a 20-40 year sentence for the murder of his mother, 4 and a half of which was in a mental institution where he received electroshock and drug treatment whilst he constantly complained about ‘heard voices’, despite telling the parole board that he would kill again. He was then arrested shortly after for trying to abduct a little girl but he only served four years as he got another early release despite his long criminal history. In 1975, Henry and Ottis starting their killing spree of nearly 8 years. It was at this point, after being institutionalised, that Henry switched from momentary violent outbursts to living an extreme, bloody, and violent lifestyle. In 1980, Henry spent more time in a mental institution. Drusilla spent time in a mental hospital before committing suicide; her children were placed into the care of Ottis and Henry. The children, named Frieda Powell and Frank Powell and Sarah Pierce, were forced to witness and participate in the crimes and were sexually abused by their ‘carers’. Frieda was murdered by them and was subsequently scattered in a field. Frank ended up in a mental hospital. Sarah Pierce was imprisoned for Arson, a passionate which she had shared with Ottis. Henry was arrested in 1982 on suspicion of murder and released, before being arrested in 1983.
After this arrest, Henry was toured around the country by the Texas Rangers and other law enforcement, on the trip he admitted to 600 murders in 26 states. It is patently obvious that law enforcement was clumping inconvenient unsolved murders onto Henry, a fact which is provable as for many of the murders that Henry confessed to evidence placed him across the other side of the country at the time of death. Lucas was sentenced to death in 1998 for crimes involving rape, torture, necrophilia, cannibalism, and pedophiliia against 300 to 600 people. Yet, 12 days before the execution occurred, the Texas Governor at the time and future president George W. Bush requested that the Texas State Board of Pardons and Paroles, which was staffed entirely by Bush appointees, look into Henry’s case which led to his execution being cancelled.
Was Lucas receiving special systematic treatment and protection? Jim Boutwell, the Sheriff of Williamson County in Texas, claimed that Henry was an ‘unusual prisoner’ as he had a high security cell with some special amenities. Bush hadn’t granted anyone else a pardon in his entire tenure, Bush was an advocate of the death penalty and carried out more judicial executions than any other Governor of any State in history at the time; putting over 150 people to death. The justification given for Henry’s pardon was the ‘possibility of innocence’, yet many of the people executed also had evidence pointing to their innocence but Bush simply mocked and denied their appeals. He even executed a grandmother in her sixties who killed her chronically abusive husband. In the review of the case, Henry was given full clemency rather than the date being set back; Bush had set the date back for the murder Ricky Nolen McGinn. He even denied Karla Faye Tucker from getting a pardon despite high-level support for it coming from figures such as Pat Robberson. Bush carried on rejecting all appeals after Henry’s case. Henry was convicted for 11 homicides but only got the death sentence for one which just so happened to be the one that Bush had no problem with putting aside. Henry wasn’t charged for four additional homicides on economic grounds, despite the fact that Ottis Toole was prosecuted for them. Ottis Toole was trailed in Florida, another Bush-family controlled State where the death penalty was common, but he had his death sentence commuted as well.
Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, the railroad killer, was born in Matamoros and raised by non-family members. In 1999, he walked across a bridge from Juarez into El Paso to turn himself in to the Texas Rangers. Thus, he went from a no death penalty zone to an extreme death penalty zone. He didn’t want an attorney and cooperated fully with detectives. Rafael was wanted for 9 serial killings, he had been taken into custody several weeks before by the US border patrol but was released despite there being a nationwide manhunt for him as he was present on FBI most wanted lists. Between his release and surrender, he murdered four more people. Rafael claimed to hear voices and that he was instructed to put down Christianity, democracy, and freedom during his closing argument to a jury in 1989. From his involvement with Mexico ranches and the Texas rangers, to being released to commit more murders before being arrested again, his case mirrors that of Lucas’s. Henry claimed to follow his case and wanted to meet him.
While incarcerated, Henry got an author to write ‘The Hand of Death: The Story of Henry Lee Lucas.’ The book was based on testimony from Lucas who claimed that Toole had introduced and indoctrinated him into a nationwide satanic cult and that they had trained him in a mobile paramilitary training camp in the Florida Everglades. His training included learning abduction and arson techniques as well as up-close killing; he even apparently served as an instructor due to his impressive knife wielding abilities. He claimed that after this he served the cult as a contract killer and abductor of children for them. He delivered these children to ranch in Mexico near Juarez where they would be used for producing CP and ritual sacrifice. The Cults operations were based in Texas, these involved drug and human trafficking among illegal pursuits. Henry claimed that the cult contained many prominent people including high-level politicians and that the training camp had military ties. The cult carried out political hits on foreign dignitaries, local politicians, and wealthy business men. However, Henry also committed some of the murders for fun, knowing he could rely on the connected-cults protection; this arrangement on his end meant he could live out his fantasies and on the Elite’s end meant that they could assassinate people in a way that make the killings look like random unconnected tragedies done by a serial killer; it’s essentially a giant ‘haystacking’ scheme.
Henry claimed to be a close friend of Jim Jones, the leader of the cult known as the People’s Temple, and that he was taken a chartered plane to Guyana in order to deliver the cyanide to Jones. His ties to a drug trafficking cult would explain how he got the cyanide. Henry claimed to have ties to cult-run ranches south of the US border, such cults did actually exist. In 1989, in Matamoros a ranch located just south of Brownsville was found to contain the bodies of fifteen ritual sacrifice victims; they had been beheaded and had their organs removed, their spines were used to make necklaces and body parts were found in cauldrons. The striking parallels between this discovery and Henry’s story started an investigation into Henry’s claims. Boutwell confirmed that Henry was involved in cult activities. Also, Henry’s spiritual advisor Clemmie Schroeder sent the State attorney a map that Henry had drawn in 1985 showing the key locations of murder, kidnapping, and drug running operations locations. He had marked a cult and drug ring on it near Brownsville; he also had marked many other satanic cults in Mexico. The police and attorney general’s office ignored it. Toole claimed that he and Henry weren’t specifically associated with any given ranch, but that there were many interconnected operations along the Texas-Mexico border to which they were tied.
Rancho Diablo
The Matamoros cult’s leader was Adolfo Constanzo, he was an Cuban-American raised in Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Clifford Linedecker described Constanzo as a cult leader who commanded his zombies-like followers in dope dealing, terror, torture, and human sacrifice. He was born to a 15 year old Cuban immigrant, who was likely a prostitute, and was declared the chosen one by a Palo Mayombe high priest that blessed him. He was trained by Satanists in San Juan and Haiti until age 10, he then returned to Miami in 1972. In Miami, a Satanist high priest mentored him, encouraging Constanzo to partake in grave robbing. His mother was arrested 30 times, yet she always escaped her charges with probation. Her Dade county neighbours considered her to be a witch or sorceress. She was charged with trespassing and child neglect after being found living in a vacant blood, feces, and urine smeared apartment.
In 1984, Constanzo moved to a high-dollar suburb of Mexico City, his house being located directly across the street from an elementary school, to serve as a psychic to powerful individuals; his clients included entertainment stars, nightclub performers, fashion models, politicians, crime lords, police officials, business men, and civil servants. Thus he earned a rather lavish lifestyle. Irma Serrano, a singer and actress who was the mistress of a former president of Mexico, and Florentino Ventura, the head of the Mexican Branch of Interpol, both followed him. In fact, Ventura considered himself the be Constanzo’s godson. In 1988, Ventura supposedly killed himself as well as his wife and another woman; yet the same burst of gunfire killed them all.
The Matamoros cult’s high Priestess was Sara Aldrete, an honour student at Southmost Texas College in Brownsville. Aldrete displayed signs of Dissociative Identity Disorder and seemed to have three alter personalities; a claim backed up by a US custom agent. She had links to the Hernadez drug family. One of the cults top lieutenants, Serafin Hernandez Garcia, attended Southmost as a law enforcement major, Garcia’s grandfather owned Rancho Santa Elena where the cult performed ritual sacrifices and buried lots of their victims. Elio Hernandez Rivera, a drug baron and member of the cult, hailed from Brownsville. Salvador Vidal Garcia, a Mexico City Federal Judicial Police agent who was in charge of narcotics operations, was also part of the cult. Juan Benitez, the Commandante of the Federal Justice Police, claimed that there were another 6 law enforcement officers in the cult, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge them for their involvement. Another member of the cult was from Weslaco in Texas. In 1989, Police searched the ranch and found drugs as well as occultist paraphernalia. They returned later to arrest 4 members of the cult who belonged to the Hernandez drug family. Two days later, the first bodies were found on Rancho Santa Elena, all of the bodies had been mutilated and one person had even been boiled alive whilst another victim had been skinned alive.
The cult’s victims included the owner and sectary of a company that was a front for a cocaine processing lab, an informant for Federales (the Mexican federal police) and his mistress, 2 federal narcotic officers, three former police officers, and the American nephew of an US Customs Agent. The cult is also linked to the deaths of 7 members of a drug trafficking family that was threatening to expose police complicity in the drugs trade; on Walpurginacht in 1987, these members were killed in a mass ritual slaughter which involved body parts being removed, genitals being excised, and the removal of two brains as well as a spine. Many of the cults members had links to the Hernandez family which trafficked drugs to top Chicago mob bosses; interestingly Constanzo was reportedly sighted in Chicago during the manhunt for him. Between 1887 and 1889 there were seventy four unsolved ritual homicides in Mexico City; 14 of the victims were infants.
In 1987, the cult’s Patriarch Serafin Hernandez Rivera was arrested in Houston. A US grand jury issued indictments for Constanzo and 10 followers on drug charges, three days later the Mexican authorities charged the four captured cultists with murder, kidnapping, and drug trafficking. Two days later, a crew of heavily armed Mexican Federales burned down the death shed at Rancho Santa Elena, destroying vital evidence. Police looking for a missing child ended up at a Mexico City apartment where Constanzo and four of his followers were hiding, shots were fired from inside garnering a large police response. A 45 minute exchange of gunfire ensued. Constanzo and his male lover were executed on Constanzo’s orders, but this could have been faked as witnesses claimed that two men fled from the scene. The supposed body of Constanzo and his lover in the closet were riddled with automatic weapon fire making identifications challenging, he could have easily been substituted for another cultist. The body was claimed by US consular officials on behalf of his mother, it was quickly flown to Miami to be cremated. Police found blood spattered alters in homes of suspected cultists, and newspapers even suggested that infants were ritualistically sacrificed and that babies had been bred for this purpose.
The Lucas and the Long Families
Bobby Joe Long, the cousin of Henry Lee Lucas, was born in 1953 to Joe Long and Louella Lucas, both families had a history of mental illness and alcoholism. Louella’s father died when she was three and she can’t remember her mother. She separated from Joe when Bobby was eight months old, after this they kept breaking up and reconciling, even going so far as to remarry each other twice. When he was 2 and a half years old, Bobby lived in Florida with Louella in a series of seedy apartments and boarding houses, she worked at bars as a prostitute. Bobby also lived with Louella’s mother, Louella’s two sisters and half sister, and of his cousins (one of which was potentially Henry; their tight living condition is given as the reason why Bobby slept with his mother until he was 13. Bobby got locked in a closet by his cousins and screaming to be let out. He worked as a funeral home attendant and at medical facilities as an X-ray technician. In the late 60s, Bobby began experimenting with and getting hooked on LSD. He was arrested for theft in 1970, but the charges were dropped. Two months later he was put on probation for a different offence. He was then accused of rape, but it’s unclear if he was ever charged. He joined the Army in 1972 and was positioned in Fort Benning; this was the home of the ‘School of Americas’ or ‘School of Assassins’, a training facility for Central and South American death squads. He spent a considerable amount of time recovering from a motorcycle accident in the Army Hospital, he claimed that this accident changed him completely. He was discharged, potentially due to medical reasons, and got a 40% disability rating with full military benefits.
In 1975, numerous women in 3 Florida counties were taken by a man at knife point before being bound and raped; the man then looted their homes. The unknown criminal was dubbed the ‘Classified Ad Rapist’. In 1981, Bobby was accused of rape and battery, before the charge was dropped to just battery, by his girlfriend. He represented himself and waved his right to a jury; Bobby received 30 days in jail and 6 months probation, but then Bobby wrote an informal letter to the Judge requesting new trail which the Judge absurdly accepted. Bobby was released to await new hearing. By the end of the year, he was charged with obscene communications with the twelve year old daughter of a Tampa physician; he was fined 65.50 dollars and received 6 months probation. Bobby then travelled to West Virginia and then Southern California where he stayed for 6 months, at the time Henry stayed in Hemet California. Bobby signed up for a 9 thousands dollar diving class, considering Bobby was broke and underemployed the source of his funding is a mystery. Witnesses who socialised with Bobby at the time claim that he often went out alone and refused to disclose where he went, he was also prone to mood swings, headaches, and using racial slurs. He went back to West Virginia where he was arrested for assault and property damage, the judge was a family friend of the Long family. Having been acquitted of assault, he simply paid 68 dollars for destroying property. Back in Florida in 1984, Long was acquitted for the battery of his girlfriend despite the State having several credible witnesses including at least one who saw the beating occur.
Ann Wick disappeared in 1984; she had just arrived in Tampa and moved in with a police officer. The police officer was incoherent in an interview about her disappearance, Bobby later agreed to admit to murdering her so long as he wasn’t officially charged, thus absolving officer and others of the crime. Five months earlier, a boyfriend of hers and his brother had beaten their father to death with her complicity, she had subsequently left town without telling anyone where she was going. A week after Wick’s disappearance, Bobby attempted to abduct a woman at gunpoint but she intentionally crashed her car to stop the attack. For this, Bobby was only given six months parole and had to pay 1,500 dollars in restitution. After this, Lana Long’s body was discovered raped, strangled and posed; her body was found months before Wick’s. She had recently come to Tampa from LA with her boyfriend, though her boyfriend didn’t report her disappearance until his friends threatened to do it on his behalf. Lana and her boyfriend were associates of LA nightclub owners including Eddie Nash (Adel Gharib Nasrallah) where Lana had danced; Eddie was the prime suspect in the Wonderland Murders and the leader of an organised crime ring. There was talk among Tampa’s exotic dancers of men recruiting women for nude modelling jobs and snuff films; an associate of Lana’s had reportedly made the unusual move of coming to Tampa from LA to pursue a’ film role’. Shortly before her death, Lana had desperately tried to raise money to leave town.
Half of police force including its top brass came to the Lana crime scene which is very unusual; all evidence was sent directly to the FBI headquarters in Quantico via a special courier system for unexplained reasons. The FBI supposedly began to secretly build a fibre evidence case, the media wasn’t informed about this until after Bobby arrested as suspect; perhaps because it didn’t exist until then. Michele Denise Simms’s body was discovered two weeks after Lana; she went from Southern California to Tampa for modelling work. Like Lana, she was a heavy drug user, Simms’s mother had died when she was young and Simms’s father was imprisoned for holding her and her babysitter at gunpoint. Elizabeth Loudenback went missing next, two days before her disappearance she had left a note affixing blame if anything happened to her; the letter included the name of a man claiming to be a police and Drug Enforcement Administration informant and a matching description of his vehicle. On other occasions she had expressed a fear for her life and of another man, both of the aforementioned men failed polygraph examinations but they weren’t considered suspects. Three months went by before Vicky Elliot disappeared, her body was exposed to the elements for two months before discovery, her face was left as a skull with a few strands of hair attached. Despite the FBI’s own experts saying that exposure to elements will destroy fibre evidence; they claimed that fibres from Bobby’s car clung to the strands of hair. By October a taskforce was assembled made up of the County Sheriff’s Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Tampa Police Department, and the FBI’s Behavioural Science Unit. Stan Jacobson was the assigned profiler, he was a member of the team that engineered the illegal incursion into Panama to capture dictator and intelligence asset Manuel Noriega.
Chanel Devon Williams, the only black victim, was killed via a gunshot wound to neck rather than being strangled; she had been forced into prostitution and was planning on leaving her pimp. Kimberly Kyle Hopp’s mummified and headless corpse was found on Halloween on a road which had been bulldozed the previous day, she had been missing since the 4th October and had been killed much earlier, yet clearly she was only just dumped there. Shortly before her disappearance, she had fought with her boyfriend and pimp Donald Jones; he took three days to report her missing. Karen Dinsfriend was raped and strangled. She was a prostitute and a drug addict, but she was from a very wealthy family. She had been arrested four times for forging prescriptions to obtain Dilaudid, also known as hospital heroin. 18 year old Virginia Lee Johnson vanished one day later; she was an alcoholic, drug addict, and a prostitute. Her 17 year old sister had been murdered the year before, they had both been alcoholics since Johnson turned 10 and both had been sexually abused by their stepfather. Johnson’s corpse wasn’t found for a month so her skeletal remains were scattered over a large area by animals, yet supposedly some fibres from Bobby’s car remained on her scalp.
Kim Marie Swann’s beaten body was rolled down a hill over a guardrail. She was a prostitute for a pimp known as ‘Fat George’, she hung out at bars at age 13 so she likely started her career early. Shortly before her death, she had reported two instances of men trying to break down her door. Her disappearance wasn’t reported for days. Her clothes, which were found near her body, reportedly had fibres from Bobby’s car on them. Lisa McVey vanished next, but she reappeared 26 hours later. At 17, Mcvey dropped out of school to move in with Marce Rhodes, wheelchair-bound double amputee who supposedly kidnapped her from the street after she had left work; he pretended to be her father but kept her as a sex slave. Rhodes had dated Mcvey’s grandmother, she was aware of the situation but did nothing to stop the girl’s treatment; in fact she approved of Lisa’s living arrangements. Half an hour after Rhodes abducted Lisa her grandmother called Rhodes; she claimed that she was just checking in on him despite it being 3:00 AM. Lisa had been sexually abused by many men, both before and whilst being Rhodes captive. Thus, despite Bobby kidnapping and raping her, she found him to not be too bad. She claimed that Bobby went out of his way to make sure she was comfortable, kept a spotlessly clean house, and let her go after just one day. She described her abductor as being 5’7” and weighing 150 pounds, but bobby was 6’ and weighed 180 pounds; so she either tried to mislead police to protect Bobby or perhaps her abductor wasn’t Bobby at all. When police arrested Bobby, detectives immediately cut a swatch of carpet from his car to compare it to the FBI fibre database; or more likely to potentially use to plant fibre evidence. Bobby was interrogated for 5 and a half hours without an attorney despite him requesting one, this allegedly yielded a confession. The media painted him as the killer straight away.
At his presentment hearing he was walked around with his ankles manacled and his handcuffs shackled to a body belt; he was charged with 8 counts of murder along with other serious crimes and indicted by a grand jury within 24 hours. Bobby was moved to a special holding cell in the infirmary where he was isolated. Local newspapers claimed that an unidentified group of investigators from Tampa tailed Bobby and interviewed witnesses before police did and before he was even a suspect. In 1985, Bobby’s trail began for the ‘Classified Ad rapes’ in one of the counties, the trail was over within two days and he was of course declared guilty. He received 693 years imprisonment, exceeding Florida’s sentencing guidelines. This is despite the fact that there is zero evidence linking Bobby to any of the series of rapes short of one out of multiple witnesses being able to later identify him. These rapes started before and continued after the killings that Bobby was accused of; so the official profile that we’re supposed to believe is that Bobby was a serial killer in one county and a serial rapist in three others.
Days later, jury selection began in Dade county for Bobby to be tried for the murder of Virginia Johnson. His defence council for most of his time in the Courts was Ellis Rubin, a Florida Attorney who represented the Collier brothers (who wrote the book ‘Votescam’) and dealt with prostitution as well as battered women cases. Rubin conceded guilt but claimed that Bobby couldn’t control his actions, the defence didn’t raise a single challenge of fibre evidence nor did they call any witnesses at all. Bobby’s parents and ex-wife were barred from entering the Courtroom under the justification that they were ‘potential witnesses’, yet Detectives who had worked n the case were allowed to watch the trial. This tactic was used to create the impression that Bobby was a lone nut whose family didn’t even bother turning up for him. It only took 44 minutes for the jury to reach a guilty verdict, the next day they gave him the death penalty with only 35 minutes of deliberation. A month later, Bobby sat in Court on more rape charges, he pled guilty giving him 6 life sentences; again exceeding the sentencing guidelines.
The defence and prosecution attorneys met to discuss the 8 outstanding murder charges, Bobby agreed to plead guilty to them and other charges for no reason as he wasn’t granted a plea deal. Bobby received twenty six life sentences. Bobby then went to trail again so the State could charge him with one more death sentence. Bobby’s defence implicated him in a murder that wasn’t even publically credited to him; he got another death sentence with an hour’s deliberation. In 1987, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a new trial for the Johnson case as the confession came from an illegal interrogation. In 1988, the high court tossed out Bobby’s second death sentence. The State retried him for Johnson case, they used a 2 minute heavily edited clip of a 90 minute television interview as his new ‘confession’, but the defence only provided a few psychiatric witnesses without challenging the State’s claims. The jury took sixty two minutes to find him guilty, and thirty minutes to give him the death penalty. In 1989, sentencing for the Simms case convened. Within three days, the Jury gave Bobby the death penalty, which the Judge added two life sentences to. In 1992, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the Johnson case again, citing how the State mainly focused on crimes he wasn’t even being tried for and that the state’s main evidence was inadmissible. He was just found guilty and sentenced to death yet again.
In the end Bobby had two death sentence, 34 life sentences, and 693 additional year’s imprisonment. Bobby was clearly set up in terms of the murders. The only physical evidence was the dodgy fibre case, an unidentified surveillance team was watching Bobby, and there are indications that the Lisa McVey abduction was aided by other people so that the State could at least have one eyewitness linking Bobby to any crime. But Bobby was clearly involved in criminal activities. He had collection of photographs of rapes in progress; police believed that there were additional photos in the hands of others. At a deposition hearing a lead investigator on the case claimed that the police believed Bobby photographed his victims as he killed them. Bobby’s former wife claimed that she had found a collection of nude women, some with a blank (dissociative) look in their eyes. No such photos were every produced, likely to protect others. Semen evidence was recovered from two of the murder victims, but it didn’t match Bobby’s. In a letter Bobby wrote whilst incarcerated, he claimed that he ‘talked’ but never mentioned his ‘kinky friends’, one of these was a woman who returned to California and another one was a man who returned to Miami.
Sondra's Gainesville Ripper
Danny Rolling’s mother was called Claudia Beatrice Rolling and his abusive father was named James Harold Rolling, a highly decorated hero from the Korean War. James was a controlling man with a violent temper. He tied up his sons and even locked up a 13 year old Danny up in jail cell for 2 weeks. He liked to trap neighbour’s cats before shooting them and watching them die. Danny’s family had a history of mental illness, violence and suicide. Danny’s father had witnessed his grandfather slitting his wife’s throat from ear to ear. Danny’s grandfather had worked for the County Sheriff’s Office and James worked at the local Shreveport police where he quickly became lieutenant. Danny had great musical ability; he considered himself an artist and even sang in a choir. In 1971, Danny became an US Air force Airman after his dad signed him up at age 17. Two years later he was in military prison, Danny was discharged after a psychiatrist found that he had an antisocial personality disorder. In 1974, Danny got married whilst he worked for the local Water Department. His wife filed for a divorce in 1977, she later married a cop.
Danny was arrested for two counts of armed robbery in 1979; he received a six year prison sentence. He managed to escape whilst he was incarcerated, but Danny was captured a few hours later and received an extra year in prison. In 1980, he pled guilty to armed robbery in Alabama, giving him 10 years in that State. Danny was released by the state of Louisiana in 1982 but immediately went to Alabama to serve his time there. A month later he escaped again for 2 days, despite this he was released after just 2 years. Danny then headed to California for unknown reasons before drifting back east. In 1985, he began serving a 15 year sentence he received for another armed robbery incident and grand larceny (theft) in Mississippi. Danny was regularly put in solitary confinement in a cold sewer-infested cell and later on was put on a chain gang. Amazingly, he was released in 1988. At home, he began attracting neighbourhood kids. In 1990, James opened fire at Danny with a service revolver after having repeatedly told his wife that he wished his son was dead. Danny shot back knocking James down, he then shot his father in the face at close range before kicking James’s nearly dead body. Danny fled to Florida were he stole the identity of Michael J. Kennedy, a Vietnam veteran who had died in 1975. He then headed to set up a camp in wooded area of Gainesville; at the time Money Magazine ranked it as the 13th safest place to live in the US.
In 1990 Ray Berber, a police officer, discovered two dead college students, they had been stabbed repeatedly and mutilated before being posed; one had been raped. The bodies were washed with detergent and the apartment was thoroughly searched. Some body parts were missing or carved out of the girls, such as one of the girl’s breasts. Most of the blood spillage had been wiped away and duct tape had been removed. Berber had spent time alone in the student’s apartment. Twenty or more officers were on the scene within minutes; this included the Gainesville police chief and the state’s attorney. 9 hours later, Gail Berber (Ray’s wife) discovered the body of Christa Hoyt. Gail had trained Hoyt as a Sheriff’s Explorer after she spent a summer at the US Department of Agriculture’s Entomology Lab, after the training Hoyt worked full time in the record department of the Sheriff’s Office. Hoft had a romance with a deputy sheriff. Hoyt had been beheaded and her head was posed on a bookshelf facing the door. Her corpse was also posed, her nipples were removed as were her boobs; her boobs were packaged up but just left there. She had been cut from the breast to public bone in such a surgically precise manner that there was no damage to her internal organs; the cut looked ritualistic. Hoyt was into a Goth like atheistic and had made mention of a devil cult living in the immediate vicinity. The house had been searched, soap and water was used on the body, and tape had been removed; there was also evidence of rape having occurred. Two bookcases were moved; one from the hall into the bedroom, a feat which would require more than one person. The body had been moved hours after the time of death; it was later claimed that Danny moved it as he returned to get his wallet, but this is absurd as a veteran criminal would have no reason to bring incriminating evidence like that to a crime scene.
A task force was set up, it contained 10 members from the FBI’s BSU including profiler John Douglas. J. O. Jackson, who had been the principle agent in the Bundy taskforce, was likewise the principle agent for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Also included were the local police, state troopers, and US Navy reservists. The investigation involved paramilitary manoeuvres, making this appear to be a rehearsal for martial law; 11 years later Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed legislation legalizing martial law just days before 9/11. The next day, two more victims were found when a maintenance man peered into an apartment thinking that it had been burglarized, he locked the door and called the police. When he returned, the door was unlocked and a dark coloured bag which had been there was missing. One victim was the physically imposing college athlete Manny Toboada who suffered 31 stab wounds; many of these were defensive. It is highly unlikely Danny would have had the physical capacity to kill Toboada alone. The other victim was Toboada’s roommate, Tracey Paules. She was raped anally and posed; her body yielded semen present and five pubic hairs. There was no attempt to clean up the crime scene so blood was spattered everywhere, the deaths were extremely violent but there was zero excess mutilation done to the bodies. People claimed to see Danny and drug dealer Tony Danzy lurking in the woods. A cassette recorder and cash linked to a bank robbery from the previous day were seized from their camp; so the official narrative is that in the midst of his murder spree Danny randomly robbed a bank with an accomplice who was unrelated to the murders.
Two days later, Edward Lewis Humphrey, the son of an alcoholic mother and abusive father, had a violent altercation with grandmother. Lewis was arrested and questioned for over 24 hours without attorney at the Regional Medical Center. Despite only being charged with assault and having no criminal record, his bail was set at 1 million. Lewis was convicted and given two months at Chattahoochie State Hospital, in reaction his mother claimed that he was a good boy who hung out with bad people, and that it would be okay if he committed suicide. Lewis was a prime suspect for a whole year (as was another man who was suspected of a multiple stabbing murder in Ohio); he had often made violent threats and displayed erratic behaviour. He was diagnosed as manic-depressive and committed to a psychiatric facility where his sister claims that he began getting crazy thoughts like Satan being everywhere. The Gainesville campus was full of talk of a satanic cult at work. Another prime suspect had satanic writings in his home. Items on lists of evidence sought by the task force included a black hood, photographs and audio tapes and video tapes of murder, severed nipples, and human blood; all satanic ritual related items. Lewis had also suddenly got into knives and militarism to the point that he went out into the woods late at night to ‘recon’. He also claimed to be a middleman for a high-volume drug dealer, but he lived below a police officer. He knew about details of the murder which were not publically released information like the nature of the wounds. His brother knew Paules and he lived near the crime scene. In Chattahoochie, he admitted to knowing about the killings but blamed it on an alter personalities. His fellow inmate Stephen Michael Bates claimed that he, Lewis, and another man had committed the murders; he also affirmed that Lewis was into Satanic stuff.
In 1990, investigators claimed that semen samples from two crime scenes match. In 1991, Danny was arrested for robbery and got a life sentence, over the next two months he was convicted for two different burglaries; gaining a total of three life sentences and 170 additional years. Whilst Danny was in custody, the state got a sample of his blood from a tooth extraction and hair from a haircut, prosecutors then returned with warrant to gather the exact same samples; the previous samples weren’t mentioned. A grand jury convened and Danny was indicated on the five murder charges. He then made several suicide attempts, so he was transferred to Chattahoochie State Hospital. The police spokesman on the murder case moved onto the FBI Academy in Quantico. Strangely, in his upcoming trial the Judge, prosecutors, and Danny’s defence attorneys had been classmates together at the University of Florida law school; mirroring the Bundy case.
Around this time, Rolling began a relationship with true-crime writer Sondra London; London had been romantically involved with the serial killer and child rapist Gerald John Schaefer (who interviewed a Satanic Fourth Priest in the Hand of Death Cult called Mad Dog McKenna / Kenneth Alvin Cooley for London). London even published his ‘serial killer fiction’ via Feral House, a publishing company owned by Adam Parfrey who glorified Gilles de Rais and had ties to the Process Church, which has the exclusive rights to Anton LaVey’s writings. Schaefer was killed in a prison cell in 1995, many people suspect at the hands of Toole. London was friends with Ann Rule and Kenneth Lanning, a chronic ritual abuse denier from BSU. London urged Rolling to take credit for the murders publically, as did his homicide cellmate Bobby Lewis. Danny’s ‘confession’ was Lewis talking whilst Rolling sat nearby giving automatic affirmative responses; the first session was audio taped and the second was videotaped. He blamed the killings on an alter called Gemini which he insisted acted alone. Police attempted to verify his confessions through searching for the murder weapon based on the details given, but they were unsuccessful. Danny’s trial was repeatedly post-poned, it was originally set for 1992 but it didn’t begin until 1994. Danny entered a guilty plea; he claimed to have done so to prevent the details of the murder from airing in court so as to allow London to have an exclusive story.
Yet the prosecutors aired the case anyway, the guilty plea meant that the defence hardly objected to the problematic evidence presented. The state claimed that a Stanley screwdriver found at the campsite was used to gain access to the crime scenes as pry markings matched its blade. But thousands of identical ones are manufactured and state could only assert that Danny stole it, it had no actual link to him at all. The state also asserted that he stole duct tape and two pairs of athletic gloves found at the campsite, and that he had brought a knife in Tallahassee under an assumed name; yet there is zero documentation supporting this. A pair of black pants at the campsite was stained with Toboada’s blood, yet the killer had taken a dip in the pool immediately after murders to dispose of such evidence. Other evidence included a pubic hair from Hoyt at the campsite, a clothing fibre at a crime scene, and a note supposedly matching Danny’s handwriting from a crime scene. The campsite evidence wasn’t produced until a year after the investigation had begun. It was also claimed that semen and blood samples identified him as the killer, yet we know such evidence was clandestinely obtained from him. The cassette recorder contained a tape, which supposedly wasn’t listened to until months after it was seized, made by Rolling for his family which ended with him saying ‘I gotta do something’. The state claimed that this proved his guilt. The state also called Experts to the stand to dispute Danny’s DID claims. He received 5 death sentences after 5 hours of deliberation. Shortly after, James was cited for the battery of his terminally ill wife.
Bundy's Silent Reign of Terror
Theodore Robert Bundy was born at Elizabeth Lund Home for unwed mothers where he was abandoned for three months by his mother: Eleanor Cowell. Some claim that his mother was an abusive young prostitute who made Ted watch whilst she worked. He was raised to believe that Sam Cowell, his grandfather, was his dad; there is a possibility that this belief is true. Sam was a church deacon who Ted admired, yet other family members described him as violent, abusive to the family, and sadistic towards animals. Sam’s bother claimed that someone ought to kill Sam to spare others misery. From an early age, Ted wanted to be a police officer. In 1950, his mother called herself Louise and changed Ted’s name to Theodore Robert Nelson. In 1951, she then married Johnnie Culpepper Bundy who came from a large Tacoma Bundy clan, so Ted’s name was changed again. Johnnie was a former navy man who was employed at a military hospital in a joint Army / Air Force complex.
Ted attended Woodrow Wilson high school in Tacoma according to classmates, however all records of his enrolment have disappeared. He then graduated and worked for a municipal electric utility. In 1967 he met Stephanie Brooks (though this is a pseudonym); Brooks was the daughter of a wealthy California family. In 1968, Ted received a scholarship to attend Stanford University for sessions in intensive Chinese studies; this is despite there being zero indication he had any interest in Chinese. That year he also travelled to Florida to attend the Republican National Convention as a supporter of Nelson Rockefeller. Around this time, Ted worked as a driver and body guard for Art Fletcher; a Lieutenant Governor in state of Washington candidate. In 1969, he travelled to Aspen (Colorado) under the false guise that he had been hired as a ski instructor. He then paid a visit to Arkansas, reportedly to visit relatives. Liz Kendall / Meg Anders, the daughter of a prominent doctor in the Mormon stronghold of Ogden, met Ted. Her estranged husband was a convicted felon.
In 1971, Ted worked in the Seattle Crisis Clinic as a paid study student for a year. He worked with Ann Rule, a police woman for the Seattle Police Department and former Chi Omega sorority sister who turned into a true crime reporter, at time her brother had recently ‘committed suicide’ at Stanford University. Ted then interned at Harborview County Hospital as a psychiatric counsellor, a federal grant funded his salary. He became a key organizer of Washington Governor Dan Evans’ re-election campaign by acting as a spy on his opponent. Ted was a member of the young republicans. Evans wrote him a letter of recommendation to a Utah law school. Ted was also friends with Ross David, Washington’s Republican Party Chairman, and occasionally babysat Ross’ kids; in 1973 he became his special assistant. Ted would go on to work for the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Committee, the King County Law and Justice Planning Office, and the Seattle Crime Commission. Ted even set up ‘T. R. B. Associates’, a law enforcement consultant. In 1973, Bundy flew to San Francisco before returning to Washington and beginning to commit the murders.
His personality as well as appearance could change quickly, Joe Aloi (an investigator on case) claimed that Ted changed his body and muscle tone and started emitting an odor in response to stressful situations. The judge in the Colorado trail called him a changling and drew comparison to Bugliosi’s observations of Manson (which were backed up by Manson Disciple Susan Atkins). Thus Bundy may have ties to ritual abuse. In 1974, there was an abundance of cattle mutilations in the Pacific Northwest; these were likely linked to satanic cult activity. Local police claimed that Satan worship had a small but ardent following around the Seattle area. File 1004 was assembled documenting occult activities in the area; this document linked disappeared women to the victim of a cannibalistic satanic killing in Montana. It claims that a man called ‘Ted’ held satanic meetings and set up satanic alters. This is interesting as there was an article about this file was in 1976, it mentioned victims of occult crimes who were only later claimed to be Bundy’s. It should also be noted that Bundy was openly heavily into Mormonism. The fact that only the bones of many of the victims were found could potentially support the idea that many of the murders were occultist in nature, if not at least done by an extremely professional killer. However, Occult theories were ridiculed by county police and prosecutors so this line of inquiry was never properly investigated. Yet the assassin and admitted cult member Mad Dog Mckenna, who was a prison friend of Schaefer whom was of course linked to Rule through London, claimed that Bundy used him as his mentor. He also claimed that Ted had a Satanic cave where the unfound bodies are, which is interesting as Ted did talk to investigators about how he was working on a body disposal site to facilitate his murders.
In 1973, Katherine Merry Devine’s body was found. She had gotten into a pickup truck, which wasn’t driven by Ted, after running away two weeks before. Her body was missing many of its specific vital organs, this was supposedly due to animals yet they would have had to be extremely fussy and precise. Then Lynda Healey disappeared in 1974. If we are to believe the official take, Ted entered house and crept downstairs to kill her whilst being completely undetected by others (despite a roommate sleeping just the other side of a thin plywood partition), wrapped her body without leaving any sign of a struggle, carried it upstairs, returned to make her bed and hang up her nightgown, then grabbed a change of clothes for her. Later that day, her roommates received three phone calls involving only breathing noises. One of these roommates later roomed with Bundy’s cousin who Ted was close to since the age 4. The brother of this cousin was a teacher of disturbed youngsters; interestingly Lynda did voluntary work at an experimental school for retarded youth called Camelot House. Only her skull was found which was used to deduce a bludgeoning had occurred, her mother claims the identification was made based on a single tooth; making it rather unreliable.
Next Donna Gail Manson (a college student) vanished; it took a week for anyone to bother reporting her missing. Donna had been walking outside and looked nothing like Lynda. Donna dabbled in Occultism, she had literature from the organisation ‘Thought Power Inc.’ which offered semesters on positive thinking and mind discipline. Alfred Pickles, the Chief of the college Police force, ordered a perfunctory search before delegating oversight of the case to his secretary. Ted had a friend who was Donna’s occasional racquetball partner. Susan Rancourt disappeared next; her jogging partner was Ted’s friend. Only her skull was found, amongst other skulls on Taylor Mountain such as the skulls of the next two victims to vanish: Roberta Kathleen Parks and Brenda Ball. Ball wasn’t reported missing for two and a half weeks after her disappearance; she was an acquaintance of Anne Rule’s daughter. Georgann Hawkins disappeared next from a well lit busy street running along a campus in 1974, all the windows facing the ally were open and the students were awake. She was seen going to her sorority house just seconds before entering; yet she disappeared without a single clue being left behind. A high school friend of Ted’s was a family friend of the Hawkins’. The day her disappearance was reported, Herb Swindler became the Head of the homicide division; he had been a friend of Rule’s for 20 years.
In July 1974, a law enforcement summit was held in Olympia which was attended by over 100 representatives from Oregon and Washington. The wave of missing girls was discussed, yet only one of girl’s remains had been discovered at time and the disappearances occurred over such a wide geographical area that there was zero proof of a connection between them; the only common link is that no evidence had been found at all in any of the cases. The Army’s Criminal Investigation Division and Ann Rule were there. Days after conference, Janice Ott, a probation officer whose father sat on Washington State Board of Prison Terms and Parole, and Denise Naslund, a drug user and babysitter for a good friend Ann Rule, disappeared from the crowded Lake Sammamish Park in broad daylight, the Seattle Police force were holding their annual picnic there that day. Ott and her bike, which couldn’t fit in Bundy’s car, disappeared but no one saw her leave. One witness claimed to see Ott’s with a sandy-blond coloured haired man around the time of her disappearance, yet this is contradicted by the description of the seven other witnesses. Only two witnesses could identify Bundy, but only after Bundy’s image had been widely aired by the media. Several agreed that the man introduced himself as Ted. Why would the up to now stealthy killer show his face and use his real name? Ted didn’t appear in any of the hundreds of photos shot at the park. Naslund disappeared a few hours later, a witness claimed that a girl matching her description rode off with a biker gang after yelling at them to let her off. Her mother wrote a brief note to be displayed at Naslund’s memorial service, it read “God forgive them for what they have done.” Only the girl’s skulls and assorted bones were found, these were examined by Dr. Daris Swindler who is a distant relative of Herb Swindler.
After this, the Task force tracking the Seattle killer was dubbed the ‘Ted squad’ as the killers name was their main lead. Bundy was one of first ‘Ted’s’ reported to them, his name was given by Rule then later Liz Kendall (Bundy’s Fiancée), one of his college professors, and a former co-worker at the Department of Emergency Services. More girls disappeared in the area but Ted had moved to University of Utah to attend its law school and work as a campus security guard. Nancy Wilcox disappeared in 1974, no remains were ever found. Then Melissa Smith vanished, she was the daughter of the police chief of Midvale, her nude body was strangled and bludgeoned; the blood had been almost been completely drained from her so she was kept alive up to week after her disappearance. Despite this she had no broken nails, ligature markings, and her makeup was undisturbed; thus she likely wasn’t held against her will. A day after her disappearance, Bundy left on a hunting trip with his Fiancée’s father, so he couldn’t have held her without accomplices. Laura Aime vanished on Halloween night. She was reportedly held for a week before being strangled and bludgeoned, yet her hair was shampooed just before or after death and she was drunk at the time of death. Mack Holley, the local sheriff, suspected a man who was later convicted of the brutal sex slaying of his girlfriend, yet the Ted Squad ignored his suspicions. Laura said to mother a few weeks before her death that she didn’t want to be buried in a dress, potentially showing she was aware of danger.
On the 8th Nov, Ted apparently tried and failed to kidnap Carol Daronch from a shopping mall in Murray before abducting Debra Kent in Bountiful from outside the building of a school play; her body was never found. A teacher positively identified a drug-dealer who was the initial suspect in the Kent case. DaRonch claimed that her abductor had slick-black hair and a strong scent of alcohol, yet witnesses described the suspect at the school as having long brown wavy hair, being well dressed, and having no scent of alcohol in his breath. He would have had to drive his car at 100 miles per hour over rain-soaked streets as the crime scenes were twenty-six miles apart yet the crimes only occurred fifteen minutes apart. This fact was recorded in police logs, so Ted team members should have known it’s impossible for Ted to have committed both of these crimes. In December 1974, the follow-up Intermountain Crime Conference was held in Nevada. A month later Ted moved to Colorado. Caryn Campbell soon after disappeared from a well-lit busy corridor at the Wildwood Inn. She was mere steps away from her room where she had gone to pick up a magazine, yet no sound was heard by anyone and there was no sign of a struggle. Her body was badly bludgeoned, she had argued with her Fiancée earlier that day. Julie Cunningham and Denise Oliverson disappeared in 1975, their bodies were never found. No more disappearances linked to Ted occurred for 7 months after this. During this time, Ted received a Mormon baptismal.
Yet one day, Sergeant Bob Hayward of the Utah Highway Patrol, the brother of Captain Pete Hayward who was the chief homicide detective of Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office, stopped Ted for driving down a street near Bob’s house. Bob called in two more UHP troopers and a Salt Lake County Detective. They illegally searched Ted’s car without his consent, despite these officers admitting that they didn’t have probable cause to suspect Ted of any crime. They found a pry bar, ski mask, stocking mask, an ice pick, and handcuffs. The handcuffs were claimed to be connected to the DaRonch kidnapping, yet they were made by a different manufacturer than the ones recovered from her wrist. Ted was therefore taken into custody, around this time a law enforcement summit was held in Aspen (Colorado) of Detectives and Prosecutors from numerous States where Ted had been situated; attendees reportedly took a fraternal vow of secrecy. A week after his arrest, Ted was released after posting bond and thoroughly cleaned his car; he even used a garden hose on the inside of his vehicle. He repaired and sold the car to a former classmate of Melissa Smith. Investigators claim that three of the different victim’s hair managed to remain in the car. Around the same time, Bundy moved out of his rooming house which was under police surveillance, yet this room was never searched. He was charged with the attempted kidnapping of Carole DaRonch despite their lack of evidence. She couldn’t initially identify him in a line-up nor to Investigator Jerry Thompson when showing her photos. Later, she managed to pick Ted out of a line-up of six police detectives who were all older and heavier than him after having replaced the inmates who had been prepared for the line-up for unknown reasons. Two witnesses from the Kent case picked Ted out as well, meaning at least either DaRonch or these witnesses were lying / mistaken. It’s alleged that Captain Pete Hayward influenced the line-up.
Bundy's Loud Burst of Terror
At trail, Ted’s defence John O’Connell at last minute suggested waiving Bundy’s jury rights and giving the presiding Judge Stewart Hanson Jr. full say over Bundy’s fate. John, Stewart, and Prosecutor Dave Yocum had all been friends since they were classmates at the University of Utah. Stewart repeatedly questioned the witnesses, which is unheard of from a judge. DaRonch’s testimony was contradictory; she changed her claim about whether her assailant had a moustache, she said the car was white / tan despite initially telling police that it was blue, and she positively identified Bundy’s car on the stand despite it being altered from how it was at the time of the abduction. The Judge ignored these and pronounced Bundy guilty in 1976, the sentencing was delayed for a psychological evaluation by Dr. Al Carlisle to occur. Bundy’s visitation privileges were extremely restrictive, yet Rule could visit him despite not being a relative or on the approved list despite. Furthermore it wasn’t even a regular visiting day when she showed up and she wasn’t even searched. Bundy was sentenced for 1 to 15 years, meaning he could be paroled within eighteen months. But the State of Colorado issued a warrant for his arrest for Caryn Campbell murder. The warrant was based on hair purportedly found in his car, gas receipts placing him in Colorado, a prison informant, an alleged eyewitness, and a Colorado Ski County guidebook with an X marked next to the Wildwood Inn; despite the guidebook being found in his possessions, Ted claimed he didn’t make the mark.
The death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1972, at the time no one had been executed since 1962. Gary Gilmore, a Utah killer of two victims, campaigned to become the first man to be executed since the reinstatement occurred. He succeeded and was killed by a firing squad in 1977; thus the precedent of executions returned. Later the Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh, an intelligence asset and potential hit man for the State after being handpicked and then sheep-dipped from the Special Forces, successfully campaigned for the resumption of federal executions. The bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building was used to attack real and FBI-driven fake right-wing groups as well as legitimising the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act 1995 which was written by Joe Biden. This act would provide the basis for the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act 1996 and then eventually the Patriot Act of 2001 in response to 9/11. Gilmore’s execution occurred a mere week before Bundy’s new trial, Norman Mailer’s book and movie ensured the execution received sufficient publicity the be a threat for serious criminals.
Whilst awaiting his trial, Ted met Carole Ann Boone, she had worked at a Vietnamese resettlement camp, she went on to marry and have a child with him. Bundy was brought before Judge George Lohr to answer these charges; Lohr had presided over the Claudine Longet trail, giving Longet a thirty day jail term for killing Spider Sabitch (famed skier and her boyfriend). The prosecutor assigned to both the Longet and Campbell case was District Attorney Frank Tucker; he had compromised the former case by losing Longet’s diary after taking it home. After the Bundy trail, Tucker was convicted of two counts of embezzlement, felony theft, and two misdemeanours resulting in prison time, Tucker was disbarred so he enrolled in a San Francisco mortician school. During the trial, Bundy represented himself. The eye witness took the stand and confidently identified the Pitkin County Undersheriff as man she’d seen. The prison informant was also dropped. The only real evidence left was the single hair that an FBI analyst claimed was Campbell’s and the police claimed was found in his car. No trail occurred however, as during a break in the preliminary proceedings, Ted supposedly escaped by jumping through an open window whilst being left unguarded then simply walking away. This is despite the reasonably good legal position he found himself in at the time.
Ted found his way to a fully stocked empty cabin, which contained military like supplies. He entered it by prying loose a wire mesh which was applied to the windows; however a caretaker claimed it that it would take superhuman strength to do this with one’s bare hands as Ted claimed to have done. Bundy then suddenly became lost and disorientated so he couldn’t escape the area and was recaptured. Ted was assigned attorney Stephen “Buzzy” Ware, Ware travelled around the US handling racketeering and narcotics cases. A few weeks later, he ended up in a coma after a freak motorcycle accident occurred which killed his wife; so Bundy had to represent himself again. Bundy filed for a change of venue, but it moved from Aspen to Colorado Springs which is statically the worst place for a murder to stand trial in Colorado. Ted escaped again by climbing through a 12 inch square hole he had sawed into ceiling without anyone noticing, he went through a crawlspace above his cell before lowering himself into an empty deputy’s apartment. A snitch reported consistently hearing Ted’s movements in this crawlspace at nights but nothing done, yet it’s debatable whether this crawlspace even existed. Even more questionable is how Ted even got a hacksaw or how no one heard the noisy sawing. Ted found a car which happened to be fitted with studded radial tires necessary for the snow-covered roads he would go over, it also happened to already have the keys in the ignition. He was in Chicago by the time his escape was noticed, the car broke down on the way to Vail but a GI helped him so he could take a bus and then a plane the rest of the way. He eventually ended up in Tallahassee (Florida) under the fake identity of Chris Hagen.
In 1978, the Chi Omega Sorority house slaughter occurred on the University of Florida campus. Four girls were bludgeoned within 15 minutes, two died and two were raped and sodomised; an additional fifth girl was attacked at another location. Nita Neary, a sorority sister, caught a glimpse of an intruder leaving via the front door, he wore a watch cap pulled down over face and he had a large nose; Neary had just arrived home from a campus kegger party and so was likely intoxicated despite the state claiming that she was sober. Under hypnosis, she later claimed that the intruder looked like the sorority’s house boy, whom looked nothing like Ted. Carol Johnson, another sorority sister, didn’t see or hear anything unusual despite not sleeping until about 14 minutes after the incident occurred. The officers arrived minutes after the victims staggered out of their rooms shortly after Johnston was awoken, an army of authorities quickly followed.
The streets were filled with emergency vehicles. 40 sorority sisters moved around freely with blood dripping from their hands after assisting the victims, lots of curious onlookers were allowed to just wonder around the crime scene as well; thus the scene was quickly compromised. Semen was found in the bed of Cheryl Thomas (the fifth victim), it was from a non-secretor and therefore not Ted’s. Chewing gum in hair of a victim containing saliva and bite-mark was destroyed; saliva around an alleged bite mark on another victim was destroyed too. The skin containing this bite mark was excised and placed in saline solution destroying it. The only evidence of the bite mark was a photo taken by a standard 35 mm camera supplied by a crime scene specialist; rather than a photo taken on the medical examiners camera which supposedly malfunctioned at the time, making the photo illegitimate. This evidence was presented by Dr. Richard Souviron, who had published his findings before the trail thus contaminating the jury. He explained that he took casting of Bundy’s teeth and pressed them into bodies in the morgue, photographing them with a 35 mm camera. Thus potential fraud occurred, as the evidence presented in court purportedly from one of the victims, could just be bite marks from a random corpse. A sheriff’s deputy on the scene ordered that Margaret Bowman’s body be taken to the morgue before crime scene technicians could search for evidence on it. Ray Crews, one of first officers on scene, repeatedly claimed that Lisa Levy’s body was cool to touch upon its discovery; despite her supposedly having just been killed. Daris Swindler just so happened to be in Tallahassee at the time of the incident. A set of keys to Thomas’ house were discovered in her backyard, if these were used by her killer it is clear that she wasn’t a random target.
Soon after 12 year old Kimberly Leach disappeared from Lake City Junior High School in broad daylight amid rush hour traffic, her body was found two months later completely drained of blood with signs of ‘violence to the neck region’. The day after she disappeared, Ted’s name appeared on the FBI’s most wanted list, yet there was zero reason to suspect Bundy was responsible for the Florida crimes or that was even there. He was shortly arrested as ‘Kenneth Misner’ after spending a night in the wooded area of Eglin Air Force Base; a restricted military facility. He had an array of ID / credit cards and photos of girls / young women. Ted was interrogated in Pensacola without an attorney as he requested. His public defender had been refused entry into room; the tape produced from the interview was filled with gaps whenever Ted allegedly made incriminating statements. Detective swore that Ted had made them, but not a single one was recorded due to the malfunctions. On the recording, after being questioned as to where he got the money from to travel after his escape, Ted claimed that other people were in on it.
The next day, Bundy was escorted into the court under guard with his defenders claiming that they weren’t allowed to see him in jail. He walked straight past Richard Larsen looking dissociated, Larsen was friend of his. Interrogations of Bundy continued. In March, Ted appeared before Judge John Rudd; Rudd later authorized dental impressions to be taken from Ted, yet prosecutors waited over two months before doing so. In July, a grand jury heard secret testimony about Kimberly Leach, an indictment was handed down which the judge sealed. The next week, a jury convened to hear the Chi Omega case. In December 1978, the Florida Supreme Court ordered Rudd to disqualify himself from the case after showing obvious bias against Bundy. Judge Edward Cowart, a former navy and policeman, replaced Rudd; Cowart died of a heart attack in 1987 despite having no prior illness while in private hospital room for a check-up. In 1979, Ted was supposed to accept a plea agreement of three guilty pleas to first-degree murder in order to dispose of both indictments he had received, thus avoiding the death penalty. Six days before this, the second post-reinstatement execution occurred. The convict was John Spenkelink (a murder and robber), Bundy had to appear in the same Courtroom where John was given the death penalty with many same people present; Bundy was even temporarily represented John’s attorney called Brian Hayes.
Ted refused the deal. The Omega trial began in June 1979; it was the first trial to be nationally televised. One juror was Vernon Swindler who had been to the murder trial of his cousin before. Ted’s defence team included Emil Spillman, a ‘jury expert’ who was actually an Atlanta hypnotist. A stocking mask was found in the Thomas residence which was ‘identical’ to one found in Ted’s car; it supposedly had two hairs from Ted on it. Yet Nita Neary claimed that the man wasn’t wearing this mask, or gloves. 260 fingerprints were found at the sorority house, not one matched Ted’s. Neary could identify Ted in court and a line-up, but initially she couldn’t do so when she first saw him in person. A Fort Lauderdale police officer called Bob Campbell was sceptical of the bite-mark and Neary’s testimony; this is despite his clear incentives as Ted had killed his sister (Carny) in Colorado. Dr. Dawyne DeVore testified that the tooth pattern in the photo was common, and that skin was flexible making it a bad medium to compare bite marks. Ted tried to get the Court to subpoena all photographic evidence of him in order to show he chipped his tooth after the Sorority house incident, which would prove that the bite mark evidence was a fabrication; the Court denied this request. The defence’s opening statement ran for 26 minutes and was interrupted by 29 objections; twenty three of these were sustained, yet it is unusual for there to be any objections to an opening statement at all. The jury deliberated for six hours before finding Bundy guilty, it took an hour and forty minutes for the jury to arrive at two death sentences. Ted was sent to the Q Wing / Bug Wing, there he occupied Spenkelink’s cell.
In 1980, he went to trial for the Leach case. His name recognition in Orange County was at 98%, the jury was filled with those with foreknowledge of the case received outside of the Court room. Even Rule admitted that jurors would say anything so that they could get chosen. Bundy’s defence was Vic Africano, Vic described Ted as having a split personality. Ted seemed a lot more dissociated in this trail; it was later admitted that Carole Boone supplied Ted with alcohol and drugs throughout the trial. One eyewitness was a seventy-three year old crossing guard, he claimed the abduction occurred on a warm summer-like day when it was in fact freezing and raining, he also told an attorney that he knew he picked the right man when FBI agent winked at him in a photo line-up. A second witness couldn’t identify Ted for two years but then suddenly could. Both witnesses were deemed inadmissible. C. L. “Andy” Anderson was another witness; he worked at a local fire station in the same building as Lake City Police Department. He had waited for weeks before reporting what he saw, Bundy apparently left a van parked in the street blocking the only west-bound traffic lane during rush hour whilst roaming about the school to find a victim. Anderson had been hypnotized for ‘memory enhancement’. The last witness was a sporting goods dealer, he identified another man in a photo line-up and claims to have sold Bundy a knife, but there is zero proof it was used in anyway.
Fibres from the van Ted used were discovered on Leach’s purse, bra, jersey, and socks; fibres from her pursue and jeans were found in the Van. It should be noted however that mass produced products like jeans do not have unique fibres anyway; nor do van carpets, only the make can be determined from the fibres not a specific vehicle. Yet there was zero evidence that Ted had used the van, Detective James Parmenter of Jacksonville claims that his kids encountered the van and its driver before the abduction, his kids were hypnotised leading to one positively identifying Ted Bundy; thus the state only had the manipulated testimony of two young children. 100 samples of hair were recovered from van, but none matched Leach’s or Ted’s. Dozens of latent fingerprints were found, none of these matched Ted’s. There was clearly no attempt made to hide evidence in the van, this contradicted Ted’s other crime scenes and general behaviour like his Florida apartment having literally zero prints after he cleaned it before departure. It took the jury 45 minutes to deliver a death sentence on the second anniversary of Leach’s disappearance. Ted occupied a cell next to Ottis Toole. In not a single trial were the photos that Ted took with his Polaroid camera presented as evidence, either due to them not existing or more likely them showing evidence of other people being involved.
In the 1980s, women in the Seattle continued disappearing, as many as 100 in fact; this was blamed on the ‘Green River Killer’. In 1985, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Programme was launched in the FBI’s Quantico headquarters; the programme manager was Robert Ressler and Ted Bundy was the system’s prototype. The system was used to attack civil liberties using the fear of serial killers; Ann Rule was one of the main promoters of this. Interestingly, Rule was researching the ‘Ted case’ before Bundy was their suspect; is it coincidental that she just so happened to be his friend? Before she even met Bundy, she had lived in the same states at the same time as him (as did other suspicious characters that seemed to mirror his movements). She had lots of connections to victims just like Bundy did, and they met at crisis centre which is the kind of organisation cults are known to infiltrate. In the competency trails where Ted requested new trails for the Florida cases, Ann Rule was a witness for the prosecution. She justified this by claiming that Ted could actually have been successful if retrials were to occur. Stephen Michaud (a Bundy chronicler) points out that there was no proof Ted did anything more serious than a car theft, he claims this is because Ted was a criminal mastermind, yet his IQ wasn’t even at the level of a genius. By 1987, Bundy was corresponding with attempted president assassin John Hinckley Jr. Hinckley was corresponding with another attempted presidential assassin called Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme who was a Manson disciple. In 1989, Ted was executed. Allegedly confessed on tape in his final hours, including to crimes in Idaho he wasn’t accused off, yet many details of the confession were wrong or unverifiable and the tape was hard to hear due to another ‘malfunction’.