In the 11 years since his murderous rampage in North Florida, Theodore Robert Bundy has defended himself in court, given interviews and been the subject of several books and a television movie.

The high visibility of Bundy, who is promising confessions while submitting further appeals, contrasts with the silence of the victims’ families.

“They ain’t going to do nothing,” said Thomas Leach of Lake City, whose 12-year-old daughter, Kimberly Diane, was kidnapped, raped and murdered in the last of Bundy’s savageries. Leach is so bitter about Bundy’s agility in escaping the electric chair that, when asked to express his feelings, his response is cryptic: “I’d just rather not say.”

“It’s a terrible thing that they have to keep going through this nightmare constantly,” said family friend Donna Perry of Lake City. “I don’t understand these appeals and appeals. I think the family has suffered enough and Bundy has had enough breaks.”

Bundy is scheduled to die at 7 a.m. on Tuesday in Florida State Prison’s electric chair before about two dozen witnesses, half of them from the media. More than 200 people asked to be witnesses.

“I’d pull the switch in a heartbeat. He’s been proven guilty time and time again,” said Darryl Meisky, who works at a Lake City carpet store. “What would we be without capital punishment? Do we want to just slap ’em on the hand and let ’em stay in that country club?”

The pending death warrant, Bundy’s fourth, is for the Leach killing. It was on Feb. 9, 1978, that Kimberly disappeared from the grounds of Lake City Junior High School.

After his chance arrest on Feb. 15 in Pensacola, Bundy was asked to help locate Kimberly’s body. He reportedly answered, “But I’m the most cold- hearted son-of-a-bitch you’ll ever meet.”

He also has been condemned to die for the slaughter of two Florida State University sorority sisters in the early hours of Jan. 15, 1978, that year’s Super Bowl Sunday.

VICTIMS’ FAMILIES QUIET

“We really don’t want to expose our feeling at this time,” said Jackson Bowman, father of Margaret Bowman, 21, who was sleeping in the Chi Omega sorority house when Bundy bludgeoned and strangled her. Last week, the family of Lisa Levy, who also died after Bundy’s brutal assault, refused to say anything about the pending execution.

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde — he’s one of the best examples I’m aware of,” said James Daugherty, Lake City police’s lead investigator in the Leach case. “Ted was the normal guy-next-door, that was his appearance.”

Theories abound on why Bundy — articulate, good-looking and college- educated, with family, friends and girlfriends — struck out with such rage against a series of female strangers.

Bundy, suspected of killing at least 36 women in Colorado, Utah and Washington state, has “speculated” about some of those crimes during interviews in which he spoke of “the entity.”

Bundy on Friday began talking to the FBI and law enforcement authorities from other states who are trying to close those cases.

He is planning to add another flourish to his notoriety on Monday by granting a videotaped interview to a Christian psychologist who has decried pornography.

Bundy in the past has blamed pornography, as well as alcohol, for blunting “this individual’s” inhibitions against violence.

For residents of Lake City and Tallahassee, the feelings of horror remain.

“It’s about time (Bundy was executed),” said Donna Anderson as she picked up her children from day care at the Lake City First Baptist Church. “I think he’s exhausted all his avenues of escape. There’s a lot of intense feeling in the community about it. It’s been dragged out too long.”

And Ann Sides said: “I don’t think he deserves those expensive lawyers in Washington. Just put him away and forget him — or fry him.”

Again and again in Lake City, a sleepy town of about 9,000 people, anger boils over at the criminal justice system for allowing Bundy to postpone his death sentence for so long.

‘JUST PUT HIM AWAY …’

“It seems like the victim is the criminal, and the criminal is the victim. They almost exchanged places,” Marilyn Yonn said. “I doubt very seriously if they will execute him Tuesday. I’ll be greatly surprised if they do.”

“It had an effect on every young girl in Lake City. No one felt safe anymore,” said Danielle Wilson, who was a third-grader at the time of Leach’s death. Kimberly had been her brother’s girlfriend for a while.

“No one has any faith in the judicial system anymore,” Perry said. “And the fact he shows no remorse — that’s worse than a snake. I don’t know how anyone could get lower than that.”

“He’s made a mockery of the justice system. A lot of people are waiting to get on with their lives. Once he’s put to death, I think justice is done,” Lake City businessman J. Wayne Adams said.

However, Daugherty, one of the hundreds who searched for weeks for Kimberly’s body, attaches little significance to Bundy’s decade on Death Row. The long time-frame is typical of capital cases, he said.

“He’s not manipulated anything. He’s just a common criminal. As far as being brillant or supernatural or excessively clever, he’s not,” Daugherty said. “It’s everyone’s right (to appeal) — not just Ted Bundy’s. It’s the process that has to be gone through. You don’t kill anyone in the electric chair unless you’re absolutely sure.”

On the edge of the FSU campus sits the since-remodeled Chi Omega house and the popular bar nearby where Bundy drank the night of the murders. Chi Omega members have been forbidden to talk about the case, even threatened with expulsion if they do.

Most FSU students readily endorse a swift execution for Bundy. “I wonder if it will ever go through? I think it should,” said freshman Victoria Weise of Jacksonville. “It’s a fear for girls who come here. It doesn’t affect your daily life, but you don’t walk around at night alone.”

“He shouldn’t be allowed more appeals. We don’t need to hear any more about it. Everyone here really is angry about it. Everyone really hates him,” sophomore Lisa Chaney of Pensacola said. “The only thing that scares me is you can see it’s so easy to get away with something like this. Some other lunatic might do it.”

STUDENTS WILL CELEBRATE

Should Bundy be executed as scheduled on Tuesday, Chaney and her friends will “not go to class and will hang out and party all day.”

The Rev. Jim Hardison, who was in Tallahassee at the time of the murders, said he understands those who feel revulsion toward Bundy. However, Hardison said, “This execution is not going to accomplish what the state feels it’s accomplishing, not more than with any other execution. No one will be any safer. The question is whether the state should be in a position of calculating a deliberate death.”

Noting the $7 million the state has spent on Bundy’s case, Hardison said, “This money would be better spent on helping the victims of these and other crimes.”

More blunt in her criticism is Sister Hannah Daly of Orlando, a Catholic who ministers to Death Row inmates: “It’s pure political hype. It’s the sensationalizing of one man’s death. Not only do politicians need a scapegoat, but it’s a substitute for people’s own frustrations. The violence this promotes … the death penalty is nothing but a license to kill.”

Yet for Kathy Kleiner, a Chi Omega sister whose jaw was broken by Bundy, his electrocution “is going to be a relief. As long as he’s alive, it can’t be put behind us. He’s abused the system long enough. Last time … it was a little bit depressing it didn’t go through.”

Even a longtime friend of Bundy’s, Anne Rule, who wrote The Stranger Beside Me about the case, thinks he must die. “Ted is a sadistic sociopath,” said Rule, who worked with Bundy in the early 1970s before he began to kill. “Carrying out the death penalty is the only answer — not just for punishment but because of Ted’s skills at escape, and his powers of persuasion and manipulation are such that if he were not executed, he one day would be free.”

“I think he’s supremely dangerous,” Rule said. “My friend for years I now realize I never knew. He was living a lie. … He had charm. He had charisma. He had an apparent courtliness and concern for others.

“The only unusual thing about Ted Bundy in retrospect is he never talked about sex,” she said. “Most men manage to insinuate it into conversations. Ted never did. It was a very dangerous area for him.”

CHRONOLOGY TED BUNDY’S FLORIDA CRIMINAL HISTORY AND DAYS IN COURT:

JAN. 15, 1978: Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy strangled at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University, Tallahassee.

— FEB. 9, 1978: Kimberly Leach, 12, reported missing from her junior high school in Lake City.

— FEB. 15, 1978: Bundy arrested on charges of possession of stolen property, Pensacola.

— JULY 21, 1978: Indicted for Leach murder and kidnapping.

— JULY 27, 1978: Indicted for Chi Omega murders.

— JULY 24, 1979: Found guilty of first-degree murder in Chi Omega case.

— JULY 31, 1979: Sentenced to death by electrocution in Chi Omega murders.

— FEB. 7, 1979: Found guilty of first-degree murder in Leach case.

— FEB. 12, 1980: Sentenced to death for Leach killing.

— SEPT. 24, 1984: Florida Supreme Court denies request for rehearing in Chi Omega case.

— JULY 11, 1985: Florida Supreme Court denies request for rehearing in Leach case.

— DEC. 18, 1985: Clemency denied by Florida Board of Executive Clemency.

— FEB. 5, 1986: Gov. Bob Graham signs death warrant in Chi Omega case.

— FEB. 21, 1986: Florida Supreme Court denies request for stay in Chi Omega case.

— FEB. 25, 1986: U.S. Supreme Court grants stay in Chi Omega case.

— MAY 22, 1986: Gov. Bob Graham signs second death warrant in Chi Omega case.

— JUNE 28, 1986: Trial judge denies stay in Chi Omega case.

— JUNE 30, 1986: Florida Supreme Court denies stay in Chi Omega case.

— JULY 1, 1986: U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals grants stay in Chi Omega case.

— OCT. 21, 1986: Graham signs death warrant in Leach case.

— NOV. 7, 1986: Trial judge denies stay in Leach case.

— NOV. 11, 1986: U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denies stay in Leach case.

— NOV. 17, 1986: U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals grants stay in Leach case.

— APRIL 2, 1987: U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals orders hearing on Bundy’s competence to stand trial.

— DEC. 17, 1987: U.S. District Court denies incompetence claim.

— JAN. 16, 1989: U.S. Supreme Court denies appeal. Gov. Bob Martinez signs second death warrant in Leach case.

— JAN. 19: Columbia County Circuit judge denies Bundy’s appeal, filed in Lake City. He also turns down Bundy’s request for a stay of execution.

— JAN. 20: Florida Supreme Court rejects Bundy’s appeal.

SOURCE: The Associated Press