Spirit of resilience: Survivors speak out
At Duquesne symposium, Ted Bundy survivor recalls attack
It was a cold, dark Sunday night on January 1978, when she heard the door open.
Kathy Kleiner, 20, was asleep on her left side in her room at the Chi Omega sorority house when a dark figure entered the room and tripped over a footlocker that separated her and her roommate’s twin beds.
As she opened her eyes and adjusted to being awake, she saw a silhouette of the figure next to her. A man raised his arm, holding a piece of firewood that he had picked up from outside the back door of the sorority house at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
What happened next changed Kathy’s life forever, she said Friday during a symposium at Duquesne University.
“He flung the firewood down so hard on my face that my jaw was broken in three places,” said the now Kathy Kleiner Rubin, 61. “My chin was so badly shattered that it was wired shut just to keep the bone together. My cheek was torn, so you could see the teeth inside my mouth. I also almost bit my tongue off.”
She said her roommate started making noise, which caused the man to turn around. Then, he attacked her with the club as well.
“He came back to my side of the bed to hit me, and I’m cringing at this point, because I knew what was going to happen,” Ms. Kleiner Rubin told an intently gazing audience.
“All of a sudden, the light shown in our room through the curtain that was left open. A car had pulled in and shined lights that illuminated the room. It was something I will never forget.”
The man became spooked by the light and fled, leaving the room “dark again,” she said. “I knew at that point, the beatings had stopped.”
That night, Theodore Robert “Ted” Bundy, who had fled to Tallahassee in 1977 after escaping prison a second time that year, had entered through the front door of the sorority house, which was unlocked and had been broken for a few days. Ms. Kleiner Rubin said there were plans to get it fixed, but on this particular night it hadn’t been.
On Friday, at the 18th annual Forensic Science and Law Symposium, Ms. Kleiner Rubin recalled in great detail the beating she and three of her sorority sisters endured that night. Two of her sorority sisters who lived in neighboring rooms — Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman — were killed by Bundy that night. Her roommate also survived.
She was joined at the symposium by true crime writer Kevin M. Sullivan, who authored “The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History,” and also provided remarks on Bundy’s nature.
After the talk, attendees were allowed to ask questions, and almost every one thanked her for such “bravery” and “resilience.” Ben Wecht, program administrator at Duquesne, also presented questions that were sent online.
“I’m healing each time I get to tell my story and get to talk to people and listen to their issues and their questions,” Ms. Kleiner Rubin said Friday. “It helps me heal. Each time, I feel better doing it. It doesn’t cause me angst, and I don’t have terrible nightmares, but I feel sad. I feel sad because I remember the sorority sisters Margaret and Lisa, and all the other victims that Bundy attacked.”
Bundy, who was put to death by electric chair in 1989, had confessed to killing around 36 women across several states in the 1970s, although the total number is still unknown.
Women began disappearing in the fall of 1974 after Bundy moved to Utah to attend law school. Police uncovered burglary tools in his vehicle during a traffic stop the following year. He was arrested for possession of the tools and the police began to link him to much more sinister crimes.
That year, he was arrested in the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch, one of the few women to escape his clutches. He was convicted and received a maximum 15year jail sentence.
But he escaped from prison twice in 1977. The first time, he had been indicted on murder charges for the death of a young Colorado woman and defended himself in the case. During a trip to the courthouse library, he jumped out a window and escaped while a guard was distracted. He was captured eight days later.
A few months after that, Bundy escaped a second time by losing more than 30 pounds and climbing through a hole he made in the ceiling of his cell to fit through the small opening. Authorities did not know he was missing for 15 hours, although inmates had previously warned guards that they could hear him crawling through the ceiling above their heads at night, Mr. Sullivan said Friday.
Bundy made his way to Tallahassee where he attacked the sorority women. On Feb. 9, he kidnapped and murdered a 12-year-old girl named Kimberly Leach.
He was pulled over by police that February, marking the end of his murderous rampage.
Ms. Kleiner Rubin, who was diagnosed with lupus at 13, said her recovery from the attack is an ongoing process. Resiliency is about learning what’s inside you in the moment, because “you don’t know what you can handle until it happens,” she said. She is also a cancer survivor after being diagnosed with Stage II in 1994.
The wife and mother of one has had about six surgeries on her jaw — the last one two years ago, she said. She suspects she will be back in the operating room soon, as her jaw is beginning to bother her again.
Ms. Kleiner Rubin said she was not contacted for input regarding the Netflix movie starring Zack Efron titled “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile,” which was released this year. She was allowed to watch the movie in advance, however.
Also released this year on Netflix was the documentary “Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes,” which Ms. Kleiner Rubin said she “bingewatched.” She participated, however, in a documentary on the Identification Discovery Channel titled “Ted Bundy: Mind of a Monster,” also released this year.
“This happened to me so long ago that I can put some distance,” she said. “But for the families of the beautiful women that were taken away from us far too soon, to them, it’s like it happened yesterday.”