Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - EXCLUSIVE: 'My Jaw Was Hanging Off My Face' Ted Bundy Survivor on the Horrific Attack

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

Notorious and vile rapist and serial killer, Ted Bundy, confesses to 30 killings. No one can be sure of the actual number. His attacks, violent and vicious. One of the only known survivors of a Bundy attack, Kathy Kleiner, talks with Nancy about that horrific nightNancy's expert panel also weighs in:Sheryl McCollum     Cold Case Research Institute DirectorDr. Katherine Ramsland     Professor of Forensic Psychology at DeSales UniversityDr. Peter Vronsky     Author of “Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present" Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. What do you say we get out of here? What is it about this guy when I feel his love I feel like I won't talk to the world There are things you don't know. Hi officer, I think I must be lost that will shock you beyond your worst nightmare I am innocent. You don't actually believe this garbage do do you? It's in all the papers, Ted. Ted! Monkey! How did his name get on that suspect list? I want to come see you. I was really hoping you'd say that.

This case is about catching a monster ladies and gentlemen i am that innocent suspect you are skating on thin ice partner you are hearing the official trailer that's zach afron portraying extremely wicked shockingly evil and vile ted bundy. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. No telling how many millions of dollars were sunk into the portrayal of serial rapist and killer Ted Bundy, but the movie makes him out to be a glamour boy. I don't really fault Zac Efron for doing it. He's just a squirrel trying to get a nutour boy. I don't really fault Zac Efron for doing it. He's just a squirrel trying to get a nut like everybody else, you know? Making a living.

But there's something so bass-ackwards with this. Netflix at it again, portraying a cold-blooded killer as a hero. Let me get this straight, Jackie. Isn't that where they did Stephen Avery making a murder? Okay. Joining me right now on All-Star Panel, Cheryl McCollum, Cold Case Research Institute Director, Dr. Catherine Ramsland,

Professor of Forensic Psychology at DeSalle University and author of 60 books, including Inside the Minds of Serial Killers, Why They Kill on Amazon. Incredible body of work. Dr. Peter Vronsky, investigative historian, author of Sons of Cain, A History of Serial Killers from Stone Age to Present. Guys, I really don't know what to say, but I guess we should start with a very special guest joining us,

a woman who survived an attack by Ted Bundy. And not very many people, not very many women can say that. Kathy Kleiner, I want you to hear something from Dr. Peter Vronsky. Dr. Vronsky and I have talked in depth about Bundy. Vronsky with me, author of Sons of Cain, History of Serial Killers, Stone Age to Present. Dr. Vronsky, you taught me something about Ted Bundy I didn't know. And I had already read one book on Ted Bundy when I talked to you, much less covered the case a million times. Dr. Vronsky, Ted Bundy would actually take some of his victims, bathe their dead bodies, apply hair and makeup.

I'm not really sure what else. I can only imagine necrophilia. Dr. Vronsky, could you please describe that, what we know about that aspect of serial killer Ted Bundy? Well, you know, that's one of the most extreme and monstrous ends of the serial killer phenomenon. You know, the necrophiles. You know, Ted Bundy used to bring some of the heads home. In fact, you know, in that fireplace that you see in the

Netflix show, right, he burns one of the heads in his girlfriend's apartment. So, you know, the Netflix part of the Ted Bundy we see is the part that his victims never saw or at least saw at the moment he first encountered him. So, you know, we see the public version of Ted Bundy, the mask that he wore. It's kind of regrettable that they didn't delve deeper into what was beneath that mask. Excuse me. I think it's regrettable the cops didn't shoot him the first time they laid eyes on him. But that's a whole other can of worms. Because if he had not escaped not once but twice, lives could have been saved.

But he managed to escape, believe it or not. He escaped law two times, two times. And look, I'm not making the lawmen and lawwomen out to be the bad guys, okay? They didn't kill anybody. He did. But this guy was so wily. I just want to just pause. Kathy Kleiner, who I consider to be a friend and I've sat beside her as she tells her story and even talking about it right now is giving me chills up and down my arms I want to go to Cheryl and Dr. Kathleen Ramsland but I'm going to go to Kathy first because Kathy just think about what you survived as Vronsky, Dr. Peter Vronsky was talking, actually severing his victim's heads. And I really think the only reason he burned the one victim's

head in his girlfriend's place was because she was coming home and he didn't want her to find a head. I think he would have kept it around, frankly. But a plot bathing, washing the hair of victims, dead women, and then fixing their hair and carefully applying makeup to their face, I guess having relations with them. And there was one victim, a young girl, he left out in the woods and would go back to visit the body. And I don't know what he was doing with that body. Nothing good. You know, Kathy, when you look back, I know it's all like a horrible, terrible, dark blur. You were attacked in your room at night, in your dorm room.

I mean, your, you know, sorority house room. But to be in the room, literally, was so much evil. I mean, Netflix got that part right. Extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile. I mean, you were in the room with the devil. What happened, Kathy? That night was, as you said, a big blur of being scared and just not knowing, of course, it was Ted Bundy in the room with me. Our sorority house had several rooms in it.

We were on the second floor, and our room faced the back of the sorority. That also was where the parking lot was. When I heard a noise, we went to bed around 1030, my roommate and I. And sometime in the early morning, I heard something which woke me up a bit. And that was our bedroom door opening. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, right there. Okay. All three of us here in the studio, Jackie, Riley, and myself, when you said the bedroom door opened,

how many nightmares and fears have started with you thinking your bedroom door opens? In your case, it was real. It was, it came back to me many times as a soft sound. It wasn't a door opening and slamming against the wall. It was a quiet opening. That has bothered me over the years. When I'm sleeping, if I hear a noise and my first thought is that someone's coming in the door, even if the door isn't closed, that feeling I don't think will ever go away. It's something that I'll have to live with. You know, when I was, and still to this day, I hate a cracked door because I can't really see somebody standing on the other side of it at night. Not that there ever has been or would be, but after all the years of prosecuting,

that stuck in my mind. Now, I'm curious about, and I know I'm picking out one isolated detail, but I want you to describe again that sound when you hear your bedroom door open. It was, as I said, a soft sound. It wasn't the door hitting against the wall. It was just, we had carpeting and it was more of a slide of the door you could hear. You could hear the door knob being turned and the door being slightly opened and then completely opened. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. My experience with, I'd say, pornography generally, but with pornography that deals on a violent level with sexuality, is that once you become addicted to it,

and I look at this as a kind of addiction, like other kinds of addiction, I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic signs of material. Like an addiction, you keep craving something which is harder, harder, something which gives you a greater sense of excitement. Until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far. You reach that jumping off point where you begin to wonder if maybe actually doing it will give you

that which is beyond just reading about it or looking at it how long did you stay at that point before you actually assaulted someone well yeah you see that is a very delicate point in my own development and we're talking about something we're talking about having reached the point or a gray area that surrounded that point over a course of it you don't remember how long i will i would say i would say a couple years is he actually trying to blame mass murder of women serial killings one woman after the next, after the next, after the next, on pornography that he voluntarily consumed. What in the hay? I mean, Cheryl McCollum, you know, every time I say, well, I've heard it all. I hear something else. And that just makes me ill. I mean, Cheryl,

you heard me describing how after Ted Bundy would rape and murder someone, he would then take their bodies, some of them, bathe them, style their hair, apply makeup, and I guess have sex with them again. I mean, and he's blaming that on his voluntary use of porn? Really? It just makes me want to just slap him in the face. Nancy, I think Ted Bundy, more than almost anybody, knew how to get just fear just plummeted into us. And he knew what to say. He knew what to say to freak people out.

He knew what to say to cause just this stir of emotion. And people then, if you remember, they freaked out over it. And they wanted to shut down all these sex shops. They wanted to shut down, you know, Playboy and all these sort of things. Did he participate in pornography? Absolutely. He's a rapist. He was in the S&M. He liked watching anybody suffer.

But that isn't what made him. Well, no. To Dr. Catherine Ramsland, professor of forensic psychology, DeSales University, author of 60 books, people, it's all I can do to write my Haley Dean books. I'm half dead by the time I finish one of those, much less the one coming out, nonfiction, Don't Be a Victim. I don't know how you do it, Dr. Kathleen Ramsland, but one of her books is Inside the Mind of Serial Killers, Why They Kill. Now, I'm sure you're going to tell me how wrong I am, and I'm certainly no stranger to that, but it just burns me up to hear Ted Bundy kind of blame pornography for what he did. Like, it's society's fault. If I hear that one more time, I'm going to shoot my foot. Well, I think the context was that he was trying to manipulate

Reverend Dobson because that was the last interview he gave before he was executed. He was trying to save his life. I believe he exaggerated the impact of the pornography on him because he was trying to get somebody to keep him alive to study as a specimen because he believed he was so special and so important. And this was his sort of last ditch effort. But even at that, pornography has, and the true crime, the true detective magazines in particular, which I think is what he's talking about, certainly have had an influence on some of these developing young men. Dennis Rader talked about it too. I spent five years talking with Dennis Rader to write his book. And he talked about it

almost in the same way, not blaming it so much as just simply saying this clearly was an influence in my addiction to violence. And I think that there's something to that. But in Bundy's case, he was certainly exaggerating it to try to get Dobson to say, we really need to study this guy. Okay, you know what? Now I am going to shoot my foot. Cheryl McCollum, I actually started laughing on this end, not at Dr. Catherine Ramsland, but at, because she's portraying what Bundy is projecting, that he is so special. We should keep him and study him. I already know enough about him. I don't want to keep him. I don't want to study him. I want him off the face of the earth because he's already gotten away out of jail twice. That means when you don't know a horse, you look at his track record, he'll do it again

and attack another woman. He couldn't stop attacking women. And he thinks he's so special. What makes him special? And why do people keep thinking he's attractive? I don't think he's attractive at all. He looks like a wolf. Every time he smiles, I can see every tooth in his mouth all the way to the back. That's freaky. Well, I got two things to say. One, as far as killers went at the time, people that we knew were murderers and rapists. In that group, he was attractive. Oh, like when you're like king of the zombies, you're the best zombie, the best. Exactly.

Okay, go ahead. Exactly. You and I have worked enough family violence cases and other cases to know this is true. People will often say, oh, I was drunk when I beat my wife. I'm so sorry. I was drunk. I was drunk. I was drunk.

He didn't beat her because he was drunk. He got drunk so he could beat her. And Ted Bundy. Okay, you're scaring me. It's the truth. I know it's the truth, but when you say it like that. Guys, with me, in addition to Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Research Institute,

Dr. Catherine Ramsland and Dr. Peter Voronsky, Kathy Kleiner is with me. Kathy Kleiner survived an attack by Ted Bundy. I don't know the statistical odds of her being alive today, but she still suffers physically from that attack. Kathy, we left off when he first came in the door and you heard that soft opening of the door on the carpet. What happened then? I woke up a bit, having been sleeping pretty hard. That noise brought me a bit awake. The next thing I heard was setting up the room. It was a normal-sized dorm room. We had twin beds on each side of the wall. In between our beds, we had a small trunk. And on that trunk, we kept our books, a little plant, and small things that we needed to reach from our bed. Our bed then, from the trunk, had about four feet on each side. Once I heard him open the door and come into the

room, the room being so dark, he tripped over that trunk, which now woke me up completely. I'm laying in bed on my left side. I look up, and I see the shadow of something, a man standing next to the bed. As I see it, in a split second, he raises his arm up above his head, and I could see he had something in his hand, a log. As I looked at him in a split second, he threw with such force that log in his hand on my face

that it terribly, terribly injured my face. Just trying to take in what you're saying. What happened then? When he struck me, it was, it felt like a thud. It didn't hurt. It didn't, I didn't feel the sharp pain that I would feel later. When I was being attacked, I made noise and it woke up my roommate, who was right next to me in her twin bed. He then walked across the room again. He tripped over that trunk and attacked Karen. Again, he beat her with the same log that he had attacked me with.

As he went to strike her, she rose her arms up over her face to hopefully keep the blow from hurting her. After he hit her, he heard me moaning again. So he crossed the other side to my twin bed and went to attack me again. I saw him raise his arm up over his head. And just before he struck me, a light shone up into our bedroom. We were on the second floor of the house, which faced the back, which faced the parking lot. Our window was completely exposed to that parking lot. Our bedroom shades, our curtains, were wide open because we hung plants on the curtain rods, so therefore we

never closed them. Just before he's waiting for that to hit me. I could see only a black shadow when he first walked into the room. He had a dark knit hat over his head. He wore dark clothes. When someone came into the parking lot that night, early in the morning to drop off a sorority sister from a date the lights of that car shown up into our bedroom and illuminated the room so bright and i was cringing i could see the light through my dark closed eyes Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. So her roommates knew right away something was wrong.

I said, well, where did she go last night? I said, well, she went to a dorm leaders meeting and was on her way back to the dorm room and never came back. This is where we, where he abducted her. She had to walk through this to get to her dorm. I would be obsessed with searching for her. She had a bright yellow ski coat. I would just look for that everywhere we went. I find myself looking in fields and ditches for bright yellow ski coat. I would just look for that everywhere we went. I find myself looking in fields and ditches for this yellow ski jacket to stick out like a sore thumb and I'd be able to say I found her and we lived for a long time. You can hear the heartbreak

in the voice of Vivian Rancourt. That's Susan Rancourt's mom, along with her sister, crying, crying, speaking out about the day that Susan disappeared and how for so many years they kept just looking instinctively for her yellow coat. Well, she was a Ted Bundy victim. And in the last weeks, Netflix has released a real glamorization of Bundy, the serial killer, the rapist, the killer, the kidnapper, the necrophiliac, Ted Bundy. And you know, I like Zac Efron. Does somebody not like Zac Efron? But this portrayal of Bundy, and again, this is not about Efron. As I said, he's just a squirrel trying to get a nut, trying to make a living like the rest of us. He gets a movie deal, sure, I'll do it. But, oh, the way Bundy is glamorized.

It just, to Dr. Peter Vronsky, author of Sons of Cain, History of Serial Killers, Stone Age to Present. What's your response to the movie? Before I go back to Kathy Kleiner, who actually survived Bundy, what do you make of the movie? Well, you know, the portrait that we have of Ted Bundy in that movie is, again, you know, that quality that he had, that characteristic that he presented. And so we see the surface, we see the mask. You know, a lot of us have grown up knowing about Ted Bundy, but you have a whole new generation that doesn't quite understand who or what Ted Bundy really was in the how he was able to lure so many victims and and of course it was that you know

that psychopathic career that allowed him to lure these victims into these vulnerable positions where he was able to abduct them and take them away. And so we get that side of Ted Bundy. We see the side that the victim saw before he revealed himself. What is, again, regrettable about that film is that it doesn't show us the real Ted Bundy, what was really lurking beneath that mask. That we don't see. You mean the Ted Bundy that would bathe the dead victims' bodies and make love to them and

put makeup and hairspray on them? That Ted Bundy, the freaky killer Ted Bundy? That Ted Bundy, indeed. The monster, this predatory, really monstrous creature. You know, on the scale of serial killers, Ted Bundy really, I think that's why we're so fascinated with him. Because when we look at serial killers, you know, some of them really look like serial killers. I'm not really fascinated by him, Dr. Peter Vronsky. I'm not really fascinated. I just want to put a hoe through his neck like he's a snake. So that's kind of how I feel about him.

But I hear what you're saying because it's so bizarre. I mean, Cheryl McCollum, think about it. You know how hard it is to put on eyeliner straight, much less when you're driving. That's a wholeher can of worms. But eyeliner, can you imagine him with the dead body trying to perfectly apply eyeliner and mascara and lipstick on a dead body of a woman that he raped and murdered? Think about it. Just wait a minute, Cheryl. Just think about it. Him hunched over the dead body, trying to put on eyeliner or lipstick.

Ugh. Okay, now that you've thought about it, weigh in. He was meticulous. He did take his time. He had a plan that was so clear in his mind exactly what he wanted to happen. And here's the thing, as I listened to Kathy Kleiner, and I've heard her story more than once, and every time, like you, I just get chills and I just hurt for her. But it's important for people listening to her to realize prior to him attacking Catherine and Karen, he already killed Lisa and Margaret.

He had already killed two of their friends in that house. He walked calmly down the hall and entered another room. Then he would murder, rape, walk down the hall, strangle, beat, rape, walk down the hall, and enter another room to do it again. And there is no doubt in my mind that Kathy was his next victim. Ted Bundy didn't attack anybody to hurt them. He attacked them to kill them. Kathy Kleiner with me, one of the few, you know, in all the Harry Potters, they refer to him as the boy who lived,

the only boy who lived. This is the girl who lived. Kathy Kleiner lived through a real life Voldemort a real life devil incarnate and I just can't even imagine being in the room you know sometimes Kathy I look back on murderers spree killers serial killers that I actually prosecuted and they had an aura about them. I don't care who wants to make fun of this. They had an aura about them that it was just different. They're not like regular people. It's like holding, holding a reptile in your hand and it looks at you and you know, it has no feeling and it's just cold blood running through those veins. I want to go back to where you left off, Kathy. What happened then? When the

light shone up in our room, I could see more clearly this dark shadow. Again, I did not see his face. All I could make out was the shape of a body, a man. I remember the light shone so bright in our room that it felt like it was a flood of a personal, I'm sorry, a personal feeling that the blows were going to stop, that he was going to stop attacking me. Because I saw him turn around and leave, run out of our bedroom. In a few minutes, the light went away, the room was dark, and the beatings had stopped. Then what happened? I was screaming, I was yelling, I was sitting in my bed just just yelling for help, and actually all I was doing was making gurgling sounds. When he attacked me, my jaw was shattered so bad that it was hanging off my face and attached only to a fraction of the bone on my joint. My cheek was split open

from my mouth to my ear where it exposed the inside of my mouth. I also almost bit my tongue off. Because of these injuries, I was gurgling and not screaming like I thought I was. The next thing I remember are paramedics and a police officer coming to the side of my bed. And as soon as I saw the policeman, I knew I was safe. I didn't know a lot of what was going on because I was so confused and hurting so bad. At this point, it felt like knives being dug into my face. When I saw the police officer, I knew this person that hit me and attacked, still confused and dazed, I felt safe. The paramedics were at the side of my bed trying to assess what exactly had happened to me.

I remember in the state I was trying to talk, and the paramedic said, it's okay, don't worry, you've been shot in the face, but we're going to take care of you. Again, confusion hit me because I knew I was hit with a log. I knew my face was struck with a log. I didn't remember being shot in the face. Again, that just compounded the confusion I had in my head of exactly what was going on that night. Crime stories with Nancy Grace. I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead, he said very quietly, do you know what? I'm going to kill you. And he put his hands on my throat and started squeezing.

My first thought was, it has to be some kind of a joke. This guy's got a weird sense of humor. But that was just maybe a fraction of a second, because I realized he was squeezing too tightly. He was serious, and I was in trouble. And there's no door handle. What did you do? We had a little small battle in the car,

but I went unconscious. So he choked you to the point of unconsciousness? Yes. Did you put up a fight? I did as much of a fight as you can put up when you're running out of air. Did you think at that point? I did as much of a fight as you can put up when you're running out of air. Did you think at that point? I'm going to die.

You're hearing our friend Dr. Phil speaking to one of the only other known living victims of Ted Bundy, in addition to our special guest Kathy Kleiner joining us today. That was Rhonda Stapley, and that's not all. Listen. He was slapping my face again, trying to wake me up again. He said, good girl, good girl, you don't want to die yet. Don't die on me yet, because you would miss the best part. And he grabbed me by my boot to the end of the picnic table, pulled my pants down and raped me.

And just as that was finishing, he leaned forward again and put his hands around my throat and was choking me again. And at that point, I didn't struggle. I decided I was dead. I was just going to wait until it was over. The next thing I knew, I was laying on the ground. And I was sort of surprised when I came to again. And it was pitch dark.

And he was standing by the open door, fiddling with something in the back seat, like 30 feet away from me. And I didn't really plan anything like a great escape. and he was standing by the open door, fiddling with something in the back seat, like 30 feet away from me. And I didn't really plan anything like a great escape, but adrenaline was running, and I just jumped and ran. I didn't run very far because my pants were in a wad around my ankles.

I tripped after just one or two steps, but fortunately or luckily or intervention from above or something, I fell into a fast-moving mountain river that swept me away from my attacker and probably saved my life. Wow. Talk about divine intervention. You know what? If anybody doesn't believe in miracles, they need to hear Rhonda Stapley. That's her speaking with our friend, Dr. Phil, or listen to Kathy Kleiner who is with me right now one of the only known victims to survive Ted Bundy to Dr. Katherine Ramsland professor forensic psychology DeSales University the author of 60 books

including inside the minds of serial killers why they kill on Amazon Dr. Ramsland I have no doubt in my mind that there are other Bundy victims out there that have never been identified that are still unsolved cases. I'm sure there are. He even thought there were himself, but he couldn't remember them when he was doing the final interviews. And there probably are. I don't want to talk about it. They're still traumatized by it. Cheryl, so many women don't come forward after rape. I don't know why. Well, I guess I do know why, actually. They don't want to think about it.

They don't want to go through a pelvic exam. They don't want to be attacked on cross-exam. They want to suppress it, pretend it didn't happen, and go on with their lives. It's really hard to do that, Cheryl. It's impossible to do that, Nancy. But here's the thing. Prior to Kathy Carter, if you were to look at that scene that Bundy left at the Child Mega House, and you've got victims strangled and beaten, and they were raped with objects,

you would believe that this person that did it, that is capable of that type of just violence would be an out of control just in this frenzy but listening to Kathy talk we know that's not true he was controlled he was slow he never said one word he slowly walks in a room, murders, rapes, slowly down the hall to the next room does the same thing. Because of Kathy, we have insight to how this serial killer murdered. And that

to me is so invaluable. And her bravery... Why? Why does everybody keep talking about him like they want to study him, like he's a work of art? He's the devil. And you know what? If we understand it, we can prevent it.

Understand? Understand what? It's just like jumping into a vat of snakes. What is there to understand? How could you take somebody young and wonderful and just destroyed. I'm thinking about Kathy Kleiner at that age. She's just this young, teen girl.

It just... What do you make of the new movie out on Netflix with Zac Efron? I watched it with my husband, and I did see how he wanted people to see him. It was a movie about Ted, but it showed to me a different side of him, because I did not know the story of his girlfriend and their relationship. Because of that, you saw him more as a person than the devil and the beast inside of him. By not showing him attacking with the blood and the gore, victims, it put into view for me that he was in control at some point, but he enjoyed it when he let the beast out, and that when he raped and killed, he got satisfaction out of that. But when he went home, he saw his girlfriend and her daughter.

That movie portrayed Bundy and his girlfriend, but it didn movie where the victim should have been examined and talked about and how they were killed and taken away from us so soon from this world. At that point, I thought the movie was done very well as far as the acting and the portrayal of how he was when he wanted to be seen that way. I didn't see it as showing the victims until the very end when the credits rolled and all the names of the victims, all of our names were on the TV screen and it showed that we were people and we did have names. So I think that at that point, acknowledging us was a way of showing that the film was sensitive enough to show who we were.

The story of Ted Bundy goes on because I guarantee you there are other victims. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.