"I Did Not Kill Kimberly Leach": Ted Bundy's Statement Before Sentencing, 1980

Before Judge Wallace Jopling sentenced him for the murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, Ted Bundy argued at length that publicity, not evidence, had convicted him.

Subject

Ted Bundy

Recorded

February 12, 1980

Runtime

15:55

Content warning: Concerns the abduction and murder of a 12-year-old girl.

The Interview

On February 12, 1980, Ted Bundy stood in an Orlando courtroom to be sentenced for the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. Before Judge Wallace Jopling read the sentence, Bundy addressed him directly; the clip, which begins in mid-sentence, holds about fifteen minutes of the statement. He argued that statewide publicity had decided the case before trial, attacked the jury foreman and the state's eyewitnesses, and ended: "I bear none of the guilt, and I bear none of the responsibility, because I did not kill Kimberly Leach." The clip closes as the judge begins the formal sentencing.

Historical Context

Kimberly Diane Leach was abducted from Lake City Junior High School in Lake City, Florida, on February 9, 1978. Bundy was arrested in Pensacola six days later. In July 1979 he was convicted in Miami of the Chi Omega murders in Tallahassee and sentenced to death. The Leach case, a Columbia County prosecution, was moved first toward Live Oak (Suwannee County) and then to Orlando. The trial began on January 7, 1980, and on February 7 the jury found him guilty of murder and kidnapping. On February 9, the day he declared himself married to Carole Ann Boone in court, the jury recommended death.

Circumstances of the Interview

Court reconvened for sentencing on Tuesday, February 12, 1980. According to the defense's brief in his Florida Supreme Court appeal, the judge read his sentence "immediately after a final statement to the court by Bundy". Bundy was represented by Julius Victor Africano and Lynn Thompson, whom he names in the statement, but he spoke for himself. He also says one of his attorneys called jury selection "less a task of jury selection" than "of jury imposition".

What the Interview Covers

Bundy says the television coverage of his Miami trial reached most people in Florida, and that moving the trial to Orlando gave him only "half a loaf of fairness". He says the jury foreman worked on the printing of the Orlando Sentinel Star, which, he says, had published 283 articles about him, and that the foreman had told the press Bundy was guilty "all along". He calls the state's witnesses "media manufactured", naming Jackie Moore, John Farhat and the key eyewitness, Clarence "Andy" Anderson, and argues that the state overwhelmed the jury with the quantity of its evidence rather than its quality. He says he was convicted not by the jury but by "a publicity-created symbol", and denies the murder.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The argument is Bundy's own account of why the verdict was wrong, delivered at the end of the trial that led to his execution. Years later it became evidence about his state of mind: in 1988 the federal Eleventh Circuit, reviewing the videotape of this argument, called it "a cogent, well-reasoned argument" and relied on it in upholding the finding that he had been competent to stand trial.

Archival Importance

The Leach case brought Bundy's third death sentence, and it was for this murder that he was executed on January 24, 1989. The clip preserves at length his courtroom manner and his public position of innocence, which he maintained until the days before his execution, when he confessed to many murders.

Important Caveats

Everything Bundy says about the jury, the witnesses and the evidence is his argument; the jury convicted him, and the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence in 1985. His claims about the foreman and the number of newspaper articles are his own and are not verified here. The foreman's surname is not clearly heard and is not given on this page. Several passages are indistinct and are not quoted. The uploader's title calls this Bundy's "last statement"; it was his statement before sentencing, not his last words in court.

Ted Bundy: ...which allowed televisions in the courtroom, as opposed to the experimental period. And so it's not unreasonable to assume that the great majority of people in this state watched me being tried and convicted of two murders in the Chi Omega case in Miami. Now, you recognize, Judge Jopling, you recognize the effect of this publicity. I think you recognize it as a jurist, but you also recognize it as an intelligent scholar, as a human being. And so you moved this trial from, you allowed this trial to be moved from Lake City to Live Oak, and then from Live Oak to Orlando.

Ted Bundy: But I think, if I'm not mistaken, that you would have to admit to yourself, and I believe you have stated on the record, that the publicity that has tainted this case, and which has [unclear: "brought them out of" / "brought him out of"] the verdict that we have here today, was statewide. But there's no way [unclear: "that the publicity has tainted the gone-out or" / "they're devastated that the publicity has attained"] the verdict in this case. I meant to say, you recognize the publicity was statewide. It's my contention that it's tainted and contaminated this case, and that we could not escape it. We could not escape the reality in which the [unclear: "priest's publicity, in his presentation" / "priests publicity anymore presentation"] in this case, could not escape the way in which it influenced the jury that heard this case.

Ted Bundy: Now, Your Honor, you recognized at one point, I believe here in Orlando, and correct me if I'm wrong, as I recall you said, in connection with our motion to continue this trial, that based upon what you knew, Orlando was as fair a place for this trial to be held as any other place in the state. Well, Your Honor, that's sort of treating fairness like a loaf of bread and saying that half a loaf is better than none. And what we got here in this courtroom was half a loaf of fairness, because [unclear: "we had the state and the court felt" / "we had that of the state and the coin"] this trial had to go forward this time.

Ted Bundy: So it went forward with jury selection. And as one of my attorneys observed after several days, it was less a task of jury selection and more a task of jury imposition. And what kind of jury did we get as a result? Well, let me say this. The most, the most typical example we've got is the man who is responsible for the actual printing of the Orlando Sentinel Star, which printed some 283 articles concerning me and cases concerning me and about my background: the man, Patrick Wolski.

Ted Bundy: The man who was placed in that jury box when we were defenseless, when we had no more [unclear: "preference" / "cranberries"; probably "peremptories"]. The man who later became jury foreman. And the man who's been quoted in the [unclear: "pages" / "papers"] as saying, well, he was guilty, as I saw, he was guilty all along. It wasn't any surprise to us. We listened to Mr. Wolski when he was being questioned during voir dire. And there was no more hostile individual who sat in there during jury selection, no more individual more hostile to the defense than the man who eventually became the jury foreman in this case. What a fitting honor, that a man intimately involved in generating the pretrial publicity should be placed on this jury, where we couldn't get him off, and should eventually become jury foreman.

Ted Bundy: And what of the evidence? The so-called evidence. The evidence in this case didn't come solely from the witness stand. It came from the newsstand, the television set. It became the town gospel. We weren't limited here to the testimony that came from that witness stand. Elementary knowledge of the human mind, Your Honor, I suggest, makes it impossible for anyone who's honestly [unclear: "advanced and feared" / "Advanced to Theory"] the people who were [unclear: "in panel" / "entitled"; probably "impaneled"] here, each and every one of them with knowledge about my background and allegations about [unclear: "what I've passed" / "life"], to put that out of their mind.

Ted Bundy: But we did hear evidence. We heard a lot of it. In fact, Mr. Wolski was impressed by the amount of it. And so the state, faced with making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, built a case based on quality, on quantity, not on quality, and attempted, and succeeded, apparently, in overwhelming the members of the jury with quantity, without credibility, without quality.

Ted Bundy: Consider the parade of media-manufactured witnesses that you yourself, Your Honor, heard testify on this witness stand. Consider Jackie Moore, who saw a van weaving down the highway on February the 9th, and two years later walks into this courtroom and says, I recognize Mr. Bundy on January the 18th, 1980, as he was leaving the courtroom in this very case. Preposterous. That's the kind of evidence we're dealing with, and that is why this case was not based upon truth, why this case was contaminated by publicity.

Ted Bundy: Consider John Farhat, who, after failing [unclear: "to identify a witness like that" / "within a file witness like that"] on the stand, [unclear: "to point" / "at the point"] the finger at me, a man who thought what he saw occurred in the heat of [unclear: "some" / "sun"], who couldn't even identify Lynn Thompson, a man he had seen for 20 minutes four months earlier. Why? As long as I got those fingers pointing at the defendant, that's all it meant. Never mind whether it was truthful, never mind whether it was credible. And the thing that jury was going to remember was the pointing of that finger, and what they knew about that defendant, and what they knew about me before they went into that jury box was enough. The combination of those two factors was enough.

Ted Bundy: And last but not least, consider Andy Anderson, the fireman, the state's key witness. [unclear: "I don't think the state would deny this" / "I don't think mistake for the 90s"]. The man waited five months to come forward with his television identification, with his identification procured through [unclear: "media publicity" / "media complicity"], a man who had the audacity to tell that jury that he did not do so, that he did not come forward because he didn't want to get involved. The jury must have believed him, must have believed part of what he said. And certainly the prosecution wanted the jury to believe the testimony of Mr. Anderson.

Ted Bundy: And remember how he identified me in court? He sat in that witness chair and was asked to look around the courtroom, asked to look around the courtroom to see if anybody in that courtroom closely resembled the person he had seen in front of Lake City, the man he had seen in front of Lake City. And I sat here like this, and I faced the man, and he pointed the finger right at me. He didn't identify the man in front of Lake City Junior High School. He didn't ask to see a profile. He didn't need a profile. He never needed a profile. All he needed was a face. All he needed to know was that that was Ted Bundy, and that was the man he needed to identify. So let's throw out this nonsense about needing a profile to identify the man in front of Lake City Junior High School.

Ted Bundy: [inaudible; see Variant readings]

Ted Bundy: And apparently it made no difference to the jury that the girl Andy Anderson saw was not wearing a coat, when we know Kimberly Leach was. Apparently it made no difference to the jury that [unclear: "Mr. Andy Anderson strived to first being carried by the girl he saw as a brown person" / "this thing transcribe the first being carried by the girl he saw the brown"], the [unclear: "man he'd been" / "first man even"] watching on television, seeing in the newspaper for two years. He did his job. He did his civic duty. [unclear: "pretty color" (captions only)] But he did not tell the truth.

Ted Bundy: His testimony can't be [unclear: "wrong"; perhaps "corroborated"]: not by his [unclear: "work records" / "word fragrance"], not by his description of what [inaudible] [unclear: "by his original descriptions to Mr. Diesel and the first kid and assisted" (captions only)] what he saw occurred in April. [inaudible] [unclear: "the manner in which the state" (Whisper only)] used publicity to their advantage in procuring this [unclear: "condition"; probably "conviction"].

Ted Bundy: [unclear: "Where Andy Anderson, he" / "Or Andy Anderson, you"] saw that little girl being taken across the street in April, and months later thought he saw an abduction that occurred in February. [unclear: "But where, over in" / "aware of"] the middle of a highway, [unclear: "he started" / "and start"] running around Lake City Junior High School looking for someone to [unclear: "abduct him or" / "abduct and murder"]. How fallacious. [unclear: "A proposition being that somebody bought it" / "You get somebody bought it"], the jury bought it, but I don't buy it. [inaudible] Because that's not true. It proves nothing. It certainly doesn't prove [unclear: "that I wasn't that bad" / "that I was in there"].

Ted Bundy: But the jury apparently was impressed by such inferences, which were without reliability, and proceeded to deliberate. But I maintain that the real deliberations in this case did not occur in this courtroom, but in barrooms, around kitchen tables. There were no deliberations here. I'm glad Patrick Wolski got a chance to chat with a member of the news media. We got some kind of insight into their, quote, deliberations, which says very, very early in the deliberations they took a vote, they took [unclear: "four votes"], it was nine for conviction, two for acquittal, one on the [unclear: "side"; perhaps "undecided"].

Ted Bundy: Three weeks of testimony, 100 exhibits, and very early in the testimony they were overwhelmed by that, [unclear: "one to PMM" / "wanted the amen"]. And they were not uninfluenced by those [unclear: "other" / "probably"] deliberations that they had engaged in before they came into this courtroom. And they were not [unclear: "undermined by" / "unminded from"; perhaps "unmindful of"] the publicity that they had heard concerning this case before they came in here. [unclear: "Never. I'm the number one basis of the evidence." / "another basis of the evidence"]

Ted Bundy: I was not convicted by this jury. [unclear: "My name was convicted" / "A name was convened"]. I was not convicted by this jury, but a publicity-created symbol. And the prosecution, contrary to the oft-stated cliché that they had to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, didn't have that [unclear: "word" / "bird"; probably "burden"]. Let's not fool ourselves. It was Mr. Africano, Mr. Thompson and myself who had to prove Ted Bundy innocent beyond a reasonable doubt, and we failed. [unclear: "that Ted Bundy was innocent beyond a reasonable doubt, but" / "apart from that with the stand that Ted Bundy was innocent beyond a reasonable doubt"]. [unclear: "Kimberly Leach didn't testify" / "a Timberland testica"]. Okay.

Ted Bundy: Now, you're going to pass sentence on me today, but the sentence was passed months ago, as a result of publicity, suspicion and fear, and a desire for vengeance. This was passed months ago, you know. And while I may bear the awesome consequences of what you're about to do, I bear none of the guilt, and I bear none of the responsibility, because I did not kill Kimberly Leach.

Judge: [unclear: "They wished us called" / "Thank Mr. Strong"] trial by jury, and after deliberation a verdict was rendered finding the defendant, Theodore Robert Bundy, guilty of the following crimes. One, murder in the first degree of Kimberly Diane Leach, as alleged in count one of the indictment. Two, kidnap of Kimberly Diane Leach, as alleged in count two of the indictment. The trial jury, after hearing additional matters, retired to consider and render an advisory sentence pursuant to Florida Statutes 921.141. The trial jury returned and in open court recommended the imposition of the death penalty upon the defendant, Theodore Robert Bundy, for the murder of Kimberly Diane Leach. [recording ends] ---