Kathy Kleiner, Chi Omega Survivor, on Ted Bundy and the Netflix Series: CBSN, 2019

Name: Kathy Kleiner, Chi Omega Survivor, on Ted Bundy and the Netflix Series: CBSN, 2019
Uploaded: 2019-02-23T00:00:00Z
Duration: 11 min 37 s
Description: Forty-one years after Ted Bundy attacked her in her sorority room, Kathy Kleiner told CBSN how she survived, how she recovered, and what she thought of the 2019 Netflix series and the coming Bundy film.

Forty-one years after Ted Bundy attacked her in her sorority room, Kathy Kleiner told CBSN how she survived, how she recovered, and what she thought of the 2019 Netflix series and the coming Bundy film.

Subject: Ted Bundy
Recorded: about February 2019
Runtime: 11:37

Content warning: A survivor describes the 1978 attack at the Chi Omega sorority house, in which two women were killed and she and her roommate were badly injured; references to rape, strangulation and her injuries. No graphic detail.

The Interview

This is an 11-minute-37-second CBSN interview from February 2019, posted by CBS News on its own channel. A CBSN anchor speaks with Kathy Kleiner, who survived Ted Bundy's attack at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University in January 1978, as Netflix's documentary series "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes" and a coming feature film about Bundy were being criticized for glamorizing him. Kleiner speaks from New Orleans for most of the running time. Bundy himself is not heard.

Historical Context

In the early hours of January 15, 1978, Bundy entered the Chi Omega house in Tallahassee. Two members, Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, were killed; Kathy Kleiner and her roommate were badly injured. Another woman was attacked in a separate apartment nearby that night and survived. At Bundy's trial in Miami in 1979, bite-mark evidence linked him to the attack on Levy; on July 24, 1979, he was convicted of the two murders and of three counts of attempted first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death. Kleiner testified at the trial. Bundy was executed at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989. Netflix released its series on the 30th anniversary of the execution, January 24, 2019.

Circumstances

The interview was part of the wave of coverage that followed the Netflix series and the premiere of the film "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile", starring Zac Efron, in January 2019. Kleiner had given several interviews in the preceding weeks, including one to Rolling Stone, which the anchor mentions.

What the Interview Covers

In her account, Kleiner describes the layout of the house and her room, waking to see a figure dressed in black, and being struck in the face with a piece of firewood. She says that the headlights of a car arriving in the parking lot lit up the room and, she believes, made him run before he could return to her. She describes her injuries and long recovery, including weeks with her jaw wired shut and later surgery, and explains that she chose to read about Bundy and talk about the attack in order to understand him and to heal. She describes watching the Netflix series, comments on the criticism that the films glorify him, and asks that the victims be given time to be heard: "the ones that were killed were beautiful women who had lives and dreams."

What Makes the Recording Significant

It preserves a first-hand account by one of the women who survived the Chi Omega attack, in her own voice and at length, and her response to the renewed attention on Bundy in 2019, from the point of view of the people he harmed.

Archival Importance

This interview adds the voice of a survivor of the crime for which he was first sentenced to death.

Important Caveats

Bundy is not heard in this video. The details of the attack are Kleiner's account, given 41 years later. At one point she says Margaret Bowman was raped; published accounts of the case document sexual assault of Lisa Levy but do not report one for Bowman, and the page should not repeat that detail. Her roommate is named on air by first name only; the page should say "her roommate".

Cbsn Anchor: Ted Bundy is one of the most notorious serial killers in American history, and his story has recaptured the nation's attention after Netflix released its documentary series "Conversations with a Killer" and announced its upcoming biopic starring Zac Efron. Critics have accused filmmakers of romanticizing the serial killer, depicting him as charming and charismatic, but a Ted Bundy survivor has a different opinion. Kathy Kleiner was a college student when Ted Bundy attacked her. She joins me now from New Orleans. Kathy, thank you for being with us. If you could take us back, as difficult as it may be, and tell us a little bit more about that night and how you escaped.

Kathy Kleiner: That night was very bizarre. It's something that I'll never forget. I was asleep in our room. We lived in a dorm, in a dorm-style room in the sorority house, Chi Omega. As you entered the front door, there were stairs that led up to the second-floor landing. At that point, if you look to the side, left and right, you could see two hallways that the rooms were in for each of the girls that lived in the house.

Kathy Kleiner: That night when Ted came up, he went into Margaret's room, which was the first room on the left, and attacked Margaret, and raped her, and strangled her, and then put the sheets up to her neck to make it look like she was sleeping. He then went in and attacked Lisa, and he did the same thing. He actually bit her at that point, which ended up being a way that he was convicted, because it was definitely him that made the bite marks, which meant he was in the house that night.

Kathy Kleiner: When he came into our room, I had a roommate, Karen. We were asleep in our beds. The room was rather small. We had two twin beds on each side of the room. Also, we had a small trunk, like a, we used to call them footlockers, just a small green trunk on the floor, we'd keep our books in and some of the other stuff on top of it. Next to the trunk on each side, there was about three feet, which allowed you to get around the bed.

Kathy Kleiner: So that night, I'm sleeping in my bed, and I heard the door open, and it kind of woke me up a little bit. So the next thing I hear is some noise, the trunk being moved, and someone fell over it and made a lot of noise. So then I woke up, and just in time, I saw the figure, the silhouette of a big, just a black shadow. And as I was looking at it, I was laying on my left side. As I was looking at it, I saw this figure dressed in black, all black, raised his arm up over his head. He had a log in it that he had picked up, a piece of firewood. He struck me in the face with so much force that it shattered my jaw. It cut my cheek open until it was almost back to my ear. Also, I almost bit my tongue off.

Kathy Kleiner: Once he attacked me, he went to my roommate, Karen, attacked her, heard that I was still alive. And since Bundy didn't leave any victims alive, I believe he came to me to go ahead and finish me off. But just before he did, we were on the second floor of the building. We had our curtains open because we had [unclear: "plant paint and a dry elk" / "plant painting in a drive L"]. Someone was coming in the back parking lot, and as they did, the lights shone up into our bedroom. With the curtains open, they illuminated the room. It was just a very bright light, and I could see it even though I was laying in my bed with my eyes closed. At this point, I think Bundy thought he was seen. He ran out of our room, down the front stairs and out the sorority front doors.

Cbsn Anchor: You believe those people coming home and those lights illuminating the room and coming through the window saved your life?

Kathy Kleiner: Oh, yes, I do. I really do, because that's the only thing that stopped him. If he had continued with his mission in our room, I believe he would have just gone down the hall and gone to each room until God knows when he would have stopped.

Cbsn Anchor: What was the physical and emotional recovery like for you in the years, you know, following this attack? How did you cope?

Kathy Kleiner: The physical part of it was pretty difficult. Since my jaw was shattered in three places, I had to have pins put in, and my chin had to be wired shut because there was no bone connected enough to go ahead and do the pins in it. I had my mouth wired shut for nine weeks, which meant I could only drink [unclear: "what came to a straw" / "what Kings was straw"]. And that was fun. I didn't get to enjoy as much food as everyone else did during that time. I continue to have TMJ really bad. I've had several operations over the years. Actually, I had one two years ago, so this is still an ongoing problem for me.

Kathy Kleiner: I recuperated physically and emotionally because I didn't [unclear: "want to be defined" / "let define"] as a survivor. I wanted to get through this, to understand who he was and what he was. I've read every book I could find and watched all the movies, because I didn't want this just to be a bad, scary thing. I wanted to put [unclear: "a face in a person" / "a big thin person"].

Cbsn Anchor: And that's what's really remarkable about your story, is that you have really faced this head-on. You haven't shied away from this. You've talked about this. I read a Rolling Stone article that you were part of recently that, you know, talked about you going in those bookstores and looking at the books and really sort of redefining the conversation surrounding this. Why was that so important to you, instead of just moving on from this and putting this in the past?

Kathy Kleiner: I wanted to talk it through, because I think that helped heal me, by getting it out of my system and just telling it so many times. It felt like it was more of something that happened and not something that happened to me, because that was too scary to think about. So I made the decision to talk about it, to open my mind, to read about it, because I wanted to be sure what Bundy was. He allowed people to see what he wanted them to see. He was very domineering, and he was very manipulative, and he showed the world what he wanted. He was always in control. And I think part of that helped me to heal also, because I understood the other side of him and how he hid that from other people.

Cbsn Anchor: And our conversation comes as this docuseries is on Netflix and this other feature film is on the way. What do you make of these two movies and now all of the conversation that's surrounding them?

Kathy Kleiner: I did watch the series on Netflix, with the tapes. I watched all four hours in one evening. I just, I wanted to see it, and this was his tape, this was his story. I thought it remarkable that he went from the self-secured person that he wanted everyone to know he was, down to the point toward the end where he was almost crying for his life and asking anything he could do to prolong his life. And I found it ironic, because I'm sure his victims, the beautiful women that he killed, I'm sure they did the same thing to him. They were begging for their life. So it kind of was appropriate, I think, for me to know that he was doing the same thing, and hopefully he understood a little bit of what it was to feel in that position.

Cbsn Anchor: But as you're well aware, there's been so much, sorry to interrupt you, there's been so much criticism surrounding these two movies, that they're really sort of feeding the type of attention he so desperately craved. Do you see it that way, or do you see it very differently?

Kathy Kleiner: I say that he wanted to be seen that way, so he was. In the first tapes, and the tapes, there wasn't a place in that situation or in that genre to have the victims speak or talk about them, because it was his tapes, about his story. Not having seen the movie yet, I hope that they will horrify him. They will make him look charismatic, because that's the way he wanted to be seen. Again, that's what the movie's going to pick up on. They are making a movie, they made a movie for people to see, so I think they did glorify him a bit to make the story more interesting. I just hope that they have time for the victims, time to let us talk and let people know that the ones that were killed were beautiful women who had lives and dreams, and they were taken away from us so soon.

Cbsn Anchor: And that doesn't rip you apart, the fact that there is that aspect of glorifying him? There's been a lot of talk about how attractive he was as well. That doesn't just tear you apart?

Kathy Kleiner: It doesn't, because I understand why they are doing it, and that it is his persona. And again, it's hard to explain it, but that was what he wanted people to see. And I felt bad for the women who just over-exaggerate in how they care about him. They don't know him. They mustn't have read and known the diabolical person that he really was. So the movie is made for people to see, and if it glorifies him, then that's the way he wanted it to be told. But I mean, anything you can see at any time to learn more, I think it's important.

Cbsn Anchor: You know, I wonder why you think the public is so fascinated by serial killers as a whole.

Kathy Kleiner: I think it's something morbid in everybody. It's like a train wreck. Unfortunately, you want to watch it. And I think serial killers, they're being talked about so much, and what they did is so alarming that people just want to get more and more of it. Each serial killer obviously has a different way that [unclear: "they did think how they hurt people" / "they did things, they hurt people"]. But they're all the same, where people just want to hear about it. They want to know what happened, and not necessarily in a good way. They just want to hear what happened, and hopefully they're learning something from it: that they are serial killers because they killed people, most of them being young women. [unclear: "That's what's all in common." / "That's what we'll"]

Cbsn Anchor: Well, we'll leave it there, Kathy. Kathy Kleiner, coming to us from New Orleans tonight. ---