In the early morning hours of January 15, 1978, a sense of security within the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University in Tallahassee was shattered. Lisa Levy, a 20-year-old female student, was asleep in her room when an intruder entered the house through a faulty back door. The man, armed with a piece of oak firewood, moved silently through the darkened halls. He entered Lisa's room and brutally bludgeoned and strangled her as she slept.
The attacker did not stop with Lisa.
That same night, he also murdered her sorority sister, Margaret Bowman, and viciously assaulted two other young women in the house, Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, who sustained severe injuries but survived the horrific ordeal. A short time after leaving the sorority house, the same man broke into a nearby duplex and attacked another student, Cheryl Thomas, who also survived. When police arrived at the Chi Omega house, they discovered a scene of chaos and violence. Lisa Levy was found with a faint heartbeat but later succumbed to her extensive injuries at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.
The investigation into the brutal attacks quickly focused on finding a suspect who had left behind minimal evidence. No fingerprints were found, and the surviving victims could not identify their assailant. The breakthrough in the case came from a unique and grim piece of evidence: a distinct bite mark left on Lisa Levy's body. Forensic odontologists were able to create a cast of the mark, which proved to be crucial in identifying the killer.
The man responsible for this night of terror was Theodore Robert Bundy, a serial killer who had recently escaped from custody in Colorado and made his way to Florida. He was arrested in Pensacola, Florida, on February 15, 1978, after a police officer stopped him in a stolen vehicle. Investigators were able to match Bundy's crooked and chipped teeth to the bite mark found on Lisa. This forensic evidence became the cornerstone of the prosecution's case against him.
In June 1979, Ted Bundy's trial for the Chi Omega murders began in Miami, becoming the first nationally televised murder trial in the United States. Despite the defense's efforts, the evidence, particularly the bite mark analysis, was overwhelming. On July 24, 1979, the jury found Bundy guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, and three counts of attempted first-degree murder. He was sentenced to death. After years of appeals, Ted Bundy was executed in Florida's electric chair on January 24, 1989.
