On a cold and rainy February morning in 1978, 12-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach, a white female, was dropped off at Lake City Junior High School by her mother. It was February 9th, and after a brief chat with a friend, Kimberly headed to her first-period class. Soon after, she was sent back to her homeroom to get a purse she had forgotten. She was never seen alive again.
Eyewitnesses later reported seeing a man leading a young girl to a white van that had been circling the school.
The disappearance of the seventh-grader launched an intensive search. The investigation soon focused on a man who had recently escaped from a Colorado prison and fled to Florida: Ted Bundy. Just weeks before Kimberly vanished, Bundy had committed a series of brutal attacks at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University. Six days after Kimberly's abduction, Bundy was arrested in Pensacola for driving a stolen car. Investigators quickly began to connect him to the missing girl. A white van he was known to have stolen matched the description given by witnesses at the school. Furthermore, credit card receipts placed Bundy at a Holiday Inn in Lake City, only three miles from the junior high, the night before Kimberly disappeared.
Nearly two months after she went missing, on April 7, 1978, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper discovered Kimberly's mummified remains in a rundown hog shed near Suwannee River State Park, about 30 miles west of Lake City. Her body was nude except for a turtleneck, with her other clothes lying next to her. The autopsy determined that she had been sexually assaulted and had died from homicidal violence to her neck. The evidence against Bundy mounted. Investigators found numerous fibers on Kimberly's clothing that matched the carpet in the white van linked to him. Bloodstains found inside the van also matched Kimberly's DNA.
Bundy was first tried and convicted for the murders at the Chi Omega sorority, receiving two death sentences. In January 1980, he stood trial in Orlando for the kidnapping and murder of Kimberly Leach. During the trial, a firefighter testified to seeing Bundy lead the young girl to his van. The forensic evidence, particularly the matching clothing fibers, was a crucial part of the prosecution's case. After seven hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty on both counts. On the second anniversary of Kimberly's murder, Bundy was sentenced to death for a third time. After his sentencing, he yelled, "Tell the jury they were wrong!" For years, Bundy denied his involvement in her death, but on the eve of his execution, he finally confessed to her murder. On January 24, 1989, Ted Bundy was executed by electric chair for the murder of Kimberly Leach.
