I woke up with Ted Bundy looming over me with log… he shattered my jaw & left me to die but I survived in stroke of luck
The Florida-born author is one of the few women to have survived an encounter with the sadist, who was later found guilty of rape, necrophilia, and murder.
11
11
Among his victims were 21-year-old Margaret Bowman and 20-year-old Lisa Levy, who were murdered just minutes before the 33-year-old launched his assault on Kathy.
Bundy was executed in 1989, when he admitted to murdering at least 30 women in his four-year-long reign of horror.
But his notoriety has lived on, with books and films often depicting the sadist as a charismatic killer who lured his victims with his good looks.
Decades later, Kathy has revealed how she has found peace by giving a voice to his victims and exposing Bundy's "true" nature.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, she described him as a "loser and a sociopath" who craved the world's attention.
NIGHT OF THE ATTACK
When Kathy was attacked, she was a second-year student at Florida State University, living in Chi Omega sorority house with girls 'who felt like sisters'.
She had spent the afternoon at a church friend's wedding but decided to head back early with her dormmate, Karen Chandler, to study for her calculus exam the following Monday.
The pair's room was not dissimilar to any other dorm room: two single beds pushed against opposite walls, separated by a small trunk and a large bay window with curtains that remained open 'all the time'.
When they turned the lights off at around 11:30pm, Kathy fell straight to sleep.
In the early hours of the morning, she awoke to the 'swish' sound of the carpet.
'I remember squinting into the dark, not wearing my glasses, and seeing this black shadow standing above me, looking at me.
'I was just waking up a little bit and he had that log in his hand.
"I can close my eyes and I can see my room. And I can see him standing over me. And this is something I'll never forget," she said.
Wielding the same log he had used to kill her two much-adored sorority sisters, and which he had stolen from the house's fireplace, Bundy struck Kathy's jaw.
The sheer force shattered the bone and splintered her chin - exposing her teeth and almost severing her tongue.
"When he hit me, my first feeling was like hitting a bag of potatoes. You know, it didn't hurt," she added.
But it wasn't long before adrenaline turned to agonising pain.
11
11
"It hurt so bad. The most intense pain I have ever felt," she recalled.
Moments later, a rustle in the neighbouring bed turned Bundy's attention to Karen.
Tripping over Kathy's trunk, he stumbled to his next victim, before mercilessly bludgeoning her too.
In a stroke of immense fortune, the pair were saved when a couple returning home parked up beside the sorority house.
I thought I was yelling and screaming for help but all I was doing was making gurgling sounds from all the blood in my mouth
Kathy Kleiner Rubin
The headlights flooded the room with light, startling Bundy, who ran away.
Kathy said: 'I was moaning and groaning and I thought I was yelling and screaming for help but all I was doing was making gurgling sounds from all the blood in my mouth.
'He came back over to my side of the room so I tucked myself into the smallest ball. I thought if he didn't see me, he wouldn't kill me.'
'He looked at me. He raised his arm up over his head, but just as he was about to hit me again, a bright light shone through our window,
'He got real antsy and started moving around. Then he ran out of the room."
I thought if he didn't see me, he wouldn't kill me
Kathy Kleiner Rubin
Whimpering, Kathy tried calling for help but managed no more than a few "gurgling sounds" through all of the blood.
Karen was able to stumble to get help as Kathy passed out from the pain.
She recalled: 'I woke up and a police officer was standing at the head of my bed looking at me.
'I touched my face and it was warm with blood. I was in excruciating pain – it felt like daggers and knives. But he just told me 'it's going to be OK.''
"I knew, having been so scared that this person was going to take care of me."
PATH TO HAPPINESS
Kathy never returned to university and spent the next nine weeks with her jaw wired shut at her parents' house in Miami.
Therapy wasn't an option for the young girl who was raised by Cuban parents, where sweeping problems under the rug was the "done thing".
Instead, her parents did all they could to help her physically recover and protect her from the trauma of what happened.
"My mum wanted to shield me from the news and hearing about my sorority sisters so she would take the newspaper and cut all of the articles out that would mention Bundy," she said.
Meanwhile, Kathy took "baby steps" to heal from the psychological wounds left from Bundy's attack - but also from the anger and sadness of leaving behind her freedom and friends at university.
She said: "I walked outside and felt the sun on my face and looked up at the trees and saw each individual leaf, that's part of the branch, that's part of the tree.
"And looking at the bugs on the ground and seeing how they interact. That's life.
"And I wanted to be part of life. I wanted to be part of what was so natural."
Kathy recognised exposure therapy would be crucial in her path to recovery so she got a job working at a lumber yard, where she would be surrounded by men everyday.
11
11
While she grew progressively less scared, dark thoughts of a figure standing behind her lingered.
Leaning on her faith, she imagined herself walking away from the darkness - each day, taking one step closer to the "light" at the end of the road.
She has since co-authored a book with writer Emilie Lebau-Luchessi, in which she revisited in painfully vivid detail the events of that night.
Although challenging, Kathy said sharing her story with the world has helped her heal and connect with other survivors.
"They just need to know that one day they were a victim and the next day they became a survivor.
"That survivor has to live the rest of their life and they can talk about it and they can feel it but they shouldn't dwell on it.
"They need to move on and and not let this put them in a box but just take baby steps to heal themselves," she said.
11
11
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Woman says she's now a 'prisoner in her own home' after gun-toting neighbor moves in next door
A Michigan woman says she lives in constant fear and hasn't been able to relax in years due to her gun-loving neighbor's alarming hobby. Lois Laroe, who has lived in Ionia for decades, claims the man who moved in next door about three years ago has made her life a living hell. The disrupting neighbor, Casey Wagner, has allegedly been shooting high-caliber guns at Tannerite - causing booming explosions in his yard day and night. Along with having to endure the unrelenting sound of the explosive targets going off, Laroe has allegedly sustained property damage and has even been taunted by the gun-happy culprit. 'I haven't been out in my yard to do anything,' Laroe confessed to WLNS. 'I'm a prisoner of my own home.' Laroe said she has trekked down to the Ionia County Sheriff's Department countless times, but Wagner has yet to face any consequences for his unneighborly behavior. In March, Wagner's gunshots shattered a hole in Laroe's car windshield, she told the outlet. A shocking photo also shows a window taped up in her home after Wagner allegedly damaged it. She also claims Wagner caught wind of her efforts to stop him from blowing up explosives in the quiet neighborhood and sent her a chilling message. 'We found a balloon that said "Snitch" on it,' the concerned woman told WLNS. 'I have been everywhere asking for help.' Laroe is not the only person disturbed by Wagner's shooting habits. Greg Sipka, who lives next to Laroe, agrees the gunfire is nuisance and has filed a police report about it. 'You'd hear them at 10 at night. You'd hear them at 6am. You'd hear them at 2:30 at night,' Spika told the outlet. He said after he complained to the cops, it took about two weeks for anyone to come to his home to take the report. Spika followed up with the sheriff's office about seven weeks later. To his dismay, the case was already closed. An Ionia ordinance regarding 'Breach of Peace' explicitly outlaws what Laroe and Spika have both described. 'No person shall disturb the public peace and quiet by loud or boisterous conduct,' it reads. Spika said back in September 2024, the township held a meeting to get to the bottom of the unsettling situation, although not much has changed since then. He said that at the meeting, Ionia Township Supervisor Kurt Scheurer and Representative Gina Johnson said they would start issuing Wagner citations. After that meeting, Spika claims Wagner had actually stopped recreationally shooting in his yard for about four months, but resumed in January. Since he made his firearm comeback, Laroe and Spika are more fed up than ever. They claim Wagner has still not been cited. Sheriff Charlie Noll told WLNS the department has launched an investigation into the matter and could not further comment. Wagner could not be reached.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Student's horrifying 'plan c' text revealed after she gave birth to secret baby that died in her dorm
A Florida college student accused of fatally suffocating her newborn in her dorm bathroom texted a man eight months before about her sickening preference for 'killing the baby', prosecutors say. Brianna Moore, 19, who stands accused of aggravated manslaughter over the April 2024 death of her newborn daughter, texted an unnamed man in September 2023 about her chilling plans if she got pregnant. 'Hey man, sometimes you need a plan C,' Moore texted the unidentified man, per the Tampa Bay Times. He responded: 'Plan A was condoms. Plan B was the pill. Plan C was to kill (the) kid.' 'Plan C is my favorite,' Moore said back, according to texts in her phone found by investigators after her child was found dead. The texts are set to become central to prosecutors' arguments when she stands trial over the manslaughter of her infant on July 22. When she gave birth last spring, Moore claims that she had no idea she was pregnant before she suddenly fell ill in her dorm, throwing up and laying on the floor in pain before her screaming bay fell down next to her. 'It wasn't moving, so I felt for a heartbeat, and I didn't feel one,' she told investigators. 'It wasn't moving, and I got scared.' Moore stunned the University of Tampa campus when her newborn child was found in her bathroom trash can, with newly revealed documents from her upcoming trial shedding light on the moment the child was discovered. When she was brought in for questioning to a campus security office, Moore said she was stunned when she gave birth, and told investigators: 'I just woke up not feeling good yesterday morning. So I went to the bathroom... After a few seconds, it was dead.' She was attending the university on a $30,000 scholarship and had previously achieved high grades at Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, a high school for gifted students. But police said that they came to believe she was naïve about much of the world and struggled to make friends at college, barely talking to her three roommates who she shared a bathroom with. She told investigators that on the morning of April 27, 2024, she woke up in pain and noticed that her pants were wet. Moore raced to the bathroom and remained in there for over 90 minutes, with her roommates later saying they mistook the newborn baby's cries for a video playing on a phone. The roommates didn't check on her, and Moore said her infant cried for 'like five seconds' before it became unresponsive. According to the Tampa Bay Times, she said she then laid the baby on a towel and took a shower, and when she came out she feared it was dead. 'It wasn't moving, so I felt for a heartbeat, and I didn't feel one,' she reportedly told police. 'It wasn't moving, and I got scared.' Moore said she then wrapped the baby in a towel and took a nap at around 9.45am, waking up at 11am and finding the baby was still not breathing. Late that afternoon, her roommates called campus security after seeing blood on the bathroom floor. Moore initially claimed she had merely had her period, and security left. Tragically, the newborn was not discovered until the next evening, when one of her roommates found the baby wrapped in a bloodied towel in the trash bag. The haunting discovery led police to race to the campus, and a medical examiner found that the newborn suffered several broken ribs along her spine and small hemorrhages in her lungs. The death was ruled a homicide, caused by 'asphyxia due to compression of the torso with rib fractures'. Once she was interrogated, Moore admitted that she was 'probably in denial' about being pregnant, and told police: 'I just kind of put it out of my head because I hadn't had my period since last March.' In an examination by forensic neuropsychologist Nicole Graham for Moore's impending trial, she wrote that Moore likely had a 'cryptic pregnancy', where women either do not know or are in denial that they are heavily pregnant. She told Graham that she held the baby girl to her chest to 'soothe' her, and denied smothering her by holding her too tightly. The reports are set to become central to Moore's trial later this month, with prosecutors attempting to block her from testifying in her own defense, saying it would only 'garner sympathy from the jury'. Moore's text messages about 'killing the kid', written eight months before the birth to a man who was not the father, are also set to be brought up by prosecutors. Her attorney Jonah Dickstein told the Tampa Bay Times that the texts are out of context, and said that 'in those text messages with her friend from eight months earlier, she was just discussing the general legal status of birth control and abortion in Florida and other states'. If Moore is found guilty of manslaughter, she faces up to 30 years in prison.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Two women killed in Kentucky church shooting after trooper shot; suspect killed, police say
Two women died Sunday at a Kentucky church in a shooting spree that began when a state trooper was wounded after making a traffic stop, police said. The suspect in both shootings was also killed. The suspect carjacked a vehicle after the traffic stop near Lexington 's airport and fled to Richmond Road Baptist Church, where he opened fire, Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers said. Killed in the shootings at the church were a 72-year-old woman and a 32-year-old woman, the local coroner said. Two other people were wounded at the church and taken to a local hospital, the police chief said. One victim sustained critical injuries and the other was in stable condition, Weathers said. The suspect was shot by police and died at the scene, he said. The suspect was not immediately identified pending notification of family, he said. 'Preliminary information indicates that the suspect may have had a connection to the individuals at the church,' the police chief said at a news conference. The trooper stopped the vehicle after receiving a 'license plate reader alert' and was shot about 11:30 a.m., Weathers said. The trooper was in stable condition, he said. Police tracked the carjacked vehicle to the Baptist church, the police chief said. The church is about 16 miles 26 kilometers) from where the trooper was shot. The shootings remain under investigation, Weathers said. Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said the church is home to a small, tight-knit congregation. 'Please pray for everyone affected by these senseless acts of violence, and let's give thanks for the swift response by the Lexington Police Department and Kentucky State Police,' Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a social media post. State Attorney General Russell Coleman said detectives with his office were ready to support local and state agencies. 'Today, violence invaded the Lord's House,' Coleman said in a statement. 'The attack on law enforcement and people of faith in Lexington shocked the entire Commonwealth."
