Forty-Seven Minutes: The Chi Omega Evidence That Convicted Bundy

(00:00:00) Forty-Seven Minutes: The Chi Omega Evidence That Convicted Bundy
(00:00:55) The Second Escape and the Road to Tallahassee
(00:02:44) The Forty-Seven Minutes
(00:04:54) The Evidence Left Behind
(00:06:10) Kimberly Leach
(00:07:10) The Arrest That Ended the Run
(00:08:08) The Trial He Ran Himself
(00:09:27) The Keppel Tapes
(00:10:36) January 24, 1989
(00:11:58) What the Forty-Seven Minutes Left Behind

In the early hours of January 15, 1978, Ted Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University and carried out one of the most devastating attacks in American true crime history — killing two women, injuring two more, and leaving forensic evidence that would ultimately convict him. This episode reconstructs those forty-seven minutes in detail, from his second escape out of a Colorado jail cell on December 30, 1977, through his weeks of surveillance in Tallahassee under the stolen name Chris Hagen, to the moment he walked back to his rooming house and went to sleep.

The attack on Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, the survival of Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler, the assault on Cheryl Thomas eight blocks away — each is examined against the physical evidence recovered at the scene. Central to this chapter is the bite mark left on Lisa Levy's body: the piece of forensic evidence that, at trial, forensic odontologist Dr. Richard Souviron matched to Bundy's own teeth — a chipped tooth, a distinctive spacing pattern, a conviction. It was the first time bite mark evidence secured a murder conviction in Florida.

This episode also covers the abduction and murder of twelve-year-old Kimberly Leach from Lake City Junior High on February 9, 1978 — Bundy's final known killing — twenty-five days after Chi Omega, and examines what his behaviour in those intervening weeks tells us about the man beneath the charm.

This episode includes AI-generated content.