MIAMI – It has been 45 years since notorious serial killer Ted Bundy stood trial in Miami for the murders of two Florida State University college students.
Bundy killed more than 30 women and only a few survived his attacks.
Local 10 crime specialist Bridget Matter sat down with a survivor, Kathy Rubin Kleiner.
In 1978, Kleiner was a 20-year-old freshman at FSU. She was studying interior design and a member of the Chi Omega Sorority.
“Everything was great, my roommate and I got along great and then came January 1978,” she said.
On the night of January 14, Kleiner turned in after a night out with friends, and in the hours that followed, her two sorority sisters, Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, were murdered in their sleep.
“He walked to the next room which was my room, room number eight,” Kleiner said.
The killer would walk down the hallway and attack Kathy and her roommate.
“I could see someone standing there, I couldn’t get a face couldn’t see who it was but as he was standing there, he raised his arm over his head and he had the log and he slapped it down so hard it broke my jaw in three places and shattered my chin,” Kleiner said.
The attacker was Ted Bundy.
Kleiner said she and her roommate were spared when Bundy was spooked by someone being dropped off at the sorority house.
Bundy murdered at least 30 women across seven states, and Kleiner is only one of a few survivors.
She would testify in the Miami trial against Bundy about that night.
Then in 1989, Bundy would be executed at a Florida state prison following several convictions.
Kleiner watched the execution coverage on television. It was a pivotal moment in her healing process.
She never went back to the university to finish her degree. Instead, she got married and became a mother. At the age of 32 tragedy came knocking again after finding a lump she was dealt a life-changing diagnosis.
“To have breast cancer after everything I had been through doesn’t seem fair but it wasn’t going to stop me,” she said.
Today, she lives a quiet life in North Fort Myers with her husband.
She wrote a book, “A light in the dark: Surviving more than Ted Bundy.”
Writing not only about surviving Bundy, but breast cancer and the women Bundy killed.
“I was living in my own hell, one day I was a victim the next day I was a survivor,” she said.