FSU Chi Omega Sorority House

Author: Jewls Krueger

In the early morning hours of Sunday, January 15, 1978, serial killer Ted Bundy broke into the Chi Omega sorority house on the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee, Florida and, in a rampage that lasted just 15 minutes, attacked four young women in their sleep. He killed 21 year old Margaret Bowman and 20 year old Lisa Levy, and seriously injured 21 year old roommates Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler. About half an hour later, he attacked and severely injured a fifth young woman, FSU dance student Cheryl Thomas, at an off campus boarding house just four blocks away.The Chi Omega attack was Bundy's most public and prolific single night of violence. It was also his last.

Ted Bundy's Path to Tallahassee

By the end of 1977, Ted Bundy had been convicted of aggravated kidnapping in Utah, was awaiting trial for the January 1975 murder of Colorado nurse Caryn Campbell, and had already escaped twice from Colorado jails while acting as his own attorney. On December 30, 1977, he broke free from the Garfield County Jail in Glenwood Springs, Colorado for a second and final time by cutting a hole in the ceiling of his cell.

Over the following week, Bundy traveled by bus, car, and plane through Denver, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Atlanta, and, finally, Tallahassee. He arrived on the FSU campus on January 8, 1978, and rented a room using the alias "Chris Hagen" at a rooming house called The Oak at 409 West College Avenue, less than half a mile from the Chi Omega sorority house.

The Chi Omega Attack

Just before 3 a.m. on Sunday, January 15, 1978, Bundy left The Oak and walked to the Chi Omega house at 661 West Jefferson Street. He picked up a piece of firewood as he approached, and let himself in through a back door that Chi Omega members later confirmed had a broken lock. Once inside, he made his way through the ground floor and up the stairs.

His first victim was 21 year old Chi Omega Vice President Margaret Elizabeth Bowman, whom he beat over the head with the log as she slept and then strangled with a nylon stocking. He then crossed the hallway to the room of 20 year old sorority pledge Lisa Janet Levy, who was also asleep. He beat her unconscious with the wooden log, sexually assaulted her with a hair mist bottle, and bit her twice, once on her left buttock and once on her left breast. The two bite marks would prove crucial to the case.

Bundy then moved farther down the hallway to Room 8, where 21 year old roommates Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler were asleep. He tripped over a small wooden trunk on the floor between the beds, which briefly alerted Kleiner. He beat both women severely, breaking Kleiner's jaw in three places and giving Chandler a fractured jaw and severe head lacerations. He fled the house after being interrupted by an outside sound.

At about 3:20 a.m., Chi Omega sister Nita Neary returned to the house from a date and saw a man rushing out of the front door carrying an object that looked like a piece of wood. When she went upstairs to alert the housemother, she found Karen Chandler in the hallway, stumbling and bloody. The first Tallahassee Police officer on the scene, Officer Ray Crew, discovered the four women within minutes. Margaret Bowman was pronounced dead in her room. Lisa Levy was transported to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead there a short time later. Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner survived with serious injuries.

The Attack on Cheryl Thomas

Roughly half an hour after leaving Chi Omega, Bundy broke into a nearby duplex apartment at 431½ Dunwoody Street, about four blocks from the sorority house. In the bedroom, he attacked 21 year old Florida State University dance major Cheryl Thomas, beating her with a nearby piece of wood before once again being interrupted, this time by Thomas's next door neighbors Debbie Ciccarelli and Nancy Dowdy, who heard the attack through their thin adjoining wall. Ciccarelli called Thomas on the phone, and Bundy fled through a window when it rang. Cheryl Thomas survived, though the attack left her with a fractured skull and permanent hearing loss in one ear, ending her dance career.

The Investigation and Arrest

Investigators quickly linked the Chi Omega and Dunwoody Street attacks. Tallahassee Police Sergeant Howard Winkler, the department's crime scene investigation supervisor, photographed the bite marks on Lisa Levy's body to scale. Leon County Sheriff Ken Katsaris personally accompanied his investigators to the medical examiner's office.

On February 9, 1978, less than a month after the Chi Omega killings, Bundy abducted and murdered 12 year old Kimberly Diane Leach from her junior high school in Lake City, Florida. On February 15, 1978, Pensacola Police Officer David Lee pulled over a stolen orange Volkswagen Beetle a short distance west of the city and, after a brief struggle, arrested the driver. That driver was Ted Bundy.

Investigators eventually connected Bundy to the Chi Omega attacks through fibers, eyewitness identification by Nita Neary, and the bite mark evidence recovered from Lisa Levy's body. On July 27, 1978, Bundy was indicted in Tallahassee for the two Chi Omega murders and the assaults on Kleiner, Chandler, and Thomas.

The Trial and Execution

Bundy's Chi Omega trial began June 25, 1979 at the Dade County Courthouse in Miami, after his defense successfully argued for a change of venue away from Tallahassee. It was the first murder trial in American history to be televised nationally. Bundy, still trained as a law student, acted as his own attorney for portions of the proceedings, cross examining witnesses himself. On July 24, 1979, after less than seven hours of deliberation, the jury found Bundy guilty of all charges. A week later, he was formally sentenced to death for the murders of Levy and Bowman.

Bundy was convicted again in a separate 1980 Orlando trial for the murder of Kimberly Leach, and received a third death sentence. After nearly a decade of appeals, Ted Bundy was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida on January 24, 1989 at the age of 42. In the days leading up to his execution, he confessed to more than 30 murders across at least seven states, though the actual total is believed to be much higher.

The Sorority House Today

The Chi Omega sorority house at 661 West Jefferson Street sits on the west side of the Florida State University main campus, in Tallahassee, Florida. The sorority still owns and occupies the house, and the property continues to serve as active student housing for members of the Chi Omega chapter.

The house has been renovated multiple times in the decades since 1978, and the specific bedrooms where the attacks took place are no longer identifiable. In the years after the killings, both survivors Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler have spoken publicly about the attacks and about the lives of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman.

The Chi Omega house is private student housing on an active university campus and is not open to the public. Please be respectful of the current residents, students, faculty, and staff during any visit to the FSU campus, stay on public sidewalks along West Jefferson Street, follow all posted signage, and do not attempt to enter the property or interact with the members of the Chi Omega chapter.