Emptying of death row in Illinois stirs outrage

Every Democrat on the national scene that was once for life has gone pro-baby-killer. Given that Pashard saw fit to remain a Rat, what are the chances that he would have stood against the momentum of his party on guns, abortion, or anything else?

Ryan's ads blasted Poshard for being to the right of him on many issues [especially RKBA, but others as well]. If a candidate gets blasted by his opponent for "wanting to legalize concealed guns", but wins, that would suggest pretty strongly that carry licensing resonates with voters but more gun control does not.

Much as people complain about King George, he really hasn't govered that differently from the way he campaigned. He ran as a corrupt left-wing liberal and that's how he governed.

Points well made. However, since I agree(d) with both of you, I voted for Wheat of the Reform Party.

On the other hand, opponents of the death penalty (or those, such as yourself, who want certainty in its application) must acknowledge that without the death penalty, more innocent people will be murdered.

How does someone stashed in a prison cell for the rest of his life managed to murder any more innocent people than someone put to death by the apparatus of the State?

"What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?

What effect did it have on their convictions in the first place? If you have to put a question mark after it, then it means you don't know.

Further, what effect did race and poverty have on their convictions in the first place? I mean, if you don't think they are guilty then they shouldn't be in jail. Why not just turn them all loose?

By commuting the death sentance but keeping them locked up for life, Governor Ryan is in effect saying: "Well, they'er a little guilty.. Guilty enough to forefit their freedom for the rest of their lives, because of their crimes. But not guilty enough to face the death penalty for their crimes."

I think this is an un-acceptable alternative. If the state has a reasonable doubt as to their guilt, they shouldn't be holding them. If not, their sentance should be executed according to the law.

All but three of the 156 inmates will now serve life in prison without possibility of parole.

I would rather the state kill me than to live in a box, especially if I was only 'a little' guilty.

There would be no wrongful deaths if we abolished the death penalty.
There would be no shootings if we abolished guns.

So basically, you're drawing an analogy between the actions of the judicial branch of the State and the actions of sociopathic criminals.

How does someone stashed in a prison cell for the rest of his life managed to murder any more innocent people than someone put to death by the apparatus of the State?

Some kill guards; some kill other inmates; some escape.

first, let me state that i am a believer in and supporter of the death penalty, BUT not 18 or 20 years after the fact.

as a former corrections officer, i have spent a lot of time behind the fence, and i can surely testify that if i were ever in a position of knowing i would either get life without parole or the "needle", i would ask for the needle and ask that it be administered as quickly as possible.

to know that i had 15 or 20 yrs or more of just being in a 6 x 8 cell 23 hours a day, 7 days a week would drive me crazy.

hopefully, i will never be in that position, but i just know that deep within me, i could not tolerate the life sentence. Yes, i would still be alive, but visitation by family is very restricted on death row. You have no semblance of a sane and rational life. even in general population, where you have many more freedoms, would be intolerable for me.

heaven forbid, i ever wind up in that spot, but if i do...ice me!!!! (quickly)

153 were commuted to LWOP, which some other fuzzy headed liberal can come along and commute to TIME SERVED. Or to LWP.

Sun Times

Notorious killers get huge break

When Gov. Ryan issued a blanket commutation to every man and woman on Death Row in Illinois, he knowingly spared the lives of some of the most vicious killers in the state's 185-year history.

The governor acknowledged as much Saturday but said that fundamental flaws in the system necessitated his actions.

Here are some of the most infamous killers saved by Ryan:

Danny Edwards

To make the point that he has been personally touched by the horror of murder, Ryan on Saturday described the murder of an old family friend, Kankakee businessman Stephen B. Small, in 1987, in a kidnapping plot.

Danny Edwards, who at the time was a small-time drug dealer and electrician in Kankakee, was found guilty of burying Small alive in a wooden box.

Edwards made an air hole in the box and apparently thought Small could survive for some time while he--Edwards--attempted to extort a $1 million ransom from Small's wealthy family. But Small died within four hours of being buried.

While conceding that the evidence against his client was "overwhelming"--Edwards was seen building the box, and his fingerprints were found inside--defense attorney Thomas Allen expressed surprise at the quick guilty verdict, calling the jury "the coldest I've ever seen."

Henry Brisbon

Brisbon and three other men decided to rob somebody. When they couldn't find the right pedestrian to rob in Kankakee, they drove toward Chicago on Interstate 57. While riding along, they came up with the idea of robbing motorists by staging phony accidents.

One of the killers tricked motorists out of their cars by asking them to inspect minor collision damage, then led them to Brisbon, who brandished the shotgun and robbed and shot them.

Betty Lou Harmon, 29, of suburban Darien, was forced to undress at gunpoint. She ran away, but was caught by Sanders, who led her to Brisbon, who fatally shot her in a field.

An engaged North Side couple, Dorothy Cerny and James Schmidt, both 25, who were returning from a family gathering in Matteson, also were shot to death by Brisbon after being stripped of their valuables.

Brisbon told the couple to "kiss your last kiss" before firing shotgun blasts into their backs as they lay on the side of the highway.

But Brisbon was not on Death Row for the I-57 murders. He was put there because he used a sharpened spoon to kill another inmate while in prison.

Fedell Caffey & Jacqueline Williams

Caffey and Williams decided they wanted a baby. So they stabbed to death a pregnant woman, Debra Evans, in her Addison apartment and cut her nearly full-term fetus from her body, according to prosecutors.

To eliminate witnesses, they also murdered Evans' 10-year-old daughter, Samantha, and 8-year-old son, Joshua.

Another child, Jordan, was spared in the 1995 murder--children under the age of 2 aren't likely to be good witnesses. And the newborn boy also survived.

Fortunately, Jordan's grandfather, Sam Evans, says Jordan has no recollection today of the horrors he witnessed.

Gabriel Solache

In an eerily similar case, little 2-month-old Guadalupe Soto and her toddler brother Santiago had both parents ripped away by vicious killers who wanted to steal a baby in 1998.

One of them was Solache, who agreed to help kill Jacinta and Mariano Soto and snatch the baby so Adriana Mejia could pretend it was hers. Mejia targeted the Bucktown family after seeing Jacinta with the children at a local health clinic. She followed them home on a bus to see where they lived.

Early the next morning, Solache, Mejia and Arturo DeLeon-Reyes surprised the family, stabbing the parents more than 60 times as the sleepy toddler looked on. Mejia and DeLeon-Reyes got life in prison.

Luther Casteel

At JB's Pub in Elgin in 2001, Casteel was booted out for harassing female customers and employees. Roaring drunk and enraged, he shot straight home, shaved his hair into a mohawk and changed into military fatigues, armed himself with several guns and returned to the bar.

Screaming, "I am a natural born killer," he shot bartender Jeffrey Weides and customer Richard Bartlett to death and wounded 16 others before being wrestled to the ground by bar patrons and employees.

At his trial, Casteel almost dared a Kane County jury to impose the death penalty.

"I'm not someone who asks for mercy or pity for my actions," he said during a stunning half hour of testimony. "I have absolutely no fear of anything anyone can put upon me."

Latasha Pulliam

In 1991, 6-year-old Shenosha Richard was playing in her South Side Chicago neighborhood when she was approached by Pulliam and Pulliam's boyfriend, Dwight Jordan. She went with them after they purchased her a bag of chips and promised to take her to a movie.

At Pulliam's apartment, over several hours, Pulliam and Jordan sexually assaulted the girl with a shoe polish applicator and a hammer, and then used the hammer to pulverize her skull, according to prosecutors. Pulliam also beat and strangled the girl.

Attorneys for Pulliam said she was drug-crazed at the time, but a court psychologist described her as "a female John Gacy" who got sexual satisfaction from hurting someone weaker than she.

This particular article has been posted to FR earlier

Death penalty gains unusual defenders

USA TODAY ^ | 1/06/03 | Richard Willing

NEW YORK — Robert Blecker sat quietly as other professors ticked off their reasons for opposing the death penalty: It's unfair to blacks. It doesn't really deter crime. Innocent people could be executed.

But Blecker, a professor at New York Law School, was having none of it. When it was his turn to speak at the recent death-penalty forum at John Jay College, he summed up his support for executions in three words: "Barbara Jo Brown."

Blecker then launched into a staccato description of the 11-year-old Louisiana girl's slaying in 1981, how she was abducted, raped and tortured by a man who later was executed. The story drew gasps from a crowd accustomed to dealing in legal theories and academic formulas. "We know evil when we see it, and it's past time that we start saying so," Blecker said later. "When it comes to the death penalty, too many in academia can't face that."

For years, professors and civil rights leaders have led the charge against the death penalty, raising questions about its fairness that caused two states to suspend executions. But now death-penalty supporters have found some unlikely allies: a small but growing number of professors and social scientists who are speaking out in favor of the ultimate sanction.

Challenging themes that have been the foundation of the anti-death penalty movement, about a dozen professors and social scientists have produced unprecedented research arguing that the penalty deters crime. They also are questioning studies that say it is racially biased, and they are attacking one of the anti-death penalty movement's most effective talking points: that more than 100 people released from death row during the past 30 years were "innocent."

The researchers say that only about a third of those released from death row could show they were innocent of murder, and that the rest were released for other reasons, often legal technicalities. The researchers say that those convicts' names have remained on the "innocent" list to exaggerate the case against the death penalty.

The pro-death penalty researchers are still a tiny minority in U.S. academia, which Blecker guesses is "99%-plus" against executions. But the researchers are changing the nature of the death-penalty debate.

Justice Department lawyers have cited their work in legal briefs defending the death penalty. Republican senators have used the new research to try to stave off proposals to make it more difficult to execute inmates. Some death-penalty supporters, noting that more than two-thirds of Americans back capital punishment, say the research validates the views of a relatively silent majority.

And victims' rights groups that have felt excluded from the debate over executions say the professors give them moral support.

"It's been easy for the media to dismiss (death-penalty supporters) as just a rabble that wants to 'hang 'em all,' " says Dudley Sharp, resource director for Justice For All, a victims' rights group in Houston. "Now we've got research, respectability — things that have always been conceded to the other side. It's more of a real debate."

Some death-penalty foes say the new research is a desperate reaction to successful efforts to stop executions. "If the public wasn't concerned with (the possible execution of) innocents, if courts and the Congress and state legislatures weren't beginning to get involved again, (pro-death penalty academics) wouldn't be noticed," says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group in Washington, D.C., that opposes capital punishment.

Fairness of executions questioned

Executions had been declining in the USA for years when states halted them in 1967, in anticipation of a Supreme Court ruling on whether death-penalty laws violated the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."

The court banned executions in 1972, ruling that the death penalty was being imposed arbitrarily. But the court reinstated the penalty four years later, backing new laws that guided judges and juries in imposing death sentences. Since then, more than 800 killers have been executed in the USA.

Soon after executions resumed, studies suggested that blacks were more likely than whites to receive death sentences, especially when their victims were white. Other studies compared murder rates in the 38 death-penalty states with lower rates in the 12 states that don't have the penalty, and concluded that capital punishment does not deter homicides.

In 1993, a U.S. House of Representatives panel led by a death-penalty foe, Rep. Don Edwards, D-Calif., found that 68 people had been released from wrongfully imposed death sentences during the previous 20 years. The report was the basis for the list of 102 "innocents" that anti-death penalty groups now promote.

The idea that innocent people had been sent to death rows across the nation was politically potent, and capital punishment foes exploited it. The Edwards list was taken over by the Death Penalty Information Center, which has added to the list 34 death-row inmates who have been exonerated. Among those were 12 who were freed by DNA tests done on evidence years after their convictions.

The center doesn't vouch for the validity of the initial 68 cases. To be added to the center's "innocents" list, a condemned inmate must have his conviction overturned and be acquitted at retrial. Ex-prisoners also are added to the list if prosecutors don't pursue a retrial.

The ongoing campaign against the death penalty has been effective. Analysts say it likely contributed to a dip in the still-strong public support for capital punishment. (Surveys in October said that about 70% of Americans back the death penalty, down from 80% in 1994.)

Meanwhile, the governors of Illinois and Maryland have suspended executions in their states to study whether the death penalty is being imposed fairly.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that states cannot execute killers who are under 18 when they commit their crimes and that juries, not judges, must impose death sentences. In the latter case, Justice Stephen Breyer called studies of the death penalty's impact on deterring crime "inconclusive."

And last July, a U.S. district court judge here declared the federal death penalty unconstitutional, a decision that applied only in his court and that was appealed by the Justice Department. Judge Jed Rakoff based his ruling on research, including the list of 102 "innocents," that he said suggested there is a high risk that inmates could be wrongly executed. A U.S. appeals court panel reversed that ruling on Dec. 10, saying that the matter should be left to the U.S. Supreme Court. That decision, too, is likely to be appealed.

"There's no way to underestimate the importance of the innocence issue," Dieter says. "It's created an irresolvable concern on the part of the public."

How innocent are they?

But how innocent are the "innocents"?

Ward Campbell, a deputy attorney general in California, said in a study last year that at least 68 of the 102 ex-death row inmates on the "innocents" list don't belong there. Campbell says some on the list had their convictions reversed because of prosecutors' errors or misconduct but seem certain to have committed the crimes of which they were convicted. Others avoided retrials or were acquitted because witnesses died, evidence was excluded for legal reasons, or because they were in prison for similar crimes.

In some cases, death sentences were overturned because the convict was an accomplice, not the killer. Campbell found that nine "innocents" were exonerated because courts said the evidence against them was valid but did not establish guilt beyond a "reasonable doubt."

Eight of those on the list were not actually on death row when they were exonerated; two others never received a death sentence, Campbell said. In more than a dozen cases, death sentences were overturned only because later Supreme Court rulings invalidated a state's death-penalty statute.

For Campbell, a recent addition to the list shows the problem with its standards: Larry Osborne was convicted of breaking into a Louisville couple's home in 1997 and killing them. He won a new trial because the conviction was based in part on grand jury testimony from an accomplice who died before Osborne's trial. An appeals court said the testimony should not have been admitted as evidence because Osborne's lawyer could not cross-examine the dead witness. Osborne was acquitted in a second trial. He made the "innocents" list in August.

Dieter says convicts whose sentences have been overturned "truly are innocent, in the legal sense." A spokesman for Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., sponsor of a bill aimed at eliminating wrongful convictions, says that "quibbling over numbers" misses the point.

"Even the staunchest defenders of the status quo must admit that ... innocent people have been sent to death row," Leahy spokesman David Carle says.

Pro-death penalty professors say the number of innocents does matter.

"The idea that 100 innocent people have just missed execution has undermined the public's confidence" in the death penalty, says Barry Latzer, a political scientist at John Jay College. "If it's substantially fewer, it's not nearly as powerful a story."

Latzer and his colleagues are challenging death-penalty foes on other fronts as well.

John McAdams, a political science professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, acknowledges that African-Americans appear to be overrepresented on death row, where they account for about 42% of the prisoners, compared with about 12% of the U.S. population. (Since 1977, 57% of those executed have been white; 35% have been black.)

McAdams notes the widely held belief that black defendants are more likely to receive the death penalty than whites convicted in similar slayings. But he says that doesn't take into account that blacks make up nearly 50% of all murder victims, and that all but a few are killed by other blacks. Blacks who kill blacks, he argues, are far less likely to get the death penalty than whites, blacks or Hispanics who kill whites.

"Why are the lives of black victims less valued?" McAdams asks. "There's a subtle kind of racism going on here, and it's got to do with the victims of crime, not how we treat the perpetrators." He realizes that his analysis has a provocative implication: that more black killers should be executed. He favors "more executions generally."

But fellow death-penalty supporter Blecker says that the death penalty should be reserved for the "worst of the worst, the ones almost everyone can agree are worthy."

Death-penalty supporters also say there is plenty of evidence that executions deter homicides.

A study last year by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta examined the nearly 6,000 death sentences imposed in the USA from 1977 through 1996. The authors compared changes in murder rates in 3,000 U.S. counties to the likelihood of being executed for murder in that county. They found that murder rates declined in counties where capital punishment was imposed. The researchers said a statistical formula suggested that each execution saved the lives of 18 potential victims.

Recent studies at the University of Houston and at the University of Colorado at Denver had similar findings. Blecker, who is researching deterrence, says they square with what he found in interviews with 60 killers. "They are cognizant of whether they are operating in a death-penalty state before they pull the trigger," he says. "They're operating in the real world, not the realm of political theory."

To McAdams, the debate over deterrence is unnecessary. "If you execute a murderer and it stops other murders, you've saved innocent lives," he says. "And if it doesn't, you've executed a murderer. Where's the problem?"

Academics who back executions are gaining some acceptance. Senate Republicans countered Leahy's bill by citing research from pro-death penalty academics. The bill was approved by the Judiciary Committee but is stalled in the Senate. Meanwhile, Blecker says he's getting asked to more academic conferences on the death penalty — usually as the only voice in favor. " 'A lion in a den of Daniels' is one way I've been introduced," he says.

Perhaps I should spell out my point.

In all things there are inherent risks. Those risks include that people will make mistakes and or intentionally misuse power, mechanism or substance. In each case we must weigh whether the risks are worth the benefits.

If we are unwilling to accept the risk that someone will misuse a firearm, we sacrifice the Second Amendment.

If we are unwilling to accept the risk that someone will misuse alcohol, we return to the days of Prohibition.

If we are unwilling to accept the risks of driving, we sacrifice the ability to travel when and where we want to go.

If we are unwilling to accept the risks of capital punishment, we sacrifice justice.

There are no certainties in this world. And, unless you’re hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar, you just have to learn to deal with it.

Our son's killer will be released from prison this year after serving only 14 years of his 20 year plea bargain. We've had to FIGHT TOOTH AND NAIL to keep him in prison for 14 years. His first parole hearing was 10 MONTHS after sentencing. His crime..the beating death of our 16 year old son Jeremy, he savagely beat Jeremy repeatedly with a 4 x 4 fence post. The first blow was fatal but he kept on beating him. Then left his body in a drainage ditch. He then went to a local game room to collect his brother and pals to show them his handy work. He stood on the sidelines while the Police investigated the scene. Telling other watchers that he'd KILL any one who'd testify against him. Made similar threats from his jail cell. Jeremy's killer was all of 14.11 years old.

This was NOT a fight gone wrong, this was an ambush done by a SOCIO-PATH who WANTED TO SEE WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO KILL! He choose a 16 year old learning disabled child with the emotional make-up of a 12-13 year old. Jeremy was still sitting on the floor playing with GI Joes and Hot Wheels.

Jeremy's killer is a diagnosed SOCIO-PATH.

Want to help keep some killers in prison who are up for parole? Then write a letter to the parole board opposing it. THROW AWAY THE KEYS

If some victim's family member shot Ryan, I would applaud. The tragedy is such a person would probably end up getting executed for a "hate crime"

Ryan is a white, male, heterosexual, Christian, Republican. How could it possibly be a "hate crime"?

Thank you, GailA, for a reality check. My prayers for you and Jeremy and your family - what a terrible thing.

And how terribly you were treated by the "justice" system.

MURDERS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AVERTED BY EXECUTION:
A sample of the murderers freed to kill again after receiving a "Life" sentence

•Charles Fitzgerald
--Killed a deputy sheriff and was given a 100-year prison sentence as a result.
--Reeased after serving just 11 years.
--Then murdered a California policeman.
--Given "life" for that killing.
--Paroled again in 1971.

• "Gypsy" Bob Harper
--Convicted of murder, given a so-called "life" sentence.
--Escaped from a Michigan prison and killed two persons.
--Recaptured, then killed the prison warden and his deputy.

• Ed Jover
--Convicted committed two murders, sentenced to execution
--Execution overturned and he received clemency for each
--Murdered twice more after clemeny.

• Joseph Taborsky
--Sentenced to death in Connecticut for 1951 murder
--Freed when the courts overturned the sentence on technitalities.
--Later was found guilty for another murder, for which he was electrocuted in May 1960. Before his execution, he confessed to the 1951 murder.

• Allen Pruitt
--Convicted of knife slaying of a newsstand operator and sentenced to "life" in prison.
--Later charged with fatally stabbing a prison doctor and an assistant prison superintendent, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
--In 1968, his conviction was overturned on a technicality by the Virginia Supreme Court. He was re-tried, again found guilty, but given a 20-year sentence instead of life. Since he had already served 18 years, and had some time off for "good behavior," he was released.
--December 31, 1971: Arrested and charged in the murder of two men in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

• Richard Biegenwald
--Murdered a store owner during a robbery in New Jersey.
--Convicted, given a "life" sentence rather than death.
--After serving 17 years, he was paroled. He violated his parole, was returned to prison, but was again paroled in 1980.
--He then shot and killed an 18-year-old Asbury Park, New Jersey girl. He also killed three other 17-year-old New Jersey girls and a 34-year-old man.

•Oral Kolame
--Found gulity of brutally murdering his wife. Pleaded with the judge and jury to impose the death sentence, but was given "life" instead.
--Later killed a fellow inmate and was executed for the second killing in 1966.

• Arthur James Julius
--Convicted of murder and sentenced to "life" in prison.
--In 1978, he was given a brief leave from prison, during which he raped and murdered a cousin.
--He was sentenced to death for that crime and was executed on November 17, 1989.

• Jimmy Lee Gray
--Conviction for killing a 16-year-old high school girl and given a "life" sentence
--Later freed on parole thanks to "good" behavior.
--Kidnapped, sodomized, and suffocated a three-year-old Mississippi girl. He was executed for that second killing on September 2, 1983.

• Timothy Charles Palmes
--Found gulity of a manslaughter conviction
--Was on probation fo this murder when he and two accomplices robbed and brutally murdered a Florida furniture store owner.
--Palmes was executed for the killing on November 8, 1984. An accomplice, Ronald Straight, was executed on May 20, 1986.

•Wayne Robert Felde
--Convicted of manslaughter in Maryland
--Later given a work release program
--Violated parole, while being taken to jail in handcuffs, pulled a gun hidden in his pants and killed a policeman.

• Donald Dillbeck
--Convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for murdering a Florida sheriff.
-- In 1983, he tried to escape. In January of this year he was transferred to a minimum-security facility. On June 22nd, he walked away from a ten-inmate crew catering a school banquet.
--Two days later, he was arrested and charged with stabbing a woman to death at a Tallahassee shopping mall.

• Jack Henry Abbott
--Convicted killer, serving "life" sentence in New York for murder of fellow inmate
--In 1981, author Norman Mailer and many other New York literati embraced Abbott and succeeded in having him released early from a Utah prison.
--July 18, 1981 (six-weeks after his release), Abbott stabbed actor Richard Adan to death in New York. He was convicted of manslaughter and received a "15-year-to-life sentence." Mrs. Adan sued Abbott for her husband's wrongful death and her pain and suffering.
--On June 15, 1990, a jury awarded her nearly $7.6 million.

• Lowell Jensen and Gene Dinkins
--Both serving "life" terms in Marion, IL for previously murdering inmates
--On October 22, 1983 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, two prison guards were murdered in two separate instances by the inmates
--On November 9, 1983 the Associate U.S. Attorney General told a Senate subcommittee that it is impossible to punish or even deter such prison murders because, without a death sentence, a violent life-termer has free rein "to continue to murder as opportunity and his perverse motives dictate. "

• Benny Lee Chaffin
--Convicted of murder in Texas, but not executed
--Later kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old Springfield, Oregon girl.
-- The same jury that convicted him for killing the young girl refused to sentence him to death because two of the 12 jurors said they "could not determine" whether or not he would be a future threat to societ.

• Thomas Eugene Creech
---Convicted of three murders and had claimed a role in more than 40 killings in 13 states as a paid killer for a motorcycle gang, but never sentenced to death
-- Later killed a fellow prison inmate in 1981 and was sentenced to death.
--1986: his execution was stayed by a federal judge and has yet to be carried out.

•Dalton Prejean
-- When he was 14, he was convicted of killing a taxi driver.
-- When he was 17, he gunned down a state trooper in Lafayette, Louisiana.
-- Despite protests from the American Civil Liberties Union and other abolitionist groups, Prejean was finally executed for the second murder on May 18, 1990.

•Ted Bundy
-- Serial killer murdered many women starting in 1974. There is no speculation as to how many women he killed. Anywhere between 30 and 40 is what he claimed.
-- Captured August 16, 1974. Found guilty of aggrevated kidnapping and attempted murder, and was to go for psychiatric exams.
--June 7, 1977: Bundy escaped. Headed to Florida State University campus.
--January 14, 1978: Bundy murdered two women and gravely injured two more at the Chi Omega sorority house. Days later, Bundy's last victim was 12 year old Kimberly Leach. He left her body to decompose in an abandoned hog shed.
-- Bundy was recaptured on February 15, the jury convicted Bundy on two counts of first-degree murder in the Chi Omega sorority slayings. He got another death sentence for the murder of 12 year old Kimberly Leach. Bundy was taken to death row. Bundy's confessions finally came out, and left everyone in disgust. He talked about clubbing his victims to death, sexually violating them and strangling them.
-- Bundy was electrocuted in February 1989

On March 17, 1971, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told a congressional subcommittee that 19 of the killers responsible for the murder of policemen during the 1960s had been previously convicted of murder.