The unsubstantiated rumor that Bundy was raped in prison

The rape rumor has been featured in George Dekle’s book “The Last Murder: The Investigation, Prosecution, and Execution of Ted Bundy” and in this article published online: https://www.thecrimemag.com/who-gang-raped-ted-bundy-in-prison/

The “crimemag” website puts together unauthored articles by taking specific statements out of context and using enticing headlines such as this one about Ted having been gang-raped in prison. That unauthored "crimemag" article eagerly claims that the gossip allegedly heard by Dekle was fact, and it also turns things Ted himself said into salacious innuendo (ignoring the full context of Ted's statements). From the “crimemag” article:

“Despite denying the rumors numerous times, Ted Bundy was, in fact, sexually assaulted while on Death Row. During his interviews with Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth, Bundy hinted that a guard allowed four inmates to gang-rape him, saying ‘I’ve got this problem. I’ve got this red-headed bull back there who enjoys pushing me in shit. He agitates some of the blacks … tries to turn them against me.’

‘I thought I was going to die every night the first few days I was in jail back in October of 1975. I was scared to death, daily. I thought they were going to kill me. That first four or five months I cried at night. I was a wreck.’”

It has been rumored for decades Bundy was gang-raped by four prisoners on Death Row in 1984 — with prosecution lawyer George R Dekle making the claim in his book about the killer’s case, ‘The Last Murder’.

‘A couple of guys kept chanting, We don’t like rape-os. Gave me the bad eye — called me a baby raper and all that s–t.’”

Dekle himself acknowledged in his book that the allegation about Ted having been the victim of a gang rape by fellow death row inmates never made the news, and he got it through the "Department of Corrections rumor mill" (prison staff?... prisoners?...). He also wrote that "a number of inmates confessed to the crime" - a vague, unsubstantiated statement.

The "baby raper" quote mentioned in the article published on the “crimemag” website was in Michaud's book "Conversations with a Killer" and Ted was recounting his experience in the Utah State Prison. Ted told Michaud that it was in Utah that he was called a "baby raper", and he said it in the context of comparing that experience to his experience on Florida's Death Row. He said that in Utah, nothing happened, although he was scared. Here is the full quote in "Conversations with a Killer":

“I was scared to death in the Salt Lake City jail (where Bundy was taken after his first criminal charge for the kidnap of an intended murder victim, nineteen-year-old Carol DaRonch, the only woman known to have escaped Bundy once he had her in his car.) I thought I was going to die every night the first few days I was in jail back in October of 1975. I was scared to death! Daily. I thought they were going to kill me.

“Animals sense it. Just like the old adage that a dog can tell when somebody is afraid of it. They sensed it – and some guys jacked me up on it. I mean, nothing happened. But they said, ‘Hey, Bundy, did you really do that?’ This or that. Nobody fucks with me anymore about that.

“I've come up against the toughest, meanest dudes on Death Row. They'd slit your throat in a second. I count them as my friends. They give me no trouble. I don't expect I'll ever have any trouble with 'em unless I try to fuck 'em somehow. It's not really men they're in awe of. It's the reputation or something that goes along with it.

“After I was sentenced in Salt Lake City, I was put on ‘A’ Block at Utah State Prison. I was scared to death for a while. A couple of guys kept chanting, ‘We don’t like rape-os’. Gave me the bad eye. Called me a baby raper and all that shit.

“Nobody would ever do that to me now. They might talk a lot. But they won’t say anything to my face. The reputation stops ‘em. They’re afraid I’ll do something to them. And I probably would, if it came down to it. It may be the way I carry myself. They may have respect for me the way I handle the authorities. The way I fucked with them. The way I made them pay to get me. No one has said a cross word to me. Not even has there been a mean word.”

 

A target for animosity and name calling. But rape?...

Ted's notoriety undoubtedly would make him a target for animosity and name calling. His friend, Michael Lambrix, in an article published on minutesbeforesix.blogspot.com: "for a good reason he [Ted] didn’t exactly go out of his way to reach out to those he didn’t know, as too many even in our own little world liked to throw their stones… even those cast down together into this cesspool of the system. I was already aware of how doing time was about being part of a micro-community of various clichés, each of us becoming part of our own little group"... I also remember this passage from David Von Drehle's book "Among the Lowest of the Dead: the Culture of Capital Punishment": "Bundy made a good impression on some of the black inmates with his skill in the exercise yard-'We were amazed', one remembered. 'Here's a white guy who can actually play basketball!'-but mostly the other inmates resented his notoriety and, despite their own evil, abhorred his crimes. Doug McCray, one of the death row old-timers, recalled the night the news came over the television that Kimberly Leach's body had been found. He got on the bars and said to Bob Sullivan, 'Sully, man, the individual who would do something like that he deserves the death penalty'." (that exchange between McCray and Sullivan was before November 30, 1983, because on that date Sullivan was executed) And when fellow death-row prisoner Michael Bruno was interviewed by The Associated Press after Ted's execution, he said: ″A lot of people didn’t like him. A lot of people thought he was all right″...

 

The way Ted himself referred to his prison experience makes me suspect that the likelihood of rape was slight.

In the 1986 interview he granted to Jon Nordheimer of the New York Times (reprinted in three parts in The Gainsville Sun), and in one of his letters to Hinckley, he said complimentary things about his fellow prisoners, mentioning the restraint, cooperation and camaraderie he'd witnessed on Death Row. But he also said that Death Row comprised men with various personalities and he warned against generalizations, but said that the men he had met were indistinguishable from those in the free world. He also said there was a common humanity that he and his fellow prisoners shared with the people on the outside. He would have been bitter, I thought, had he been raped on death row. Whereas he referred to his fellow prisoners in benevolent, non-sensational terms. He also never used any category of prisoners as a foil against the others.

“I’ve been on Death Row, living with men who are condemned murderers, for six and one half years. I’ll bet you there are bars and taverns on the street where there is more violence in one night than I have seen here amongst the men in six years. I’ve seen two scuffles in the yard twice a week for two hours a session. I’ve seen two pushing scuffles. These are men condemned to death for murder and yet they have an amazing amount of restraint and cooperation and camaraderie than you will see anywhere. There’s probably more violence at an army base than you will ever see here.” ... “It’s improper to make generalizations. And if there’s one reason why I see so little overt violence in a place where you would expect to see a great deal of violence is because whatever precipitated that act of violence that resulted in a murder... How should I put it?... That part of them, of themselves is only a small, small part. It’s probably very situational. By and large the men on Death Row are good people. Some are more likeable than others, but that’s just like on the streets, just like out in the free world. Some people are jerks and some people are nice; some people are generous and some people are stingy. You see the whole range of personalities.

“The men in prison that I have met, by and large, if you dressed them up and took them out into the street and lined them up against a representative sample from similar social-economic backgrounds, they would be indistinguishable from that group. That doesn’t mean that the men here haven’t done something harmful to society. And it doesn’t lessen the seriousness of the crimes we all have been charged with. But it does say that one can begin to see the common humanity, if you will. Only then, I believe, can people begin to deal with the underlying distortions that cause violence, whether it be on the individual level, such as murder, or whether on the collective level such as what this country is gearing up for in terms of nuclear war.”

And he then went on to say that most of his fellow prisoners were guilty of an isolated crime, and were hopeful that one day they might get off Death Row and so they were on their best behavior because they wanted a good record: “For the most part they are guilty of an isolated crime, perhaps the only time they would ever kill in their life, we don’t know. They may not be more disposed to violence than anyone else. There’s another factor here that I suppose has to be dealt with realistically. Everyone on the Row without exception believes that he has a chance of having the death sentence taken off him. To beat the death penalty. For very practical reasons the guys don’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. Certainly they don’t want anything on their record that would reflect badly on them. This is why Death Row is considered to be the best behaved and most peaceful link in the entire prison. They say, ‘Look, I want my record to look good when the day comes that I get off the Row.’ Now, being realistic, not everyone’s going to make it. But it is like a sort of lottery down there. The death penalty is a very randomly imposed penalty. Fifty percent of the men who are sentenced to death eventually have the death sentence taken off them. Those are pretty good odds when you talk about a lottery. A substantial number of men eventually do get off the Row. Hope springs eternal. No man wants to believe he’s going to die in that electric chair. For the time Bob Graham has been in office, only six have been given clemency. A lot more have not had their warrants signed because Bob Graham would like to give them clemency but it’s politically inadviseable for him to do it. So he’s shuffled them off to one side and they’re not touched. They’re sort of back there in perpetuity.”

He also said, in the 1986 NYT interview: “The experience of being in prison has been, interestingly enough, a very positive one in many respects. One that has been very helpful in helping me come to terms with myself.”

He also pointed out the similarities between the men on Death Row and those in the free world: “Those around me in prison and those who like yourself are in the free world, we are more like each other than we want to admit. When we do things, right or wrong, we do them in much the same way.”

He also said, “I don’t worry about things. I’m relaxed. I don’t judge people. I try not to judge people.”

And from his August 7, 1986 letter to John Hinckley: “I’ve met many wonderful people both inside prison (and jail) and out. Many people believe that being locked up is the end of the world, that you’re surrounded by vicious, demented people. Well, that’s not true. Being locked up, whether in a prison or a hospital, is not the end, but the beginning. It’s no picnic, as you know. I’m sure we’d both rather be somewhere else. I think you’re like me, we take it one day at a time and make the best of it. Being locked up has given me a chance to watch and study myself and get to understand myself that I never would have had on the streets. Imprisonment offers everyone the opportunity to liberate or further entrap ourselves.

[...] mentally and spiritually, I am freer now than I was ten years ago. All this has allowed me to open up to people like I never could before. Like you, I’ve made many friends while being inside. It’s rewarding, a kind of silver lining. There are a lot of mean and unpleasant people on death row. That’s how they appear on the outside. But I have got to meet one man in here who doesn’t have something likable about him. People would be astonished about how well the men here get along. I’ve seen more fights in an afternoon in a college gym than I’ve seen among this group of 200 men convicted of murders in seven years. The guys in here aren’t angels, but they’re not vicious animals either.”In the mid-80's he was referring to his fellow prisoners in terms that suggest he saw the good in them and he found it rewarding to be among them, unlike someone who'd have been raped by his fellow prisoners, I’d have said. And when he described his experiences with other prisoners to Nelson, he recalled funny moments, like tricking the guards by unlocking the doors to their cells (in solitary confinement) and chilling with the other prisoners in the hall, smoking dope, talking etc. Not that he would necessarily admit to Nelson that he'd been raped... But again nothing he said is suggestive of rape. What he told Michaud about his experience in the Utah State Prison was only suggestive of how they gave him the bad eye and calling him names. In the end, we don't really know.

In the mid-80's he was referring to his fellow prisoners in terms that suggest he saw the good in them and he found it rewarding to be among them, unlike someone who had been raped by his fellow prisoners, I’d have said. And when he described his experiences with other prisoners to Nelson, he recalled funny moments, like tricking the guards by unlocking the doors to their cells (in solitary confinement) and chilling with the other prisoners in the hall, smoking dope, talking etc. Not that he would necessarily admit to Nelson that he'd been raped... But again nothing he said is suggestive of rape. What he told Michaud about his experience in the Utah State Prison was only suggestive of how they gave him the bad eye and calling him names. In the end, we don't really know.

And since he was outspoken and had a fine-tuned sense of justice (according to Polly Nelson), I'd have expected him to allude to the prisoners who had raped him. After all, he dared to criticize the governor himself in that 1986 NYT interview, so maybe he'd have been critical of the prisoners who raped fellow prisoners too... We can infer things also from the way one refers to experiences they've had. We can assume he faced name calling ("baby raper", as they called him in Utah, by his own admission to Michaud), but I wouldn't assume he was raped based only on his notoriety and on the name calling.

 

Had Bundy been dumped out in the general population of a maximum security prison, would he have survived it?

I wondered if maybe Bundy wouldn't have befriended the prisoners, even if he had been dumped out in the general population of a maximum security prison...

At Florida State Prison, on death row, he had both friends and enemies, according to various accounts. Among his friends were Robert Fieldmore Lewis, Willie Darden, Stephen Booker, Michael Lambrix...

Robert “Bobby” Lewis was mentioned as Bundy’s “best friend on The Row” in "Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer" by Stephen G. Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth. His death sentence was ultimately commuted to life imprisonment.

Michael Lambrix was mentioned as Bundy’s friend and cell neighbor in Lambrix’s death row journals, published on websites and blogs that his friends maintain for him to this day.

Stephen Booker and Ted Bundy shared the same lawyer, James Coleman, after Bundy had complained to Booker about the previous lawyer he had been appointed (most likely Robert Harper, although he continued to be advised by Victor Africano too, throughout the 80’s). Booker encouraged him to contact Coleman and ask him to handle his appeals (Coleman had previously blocked Booker’s own death warrant in 1983). Coleman undertook Bundy’s pro bono representation pursuant to Bundy’s and Michael Mello’s overtures to his law firm.

Willie Darden was mentioned as Bundy’s friend in old newspaper articles I have read. Mary Darden, Willie Darden's wife, comforted Carole Boone after the verdict in the Leach trial (according to newspaper articles I’ve read). Willie Darden himself mentioned Ted Bundy in an interview published in The Sun Sentinel of July 28, 1985:

"One of his good friends is Ted Bundy, the former law student convicted of killing two FSU sorority sisters and a child in 1978; he occupies Cell 16.

'Ted`s a pretty easy-going fellow' says Darden, who lives in Cell 12. 'He`s the kind of fellow you and I would both like to have as our next-door neighbor on the street, when it comes to the way he behaves around us.

'Everybody holds a normal conversation,' Darden explains. 'Nobody has the right be belittle the next person for what they`re back there for. We`re all there for the same thing. Naturally, with all these peoples you`re dealing with different personalities. The peoples who live on my wing is the same kind of peoples you`ll see when you go home, peoples living around you each and every day'."

And Ted Bundy played handball with Michael Bruno in the prison exercise yard and would talk into the early hours of the morning with James McCray, who found him to be witty and bright rather than the killer he confessed to be in his final days. Both Ganz and McCray were interviewed by the Associated Press on January 28, 1989). According to Ganz, "a lot of people didn’t like him. A lot of people thought he was all right". Both Bruno and McCray said they liked Bundy and enjoyed living in cells next to him. McCray said he lived next to Bundy for about two years. Bruno said he was housed next to Bundy for six months.

I also remember a photo of Ted Bundy in the company of three other death row inmates...

So one might think that if inmates at Florida State Prison had mixed feelings about him, maybe even if he had been housed in the general population he might have been safe after all?... Maybe he'd have managed to get along with the other inmates.