Ted Bundy and his fellow inmates at Florida State Prison: how they got along

Florida State Prison, at the time Bundy was housed there, didn’t have tiers or yards reserved for the so-called “lowest on death row’s pecking order”: serial killers and child molesters. Serial killers and child molesters weren’t housed together to protect them from the others.

In other prisons throughout the U.S., the death row inmates were separated according to their perceived dangerousness. For instance, at San Quentin State Prison, Yard 4 was reserved for serial killers and child molesters. They were free to leave their cells and go into Yard 4 to exercise, play cards and chat with other inmates, convicted of similar crimes. One of San Quentin’s spokespersons once said in the media that the inmates at San Quentin State Prison had their own code, and housing them all together would put them in danger.

Death row inmates at Florida State Prison had mixed feelings about Bundy, according to media reports, and although it was no doubt known among the inmates that Bundy was convicted of killing two young women and a child in 1978, he didn’t occupy a special cell or exercise in a special yard, separated from other inmates. Although in other prisons in the U.S. in some cases the inmates were killed, and some speculated that their crimes may have been a motive for the assaults or why they were attacked (as in the case of Gregory Miley, who was attacked and killed by another inmate in a Mule Creek State Prison exercise yard one evening, and Jeffrey Dahmer), Bundy was never assaulted or attacked while he was housed at FSP, according to credible sources.

At FSP, Bundy got to talk and meet with all the other condemned men. The FSP inmates’ disposition toward Bundy can be grasped from interviews with the inmates themselves through the years, or various other sources.

Robert "Bobby" Lewis was reportedly Bundy's best friend on death row during Bundy's early years at Florida State Prison. Bundy then also made friends with Willie Darden and Michael Lambrix, and got along well with other inmates too. Lambrix and Darden in particular offered claims of Bundy’s humanity, and his generosity to fellow inmates.

Dave Von Drehle wrote the following in "Among the lowest of the dead: the culture of capital punishment":

"Bundy was not a popular man on death row. He 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.' There was a lot of boasting around the prison, prisoners saying: Let Bundy out with us. We'll take care of him. From the security of his cell, the most infamous serial killer in America sniffed, 'I have nothing for those animals out there.' Bundy mostly kept to himself.”

On January 28, 1989, the Associated Press publishes an article entitled "Death Row Inmates Had Mixed Feelings About Bundy".

The article revealed that Bundy was “well-liked by many fellow death row inmates, but some believed that his death might paradoxically be a good thing for them, two of Bundy’s former inmate neighbors say”. James Doug McCray and Michael Bruno are then quoted about Ted.

McCray said that some Florida State Prison inmates expressed hope that Bundy’s death would satisfy a public desire for executions and cause support for the death penalty to recede. McCray also said that over the years he’s spent on death row, he’s witnessed the “Kill Bundy” syndrome.

Michael Bruno, another inmate once housed next to Ted, said there were varied opinions about Ted’s fate: ″A lot of people didn’t like him. A lot of people thought he was all right. Really, when it comes to sex crimes - toward women and children - it’s not looked good upon by other inmates.″

Both Bruno and McCray said they liked Bundy and enjoyed living in cells next to him. McCray said he lived next to Ted for about two years. Bruno said he was housed next to Bundy for six months.

Bruno said he and Bundy would play handball together in the prison exercise yard, and Bundy always was respectful to Bruno’s relatives when they came to visit.

Although the inmates never discussed Bundy’s cases with him, McCray and Bruno said they were surprised to hear him confess to being a killer during an interview taped shortly before his execution. By that time, Bundy had been moved to another area of the prison.

″I find it hard to believe - it’s not the same Ted Bundy,″ Bruno said. ″Even when he started confessing to all these things, I couldn’t believe it.″

McCray said he would talk into the early hours of the morning with Ted and found him to be witty and bright rather than the killer he confessed to be in his final days.

″The Ted Bundy I knew here at FSP (Florida State Prison) for 11 years was not that person that committed those crimes,″ McCray said. ″I never viewed Ted as a seething psychopath.″

Bundy, who once attended law school and worked for the Republican Party in Washington state, was sometimes harassed verbally by other inmates, many of whom are black and poor, McCray said. ″Black men viewed Ted as being a disciple of the system, the very system which we are fighting, because he had grown up with all of the advantages,″ McCray said. ″Therefore, a grotesque form of resentment occurred.″ 

About his experience on Florida's Death Row, Bundy also told Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth the following in one of their 1980 conversations:

“Anybody matures. I’m sure, no matter where they are. So many times in these past couple years I felt I was looking down from atop a mountain and seeing so many things I had never seen before. And appreciating so many things I never appreciated.

“I feel so much more confident about myself. It’s really marvelous. But here I am – in here.

“I think that at last I have perspective. And a sort of self-confidence. It may be borne, in part, out of this bizarre kind of way. I feel immune. I feel nobody can hurt me.

“I’m not sure why I feel that way. Maybe I would have reached this new perspective without being in prison. Anyway, everything from changing my diet – which is a real trip – I take very seriously. I feel comfortable, so much more confident when I talk to people. I know who I am.

“I know I don’t have to apologize to people for anything. Nobody can spring anything on me. Not that people do this. But nothing’s going to come out of left field. I feel I’m a cat. I feel aware of things. Diet is one thing. Yoga. Some of the more esoteric things I overlooked before.

“Being in prison has helped me understand a lot about human behavior, because in prison behavior is very elemental, and it’s very blatant. Very brutal. But it’s an analog to the more subtle, more sophisticated behavior on the streets. Nobody surprises me anymore. I believe I know why people act the way they do. I understand incentive. I understand the profit motive for the very first time, having been around drug dealers. I understand economics in a way I never understood it before.

“I understand violence – and I am not afraid. I am not afraid of a thing. And it’s a terribly secure thing. I am not afraid of death. Maybe that’s a function of it, also. I’m not intimidated by anything or anybody. And I used to be very intimidated by situations. And people. Not understanding motivations. I can now speak my mind and be not at all self-conscious about it.”

He also told Michaud and Aynesworth that compared to his experience in the Utah State Prison, nobody would ever viciously and relentlessly attack him verbally: "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.”

And in one of his conversations with Aynesworth, Bundy mentioned guard who was harassing him: "I've got a 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, but, of course, that won't work because they know I'm down with them, but he's pulling my chain every chance he gets."

Bundy's conversations with Michaud and Aynesworth were taped in 1980 and published in the book "Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer". 

On July 28, 1985, The Sun Sentinel (South Florida newspaper) published an interview with Willie Darden, another inmate on Death Row at Florida State Prison. Darden was quoted as saying that Bundy was one of his good friends on death row. "Ted's a pretty easy-going fellow," said Darden. "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. Nobody has the right to 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."

Michael Lambrix, another fellow death row inmate at FSP, mentioned Bundy several times in the articles he wrote from prison (and which were published online by his friends). From an article entitled “Alcatraz of the South Part 7 (Redemption in the Mirror)”:

“For a good reason he [Bundy] 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.”

Lambrix further wrote that he and Bundy reminisced about common ground and various places they both knew (they both lived in Salt Lake City). Sharing their memories with each other brought them together, and they also grew closer through their common interest in the law.

Lambrix also wrote that Ted’s tutorage enlightened him about the law, helped him see that to truly understand the law you must look beyond what the law says and learn how to creatively apply the concepts. "During the time I was next to Ted I was preparing to have my first 'clemency' hearing,” he wrote. “Fortunately, with Ted as my neighbor, I received assistance not available to others, and through his guidance I was able to file the necessary motions requesting assignment of what is known as initial-review collateral counsel. Although none were available, it still built up the record and although like many others who were forced to pursue their initial post-conviction review through such a deliberately corrupted process, at least I was able to get my attempts to have collateral counsel assigned to my case into the permanent record, and although as intended, I was deprived of my meaningful opportunity to pursue this crucial collateral review, thanks to Ted’s assistance, that foundation was laid long ago.

‘It only took our Supreme Court another 25 years to finally recognize the same constitutional concept that Ted walked me through so long ago—that fundamental fairness and ‘due process’ required the states to provide competent and ‘effective’ assistance of initial-review collateral counsel and if actions attributable to the states deprived a prisoner of that meaningful opportunity to pursue the necessary post-conviction review, then an equitable remedy must be made available. See Martinez v Ryan, 132 Sect. 1309 (2012).

‘I would say that Ted is probably rolling over in his grave and smiling at all this, but I know he was never buried. It was his choice to be cremated and have his ashes spread in the Cascade Mountains, where he called home.

‘Perhaps this is one of the lessons I had to learn in those early years when I first came to Death Row. I shared many preconceived opinions that most in our society would. Because of what I heard of Ted Bundy, I had expectations that soon proved to be an illusion. Often over the years I have struggled with the judgments we make of others around us, only too quickly forgetting that while we go through our lives throwing stones, we become blissfully oblivious to the stones being thrown at us.

‘Maybe we will want to call him a monster, and few would deny the evil that existed within him. But when I look to those who gather outside on the day of yet another state-sanctioned execution, I now see that same evil on the face of those who all but foam at their mouth while screaming for the death of one of us here. That doesn’t make these people evil, per se, but merely reminds me of a truth I came to know only by being condemned to death: that both good and evil do simultaneously co-exist within each of us and only by making that conscious effort every day to rise above it, can each of us truly hold any hope of not succumbing to it and becoming that monster ourselves.”

In another article (entitled "Administering Justice in the Spirit of Ted Bundy"), Lambrix wrote:

"In the countless hours I spent conversing with him over several years around the concrete walls of our solitary confinement cells or walking around the yard as casually as if we were strolling through a public park, not once did he exhibit even the slightest indication of seeing himself as ‘evil.’ Nor did he bear any resemblance to the measure of evil so many others saw him as. If not for the well-publicized accounts of his preying upon young women from coast to coast, the horrors he inflicted for no other reason than to satisfy his lusts and rage, I would have had no reason to think of him as ‘evil.’ That is not the person he projected himself to be, at least not to me. Rather, I saw him as each of his victims initially did –an intelligent and charismatic ‘boy next door’ type with a quick wit and sense of humor that drew you in like a moth to a candle.

Lambrix also mentioned Bundy in his book “To Live and Die on Death Row”. He wrote that at one point Ted sent Diana Weiner - Lambrix referred to her as Ted’s “close friend” - to give Lambrix law books that explained Federal law. In his book, Lambrix wrote: “Looking back, I believe I am still alive today because of the help Ted Bundy so generously gave. I never knew him as the monster that society made him out to be. I only knew him as the man he was when he lived among the condemned and I was not the only one he so often reached out to help. I wish people outside could have seen and known that side of him- the sense of humanity, compassion and generosity he possessed.”

 

Additional reading: https://tedbundyarchive.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-unsubstantiated-rumor-that-bundy.html (my article about the unsubstantiated rumor that Bundy was raped in prison)