Nearly a quarter-century later to the day, Georgia Writers Museum presented back-to-back nights of the first-hand account of serial killer survivor Kathy Kleiner- Rubin Jan. 12-13 at The Plaza in Eatonton.
Kleiner-Rubin, author of A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy, described her harrowing escape from the hands of the infamous Ted Bundy in the latest edition of GWM’s gripping Crime & Wine series.
Bludgeoned by Bundy using a piece of firewood found at her Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Kleiner-Rubin was left with injuries severe enough that responding police officers initially thought she had been shot in the face.
She was lucky, her FSU sorority sisters, Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, had already been killed by Bundy with that same piece of wood and she and her roommate, Karen Chandler, were next on his Jan. 15, 1978, murderous rampage.
The Plaza audience sat quiet and in rapt attention as Kleiner-Rubin told her story, subtly acting out various parts such as curling up in a ball after being beaten in hopes of disappearing on her bed that night, or holding her right hand high as she mimicked Bundy’s attack, as well as taking a few “baby steps” across The Plaza stage to represent her progress back to normalcy.
It was a moving, though, often disturbing account of a horrific crime that Kleiner-Rubin said ended only because another of her house sisters returned from a date in the middle of Bundy’s attack. When the lights of her boyfriend’s car swept across Kleiner-Rubin’s room, she said Bundy got spooked and fled into the night.
Kleiner-Rubin said the Eatonton appearances marked just the sixth and seventh times she had told her story in a public forum since her book was released early last October.
“I like to tell what happened to me because it might touch someone and help them through something like lupus or breast cancer or miscarriages. Hopefully, I can give someone just a ray of hope or just help them know they can get through it,” Kleiner-Rubin said. “So, it's healing to me very much for going through it. But I like talking to the people. I like relating to them and seeing their faces. I can tell when it’s connecting.”
Kleiner-Rubin’s testimony eventually helped convict Bundy in July 1979, and he ultimately was executed nearly 10 years later in Florida’s electric chair.
A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy remains available at the Georgia Writers Museum bookstore in downtown Eatonton.