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Bite Marks, Death Sentences, and the Decade That Followed
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
In 1979, a forensic dentist's testimony about bite marks on Lisa Levy's body became the evidence that finally convicted Ted Bundy — a landmark moment in true crime history. This chapter covers the trial, the verdict, the survivors who testified, and the ten years on death row that followed.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Before Ted Bundy ever walked into a courtroom to defend himself, before the cameras, before the spectacle, a forensic dentist knelt over a photograph of a dead woman's shoulder and asked a question no Florida jury had ever been asked to answer. Can a bite mark prove a killer?
Here's the key thing about Ted Bundy going into that courtroom. He believed his greatest asset was his mind.
Dr. Richard Souviron was a forensic odontologist, a specialist in the analysis of dental evidence. When investigators brought him the crime scene photographs, he examined the bite marks left on Lisa Levy's body.
Bundy had made the decision to serve as his own co-counsel, working alongside public defenders. That decision has been analyzed endlessly, and the simplest explanation is probably the most accurate.
On July twenty-fourth, nineteen seventy-nine, the jury returned its verdict. Guilty on two counts of murder in the first degree.
Between the nineteen seventy-nine convictions and his execution date, Bundy filed appeals, sought stays, and continued to maintain that the evidence against him was flawed. He was not successful in any of those efforts, but the process took a decade.
At seven oh-six in the morning on January twenty-fourth, nineteen eighty-nine, Ted Bundy was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison. The chair had a nickname.
The forensic legacy of the Bundy trial is concrete and traceable. Courts that had been cautious about odontological evidence became more willing to admit it after nineteen seventy-nine.
Every account of Ted Bundy eventually returns to the same unresolved number. Thirty confirmed.
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