An Interaction with Deputy Daws, 1978

With no reason to stay any longer, and plenty of reasons to leave, a rational Ted Bundy would have left the state immediately — and probably still could have escaped detection if he had. Instead, Bundy could not stir himself for three days. He did steal a green Toyota on Friday, February 10, and told himself he'd leave no later than eleven that night for Houston, Texas. Instead, Bundy took a girl from the Oaks to dinner and then went back to the rooming house to watch The Rockford Files on his stolen television set with her.
It was after 1:00 a.m. before he had gotten his cache of stolen goods organized and had brought the Toyota to the vicinity of the Oaks. He was just about to lock the car when Leon County sheriff’s deputy Keith Dawes pulled up behind him. Dawes asked Ted for identification, which Bundy could not produce. Then the deputy noticed license plate 13-D-11300 resting on the front floorboards of the Toyota.
“Where do you live?” he asked Bundy.
Ted replied, “College Avenue.”
At first, Dawes had only been curious about the man and the car. But the lack of identification and the license plate made him suspicious. He walked back to the patrol car to run a check on the Toyota and the license plate. As he was doing so, Ted scampered across the street, darted behind an apartment building, and then leaped over the fence into the backyard of the Oaks. He lay trembling for several moments in a bramble, listening for sounds of pursuit. When he heard nothing, he stumbled across the darkened yard and scurried up the fire escape to his room. In his room, he turned the light out and sat in the dark, heart thumping.

--from "The Only Living Witness" by Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth
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...So I took my flashlight, shined it in the little car and uh, he had a bunch of papers and stuff all over the seat, bucket seats. And he had little papers in the seat and floorboard. And on, on the floorboard you could see about an inch of, uh, looked like an automobile tag sticking out from under the papers. And I asked him uh, whose tag is that in the floorboard. Cause the car had a tag on it. I went 10-6 on that tag at that corner. I knew that it had a tag on the back. And uh, he says, "What tag?" Kinda like he was dumbfounded, like I was seeing things.
I said the tag right there on the floorboard. So I walked around the car and he opened up the door, voluntarily opened it. I didn't even ask him. He opened the door on his own. And uh, fluffed some papers around and his hand hit the tag, but he didn't bother to pull it out. I says, I said, hand me the tag. He says "What tag?" I said the one your hand just hit. The tag right there in front of you. And uh, he brought the tag up and handed it to me. And I said, where'd you get this, and he said I found it. I said, well didn't you think somebody might, want their tag? I said it's still good, you know. June of '78 before it expired. 13D-11300. And he said "I didn't think of that," you know, kind of a typical dumbfounded answer that you get.
I said well I'll run a check on it to see who's it is. And so I left him standing right beside his car door open. I walked around his car and over to mine, and back to my regular car radio. And was reading off the tag number. And I don't know if I heard him running or just happened to look up, but I looked up and he was getting, he was already across uh, Boulevard Street and headed through some apartment complexes. I jumped in the car and I had the radio,  and I grabbed it and threw it in the car and jumped in the car and said I'll be in pursuit of this guy.
He cut across an intersection of Boulevard and Jefferson and headed northwesterly, through some apartments and then, the last I saw him he was going through some trees towards College Avenue. And time I got to those trees I couldn't hear nothing or see nothing.
--Statement of Deputy Daws, Feb. 17, 1978
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Pensacola Interviews
February 17, 1978
Bodiford: That tag on the floorboard of that Toyota that our deputy stopped you in the other night and you ran from him, do you know which one I'm talking about? The one that was in the floorboard that he asked you about.
Bundy: Yeah.
Bodiford: Do you remember where you came by that?
Bundy: No I really don't.
Bodiford: Do you remember how soon after you got to Tallahassee it was?
Bundy: I don't imagine it was until sometime after I was in Tallahassee. I, you know, I can't say exactly when. You sparked my memory because I had forgotten completely about any tag that was on there that-w-th-th origin of the tag that was on the floorboard.
Bodiford: Did you get the tag off of a vehicle?
Bundy: I may well have, I probably did.
Bodiford: It was reported stolen on the 13th.
Bundy: 13th of?...
Bodiford: January.
Bundy: 13th of January. Well, it doesn't ring a bell exactly.
Bodiford: Okay. I was just wondering, I mean it's only six days after you rented the room.
Bundy: Um...