Clemency Hearing, 1985

The transcript of Bundy's clemency hearing before Governor Graham on December 19, 1985. In a clemency hearing, usually, the governor listens to testimony from the state in favor of the death penalty, and testimony from a defense attorney in favor of commuting the death sentence to life in prison. However, Bundy's attorney was not present at this hearing. At the time of the Chi Omega murders, Jack Poitinger was a deputy with the Leon County Sheriff's Office, but by 1985 he was also an assistant district attorney. Here he gives his testimony as to his memories and facts of the case.

"...He had not been in Tallahassee more than a week when on the early morning hours of January 15, 1378, I received a phone call at home. I was advised by the dispatcher in the office that there had been a very serious incident at the Chi Omega sorority house and that we had some dead and some injured. I proceeded to the scene and was greeted by a sight that will stick in my memory for so long as I live. 

In those early morning hours, an intruder in a very obvious murderous rage entered the Chi Omega sorority house through an unlocked back door. That individual made his way through the lower portions of the Chi Omega sorority and found his way onto the second floor. On the second floor is where all of the dormitory type rooms are located. The very first room that you encounter as you come off the stairway is room number 9. That was the room of Margaret Bowman. The very first room. At or about 3:00 in the morning of January 15th, Theodore Bundy entered room number 9 and encountered a young lady asleep in her bed, and at that point in time Margaret Bowman's life came to a very brutal and abrupt halt. For as she lay in her bed, unaware that there was an intruder in her room, Ted Bundy with an oak club smashed her repeatedly about the head, crushing her skull, exposing her brain, and left her in a pool of blood. He took a stocking and he tied that stocking around the neck of Margaret Bowman so tightly that it came close to severing and cutting into the flesh. He then took and ripped her panties with such force that it left a burn on the inner part of her thigh and then he covered her up, very nice and very neat..."