by Erin Banks
On January 10, 1978, Ted Bundy went to the sutdent employment office at Florida State University. A young student, FSU’s track star Kenneth Raymond Misner, had lost his ID, but someone found it and kindly returned it to the registrar’s office. It lay on the counter when Bundy, who’d been left alone for a minute, discovered it and immediately decided to steal it to assume Misner’s identity.
On a side note, it’s amusing that it took Hollywood 45+ years to finally find an actor who likened Bundy (Luke Kirby in NO MAN OF GOD), yet it took Bundy just another coincidence and mere minutes. Misner and Bundy both had an extremely scrawny, slender build, were tall, had a prominent nose and intense eyes.
Bundy decided to live as Misner from now on, and one can only speculate if he truly believed this was a viable option. But he did order Misner’s birth certificate from Raleigh, North Carolina, which arrived at his door on February 10, 1978, a day after he had murdered another twelve-year old girl, Kimberly Dianne Leach from Lake City.
Bundy’s final arrest occurred on February 15, 1978 in a suburb of Pensacola. Officer David Lee spotted Bundy driving along the empty, dark streets with his headlights turned off, and stopped him. Lee ran the license plate and discovered that the car had been stolen from a man named Rick Garzaniti, prompting him to arrest Bundy. He ordered Bundy to lie down on the pavement face-down, and managed to cuff him once on the left, but when Lee attempted to cuff Bundy’s right, the latter rolled over and struck the policeman in the face with the dangling cuff, swept his feet out from under him and swiftly got up to run away. A chase ensued, but when Lee shot at Bundy for a second time, the killer fell to the ground, giving Lee the impression he had finally hit him. Once placed in the police car, Bundy muttered he wished Lee had killed him, to which a perplex Lee responded that was not his intention. Bundy, utterly depressed and suicidal after his Bipolar frenzied kill mania, asked if Lee would at least shoot him if he ran at the prison. This behavior is in stark contrast to Bundy’s grandiose demeanor throughout the trials and the way he fought for his life, albeit it in unwise, if not outright stupid, ways.
When booked at around 4 A.M., Bundy stated his name was Kenneth Misner. Detective Norman Chapman arrived at 4.25 A.M. and interviewed Bundy for about ten minutes, but just as with the Mike Fisher interview from March 1976, Bundy is being frustrating, smug, and evasive. It becomes evident to Chapman and Detective Steve Bodiford that Bundy is being untruthful, and after having him checked out at the university hospital for the wounds he sustained during the bitter fight with David Lee, the two law enforcement officers retrieve a “John Doe warrant” for their suspect. Only when they threaten to “plaster his face all over the news” does the killer relent, and negotiate a deal to call a lawyer, family and friends. Millard Farmer and Issac Koran advise Bundy, and it was Koran who secured a protective order that would not permit police to question Bundy without legal counsel present any longer.
Bundy had done his homework on Misner, but not disposed of the evidence. Police discovered in Garzaniti’s car a notebook filled with information about the FSU track star’s life, as well as his parents.
When Misner learned of the bizarre identity theft, he called the police. As The Tampa Bay Times reported in February 1978:
“The radio says I’ve been arrested down there , “Misner said. “How can I be in jail down there, when I’m up in Tallahassee?“ And Misner told the police, his wallet had been stolen several weeks ago.
Willing to follow up any possible lead, detective Don Patchen of the Tallahassee Police Department went to Pensacola and questioned the driver.”
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Photos: Florida Memory, http://nolefan.org/hof/misner_ken.html, The Pensacola News on February 15, 1978, GTC Elite, Findagrave, Falling for a Killer/Amazon Prime, Sondra Nowicki, George Dekle – The Last Murder, Newspaper.com, Leach family archives.
Sources: Kevin M. Sullivan, The Bundy Murders, Ted Bundy’s Murderous Mysteries; Richard Larsen, The Deliberate Stranger; Rob Dielenberg, Ted Bundy: A Visual Timeline; Nolefan, Pensacola News, GTC Elite, Newspaper.com; Robert D. Keppel, Terrible Secrets; George Dekle, The Last Murder.
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