Bundy Offers Murder Details as Appeal Fails

STARKE, Fla. —  A federal appeals court in Atlanta voted unanimously Saturday to deny a stay of execution for convicted murderer Theodore Bundy, leaving him just one step from death after a decade of appeals.

The suspected serial killer, meanwhile, met with officials from several states, giving them details of dozens of slayings, while his lawyers maneuvered to block his execution.

Bundy’s lawyers were expected to take his appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court, which early last week refused to consider an appeal that raised the same issue of his mental competence rejected Saturday by the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Stay Request Denied

U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp, who in 1987 called Bundy “a diabolical genius,” also denied a request for a stay earlier Saturday.

Bundy is scheduled to die at 7 a.m. Tuesday for the 1978 murder of Kimberly Diane Leach, who was 12. He is under separate death sentences for the murders that same year of two Florida State University students.

He also is suspected in the murders and disappearances of three dozen other young women, mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

The 42-year-old law school dropout was visited Saturday by officials from several Western states, and more interviews were scheduled for today, said Paul Decker, assistant warden at Florida State Prison in Starke.

‘Owning Up’ to Acts

“We have been told by some investigators who met with him that he indeed is owning up to some of his acts,” said Jon Peck, spokesman for Gov. Bob Martinez. “He indeed is making good on his promise to start talking.”

State officials in contact with the Florida State Prison said Bundy was talking with investigators from the Northwest about unsolved crimes in Utah, Colorado, Washington and Oregon.

Bundy last week had offered to trade information about other slayings for a delay in his execution, but Martinez, who signed Bundy’s fourth death warrant on Jan. 17, refused, saying he would not “negotiate with a killer.”