Ted Bundy Nearly Killed This Woman When She Was in College. This Is Her Story.
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In January 1978, serial killer Ted Bundy slipped through a door with a broken keypad lock at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University and brutally killed two sorority sisters, Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy, with a log he’d picked up on the way in. Next, he opened the bedroom door of Kathy Kleiner Rubin, who stirred when Bundy entered. He hit her with the log. Just as she braced herself for a second hit, a bright light from a car filled the room and the killer fled. Kathy miraculously survived.
But that wasn’t her first brush with death — at 13, Kathy was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease that causes widespread inflammation. The prognosis was grim after her left kidney began to fail, but her Cuban mother connected with a physician from Cuba who saved her life with a then-radical treatment: chemotherapy. Kathy endured chemotherapy again in her early thirties when she was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer.A Light in the Dark is her story of surviving three death sentences and finding love and happiness along the way. Below is an excerpt from the new book, the first memoir from a confirmed Bundy survivor, about Kathy’s life as a mother after the attack.
I was not yet twenty-five years old, and I had a town house with a mortgage, and a young son to raise on my own. I could have felt overwhelmed, and I often did. But I was also excited and optimistic for the future. The town house was mine, and I could decorate it any way I liked. I still had an interest in interior design, and as the first owner of the unit, I was able to select the furnishings. I chose eggshell-colored kitchen cabinets that matched the eggshell paint on the walls. I had a grayish rug running throughout, and I chose a clean, Art Deco style for the downstairs. In the living room, I added teak furniture and a fake plant to add greenery. I mounted a TV to the wall, put up shelves, and lined them with 1920s-inspired knickknacks.
In the downstairs bathroom, I hung black wallpaper that was designed to resemble the universe. It was like walking through the cosmos. There were comets streaking across the paper and star points forming Orion. Everyone, except for Mama, considered the wallpaper beautiful. She said it was like looking into the “devil’s den” and she refused to use it. She always trudged upstairs to use the bathroom in Michael’s room.
Michael’s room was decorated in a dinosaur motif. In his closet, I organized his toys into clear plastic boxes meant for shoe storage. Each box was labeled and designated for a specific toy. He had one bin for his Matchbox cars, another for his building blocks, and separate ones for his various action figures. I made him responsible for putting his toys back in the bin before he could take another bin from the closet. I hoped to teach him how to read the labels and how to be organized. In that regard, I think I was also trying to organize my own life.
As Michael grew to be a toddler and then preschool age, I started telling him he was the big boy of the house. Each night, he would follow me as I walked around our home and made sure all the windows and doors were locked. When I tucked him into bed, I gave him “butterfly kisses” by blinking my eyelashes around his face. One night, Michael put his hands on my face while I gave him his butterfly kisses and he felt the scar on my cheek from one of my jaw surgeries.
“How did you get this?” he asked, pressing his little fingers on the scar.
“A long time ago,” I told him. “An evil man came into my house and hurt me. That’s why we make sure all the windows are locked at night.”
Michael cupped my face in his small hands. His voice was serious, and I could tell he was trying to sound like an adult. “I won’t let anyone hit you in the face again,” he promised.
I looked down at my precious boy, whom I wasn’t even supposed to have because of my lupus. All I wanted to do was protect him from the world, and here he was saying that he was going to protect me. It was clear we were going to take care of each other.
I left the conversation at that. In the years to come, I never hid what happened to me from my son. But I also never brought it up. I tried to keep Bundy from inserting himself into our daily lives, so I tended to keep quiet, even when my memory was triggered by the sight of an oak log in the fireplace or a keypad lock. I was trying to keep the attack in my past, but I know that for others, the night of January 15, 1978, still felt painfully fresh.
In 2018, writer Tori Telfer reached out to me. She thought my story on surviving Ted Bundy would be a good fit for Rolling Stone magazine. I was surprised that anyone would be interested in what I referred to as “my little story,” but I agreed to do the interview. Tori made it easy. She is compassionate and friendly, and I loved how she used the little details to bring the story to life.
After the attack, I felt like she took readers to my parents’ kitchen, where Marilynn tried to puree different foods for me while my mouth was wired shut. Both my husband Scott and I were delighted with the article. Michael, however, was shocked. He didn’t realize I had been attacked by Ted Bundy, the serial killer. He called me after he read the article. His voice was shaking and I could tell he was upset.
He kept repeating, “You were so normal.”
Michael knew from the time he was a little boy and he felt the scar tissue on my jaw that something bad had happened to me. He knew someone had hit me, but he didn’t fully know who or how. That one night when he was a toddler and I was putting him to bed, he pledged that he would never let anyone hit me in the face again. But I soon met Scott, and I think he realized that in Scott, we both had a protector. He didn’t have to worry about being the little man of the house, and I think he was able to forget over time that someone had once harmed his mother.
I didn’t keep the Bundy attack from Michael. It was never a secret. But I also didn’t offer up any stories related to the attack. Every year on January 15, I didn’t say anything to my family or bring up Margaret or Lisa. And after Bundy was executed, we were able to move forward without him popping up as a painful reminder through media interviews or stories about his latest court petition. It’s not to say that these things didn’t haunt me, because they did. I just stopped them from haunting my son’s childhood. He was 37 when he finally learned the full story. I think he was overwhelmed by the violence I survived and the recovery I endured. But he also knew that I had found a lot of peace and happiness in my life.
A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy
amazon.com
$26.09
Michael was a big part of my happiness in life. During that phone call, as he kept repeating “you were so normal,” he brought up the pool parties I hosted for his birthday and other things I did to make his life as ordinary as possible. To me, this was one of my greatest accomplishments in life.
Bundy was on a sick and twisted journey and he dragged his victims down the path. After I survived the attack, I dug in my heels so that he could pull me no farther. I didn’t ask for this journey, and I was going to forge my own way forward. It took many years of baby steps, but I eventually got where I was going. Michael was never haunted by visions of Bundy as a child or a young adult. He never felt helpless with rage because he couldn’t avenge the man who had hurt his mother. That was me fighting back so that Bundy could not pull me or my son in with his evil. Bundy’s journey was about death. Our journey was about healing and life.
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