the facts:
"[...] the time sequence here, would become extremely important.
1. melanie nelson had a digital clock in her room & she glanced at it at 02.45 am [...].
2. it was 03.00 am when nita neary arrived at the chi omega house, on 661 west jefferson st. at the florida state university campus, on saturday night january, 14th, 1978 [...]. when she came to the back door, she found it standing open wich didn't particularly alarm her, she shared the sorority house with other 38 coeds + a housemother. anyway, [...] she stepped in & heard a loud thump. a moment later, she heard running footsteps in the corridor above & suddenly they sounded on the front stairway. for some reason she hided herself & then, she saw 'him': a slender man with a sharp nose, wearing a dark jacket & a watch cap [...]. one second, two, three, the door was open and the man was gone. -we've been burglarized-, she thought, -or maybe one of the girls had the nerve to sneak somebody upstairs-.
3. [...] she ran up the stairs & woke her roomate: -there's someone in the house, i just saw a man leave!-. [...] nothing seemed to be missing or wrong but they decided to go upstairs.
4. still discussing about calling the police, karen, another housemate, begin to run down the hall staggering holding her head in both hands, covered in blood. she seemed to be delirious.
5. nita ran to wake the housemother & went back to the room karen shared with kathy, who was sat on her bed, holding her head in her hands, moaning unintelligibly & blood gushed from her head too.
6. nancy, nita's roomate dialed 911.
7. brannon + newkirk, two police officers arrived at 03.23/03.26 am & didn't have any idea what layed ahead of them.
8. both girls (karen + kathy) seemed to be terribly injured. kathy was conscious, but she had lacerations & puncture wounds on her face, a broken jaw in three places, a whipslash injury to her neck + deep lacerations on her shoulder. karen had a concussion, a broken jaw, broken teeth, facial bone fractures & cuts + one finger crushed. they did not remember anyting because they were both sleeping when the man had hammered blows on their heads. the room looked like an abatoir.
9. as the officers went inside to check the house, officer ray crew (who joined the police officers minutes later) went into the room #4 & found a girl lying on her bed, the covers pulled up over her shoulders. she had been strangled (a ligature mark on her throat); had a bruise on her forehead + scratches on her face. her right collarbone had been broken by a tremendous blow. her right nipple was attached by only a thread of tissue + a double bite mark on her left buttock had been found. she had been sexually assaulted: an unyielding object had been jammed into her body, tearing & bruising the rectal orifice & the vaginal vault, causing hemorrhage in the lining of the womb & other internal organs. the weapon used, was a 'clairol' hair mist bottle with a nozzle-top, it was stained with blood, fecal matter & hair. her name was lisa, lisa levy.
10. opposite on the hall, newkirk stepped into the room that one of the coeds that feared her roomate could be injured too, had shown him & he felt as if he were walking through a nightmare when he got into the room. margaret, layed on her face & the covers pulled up around her neck. as he walked closer, he realized he could actually see into her brain, her skull had been shattered. the blows made on the right side of the girl's head had caused depressed fractures, & indeed, there was more damage to the left side of the brain (later on, they will find out that the killer was lefthanded) than in the right. the force dealt to this girl's head was so tremendous that her brain had been slammed against the left side of the skull when she was struck. a pantyhose ligature was cut from the girl's neck, buried so deep that it could hardly be seen in the flesh, killing her by strangulation. one leg had been cut off by the killer & unlike lisa, she bore no evidence of a sexual assault.
11. rage, hate, animalistic mutilation & what was the worst, how was it possible that a killer could enter the sorority house's sleeping area of 39 coeds so easily, without anyone heard a thing, & do all those atrocities with such rapidity as to be unimaginable? [...]."
a sixth sense or just female instincts?
24 years later, a coed from that same sorority remembering the night the murders took place, spoke.
the cuestion was: "how could anyone have done so much damage, so quietly in such a short time, with all those thirty-nine girls, & a housemother?."
"[...] 'he had already scouted it out, that afternoon i think. for some reason, we were all gone saturday afternoon. when we came home, the housemother's cat was acting spooked, & its hair was standing on end. it ran through our legs & out the door, & it didn't come back for two weeks'. she said some of the girls had felt the presence of a kind of evil that night. [...] 'at least two of the girls who were upstairs in the sleeping area had experienced stark terror, a free-floating dread with nothing to pin it to. kim had sore throath, & she went to bed early. she woke up sometime during the night to go down to the bathroom to get a drink of water [...], but she said she suddenly felt such unreasoning terror, as if something awful was waiting for her, so she backed into her room & locked the door. didn't come out until the police banged on the door later'.
'it must have been a little bit after that, tina started down the back stairs to the kitchen to get a snack, but it was the same kind of thing: she couldn't seem to make her feet go down those stairs, she started to shake & ran into her room too. she'd felt something or someone waiting down below'".
it is a fact that all the women who survived this serial killer, felt, among so many more things that "something about him was wrong"; "i will never forget those eyes that stare as long as i live"; "there was something in his eyes, something evil"; "my insides were shaken, there was something about him that terrified me". following their instincts, those girls screamed, fought, ran & did things that saved their lives.
the lesson here is: follow your instincts & never hesitate about it. it could save your life.
*source: ann rule's (2009) "the stranger beside me"; keppel + birnes (2005) "the riverman: ted bundy and i hunt for the green river killer".
