The school where Kimberly Leach was abducted

This is the location where serial killer Ted Bundy abducted 12-year-old Kimberly Dianne Leach.

It is situated at 372 West Duval Street in Lake City, Florida.

At the time, this building was home to Lake City Junior High School. Today, it serves as an administrative office for the Columbia County School District.

On February 8, 1978, Bundy attempted to abduct 14-year-old Leslie Parmenter from a mall in Jacksonville. The attempt failed when her older brother, Danny, arrived in the parking lot and confronted him.

Following the incident, Bundy drove approximately 45 miles west to Lake City, where he used a stolen credit card to check into a Holiday Inn under the alias "Ralph Miller."

He spent the rest of the evening eating and drinking at the hotel's bar.

Disappearance

On the morning of February 9, 1978, a witness at Lake City Junior High School noticed a man matching Bundy's description lingering near the grounds.

Shortly before 8:45 a.m., Kimberly Leach left her gym class in the auditorium and walked to her homeroom to retrieve her misplaced purse. After picking it up, she headed back toward the auditorium, which was only 250 feet away.

Despite the short distance, she never returned.

Abduction

Before his execution, Bundy told FBI profiler Bill Hagmaier the young girl was not "preselected." He had been loitering near the school when he spotted Leach.

Investigators believe he intercepted her while she was walking across the campus.

While Bundy never officially disclosed the exact details, he "speculated" to an interviewer that "the killer" may have read Leach's name from the back of her football jersey, called out to her, and told her there had been a family accident and she needed to come with him.

After convincing Leach to leave with him, Bundy led her back to his van, which he had stolen from Florida State University.

When Leach failed to return to the auditorium, her PE teacher presumed she had gone to her next class.

Her friends began to realize something was amiss when she did not appear at their meeting spot.

After Leach failed to return home, her parents searched the school grounds and contacted her friends before calling the police.

That same day, Jacksonville Detective James "Lester" Parmenter began making inquiries about the white van that had been used during the attempted abduction of his 14-year-old daughter.

An investigator with the Leon County Sheriff's Office traced the license plate "13D11300" to a man who said one of his plates had gone missing a month earlier. The owner lived on Dunwoody Street in Tallahassee, near the house where an unidentified intruder had recently attacked Cheryl Thomas.

Recognizing a potential link between the cases, authorities launched a large-scale search operation that spanned four counties and nearly 2,000 square miles over the next eight weeks.

Discovery and investigation

Bundy was arrested during a traffic stop in Pensacola on February 15, 1978. Investigators found a receipt for a knife Bundy had purchased in Jacksonville and a stolen credit card used at a Lake City hotel the night before Leach disappeared.

On April 7, 1978, a Florida Highway Patrol trooper discovered Leach's remains under an abandoned hog shed in Suwannee River State Park. By that point, she had been missing for nearly two months.

Investigators determined Bundy assaulted and murdered Leach in his van. The cause of death was "violence to the neck area" and "a large amount of bleeding." The prosecution team argued Bundy cut the victim's throat with the hunting knife he had purchased before the abduction.

A large bloodstain on the carpet in the back of the van matched her blood type. Investigators also discovered fibers consistent with the clothing of both Bundy and Leach.

Police found additional threads from the victim's football jersey in the vehicle. The manufacturer stated they were identical and must have come from the exact spool used to create the fabric. Only two or three jerseys from that particular batch would have contained those specific fibers.

On February 7, 1980, Bundy was found guilty of murdering Leach. Three days later, he was sentenced to death.

Bundy was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford on January 24, 1989.