Remembering Kimberly Leach, 12, Ted Bundy's Last Victim:

Three weeks after the brutal attacks on five students at Florida State University in January 1978, which resulted in the deaths of two sorority sisters and severe injuries to three other women, news arrived of a missing child in a town located approximately 90 miles to the east. The authorities in Tallahassee were in the midst of their investigation.

Kimberly Leach, a seventh-grader in Lake City, Florida, had gone missing in the middle of the school day on Feb. 9, 1978.

"It was raining, drizzly, (a) very dreary day," said childhood friend and classmate Lisa Little. "I went to our designated spot to meet up to go to our class together and she wasn't there."

Lake City police searched for Kimberly but found nothing. Authorities urged the public to come forward with any information.
"We knew something was wrong. She, Kim, was not a student to skip class, to leave campus," classmate Sheri Roberts McKinley said. "I mean, we were 12. And, she was very shy." 

While the search for Kimberly was still ongoing, police in Pensacola apprehended Ted Bundy, a notorious convicted kidnapper, a suspected murderer, and fugitive on the FBI's Most Wanted list. He had managed to evade the authorities in Colorado twice in 1977, once by jumping out of a courthouse window and later by breaking out of a jail cell.

In April 1978, approximately two months after Kimberly disappeared, her body was discovered. She had suffered a brutal assault and murder, and her remains were found inside a small shed in a forested area behind the Suwannee River State Park.

McKinley expressed, "The thought of her being terrified and scared breaks my heart. It's hard to comprehend the horror of it all, especially when you consider that she was just a 12-year-old classmate, innocent and vulnerable. It wasn't until I grew older that I fully understood the gravity of what had happened, and the reality of the horrors they must have faced."

In July 1978, Ted Bundy was formally accused of the murders of Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy at the Chi Omega sorority. The indictment against him included two counts of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder, in relation to the attacks on Kathy Kleiner, Karen Chandler, and a university student who lived nearby, named Cheryl Thomas.

He was convicted in July 1979 and sentenced to death.

McKinley said of Bundy: "He was a monster here on Earth."

In 1980, Bundy went to trial in Orlando for the kidnapping and murder of Kimberly. The evidence against Bundy in the Kimberly Leach case ranged from eyewitness testimony and fibers to hotel receipts from Lake City, according to Bob Dekle, the lead prosecutor in the Kimberly Leach trial.

A firefighter had reported seeing a man walking across the school’s campus and holding a young girl by the arm, Dekle said. The firefighter, who was coming home, had seen the man and the 12-year-old walking toward a white van parked in the middle of the street, Dekle said.

Dekle said the firefighter thought the pair was father and daughter.

"He also assumed that she'd gotten in trouble at school and he was taking her home," Dekle said.

Bundy was convicted and again sentenced to death.

Little, Kimberly's close friend, said she was speaking out because "I don't want people to focus on Ted Bundy, the monster that, that came to visit our lives for such a short time but had a such profound impact. I want everyone to remember the angel, Kimberly Leach, that was with us, that shared her life with us, her smiles with us, and her hopes and dreams with us. I would like for people to remember that she is who needs to be remembered and not him."

Credit: Lisa Little, Ruby Bedenbaugh, and Sheri McKinley

Kimberly Dianne Leach was 12 when she was abducted and murdered by Ted Bundy in 1978.

Ruby Bedenbaugh, another close friend of Kimberly's, told ABC News that she wanted people to remember Kimberly as a "beautiful, young girl that would have done great things had she not crossed paths with a monster."

"There’s a void that will always remain. ... Where would Kim be today?" Bedenbaugh said. "The world missed out on a great soul."

On Jan. 24, 1989, Bundy was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison for Kimberly's murder.

Days before his execution, Bundy confessed on tape to authorities to 30 murders in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Florida between 1973 and 1978. Authorities suspect he may have killed many more -- as many as 100.

It is believed that Kimberly was his last victim.

"In all the TV shows, all the movies, very little has been said about the murder of Kim Leach, the murder of a 12-year-old," Dekle said. "You can't have a glamorous serial killer if you look at that last killing. ... He's nothing more than a monster."