Kriti Mehrotra
If there’s one thing absolutely nobody can deny, it’s that Ted Bundy was not a criminal mastermind but actually a serial killer, a harrowing rapist, and a depraved necrophiliac, and more. That’s precisely what Hulu’s ‘Ted Bundy: Dialogue with the Devil’ explores by underscoring the ways he had tried to save himself from his impending execution, but to no avail. Among those to thus be a significant part of this original production are his survivors, including Kathy Kleiner-Rubin, one of the last women he ever attacked before being apprehended for good.
Kathy Kleiner-Rubin Was Attacked at Her Sorority
Although Kathy Kleiner-Rubin is a native of Miami, Florida, through and through, she grew up rather sheltered thanks to her Cuban mother’s desire to protect her as well as her sister. This was to such an extent that after she graduated from high school, she decided to enroll in a university that was 500 miles away from home – the farthest possible while still being in the state. In other words, she chose to enroll at the Florida State University in Tallahassee. It took her some time to adjust and balance her things out, like moving out of the forms and into the Chi Omega sorority house following her freshman year at the behest of her parents, but she was excited to be branching out.
It was at university that Kathy got her first boyfriend and began thinking of a future beyond what she had initially thought was possible – she had freedom in every sense of the term. She had so many opportunities in front of her, and she was excited to explore them all – she could be anything, an archeologist, an entertainer, a teacher, a reporter, and much, much more. However, everything turned upside down for the 21-year-old in the early hours of January 15, 1978, as Ted Bundy broke into the sorority house while on the lam from the police. According to records, she had been to a wedding before returning to the sorority and the room she shared with Karen Chandler to prepare for the Calculus test she had on Monday, January 16.
Kathy and Karen both ended up falling asleep well before midnight, only for the former to awake to the sound of her bedroom door slowly opening hours later. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, so she couldn’t see anything but a shadowy figure coming to tower over her, raising his arm over his head, and then slamming something down her face. That’s when her roommate stirred, inadvertently grabbing the attacker’s attention and getting hurt in the same way before he returned to hit Kathy again. By this point, she had curled up into a small ball in pain and was trying to scream for help, but no sound was coming from her. Fortunately, before the attacker managed to bludgeon her over the head again, the whole room flooded with light as fellow sorority sisters returned and were parking their car – their room faced their parking lot, resulting in the attacker fleeing.
Kathy Kleiner-Rubin Was Left Deeply Traumatized From the Ordeal
According to records, the weapon Ted Bundy had used was a firewood log that he had actually grabbed from right outside the sorority, but Kathy and Karen’s room was his third that night. He first entered the room of Margaret Bowman, whom he bludgeoned and strangled to death, before stepping into the room right opposite that belonged to Lisa Levy. She was also beaten and strangled, but he also bit her, raped her, and sexually assaulted her with a foreign object. That’s when he came into the shared room, hitting Kathy so hard that her jaw broke in three places and one side of her entire cheek ripped open, the pain of which led her to almost bite her tongue off. She was in really bad shape, but Karen fortunately was doing a bit better and managed to stumble out and get help.
Kathy was subsequently rushed to a local hospital while she drifted in and out of consciousness, where she had to remain for a week. She had an emergency surgery on her jaw, her teeth were wired shut, and her jaw was almost shredded, which meant she could barely speak at the time. Therefore, her family decided it would be best if she were to return home to Miami and not tell the details of her attack for a while. Before she did so, though, officials asked her to return to the scene to see if something was missing from her room – if Ted Bundy had taken a souvenir – but all she could see were the blood stains. As per her own accounts, it was horrifying but helpful because it gave her a sense of clarity about what had transpired.
When Kathy returned to Miami, she was able to focus on her physical healing to the best of her abilities, but no one ever spoke to her of the incident – it was as if they were trying to sweep it under the rug. Therefore, it was through the news that she learned the entire truth, following which she developed her own kind of therapy methods so as to be able to move forward in life. She took small steps like imagining she was on vacation and caring for herself so as to slowly stop feeling scared, and then she jumped into exposure therapy upon realizing she was scared of men in public spaces too. She did her best, and she even tied the knot with her then-boyfriend as it seemed like having that sort of stability would be best. Slowly yet surely, despite having dropped out of college, Kathy picked up the pieces to create a new normal for herself.
Kathy Kleiner-Rubin Has Not Let the Past Control or Consume Her
While the initial few years following the attack were extremely hard for Kathy, she somehow managed to take that pain, grief, and trauma and turn it into motivation. She actually testified against Ted Bundy during his pre-trial and trial so as to ensure he was convicted of not only the attack on her but also the double homicide of her two sorority sisters. She continued to have good days and bad days as the years passed, especially considering she had to have several other surgeries on her jaw, but she chose to focus on the positives. In fact, although her marriage crumbled within six years as both she and her husband realized they had not only tied the knot young but for the wrong reasons, she was able to prioritize their son, Michael.
As if that’s not enough, Kathy eventually also established herself as a career woman, as a hospital buyer, before finding love again with a neuroscience professor named Scott Rubin. Therefore, in her late 60s, she now goes by Kathy Kleiner-Rubin and is happily settled in Southern Florida, where she is surrounded by her husband, son, daughter-in-law, and grandkids at every step of the way. She and Scott have lived in various states like Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana over the decades, owing to his job, but now that they are both retired, they are enjoying life to the best of their abilities in the state that they have always called home.
We should mention that both Kathy and Scott are big adventure enthusiasts and fans of sailboats, so they recently bought one called Seabreeze and traversed the entire western coast of Florida alongside their fur baby, a Yorkie named Gidget. As if that’s not enough, Kathy has since also evolved into a motivational speaker as well as an author, so whenever she is not spending quality time with loved ones, she is working. Her memoir ‘A Light in the Dark: Surviving More Than Ted Bundy’ came out in 2023, and it details not only the 1978 incident but also her struggles with several miscarriages and breast cancer. From what we can tell, she is in remission as of writing and is filling her days doting on her family or appearing on several podcasts. Honestly, she seems perfectly content today, which is all that matters in the long run.
Read More: Carol DaRonch: Where is the Ted Bundy Survivor Now?
