In the early morning hours of January 15, 1978, an intruder entered the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University through a faulty back door and attacked several students while they slept. Twenty-year-old Lisa Levy was found with a faint heartbeat and taken to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, where she later died from her extensive injuries. Her sorority sister Margaret Bowman was also murdered that night; two other women, Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, suffered severe injuries but survived, and a nearby duplex resident, Cheryl Thomas, was attacked and survived as well.

Investigators found minimal physical evidence at the scene and no usable fingerprints. A distinct bite mark on Lisa Levy’s body led forensic odontologists to make a cast; the dental comparison became a central piece of evidence. The bite mark was ultimately matched to Theodore Robert Bundy, who had escaped custody in Colorado and was arrested on February 15, 1978, in Pensacola in a stolen vehicle. In July 1979 a jury convicted Bundy of first-degree murder in the deaths of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman and of three counts of attempted first-degree murder; he received the death penalty.