Tallahassee was still in shock when my family arrived from Melbourne at the start of 1979, just 12 months after Ted Bundy hideously murdered two young women asleep in their college dorm.
asserted
Bundy → arrive → dorm
My father was going to do his PhD at Florida State, the university where the victims studied, and Bundy’s blank, handsome features still featured regularly on the front page of the Tallahassee Democrat.
asserted
features → go → Democrat
Adults talked in whispers about what happened to those poor girls and conversations stopped when children entered the room.
asserted
children → talk → room
I had turned 10, just old enough to start paying attention to adult matters and curious to find out more.
asserted
I → turn → more
It was easy enough to glean the details – two sorority sisters were discovered in their beds, clubbed to death, two others barely alive.
asserted
others → glean → death
Girls at the elementary school speculated, in languid accents I could barely understand, that there was a victim our age.
uncertain
I → speculate → accents
What happened to her used words we didn’t understand.
asserted
we → happen → words
Bundy was locked up two hours away in Florida State Penitentiary but the most famous convict in America loomed over the town as everyone waited for his trial to begin.
asserted
trial → lock → town
Rape, serial murder, capital punishment: all these words entered my vocabulary that year.
asserted
words → enter → vocabulary
Just as I graduated from elementary school in May 1979, Florida’s governor signed the death warrant for John Spenkelink, a drifter who’d killed a man he claimed had robbed and raped him, but he had convinced no judge and exhausted all his appeals.
uncertain
he → graduate → appeals
He would be the first involuntary execution since the US Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976 after a four-year moratorium and the first man to die in Florida’s antique electric chair, “Old Sparky”, in 15 years.
asserted
Court → restore → years
Almost two-thirds of Americans supported the death penalty by 1979 but the debate divided Tallahassee.
asserted
debate → support → Tallahassee
The horror of the Chi Omega murders was more than enough to galvanise the many who believed in justice, damnation and hellfire.
asserted
who → galvanise → justice
But my parents, like many people in the liberal post-graduate student village where we lived, were opposed.
asserted
we → live → opposed
So too were many Christian groups, organising vigils outside the capitol’s courthouses for the right to life, before that phrase was subsumed by the anti-abortion crusade.
asserted
phrase → organise → crusade
At the urging of one of our neighbours, my mother joined the small vigil overnight outside the prison the night before Spenkelink was executed.
asserted
Spenkelink → join → prison
“They are killing him in your name,” our neighbour said as they talked about the case at the communal laundry.
asserted
they → kill → laundry
“Not in my name,” my mother said.
asserted
mother → say → name
“I’m not an American.”
asserted
I → ’m → ?
“If you don’t protest, it will be in your name.”
asserted
it → protest → name
For my mother, May 25 was a night of candles, prayers and chants: “Death row must go”.
uncertain
row → go → candles
She says people yelled at them from passing cars but it was peaceful.
asserted
it → say → cars
Within the prison, an Associated Press stringer improbably named Thomas Slaughter reported the condemned man “looked terrified and helpless.
asserted
man → name → prison
I remember my parents talking about how wrong it was for the government to kill someone, how sad, how dangerous.
asserted
government → remember → someone
“It degrades us all,” my mother said.
asserted
mother → degrade → us
But this stance was sorely tested six days later, when Bundy was shipped to town for his first pre-trial hearings, a former law student showboating in the first nationally televised trial, demanding a new defence attorney, seeking delays, playing the lead.
asserted
Bundy → test → lead
On June 12, Judge Edward Cowart relocated the trial to Miami on the grounds it would be impossible to field an impartial jury in Tallahassee.
asserted
it → relocate → Tallahassee
At night I eavesdropped on the heated discussions downstairs, my mother saying even someone as evil as Bundy should not be executed, our neighbours adamant someone guilty of such horrendous crimes should die.
asserted
someone → eavesdrop → crimes
So I’ve been thinking about Bundy this week, ever since US War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced there would be a livestream of the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, the US Army major who betrayed and shot dead 13 unarmed comrades in 2009.
asserted
who → think → 2009
The US is on the threshold of another step change in how it metes out justice for the worst crimes.
asserted
it → mete → crimes
The idea of an execution broadcast live has horrified many, even those who believe in the death penalty as something that must be carried out in medical doses before only a dozen witnesses.
asserted
that → broadcast → witnesses
Now the debate has moved from the legitimacy of the death penalty to the corrupting influence of a televised execution.
asserted
debate → move → execution
Fuelled by the algorithm of extremes, this is a show that will leave some viewers craving more.
asserted
that → fuel → more
But the botched execution of Christa Pike, who had to be hospitalised when death by injection failed, exposes the nightmare logic of capital punishment even when it is supposed to be sombre and clinical.
asserted
it → botch → punishment
Forty-seven years after my mother lit a candle outside the state penitentiary, Florida is leading America’s state-sanctioned killing spree, executing a record 19 prisoners last year and fatally injecting another 16 already in 2026, more than all other states combined.
asserted
Florida → light → states
The cause she believed in back then, is so far a lost cause.
asserted
she → believe → ?
The 800-strong crowd gathered for Bundy’s execution in 1989, a decade later, let off fireworks as they celebrated his death with an all-night party.
asserted
they → gather → party
Every execution, public or secret, degrades us all.
asserted
execution → degrade → us
The Aporia
