The muggy Tuesday before Ted Bundy was supposed to die, belted into the 62-year-old, red-oak electric chair known as ”Old Sparky,” the marquee outside Sonny`s Barbeque on U.S. Hwy. 301 wasn`t advertising barbeque. ”Go All the Way,” the big black letters urged, in the hubba-hubba cadence of a football cheer. ”No Stay for Bundy.”
Around town, sentiment for Bundy was commonly reduced to even fewer words: ”Fry that sucker.”
Here in what may be the most aptly named prison town in America, Southern hospitality is in short supply for the 246 convicts on Florida State Prison`s Death Row, the most populated Death Row in the nation.
Starke had one vocal death penalty opponent for a while. She got so fed up with having eggs thrown at her van that right next to her bumper sticker protesting the death penalty she pasted one that said, ”I Don`t Get Mad, I Get Even.” She has left town, or, as one resident phrased it, ”She hauled buggy.”
Florida has been called the Buckle of the Death Belt of America, and Starke, a town of 5,600 people and 38 churches between Gainesville and Jacksonville, is the crest on the buckle. Around it, in a 20-mile-radius of the northeastern backwoods of the Sunshine State, are eight prisons. Together they employ about 5,000 people.
”It`s not a question around here of whether you`re for or against the death penalty,” says Joy Johnson, 22, a clerk at Mitchell`s Rexall Drugstore downtown. ”Whenever an execution happens, it`s just, `Oh, are they gonna do it this morning?” She shrugs. ”Then again, when half your family`s employed out there it`s hard to be too vocal about being against it.”
Ted Bundy, a dapper law student, and Gerald Stano, a pudgy short-order cook, were to have died at 7 a.m. on July 2 in a dank little room with beige walls, low ceilings, linoleum floors and steel doors. Between the two of them, they are believed, separately, to have murdered about 80 women.
If they hadn`t received last minute stays, they would have become the 17th and 18th men executed in Florida since 1979, all but one of those in the last three years. Only Texas even comes close to that pace.
For all their tough talk about the death penalty, Starke residents don`t appreciate its being the reason for their renown. Many are quick to point out that Florida State Prison isn`t even in Starke. It`s 11 miles outside the city limits, down a flat, straight, two-lane highway, almost over the Bradford County line.
”Media people come in here and they call us `The Electrocution Capital of the World,”` grumbles one resident. ”How come nobody ever mentions that we`re the world`s Strawberry Capital, too?”
Mayor Charlie Schaefer, a man with the gruff but endearing air of the Wizard of Oz, kneads his cigar and leans on the bar. He wears an American Legion bolo tie and an American Legion belt. His white hair is in a military crewcut and his black patent leather shoes are shiny enough to pass the toughest sergeant`s inspection.
”People ask me, `Where`s Starke?` I just tell `em, `Home of the Electric Chair.` Then they know.`
A short time earlier, Schaefer, 59, had warned, ”I`m not going to talk about Bundy or the electric chair. That`s got nothing to do with the city.”
Like a lot of people in town, Schaefer in one moment disavows association with the prisons and in the next proves that they touch almost everyone here, though often in ways so routine as to be invisible.
Even though the prisons are one of the area`s largest employers, the Chamber of Commerce brochures don`t mention them. The weekly Bradford County Telegraph didn`t print a word about the Bundy and Stano executions the week they were to happen. Editor Bob Ferguson says the paper writes about the prisons only when they involve local news. ”We`ve written about the woodburning generator out there,” he says. ”We cover the prison flower shows.”
The mayor is wary of talking also because he doesn`t want his position on the death penalty garbled. ”I`ve got re-election to think about,” he says.
He says a Jacksonville TV station interviewed him and made it sound as if he opposed the death penalty. He`s got enough trouble without that kind of misinterpretation. He`s got the NAACP suing him to redistrict the city. He`s got the Humane Society mad at him because he refuses to run a hotel for dogs instead of just a dog pound. And he`s got the atheists after him to take the cross, a leftover Christmas decoration, off the top of the Starke water tower. To the Wisconsin woman who has been pestering him about the cross he sent a get-well card and a box of Ex-Lax.
It`s a slow night at Jessie`s lounge, and the mayor starts telling a story, the kind of story that gets passed around and fixed in the local lore. Everybody around here knows prison stories, of inmates who throw urine and feces on the guards, about the private TV–with cable–in each Death Row cell, about the weapons the prisoners devise from disposable razors, toothbrushes, combs, broom handles, bucket handles, metal rulers.
They know escape stories too, like the one about the Death Row inmate who was recaptured recently after dressing up in a guard`s uniform and walking right through the clanging metal gates and straight out the front door. Escapees don`t worry them, though. Most figure that anyone smart enough to escape isn`t dumb enough to hang around Starke.
”I`ll tell you what he admitted to me,” the mayor tells his small audience over the air conditioner`s loud hum. He is talking about a recent execution at which he served as the official observer, hired by the state to watch the prisoner during his final hours to ensure that he is treated properly.
”He was a drug addict. He said when he didn`t have a fix he has taken battery acid and put it in a cigarette and smoked it. I never heard of that.” ”Me neither,” says Buddy Hardy, a burly heavy equipment operator as he reaches for the popcorn basket.
The mayor continues. ”I went out to the prison about 3:45 a.m. He got a stay until 12:01. I`m right there in front of the cell and the phone rings. Goddamn. He`s got another stay. He lights up like a lightbulb.
”Later in the morning he got another stay, until 5:01. He made his peace with the Lord anyway. He`s a Catholic, too, by the way. He promised the priest he wouldn`t smoke. His cigarettes are right there next to him and he doesn`t touch them.”
The mayor says this with admiration as he chews on his cigar.
”At 4, there`s still no word on another stay. It`s like the light went out. He asked if he could call his mother. Then they prepped him, you know, the blue suit and all. He never yelled, he never cussed. I walked behind him until he got to the chair. The warden asked him if he had anything to say. He said no–not like that other joker a while back who started fighting and scratched the warden all up. They put the hood over his face. That was it.”
A moment of respectful silence follows the tale, then the mayor adds a coda that illuminates the complicated relationship between the local people and the prisoners: ”He went like a man.”
The mayor mentions that he had asked to witness Bundy`s execution, too, but had been turned down.
”The guy who does it gets $750, you know,” he says, a figure prison officials say is actually $600 above the executioner`s fee.
Jeff Jackson, a postal clerk who is standing at the bar, says he`d throw the switch for free.
The territory around Starke is an ecological limbo where pines, oaks and palmettos meet, a cultural hybrid forged of the lawless Old West and the Old and New Souths. It is more Georgia than Florida, but, except for the Spanish moss and some rambling white colonnaded houses, it is not the genteel Georgia of Rhett and Scarlett.
To the 20,000 motorists who drive through town along U.S. 301 every day, to and from the natural and unnatural attractions to the south, Starke is simply a town on the road to somewhere else, known, if it`s known at all, as a notorious newspaper dateline.
It is a place with a past of shoot-em-ups and moonshine and a present of fast-food franchises and trailer signs. During World War II, 90,000 soldiers settled into nearby Camp Blanding, turning Starke briefly into a neon-lit carnival.
Prisons have been here since the early part of the century, an economic blessing to one of the poorest parts of the state. Even though they are such an integral part of the sociological landscape that the residents don`t think they rate discussion, you can find evidence of them at almost every turn.
The boys are standing outside the Majik Market late Monday afternoon. One teenager leans on his bike and sips a Coke. Another leans against the wall and feeds cigarettes to a kid wearing a T-shirt that says ”Sluggers.”
”I met Bundy,” the kid says, taking a drag from the cigarette. ”I had lunch with him.” He sees the skepticism that meets his claim, so he offers proof.
”My dad`s on Death Row,” he says.
”He`s telling the truth,” one of the older boys says. The kid is asked why his father`s on Death Row. He shrugs and looks away.
”He murdered two people,” the older boy says quietly.
”He did not! He did not!” The kid backs away and screams at him.
The kid says his name is David, and he is almost 11. He is asked his last name. ”You a reporter?” he says, tilting his chin up and cocking his hip.
”Oh, s—,” he says, stretching the word for four seconds. ”No way.”
Another boy, who also refuses to give his name, cycles up. He is skinny and acned and wearing a sleeveless T-shirt sawed off at his midriff.
”My Mama`s boyfriend works at the prison,” he says. He proudly adds,
”He guards Bundy.” He figures he`ll probably get a job at the prison eventually. ”I don`t know what other job I could get.”
From Richard Dugger`s office, you can see the green concrete prison buildings surrounded by high fences and coiled razor wire. Just outside the administration building, several sweating inmates in white uniforms are pruning orange and yellow mums next to a small sign that primly requests,
”Please don`t pick the flowers.”
Dugger is on the phone.
”Bundy`s not talking to anybody. I`ve got two detectives from Salt Lake City sitting in the Econo Lodge hoping he`ll help them identify the location of some of the bodies. I tried to get him to talk, hoping he`d do it for humanitarian reasons. I sat down face to face with him and asked him point blank. There`s no way in hell.”
Dugger is superintendent of Florida State Prison, the only maximum security prison in the state, occupied by the worst kind of troublemakers, men who have killed other inmates, assaulted guards, been condemned to three consecutive life sentences.
Dugger, 42, is a thoughtful, well-spoken man whose father also worked at the prison. Dugger was raised on the prison grounds, 18,300 flat, green acres that he likens to a farm.
He has witnessed every Florida execution since 1979, when the state resumed executions after a 15-year hiatus. The reasons behind the high numbers are simple, he says. Florida is a highly populated state. In 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the consitutionality of death penalty laws in Florida, Georgia and Texas, Florida had a backlog of prisoners sentenced to death. Since 1979, it has had a governor, Democrat Bob Graham, willing to sign death warrants. He has signed 139.
”We look at it in a very detached fashion,” Dugger says between phone calls from reporters and law officials about Bundy. ”It`s a duty, it`s a responsibility.”
Yet, he adds, ”you never completely forget it.” He pauses. ”I remember every one. But you don`t dwell on it. If you did I think it would cause you problems.”
He says the prison has little direct effect on the adjacent communities.
”I belong to the Rotary Club in Starke, and we don`t talk about the prison,” he says.
Within the next few hours, Dugger must make sure that Bundy and Stano are measured for suits and asked what they want done with their remains. Meanwhile, prison life goes on as usual that day. One Death Row inmate slashes another in the yard, and some pranksters hide razor blades in the day`s biscuits and a dead rat in the gravy.
”My father is a sensitive man,” says Darla Christopher, growing tearful. ”He changed after he started working out there. He`d come home and tell stories about inmates bragging about torturing women. He was never the stereotype of a redneck Southern guard. I see people around town who look like that, but . . . .” She pauses. ”It`s hard to generalize. Starke doesn`t really fulfill the stereotype of the redneck Southern town. And the guards who work out there are kind of imprisoned themselves.”
Christopher, the daughter of a former corrections officer, is small and slender, intense and fast-talking. In high school, she couldn`t wait to get out of Starke. But when she finished Harvard University and the University of Florida Law School she came back and went into law practice.
Christopher acknowledges that FSP affects the community in ways that transcend salaries and pension plans. ”Yeah,” she says with a laugh,
”everybody turns into conservative rednecks, at least when it comes to the death penalty.” She is for the death penalty. ”But,” she says, ”I don`t think it`s anything to celebrate.”
She talks about the prisons being understaffed and the correctional officers underpaid (starting salary is $14,000 a year). She discusses the ways that working at a tough prison like FSP makes employees and their families scared. ”Whenever my dad was supposed to come home, we were always looking out the window for the lights. You`d hear about an officer getting stabbed at the prison and you`d start thinking it was him.”
The prisons affect the life of the community in another important way.
”It makes you defensive about outsiders coming in. It makes you resentful and angry with people who judge you and don`t understand the place or the prisons.”
Except for a celebrity killer like Bundy, fewer and fewer outsiders visit Starke at execution time to poke and peer and ask questions. Florida executions just aren`t news anymore. At the first few executions, the cow pasture across from the prison was jammed with death penalty opponents and proponents, reporters and officers hoping to keep the peace. At the last one, only a couple dozen people showed up.
If Graham`s successor, to be elected this fall, acts according to public desire, he will continue to sign death warrants and Starke will retain its unwanted title as the Electrocution Capital of the World. Few people will ever know that the town`s name once belonged to a Miss Starke, the sweetheart of a founding father, and that despite the bleakness of its sound, the name Starke is really the residue of a forgotten romance.
