ST. PETERSBURG — Aboriginal in his career at the Clearwater Sun, announcer Tony Panaccio was not the bigger fan of account ballast John Wilson.
“If I was sitting in the newsroom at 11 watching the account and there was a adventure that I missed, my night got longer,” Panaccio laughed.
But that was afore the two affirmed on the morning of Jan. 24, 1989.
As two of the 12 reporters who had aloof watched the beheading of consecutive analgesic Ted Bundy, they approved to abundance one another.
John Wilson asked Panaccio if he was okay. Panaccio asked the aforementioned of Wilson. Both answered, “No.”
Bundy was a monster, but watching him die was nonetheless disturbing. That aggregate acquaintance formed a band that continues today.
Until recently, though, they never discussed the execution. At an Ybor City assembly flat in aboriginal August, they relived that day.
Their recollections were recorded and filmed for an articulate history book, Our Top Story: How Ted Bundy Changed Us Forever. The book will be appear Nov. 1.
They additionally plan to do either a documentary or affection blur based on the interviews.
John Wilson’s son is a third columnist of the book, accouterment the angle of addition who covered the beheading from the blooming lot beyond the artery from Florida State Prison.
A inferior year anchorman for Florida State University’s WVFS radio base at the time, Paul Wilson was there in 1989 to allocution with those who witnessed the execution.
His ancestor gave him the scoop.
That moment haunts 53-year-old Paul Wilson.
“It was January, apparently about 50 degrees, but my dad looked like it was summer,” he said, angry aback tears. “I’d never apparent him like that. It was chilling.”
The leash asked above Tampa account ballast Reginald Roundtree to serve as the fourth author, who conducted the interviews.
“You accept three animal beings, three stories, three claimed stories,” Roundtree, 62, said. “I had to accompany out that emotion, ask questions they weren’t adequate answering, and get their story.”
A anniversary afterwards the Ybor summit, they aggregate afresh at Paul Wilson’s St. Petersburg appointment to altercate what’s abutting for the project. They were still afraid abandoning the execution.
“It’s not so accidental that it’s a communicative subject,” John Wilson, 80 and retired as a account anchor, said. “It afflicted all of us alone in abounding altered ways. To be actually frank, I don’t like talking about it.”
A 30-year account adept alive with Tampa’s ABC associate in 1989, John Wilson was not initially absorbed aback the Florida Association of Broadcasters presented him the befalling to attestant Bundy’s execution.
“Then I was told it ability accommodate an account with Bundy,” Wilson said. “It was activity to be Bundy’s choice. Who would account him would be his final decision. If he chose me, I had to be prepared.”
He asked brainy bloom professionals what to apprehend from a consecutive analgesic who accepted to 30 murders.
Their admonition was to “let him talk. He will appetite to befitting talking if you let him,” John Wilson said. “I was told he would allocution in the third person, which he did.”
But not to John Wilson. The account went to James Dobson, a analyst and adversary of pornography, which Bundy abhorrent for his violence.
John Wilson said he “felt compelled” to still go because Margaret Elizabeth Bowman, one of Bundy’s FSU victims, was a St. Petersburg citizen who abounding St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church.
“That’s my church,” he said.
As the sun was ascent on Jan. 24, 1989, a white government van best up the alleged journalists at the blooming lot beyond from the prison.
“I was actually nervous,” Panaccio said. “I was underwater.”
While John Wilson was adopted due to his experience, Panaccio, aloof 23 and with a few years acquaintance at the time, was alleged by happenstance.
The Associated Columnist and United Columnist International anniversary alleged one agents affiliate to appear the execution. The Lake City Anchorman was automatically included in the columnist basin because Bundy was bedevilled to afterlife due to the annihilation of a 12-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach of Lake City. The Florida Association of Broadcasters alleged three television and two radio reporters.
The names of 19 Florida newspapers were again befuddled into a hat, according to the now asleep Clearwater Sun’s archives, with endemic actuality one of four picked.
The bi-weekly had a skeleton crew, Panaccio said, and the two best accomplished staffers — the managing editor and editor in arch — had covered an beheading 10 years earlier.
“They didn’t appetite to do another,” he said, “but were added than blessed to alternation me. They told me not to anticipate about what Hollywood has shown. There’s no smoke. There’s no fire. It’s not that dramatic. But it’s an angel that is activity to break with you.”
As the van took them to the execution, he additionally accustomed admonition from John Wilson, who said he looked afterwards Panaccio because of his adolescent age and because they were from the aforementioned media market.
“He told me to focus, accumulate it simple,” Panaccio said. “Be the eyes and the aerial for your readers. Put them in your chair, appearance them what you’re seeing, what you’re hearing, what you’re smelling. Accompany them here. He told me that if I can do that, I’ve done my job.’”
They watched from what Panaccio said looked like a advertisement booth. A bottle window afar them from the electric armchair area.
“Bundy came in like he was assured a party,” John Wilson said. “The guards didn’t annoyance him in. He was acutely arch them. He looked at every eyeball, every one of us in there, and smiled. They again escorted him to the chair, maybe six or eight steps, and put him in the armchair and beggared him tight. He’s still attractive at us.”
Bundy’s aftermost words — “I’d like to accord my adulation to my ancestors and friends” — abashed John Wilson.
“What friends?” he said.
The electric chair’s metal skull cap was placed on Bundy’s head, blubbery straps were pulled adjoin his aperture and chin, and a blind covered his face.
John Wilson noticed architecture about the hooded executioner’s eyes as they addled the about-face that beatific 2,000 volts into Bundy.
“A woman,” he said of the executioner. “It was freaky. The accomplished scene. And again bam, the aboriginal charge.”
Mimicking how Bundy’s anatomy reacted, John Wilson leaned his arch aback hardly to the appropriate and again affected to try to blunder it forward, alone to be anon chock-full by an abstract arch strap.
What followed was uncomfortable, Panaccio said. They removed the blind and “we could see his face as they waited for the anatomy to air-conditioned so they could analysis if he is dead.”
John Wilson said he began apprehensive if afterlife was the appropriate decision. Perhaps Bundy should accept been added advised so “we could bigger accept what a consecutive analgesic is.”
Bundy was arresting asleep at 7:16 a.m.
“While John Wilson is cerebration about existential issues, I was aloof aggravating to authority on,” Panaccio laughed. “I was underwater, aloof aggravating not to abatement in a ravine. I kept writing, but don’t anticipate I anytime looked at my pad.”
The van was declared to bead them at the south end of the parking lot area their cars were parked. Instead, they were alone on the arctic end.
“To get to our cars, we had to airing accomplished all of the media absent to account us,” Panaccio said.
As reporters, they were accomplished to never become the account story, John Wilson said. “We could not do that with this. We were witnesses.”
Paul Wilson declared the parking lot arena as a “macabre Mardi Gras.”
“People affairs ‘Tuesday is Fry-day’ shirts because it was on a Tuesday,” he said. ” You had protesters for and against. You had clergy out there. And again the phalanx of media. The acreage was about the admeasurement of two football fields, and it was covered by accessory trucks.”
John Wilson approved out his son for his aboriginal account as a witness. Paul Wilson still has the tape.
He played it for the Tampa Bay Times.
John Wilson’s articulation is unwavering, but Paul Wilson said his dad’s face told addition story.
“He was shaken,” he said.
Realizing that Panaccio would anon be afflicted by reporters, John Wilson — additionally there to awning it for Good Morning America — said he calmed the adolescent announcer by acceptable his aboriginal interviewer. “I affective Tony and gave him a softball catechism to get him broiled up.”
Panaccio still recalls the question, “Why are you here?” he said. “And he gave me that acknowledgment beforehand in the van. So, I said, ‘To be the eyes and aerial for my readers.’ That brought me back.”
John Wilson and Panaccio appraisal they were anniversary interviewed by a dozen media outlets.
A anniversary later, Panaccio said, John Wilson alleged to analysis how he was doing.
“That’s aloof who he is,” Panaccio said.
They remained close.
Eight years ago, John Wilson helped Panaccio ache the accident of his father.
“I had emergency anaplasty a few years aback for a access appendix,” Panaccio said. “When I got home from the hospital, the aboriginal alarm I got was from John’s wife, Mary K, allurement me if I bare anything.”
Today, Panaccio and Paul Wilson assignment calm through their Lonesome Pine Pictures assembly aggregation and Wilson Media announcement agency. They met about 10 years ago.
Early in their aboriginal conversation, “Tony said to me, ‘I was with your dad at Ted Bundy’s execution,” Paul Wilson said.
Panaccio didn’t say added about the topic, and Paul Wilson knew bigger than to advance for details.
“He didn’t acquaint me that to acquaint me a story,” Paul Wilsons said. “It was to let me apperceive he had a abysmal affiliation with my dad and, through him, my family. That affiliation can never be broken.”
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