When Ted Bundy escaped from custody and stole Kurt Russell’s food: “This is a crazy story”
During a career that spans more than 60 years, Kurt Russell has encountered a litany of icons from all walks of life. However, he narrowly avoided a memorable encounter of an entirely different kind when notorious serial killer Ted Bundy stole his lunch.
It sounds too crazy to be true, but according to the actor’s family, the circumstances convinced them that the king of the cult classic almost came face-to-face with a mass murderer. Even for a guy who became a confidant of Walt Disney while still a kid and made his first onscreen appearance booting Elvis Presley in the shins, crossing paths with Bundy would be on another level.
Not only that, but the killer was on the run at the time, having recently fled from police custody when he was on trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell. Because he acted as his own attorney, the judge excused Bundy from wearing handcuffs or shackles during the preliminary hearing at Aspen, Colorado’s Pitkin County Courthouse in June 1977.
During a recess, Bundy requested that he visit the library to brush up on a few things. Once he was out of sight from the guards watching over him, he jumped out of a second-floor window, vanished into the nearby mountains, and gathered supplies by stealing food, as it turned out, that food more than likely belonged to John Carpenter’s most famous frequent collaborator.
“This is a crazy story,” Oliver Hudson admitted to Jimmy Kimmel, which was an understatement. “Kurt was camping, he had his plate of food, went to go get a beer or something, comes back and his plate of food is gone.” It doesn’t sound like the wildest thing in the world, and he probably thought it was a wild animal or another camper who’d pilfered his lunch.
“Ted Bundy then gets caught and recounts sort of how he survived after escaping,” Hudson continued. “And he said he found a guy camping in the woods with his friends, he leaves the thing, and he grabs and eats his food.” Russell accidentally lent Bundy an assist by inadvertently providing him with the sustenance he needed to continue marauding through the woods, not that he realised it at the time.
Then again, maybe it’s not all that surprising. After all, Russell has a habit of being in close proximity to dangerous people doing dangerous things. He once beat up one of Charles Manson’s closest followers in a barroom brawl, and he was caught on camera parked in OJ Simpson’s driveway when the former NFL player was leading the authorities on a high-speed chase.
With that in mind, maybe it’s not that surprising that of all the actors who had a close call with Bundy between his initial arrest and eventual incarceration, it was Russell.
