MOUNTAIN BROOK, Ala. -- Two police officers in Alabama are planning a barbecue dinner Tuesday to celebrate the scheduled execution of serial killer Ted Bundy and show their support for capital punishment.
Mountain Brook police officers Clay Gilmore and Jim Cole said their original plans for a 'Bundy-cue' at The Golden Rule Restaurant just outside Birmingham included a handful of officers from the force, but the dinner has attracted interest from about 50 or 60 people.
Those attending will be able to buy T-shirts with 'First Annual Ted Bundy Barbecue' written on the front and 'Exercise Capital Punishment' on the back. Gilmore said he and Cole may also rig up a chair with Christmas lights in honor of the electrocution.
'It may sound gruesome, but what Bundy did was even more so,' Gilmore said. 'Everybody has their little demonstrations against capital punishment. You're not seeing enough support for capital punishment.'
Bundy is scheduled to die Tuesday in Florida's electric chair for the 1978 kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old Lake City, Fla., girl. He is also under a death sentence for clubbing to death two women at a Florida State University sorority house and has in the past few days confessed to 22 other murders.
Gilmore, a 14-year veteran of the Mountain Brook police force, said he has no direct interest in the Bundy case, but has read books about Bundy and followed the trial and appeals on television and through newspapers.
He said interest in the dinner was stirred Monday by a headline in a local newspaper, which quoted one of Bundy's attorneys as saying Bundy did not fit the public image of a mass murderer, but on the surface seems like he 'is one of us.'
'Our membership has started going up ... since people have seen that,' Gilmore said. 'He's not one of us. He's an animal.'
