When serial killer Ted Bundy escaped from a Colorado jail in 1977 and fled to the mountains, he partly benefited from a group of campers — including one future Marvel actor — who left their food unattended, at least according to that actor.
In January of 2024, celebrity siblings Oliver Hudson and Kate Hudson appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote their podcast, Sibling Revelry, but spent much of their time discussing the wild stories of their step-father, Kurt Russell.
“Everyone always talks about my mom,” Kate Hudson told Jimmy Kimmel, “but Kurt is such an interesting man. There’s so much people don’t know about him.”
A curious Kimmel, who is friends with their mother Goldie Hawn and her husband Kurt Russell, asked for some examples to which Oliver answered, “He’s always crossing paths somehow with killers.”
That wasn’t exactly what Kimmel or his audience were expecting, but Oliver first explained that Kurt was on camera when O.J. Simpson, having infamously fled in a white Ford Bronco in 1994, returned to his house where a crowd was waiting to spot him. In that crowd was Kurt Russell, apparently standing in O.J.’s driveway.
Whereas that on-camera appearance was somewhat planned — Russell saw the news on television and reacted by darting to Simpson’s home (he lived close by), others weren’t.
Oliver followed up the story by claiming that Kurt Russell “beat up Tex Watson, who was Charles Manson’s right hand guy.”
Though no further explanation was given for that beatdown, Oliver Hudson immediately offered the most unlikely occurrence which, to his own admission, may have to be taken with a grain of salt.
Oliver told Jimmy a story involving Russell and notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. He stated, “Ted Bundy escaped from Pitkin County jail, which is in Colorado. He (Kurt Russell) was living there at the time. Kurt was camping, he had his plate of food, he went to get a beer or something, he comes back and his plate is gone.”
Hudson is referring to Bundy’s first of two escapes from jail. After Bundy’s first escape on June 7, 1977, he fled to the mountains and stayed in an abandoned cabin before deciding to leave the mountains only to get lost and eventually find another cabin to temporarily shelter in. Shortly thereafter, Bundy found his way out of the mountains and attempted to flee, but was caught. Sadly, his second escape led him to flee to Florida, where he killed two more women and a 12-year-old child before finally being caught again.
Oliver Hudson also added to his story by saying, “Ted Bundy then gets caught and recounts sort of how he survived after escaping and said he found a guy camping in the woods with his friends and leaves the thing and he goes grabs and he eats his food.”
Kimmel’s reaction to this story was simply, “Oh my God!” which seems appropriate, considering Kurt Russell later played a god in the Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Of course, Russell was already a well known actor in 1977, but he would later star in countless movies including Escape From New York, which was not, incidentally, inspired by Ted Bundy’s escape from jail.
Whether or not you believe the story, it’s not exactly unbelievable, and if it were to be fabricated, then perhaps a version where Ted Bundy steals OJ Simpson’s food would have a different ending.