STARKE, Fla.--Ted Bundy, the "diabolical" law school dropout who confessed to killing 20 women in four Western states, was executed in the electric chair today for the 1978 rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl.

At 7:06 a.m., six minutes past schedule, the executioner turned on 2000 volts of electricity and Bundy gently arched back in the chair and clenched his fists. One minute later, 'the power was turned off.

"At 7:16 this morning, the doctor at Florida State Prison pronounced Theodore Bundy dead," said Jon Peck, a spokesperson for Florida Gov. Bob Martinez. "He was executed right on schedule."

Bundy was condemned for the kidnapping, rape and murder of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach of Lake City. Her body was found in an abandoned pigsty. He also was sentenced to death for killing two Florida State students in Tallahassee in 1978.

In his final statement, Bundy said, "Jim and Fred, I'd like you to give my love to my family and friends."

Jim Coleman is Bundy's attorney from Washington, D.C., and Fred Lawrence is a Methodist minister who spent the night in prayer with him.

In addition to praying, a remorseful Bundy, 42, also placed two last calls to his mother in Tacoma, Wash., to say farewell.

"He sounds wonderful," Louise Bundy said after the first telephone call. "He sounds very much at peace with himself."

At the conclusion of the second, Bundy's mother told him, "You'll always be my precious son," according to today's Morning News Tribune of Tacoma.

Bundy, who had dodged three previous execution dates through appeals, has been called a suspect in as many as 36 deaths.

The execution brought a sigh of relief in the LaConner, Wash., home of Vivian Rancourt, whose daughter, Susan, was among Bundy's victims. "Good," Mrs. Rancourt said when told Bundy was dead. "The only thing I can say is thank God, it's finally over."

Around 5:30 a.m., the final preparations began with a prison official shaving Bundy's head and right leg, where the electrodes were later placed.

Forty-two people witnessed the execution from behind a plexiglass partition. They included 12 official witnesses, among them a state representative and three state attorneys; 12 reporters; and 18 other people, mostly corrections officials.

More than 100 people supporting the execution and about two dozen against milled around outside the Florida State Prison. At 7 a.m. a small group of death penalty supporters lit sparklers and firecrackers and cheered, while opponents silently held candles and then held a memorial service.

Within a half hour of the execution, a hearse carried Bundy's body out of the prison to Gainesville for an autopsy.

Bundy, who dropped out of law school after a year, is believed to have stalked young women near college campuses, shopping centers and parks in the West and Northwest, targeting those with long, dark hair, parted in the middle.

Prosecutors said he often lured victims into his car by posing as a police officer or making false requests for aid.

One of the women he admitted killing was Caryn Campbell, 23, of Dearborn, Mich., who was killed by a blow to the head while vacationing in Colorado in 1975.

"You never really forgive someone for something like that. You just try to put it behind you," her father, Robert Campbell, said Monday. "It's not important to me now. The thing I'd like to have back, I can't have."

Bundy's final appeals, including a series to the U.S. Supreme Court, were rejected Monday.

The execution was the 20th in Florida since it resumed executions in 1979; 106 murderers have been put to death in the United States since capital punishment was restored in 1976.

Bundy, who grew up in Tacoma, was linked to three dozen killings of young women. As the execution approached, he met with investigators from Western states and admitted killing eight women each in Washington and Utah and two each in Colorado and Idaho, authorities said.