Document courtesy of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department.
Katherine Merry Devine, Case Files: Part Sixteen.
The 1978 Pierce County/Eatonville Jane Doe & Donna Gail Manson.
Donna Gail Manson: Donna Manson was a nineteen-year-old student at ‘The Evergreen State College’ in Olympia, WA when she became the third (confirmed) victim of Ted Bundy on March 12 .1974. Born on June 9, 1954 to Lyle Edward and Marie Elizabeth (nee Nilson) Manson, Donna’s father was a music teacher for the Seattle public school district, and her mother was a church choir director and part-time legal secretary. She grew up in Auburn, WA and followed in her parents’ musical footsteps and was an accomplished flutist and talented poet; Donna was described as highly intelligent with a high IQ and was physically small in stature, standing in at only 5 feet tall; she weighed roughly one-hundred pounds and had long brown hair and blue eyes.
Donna graduated from Auburn High School in 1972, and that summer she went to Europe with her (then) boyfriend, and upon returning home she enrolled at Green River Community College. In early 1974 she transferred to Evergreen State in Olympia, a place she was drawn to because of its progressive academic environment and courses in alternative subjects, like the ‘I-Ching’ and alchemy; while there, she enrolled in a coordinated sixteen-credit study program called ‘P.O.R.T.E.L.S.,’ which stood for ‘Personal Options Reaching Towards Effective Learning Skills.’
Described by her loved ones as a ‘free spirit,’ Manson struggled with bouts of depression and anxiety, which adversely affected her academic performance (it was reported that she was also suicidal at times); to most people, she seemed like an introverted young woman that enjoyed spending time alone. On occasion, she engaged in high-risk behaviors that were common for the era, such as hitchhiking and taking impromptu trips without telling any loved ones; she would frequently stay out late and liked to skip class and was known to ‘couch surf’ amongst her friends’ residences.
On the evening of March 12, 1974, Manson left her dormitory around 7:00 PM to attend a campus jazz concert on the first floor of the Daniel J. Evans Library, which is considered to be the heart of The Evergreen State College’s Olympia campus; she was last seen walking toward the library wearing a red/orange/green striped top, green slacks (or pants), and a dark fuzzy maxi-coat (she also had on a Bulova wristwatch and an oval-shaped brown agate ring). Because she enjoyed traveling and would frequently disappear for days at time without telling her peers, she was not officially reported missing until March 18th, a full six days after she was last seen. When her room was checked, she had left all her personal belongings behind, including her purse, money, and clothes.
August 29, 1978: on the morning of August 29, 1978 two fishermen out walking on Highway 7 (southwest of Eatonville) found skeletonized remains on the north side of the Mashel River, where it crosses with the Washington 7 after one of them went to kick what they thought was a rock and found out it was really a human skull. They immediately left and contacted the Pierce County Sheriff’s department, and within hours Explorer Scouts were combing the area, which was located only about sixty miles away from Bundy’s Taylor Mountain burial site; further efforts by law enforcement and search teams found additional bones, hair, and clothing. The Mashel River is a prominent salmon-bearing stream that is a little over twenty miles long and located near the town of Eatonville in Pierce County, Washington. The waterway flows through the foothills of Mount Rainier near the town of Eatonville and is a highly protected environmental zone that is managed (in part) by the Nisqually Land Trust to preserve critical spawning habitats of the threatened Chinook salmon and steelhead trout.
The victim had long brown hair that was roughly thirteen to seventeen inches long and contained blondish highlights; during the autopsy it was determined that the skeleton belonged to a female that was roughly 5’7″ tall and somewhere between fifteen to twenty years old. Her dental records are available, although her mandible was never recovered; her fingerprints and DNA are not available, and due to the advanced level of decomp her eye color is unknown. Her case number with ‘The Doe Network’ is 917UFWA. In an article published in The News Tribune on January 25, 1998, forensic experts noted that the Jane Doe possessed a ‘small crescent-shaped depression’ and fracture on the back that measured about one inch in diameter that was likely caused by a hammer striking a pointed blow at an odd angle or by a tire iron.
She was wearing a zip-up blue sweater with pink shoulders (of an unknown brand) with arm bones found inside; a Marlboro cigarette pack was found near the body along with a girl’s tee shirt with button front and red, yellow, white, green, two colors of blue, black, and lavender stripes on it (made by the brand ‘Pat, On the Back).’ She was also wearing size seven panties, blue pants with no distinguishing markings, and a medium-sized green Sportscaster windbreaker (that had pockets on the inside); on her feet were size six Trax brand tennis shoes that were blue with white chevron stripes.
From the very beginning, the remains were treated like that of a homicide victim, and the Pierce County Medical Examiner estimated the young victim had been deceased for roughly one to two years (therefore had been killed sometime between 1976 to 1978. Pierce County Coroner Dr. Jack Davelear sent the remains to Dr. Juan Cordoca, a forensic dentist that the department hired to prepare an autopsy report, and per Detective Ray Durham, ‘the remains most likely belonged to either Donna Manson or Georgann Hawkins’ (although most investigators felt it was more likely Manson due to the shirt she had been found wearing). The Pierce County detective also advised Bob Keppel that ‘the skeletal remains did not appear to be as old as 1974,’ and in response to this, the he recommend that Durham try reaching out to the Thurston County Detective that was overseeing the Manson case, but the call was never made, and the case was closed on September 12, 1978 (I will touch more on the 1978 Eatonville Jane Doe in relation to Bob Keppel later).
Before a conclusive positive ID could be made, the physical remains and clothing related to the 1978 Pierce County Jane Doe were destroyed during a routine purge of the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office on May 10, 1985, after they were examined by a forensic dentist (who determined there was a strong possibility that the skeleton belonged to Manson). In addition, documents and x-rays related to the case were lost/thrown out, although it is worth mentioning that color photographs of the remains and clothing were taken and saved. In addition to the 1978 Eatonville Jane Doe, two more skeletons were destroyed in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s in the Tacoma landfills during ‘routine purges of the property room of the sheriff’s department.’ Personally, I wonder if the remains found in 1978 belonged to a different (unknown) Bundy victim: I know people will argue that he was in prison by then many states away and he wouldn’t have been able to commit a murder in Washington, but even law enforcement admitted they weren’t sure when victim was killed (which makes sense, as it was the 1970’s).
Ted Bundy’s Confession: after they were first discovered (now retired) Pierce County detective Roy Durham said that he felt the bones did not appear to go back as far as 1974 and did not appear to suffer from any blunt force trauma to the head (which was common in Bundy victims), however I do want to point out a contradiction to this: in an article published in The News Tribune on January 25, 1998, forensic experts noted that the 1978 Pierce County Jane Doe possessed a ‘small crescent-shaped depression’ and fracture on the back that measured about one inch in diameter that was likely caused by a hammer striking a pointed blow at an odd angle or by a tire iron.
Ted Bundy’s Confession: during his death row interview with Bob Keppel on January 20, 1989, Ted claimed that he left Manson’s body ‘up in the mountains’ close to Taylor Mountain (which is the same place he disposed of Brenda Ball, Lynda Ann Healy, Susan Rancourt, and Roberta Parks) but specified he left her in a slightly different location than the others. He also volunteered that he didn’t remember much about the event because he was incredibly intoxicated at the time, but he did recall it was ‘nightmarish, blurry, and incoherent:’
Keppel: ‘OK. How about Donna Manson? The girl from Thurston County, Olympia. Where is she?’
B: ‘Where is she? She should be… on Taylor Mountain.’
K: ‘Was she dumped out along the power line too or on a different road?’
B: ‘That was different. That was different.’
K: ‘What was different about it?’
B: ‘Well, where she was, relative to the power line road.’
K: ‘You told me before that Donna might be buried.’
B: ‘Yea. Do you have any pictures of the site?’
Bundy then pointed out a spot on a map where he thought he had left Donna’s remains but clarified that search teams would never find her skull because it was ‘nowhere;’ when Keppel pressed him for more information, he claimed to have burned her skull to ashes’ in his then-girlfriends Liz’s fireplace, then vacuumed up the ashes that remained behind. He explained: ‘it’s a lot of work and certainly very risky, under the circumstances. I mean, the kids come home from school and there’s a roaring fire in the fireplace and it’s warm outside.’ Later searches of that area failed to find anything related to a human skeleton (keep in mind he admitted to being inebriated at the time of the abduction, so he probably directed them in the wrong direction).
Now, there are holes in that story so big I can drive my station wagon through them: throughout the entirety of his murder spree, Bundy was (surprisingly) very good about avoiding detection (although I firmly believe he may never have been caught if he wasn’t such a shitty driver), so I have a really hard time believing that he took the risk and smuggled an entire HUMAN HEAD into his girlfriend’s apartment. Additionally, incinerating a skull in a residential fireplace would not have been an easy feat: in order to transform human bone into ash, the fire would need to get between 1,500 and 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (which can be done with the use of an accelerant), and burn for a period of at least a few hours… even if he was able to get the fire that hot, there would still be pieces of bone left behind.
What I think more likely happened with Donna’s skull is, Ted *attempted* to burn it in Liz’s fireplace (in her apartment on 18th Ave NE), but partway through realized how difficult of an ordeal it was (plus, burnt hair smells ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE, and at the time of her murder she had a lot of it, as it was pretty long), and took the chunks of bone that didn’t turn to ash and disposed of them in a different way (as awful as this sounds, perhaps they were so small he was able to dispose of them in the household garbage?). Another reason to doubt Bundy’s story is that he said it was ‘warm outside’ when he burned the skull, and according to records, the temperature range in the days after Mansons disappearance in Seattle ranged somewhere between 49°F to 57°F, and it remained on the cooler side until March 26th (although I guess warm to one person can be considered chilly by the next, as its subjective and it doesn’t appear that he elaborated). So, this makes me think Ted was either lying about the weather, or he simply got his dates mixed up (it was fifteen years prior). Some people wonder if Bundy made up the incident completely simply to hurt Kloepfer, who by that time had cut all ties with him and had moved on with her life (she remarried in September 1978)… but, at the end of the day, Bundy was a habitual liar that rarely told the truth. And let’s say this ONE TIME he wasn’t lying: he had avoided telling the truth for so long, why would anyone take him seriously at that point (especially when he was trying to avoid the electric chair). Also keep in mind that only minutes before he told Keppel about incinerating Manson’s skull, he cracked a ‘joke’ about how much press his confession would generate.
The following is a brief back-and-forth between Bundy and Robert Keppel regarding the condemned man being responsible for the murder of Donna Gail Manson:
Robert Keppel: ‘What about Donna Mason?’
Bundy: ‘I won’t beat around the bush with you anymore because I’m just tired and want to get back to sleep. So let me tell you, I know part of her is buried up there, the head however, wouldn’t be there.’
RK: ‘Where is it now?’
TB: ‘It’s nowhere. I’m not trying to be flippant. It’s in a category all by itself. It was incinerated. It was an exception, a strange exception.’
RK: ‘Where did you incinerate it?’
TB: ‘I promised myself I’d never tell this. In her fireplace. That’s not really that humorous, but I mean, the fireplace at her house… that was the twist. It’s a lot of work and certainly very risky, under the circumstances. I mean, the kids come home from school, there’s a roaring fire in the fireplace, and it’s warm outside.’
In my opinion, it would make sense that Donna was a Bundy victim, she certainly fit neatly into his victim profile: she was a young, attractive, petite college student that had long, dark hair that she wore in a center-part. She also disappeared during the time that he was actively preying on young women across Washington state, and the area surrounding Mount Rainier was one of his preferred burial grounds (it was also determined that the spot where the Eatonville Jane Doe’s remains were found were not their original resting place, and they were moved at some point post-mortem). Donna’s case was re-opened in 1990, but no new evidence was uncovered.
Despite multiple newspapers reporting that the missing skeleton belonged to Donna Manson, some of the facts don’t completely line up: ‘The News Tribune’ reported that the skeleton Pierce County Sheriffs discovered was 5’7”, and Donna was only 5 feet tall. Also, the remains were discovered wearing blue jeans, where Donna’s roommates said she was wearing a pair of green pants the night she disappeared. The report also said the victim was somewhere between twelve and seventeen years old, where Donna was nineteen at the time she disappeared
It was revealed by Detective Bob Hoffman that in early 1998 Lyle and Marie Manson were sent a photograph of the multicolored shirt that was found with the remains of the 1978 Eatonville Jane Doe, and they both agreed that it was not the one that their daughter had owned. It’s do want to mention that nearly twenty-five-years had passed since the couple had last seen their daughter wearing that shirt, and maybe their memories weren’t 100% accurate (they were also only shown a picture of it and did not see the real thing). I also wonder if they ever went through Donna’s belongings and found the shirt (although my guess is, by 1998 it was long gone).
The News Tribune, December 2, 1996/January 25, 1998: in an article published in The News Tribune on December 2, 1996, a recent check of dental records of people missing in Washington state produced eight possibilities as to who the Eatonville Jane Doe could be; those possibilities were reduced to two because of other obvious discrepancies. A forensic dentist hired by the department ruled out one, leaving Manson as the last remaining possibility. According to Pierce County Detective Sergeant Bob Hoffman, ‘some things make me think it’s not her, some things make me think it is her.’ … ‘Its most intriguing, we were able to eliminate most of the open cases, but we weren’t able to eliminate her.’
According to an article published in The News Tribune on January 25, 1998, after the skull was first found in early 1978 Bob Keppel (who had been a detective at the time with King County) called Peirce County Sheriff’s Department and inquired if the skeleton might belong to Donna Manson: he was told that a forensic doctor had estimated the skeleton had been at the rural location for only about a year, which meant it most likely wasn’t hers. But it is worth noting that the same article said it has been ‘difficult to determine the age of the skeleton, especially in the 1970’s, before modern testing techniques were employed.’
Other Bundy Victims Missing Remains: oddly enough, the 1978 Eatonville Jane Doe was not the first time a Bundy victims’ remains came up missing: following the identification of Jan Ott and Denise Naslund in September 1974, the King County ME’s Office held onto the remains ‘as potential evidence’ if Bundy was extradited back to Washington state to stand trial instead of returning them to the families. However, when the Medical Examiner’s office moved their offices to the Harborview Medical Center in 1976, the remains of both girls disappeared, and investigative records suggest that the county may have accidentally cremated them (or simply misplaced them during the move). When they discovered their daughters’ remains had been lost, the Naslund and Ott families filed lawsuits against the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, and they both received payouts through legal settlements (the exact financial terms were never fully disclosed in public reporting).
Additionally, when the two grouse hunters discovered Ott and Naslund’s remains at the Issaquah burial site, it’s thought that Georgann Hawkins was also buried there as well: when forensic experts later inspected the bones they realized they were in the possession of five femur bones, not four; they also had in their possession several additional vertebrae that did not belong to either Denise or Janice.
Because DNA profiling did not exist in the mid-1970’s, unidentified skeletal remains required a jawbone or skull for dental record comparison to order to secure a positive ID. As I stated earlier, unidentified remains are required to be held onto for a certain amount of time before they can be properly disposed of, and some time before Bundy’s execution in January 1989 the extra femur and vertebrae were cremated and disposed of (one article said it took place in March 1986, but when I went to check my sources, I could no longer find it). As a side note, I was incredibly surprised to learn that unidentified human remains are eventually discarded: I sort of just assumed they were held onto forever until they were one day identified, but it makes sense: they can’t hold onto every single bone, forever… the department would be overrun with human remains. It is worth noting that in recent years, police work has become much more structured (and civilized), and before remains are disposed of, DNA samples are taken along with pictures, fingerprints, dentals, full body x-rays and the serial numbers from medical devices are documented. Additionally, the victims’ personal belongings and clothing are collected, catalogued, and documented, and an array of biological samples are taken (which includes hair, fingernail clippings, and toxicological specimens).
Almost three years after the bones were allegedly destroyed, in January 1989 Bundy confessed to the murder of Georgann Hawkins right before he was executed (it was the same interview where he confessed to killing Donna on January 20, 1989), and he explicitly stated that he had left her remains at his Issaquah burial site; he also confirmed that the extra femur bone and vertebrae investigators found in the fall of 1974 did indeed belong to her.
‘The Year of Fear:’ Murders in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1975.
Introduction: 1975 in Grand Junction, Colorado was marked by a sudden and shocking wave of violent crimes, which included multiple murders (and disappearances) of young women (and children), which traumatized the local community. In the beginning stages of the investigations (long before modern DNA profiling was available), local suspicion frequently fell on acquaintances or family members of the victims, and all cases have been solved in subsequent years thanks to advanced scientific methods as well as dedicated cold case investigators.
The key cases include Denise Oliverson (April 1975), mother and daughter Linda and Kelley (Ketchum) Benson (July 1975), Patricia Botham, Linda Miracle and her two young sons, five-year-old Troy and three-year-old Chad (August 1975), and nineteen-year-old college student Deborah Tomlinson (December 1975).
Isaac Carmickle: on January 27, 1975, thirty-year-old Virgil Carmickle shot and killed his father, fifty-five-year-old Isaac Carmicle after an argument they had in the family home, located at 3047 F Road in Grand Junction. He was raised in Colorado but had lived in California before he returned to Rangely in March/April 1974; as a child he spent some time at Lookout Mountain School for Boys (a state run juvenile center for wayward youth) because of ‘inappropriate conduct,’ and despite having a residence in Rangely, Virgil was saying at his parents’ house at the time. Virgil’s mother Elsie called police after the shooting, who (along with his twelve-year-old sister, Mary) had witnessed the entire incident; they both were taken to St. Mary’s Hospital, where they were treated for shock. When Virgil was taken into custody, Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Martsolf also confiscated a 30-30 rifle as well as a box of ammunition from his vehicle.
In April 1975 he was found innocent by reason of insanity under the ‘irresistible impulse’ clause in the state’s mental defect statute,’ which states if a person is criminally insane if suffering ‘such an impairment of the mind by disease or defect as to destroy the willpower and render him in capable of choosing the right and refraining from doing the wrong;‘ he was committed to the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, Colorado for ‘an indefinite period of time.’ About the plea, Mesa County District Attorney Terrance Farina said: ‘the people are not going to resist,’ and an investigation into Carmickle’s background indicated ‘a severe mental disorder.’ Since his release Virgil has had numerous run-ins with LE, the most serious being in June 2020 when he stabbed a truck driver (while highly intoxicated) who had been unloading merchandise outside of a store in Vernal, UT; he was charged with attempted murder he stabbed a truck driver unloading merchandise at a store.
Denise Lynn Oliverson: the pretty twenty-four-year-old brunette disappeared on April 6, 1975 while riding her bicycle to her parents’ house after getting into a fight with her boyfriend (it is a popular misconception that she was still married at the time of her abduction, but she was not); she never arrived at her intended destination and her ten-speed bicycle and sandals were discovered the following day under the Fifth Street Bridge near the Colorado River.
Ted Bundy: though long suspected to be a victim of Theodore Robert Bundy, Denise’s disappearance remained an official mystery for over four decades; investigators later found a gas receipt that placed the killer in Grand Junction on the same day that she disappeared, and during his January 1989 confession, he told investigators he that he abducted the young divorcee (although he did not give her name), killed her in his car near the Utah state line, then dumped her body in the Colorado River (about five miles west of the city). As of September 2026, her remains have never been recovered, but the Grand Junction PD officially closed the cold case in August 2019 after they uncovered an overlooked audio recording originally obtained by the Vail Police Department where Bundy explicitly referenced killing Denise Oliverson and discarding her body in the river.
Linda, Miles, and Knolly Clark: on June 6, 1975 twenty-four-year-old Linda Lee Clark shot her two children then turned the weapon on herself in an apparent ‘murder/suicide’: she killed four-year-old Miles, and her eight-month-old son Knolly sustained life-threatening injuries before she shot herself in the head. The three lived with Linda’s mom (Virginia Snyder) and her two younger brothers (sixteen-year-old Fred and thirteen-year-old Leonard) in her house in Whitewater. It was the older boy that made the gruesome discovery at around 6 PM when he found his sister and nephews in one of the back rooms of the house: the baby had been lying in his crib, and Miles was in his bed. Linda was lying next to Miles’s bed. A .38 caliber pistol was lying on the floor and sheriff’s deputies found three .38 caliber bullets in the vicinity of the bedroom.
None of Linda’s neighbors reported hearing gunshots, and one reported the young mother and her sons moved in about a month before the incident, and that they lived in Denver until about a year prior. She also said both Linda and Virginia were separated from their respective spouses, and both men were suspected to be living in the Denver area. The owner of the house said the last time her tenant stopped by to pay rent she seemed very ‘discouraged and down,’ and that she ‘wished she had made a harder try at marriage. Regarding the incident, Sheriff Dick Williams said there was ‘nothing to lead me to believe Mrs. Clark did not shoot her sons and then kill herself.’
Another neighbor of Clark’s said her marriage situation was ‘something ‘she didn’t talk about much,’ and marriage was a ‘part of her life she’d like to forget.’ A third neighbor named Edna Lawler babysat for her on occasion, and she said Linda ‘treated her kids perfectly,’ and had told her once, ‘if I give anything to my children, it would be their health.’ It is worth noting that, according to the user ‘marionumber1’ on the website ‘zodiackillerhoax.freeforum.net’ website, Linda’s mother disputes the fact that her daughter shot her children then herself and believes they were all murdered; additionally, Clark happened to know future victims Linda Benson and Linda Miracle.’ Knolly Clark was adopted by his biological aunt Kathy and lived in Brighton, CO until his mom and sister Rose died, when he moved back to Grand Junction. He died on September 6, 2022 at the age of forty-seven at the HopeWest Hospice Care Center.
Francis ‘Jerry’ Gerald Romisch: although the nineteen-year-old US Army soldier at Fort Carson wasn’t technically killed in Grand Junction, Jerry Romisch was born and raised in the area and was there the day prior to his death (he left GJ around 7 PM on June 16, 1975). As an adolescent he attended St. Joseph’s Immaculate Heart and Palisade High School, where he was a varsity wrestler; he was also a member of St. Ann’s Catholic Church. Romisch was shot ‘multiple times’ while in his vehicle (his autopsy report stated only that he suffered ‘multiple gunshot wounds’ and didn’t specify how many), which was a white two-door international brand pickup truck with license number NJ-379; the vehicle’s windshield had been ‘sprayed with bullets,’ and there were seventeen holes in total found scattered across it. It is believed he was shot while at a rest stop along Highway 115, south of Colorado Springs and it appears he tried to drive away afterwards only but made it a few hundred feet down the road (where his truck came to a stop against a barbed wire fence). His body was found lying on the ground outside the driver’s side door when he was discovered by a passing motorist. He had been wearing blue jeans, a brown belt, a brown shirt and green socks; the cowboy boots he had been wearing were not on his feet but were found close by. It’s also worth noting that Jerry’s brother Richard was also stationed at Fort Carson and was it rumored he had been working on a narcotics squad there. As of September 2026, the murder of Jerry Romisch remains an active and open cold case.
Linda Benson and her daughter Kelley Ketchum: on the evening of July 25, 1975, twenty-four-year-old Linda Benson and her five-year-old daughter Kelley Ketchum were found stabbed multiple times inside their residence at the Chateau Apartments in Grand Junction; they were found by Linda’s ‘common-law husband,’ Steve Benson, who had returned home from a multi-day work trip in Hayden (where he was working as a pipe fitter), and discovered their bodies inside their apartment. Linda had been nude on the floor of the master bedroom (one report said she was found at the foot of the bed), and though investigators noted the scene pointed to a sexually motivated crime, there were no clinical signs of rape; she had been stabbed multiple times. Kelley also suffered multiple stab wounds and was found in the hallway floor between two bedrooms (one source said she was specifically on the floor of a connecting bathroom).
Due to an extreme lack of evidence at the scene of the crime, the case quickly went cold, and for over three decades Linda and Kelley’s family were left desperately seeking answers. In 2007, the Grand Junction PD’s cold case unit re-examined the preserved physical evidence using modern forensic technology, and experts successfully isolated foreign DNA from underneath Linda’s fingernails as well as from blood spatter found in eight different spots across the apartment. Deputy District Attorney Jim Alvillar saw the apartment after the murders took place and described it as ‘a horrific scene.’ … ‘It was tragic. There was a young woman who had obviously fought, and then there was a dead little girl.’ According to reports, Steve Benson fled Colorado due to the judgment and rumors of possibly being involved with his wife and daughter’s death.
Jerry Louis Nemnich: there was a break in the case in April2009, when detectives entered DNA that had been collected from the crime scene into CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), which returned a perfect match for Jerry Nemnich, a convicted serial rapist with a long and violent criminal history dating back to the age of sixteen in 1960. He was convicted of first-degree sexual assault in 1977 and served a long prison sentence from 1978 until 1992. After his release he got a job as a long-haul trucker and he was arrested for the murders on April 9, 2009 at the Utah-Colorado border. At the time of his 2009 arrest, authorities were also looking into him regarding potential links to three or four additional unsolved murders in the Grand Junction area.
On October 27, 2010, a jury of his peers found Nemnich guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. His subsequent appeals to the Colorado Court of Appeals and the Colorado Supreme Court were denied, ensuring he would spend the remainder of his life in prison. During his October 2010 trial, he took the stand in a surprise move and offered a highly improbable defense, claiming he had entered Linda’s apartment complex to buy marijuana when he was suddenly attacked by a mysterious, knife-wielding stranger, and he managed to wrestle the weapon away, and it was only then that he discover the bodies. The prosecution successfully dismantled his story as pure fiction, using advanced forensic techniques to prove that Nemnich’s blood was spattered directly onto Linda’s chest, and that his DNA under her fingernails, which proved she had fought him directly for her life.
Many Rumors Surround Linda’s Death: I took the following passage from a post about former Grand Junction Police Ben Meyers from the website ‘zodiackillerhoax1986.freeforums.net (made by user ‘marionuimber1’): ‘Linda Benson and her 5-year-old daughter Kelly Ketchum are brutally murdered in a grisly scene at her apartment. It was found that ‘a cross was carved into her sternum, between her breasts’ (l.376 of The Killing Season by Alex French), which happens to be one of the alleged markers of Hand of Death cult murders. Rumors swirled that Linda’s ex-husband Steve Benson was in the drug and gun trafficking scene (l.710 of French), and at one point Benson’s mother Barbara Himmerite offered up a suspicion to police that Steven and Ted Bundy ‘ran dope together.‘ It is clear that Benson herself was a member of that scene; a member of a local church said to police (l.710 of French): ‘I’ll tell you what, though. Linda was into the drug scene. I believe she had knowledge of the numerous heavy pushers around the Valley and that put her into considerable danger. Once she said to me, ‘If you only knew who the dealers are . . . big shots.’ So Linda Benson was in a position to have known too much, and to top it off, she was friends with future victim Linda Miracle. A bizarre side note (l.913 of French): Steve Goad, who lived in the same apartment complex as Linda, was adamant that he saw Ted Bundy (!) there on the night of her murder. But ultimately, the case was closed through an apparent DNA hit, matching to Colorado serial rapist Jerry Nemnich. That does not, needless to say, rule out others from involvement.’
Linda Miracle, her two young sons, Troy (age five) and Chad (age three), and Patricia Botham: it’s worth noting that on June 15, 1975, it was reported that somebody tried to strangle Linda Miracle, but she survived the ordeal. On the evening of August 22, 1975, twenty-four-year-old Linda Miracle and her two young sons vanished from their home under highly unusual circumstances, and she even left a meal behind, still sitting on the kitchen table; oddly enough, their neighbor across the street, twenty-five-year-old Patricia Botham, also vanished. Weeks later, on September 26, 1975 the bodies of Linda, Patricia, Troy and Chad were recovered from the Gunnison River. The coroner determined both women had been suffocated, where Troy and Chad had been shot in the head with a .22-caliber weapon; post-mortem, he weighed their bodies down with railroad iron then threw them into the river.
Unlike most of the other murders that took place in Grand Junction in 1975, the Miracle/Botham slayings were solved relatively quickly: Patricia Botham’s twenty-eight-year-old husband, Kenneth Botham Jr. (a former electronics executive) was arrested on November 8, 1975 on four counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of his wife, Linda Miracle, and her two sons (authorities believed he killed the two boys because they would have been able to identify him). In December 1976 he was found guilty of first-degree murder for his wife’s death and three counts of second-degree murder for the deaths of Linda Miracle and her children.
The prosecution’s case relied heavily on circumstantial details, including the fact that the state argued Botham wanted to avoid paying alimony due to marriage difficulties, something that established a supposed motive; additionally, investigators found a .22-caliber pistol in a crawl space under his residence months after the murders, however, forensic testing by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation could never definitively tie that specific gun to the bullets that killed the Miracle children. Botham’s defense also strongly maintained that logistically, the timeline of events prevented him from being in Grand Junction when the murders took place because he had been somewhere else at the time.
Despite the lack of direct forensic evidence or eyewitness proof, a Mesa County jury convicted Botham of first-degree murder for his wife and three counts of second-degree murder for Linda Miracle and her sons, and he was sentenced to die in the gas chamber. In 1981, the Supreme Court of Colorado completely overturned Botham’s conviction when the high court ruled that pervasive, prejudicial pretrial publicity (such as local newspapers publishing unverified headlines about the .22 pistol before the trial) had fundamentally denied him a fair trial.
In 1982 he was retried, and because Colorado changed its statutes surrounding capital punishment during that window, Botham was instead sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, where he has remained ever since. He has maintained his innocence for over fifty years, and in recent decades, independent true crime researchers and his family have championed his case, most notably via true-crime websites and podcasts like ‘the investigative podcast, ‘Junction’ and kenbotham.com.
Interestingly enough, on a forum about Ben Meyers on the website ‘zodiackillerhoax1986.freeforums.net,’ the user ‘marionumbner1’ on said the following about the Miracle/Botham murders: ‘an aborted podcast on the case (soundcloud.com/junctionpodcast/welcome-to-junction) interviewed a couple who was friends with Botham and Miracle, and they said they were ‘told by Patricia that her and Linda were going to come forward with some news that was going to shock the whole town.’ What could they have been in a position to reveal? Both women were romantically involved with local law enforcement officers: Miracle was dating a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy named Truman Haley, and Botham was having an affair with Grand Junction PD officer Tom Montgomery. Also bizarrely, Haley stole several of Miracle’s diaries, one of which (per SUSPECTS: The Botham / Miracle Murders by Marti Talbott) was said to have recorded sexual liaisons that Miracle had with a large number of Grand Junction cops. Sounds like the town would have been left very shocked indeed if this information came out. The murders were ultimately pinned on Pat’s husband Ken Botham, although his sons believe he is innocent and run the aforementioned website on his case: kenbotham.com/overview.htm’ Later on in the same post about Ben Meyers, the same user points out that Linda Miracle knew Linda Miracle, and the two women had been friends since high school (drugs did play a role in their friendship).
Donald, Harlin, and Eva Sparks: on November 21, 1975 twenty-one-year-old Donald Lee Sparks shot and killed his parents Harlin and Eva (both forty-nine) while they were asleep in their beds in their home (located at 2107 Zion Road). Donald called Grand Junction PD around 12:320 AM to inform them he shot and killed both of his parents in the family residence, and upon hanging up turned the gun on himself. Upon entering the residences deputies found him dead on the living room floor from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and his father and mother died of a gunshot wound to the head. According to Sheriff Don Williams, ‘ a .357 magnum revolver was lying underneath Don’s back near his hand; three bullets had been fired from the weapon, and there were three left.‘ and ‘at this time we feel Don apparently shot his parents called police and then shot himself. The parents were sleeping when they were shot. ‘No motive for the murders was known and there were no suicide notes left behind by any parties.
Deborah ‘Debi’ Tomlinson: nineteen-year-old Deborah Kathleen Tomlinson was a student at Mesa College that was found bound and strangled in her off-campus apartment on the 1000 block of Belford Avenue on December 27, 1975 by the apartment manager after her family reported multiple unanswered phone calls. Upon entry, she discovered Tomlinson’s bedroom window was open and her toilet was running. She had been partially clothed and was found in the bathtub. Investigators found that Deborah had been bound, sexually assaulted, and strangled; she also had a gash on her forehead, which was proof she most likely tried to fight off her attacker. Police found no evidence that a weapon was used in the murder.
Local detectives interviewed neighbors and potential suspects in 1975 and 1976 but ran out of leads by April 1976, and the case quickly went cold. For decades, Deb’s murder tore the Tomlinson family apart, because initial suspicion wrongfully swirled around her Uncle Tim, who was eventually excluded as a suspect via DNA evidence when the case was briefly revived in 2008.
Jimmie Dean Duncan: in 2019, the Grand Junction PD (along with Parabon NanoLabs), took a fresh look at the evidence in relation to the murder of Tomlinson, and the following year DNA allowed them to identify career criminal Jimmie Dean Duncan as the killer of the pretty young college student (I have also seen his first name spelled ‘Jimmy’). Duncan was twenty-six at the time of the murder, and by the time this discovery was made he was already dead, as he died of unknown causes on December 24, 1987, in Denver at the age of thirty-eight. Opinions on Reddit’s Unresolved Mysteries thread are mixed regarding the possible motives: some people feel it was related to a burglary, where others feel it was simply a crime of opportunity (given Duncan’s transient background). Jimmie Dean Duncan was born on April 24, 1949, in Monte Vista, Colorado, and before Tomlinson’s murder in 1975, he had been involved in an armed robbery and a separate shooting incident in Florida.
Donald Robert Laabs: twenty-eight-year-old Detective Sergeant Donald Robert Laabs with the Manitou Springs Police Department was shot and killed on December 18, 1975, the same day he was promoted to detective sergeant. It’s highly suspected that Laabs (a US Army and undercover narcotics officer) was on his way home from work, as eyewitnesses saw him exit the highway in the direction of his residence. Approximately two hours after he was last seen alive, he was found deceased inside his police cruiser parked along Interstate 25 near the Arvada Street exit in Colorado Springs; he had been shot eight times with a .22 caliber handgun.
Despite intensive investigations and interviews with dozens of personal and professional associates in the months that followed the murder, authorities never established a motive or identified any viable suspects. At the time of Laabs death, he was survived by his wife and two young sons, and the investigation into his death remains an active, open case monitored by the Colorado Springs Police Department Cold Case Files
Ben Meyers in Relation to ‘The Year of Fear:’ Ben Meyers served as the Chief of Police in Grand Junction for the entirety of 1975 (he led the department from 1973 to 1976, when he was succeeded by Ed VanderTook); he had previously served as the police chief in Salem, Oregon, for eight years before he relocated to Colorado. However, his tenure at the Grand Junction Police Department was short-lived and highly controversial amidst rumors of corruption and a personal scandal following the murder of Deborah Tomlinson when he faced intense scrutiny over how his department handled the homicides in 1975, which created intense public and political pressure for a change in leadership. His administration was continually plagued by rumors of institutional misconduct, and there were additional (unproven) allegations that linked some of his officers to illicit narcotics and vice rings. The final catalyst occurred after Meyers reportedly threatened one of his subordinate officers that caught him buying drinks for his nineteen-year-old girlfriend at a local bar, which sparked an intense internal dispute, and he was forced to step down.
In addition to shady practices regarding women less than half his age, Meyers was rumored to be involved in drug trafficking operations (despite being part of a Grand Junction ‘anti-drug’ task force), where he was rubbing shoulders with dope dealers; it was discovered that he had two separate bank accounts where many large deposits were made throughout his time as police chief, but a District Attorney and a Judge blocked any release of these records.
According to George from the website CAVDEF.org, Meyers ‘possible involvement makes sense considering Campbell was the sister of a Florida police officer, so there is the chance of her death involving threats related to drugs traffickers. Perhaps Temos* was his hit man. Meyers resigned as undersheriff after Bundy’s jail break. But the department claims his resignation was not related to that, and he left over disagreements with the Sheriff on some unknown ‘law enforcement philosophy.’ Meyers was found to have several ‘extra’ bank accounts with untraceable money. Cleared bank accounts and left Grand Junction in December 1976. Went to Telluride as Chief of Police. Alleged connections to the drug/traffic/prostitution community.’ * George is referring to Hugh Joseph Michael Temos, who was an alternative suspect in the murder of Caryn Campbell before Bundy was caught.
In addition to shady practices regarding women less than half his age, Meyers was rumored to be involved in drug trafficking operations (despite being part of a Grand Junction ‘anti-drug’ task force), where he was rubbing shoulders with drug dealers; it was discovered that he had two separate bank accounts where many large deposits were made throughout his time as police chief, but a District Attorney and a Judge blocked any release of these records. Unofficial accounts and cold case files from the era suggest a broader crime spree in the area, which may have targeted individuals who knew too much about drug activities tied to corrupt law enforcement. It’s also a belief by some people that Meyers framed Pat Botham for the murder of Linda Miracle, who was rumored to have been in sexual relationships with several members of the Grand Junction police department.
Upon leaving Grand Junction, Meyers moved to Aspen and took a job as the Undersheriff of Pitkin County, and in a strange twist during a 1977 Aspen preliminary court hearing for serial killer Ted Bundy, a star eyewitness named Lizabeth Harter was asked to identify Bundy in the courtroom, and instead of pointing to the killer, she mistakenly singled out Meyers thinking he was the man she had seen near the victim. But as usual with Bundy case testimony, Harter changed her version of events from ’nothing unusual,’ to ‘two men,’ to only Bundy in the span of 3 years, however she did admit she didn’t get a good look at the man due to poor lighting before Cambell’s disappearance; this mix-up fueled conspiracy theories and rumors regarding Meyers’ background and any overlap with the 1975 Colorado crimes.
The first is the 5th Street Bridge, where Denise Oliverson was abducted from.
The second location is where Linda Benson and her daughter Kelley were killed.
The third is where Patricia Botham and her neighbors Linda, Chad, and Troy Miracle were abducted from.
The fourth location is the apartment complex where Deborah Kathleen Tomlinson was killed.
spl.cde.state.co.us.
Shanann Watts, FBI Documents.
Ted Bundy: Utah Confession Transcript, January 1989.
Document courtesy of Erin Banks.
Edmund Kemper Interview with Inside Detective, August 1973. Written by Hugh Stephens.
Document courtesy of Erin Banks.
‘Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy On Serial Murder,’ Written by Robert D. Keppel & Stephen G. Michaud.
Katherine Merry Devine, Case Files: Part Fifteen.
Documents courtesy of the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department.
Ted Bundy, Sentencing Document.
| Bench Docket sentencing Ted Bundy for the crimes he was convicted of in the Chi Omega murders of January 15, 1978, which includes a death sentence for the murders of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman; he was executed for the murder of Kimberly Leach on January 24, 1989. |
Elizabeth Ruth Aardsma, Case Files.
Documents are courtesy of my friend Derek Sherwood: one is the copy of Betsy’s full autopsy report, the second is the FBI file on her investigation, and the third is the inventory of the contents of the Aardsma investigation held by the PA State Police.
