Katherine Merry Devine, Case Files: Part Twelve.
Mysteries that I would love to have Resolved (one day), as Related to Ted Bundy/Murders from the Pacific Northwest.
What happened to Jan Ott’s Bicycle?: I know this question bothered Bob Keppel as well.
How exactly did Ted’s Lake Sammamish murders ‘work?’ Did he incapacitate Jan Ott and keep her alive somewhere until he brought Denise Naslund back, and kill one in front of the other? Or, did he kill Ottb too quickly (because of how small she was), and his urge wasn’t satisfied so he had to go back and get a second victim (this is just a theory I’ve heard over the years).
The cluster of murders from the summer/fall of 1973: are they all related? Will their remains ever be found one day in the same area (like a Taylor Mountain/Issaquah DS situation)? I’m specifically referring to Rita Jolly/Vicki Hollar/Sue Justis.
Were there other burial grounds?: I think the term ‘dump site’ is so crude, by the way… most of his confirmed Washington victims were accounted for… but did they exist in other states?
What happened to Vicki Lynn Hollar’s black VW Bug?: I have aa theory: its under a sheet in some elderly mans garage (most likely the killer, or an accomplice), and it won’t be until after he’s dead that the truth will come to light. He probably keeps it in a barn in his backyard… his grandkids try to play around with it once in a while, and he has to yell at them not to.
Lynette Culver: I know he confessed to killing her, and I know he knew details about her life and her family that only the killer would be privy to, but when I was writing about the missing Idaho hitchhiker from September 2, 1974 I learned an interesting theory that Lynette isn’t a Bundy victim but is actually the victim of a different serial killer that operated in Pocatello around the same time, as Culver was the first of several young girls to be murdered/go missing in the area between 1978 and 1983.
Why are there so many missing and murdered young women in Oregon during the 1970’s?: why are their identities scattered all over the internet, like there’s not one complete resources of names out there?
Just a comment, I’ve always been curious about Ted’s collection of Polaroids that he held onto before he burned them after his first arrest. Just how horrific were they? Also, I want to know more about the random bowl of key’s Liz found in his apartment one day after snooping.
To what extent did Ted stalk his victims? I know there’s evidence he stalked Lynda Ann Healy before he killed her, and Karen Sparks said she remembered a man watching her while she was in the laundromat…
Exactly how many other girlfriends/lovers did Ted have while he was dating Liz?
When was his first kill? I’ve heard multiple stories over the years, that he started in 1973, or 1972, then 1969… then there’s the theory he killed eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr in late August of 1961.
There have been a lot of new supposed living Ted Bundy victims (or at the very least women who have claimed to have run into him at one point)… the odd part is, when I’m researching one of them, and watching a video on them, there are always women chiming in on the comments about their supposed run-ins with him… For example, the most recent ‘surviving victim’ of Ted Bundy is Connie Geldreich, who recently came forward and has done multiple podcasts and videos regarding her experience with the killer in 1967. When I was looking into her story I read through the comments, and they were filled with stories of other women who also had run-ins with him as well. I wonder how many of them are telling the truth?
John Wayne Gacy, Execution Order.
Cornelia ‘Connie’ June Enright.
Introduction: Cornelia* June Enright was born on December 19, 1950 to Raymond and Alice Enright in Schenectady, NY. Raymond Basil Enright was born on February 20, 1915 in Schenectady, NY, and Alice Shaw was born on June 30, 1918 (also in Schenectady). The couple were married on May 16, 1936 and went on to have three children together: John (b. 1937), Robert (b. 1943), and Cornelia. Mr. Enright was drafted into WWII on April 17, 1943 (he enlisted on October 16, 1940), and in the early part of his marriage was employed at Gloversville Knitting Company. *I did see Connie’s name listed s ‘Constance’ in one source, but that is incorrect.
During her time at Linton High School in Schenectady, Connie majored in Business Education and during her sophomore year was an alternate for the student council, and during her senior year she was an intern for the guidance counselor’s office. A former classmate described her as ‘a ball of energy’ that always made a point of going out of her way to say hello, despite them only being casual acquaintances and having no classes together. Enright graduated in 1968, and a few weeks before she disappeared in April 1969 got a full-time job at the Almart’s Discount Store, which (at the time) was located on Central Avenue in Colonie. At the time she disappeared Connie was nineteen, and she wore her strawberry blonde hair short, had blue eyes, stood at 5’2″ tall and weighed 115 pounds.
April 24, 1969: Raymond and Alice last heard from Cornelia around 9:30 PM on April 24, 1969, when she left with the family car to meet up ‘a girlfriend with whom she worked with’ in nearby Rotterdam for a bite to eat. She arrived at Lum’s Restaurant at 9:30 and according to her friend, the two ate and chatted then eventually went their separate ways in the parking lot; she was last seen driving away from the establishment at 11:00 PM.
The Day After: upon realizing their daughter never returned home the prior evening, the next morning at around 8 AM Cornelia’s father called the Schenectady Police Department and filed a police report. Later that same day the Enright family vehicle was found on State Street near Friendly’s Ice Cream Shop; it was locked, and the keys were missing. Her purse was also nowhere to be found. In the days following Connie’s disappearance, her parents searched her bedroom, top to bottom, but found nothing to be missing. It’s also worth mentioning that the day she disappeared was ‘the day before payday,’ and that she only had around ten to fifteen dollars on her.
Connie’s parents felt their daughter didn’t leave ‘of her own choice,’ and her disappearance was the ‘result of foul play.‘ After very little movement on her case, in 1980 Mr. and Mrs. Enright filed paperwork to have Connie declared ‘legally dead,‘ and said in their petition that in the eleven years since she disappeared, they have unsuccessfully continued searching for her; it went on to say that their efforts included a trip to Newport, Rhode Island after they received a tip that a young woman matching her description was seen at a local store. Unfortunately, the trip was uneventful, but they left some pictures of her behind at the market (just in case). Cornelia’s parents also said she ‘had never run away before’ and that prior to her disappearing they: ‘had no fights or disagreements. To the best of our knowledge, she had no secret boyfriends and none of her friends turned up missing.’
The Enright’s said that from the ‘knowledge of our daughter,’ based on the ‘circumstances surrounding’ her disappearance, that ‘it is our opinion that our daughter is now deceased.’ The petition, which had been prepared by the couples’ attorney Cristine Ciofi of the Schenectady law firm of Higgins, Roberts, Beyerl & Coan, PC Law Firm Profile requested that Connie be declared dead and that her estate (which consisted of personal property with a value not exceeding $400) be settled.
Ray and Alice said Connie was a ‘considerate and thoughtful daughter. If she knew she would be out later than 11 PM she would called home and appraised us of the fact.’ They also said their efforts to find her also included a letter to the Social Security Administration in Baltimore as well as multiple conversations with her co-workers, friends, and acquaintances. They also added ‘we further believe that were she alive today, she would have sent us knowledge of the fact.’ The petition to have Connie declared legally deceased was based on a law which provides that a person who is absent for ‘a continuous period of five years who has not been seen or heard from after diligent search and whose absence is not satisfactory explained, shall he presumed have died ‘five years after such unexplained absence commenced.’ Their request was approved and Raymond Enright was declared the executive of his daughter’s estate.
Ted Bundy?: at the end of 1968, Ted left Seattle behind and enrolled at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, and it was also around this time that he was dumped by his first love, Diane Edwards; reports pointed towards him being in a ‘defeated state of mind,’ and that he was lonely and detached. In early 1969, he briefly relocated to the East Coast and slip-flopped between staying at his grandparents’ house in Roxborough and his aunt’s apartment in Lafayette Hill. He was mostly active in his studies at Temple until early March, when (typical Ted)… he stopped going to class after he got into a minor car accident and hurt his ankle.
After Ted found out about being illegitimate, he used some of his ‘leftover money’ (whatever that is) from when he sold his first VW bug in 1968 and went on a trip to New-York City (supposedly he a friend from school had lent him a car). While there he spent his time exploring ‘flesh-shops and accessing the most explicit forms of pornography’ before he returned to Philadelphia (then eventually Washington).
Also around this time Bundy frequented Ocean City, New Jersey, where his grandparents owned a home on 26th Street (he spent a good amount of time there as a child). Where he isn’t officially linked to the murders, he is heavily suspected of being responsible for the murders of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry, two coeds from Monticello Women’s Junior College in Godfrey, Illinois that were were brutally stabbed to death on Memorial Day weekend in 1969. Ted would hint in later interviews that he committed his first abduction and murder in Ocean City, in the ‘early summer or spring’ of 1969.
It is worth mentioning that Connie’s car keys were never located, meaning they (most likely) were at some time in the possession of her abductor; Ted’s future girlfriend Liz Kloepfer stated after his first arrest she went snooping around his room at the Rogers Boarding House and she found a bowl full of miscellaneous keys that didn’t belong to him. Cornelia also disappeared at night in a parking lot, which are similar circumstances to many of Bundy’s confirmed victims (Carol DaRonch, Georgann Hawkins, Brenda Ball, Caryn Campbell, Denise Naslund, etc…). Schenectady is also only a few hours away from both Philadelphia and NYC, which puts him fairly near to Connie at the time she disappeared, and we all know Ted had no problem driving hundreds of miles at a time to hunt for his perfect victim. Additionally, we all know that he targeted girls that fit Enright’s physical description, age, personality and socioeconomic background.
Lemuel Warren Smith: one plausible suspect for the abduction of Cornelia Enright is Lemuel Warren Smith, a convicted rapist and serial killer that operated around the general Albany area that is perhaps best known for being the first person in US history to kill an on duty female corrections officer. While serving out his life sentences at the Green Haven Correctional Facility, Smith murdered thirty-one-year-old Donna Payant; her body was found in a landfill after it was discarded in the prison’s trash.
In April 1969, Smith was a free man living in the Capital District of New York following a 1959 conviction for kidnapping and attempted murder in Baltimore, where he served nearly ten years of a twenty-year sentence before he was paroled in May 1968. He largely stayed in the Albany area during this time until he was rearrested on May 20, 1969 when he kidnapped and sexually assaulted two women in a single day. This time Smith was sentenced to four to fifteen years but was paroled again in October 1976 (shortly before he began the murder spree for which he is best known for). He was caught for the final time on August 19, 1977 after he kidnapped and raped eighteen-year-old Marianne Maggio; thankfully when he forced her to drive towards Albany afterwards, LE stopped their vehicle and took Smith into custody (without incident). As of 2024, Smith remains incarcerated at the Wende Correctional Facility in New York, and where he confessed to his earlier murders, he has consistently maintained his innocence regarding the death of Donna Payant, claiming he was framed by other prison guards’ (a theory that Payant’s own son has called to be reinvestigated).
Robert Garrow: one individual from a Schenectady Facebook group (where I posted asking if anyone remembered Connie) suggested that I look into Robert Garrow, but when I did I got the impression he was more of a pervert and (eventually) spree-killer so I don’t think he would have anything to do with Enright’s disappearance (more importently, he was only active in 1973). In April 1969, Garrow was a free man living in the general Syracuse area and had been released from prison for ‘good behavior’ the previous year after serving only six years of a twenty-year sentence for a 1961 rape conviction. Information regarding his day-to-day activities between 1968 and 1973 is sparse, although it has been confirmed that he worked as a mechanic for a bakery in Syracuse around this time. Investigators have suspected him of being responsible for several cold cases during his five years of freedom, including the 1959 murder of Ruth Whitman, who lived close to him at the time she was killed.
Arthur Shawcross: a name that came up only once in my research is serial killer Arthur John Shawcross, who oddly enough had two separate ‘rounds’ of murders as well as two different types of victims: in 1972 he went away for killing two children under the age of ten in Watertown, NY, and after serving only a fraction of his sentence he was released early on ‘good behavior,’ where he went onto kill eleven sex workers in Rochester. In April 1969, Shawcross was involved in some ‘lower-level’ criminal activity (IE not murder), specifically an arson attack at the Knowlton Brothers Paper Mill. Following this and other incidents involving burglary and arson, he was sentenced to a five-year prison term, of which he served only twenty-two months and he was paroled in October 1971; additionally, some records indicate he was honorably discharged from the US Army around April 1969. I could find no link between him and Cornelia Enright (personally, I don’t think she fit into wither of his demographic of victims).
Frosty Austin: right as I was about to hit the ‘publish’ button, I came across one final piece of information regarding the disappearance of Connie Enright… and at the risk of being dramatic, its something that I find incredibly eerie (I actually sat up in bed and said, ‘oh my gosh, oh my gosh’ a bunch of times until my husband finally asked ‘what?’). There was a unhoused woman in Modesto, CA that (even in her ‘advanced age’) looked incredibly similar to a young Connie, and where I’m not normally someone that puts much effort into ‘solving’ missing persons cases (I will never pretend I know more than law enforcement), this made me actually stop and pay attention.
‘Frosty Austin’ is the alias of an unidentified woman that passed away in a Modesto, California nursing home on October 6, 2018, and despite exhaustive efforts by detectives and the FBI, her true identity remains a mystery. Ms. Austin lived in the Stockton, California area for over thirty years and claimed her maiden name was O’Malley. At the time of her death, she was estimated to be around sixty-seven-years old, 5’6″ tall (Connie waas only 5’2”), and approximately 214 pounds; she had strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes.
Authorities and those that were aquainted with her believe Austin may have been a ‘con-woman’ or fraudster that used multiple assumed identities and told conflicting stories about her past. Her case is listed in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System as case #UP58456, and ‘armchair detectives’ on social media platforms like Websleuths and Reddit have attempted to link her to multiple missing womens cases (although no match has ever been confirmed).
Conclusion: Connie’s father Raymond Basil Enright passed away at the age of eighty-two on November 5, 1997, and at the time of his death he had been married to Alice for sixty-one years. According to his obituary, he was born and educated in Schenectady and was employed with General Electric for thirty-seven years: he started his career as an electrician in the main plant and by the time he retired had worked his way up to being a ‘mechanic analyst’ at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory. Mr. Enright was also a member of the GE Quarter Century Club and was part of the flock at the Faith Baptist Church in Schenectady.
Alice June Enright was ninety-four when she entered into eternal rest on January 31, 2013 in Schenectady, NY. According to her obituary, Mrs. Enright was a member of the Faith Baptist Church in Rexford and was a volunteer with their food pantry for many years. She loved seeing movies at the local theater, going out to eat with her loved ones, and gardening; she was also a great cook and enjoyed hosting holidays at her home with her family and friends. Alice looked forward to traveling and visiting with her son Robert that lived in Florida.
Connie’s brother Robert died at the age of eighty-seven on July 26, 2023 in Niceville, FL. Per his obituary, he graduated from Mount Pleasant High School in 1961 and entered the Air Force shortly after in August 1961, where he served his country for twenty-eight-years as a Weapons Mechanic; he was also involved in the Chemical Warfare unit with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Robert retired as a Senior Master Sergeant and was stationed in several location to include Plattsburgh, NY, Japan, North Carolina, Korea, Thailand (twice) Louisiana, England, Arizona, Virginia, and Florida. He took several classes at Okaloosa-Walton Junior College (which is now Northwest Florida State College) and briefly attended the Senior Non-Commissioned Officer Academy; after he retired from the military, he worked maintenance at the Rocky Bayou Baptist Church for seventeen years, where he also served as a Deacon and was involved in multiple organizations (including Faithful Men, Men’s Retreat Committee, Men’s Breakfast, Benevolence, and Choir). He also loved bowling, running, fishing in his kayak with his buddies, camping, gospel music, and Jesus. John B. Enright died at the age of eighty-six on June 14, 2024 in Schenectady, New York.
As of April 2026, no trace of Cornelia Enright has never been recovered, and in the years following her disappearance, every member of her immediate family has passed away. It could be that for whatever reason, she just decided to up and leave her existing life behind for a new one… but we’ll probably never know the full story.
Works Cited:
charleyproject.org/case/cornelia-june-enright
DeCamilla, Jane. (April 24, 2025). ’56 Years Later, Still No Answers in Disappearance of Schenectady Woman.’ Taken April 20, 2026 from cbs6albany.com
reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/v8qprv/link_between_ted_bundy_cornelia_j_enright_and/
Sommers, Ashleigh. (October 10, 2025). Taken April 20, 2026 from /ashmysteries.com
troopers.ny.gov/missing-enright-cornelia-june Taken on April 20, 2026.
websleuths.com/threads/ny-cornelia-connie-enright-18-rotterdam-24-april-1969.340318/
‘Ted Bundy on the ‘Malignant Being:’ An Analysis of the Justificatory Discourse of a Serial Killer,’ written by Amelie Pedneault.
Gary Leon Ridgway, Case Files: Part Three (Wendy Lee Coffield).
This installment of information is largely about Wendy Lee Coffield, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.
Jane Ellen Hallberg-Wakefield.
Background: Jane Ellen Hallberg was born November 19, 1948 to Richard and Pauline Hallberg in Ludington, MI. Richard Eric Hallberg was born on June 13, 1924 in Ludington, Michigan and Pauline J. Rebman was born on April 5, 1925 in Elroy, WI. Richard only finished two years of high school and was drafted into the US Army on June 30, 1942 in Kalamazoo, Michigan; while serving in April 1944 he suffered from malaria. The couple were married on December 17, 1945 in Wisconsin and went on to have three daughters together: Jane, Susan Jean (b. 1947), and Karen (b. 1949); they went onto divorce on August 6, 1968 after twenty years of marriage in Minneapolis. After Richard’s split with Pauline, he went on to marry Alice Cardeen Jacobson on May 6, 1968 in Cass, MI, who was born on February 1, 1928. He was married for a third time to Vicki Irene Hallberg, who was born on May 9, 1928.
Academics: during her time at Bloomington High School, Jane excelled at academics and was involved with a great number of after school activities and sports as well, including National Honor Society, Spanish Club, and Swim Club. It’s worth noting that the Iowa DPS had her classified as simply ‘disabled’ with no elaboration, and no clarification was ever provided. While she was in seventh grade Wakefield met a friend named Carol, and during their senior year of high school they both realized they had plans of attending Morningside College in Sioux City, and immediately decided to room together when they started their freshman year in 1966.
Marriage: in 1966, Jane got a job at Sioux City’s Public Museum, and in the spring of 1967 she met John Wakefield through a co-worker, who was a graduate student in business administration at the University of Iowa. After she completed her freshman year in the spring 1967, she moved in with John for the summer, and the two were married on September 9, 1967 in the Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. I’m assuming Jane had some sort of falling out with her father as he wasn’t mentioned in her wedding announcement at all and she was given way by a man named ‘George Ebans.’ For her wedding ceremony, Jane wore a ‘street-length gown’ that was fashioned of ‘off-white lace,’ and her head piece was a short illusion veil.’ At the time of their wedding John Wakefield was a PhD candidate at the University of Iowa, and the bride attended Morningside College before she transferred to the same school as John.
John Albert Wakefield was born on March 19, 1944 to George Rederich and Beth Louise (nee Carson) Wakefield in Sioux City, Iowa. Shortly after their wedding Jane transferred to The University of Iowa, where she graduated with a BS in psychology in 1970; she went on to teach in two area school districts (Prairie and WACO) before she accepted a position at Penn Elementary School in North Liberty, Iowa in August 1975.
Car Accident: around 2:30 PM on July 19, 1967, Jane was involved in a fatal accident after she pulled out of a service station at an intersection on Rocky Shore Drive during a heavy rainstorm: fifty-one-year-old Allen R. Neal died as a result of the injuries he sustained from the accident. Neal was employed at the Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids and had a wife (Viola) and two children (Brad and Joleen). In October 1968 his widow sued the Wakefield’s along with Hoak Oldsmobile-Cadillac Company for $50,000, claiming her husband died from injuries he suffered from the car accident Jane caused (I couldn’t find the resolution of the case).
Divorce: Jane filed for divorce from John in March 1975 and moved out of the couple’s apartment (that was located at 923 Iowa Ave in Iowa City) and into the Bon Aire Mobile Home Park in Iowa City. Right before she vanished she had become romantically involved with another man, even though her divorce was being held up over disagreements on how she and John would divide the two businesses he owned.
September 6, 1975: twenty-six-year-old Jane Wakefield wore her blonde hair short at the time she disappeared and was 5’2” tall, weighed 112 pounds, was missing her #14 tooth and wore gold wire-rimmed eyeglasses. She had just started the school year and was employed as a math and reading teacher at Penn School in North Liberty, and had been last seen on a ‘cross-country bicycle ride’ with six of her girlfriends at roughly 2:30 PM on September 6, 1975 (one report said she ‘disappeared without a trace from her Iowa City mobile home sometime between late Saturday night on September 6, 1975 and early Sunday morning, September 7, 1975). Before they parted ways, Wakefield had told her friends that she had to get home for ‘an appointment,’ and a neighbor that had briefly spoken with her later in the afternoon told investigators that said nothing seemed out of the ordinary with her. Jane loved her friends and family and was heavily relying on their support during her divorce.
The ‘Jesus People:’ early reports speculated that Wakefield may have left the area with a religious group called the ‘Jesus People’ that had been camping near Coralville Lake at the time she disappeared despite her family never believing she would have joined a cult, and they told ‘The Gazette’ that Jane was ‘too much on top of things’ to join a cult, In an attempt to investigate the rumors, one of Jane’s friends, John Morrison, traveled to Huntsville, Arkansas where the cult had relocated to about ten days after she was last seen and searched the area with a sheriff’s deputy, but they didn’t find her. According to Morrison, ‘she was not the kind of person to get involved in that. She was just a little too much on top of things.’
The Investigation: Jane’s neighbors told police that in the late-night/early morning hours of Saturday, September 6th they heard someone ‘yelling or screaming’ that came from the direction of Jane’s home, but they weren’t certain where it were coming from but assumed it came from a different neighbors party, and did not reach out to LE. When a friend of Jane’s stopped by the following day, no one answered so they left, and according to Iowa City Police Department Capt. Patrick Harney: ‘obviously, between Saturday night and Sunday morning, she disappeared.’
When Jane didn’t report to Penn Elementary School on the morning of Monday, September 8, 1975 her principal Larry Sharp tried calling her but was unsuccessful; from there, he reached out to the mobile home parks main office, and the manager contacted her boyfriend, who immediately came to meet him and together they went to her residence. According to Jeff Burnham of ‘The Gazette: ‘outside, they found her bicycle locked to the yard lamp, and her Fiat in its parking space. Inside, they found her purse and other belongings, but no sign of Jane Wakefield.’ Sharp also called the Iowa City police department and reported her as missing, who upon arrival found everything to be in order and they determined that nothing was missing or out of place; they also said evidence suggested she had recently showered before she left.
In October 1976 a thousand-dollar reward was offered by Wakefield’s parents for any information leading to the arrest of the person (or persons) that were responsible for the disappearance of Jane. According to Investigator Kidwell, ‘there was nothing in her home to indicate violence. It would appear that she had just left the trailer and was going to come back.’ About his estranged wife, John said ‘it seems to me if she decided to drop out and take a new identity, somewhere along the way she would have given me a call. She’s either decided never to resurface, or she’s dead.’ About Jane, Captain Patrick Harney said ‘you don’t have a body. You have no elements to prove there actually was a death. But it’s surrounded by circumstances all pointing to the fact that she’s dead.’
Iowa City police and the state department of Criminal Investigation officials in charge of the investigation said they approached Jane’s case as if it were a murder, not a disappearance and that although there was an unnamed suspect at one time, no one was ever charged in connection with her possible death.
Drainage: on October 2, 1975 Iowa City deputies drained two lagoons that were in close proximity to the mobile home park where Wakefield was residing at the time she vanished, and after the nine-and-a-half-hour-long process they never found any trace of her (one report said this was on September 10, 1975). The undertaking began after a man from Emporia, Kansas reported that they overheard a conversation between two male voices in a motel room discussing getting rid of a woman, ‘the same way we did that one back in Iowa City… in a sewage lagoon.’
A Break: four months after Jane disappeared, detectives got their first major break in the case when a Confidential Informant (who happened to be a friend of her husband, who was the main suspect) told investigators that John had killed his estranged wife, cremated her body in an industrial-scale incinerator behind the apartment building he owned (and lived in), then spread her ashes along a ditch on the Interstate-80 (one report said it was the I-40) just outside of Iowa City in the middle of the night (he actually deposited the majority of them in a rest stop garbage can). Wakefield had access to this piece of equipment thanks to one of his business endeavors, something that he and Jane were actively trying to figure out how to split up during their divorce. He had even gone so far as to shift the blame on her new boyfriend, and on September 6, 1975 had rented a car from the Cedar Rapids Airport that was a near match to the one driven by her new bf then drove to her residence late that night and choked her to death. He then put her in the trunk and drove it to his Iowa City apartment building.
According to the CI, Wakefield then placed a large amount of charcoal into an industrial sized trash incinerator, lit it, and placed Jane’s body inside; when the fire went out, he swept up its contents and placed them into a garbage can. The following night he drove out to the I-80 near Iowa City, pulled off to the side of the road then spread the bags contents along the ditch. Where Iowa detectives declined to disclose the identity of the CI, they confirmed he was friends with the suspect, and he passed a polygraph test. A series of lie detector tests narrowed the short list of suspects down to one, who refused to submit to one and questioned the ‘validity of such tests.’
At roughly 10:15 AM on the morning of January 30, 1976, Captain KL Stock of the Iowa City Police Department announced they had received ‘significant new evidence’ regarding the disappearance of Jane Wakefield. Armed with three search warrants for the apartment building the two businesses owned by John Wakefield, ‘Magoo’s Lounge’ (located at 206 North Linn Street) as well as ‘Four Cushions, Inc‘ (a billiards parlor located on Clinton Street). Captain Stock said a vacuum cleaner was taken from Wakefield’s residence and five more were seized across his two businesses; their contents were sent to ‘various labs’ for examination; additionally, forensic experts sifted through the contents of the incinerator and sent them to the state crime lab in Des Moines. Everything came back inconclusive.
From the apartment, Iowa state detectives along with agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation seized miscellaneous pieces of ‘bone debris,’ a small hunk of metal that looked to be a dental filling, along with a ‘small, white chip of bonelike material.’ They also seized five vacuum cleaners from the two businesses and the following week on February 6, 1976 roughly twenty detectives returned to the area and searched (on their hands and knees) through several miles of ditches north of Iowa City along the I-80; lab analysis of bone fragments found in the incinerator were inconclusive.
From the apartment, Iowa state detectives along with agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation seized miscellaneous pieces of ‘bone debris,’ a small hunk of gold that appeared to be a dental filling that was found in the base of the incinerator, along with a ‘small, white chip of bonelike material.’ The following week on February 6, 1976 roughly twenty detectives returned to the area and searched (on their hands and knees) through several miles of ditches north of Iowa City along the I-80. Because of a lack of proper forensic technology, the bones were never confirmed to be Jane’s and tests on the fragments came back as inconclusive. John Wakefield was never charged with anything related to his estranged wife’s disappearance and is ‘officially’ not considered to be a suspect in this case (although her family strongly considers him to be a suspect).
According to Hank Reed, who was a friend of the couple, Jane was ‘a real nice, loving person. She liked kids a lot. That’s the reason she went into teaching.’ He also said that he believes his friend is dead but can’t elaborate further or explain why he feels that way. According to Willim Kidwell, a former Iowa state trooper turned PI, ‘ it naturally causes you to think that foul play was involved. Jane could be living happily somewhere, and no one would even know.’
I did notice a LOT of small inconsistencies that should have been caught in relation to this case:, as multiple articles have dates wrong. Iwa detectives believe Wakefield was the victim of foul play and is deceased. Looking into it, the apartment where John Wakefield was living at the time Jane disappeared was demolished after it was largely destroyed after a tornado ripped through Iowa City, so going back and searching through it isn’t a possibility.
923 Iowa Avenue: while doing my research, I learned the apartment where John Wakefield lived at the time his wife disappeared was demolished after it was mostly destroyed after a tornado ripped through Iowa City, so going back and searching through it for clues really isn’t possible.
Ted Bundy: on September 6, 1975, Ted Bundy was living in a room in a boarding house on East 1st Avenue in SLC (he was there until the following month), and by that time he had already been arrested and was under intense investigation by authorities (across multiple states). Oddly enough, it was the same day that the remains of Lake Sammamish victims Janice Ott and Denise Naslund and a third victim were discovered in Issaquah. At that time Ted was still actively working toward his law degree (despite the legal charges that were pending against him) and was still in a relationship with Elizabeth Kloepher (although their love had grown very rocky by that point). Bundy was actively trying to evade suspicion and was in the process of trying to sell his VW Big, which was later seized by LE.
Though not yet arrested for murder, police in Washington and Utah were narrowing in on Bundy and within weeks Carol DaRonch identified him in a police lineup, which lead to his first arrest in October 1975. I do want to say for the record, no part of me ever thought Ted was responsible for Jane’s disappearance: I kept coming across her story on Pinterest and I decided I had to write about her.
Robert Ben Rhoades: Ms. Wakefield is the first young woman I’ve written from Iowa, so I had to spend a fair amount of time looking into active serial killers that fit into that time frame, and one name that jumped out to me was Robert Ben Rhodes, aka ‘The Truckstop Killer.’ Rhodes is confirmed to have tortured and killed at least two couples in Illinois and Texas in 1989 and 1990, and he is suspected of torturing, raping, and killing more than fifty women between 1975 and 1990 based on data that has been collected about his driving routes and missing/murdered women that fit the profile of his preferred victims. At the time Rhoades was apprehended, he claimed to have been participating in these activities for fifteen years.
Jane’s Family: Jane’s mother Pauline remarried a man named John Burkhardt and died at the age of sixty-one on May 3, 1986 in Minneapolis. Karen Hallberg got married at the tender age of sixteen to twenty-two-year-old John McRew on August 24, 1968; the couple had three daughters together and according to his obituary they divorced in 1974. She died at the age of sixty-two on November 23, 2014.
Richard Eric Hallberg died at the age of fifty-one on October 1, 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri. According to his obituary, he attended school in Ludington, MI and was an employee of the Park Dairy while he lived there; before his death he lived in Kansas City and it’s worth noting that none of his daughters are listed by name in the write-up. His wife Vicki Irene Hallberg died at the age of forty-nine on May 10, 1977 and she is buried next to him in Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery in Kansas (even though his obituary said he was married to a woman named ‘Rosemary’ at the time of his death).
Conclusion: seven years after she was last seen alive, Jane Ellen Hallberg-Wakefield was declared legally deceased on September 5, 1982. No charges were ever filed in relation to her disappearance. As of April 2026, no sign of Jane has never been found and she would be seventy-seven-years-old. Pauline Hallberg had her daughter’s Fiat, her last paycheck from the Iowa City Community School District, and other items totaling around $15,000 in value were placed in a conservatorship. Wakefield’s case has been considered ‘inactive’ since 1976.
According to a background check done by a Redditor, John has lived all over the US since his wife mysteriously disappeared in the fall of 1975, and has resided in North Sioux City, SD, Jefferson, SD, Iowa City, IA, and Oviedo, FL. Per their father’s obituary, his brother Robert Wakefield is an ordained minister and a Reverend and resides in St. Croix, which is an island in the US Virgin Islands.
Works Cited:
charleyproject.org/case/jane-ellen-wakefield
‘JANE ELLEN WAKEFIELD: Missing from Iowa City, IA – 8 Sept 1975 – Age 26.’ Taken April 16, 2026 from crimewatchers.ne
missingpersons.iowa.gov
Quinn, Megan. (January 20, 2022). ‘Meg’s Cold Cases: Jane Wakefield.’ Taken April 16, 2026 from thelibertylivewire.com
‘Missing: Jane Wakefield.’ (April 1, 2023). Taken April 16, 2026 from uncovered.com/cases/jane-wakefield
Marion Vinetta Nagle-McWhorter.
Introduction: Marion Vinetta Nagle was born on January 7, 1953 to Francis and Violet Nagle in Seattle, Washington. Francis Joseph Nagle was born on September 21, 1921 in Dansville, New York and Violet ‘Val’ Jackson was born on July 8, 1927 in Valdez, Alaska (she was of The Ahtna Athabascan culture, an indigenous group of people from Alaska’s Copper River region). After serving in WWII, Francis and Val tied the knot sometime in 1945 and went on to have five children together: Marion, Richard (b. 1959), William (b. 1955), Patricia (b. 1954), and Valerie (b. 1953). Marion got married at the tender age of sixteen on November 18, 1969 in San Bernardino, California to Kenneth Michael McWhorter, who was born on November 1, 1951 in Brownwood, Texas; the couple had a daughter together named Monica Kay McWhorter (born on February 16, 1971 in San Bernardino, CA).
The Murder: the oldest of her siblings, twenty-one-year-old Marion was living an itinerant life at the time at the time she was last heard from: in late 1974, after separating from her abusive husband, she decided to hitchhike across the northern part of the US, with plans of making her way from California to Seattle then eventually ending up in Alaska. According to her sister Valerie, Marion may have been on her way to ‘The Last Frontier’ in an attempt to find work, as their grandfather lived there at the time she disappeared. In 2024 she told Oregon Live: ‘I always hoped to find her.’ According to reports, in late October 1974 McWhorter stopped in Tigard, Oregon (which is near Mountain), and on the 26th she called her aunt from a pay phone near Washington Square Mall. Valerie said her sister had hoped to stay overnight at her house that was nearby, but she said no, and claimed she had been ‘too busy’ at the time to go pick her up.
According to Valerie, Marion had actually given birth to two daughters but had given the second one up for adoption when she was sixteen and left her older one behind with her estranged husband. Nagle also made it clear that her sister didn’t just up and abandon her child, and that she was simply trying to escape from an abusive relationship: according to police reports, her husband had at one time broken her nose. After Marion disappeared Kenneth filed for divorce in July 1975; shortly after he married Deborah Kay James, who was born on August 19, 1951; the couple had three children together, two sons and Monica’s half-sister Melissa (b. 1979).
Marion’s weight was unknown at the time of her murder, but she had brown eyes and wore her brunette hair long, and she had a healed fracture on the right part of her nasal bone; she was last seen wearing a leather coat with fringe, Levi ‘s jeans (with a 29-inch inseam), and platform-style sandals with an approximately two-inch heel (one source called them a ‘clog-style shoe’) that had a single white strap with a basket weave section that was attached to the base by 5 round tacks on each side. Valerie shared with detectives that ‘their mother was an Alaskan Native from the Ahtna Athabascan people in the Copper River area in southeastern part of the state, and her oldest sister was named after their aunt who died in 1940 in an American Indian boarding school in Alaska.’
The Discovery: on the afternoon of July 24, 1976, twenty-year-old California native David Allen Shearer that had been out on the side of ‘Swamp Mountain Road’ collecting moss to sell to florist shops when he stumbled upon a skull in the woods about a mile south of US 20 in rural Sweet Home, Oregon. She had been wearing a leather coat with fringe, a leather belt adorned with a decorative phoenix made out of black and white Native American styled beadwork, two metal rings, and Levi’s jeans; a lone clog was found nearby. After their discovery the bones were transferred to the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office, where a pathologist and odontologist examined them.
According to Linn County District Attorney Jackson Frost, the county was ‘seeking the identity of the woman who had been described as Caucasian, between 5’5” to 5’7” tall, anywhere from 115 to 125 pounds and had medium brown hair. He further speculated that she had been dead for ‘over a year,’ had worn ‘size ten clothes,’ and was between seventeen and nineteen-years-old: ‘we’re unable to determine how long the remains have been at that place. Though foul play had not been ruled out we don’t have any specific reason to believe this person was murdered.‘ Frost went on to say his office had already received ‘numerous’ phone calls from parents of missing girls asking about their missing daughters, and about the skull said: ‘there are no teeth missing, we have that charted. The problem even in this day is that some people don’t have dental records.’
Because a limited amount of remains that were found (the skull, some teeth, and a few ‘small bones) the examinations came back undetermined: by that point a good amount of time had passed, and on top of the natural decomposition little woodland critters would have done a good job of dispersing their bones all over the area. The odontologist in charge of the dental examination noted several restorations, and per a 2010 Linn County Sheriff’s Office report, a medical examiner identified a ’wound track on her skull, which could have been caused by something similar in size to an ice pick or small caliber firearm.’ For almost fifty years the remains laid unidentified; she was referred to as the ‘Swamp Mountain Jane Doe.’
The Secret: for many years after her sister disappeared, Valerie said her aunt’s story about their last phone conversation remained consistent, until one day when she shared that Marion had told her that a strange man in a white pickup had offered to give her a ride. Nagle said that when she learned about this piece of the puzzle she: ‘started in earnest with more searching,’ including by checking databases with unidentified persons cases: ‘I remember spending a lot of time on those pages, just scrolling through and trying to look.’ … ‘I never forgot about her.
Valerie also said that her sister’s disappearance was something her parents didn’t often talk about, and she isn’t even positive that they filed a missing person’s report as the Nagle family wouldn’t have ‘known where to even begin looking’ for their daughter and didn’t attempt to organize any search effort. In 2024 The Oregonian newspaper reached out to Tigard law enforcement and requested copies of any missing persons reports filed for Marion; after looking into it, an agency spokesperson said they hadn’t come up with anything. At the time her big sister disappeared Valerie was only eleven and was living in New York state with her parents and one of her brothers, and according to her: ‘I mean, there were, you know, efforts to search, but it was limited. We didn’t have that much to go on.’
Efforts: over the years a NamUs profile (National Missing and Unidentified Persons System) was created for the ‘Swamp Mountain Jane Doe,’ and forensic techs put her information into CODIS (or the ‘Combined DNA Index System’), which allows federal, state, and local law enforcement laboratories to digitally compare genetic samples. Forensic artists also created multiple recreations of a possible physical renderings of the victims face based on the cranial features of her skeleton as well as a clay model that even featured different hairdos and color/shade ranges that maybe she may have worn in an attempt to create an image that people who knew her may have recognized.
Updates: in 2010, the Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History completed an anthropology report of the still unidentified remains of the ‘Swamp Mountain Jane Doe,’ and a biological profile gave investigators demographic information on the individual, noting she was most likely a white female under 35 years old when she died. But still, she remained unidentified; also in 2010, a bone sample from the remains were sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification. An additional piece of bone was submitted for DNA extraction in 2020, which allowed for a unique genetic marker profile to be produced and in 2023, Valerie Nagle submitted a DNA sample to a genealogy website when she signed up for Ancestry.com with the hope that it would result in a clue as to what happened to her sister.
It wasn’t until April 2025 that Oregon investigators got a break in the case after Marion’s first cousin uploaded their genetic profile to the Ancestry-type website ‘Family Tree DNA,’ which allowed genealogists to delve deeper into the ‘Swamp Mountain Jane Doe’s’ family tree and eventually led them to one of Marion’s surviving family members: Valerie. In June 2025 detectives reached out to Nagle ‘out of the blue’ and asked what her thoughts were when it came to Marion possibly being the ‘Swamp Mountain Jane Doe;’ she said when they contacted her she was ‘very surprised that they called. I was really glad that they found me through DNA.’ Nagle gave detectives an oral DNA swab for comparison in June 2025 which quickly confirmed that the remains belonged to Marion.
In an interview with KOIN, Oregon State Forensic Anthropologist Hailey Collord-Stalder commented that: ‘this case was cold for 49 years. That means that family members lived and died without ever knowing what happened to their missing loved one.’ She went on to add that McWhorter most ‘likely did not go missing voluntarily. This was one of our oldest unidentified cases. And I think it just goes to show you that no matter how long somebody persists in being unidentified, we won’t give up trying to identify them.’
Suspects, Ted Bundy: in October 1974, Ted Bundy was living in a rooming house in Salt Lake City and was attempting his second round of law school at the University of Utah. This period marked a notable change in his criminal activity as he was in the process of moving his ‘playground’ from the Pacific Northwest to the Intermountain West: on October 2 he abducted and killed sixteen-year-old Nancy Wilcox from Holladay, Utah, and on October 18th seventeen-year-old Melissa Smith disappeared out of nearby Midvale; the daughter of the local police chief, Smiths remains were found nine days later. At the end of the month on Halloween night Ted abducted and killed seventeen-year-old Laura Ann Aime, who vanished after leaving a party in Lehi to buy cigarettes.
In the fall of 1974 Ted was also maintaining his long-distance relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer in Seattle (despite also dating multiple other women) and it’s also worth mentioning that for his move from Washington to SLC he bought an old white pick-up truck at one point in time (I couldn’t find much information about that particular vehicle). I could have sworn I read somewhere that it was his brothers truck, but when I looked into it I couldn’t find much on it other than the fact that he owned it until late 1975 (this is according to the 1992 TB FBI Multiagency Report ).
John Arthur Ackroyd: a lesser discussed serial killer from the Pacific Northwest, John Arthur Ackroyd was born on October 3, 1949 in the small logging town of Sweet Home, Oregon. He was one of three kids (he had an older and younger sister), and his dad was a maintenance worker and his mother worked in the office for the Sweet Home Police Department. During his adolescence, he was considered a loner and was frequently bullied, and his high school diploma indicated that he had been in the special education program.
After Ackroyd was accused of felony theft he enlisted in the Army, where he worked overseas as a mechanic. Upon returning home in 1977, he got a job with the Oregon highway department which was located along US Route 20 and ran east to west across The Beaver State; some of his responsibilities included clearing vehicle wrecks, helping those whose cars broke down, and overall basic maintenance. Later that same year he raped twenty-nine-year-old Marlene Gabrielsen, a young mother that he allowed to live (she was the only one). In 1978, Ackroyd and an accomplice, Roger Dale Beck, he abducted and murdered thirty-five-year-old Kaye Turner, who had been out running at the time she was abducted.
At some time in the mid-1980’s he married a divorcee named Linda Pickle, who had two children from a previous relationship (Rachanda and Byron); the family moved into a house in Santiam Junction, a state highway division compound at the junction of Oregon-126, Oregon-22, and US Highway 20 (other members of the highway department lived there as well, but few of them had children). After only a year of marriage, the couple divorced but continued to live together; he was abusive to both of his former stepchildren, and Rachanda disappeared under mysterious circumstances on July 10, 1990.
By early 1992 Ackroyd had moved in with his mother in Sweet Home: because of his connection to his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter’s disappearance, most of the women and children in Santiam Junction were uncomfortable with him being there, and as a result he began to work out of Corvallis. In May 1992 nineteen-year-old Sheila Swanson and seventeen-year-old Melissa Sanders vanished while on a camping trip with Sanders’ family at Beverly Beach State Park on the central Oregon coast. They were last seen at a payphone near a grocery store on US 101, reportedly planning to hitchhike back home to Sweet Home and Lebanon. Their remains were discovered in October 1992 by hunters in a remote area off a logging road near Eddyville, and due to the advanced level of decomposition, an exact cause of death could not be determined. Ackroyd was arrested for the murder of Kaye Turner on June 12, 1992, and he was charged with Rachanda’s murder in 2013; he pleaded no contest. Lincoln County Investigators with the DA’s Office Ron Benson and Linda Snow were preparing to present evidence against Ackroyd in relation to the murders of the two young women to a grand jury when he died on December 30, 2016 at the age of sixty-seven.
Warren Leslie Forrest: logically, when I was thinking about the timing of Marion’s murder, serial rapist and murder Warren Leslie Forrest immediately popped into my head… but by late October 1974 he had already been arrested (he was taken into custody on October 2, 1974).
Richard Sean Nagle: sadly, Marion’s younger brother Richard Nagle died from suicide at the age of fourteen on March 6, 1974. He died in his home and according to his autopsy he died of ‘self-inflicted strangulation;’ per his obituary, Nagle was born in Seattle and had moved to Dansville four years prior; he was also in ninth grade at the local junior high school.
Monica & Melissa: tragically, on April 7, 2002 Marion’s daughter Monica died at the age of thirty-one along with her half-sister, twenty-two-year-old Melissa McWhorter after the vehicle they were driving was hit by a drunk driver in Moffat, Texas. Monica Kay McWhorter married Yeow B. Lim in 1996, and the couple had a son together named Jason Bravo (who fortunately survived the accident with only minor injuries). She is buried in Bell, TX.
Conclusion: the entire Nagle-McWhorter clan is steeped in absolute tragedy: Kenneth Michael McWhorter died at the age of forty-two on July 17, 1994; his widow Deborah died at the age of fifty-six on December 31, 2007. Marion’s brother William Frances Nagle died of a heroin overdose at the age of thirty-eight in Seattle on June 17, 1994. Patricia Ann Nagle-Johnson died from lung cancer at the age of forty-two on January 13, 1997 in Seattle. Marion’s father died on Christmas day in 2002 in Seattle and at the time of his death, he had been married to Violet for fifty-seven years. Violet Nagle died at the age of eighty on May 3, 2008 in Seattle from lung cancer. According to a Reddit post, in recent years Valerie was able to find the daughter that Marion gave up for adoption, but they didn’t get as close to her as they had hoped to. She currently lives in Seattle, Washington and is sixty-three years old. As of April 2026, Marion’s case remains unsolved.
Works Cited:
AP. (September 19, 2025). ‘A woman’s remains were found in Oregon in 1976. They’ve been identified 49 years later thanks to DNA.’ Taken March 4, 2026 from nbcnews.com
Martin, Saleen. (September 22, 2025). ‘She was Last Heard from 51 Years Ago. Her Remains have Finally been Identified.’ Taken March 4, 2026 USA TODAY
Wasson, Lindsey. (September 19, 2025). ‘A Woman Vanished in Oregon in 1974. Now, Remains Two Years Later have been Identified as her, through DNA.’ Taken March 5, 2026 from cbsnews.com
Correspondence to Ted Bundy from Some of his Female Admirers, January 1989.
In Bundy’s final days before his January 1989 execution, he received a great number of letters from individuals all over the world, including a great deal of female admirers. One letter dated January 17, 1989 is from Dawn, and reads as follows:
January 17, 1989
Dearest Ted,
I just heard the worst possible news a few hours ago (about the warrant being signed). I was totally shocked because I hadn’t expected this until next week- the governors office gave me the wrong date.
I am extremely distraught right now.
I don’t know how I am going to live with this.
I’m far too upset to say too much at the moment, but I wanted to make sure you get this in time.
Ted, I want you to remember that I’ll be there right beside you when you go to meet your destiny.
I love you and just want you to know how much you men to me and have changed my life,
Dawn.
January 18, 1989
Dearest Ted,
I’m sending this to you just in case they don’t get you the telegram I sent.
I don’t know exactly what to say except that I am in a total state of shock and beyond consolation. I really feel as if I am going to die on Tuesday, too.
I guess I kind of expected this, but I’m still not prepared. There’s so much I wanted to sy to you if this time ever came.
Now, it is here and there isn’t enough time to say or do much.
I feel guilty in a way because I never even got to meet you, and I can’t imagine what your wife and family must be going through right now.
Ted, I would very much like to talk to you. I know this is a very hectic time right now but PLEASE can you call me? – COLLECT at 416.249.47** this Friday after 3 PM or Saturday after 10 AM.
I really need to speak to you. Please!
Dawn
A GIANT thank you to the blog ‘Ted Bundy: I was Trying to Think Like an Elk’ for their translation of these letters.
Nancy Mae Richards-Winslow.
Nancy Mae Richards was born on December 9, 1946 to Elwyn and Olive Richards in Weiser, ID. Elwyn Warren Richards was born on December 18, 1908 in Union, Utah and Olive Luella McDaniel was born on October 17, 1916 in Caldwell, Idaho. The couple got married on July 10, 1934 in Weiser, Idaho and had seven daughters together: Shirley Thelma (b. 1935), Donna (b. 1939), Charlotte (b. 1942), Margery (b. 1943), Mary (b. 1945), and Nancy (b. 1946); they also had a daughter named Patricia Beverly Richardson in 1941 that sadly died shortly after birth. On October 16, 1940 at the age of thirty-two Elwyn got drafted into WWII, and upon his discharge from the service, he moved his family to Washington state, where he got a job as a welder with Boeing.
Nancy graduated from Bellingham High School in 1965 and (per her senior year bio), and during her time there was in the French club, pep club, stage crew, and the orchestra; she also said that she would describe herself as an ‘ambitious’ person and that ‘happiness’ was important to her. Those that knew her described her as ‘quiet and shy,’ but clarified that she was also a ‘friendly person.’ She married John Henry Winslow at the age of twenty-two on October 22, 1968 in Seattle and had three children with him: two daughters and a son. John Henry Winslow was born on January 5, 1938 in Quitman, Missouri and was drafted into the Korean War on January 13, 1956.
In July 1970 Nancy was twenty-three years old and was newly separated from her husband; she stood at 5′ 5″ tall, weighed 125 pounds, and had ‘steel-gray’ eyes, and where she was a natural brunette, at the time she had been wearing a ‘neck-length brown wig.‘ She had been last seen on the evening of July 26, 1970 wearing a blue dress with white flowers that had ‘full sleeves’ getting into a gray 1952 Plymouth sedan (one report said it was a 1951) that was described as an ‘older model vehicle’ after she walked out of her POE: Tom’s Beaver Inn. She was new at the establishment and worked there as a waitress at the time of her disappearance; she left her kids in the care of a babysitter (at the time, her daughters were three and five and her son was two). She was reported as missing the following day by her estranged husband after she failed to return home to relieve the babysitter; the kids were eventually sent to live with him.
On the afternoon of Sunday, August 9, 1970 ‘Mr. and Mrs. R. Avril Birge of Yew Street’ (who had been camping in the area) spotted the badly decomposing body of Nancy Richards lying on a ‘sandbar’ in the middle of the north fork in the Nooksack River, about thirty-five miles NE of Bellingham and a quarter mile away from the Bridge Camp Grounds; she had a pair of nylon stockings wrapped around her neck and died due to strangulation. She remined unidentified until the following day when the Whatcom County ME Dr. Robert Roon positively identified the body as belonging to Nancy (thanks to a check of her dental records).
After the discovery some members of Whatcom County LE searched the general area where Winslow was discovered looking for evidence, and while combing the river found two sweaters (they later said they were going to check with her husband to see if he recognized them). Nancy’s husband John Henry Winslow was employed as a ‘sub-contractor’ at the time his wife was killed and had been nearby living in Seattle at the time of his wife’s murder. A spokesman for Tom’s Beaver Inn said Nancy completed her first full day that Sunday and had worked only a half shift the day before, which had been her first day on the job. LE said they were interested in speaking with a man that was ‘around 5’7″ tall with blonde hair’ that was last seen leaving Nancy’s POE with her at around 10 PM on July 26, 1970.
Officers spoke with a wide variety of friends, family members, acquaintances and coworkers of Winslow’s, and were trying their hardest to track down the patrons that were at Tom’s Beaver Inn on the night she was last seen alive. Some of the leads in the case included a ‘lock of hair’ that had been found on the Camp Creek Bridge located roughly one-quarter mile away from where Nancy’s body was found. Sheriff Bernie Reynolds of the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Department said a sample of the hair was sent off to the FBI lab to determine if it was human (I found no update regarding this). Reynolds also said his office (along with the city police) were checking out the possibility of an ‘all night party’ that Winslow may have attended on the evening of July 26, 1970, and were also interested in speaking to people that attended the event. According to investigators, the ‘clues are few.’
At the time Nancy was killed in July 1970, Ted Bundy* was living in Seattle and was in the process of earning his degree in psychology from the University of Washington (he official re-enrolled the previous month). He was in a new(ish) relationship with Liz Kloepfer and was living at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Ave NE in Seattle. In June 1970 he got a job at a medical instrument company called Pedline Supply (he was there until the end of 1971). In April 1966 he sold his 1933 Plymouth Coupe and bought a pale blue 1958 VW Bug (as it was smaller, more reliable and got better gas mileage than the clunky old car).
Often referred to as ‘Seattle’s Forgotten Serial Killer,’ Gary Grant was born on June 29, 1951, in Renton, and spent most of his early life in extreme poverty: his parents suffered from financial difficulties and the family lived in a trailer park on the city’s outskirts. Grant’s mother was an alcoholic, and because of this he was often forced to watch his parents engage in physical violence. In his late adolescence, he was frequently mentally overstrained and stressed out, and had lost all interest in school (he often avoided going altogether); he dropped out completely in the mid-1960’s. Near the end of the decade, he signed up for the Army but was reassigned to the Navy, however in the very beginning of his service he was bullied by some marines and as a result he developed signs of PTDS and mental illness and refused further service (citing health reasons); he was dismissed from the military a few months later. Following this, in the late 1960’s Grant returned to Renton, where a wave of murders started shortly after.
On the evening of December 15, 1969 Grant attacked his first victim: nineteen-year-old Carol Adele Erickson, who had been making her way home along a dirt road that ran parallel to the Cedar River after she left the Renton Municipal Library. During the attack, Gary stabbed her with a knife then dragged her into nearby bushes, where he had had sex with her corpse. When he was finished, he physically abused Ericksons corpse, and left lacerations on her neck. In the middle of the day sometime in September 1970, Grant attacked seventeen-year-old Joanne Mary Zulauf and hit her on the head with a stone then dragged her into the woods, where he raped then strangled her to death. Her naked remains were discovered on September 22, 1970; four days after the murder, Gary gave his girlfriend a watch he had stolen from Zulauf’s remains as a present for her birthday.
On April 20, 1971, Grant committed his two final murders: while walking by a house, he saw two six-year-old boys, Scott Andrews and Bradley Lyons playing outside. He threatened the children with a knife and took them into the woods roughly a mile and a half two away from the Bradleys’ residence. He then beat them, then stabbed Andrews and strangled Lyons. After he killed them, Grant covered their remains with leaves and branches; they were discovered two days later. As of April 2026, the seventy-four-year-old Grant is alive and serving his sentence at the Monroe Correctional Complex.
Nancy’s father Elwyn passed away at the age of eighty on February 2, 1989 in Grandview, WA and according to an article published in The Weiser American on April 15, 1946, in addition to being a welder by trade he also opened his own metal shop in Washington. Olive died at the age of eighty-three on March 20, 2000 in Grandview, ID. Shirley Thelma Richards-Jacobson died on September 11, 2017 in Seattle at the age of eighty-two and according to her obituary, she married Leonard Jacobson on April 1, 1956 in Grandview and she worked at Topside Cannery, Prosser Pack and People for People providing private care to Seniors until she retired. Shirley moved to Cleburne, Texas in 2007 and was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Nancy’s sister Mary Joan Richards died on March 5, 1996 at the age of fifty-one, and Donna Jean Richards-Cervine’s died on December 26, 2022 in Sunnyside, WA at the age of eighty-three. Charlotte L. Richards is also deceased (I was unable to find anything else about her). Nancy’s sister Margery Guthridge is still alive and resides in Yakima, WA.
According to his obituary, John Winslow died at the age of eighty-six on June 15, 2024 after suffering a cardiac event, with his wife and daughters by his side. He was the youngest of seven children and was married ‘at least’ three times in his life, and he had four sons with Shirley Woods, went on to have one son with his wife Linda Grindle, and shared three children with a woman named Katie Armstrong. Winslow resided in Nome and Homer in Alaska between 1978 to 2016 and moved to Dayton, OH in 2023. His children said that he was a ‘kind and loving father who loved all of his children deeply. He was very generous, often giving his last dollar to anyone in need.’
I would like to thank my friend and fellow blogger ‘flyofdragons’ for pointing out that Bundy was questioned about Nancy’s murder by Bob Keppel in January 1989 right before he was executed, and he denied any involvement.
Another Bundy Blog. 