Heidi Birgit Peterson.

~ Another Bundy Blog.

Background: Heidi Birgit Peterson was born on January 1, 1970, in Washington state to Roy and Sally Peterson. This case was an unusual instance where I was unable to find out much about the Peterson family, but I took that as a sign to stop investigating and to just let them be. There is obviously a reason.

February 21, 1974: at roughly 1:30 PM on February 21, 1974, four-year-old Heidi vanished without a trace while playing with her two-and-a-half-year-old brother Carl in the front yard of the family home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Her father was working inside the house, and her mother had briefly gone out to purchase some items at a nearby grocery store; when Mr. Peterson went outside to check on them (he surmised they had been left alone for roughly fifteen minutes), Heidi was gone: Carl was alone playing on his bicycle, and he simply said, ‘Heidi go…’ The family immediately called the police and quickly began searching the area, and specially trained German Shepards tracked Heidi’s scent to the curb in front of the house, indicating she may have been abruptly pulled into a vehicle; in addition to canines, search efforts included horse patrol, police helicopters, and explorer scouts. Rewards were posted and her picture was circulated nationwide and in parts of Canada in an effort to return her to her parents, and her disappearance sparked one of the largest and most extensive law enforcement searches in the history of the Pacific Northwest at the time. Heidi’s height and weight at the time of her disappearance are unknown, but she had brown eyes and dark hair she wore short.

According to an article published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on February 23, 1974, Sally Peterson said she ‘left the house to go shopping at 1:30 PM. Heidi and her younger brother were both outside playing then. Five minutes later my husband came out but her only the boy was there.’ A reporter asked her if Heidi wanted to go shopping with her and may have tried to follow her to the store, and in response to this Sally said, ‘No. My husband is unemployed much of the time and she is accustomed to staying at home with just her father there. She was expecting me to being her back a treat from the store.’ She also said she trained Heidi not to get into a car with a stranger because ‘if you do, you may not come back again,’ and clarified that Heidi had never run off by herself before. Her father said that Heidi ‘was very likable, and ‘People take to her, and she takes to people.’

According to Ann Rule’s book, ‘Kiss Me, Kill Me, ‘in the immediate aftermath of her disappearance, police scrutinized local residents. They thoroughly interviewed men in the Capitol Hill area with prior records for sexual offenses, as well as several neighborhood individuals whose initial alibis and answers did not fully satisfy investigators. Despite this, no concrete physical evidence or forensic links could connect any local individual to her abduction. Because the crime scene was limited to a brief fifteen-minute window in a quiet yard, and her remains were located a year later in a park trash can that had been previously searched, the lack of physical evidence remains the primary hurdle to identifying her killer.’

The Discovery: on January 23, 1975, park department employees were retrieving a garbage can from a hill directly below a scenic bluff in a brushy area and found the bones of a small child inside along with some clothing. The area where the remains were found was only a block away from where Heidi was abducted from nearly a year prior,  and the clothing matched what she was wearing when she disappeared; dental records later confirmed the remains belonged to her. The can had been discreetly hidden in some dense blackberry bushes, which had been searched thoroughly several times after Peterson first disappeared in 1974, which makes investigators strongly believe that her remains were moved there sometime prior to the discovery (possibly up to a few months). Police believe she had been killed shortly after she was abducted, and the case was immediately ruled a homicide; due to the advanced level of decomposition, the medical examiner was unable to determine the exact cause of death.

The Investigation: in the days following her disappearance, police patrolled Heidi’s Capitol Hill neighborhood throughout all hours of the day (and night) with a canine unit, hoping desperately that the dog accompanying them would help sniff her out. According to Ann Rule, ‘there were rumors and tips. Someone said they had heard a child screaming in a house one street over. But when detectives investigated, there was no indication that Heidi had ever been there. It was the next winter when the snows came before anyone knew where Heidi was. On the corner a half block south of her house there was a vacant lot where wild blackberries had towered eight feet or more over the ground for years. But this snow was heavy enough to make the vines break and flatten to the earth. Heidi’s skull was there, and the fractures in it showed the cause of her death: bludgeoning with some heavy object. There was no other evidence left. No clothes. No weapon. Nothing at all that the killer might have left behind.’

Rule went on that ‘the homicide investigators continued to check residents in an ever-widening circle with Heidi’s house in the center. They found men with records for sexual crimes and younger men whose answers to their questions didn’t quite add up. They had a suspect in mind, but they could never link him to Heidi’s murder. One of the things detectives count on is that even the most secretive murderer usually has to tell someone, either to brag about what he has done or because he feels guilty and is compelled to talk. Allegedly, Heidi Peterson’s killer told the woman in his life, and when they broke up, she told someone else. Eventually, word reached Seattle detectives. They were sure they knew the killer’s name. They looked beneath a house where the suspect said he had left evidence, but too much time had passed. It was gone. They could not arrest him.’

An Unconfirmed Suspect: according to an article that was published in The Seattle Times on September 20, 1975, Seattle homicide detectives did eventually narrow their focus toward a highly specific, unnamed person of interest: allegedly, that individual confided what he had done to a woman in his life, and after they broke up, she passed the information along and the tip eventually reached detectives. Detectives were confident enough in this lead to execute a search beneath a residence where the suspect allegedly claimed to have hidden physical evidence, however due to the extensive passage of time, nothing was recovered, and because of this police lacked the definitive proof required to make an arrest.

Ted Bundy: in the early to middle 1970’s Bundy maintained the facade of a normal, ambitious young man: he graduated from the University of Washington with his BS (in June 1972) and he went on to enroll in (two separate) law schools, all while working a ‘regular’ job and maintaining a ‘normal’ relationship with Liz Kloepher (although he wasn’t always faithful to her).

In January 1974, Ted Bundy was living in the Rogers Rooming House in Seattle’s University district, and he was attending law school at the University of Puget Sound (he attended from September 1973 to May 1974, and its now Seattle University School of Law). It was around this time that he began his first (confirmed) documented, definitive serial violent crimes, and that month, his known activities during include:

Shortly after midnight on January 4, 1974, Bundy broke into the basement apartment of eighteen-year-old University of Washington student Karen Sparks: he brutally bludgeoned her with a metal rod from her bed frame and sexually assaulted her. Sparks survived the attack but spent ten days in a coma and was left with permanent brain damage, vision loss, and hearing loss. It was also around the same time in early January, that he officially terminated his relationship with Diane Edwards, a woman he had been obsessively courting and restructuring his life to impress: he abruptly cut off all contact with her in January 1974 when he stopped returning her phone calls and letters after they had discussed marriage. When she finally got ahold of him by phone about a month later in February 1974, Bundy claimed he had no idea who she was or what she was talking about and hung up on her. Throughout the remainder of January, he stalked college coeds and prepared for his first official abduction: in the early morning of February 1, 1974 (mere hours after January ended) he committed his first confirmed murder by breaking into the apartment of twenty-one-year-old UW undergraduate, Lynda Ann Healy.

Despite the close geographic proximity and overlapping timeline, Bundy did not fit the profile for Heidi’s case: his documented victims were almost exclusively attractive college-aged women with long hair they wore parted down the middle (although I will admit that I was surprised to learn Heidi had been bludgeoned, like Ted usually did with his victims). He consistently denied targeting young children, and investigators have never uncovered any evidence linking him to Heidi, although there is no proven link or official record showing that he was formally questioned in relation to her murder.

Conclusion: unfortunately, as of November 2026, Heidi’s killer has never been identified or arrested and her murder remains unsolved. No named suspects have ever been publicly identified, formally charged, or arrested, and because her case remains unsolved, law enforcement agencies investigating the murder have kept specific names and ongoing investigative details private.

A picture of Heidi Birgit Peterson.
A picture of Heidi Birgit Peterson taken from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on July 28, 1974.
Heidi.
Heidi.
A picture of Heidi and her mother taken from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer that was published on December 20, 1974.
A picture of where Heidi’s remains were found taken from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer that was published on January 24, 1975.
A picture of where the remains of Heidi Peterson were recovered that was published in The Daily Herald on January 24, 1975.
A picture close to where the remains of Heidi Peterson were recovered that was published in The The Bellingham Herald on January 24, 1975.
A picture of the Peterson family home that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on February 23, 1974.
A picture of local volunteers searching for clues related to the murder of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Washington.
Heidi’s missing persons poster hanging on a shop door, screenshot courtesy of the Associated Press.
Heidi’s final resting place located in Holyrood Catholic Cemetery in Shoreline, Washington.
Heidi Birgit Peterson’s death certificate.
A missing persons poster for Heidi Birgit Peterson.
A screenshot of a reporter standing in front of a missing persons poster for Heidi Peterson, courtesy of the Associated Press.
Heidi Peterson’s house shortly after she was abducted, screenshot courtesy of the Associated Press.
Heidi’s home at the time of her disappearance, located at 2622 10th Ave East in Seattle.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on February 23, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on February 25, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Catholic Northwest Progress on March 1, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Kitsap Sun on March 2, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on March 2, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on March 12, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Olympian on April 3, 1974.
An article about a reward for any information leading to the return of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on April 11, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that also mentions Bundy’s six confirmed Seattle victims that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on July 28, 1974.
Part one of an article about the disappearance of Karen Levy that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on July 31, 1974.
Part two of an article about the disappearance of Karen Levy that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on July 31, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on August 25, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Daily Herald on September 26, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Spokesman-Review on October 20, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on December 20, 1974.
An article about the discovery of the remains of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Daily News on January 24, 1975.
An article about the discovery of the remains of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer that was published on January 24, 1975.
An article about the discovery of the remains of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Daily Herald on January 24, 1975.
An article about the discovery of the remains of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Bellingham Herald on January 24, 1975.
An article about the discovery of the remains of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on January 26, 1975.
A newspaper article about the recovery of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Bellingham Herald on January 26, 1975.
An article about the Sally Peterson wanting to establish a group to help the families of missing children (and women) that was published in The Daily Herald on January 27, 1975.
An article about a memorial mass being held for Heidi Peterson that was published in The Daily Herald on January 28, 1975.
An article about a memorial mass being held for Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on January 29, 1975
An article about a scholarship being established in memory of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on January 30, 1975.
An article about the Sally Peterson wanting to establish a group to help the families of missing children (and women) that was published in The Longview Daily News on January 30, 1975.
Part one of an article about the discovery of the remains of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on February 1, 1975.
Part two of an article about the discovery of the remains of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on February 1, 1975.
An article about capital punishment that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on February 9, 1975.
An opinion piece related to the murder of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on February 15, 1975.
An article about three policeman being honored for capturing a rapist that mentions the murder of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on February 20, 1975.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on March 7, 1975.
An article about tips related to the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on March 12, 1975.
An article about tips related to the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on March 13, 1975.
An article about a reward in relation to the murder of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on March 16, 1975.
An article about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Port Orchard Independent on April 9, 1975.
An article about the there being no recent activities related to the murder of Heidi Peterson that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on September 21, 1975.
A blurb from a newspaper saying that Sally Peterson was voting yes on Initiative 316, which would restore capital punishment to the state of Washington that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on October 22, 1975.
A blurb from a newspaper saying that Sally Peterson was voting yes on Initiative 316, which would restore capital punishment to the state of Washington that was published in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on October 26, 1975.
Some information about Initiative 316 in Seattle.
A Google Maps view of Heidi’s house in comparison to Interstate-5.
A comment made about Heidi’s mother, Sally.
Some comments about Heidi’s murder taken from WebSleuth’s.
An additional comment about Heidi’s murder taken from WebSleuth’s.
Some additional comments about Heidi’s murder taken from WebSleuth’s.
An additional comment about Heidi’s murder taken from WebSleuth’s.
An additional comment about Heidi’s murder taken from WebSleuth’s.
An additional comment about Heidi’s murder taken from WebSleuth’s.
A comment about Heidi’s murder taken from Reddit.
An additional comment about Heidi’s murder taken from Reddit.
A comment made about Heidi Peterson on a Substack post about the Green River Killer taken from the page, ‘nekocase.substack.com.’
A picture of Sally Peterson taken from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer that was published on February 23, 1974.
A picture of Sally Peterson sitting with her Parish Priest that was published in The Catholic Northwest Progress on March 1, 1974.
A picture of Ron and Sally Peterson.
A picture of Ron, Sally, and Carl Peterson.
Ron, Sally, and Carl Peterson standing in front of the Peterson family home, photo courtesy of the Associated Press.
Heidi’s little brother Carl running down the sidewalk in front of the Peterson family home, photo courtesy of the Associated Press.
Ted Bundy’s whereabouts in late-February 1974 according to the ‘1992 FBI TB Multiagency Team Report.’
A route from where Ted lived at the Rogers Rooming House to where Heidi lived on 10th Avenue East.
The cover of Ann Rule’s book ‘Crime Files #9: Kiss Me, Kill Me and Other True Cases’ that features a story about the disappearance of Heidi Peterson.
The average temps in Seattle in 1974, graph courtesy of the website ‘WeatherSpark.’

Debbie Harry, AKA Angela Trimble/Blondie.

~ Another Bundy Blog.

Introduction: Angela Trimble was born on July 1, 1945, in Miami, FL but was given up by her mother shortly after birth; she was adopted at three months old by Richard and Catherine Harry and renamed Deborah Ann Harry (she learned about the event through a bedtime story at the age of four). She grew up in Hawthorne, New Jersey and came from a modest, working-class background (her parents owned and operated a gift shop), though it was shaped by a lingering subconscious fear of abandonment from being adopted.

Nicknamed ‘Blondie’ as a child, Harry started bleaching her dark hair blonde at a young age and would often daydream that Marilyn Monroe was her biological mother. She sang in her local church choir and customized her own clothes and adjusted her style and stayed away from the preppy outfits that her mother preferred. A self-described ‘wild-child’ and tomboy, she described her youth as a ‘middle class idyll’ with the kind of minor parental neglect that allowed her to roam the woods freely, play in the dirt, and explore the world around her; she especially loved books, fashion, listening to the radio (specifically big band music), and science fiction.

Harry graduated from Hawthorne High School in 1963, where she was voted the ‘prettiest girl’ in her graduating class and went on to attend Centenary College in Hackettstown, NJ, where she graduated with an AA degree in 1965. Shortly after college, she moved to NYC to pursue an ‘artistic life,’ and before she made it big in music, she spent nearly a decade working a wide array of jobs in order to make ends meet, including positions as a beautician, a go-go dancer, a model, a dancer at the New York Playboy Club, and a waitress at Max’s Kansas City (a legendary Manhattan night club/restaurant that served as a central hub for the underground music, art, and glam rock scenes and operated from December 1965 until November 1981); additionally, Harry worked as a secretary for the BBC’s radio offices in New York City.

The Music Scene: Harry spent most of her early twenties getting her feet wet in the New York music scene: in the late 1960’s, she was a backing vocalist for ‘The Wind in the Willows,’ a folk-rock group that released one self-titled album on Capitol Records in 1968. In the early 1970’s, she joined a three-woman-fronted glam punk/rock group called ‘The Stilettos;’ it was around this time that she met the bands guitarist Chris Stein, and the pair eventually left the group to co-found ‘Blondie’ in 1974, when Harry was twenty-nine-years-old.

Beauty and the Beast, Blondie and Bundy: in a 1989 newspaper article, Harry recounted for the first time the details of what happened with her alleged encounter with Ted Bundy, after she had seen a photograph from a magazine article about him in the news (after he weas executed) and recognized him as a man she had once encountered sometime in the early 1970’s (she originally referred to the event as taking place ‘in the early 70s’, then specifically in 1972): ‘I was trying to get across town to an after-hours club, and a little white car pulls up, and the guy offers me a ride. So, I just continued to try and flag a cab down. But he was very persistent, and he asked me where I was going. It was only a couple of blocks away, and he said, ‘well I’ll give you a ride.’’ Harry clarified that the driver was a well-dressed man with ‘with gorgeous, curly dark hair’ and she was only looking for a ride because after a night out, her shoes made it difficult to walk: ‘I had on max platforms … max! I was way over by Avenue C and Houston. In those days, there was broken glass everywhere. I couldn’t take my shoes off to walk. I tried, that was impossible. So, I kept trying to get a cab.’

She went on to say that she ‘got in the car, and it was summertime and the windows were all rolled up except about an inch and a half at the top. So I was sitting there and he wasn’t really talking to me. Automatically, I sort of reached to roll down the window and I realized there was no door handle, no window crank, no nothing. The inside of the car was totally stripped out.’ Harry also said the man had a distinct, putrid, terrible smell, and that there was a hole where the radio and glove compartment box should have been, and she immediately felt unsafe and realized she needed to get out of there: to escape, she thrust her arm out of the window and tried to open the door using the exterior handle. When the driver noticed what she was doing, he swerved sharply around a corner, which caused the door to fly open, casting Harry out into the middle of the street: ‘As soon as he saw that, he tried to turn the corner really fast, and I spun out of the car and landed in the middle of the street.’

Harry didn’t initially know who the driver was and later clarified that ‘it was right after his execution that I read about him. I hadn’t thought about that incident in years. The whole description of how he operated and what he looked like and the kind of car he drove and the time frame he was doing that in that area of the country fit exactly. I said, ‘My God, it was him.’’ … ‘I had not thought about that night for maybe fifteen years, it was him.’ The article additionally described his appearance, modus operandi, and his white Volkswagen Beetle, and Debbie quickly became convinced that the man who had trapped her indeed Ted Bundy.

Blondie, DeBunked: from the beginning, true crime biographers, experts, and timeline records have heavily disputed Harry’s claim that she ran into Ted Bundy in NYC in the early 1970’s: according to the ‘1992 FBI Ted Bundy Multiagency Team Report,’ the killer was never placed in New York City at the time and was largely in the Pacific Northwest, and as we all know he didn’t begin abducting and killing women until (officially) the beginning of 1974 (although investigators have speculated that his crimes may have started earlier than that, as early as 1961).

Additionally, the timeline provided by Harry is highly problematic, largely because her story seems unorganized, and unfixed: originally, she referred to the event as taking place ‘in the early 70s’, then specifically that it was in 1972; she also made the remark that the assailant had to be Bundy ‘because he had escaped and was traveling down the East Coast,’ which would have meant the encounter would have taken place sometime in early 1978.

According to Dr. Art Norman (a forensic psychologist that spent around one hundred hours interviewing Bundy while he was on death row), the killer shared that he was in New York in 1969 and said: ‘when I was living in Philadelphia, I went to New York several times, I took the train up and spent days, you know, haunting 42nd Street…’ So, logically the Blondie singer could argue that she encountered Ted in 1969 in New York, not the 1970’s: but, by Ted’s own admission (and official DMV and Temple University records), he did not have a car at that time he was there.

It’s (fairly) common knowledge that Ted not own a Volkswagen (of the color identified by Harry) until 1973, and I do want to mention that before he bought his infamous ‘Savannah Beige’ Beetle, he owned a different VW Bug: in April 1966 he sold his 1933 Plymouth Coupe to put money towards a pale blue 1958 VW Bug. Harry herself even admits in an episode of RuPaul’ podcast that the car she was picked up in didn’t match Bundy’s Volkswagen, saying: ‘I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t Bundy’s Volkswagen. It didn’t have the same dashboard. It was squarer.’

Most Bundyphiles note that Ted typically targeted women while on foot by either faking an injury or pretending to be an authority figure to lure them toward his parked vehicle, and he was not known to drive through city streets picking up hitchhikers or women attempting to hail cabs. In my opinion: I do think Debbie Harry survived a terrifying, attempted abduction by a crazed man in early 1970’s NYC, I do not think that individual was Ted Bundy.

Key Activities and Location in 1972: in 1972, Ted Bundy was living in Washington state, where he graduated from the University of Washington in June with a BS degree in psychology. It was also in that year that he began working for the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission, where he helped write a rape-prevention pamphlet for women and even helped draft a state hitchhiking law (he was there from September 1972 to April 1973). In September 1972 he also became actively involved in Washington state Republican politics and started volunteering for political campaigns (such as Daniel Evans’ gubernatorial reelection) and it was around this time that he started building a respectable, charismatic public image that helped mask his underlying deviant pathologies. He also volunteered at the Seattle Crisis Clinic (he was there from September 1971 to May 1972), where he usually worked one night a week.

Ted’s VW Door Handle Myth: in recent years (specifically in April of 2016), a Utah pharmacist named Rhonda Stapley came forward and claimed she was a victim of Ted Bundy in October 1974: at the time she was a pharmacy student at the University of Utah, and on the afternoon of the incident she accepted a ride from a good-looking stranger (after some dental surgery) after her bus was late. In her book, ‘I Survived Ted Bundy,’ Stapley recalled that the very first thing she noticed when she got in his VW was that the inside passenger’s door handle was missing. Additionally, in 1972 (which is notably the same year Harry had her encounter) college student Sotria Kritsonis came forward and claimed she had been lured into a VW Bug by a man that matched Bundy’s description, and during an interview with KIRO-7 News on February 9, 2018, she also stated that the inside passenger door handle had been removed.

I do want to mention that when the only confirmed survivor Carol DaRonch (who Stapley had the audacity to say wasn’t ‘really assaulted’ because she ‘managed to get away) came forward about her run in with Ted on November 8, 1974, she did not report a missing door handle and told detectives she was able to open the door and get out.

Ted Bundy’s Smell: on numerous occasions Ted Bundy was reported to emit a foul or unpleasant odor during specific moments of intense stress, rage, or crime recollection, which was reported by investigator for the defense Joe Aloi: he reported a strong, unpleasant odor accompanied by physical contortions and a sense of ‘negative electricity’ surrounding the killer when interacting with him during conversations about his violent mindset. Psychologists suggest this response was tied to the sympathetic nervous system’s ‘fight or flight’ activation, where a surge of adrenaline and norepinephrine during extreme excitement or aggression can trigger a sudden, sharp change in body odor.

Conclusion: as of October 2026 Debbie Harry is eighty-one years old and resides in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City, where she manages her ongoing creative projects while taking care of her four beloved dogs. She is preparing for the launch of Blondie’s upcoming thirteen-track studio album, ‘High Noon’ (which is scheduled for release on February 26, 2027) which marks the band’s first major album release in nearly a decade. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Harry hinted that Blondie will most likely never perform live again following the death of longtime drummer Clem Burke. Additionally, she is slated to star as Pamela Anderson’s mother in an upcoming comedy film titled Maitreya, which is described as an indie comedy film about a rising star in the New Age healing community who takes her dysfunctional family on a chaotic trip to India.

Works Cited:
Solis, Jorge. ‘Blondie’s Debbie Harry Sets the Record Straight About Her Connection to Ted Bundy.’ (March 11, 2020). Taken October 1, 2026 from newsweek.com
‘Staff, @FarOutMagazine.’ ‘How Blondie’s Debbie Harry once Escaped Serial Killer Ted Bundy.’ (March 18, 2021). Taken October 1, 2026 from faroutmagazine.co.uk
Standen, Alex. ‘Debbie Harry still claims she escaped serial killer Ted Bundy.’ (May 30, 2019). Taken October 1, 2026 from dazeddigital.com

A young Debbie Harry.
Debbie.
A teenage Debbie Harry (with darker hair), photo courtesy of ‘Ted Bundy: I was Trying to Think Like an Elk.’
Debbie Harry from her time at Hawthorne High School.
Debbie Harry.
Debbie Harry at the age of eighty.
The cover for Blondie’s upcoming album, ‘High Noon.’
A comment on a post about Debbie Harry made on the Facebook group ‘Ted Bundy: I was Trying to Think Like an Elk.’
A Facebook post about Harry’s possible encounter with Ted Bundy.
Some Reddit comments about Debbie Harry possibly being a victim of Ted Bundy.
A Reddit comment about Debbie Harry possibly being a victim of Ted Bundy.
The first part of a Reddit post about Debbie Harry possibly being a victim of Ted Bundy.
The second part of a Reddit post about Debbie Harry possibly being a victim of Ted Bundy.
Some additional comments on a Reddit post about Blondie’s possible run-in with Ted Bundy in the early 1970’s.
Some comments on a Reddit post about Blondie’s possible run-in with Ted Bundy in the early 1970’s.
Another comment on a Reddit post about Blondie’s possible run-in with Ted Bundy in the early 1970’s.
Some additional comments on a Reddit post about Blondie’s possible run-in with Ted Bundy in the early 1970’s.
Some more comments on a Reddit post about Blondie’s possible run-in with Ted Bundy in the early 1970’s.
An article about Debbie Harry’s possible encounter with Ted Bundy that was published in The Evening Sun on November 6, 1989.
Debbie Harry and Nestor Aparicio, who interviewed Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry in November 1989 during his music critic era at The Baltimore Sun.
The cover of the Scottish tabloid ‘Daily Record’ that features a story about Debbie Harry that was published on February 23, 2017.
The cover of Debbie Harry’s book, ‘Face It!’
A cartoon taken from a website for a podcast about Debbie Harry titled ‘Blondie: Punk vs. Disco, Held Hostage by Phil Spector, and Riding with Ted Bundy.’ Taken on October 17, 2026 from ‘disgracelandpod.com/152/blondie’
A painting created by artist Robert Williams titled, ‘Debbie Harry’s Fears.’ The singer sat down with the artist and recounted her experience with Ted and from their conversation he pulled from her emotions and phobia and created this painting; she said that sitting down with Williams was therapeutic for her, and after they spent time together she doesn’t ‘have these dreams anymore.’
Avenue C in 1978.
Houston Street and Avenue C (which is co-named Loisaida Avenue) as it looks today.
A well-known archival photo from September 1972 that captures a twenty-five-year-old Ted Bundy working as an Evans campaign staffer in Washington state.
Ted Bundy with what I can only describe as ‘curls.’
Ted’s 1968 VW Beetle.
Bundy’s whereabout in 1972 according to the 1992 FBI Ted Bundy Multiagency Team Report.
Bundy’s whereabout in 1973 according to the 1992 FBI Ted Bundy Multiagency Team Report.
A screenshot from Snopes.com saying Blondie’s supposed encounter with Ted Bundy is unproven.
An article about Joe Aloi that features a picture of him posing with Bundy’s framed fingerprints that was published after his execution in Tallahassee Democrat on January 25, 1989.
A blurb from an article that mentions Debbie Harry’s time as a Playboy Bunny that was published in The News on November 9, 1972.
Debbie Harry amongst some other famous Playboy bunnies.

An Interview Between ‘The Cold Podcast’ and Thomas R. Jackson.

~ Another Bundy Blog.

The following is an impromptu interview that the creators of ‘The Cold Podcasters’ conducted with Thomas Richard Jackson, who is a suspect in the Nancy Perry-Baird disappearance.

Dave Cawley: We’ve come, unannounced, in the hopes of talking to one of the other men who worked for the East Layton Police Department in 1975.
(Sound of seat belt click)
Sheryl Worsley: We’ll see. (Laughs)
Dave Cawley: See what kind of reception we get.
Dave Cawley: His name is Thomas Jackson, Junior. As we walk toward his door, a tall white-haired man steps out.
Dave Cawley (to Tom Jackson): Hi, how you doing? Are you Tom?
Dave Cawley: Tom Jackson can see the microphone in my hand. He asks “uh oh, what did I do now” with a bit of a laugh.
Dave Cawley (to Tom Jackson): You did nothing.
Sheryl Worsley: You didn’t do anything. (Laughs)
Dave Cawley: We’re doing a history project on the Nancy Baird case. From way back in—
Tom Jackson: Oh, Nancy Perry Baird?
Dave Cawley: You got it.
Tom Jackson: When I was a cop? Yeah.
Dave Cawley: Yeah.
Sheryl Worsley: Yeah.
Tom Jackson: Oh, that’d be great. Uh, you want to come in?
Dave Cawley: Is that ok?
Sheryl Worsley: Is that alright?
Dave Cawley: He ushers us inside and makes space on the couch.
Tom Jackson: I’m glad you’re here. Man, this is, just been exciting to know that her case is still open and is, I’m tickled.
Dave Cawley: Tom Jackson was about four years older than Nancy Baird. And he confirms, they knew each other as kids.
Tom Jackson: She was a pretty gal.
Dave Cawley: Tom’d lived just down the street from Nancy. In fact, he’d even married one of Nancy’s friends, a neighbor girl. They’d stayed in the neighborhood, living just off Cherry Lane, a little ways behind the Fina station where Nancy’d worked.
Tom worked a full-time job, but around the start of 1975 also accepted a part-time position as a reserve officer for the East Layton police department. His reserve role was a little different than Cary Hartmann’s, which we heard about in Cold season 3. East Layton was a lot smaller than Ogden City, so it asked much more of its reserves. As a result, Tom worked a more regular schedule, received a paycheck, and wrote a lot of tickets.
Tom told me on the day Nancy Baird disappeared, he’d been driving around in one of the town’s two police cars.
Tom Jackson: I didn’t even hear anything on the radio about it.
Dave Cawley: Which is a little strange, since officer Dave Anderson did describe radioing dispatch about Nancy in his report. In any case, Tom said he’d stopped by the Fina station that evening and found his chief, Ray Adams, and officer Dave Anderson there.
Tom Jackson: I pulled in, I was like “what’s going on?” And they said “Nancy’s gone.” I said “what the crap, what?”
Dave Cawley: Tom remembered going to Nancy’s house and helping retrieve her address book. According to a report, Tom and the chief then went and looked around a place called Fernwood Park, as the dark of night descended. Why Fernwood? Well, it was home to a sort of “lover’s lane,” a place in the hills where couples would park their cars and make out. The police found no sign of Nancy there.
Records show Tom Jackson didn’t have any involvement with the Nancy Baird case after that. He intentionally opted out.
Tom Jackson: At that time, I don’t think I was, I don’t know, I wasn’t a good cop, I would say. I wanted to, I wanted to let someone else handle it. I didn’t want to mess it up.
Dave Cawley: In spite of this, East Layton sent Tom Jackson to the Utah police academy in September of 1975. That’s only about two-and-a-half months after Nancy Baird disappeared. Why did Tom go to the academy, instead of officer Dave Anderson? I’m not sure. Tom didn’t remember.
I’ve talked to one of Tom’s academy classmates. He said Tom struggled a bit, but Tom did graduate the academy and was certified to work in law enforcement. He replaced Dave Anderson as East Layton’s full-time police officer. At some point in the middle of all this, Tom talked to the Davis County Sheriff’s Office about next-steps in the Nancy Baird investigation. East Layton had jurisdiction. It was their call.
Tom Jackson: The county asked me, says “you want to handle this?” And I says “no way! All we are is just little hick town cops here so if we’re gonna find her, you guys is the ones that’s gotta do it.”
Dave Cawley: Tom knew the county had already tracked down several of Nancy’s boyfriends, working off her address book.
Tom Jackson: They had the book and whatever name was in there, they went after ‘em.
Dave Cawley: But the boyfriend leads ran dry, right around the time Ted Bundy entered the picture.
Tom Jackson: Yeah, there was suspicion of him.
Dave Cawley: Tom’s mind didn’t settle on Bundy, though. He figured Nancy’s abductor could’ve been much closer.
Tom Jackson: This person must’ve been someone she knew and had some trust in him. That’s the other reason why I thought it was one of the cops, that one cop.
Dave Cawley: Former officer Dave Anderson. Tom remembered Dave Anderson spending a lot of time at the Fina station.
Tom Jackson: He spent too much time looking at women, too.
Dave Cawley (to Tom Jackson): Thinks he’s a lady’s man, maybe—
Tom Jackson: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: —a little bit?
Tom Jackson: He was a good-looking guy, so I’m sure he thought so.
Dave Cawley: This description of former officer Dave Anderson reminded me of Cary Hartmann and his brief time in the Ogden police reserve corps, which we talked about during Cold season 3. There are some people who are drawn to law enforcement jobs for all the wrong reasons. Dave Anderson, it seems, might’ve been one of them. This idea was overlooked though, probably because the East Layton police department was itself in crisis. Its chief, Ray Adams, shouldn’t have been chief. He’d wasn’t a cop. He’d secured his position through the good ol’ boy system. State law required he attend the academy, but he wasn’t willing to take a leave from his full-time job to do that.
So, in April of 1976, Ray Adams vacated the chief of police position. He instead became a justice of the peace for the town, a form of low-level judge, a job for which Adams was also not qualified. Officer Tom Jackson departed the East Layton police department not long after that. He decided to leave law enforcement entirely, and went into private security work. So within about a year of the disappearance of Nancy Baird, the entire East Layton police force turned over.
Tom Jackson: Real Mayberry thing. (Laughs)
Dave Cawley: There is one other point I need to acknowledge here: former officer Tom Jackson has a criminal record. In 1986, 11 years after the disappearance of Nancy Baird, Davis County prosecutors filed a criminal charge against Tom. He stood accused of sexually abusing two young girls. He pleaded guilty to a second-degree felony, which made him eligible for a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. But the judge only placed Tom on probation.
Tom’s wife divorced him in the years that followed. He left Utah, remarried, and then, in 1995, police arrested Tom Jackson again, this time on charges of lewd conduct with a child under 16 years of age. He again pleaded guilty, but the Idaho judge showed none of the leniency the Utah judge had. Tom received a life sentence. But Tom’s no longer in prison, clearly. He won an appeal that reduced his sentence to 15 years. He served that time, a fact he and I discussed at the start of our interview.
Tom confided he felt a bit nervous going on tape. He hoped I wouldn’t make a monster of him. I promised to treat him fairly. And Tom acknowledged his past complicates how we might see him.
Tom Jackson: I wouldn’t doubt if I was a suspect and all that. And that’s ok with me.
Dave Cawley: Because, Tom says, he’s taken polygraph after polygraph as part of his probation.
Tom Jackson: And one of the questions in there is “you committed any other crimes that we don’t know about?” And when I said “no, not at all.” And it come up true, so.
Dave Cawley (to Tom Jackson): I mean, it’s—
Tom Jackson: Y’know, that pretty much cleared me right there.
Dave Cawley: —it’s a lot of years, right? You would think if you were a suspect, someone would’ve come and talked to you a long time ago—
Tom Jackson: Yeah, yeah.
Dave Cawley: —right?
Tom Jackson: That’s true.
Dave Cawley: After Tom Jackson left his job at the East Layton Police Department a year following Nancy Baird’s disappearance, the town hired a new officer, a guy named Dave Davis. Town leaders quickly promoted Davis to chief. Davis told The Salt Lake Tribune he was “working wonders” with the small budget provided to him in a 1977 newspaper story comically headlined “Yes, East Layton has a police department.”
Gary McFarland: They just did not have the funding to take and keep somebody.
Dave Cawley: Chief Davis also inherited the Nancy Baird case. He did nothing with it until, in 1979, four years on from Nancy’s disappearance, Davis hired a new patrol officer named Gary McFarland.
Gary McFarland: And it came down to where it was just me covering 12 hours and the other, the chief would cover the other 12 hours. And there was a promise from the city that if I did that, they would send me to the police academy.
Dave Cawley: Chief Davis gave Gary former East Layton police officer Dave Anderson’s report about the disappearance of Nancy Baird.
Gary McFarland: There just wasn’t a lot. We were, y’know, a very small community. There was very few things going on. Property disputes, loose cows, loose, loose horses. (Laughs) That kind of thing. It just, that was, that was a pretty big case.
Dave Cawley: At this same time, Ted Bundy was standing trial for murder in Florida.
John Hollenhorst (from July 24, 1979 KSL TV archive): As the verdict approached, reporters, editors and photographers prepared for the climax of the trial. The Bundy case has generated vast amounts of publicity all over Florida and in the western states of Utah, Colorado and Washington. In all those places, Bundy is suspected of murders. All involving young women.
Dave Cawley: Gary, and many others, believed Ted Bundy might’ve killed Nancy Baird. It wasn’t much of a leap: Bundy had been in Utah the summer Nancy disappeared.
Gary McFarland: She had the appearance of some, the females that he preferred. That’s all we had, is the method of operation fit.
Dave Cawley: But that suspicion didn’t give Gary any direction as to where to look for Nancy’s remains.
Gary McFarland: It was becoming a cold case, basically.
Dave Cawley: A little kerfuffle erupted in East Layton around this same time. The mayor fired police chief Davis, who responded by telling the news media it was an attack on the entire department.
Dave Davis (from March 24, 1980 KSL TV archive): They may be looking into an outside agency to contract to and dissolve the police department as a whole.
Dave Cawley: I suspect you probably don’t much care about this small town political squabble, but I promise you, it’s relevant to the Nancy Baird case because of what happened in the end.
Gaylen Young (from March 26, 1980 KSL TV archive): Nearly 400 angry residents were in attendance at the city council meeting because mayor Delin Yates was not going to keep police chief Dave Davis on the job.
East Layton resident (from March 26, 1980 KSL TV archive): We don’t want a contract with Davis County. We don’t want a contract with Layton City. We want the police force we have with the responsible, interested service that we get from them.
Dave Cawley: This protest proved ineffective. East Layton dissolved its police department. Officer Gary McFarland, fresh out of the academy, no longer had a job. But it didn’t stop there. The residents of East Layton voted to disincorporate at the end of 1980. Their town ceased to be and neighboring Layton City swallowed it whole. The records of the East Layton police department were lost to time. All except for the report of former police officer Dave Anderson about the disappearance of Nancy Baird. Gary McFarland still had it.
Gary McFarland: It ended up with me. No direction as to what to do with it. But it was in my custody.
Dave Cawley: But with East Layton gone, who would inherit jurisdiction over Nancy Baird’s case? Did it belong to Layton City, which absorbed East Layton? Or did the Davis County Sheriff’s Office bear responsibility, given the work deputies there had done assisting East Layton early on?
Gary McFarland: Davis County provided a lot of the crime scene investigations because small communities could not provide that service.
Dave Cawley: As we saw with the Sheree Warren case in Cold season 3, victims fall through the cracks when police agencies fail to communicate. And that’s what also appears to have happened with Nancy Baird. No one took the initiative. It wasn’t Gary McFarland’s case, but he felt duty-bound to safeguard the reports.
Gary McFarland: Because it was one of those cases that you knew someday would have a lead.
Dave Cawley: Gary ended up taking another police job at a different agency. Year after year, he waited for a phone call that might break the case.
Gary McFarland: Nobody ever came forward. Nobody was ever found. Not one tip, not nothing.
Dave Cawley: Gary McFarland retired in 2012. He turned the East Layton police report on Nancy Baird over to the Davis County Sheriff’s Office.
Gary McFarland: They’d come up with some other theories, besides the only one that I ever came up with.
Dave Cawley (to Gary McFarland): Bundy?
Gary McFarland: Yeah.
Dave Cawley: Is that what you mean?
Gary McFarland: Yeah, ‘cause I’m stuck on it. It will, until I’m proven different.
Dave Cawley: Gary still believes Ted Bundy is the most likely suspect in Nancy Baird’s presumed murder. But he knows that’s not the only theory.
Gary McFarland: The theories were that it was possibly a law enforcement officer that worked in East Layton.
Dave Cawley: The story we’ve heard so far leaves me deeply skeptical about any conclusion regarding Nancy Baird’s death being the work of serial killer Ted Bundy. To my mind, there are too many other plausible scenarios. And, Tiffany Jean, the archivist, told me she’s unsure as well.
Tiffany Jean: I, I looked at the case a little bit. And I thought that it didn’t quite fit his M.O., with what I know about how he operated.
Dave Cawley: What was different? For one, the location. Ted Bundy was never known to abduct a woman from a gas station during daylight hours.
Tiffany Jean: And while Bundy was capable of doing that, he mostly operated at night. And he mostly avoided places where he could be seen or picked out.
Dave Cawley: In his early crimes in Washington state, Bundy sometimes approached women while claiming to be injured, needing help to put something in his car. Would Nancy Baird have taken that kind of bait?
Tiffany Jean: It seems unusual that she would have been willing to leave her post to do that when there was no one else at the station.
Dave Cawley: Bundy liked to lure women to his car—a light tan 1968 Volkswagen Beetle—then handcuffed them or knocked them unconscious. If he’d done something like that with Nancy Baird, it probably would’ve happened right in the parking lot outside the Fina station.
Tiffany Jean: And that seems like kind of a big risk for Bundy to have taken.
Dave Cawley: None of the witnesses from the Fina station reported seeing a Volkswagen Beetle like Bundy’s. And the descriptions provided by the Williams children didn’t match Ted Bundy, either.
Tiffany Jean: So, that’s another reason that seems unlikely that it would have been him.
Dave Cawley: Nancy Baird vanished from the Fina station within the space of just five or ten minutes.
Kenny Payne: Yeah I mean she’s just, she’s just gone.
Dave Cawley: No signs of a struggle, no indication she ran away.
Kenny Payne: I mean she’s got a, a child at home.
Dave Cawley: So retired sheriff’s detective Kenny Payne gets why even some of his former colleagues believe to this day Ted Bundy abducted and murdered Nancy Baird.
Kenny Payne: But then you have to try and figure out whether or not the first thought of “it’s gotta be Ted Bundy” well no, what can you find that tells me a story?
Dave Cawley: What Kenny’s saying is the elements necessary to build a narrative about Ted Bundy killing Nancy Baird just aren’t there.
Tiffany Jean also shared another, more compelling reason why she questions Ted Bundy’s supposed involvement. Bundy, she told me, might have an alibi for the day Nancy Baird disappeared. And Tiffany could be the first person to ever piece it together.
Ted Bundy first moved to Utah in September of 1974, having come from Washington state to attend law school at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Tiffany Jean: He had a steady girlfriend who lived in Seattle who was originally from Ogden. And she was probably the reason why he came to Utah in the first place, because she had roots there. And eventually they planned on settling down there, if they ever got married. But y’know, he was not a good person. (Laughs) So in addition to everything else bad that he did, he also cheated on her quite a bit.
Dave Cawley: In June of 1975, just a few weeks before Nancy Baird disappeared, Ted Bundy met a young school teacher named Leslie Knudsen at a party in Salt Lake City. Bundy and Leslie started seeing one another.
Tiffany Jean: And they dated until August, she saw that he was arrested and didn’t want anything more to do with him.
Dave Cawley: Leslie spoke to investigators back in 1975, but she was never called as a witness in court and has kept a very low profile all the years since. Her story is not well known, even among Ted Bundy experts.
Tiffany Jean: But I was able to find her phone number, and an associate of mine called her. And this was back in 2019. And it took a little while for her to warm up and agree to, to speak at all. But she gave some, y‘ou ‘know, some kind of overall arching details about her time that she spent with him. And she mentioned that he had visited her family, and she’d introduced him to her entire family at a family reunion on the 4th of July, 1975. And that struck me immediately because Nancy Baird disappeared on 4th of July, 1975. And if Leslie Knudson was accurate in her recall, then Ted probably could not have done that, if he was with her, and being introduced to her entire family at their July 4th family reunion. But it doesn’t seem like anyone else has ever put those together that he was with her on the day that this crime occurred.
Dave Cawley: I’ve listened to a recording of this interview with Leslie Knudson. There are legal and ethical considerations that prevent me from sharing the audio with you, but I can tell you what Leslie said: she and Bundy had “gone to the family ranch” on the 4th of July. Leslie didn’t say where the ranch was, and she’s not responded to multiple messages I’ve left for her. But I did some genealogy research and can tell you Leslie’s maternal grandfather was a prominent sheep rancher in an area of Utah called the Uinta Basin.
When Leslie’s mother died, the obituary described how she’d spent “many summers in the Fruitland, Utah area on the family ranch.” Fruitland is in the Uinta Basin. This is likely where Leslie Knudson took Ted Bundy on the day Nancy Baird disappeared.
Tiffany Jean: And so it’d be pretty difficult for him to have done both things on that day because it would have been quite a drive.
Dave Cawley: More than 100 miles. Quite the drive, indeed. But once investigators in the Nancy Baird case honed in on Ted Bundy as a suspect, all efforts involving other persons of interest came to a halt.
Tiffany Jean: I was amazed at how many people went through that gas station in that tiny frame of time, within like 15 minutes. And nobody saw her leave?
Dave Cawley: My look into the Nancy Perry Baird case came about because a jailhouse informant once told the FBI Cary Hartmann had known Nancy. I haven’t seen any sign that tip was ever shared, investigated or corroborated. What I’ve learned, is there are other, more likely leads still left unexplored. But after nearly 50 years, so many people important to solving this puzzle are gone. And former East Layton officer Tom Jackson told me his health is on the decline.
Tom Jackson: One of the first people I want to see, other than my parents when I get to the other side, is Nancy. ‘Cause she has bugged me for so long. What could I have done to have been there for her? ‘Cause she’s, she was not the type, to’ve just bugged out and said, y’know, “I’m tired of the world.”
Dave Cawley: “She was not the type…” This is a common refrain we hear in so many cases of missing women, and to be honest, it’s getting under my skin. Because who is the type? Sure, people do run away, but in this podcast we’ve repeatedly heard how more sinister circumstances often surround the disappearances of women. It happened with Sheree Warren. Her disappearance, 10 years after Nancy Baird’s, bore many similarities. Both were young mothers, just out of unhappy marriages. Both were last seen at work. Neither just walked away. But in both cases, speculation about about serial killers distracted investigators, drawing attention away from more probable suspects.
Tom Jackson: And boy, whoever did it, he’s another Bundy.
Dave Cawley: Against the backdrop of turnover and jurisdictional dysfunction we’ve explored, it’s easy to understand how Ted Bundy filled a vacuum. His entrance to the scene took pressure off East Layton police. Nancy Baird’s friends and relatives were placated by the belief Bundy did it, even though no proof ever emerged to support that. But there are too many unexplored avenues of investigation for me to accept that conclusion. Like the man who stalked, “molested” and threatened Nancy a couple of nights before she disappeared. Or the two “hippie type” guys chatting with her at the Fina station moments before she vanished. Or even an East Layton police officer with a troubled past.
Until these other leads are closed, how can anyone accept taking “the convenient alternative?”

The State of Idaho versus Thomas Richard Jackson.

~ Another Bundy Blog.

Thomas Richard Jackson is a former part-time reserve police officer for the now-defunct police department in East Layton, Utah (where he served from April 1975 to July 1976) that has drawn renewed media and law enforcement attention in connection to the 1975 cold case disappearance of twenty-three-year-old gas station attendant, Nancy Perry-Baird. In 1996, he pled guilty to child sex crimes in Idaho and was subsequently sentenced to an indeterminate life sentence with a fifteen-year fixed term, and although he was originally released on parole in 2011, he has since been returned to custody.

STATE of Idaho, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Thomas Richard JACKSON, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 22892, Decided: April 09, 1997

Byington, Holloway, Whipple & Jones, Jerome, for appellant. Alan G. Lance, Attorney General;  L. LaMont Anderson, Deputy Attorney General, Boise, for respondent.

This is a review of a sentence and an order denying an I.C.R. 35 motion. Thomas Richard Jackson (Jackson) pled guilty to one count of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under sixteen, specifically, his stepdaughters. After hearing evidence, including that Jackson had been convicted in Utah of sexually molesting his biological daughters, the district court sentenced Jackson to a determinate sentence of life in prison, and denied a subsequent Rule 35 motion. Jackson appeals his sentence and the denial of his Rule 35 motion. Jackson argues that the district court abused its discretion in sentencing, and that the prosecution’s alleged failure to follow the plea agreement by not affirmatively recommending retained jurisdiction amounted to fundamental error.

I: FACTS AND PROCEDURE.

Jackson was originally charged with two counts of lewd conduct with a minor under sixteen, Idaho Code § 18-1508.   Jackson entered into a plea agreement, under which Jackson plead guilty to one charge of lewd conduct with a minor under sixteen. The State also agreed to make the following sentence recommendation:

The State recommends the above-named defendant be sentenced to an underlying penitentiary sentence with no agreements as to the recommendation for the underlying sentence;  and that the State will recommend that the Court retain jurisdiction;  however, the State does not bind itself to follow the recommendations of the 180-day review report.

The charges against Jackson stemmed from several instances of lewd conduct involving Jackson and two of his stepdaughters, who were seven and nine at the time of the sentencing hearing. The abuse had been occurring for approximately two years.   The first instances of abuse involved Jackson having the victims touch his penis and escalated to the point where Jackson would have the victims sit on his penis and move back and forth. The victims were always dressed, and there was a blanket between Jackson and the victims. In addition, there were never any instances of penetration of any type, and Jackson made no threats of violence to his victims. The only threat he made was a comment that if the girls told what he had done, he would have to leave.  here is one other related charge in Jackson’s record. In 1986, Jackson was convicted in Utah of sexual abuse of a child, specifically, his biological daughters. He received probation and was required to perform 20 hours of community service and undergo counseling.

After hearing testimony from Jackson’s biological daughters, his stepdaughters, and his first wife; reviewing the presentence investigation materials; and listening to argument from the attorneys on both sides, the district court sentenced Jackson to a fixed term of life in prison, without a retained jurisdiction period. At the time the judgment of conviction was entered and the sentence imposed; Jackson was forty-eight years of age.

II: STANDARD OF REVIEW.

Sentencing is a matter for the trial court’s discretion.   Our standard of review of a sentence, as well as the factors to be considered in evaluating the reasonableness of the sentence, are well-established.   We have said that “[w]here a sentence is within statutory limits, an appellant has the burden of showing a clear abuse of discretion on the part of the court imposing the sentence.”  State v. Cotton, 100 Idaho 573, 577, 602 P.2d 71, 75 (1979).   In determining whether the sentencing court abused its discretion, we review all the facts and circumstances of the case.  State v. Broadhead, 120 Idaho 141, 143, 814 P.2d 401, 403 (1991).   In order to show an abuse of discretion, the defendant must show that in light of the governing criteria, the sentence was excessive, considering any view of the facts.  Id. at 145, 814 P.2d at 405.   The governing criteria, or objectives of criminal punishment are:  “ ‘(1) protection of society;  (2) deterrence of the individual and the public generally;  (3) the possibility of rehabilitation;  and (4) punishment or retribution for wrongdoing.’ ”  Id. (quoting State v. Wolfe, 99 Idaho 382, 384, 582 P.2d 728, 730 (1978)).

III: THE DISTRICT COURT ABUSED ITS DISCRETION IN SENTENCING JACKSON TO A FIXED TERM OF LIFE IN PRISON.

 As noted above, this Court reviews a sentence handed down by a district court for abuse of discretion.   It is not often that we vacate and modify a sentence, but for the reasons discussed below, we feel compelled to do so in this case.

A fixed or determinate life sentence is a serious penalty and should not be imposed lightly. We note with approval the language of our Court of Appeals when it stated that: ‘a fixed life sentence may be deemed reasonable if the offense is so egregious that it demands an exceptionally severe measure of retribution and deterrence, or if the offender so utterly lacks rehabilitative potential that imprisonment until death is the only feasible means of protecting society.   Unfortunately, in making these determinations, a judge has complete information only in regard to retribution and deterrence, ․ The judge must attempt to predict the defendant’s future response to rehabilitative programs and the degree of risk he might pose to society if eventually released․’

State v. Eubank, 114 Idaho 635, 638, 759 P.2d 926, 929 (Ct.App.1988).   Although it recognized the difficulty of predicting future behavior, the Court of Appeals also wisely cautioned that:

a fixed sentence should not be regarded as a judicial hedge against uncertainty.   To the contrary, a fixed life term, with its rigid preclusion of parole or good time, should be regarded as a sentence requiring a high degree of certainty-certainty that the nature of the crime demands incarceration until the perpetrator dies in prison, or certainty that the perpetrator never, at any time in his life, could be safely released.

Id: This Court and the Court of Appeals have upheld some fixed life sentences for crimes involving lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor under sixteen. In State v. Pugsley, 128 Idaho 168, 911 P.2d 761 (Ct.App.1995), the defendant was sentenced to three concurrent life terms for lewd conduct. The defendant was convicted of three counts of lewd conduct with his minor biological daughter, conduct which at a minimum included genital-to-genital contact. He had been previously convicted of raping his half-sister, had allegedly raped another half-sister, and had threatened his daughters with death if they ever told what he had done.   The defendant had an extensive criminal record, including three felonies as an adult, all of which were violent crimes.  Id. at 179-80, 911 P.2d at 762-63.

In another recent case, the Court of Appeals upheld a fixed life sentence for a man who pled guilty to one count of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor under sixteen, as Jackson did in this case.State v. Hibbert, 127 Idaho 277, 899 P.2d 987 (Ct.App.1995).   The defendant in Hibbert had repeatedly violently attacked his minor daughter and forced her to have intercourse with him.   He also kept her a virtual prisoner in their home, not allowing her to have friends, use the telephone, or go to school.   During the course of the proceedings, Hibbert made death threats to his daughter, a friend and the prosecutor.   Therefore, the Court of Appeals upheld the sentence.  Id. at 278-79, 899 P.2d at 988-89.   See also State v. Lewis, 123 Idaho 336, 352-53, 848 P.2d 394, 410-11 (1993) (upholding a fixed life sentence for a defendant who had previously been convicted for a sexual offense against a minor, attempted penetration, knew at the time of the crime that he was HIV-positive and denied he committed the crime);  State v. Martinez, 111 Idaho 281, 723 P.2d 825 (1986) (upholding fixed sentences of thirty years for rape, thirty years for lewd conduct, and fifteen years for aggravated battery, which amounted to a fixed life sentence;  the victim suffered extreme physical trauma requiring surgery, and it was doubtful that she would ever make a full recovery).

Although a fixed life sentence is a serious sentence, lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor under sixteen is a serious crime.   The physical injures can be severe, and the mental and emotional trauma can be permanent.   However, a fixed life sentence is not appropriate in every lewd and lascivious conduct case, and as illustrated above, is rendered and upheld in cases where the defendant’s conduct was violent, repetitive, very cruel, or life-threatening. Phrased differently, and considering the four goals of sentencing, a fixed life sentence is appropriate if necessary to protect society, to deter the individual and the public, if rehabilitation is unlikely, or if the behavior giving rise to the crime was so egregious that a determinate life sentence is necessary for proper punishment or retribution.

In this case, Jackson admits that he molested two of his stepdaughters, and he does have a previous conviction for similar behavior with his biological daughters.   However, the behavior involved in this particular case did not involve penetration of any type, nor were there any allegations of force.   Further, the record indicates that although Jackson was required to participate in some form of counseling under his prior conviction, the counseling was not part of a recognized sex-offender treatment program.   This becomes important because Jackson has indicated that he wishes to undergo treatment and will cooperate in every way necessary.   In addition, an evaluator indicated that the proper treatment could help prevent Jackson from re-offending.   It is also significant that the appellant took full responsibility for his actions, and did not blame the victims in any way.   Finally, Jackson had abstained from drugs and alcohol and had worked fairly steadily throughout his adult life.

With any crime, there is a chance that the defendant will re-offend.   Indeed, the evaluator in this case offered no guarantees that Jackson would not re-offend, even if he undergoes sexual offender treatment.   However, as our Court of Appeals noted, a fixed life sentence should not be imposed as a hedge against uncertainty.   The behavior exhibited in this case, while reprehensible, is not so egregious that Jackson should die in prison.

For the reasons discussed above, and after conducting our own careful review of the record in this case, we hold that a fixed term of life in prison is excessive in this case.   Considering the four goals of sentencing, we note that although society does need to be protected from sex offenders, and Jackson and the public must be deterred from such behavior, a fixed term of life in prison is not necessary to accomplish those goals.   Further, Jackson has indicated that he wants to undergo treatment, has shown a desire to change his behavior and exhibits a possibility for rehabilitation.   Finally, while Jackson deserves to be punished for his behavior, a fixed life term in prison is not necessary or justified in this case.

Therefore, Jackson’s sentence is hereby modified to an indeterminate life sentence with a fixed term of fifteen years in prison.   When fifteen years have passed, the earliest time that Jackson would be eligible for parole, the youngest victim in this case will be over 21 years of age.   Thus, the victims in this case will both be adults.

As to the issue of the breach of the plea agreement, although it was raised as an issue in his opening brief, Jackson subsequently withdrew this issue in his brief on his Motion to Reconsider Denial of Appellant’s Motion to Augment the Issues on Appeal.   Accordingly, we do not reach this issue.

IV: CONCLUSION.

In light of all the facts in this case, and considering the four goals of sentencing, we hold that Jackson has met his burden of showing that the district court abused its discretion in sentencing him to a fixed life sentence.   We therefore modify the sentence to an indeterminate life sentence with a fifteen year fixed period of incarceration.

I write only to indicate that I believe that the trial court is in the best position to make the determination of the appropriate sentence. Where the record reflects that the sentencing judge carefully considered the evidence and statements presented to him and the four goals of sentencing, this Court should set aside the sentence only where reasonable minds could not differ as to the excessiveness of the sentence.State v. Broadhead, 120 Idaho 141, 145, 814 P.2d 401, 405 (1991) (quoting State v. Small, 107 Idaho 504, 505, 690 P.2d 1336, 1337 (1984), overruled in part on other grounds by State v. Brown, 121 Idaho 385, 393, 825 P.2d 482, 490 (1992)).   This Court should not substitute its judgment for that of the sentencing judge where reasonable minds could differ as to whether the sentence is necessary to achieve the four goals of sentencing.  Id., 120 Idaho at 145, 814 P.2d at 405 (quoting State v. Toohill, 103 Idaho 565, 568, 650 P.2d 707, 710 (Ct.App.1982)).   The record here reflects that the trial judge carefully considered the heinous nature of the offense, the devastating impact on the victims, and the fact that Jackson had previously been convicted of this offense, as well as society’s need to be protected from this type of predator.   I find no abuse of discretion and, thus, must respectfully dissent.

SILAK, Justice.
JOHNSON, McDEVITT and SCHROEDER, JJ., concur.