Lynda Ann Healy’s House, 1974 vs 2022.

This is the residence where Ted Bundy attacked and abducted his first known murder victim, Lynda Ann Healy in February of 1974. Healy was born in 1952 to James and Joyce Healy and resided in an upper middle class Newport Hills neighborhood in Bellevue, Washington (a suburb of Seattle). The Healy’s had three children: Lynda was the oldest, then Laura, then youngest brother Robert. Lynda was a slender 115 pounds, with long brown hair, blue eyes, and a strong personality to compliment her kind nature. According to the book “The Only Living Witness,” by Hugh Aynesworth and Stephen Michaud, Lynda was 21 years old at the time of her murder and was a student at the University of Washington, majoring in Psychology. She also loved volunteering and working with children with disabilities. Lynda was an above average student who loved learning; she was also a talented musician and photographer, and was rarely seen without her camera.

On Thursday, January 31st, 1974, Lynda borrowed her roommates car to go shopping for a family dinner she was preparing the next night and returned with her groceries at roughly 8:30 PM. Shortly after, Lynda and her roommates went drinking at a popular bar called Dante’s Tavern located at 5300 Roosevelt Way NE in Seattle. The bar was a five minute walk from Lynda’s apartment, and the friends ordered two pitchers of beer between the four of them; however they didn’t stay out too late because Lynda needed to be up at 5:30 AM to be at her job giving the ski report for a local radio station. A number of sources report that Bundy used to go to the bar often and it is hypothesized that he first saw Lynda there then followed her home. In the early morning hours of February 1, 1974, Bundy broke into Healy’s basement room. He beat her, took off her bloody nightgown (making sure to neatly hang it up in her closet), dressed her in blue jeans, a white blouse, and boots, then carried her off into the night, never to be seen again. It is theorized that Bundy only took clothes to make it appear as if Lynda left on her own, and we’ll most likely never know the truth.

A few hours later, Lynda’s alarm clock went off at 5:30 AM and continued to buzz for another half hour until her roommate Karen Skavlem woke up. Upon inspection, Karen could see that the room was completely normal and nothing looked out of place, so she turned off Lynda’s alarm clock and left.

Later that day, Lynda’s boss called the house asking where she was: his model employee didn’t show up to the station that morning for work. It was at that point that the roommates started to become concerned that something could be wrong. When Lynda’s parents showed up for dinner that evening and were informed about their missing daughter Mrs. Healy immediately called the police.

During a search of the room, police noted that everything was extremely neat and tidy, including her bed being perfectly made, hospital corners and all. Lynda’s roommates found this incredibly strange, as she usually didn’t make her bed when she had to leave early for work. It wasn’t until after police lifted up the bedspread that they spotted blood on the pillow and parts of the bed sheets. The location of the blood on the upper part of Lynda’s bed and nightgown suggests that Bundy incapacitated her by hitting her over the head with a blunt object, most likely while she was sleeping. It is not known if Lynda was dead or alive when her attacker took her from the house. At this point in the investigation, it was very clear that something terrible had happened to Lynda Ann Healy.

For the next 13 months, Lynda’s case remained unsolved. Then, in March of 1975, two forestry students from the Green River Community College discovered her skull and mandible on Taylor Mountain, where Bundy frequently went hiking. During a search of the site, police discovered the partial remains of four women, including the mandible of Lynda Ann Healy. The police were able to confirm her identity by comparing the lower jaw bone to her dental records.

By now, the police were well aware that there was a sadistic killer targeting women in the Seattle area. It wasn’t until Theodore Robert Bundy was arrested in November of 1975 for the attempted kidnapping of Utah resident Carol DaRonch outside of a bookstore in a shopping mall that the pieces of the puzzle all came together and he became the chief suspect in Healy’s murder.