Documentation released by the FBI that is related to the John Wayne Gacy murders. In 1979, Gacy was arrested for a series of murders in the area of Des Moines, Illinois and the following year he was convicted of murdering young men ranging in age from 14 to 21; he was given a death sentence.
Geneva Joy Martin was born on November 16, 1952 to Robert Eugene and Florence (nee Boldt) Martin in Hastings, MI. Mr. Martin was born on August 7, 1930 and Florence was born on March 16, 1914 in Hutchinson, Minnesota; her occupation is listed as ‘secretary’ in her ‘geni’ profile, and the couple had two daughters but eventually divorced. In 1942 Florence moved her family to Anchorage, Alaska, where she would eventually get remarried to a man named Maurice Green, who worked for the state railroad. The couple would have two daughters together: Lynella Faith (Grant) and Madelon Grace (Mottet). Aside from a DOB and where she was born I couldn’t find any more details about Ms. Martins childhood.
At some point before her death Geneva married Harvey ‘Stormy’ Nelson Irvin … or, at least that’s what it says on her tombstone. I could find no record of their nuptials anywhere and he isn’t mentioned once in any articles about her aside from the fact that she used his last name on occasion ‘as an alias…’ I did, however, find four other marriage certificates for Mr. Irvin on Ancestry. The couple had a daughter named Daphnia Joy that was two months old when nineteen year old Geneva was found deceased, and in the year prior to her disappearance she briefly lived in Seattle and the Eugene/Springfield, OR area. Harvey was born on February 15, 1950, and after Geneva was killed he wasn’t single for very long: he married Patricia Connelly less than three years later on May 22, 1975 in Reno, Nevada.
At roughly 1 PM on June 16, 1972 the remains of a decomposed, ‘partially clad young woman’ were found face down in a ‘woody, roadside ditch’ by Frank Miller, a local farmer. She was only wearing a coat and shoes, and her hair was caked with dried mud and sediment; she remained unidentified for roughly ten days while detectives searched for clues. At the scene investigators made a plaster cast of where the victim was found in the ditch in hopes to further aid in the investigation… and this is where not having a background in policing/criminology/forensics hurts me because I didn’t know that was a thing. Looking into it, ‘casting’ is when experts preserve impressions from crime scenes (for example larger, 3D impressions such as tire marks or footprints). The process works almost the same way an orthodontist makes a mold of a patient’s teeth, and forensic experts and LE use an array of materials to help create the ‘casts.’
The young victim was taken to Eugene’s Sacred Heart Hospital, where specialists from the Oregon Crime Laboratory got to work on identifying her. According to (retired) Linn County DA Jackson Frost, they were able to tell that she was in the ditch for ‘about three days, but definitely not a week,’ and were immediately able to determine that she was no older than 25. Thanks in part to an advanced stage of facial decomp, it took thirteen days and $162 worth of long distance phone calls to Alaska (where Martin received care) before dental experts were able to make a near positive identification; a sister living in Colorado helped make an absolute positive ID. Despite an autopsy as well as ‘all kinds of lab tests,’ investigators were never able to pinpoint Martin’s exact cause of death due to her having ‘no violent wounds;’ I also found no mention of sexual assault. In the beginning of the investigation medical examiners thought they detected drugs in her system however it was later determined that the advanced state of decomp produced a chemical that masked the presence of narcotics. Despite there being 150 pages worth of notes in Martins case file, there is next to no information out there on her.
In the end of an article published in The Greater Oregon on June 30, 1972, DA Frost commented that ‘the young woman apparently was living under circumstances where she might not want to use her true name, thus the alias.’ In an article published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 28, 1973, Frost said that Martin was a known drug user and had recently been in treatment for ‘drug related mental problems’ in Eugene. At the time of her death detectives learned she had been living in Eugene for several months and a week before she was last seen had cashed her monthly welfare check then quietly slipped out of sight; it was the last time she was seen alive.
At the time Geneva was murdered Ted Bundy was living in Seattle at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Avenue, and was in the middle of a long term relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer. He had just finished his undergraduate psychology degree from the University of Washington and was getting ready for his first (unsuccessful) attempt at law school at the University of Puget Sound (which he began the following year). At the time Ted was interning as a counselor at Harborview Mental Health Center in Seattle (he was only there from June to September 1972), and according to the ‘TB MultiAgency Report 1992,’ Bundy was mostly in Seattle the week before she was found dead but made a trip to San Francisco on June 13 and stayed until the 15th; his whereabouts are then unaccounted for until June 18 when he bought gas in Seattle. As I’ve said in multiple other articles, its Bundy cannon that the serial murderer began killing in early January 1974 with his brutal attack of fellow University of Washington student Karen Sparks in her basement apartment, but during his confessions before his execution he hinted to Dr. Robert Keppel that he may have started as early as 1972 with a young girl in Seattle (but of course didn’t elaborate further than that).
I didn’t know Bundy was ever actually suspected in any additional Oregon murders on top of Roberta Parks (for sure) and (possibly) Vicki Hollar/Rita Jolly/Sue Justis, but according to an article published by The Eugene Register-Guard on February 24, 1989, Martin was at one time considered a possible victim of his as well as Beverly May Jenkins, Allison Lynn Caufman, Laurie Lee Canaday, Tina Marie Mingus, and Floy Jean Bennet. Now, I am in no way saying these women are really possible victims of Ted Bundy, I’m just saying they were in the very least in the correct place at the right (or wrong) time (well sort of, as some if the dates are completely off). Sixteen year old Beverly May Jenkins was from Roseburg, OR and in June 1972 her remains were found just off the I-5 roughly ten miles outside of Cottage Grove; she had been strangled to death. Fifteen year old Portland native Allison Lynn Caufman died as a result of head injuries after being shoved from a car moving at a high rate of speed in July 1973. I think the last two girls can be quickly debunked, as Bundy was in prison when both victims were killed. Tina Marie Mingus was only 16 years old when her body was found in Salem, OR in October 1975, and Flow Joy Bennet was 37 (and obviously a bit out of Bundy’s preferred age range) when she vanished in February 1978. What’s strange is I couldn’t find any more information about any of these women out there. It’s almost as if they never existed.
But there’s more dead and missing women, on top of that article. Twenty year old Faye Ellen Robinson was found deceased from multiple stab wounds in the upper part of her body in March 23, 1972. Like most Bundy victims, she was educated and had a good job working in county government: she graduated from the University of Oregon in 1970 and was employed by the Lane County Welfare Department. Also on March 23 Alma Jean Barra was last seen after leaving the Copper Penny Tavern in the company of an unknown man driving southbound on 92nd Avenue between 11 and 11:30 PM. The 28-year-old’s body was found in an area of heavy brush of the Willamette National Cemetery, roughly forty feet off of Mount Scott Boulevard; she had been strangled and showed no signs of sexual assault. Next is 17 year old Susan Wickersham, who disappeared from Bend, OR on July 11, 1973 after dropping off the family car at her mom’s POE after joyriding around town with a gf (some conflicting reports say she was at a party). Wickershams remains were found on January 20, 1976 and her skull had a bullet hole behind the right ear with no exit wound. Gayle LeClair was murdered in her rental house on August 23, 1973; a clerk/typist at the Eugene Municipal Library, she had been found by her supervisor stabbed to death after she failed to come in for her scheduled shift. Lastly, Deborah Lee Tomlinson vanished without a trace after running away from Creswell, OR with an unnamed friend on her sixteenth birthday on October 15, 1973.
I tried my hardest to find some sort of link between Ms. Martin and any other victims from the area, but not having a cause of death makes it really hard to compare. What I (personally) think happened: she met up with some undesirable friends and together they used some illegal substances, then Geneva overdosed and they panicked then got rid of her body in the most convenient and easiest way they could think of. I mean, to me it sounds plausible that they dumped her on the side of the road (possibly in the middle of the night) because they got scared and didn’t want to be held responsible for her death. In 1972 ‘Good Samaritan’ laws didn’t exist, so if anyone was present when she died then most likely they would have been held responsible in some capacity.
After the death of her mother Daphnia was sent to live with relatives out of state. Per the Green family’s myheritage site, she got married and had a son. Harvey went on to marry (and divorce) numerous times and had four more children; he passed away on February 3, 2007 at the age of 56. Geneva’s father passed away at the age of 84 in 2014 in Garibaldi, OR, and Mrs. Green died January 13, 1994 at the age of 79 due to a smoking related illness. Both of her half-sisters have led incredibly remarkable lives: Dr. Lynella Faith Grant is a psychologist, statistician, lawyer, personnel director, inventor, marketer, publisher, and author; Dr. Madelon Green-Mottet got her PhD in Fisheries from the University of Washington in Seattle and taught classes on aquaculture at a small college in Sitka, Alaska.
Dr. Lynella Grant.
Gayle Elizabeth LeClair was born on January 26, 1951 to Donald and Barbara LeClair in Gold Beach, Oregon. Mr. LeClair was born on June 4, 1930 and was employed as a car salesman, and Barbara Jean was born on July 8, 1930 in Redondo Beach, CA and worked as a bank teller at Western Bank. The couple were wed on February 10, 1950 and had two children together (Gayle and her younger brother Cleve*), but sadly divorced in September 1970. After his marriage ended he had a daughter named Leah with a woman he only dated for a short period of time. The woman put her up for adoption and Mr. LeClair wasn’t aware of her existence until around 2000. He went on to get remarried in December 1970 and had a son named Frank; the couple remained together until the early 1980’s. On September 22, 1985 Mr. LeClair remarried for a third time to a woman named Leola Wilson, who he remained with until his death.
Gayle LeClair was a petite, attractive young woman, with blue eyes and light blonde hair that she wore short while in high school but according to her mother grew out in college, and often wore it tied up with a leather barrette. After graduating from Gold Beach High School in 1969 LeClair went on to attend Southwestern Oregon Community College for two years. While at SWOCC she was active in the schools theater group, and during her first semester there was on the crew during a production of ‘Don’t Drink the Water.’ According to her mother, Gayle was a studious young woman that excelled in math and had dreams of continuing her education and becoming a teacher one day. When she lived at home she would (on occasion) attend service at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Coos Bay. LeClair moved to Eugene in January 1972 after she graduated from community college and got a job at the Eugene Municipal Library as a clerk-typist.
After Gayle failed to come in for her scheduled shift at 10:30 AM on August 23, 1973 (or answer multiple phone calls) her supervisor went to her house to check on her. Upon arrival, there was no sign of forced entry and the front door was unlocked, and after walking towards LeClair’s bedroom the unidentified supervisor discovered her deceased from multiple stab wounds shortly after 11:00 AM; upon the discovery she immediately went next door and used a neighbor’s telephone to contact police. Gayle had a date with a known acquaintance the night before; they went to a drive-in movie then went back to her apartment for a nightcap. She was last seen alive by him at 1:30 AM, and after a conversation with detectives the young man was quickly cleared as a suspect.
Lieutenant Donald Lonnecker with the Eugene Police Department said the LeClair was dressed for bed when she was murdered and a ‘preliminary autopsy indicated no evidence of sexual assault.’ Before moving into the house she was killed in, from January 1972 to May 1973 she resided at 3760 Concord Street in the Bethel-Echo neighborhood of West-Eugene; she lived by herself in both residences. Mrs. Duane Brown lived next door to the victim on Concord Street and said where they weren’t close and didn’t talk often she said she was a ‘nice, pleasant person.’ Miss LeClair seemed to have a healthy relationship with her family, and before she was murdered her brother Cleve visited her (he lived in North Bend with their mother), and Barbara said of her daughter ‘she would pick up the phone in the evening just to ask how our day had been.’ Neither Gayle’s mother nor father could come up with any reason why anyone would want to hurt their daughter.
Members of law enforcement were immediately baffled at the motive behind the murder of LeClair. Lieutenant Lonnecker said that the victim ‘spent a lot of time socially with people’ and ‘had a lot of friends,’ and those that knew LeClair said she was ‘both outgoing and moody, depending on who knows her and in what way;’ he also said that she was ‘pleasant, and socially active,’ had a lot of friends, and a busy social life. Despite this, neighbors of LeClair didn’t seem to know her at all, and one of them even thought the house she lived in was vacant. According to an article published in The World on August 30, 1973, the small home that LeClair rented had lots of trees, shrubs and other greenery on the property despite being in a residential neighborhood, which would make it very easy for someone to hide in her yard and look through her windows. Her landlord, J. Sidney Armstrong, was a former Lane County District Attorney that moved into private practice, and at one point even dated the victim (although not recently). Armstrong told investigators that his ex ‘had a lot of boyfriends’ and was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing. On August 24, 1973 Lane County DA J. Pat Horton said they never recovered the murder weapon, but did clarify they think it was either a ‘knife or some other sharp instrument.’
At the time of her murder in August 1973, Ted Bundy seemed to be in between jobs: from February to April of that year he worked for King County Program Planning then took a break from employment until September 1973, when he got a position as the Assistant to the Washington State Republican chairman. Although it wasn’t as intense as their first few years together he was still in a relationship with Liz Kloepfer… but he was also seeing his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Brooks on the side as well (they rekindled their romance earlier that year). He was also getting ready to start law school at the University of Puget Sound (which he started the following month in September 1973). According to the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992,’ on the day of LeClair’s murder Bundy got into a car accident in Kloepfer’s eggshell blue VW Beetle.
Now, it’s widely accepted that Bundy’s murder rampage began in January 1974, when he brutally assaulted (and most likely left for dead) fellow University of Washington student Karen Sparks in her basement apartment. But, most people in the true crime community strongly suspect he started well before this (some people think as early as 1961 with little Ann Marie Burr in his hometown of Tacoma). I feel it’s worth mentioning that during his final death row interviews with Dr. Bob Keppel, Bundy confessed to starting his murder spree in 1972, not 1974:
Robert Keppel: ‘There’s a gal in 1971, Thurston County.’
Ted Bundy: ‘No.’
RK: ‘Not that far back. Nothing that far back?’
TB: ‘1972.’
Additionally, after Bundy was executed forensic psychologist Arthur Norman told New Jersey based news magazine ‘The SandPaper’ that the killer once told him that he murdered ‘two women in the Philadelphia area’ (most likely Elizabeth Perry and Susan Davis), which he suspected were his first two homicides. Dr. Norman even notified Atlantic City Prosecutor Jeffrey Blitz about his confession, who immediately shot down the story, calling it inconclusive. He never investigated it.
Ted confessed to abducting Roberta Kathleen Parks from Oregon State University on May 6, 1974: he drove her over 250 miles away to Taylor Mountain, where he raped and killed her. She is his only confirmed Oregon victim. In interviews with law enforcement, Bundy confessed to murdering two additional women in the ‘Beaver State’ but refused to elaborate any further; according to most law enforcement, Vicki Hollar and Rita Jolly are the best candidates. On June 29, 1973 seventeen year old Rita Lorraine Jolly left her family home to take a walk, something she did every night before bed. She never returned home. Not even two months later on August 20, 1973 twenty-four-year-old Hollar disappeared without a trace after leaving the Bon Marche in Eugene, where she had just gotten a new job as a seamstress two weeks prior. Detectives tried but were unable to question Ted regarding Vicki’s disappearance before his execution in 1989, eliminating the chance of closing the case in relation to the serial killer. I was not able to find anything from the Hollar family in regards to Bundy, however I did find a quote by Jill Jolly: ‘as I recall, my mother told me that the local detectives managed to get a direct question about Rita through to him before his execution, and his reply was ‘No. No more in Oregon.’ Bundy withheld many secrets in the end in hopes to parlay them into yet another stay of execution, and even told detectives that ‘there are other buried remains in Colorado’ (then of course he refused to elaborate any further).
Regarding how close the Bon Marche in Eugene was compared to LeClair’s residence, WebSleuths user BlueJean40′ points out that ‘both of these locations are relatively close on the same side of our city. Just wondered if anyone had read anything about them possibly being connected.’ Not even three months after LeClair was killed on November 5, 1973 twenty-three year old Suzanne Justis most likely hitchhiked from her home in Eugene to Portland, as her car was found left behind at home. She spoke to her mother from a phone booth located outside of the Memorial Coliseum. Justis told her mother she was planning on coming home the following day to pick up her young son from school but never showed up. No trace of her has ever been recovered.
Now, when I say this I’m in no way implying that Ted Bundy was responsible for every single murder that took place in the state of Oregon in 1973… but I am surprised that after two years of very intense research I’m still coming across names that I’ve never seen before. During my research into Gayle LeClair I learned about a young women named Faye Robinson (her high school yearbook spelled her first name ‘Fay’), who was found deceased from multiple stab wounds in the upper part of her body not even six months before LeClair in March 1973. Like Gayle, Robinson was educated and worked in county government: she graduated from the University of Oregon in 1970 and was employed by the Lane County Welfare Department.
Another girl I want to mention is 17 year old Susan Wickersham, who disappeared on July 11, 1973 after dropping off the family car at her mom’s POE in downtown Bend after joyriding around town with a girlfriend (some conflicting reports say she was at a party). Her remains were found on January 20, 1976 and her skull had a bullet hole behind the right ear with no exit wound. Lastly, a 15 year old girl named Alison Lynn Caufman disappeared out of Portland sometime in 1973 (I was unable to find an exact date or any more details about her) as well as eighteen year old Laurie Lee Caniday from nearby Milwaukie (yes, that’s spelled correctly).
Now, I want to (briefly) talk about the May 1969 Garden State Parkway killings separately from the other missing/murdered girls for a moment, just because I feel that they share some (very) general commonalities with the murder of Miss. LeClair (even though I personally don’t think Bundy was responsible for the murder of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry): like LeClair, both victims expired as a result of multiple stab wounds, and even though none of Ted’s other victims (that we know of, anyways) ever suffered from any similar types of injuries we do know that he used a (dull) knife to cut the throat of little Kimberly Dianne Leach in Florida on February 9, 1978.
Aside from Ted, another name that came up in relation to the murder of Gayle LeClair is Dayton Leroy Rogers, an American serial killer that has been linked to the slayings of at least eight ‘street’ women (which is code for sex workers/addicts/runaways) across Oregon. He was convicted of the murder of his final victim in 1988, and two years later in May 1989 he was sentenced to death after being found guilty of six additional homicides. Rogers was actually sentenced to death on three separate occasions, but all three times the Oregon Supreme Court vacated the decision and remanded the cases for a new trial; he was sentenced to death for a fourth time on November 16, 2015. According to Roger’s defense attorney, the killer said that he would have waived all future appeals and allocated to his atrocities in exchange for a life sentence rather than receiving the death penalty. His death sentence was overturned for the fourth time on November 12, 2021 partially thanks to a new law signed by Governor Kate Brown limiting the amount of ‘aggravating factors required for seeking the death penalty.’ Governor Brown commuted the death sentences of everyone on Oregon’s death row to life without parole on December 13, 2022. Dayton is still alive as of June 2024, and will live out the rest of his days behind bars.
Now, nothing in my research told me that Ted Bundy was ever considered a suspect in LeClair’s murder, despite her living in a fairly accessible area to him and fit neatly into his preferred age range, as he killed young females anywhere from 12 years old (possibly even as young as eight if you throw Ann Marie Burr into the mix) up to 26 years old (ski instructor Julie Cunningham). Miss. LeClair also fit the physical description of one of Ted’s victims, as she was beautiful and slim and had long hair and a petite build. But these superficial details are pretty much where any possible link to Bundy ends.
Mr. LeClair died at the age of 74 on January 27, 2009 due to a ‘smoking related illness.’ He was an avid outdoorsman, loved racing, and was a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Gayle’s brother Cleve died of heart failure on May 9, 2009. He was active in a local HAM radio club and was trained to help run a radio station in the event of an emergency. Frank LeClair was able to tell me that Barbara LeClair passed away on December 11, 2024.
* Edit, January 2025: I would like to thank Gayle’s brother Frank, who was kind enough to reach out to me and point out a few mistakes I made and give me some updates about his sister’s case. He shared with me that a detective from the Eugene PD Cold Case Squad had been in touch with him in recent years, who shared they had uncovered a piece of evidence in relation to the murder that unfortunately at the time had not been properly processed into evidence, therefore there was no chain of custody and it wouldn’t hold up in court. But they did however send a piece of the sample to a laboratory that specializes in recovering DNA and they were able to uncover two partial but separate genetic profiles from the blood evidence. The detective shared with him that they needed a blood sample from an immediate family member in order to determine which portion belonged to Gayle, and unfortunately since Frank was only a half-sibling he didn’t qualify, as it needed to come from a ‘more direct relative.’ He helped them get in touch with Ms. LeClair’s mother Barbara, who happily volunteered a sample. After receiving it the lab was able to isolate the suspected killers DNA from the sample taken from the crime scene, however because of the age and the fact that the sample was degraded they weren’t able to obtain a full set of genetic markers.
But Frank did tell me that recently they were able to get genetic samples from every person of interest in relation to the case, and if they were deceased they got one from one of their children. So far investigators have been able to clear every suspect except for one, who died several years ago; his child has refused to voluntarily give up a DNA sample. The detective told Frank the names of a few different suspects that were eliminated after the DNA evidence was analyzed, but he forgot most of them. The ones that stuck out the most were Gayle’s date that night and the landlord, John Sydney Armstrong.
When I went to Seattle in April 2022 there were a few places I never got around to seeing, one of them being Bundy’s Issaquah dump site… but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying: I drove around the same three mile area for almost two hours one day trying to find it (Google Maps really dropped the ball with that one, IMO). I finally had to give up because it was taking precious time away from other places I needed to see, and as I was driving away I remember thinking to myself that I’d never get back there again and I blew it. But, thankfully in May 2024 I was able to spend a few days in Washington state during my vacation to Oregon and I was finally able to locate it, with a little help with my friend Cole Kaiser, who is awesome and deserves recognition for his help.
Issaquah is a small city located about fifteen miles east of Seattle. Back in 1974, it was much (much) less populated than it is today, going from 4,500 residents to roughly 40,000. The Issaquah dump site is where Ted Bundy dumped the bodies of Janice Ann Ott, Denise Marie Naslund, and (most likely) Georgann Hawkins (despite her body never positively being identified). A University of Washington student, Hawkins was last seen in the early morning hours of June 11, 1974 after leaving a party early and stopping by her boyfriend’s dormitory room to get some Spanish notes for an upcoming final she was worried about. She stopped and chatted with a male friend named Duane (who was a Beta Theta Pi fraternity brother, like her bf) out his window then walked off into the night and was never seen again. Twenty-three year old Ott and nineteen year old Naslund both disappeared on July 14th, 1974 from Lake Sammamish State Park, which is located just ten minutes away from the dump site. All three girls vanished without a trace until later that year on September 6th, when two hunters discovered what they strongly suspected were human skeletal remains while out looking for grouse.
Upon arrival Seattle based LE discovered a variety of human bones, most of which had been dispersed throughout the wooded area thanks to local wildlife (including, but not limited to, bobcats, bears, coyotes, and cougars). Among the bones found were teeth, a jawbone, pelvis, a skull, five femurs, and a spine, and investigators quickly determined that some of them belonged to Ott and Naslund. During Bundy’s death row confessions he also claimed that he buried Hawkins at the site as well, but investigators were never able to positively confirm this.
At the time of the murders in the mid-1970’s forensic experts (in most cases) needed either a mandible or skull to make a positive ID, as they often relied on matching teeth against dental records due to the fact that DNA testing wasn’t a ‘thing’ back then. Some of the bones that were found at the site were cremated and as a result were never able to be tested, as it was apparently ‘department policy’ to incinerate bones that were left unidentified in storage for too long. As I said earlier, the search team recovered five femur bones from the area, which retired King County Detective Dr. Robert D. Keppel said proved that Bundy dumped at least three victims there.
Looking at the pictures that I included below (of the site from the 1970’s to now), it’s obvious the area has undergone quite a transformation over the past fifty years. For example, Highlands Drive wasn’t there at all, and the Swedish Issaquah Campus wasn’t built until over 30 years after the murders took place. Additionally, back in 1974 the area could only be accessed through a narrow and winding dirt pathway, and the railway line that ran through the city’s Olde Town neighborhood was taken out and replaced by the Rainier and Issaquah-Preston walking trails that are still there today.
Despite The Issaquah dump site being the first one that was found it wasn’t the first one that Bundy utilized: six months after its discovery in March 1975 a second dumping ground of bodies was discovered at nearby Taylor Mountain (also called Tiger Mountain) when two forestry students from nearby Green River Community College stumbled upon skeletal remains while marking trees for a school project. I wonder what Bundy’s logic was for switching up his dump sites, moving from Taylor Mountain (where he left Lynda Healy, Brenda Ball, Kathy Parks, and Sue Rancourt) to Issaquah. Did he want to move somewhere else in an attempt to throw off law enforcement? We also know that he was impulsive and often made decisions quickly and without much thought: did he just stumble across this location one day and decide to utilize it? Or did Ted maybe have a close call at Taylor Mountain, possibly running into other (late night) hikers or even a policeman out on patrol?
During his January 1989 confession Ted told Dr. Keppel that he buried Georgann’s head in an area that was very close to the dump site, roughly 25–50 yards north parallel to the dirt road before turning left and walking about ten years ‘through the trees, eventually coming across an area he described as ‘very rocky’ and ‘very rocky.’ Investigators didn’t wait long to go looking for Hawkin’s remains after Bundy was put to death, and on February 15, 1989 search teams combed through the Issaquah dump site once again, but were unable to find any trace of the young co-ed. We do know that Ted was known to imbibe during his murders, and very well could have been drunk, high, or both. When you consider that and the fact that the murder was committed nearly fifteen years prior to his confession it might explain why no trace of George was ever found. Or… was Bundy purposefully giving investigators the bare minimum in an attempt to get another stay of execution. Or, was it all just another lie?
James Dean Knox was born on April 4, 1955 in Warsaw, NY; he has an older sister named Cynthia and a son named James Dean Knox III. Twenty four year old Knox was last seen on December 11, 1979 and his Grandmother (who saw him two days prior in her home in the southern part of Warsaw) waited ten days to report him as missing to the authorities. All of his clothes, possessions, and money was left behind.
I found very little information regarding this case on the internet, however this is the only instance where quite a few people from local (Warsaw, NY) Facebook groups reached out to me when I asked for more information, offering me their insight and even what they think may have happened to him. Per his best friend, Jimmy’s mother thinks that her son is in the witness protection program, however he feels that he fell in with the wrong crowd, began experiencing money issues and as a result wound up at the bottom of a well on an abandoned farm in nearby Java. Neither theory seems to have any merit to it.
Knox has blue eyes, dark blonde hair, is 5’11” tall, and weighed 150 pounds at the time of his disappearance; he was last seen wearing a red plaid jacket, blue jeans and black boots. He wore corrective lenses with plastic frames and was suffering from unknown health concerns, which he was apparently pretty upset over. Because of these ongoing issues he was on leave from his POE at the Leroy Machine Company.
Knox lived in the heart of Warsaw on Wyoming Street and frequently ate at a local pizzeria. Before his disappearance he served in the US Navy for roughly one month before being honorably discharged due to medical reasons on May 25, 1979.
Per WIVB both of Knox’s parents and his grandmother have passed away, and his sister still resides in Warsaw. As recently as 2021 New York State Police released a statement about Knox asking that anyone with information related to his disappearance come forward and contact Investigator John Neeley at 585-786-7244, referencing case #3029766. As of June 2024 no trace of Knox has ever been recovered.
Works Cited:
13wham.com/news/local/nysp-continues-to-investigate-warsaw-mans-disappearance-41-years-later
charleyproject.org/case/james-dean-knox
troopers.ny.gov/missing-knox-james-d
When I went to Utah in November 2022 there was one location I was completely unaware existed that I wish I (somehow) knew to include in my list: the supposed ‘Ted Bundy Ritual House’ just outside of SLC in Bountiful. The duplex-style residence is located at 1201 North 200 West, and is said to be ‘just across the street’ from Viewmont High School, which is where Deb Kent was abducted by Bundy on November 8, 1974 after his botched kidnapping attempt of Carol DaRonch just 45 minutes away in Murray. Kent was last seen at roughly 10:30 PM after leaving a showing of ‘The Redhead’ to go and pick up her brother from the nearby Rustic Roller Rink. According to eyewitnesses, there were loud screams heard from the parking lot at roughly the same time that she was last seen, and after the Kents realized that the family car had never left the parking lot they immediately contacted the police.
Before Bundy was executed in January 1989, he confessed to killing then 17 year-old Kent and pointed investigators to where he dumped her body. Upon searching Fairview Canyon later that May the only human remains that search crews located was a patella, which was found among the ten bags of animal bones that were collected. The kneecap was presumed to belong to Debra and was given to her family to hold onto, and it remained unidentified until 2015 when DNA testing confirmed that it belonged to her. After the positive ID the Bountiful PD returned the bone to Belva Kent along with her daughter’s official death certificate.
According to Redditor ‘je-m-en-fiche,’ Bountiful residents that lived in the area referred to it as the ‘Viewmont House’ because of its close proximity to the local high school. Looking into the residence, it’s in no way ‘close’ (in my opinion, anyways) to Viewmont HS, nor should it be considered just across the street (it’s actually 0.2 miles away, and is about a five minute walk). It was featured on the Travel Channel television show Ghost Adventures, ‘starring’ Zak Bagans and his group of cronies (including Aaron Goodwin and Nick Groff), specifically for the limited spin-off mini-series ‘Serial Killer Spirits.’ The episode, titled ’The Ted Bundy Ritual House,’ aired on October 26, 2019, and focused on the abandoned structure that has been uninhabited since a gas leak led to an explosion on July 4, 1997. The show’s creator and ‘lead investigator’ Zak Bagans claims that Bundy took Debra Kent there after abducting her after she left a showing of ‘The Red Head’ to go pick up her brothers from a nearby roller skating rink.
In addition to the TB ritual house, Ghost Adventures did episodes on HH Holmes (he killed a nine year old kid in a house in Irvington, Indiana and the current owner felt that dark and sinister forces had ‘overtaken the property’), Joliet Prison in Illinois (where John Wayne Gacy spent only a small amount of time), and an episode titled ‘Axe Killer Jail,’ where the team investigated a prison in Council Bluffs, IA, where SK Jake Bird was once housed.
Because the events of the episode are so ridiculously absurd, I’m not going to spend much time on a synopsis of it. In a nutshell, it began with some little ginger-haired boy that supposedly lived next door to the house (knowing Bagans it’s probably his own kid) peeing on a log on the front steps (Zak tells one of his cronies to smell it ‘for research,’ and he does), and of course the GA’s crew followed him home and gave him (and his mother) the third degree and told them exactly what they wanted to hear… and the guys ate it up like a piece of fucking cheesecake. When asked how he felt about the house the kid told Bagans that there were ten mean child-aged spirits that lived there and were trying to kill him and they ‘better not go in there because they might kill you.’
In the beginning of the episode, a one-time resident of the home named Peter Kingston claimed that when they first moved in his family found weird, mysterious satanic symbols drawn on the walls, including various ‘devils signs’ (including a ‘big pentagram’ on the wall) and ‘666’s all over the place.’ At some point during the episode some guy named Vincent (who does not appear to be with Bagans’ crew and I don’t care enough about him to do any additional research) said that when he was in the house prior to the episode he was pushed down the stairs and almost went through the side railings. As the show progresses, the ghost hunters break out all their fancy bullshit equipment meant to detect supernatural activity, and of course everything they do results in some sort of captured phenomenon (I mean, no one would watch it if nothing happened), and plenty of jump scares and ‘sledgehammers of evil’ (Zak’s words, not mine) ensues.
One of the first things the GA team does upon entering the residence is attempt to open a portal on the floor near a pentagram using what Bagans calls a ‘geophone device,’ which he said ‘measures temperature and electromagnetic energy.’ However, according to the website HiggyPop that’ ‘isn’t strictly true. A geophone doesn’t detect heat or electromagnetic energy, as the name suggests it’s to do with geological movement and it actually detects vibration. The gadget Zak is using is called an EDI meter which has several functions built in, including EMF and thermometer as well as a geophone. Ironically the geophone is the one function of the device that Zak is not using.‘
In addition to the ‘geophone’ (that really isn’t a geophone), Bagans used night vision cameras, digital recorders, and a spirit box, which is a device that rapidly scans AM/FM radio frequencies in an attempt to pull paranormal messages out of the static and white noise. Two additional pieces of equipment the team used (that I have also never heard of before) is the Ovilus V (which is a tool that supposedly allows spirits to communicate with the living by selecting words from a internal database using their ‘energy’) and a TriField meter, which measures EMF in the form of radio-frequency, magnetic, and electric fields.
Zak and Aaron used an SLS camera in the upstairs part of the house, which is a device which ‘looks for’ human-like shapes in the darkness and supposedly can capture images in the absence of light that the human eye can’t see. According to the investigators, while using the camera in a hallway they captured what they described as a ‘mind-blowing figure,’ which was shown in the form of a ‘glitching and dancing stickman on the camera’s screen for a brief moment’ (I cannot make this up, they pulled it out of thin air).
After doing some research into the history of the structure, Bagans was wrong: Bundy never could have brought Deb Kent to this house, because it was actually occupied by two different families at the time of her abduction in November 1974. In an interview with KSNV, the Peterson family had five daughters residing there at the time Kent was abducted in November 1974, and ‘people have said that Ted Bundy took women over here and killed them in this house at the time that Debbie Kent got taken. We were living here. Two families were living here and never saw anything like that happen.’ … ‘I think it’s ridiculous because Ted Bundy never came over here. Nothing like that ever happened here.’ Cindy’s mother Rolean did share that she felt the residence was haunted (just not by Ted Bundy), and that the family experienced several strange things during their time in the house: on one occasion they were sitting in a front room and a white ball flew out the wall, seemingly out of nowhere.
Despite Bundy never having any actual ties to their former residence, Mrs. Peterson said that as mother of five young girls she made sure to always keep the doors locked, and ‘it was a really terrifying time for everybody here.’ She also commented that linking Bundy to the old residence only further exploits his victims, and that ‘he was a monster. And I don’t think he should be glorified in any manner at all. If they’re going to tell a story, they need to get their facts straight.’ KUTV out of Salt Lake reached out to Mrs. Belva Kent about the Travel Channel’s episode on the residence and she said that every time a movie or TV special is made about her daughter’s killer her family is forced to relive their pain and that the show only glorified the man that killed Debra.
According to a ‘deseret.com’ article published on July 5, 1997, the duplex went up in flames the day before after gas accumulated underneath the basement ceiling from a leak which caused the explosion (which was most likely ignited after the water heater kicked on). After an assessor was able to investigate the fire it was determined there was nearly $100K worth of damage done to the structure, with the first-floor apartment suffering the majority of it.
According to Redditor ‘OatyBisc,’ ‘I grew up in Bountiful (I even went to Viewmont HS where the abduction happened!) and this house has nothing to do with Ted Bundy other than proximity. I was excited to see an episode from my hometown but there were so many inaccuracies it drove me crazy! Debbie Kent’s body was never found, but they did find a patella at a site where they found bones from other murder victims and a few years ago they verified it was hers through DNA. This was maybe 20 miles or so from Bountiful, not 100 miles. Her headstone is in the city cemetery, but her body is not there. When she disappeared this house was occupied. It only looks bad now. I drive past it occasionally and it’s pretty worn and clearly burnt on the North end, but the fire was much later. It’s a spooky looking house and they have ghost tours there occasionally, but the Ted Bundy angle is a stretch.’ In addition to this, a Redditor going by the handle ‘pengony’ pointed out that when Bagans was told by locals that the house was completely unrelated to Bundy he told them that he didn’t care and was going to film there anyway.
Just as a side note, the episodes IMDB page gives a completely different narrative and outright fabrication of the truth: ‘Zak and the crew investigate an abandoned house in Bountiful, Utah, where locals claim notorious serial killer Ted Bundy murdered one of his victims. Overloaded with satanic rituals and violence, the home is drenched in a dark, sinister energy.’
Now… this isn’t just some old, dilapidated house with a possible (but, not really) link to Ted Bundy: referred to as the ‘Anson Call House,’ the residence was built by a pioneer of the Mormon faith (Anson Call, obviously) in the early days of Bountiful when it was known as Session’s Settlement (or North Canyon). The building, which began as a one-room cabin, was initially constructed in 1855 and the first additions to the home were made two years later when a dining room and kitchen area were built as well as a basement. Over the years a second floor was added, and it eventually turned into the structure you see today (or, before it blew up).
Interestingly enough though, Ted Bundy isn’t the house’s only murderous link: In Adam Call-Roberts blog post titled, ‘Mary & Anson Call: Hosts to a Killer,’ in October of 1857, Anson and Mary Call hosted then Utah Congressman John Doyle Lee overnight, blissfully unaware that just one month prior their guest participated in the ‘Mountain Meadows massacre.’ In September 1857 an emigrant group from Arkansas known as the Baker–Fancher party set up camp in Utah’s Mountain Meadows, which was a staging area in the southern part of the state that was used to get ready for the long crossing of the Mojave Desert by groups that were going west to California.
In the early morning hours of September 7, 1857 a group of Paiute Indian and Mormon militia men that were dressed as Native Americans attacked the circled wagons without warning. The party fought off their aggressors the best they could and the conflict went on for four days; in the process fifteen emigrant men were killed either in battle or while attempting to escape. Congressman Lee didn’t get involved in the dispute until the third day, when he approached the wagon party and convinced them to surrender their possessions and weapons in return for safe passage to nearby Cedar City. The emigrants (who were low on ammunition and supplies) accepted his offer and surrendered, and it was then that roughly 120 people from the Baker–Fancher party were then slaughtered, leaving only 17 small children behind. In 1874, Lee was arrested for leading the massacre: his first trial ended with a hung jury and two years later a second one took place in which the prosecuting attorneys put the blame solely on his shoulders. He was convicted and sentenced to death. On March 23, 1877, Lee was executed by firing squad at the very site of the massacre that took place twenty years before.
In conclusion, there’s a lot of different videos and podcasts on this residence, but one thing is for certain: Ted Bundy had absolutely nothing to do with this house.
Works Cited:
Deseret.com/1997/7/5/19321700/fiery-4th-home-goes-up-in-flames/
Roe, Ginna. (October 25, 2019). ‘Travel Channel links Bountiful house to Ted Bundy, former residents say ‘it’s ridiculous.’’ Taken May 22, 2024 from https://kutv.com/news/local/travel-chanel-links-bountiful-house-to-ted-bundy-former-residents-say-its-ridiculous
utah.com/things-to-do/attractions/mormon/mountain-meadows/
In 2004 a California jury found Scott Peterson guilty of killing his 27-year-old pregnant wife, Laci and their unborn son, Conner after a five-month long trial. Since then, he’s had multiple (failed) attempts at an appeal but was successful in getting his death penalty conviction overturned in favor of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. However his latest attempt (taken up by the Los Angeles Innocence Project) claims that there is untested DNA evidence that is just sitting out there that could help prove that someone else killed Laci and Connor. Prosecutors disagree with him and came up with this 337-page rebuttal opposing his motion for new DNA testing, describing the ‘overwhelming’ case against him that earned him a guilty verdict in the first place.
I always knew John Wayne Gacy created artwork while in prison but I didn’t know Bundy did as well. Referred to as ‘the Ted Bundy Drawings,’ these five pieces of artwork were supposedly sketched by the killer himself, and it’s strongly speculated they depicted images that utilized metaphors as well as allusions and weren’t of his victims. They offer no explanation for his crimes against humanity, but do share some general, very loose commonalities, such as dark and intense eyes, over-exaggerated mouths, and a consistent ‘phallic’ type of shape.
Thank you to the website ‘The True Crime Database” for these pictures. Taken on May 2, 2024 from https://www.thetruecrimedatabase.com/case_file/ted-bundy-drawings/
Edward Kemper was first eligible for parole in 1979, and he had additional (unsuccessful) hearings in 1980, 1981, and 1982; he waived his right to stand in front of the board in 1985. Kemper was again denied at his 1988 hearing where he said, ‘society is not ready in any shape or form for me. I can’t fault them for that.’ Once again, he was denied parole in 1991 and 1994, and he waived his right to a hearing in both 1997 and in 2002. He stood in front of the board was in 2007 but was once again denied, and at that time his attorney indicated he was content with remaining in prison. In 2012 he once again waived his right to a hearing, and was denied parole on February 2, 2017. Most recently he was denied parole on July 9, 2024 and his next parole hearing is (tentatively) scheduled for July 2031, when he will be eighty-two-years old
About the decision to keep Kemper incarcerated, Prosecutor Ariadne Symons said, ‘we don’t care how much of a model prisoner he is because of the enormity of his crimes.’
Deborah Lee Tomlinson was born on October 15, 1957 in Bitburg, Germany to Arthur and Sandra (nee Roup) Tomlinson. Arthur Vernon Tomlinson was born on September 22, 1937 in Modesto, California, and Sandra Lee Roup was born on December 31, 1939 in Livingston, Montana. According to the Tomlinson family tree, the couple had three daughters together: Deborah and her twin sisters, Jean and Joyce (b. 1958). At some point they divorced, and Mr. Tomlinson was briefly married again in 1968 (they quickly parted ways; he went on to have a relationship with Sally Morphis and in 1969 they had a son together named Daniel. He got married to Shelley Williams on August 30, 1975 in Orange, CA but their union also didn’t last long, and they split up in February of the following year. Mr. Tomlinson was married for a fourth time, and the couple had a son together. Sandra got remarried to Henry Nelson on May 10, 1963 in Billings, Montana.
After their parents parted ways Deborah, Jean, and Joyce went to live with their father and stepmother in California, and Sandra relocated to Oregon. Because of their parents’ divorce the girls were separated from their mother at a very young age, which Joyce felt prevented them from forming a strong bond because she wasn’t given a chance to raise her own babies.
According to most reports online, Deborah Lee Tomlinson disappeared from Creswell, Oregon** on her sixteenth birthday on October 15, 1973. Creswell is an incredibly small town with only one high school, and according to the 1970 census the reported population was made up of a mere 1,199 people (it went up to 5,031 in 2010). Referred to as ‘Debbie’ by family and friends (per Joyce, she hated being called ‘Deb’), Tomlinson had brown eyes, stood at 5’5” tall, and weighed 140 pounds (Joyce felt she may have been slightly heavier); she wore her golden-brown hair at her shoulders and had a ring of moles around her neck. In the initial days following her disappearance investigators strongly believed that she was a runaway, which most likely explains why I couldn’t find any newspaper reports or media coverage on her. One of the only other real takeaways I could find regarding her case was that she disappeared with an ‘unidentified teenage friend.’
** After I initially wrote the article on Deborah in April 2024 I was contacted by her sister Jean, and more recently Joyce. Both sisters were kind enough to help fill in some of the gaps in their family background and were able to provide me with some of their thoughts regarding her disappearance. According to Jean, their Aunt Helen told them in more recent years that Deborah had ran away from Eugene, not Creswell, and at one point the family had been contacted by a friend that claimed they had seen her in Santa Rosa, CA with ‘a black guy,’ which was a big deal as their father didn’t approve of people of color (Joyce also said she was there visiting a friend named Lyn). The family member also volunteered that they thought she may have been pregnant at the time as well, but nothing ever came out of that. About this alleged sighting, Joyce doesn’t feel it’s true, as that’s where their grandmother lived and Deborah would never have left the area without paying her a visit, especially if she had been pregnant (the two were especially close).
According to Jean, after their parents split up the girls were raised by their father in California, but because Deborah’s didn’t get along very well with their stepmother she had moved to Oregon to live with their mother (who she also clashed with). She also said that at the time her sister disappeared she seemed mostly happy but had been in a bit of a transition period in her life and may have been under the impression that moving out of state may have resulted in more lenient rules, but that wasn’t the case.
According to Joyce, Debbie was simply acting like any other teenager, doing things like sneaking out at night and smoking: one evening in a quick moment of anger their dad announced that he was pulling a ‘Pontious Pilot’ and was ‘washing his hands of her.’ When she left home Joyce said somehow she knew it would be the last time that she ever saw her, and to this day she struggles with her feelings towards her father about that event. Additionally, she strongly suspects that a missing person’s report was never filed in the days after she was last seen, as she never came across one after contacting local Oregon law enforcement. Because of this, I strongly feel that Debbie didn’t disappear exactly on October 15, 1973, and most likely vanished sometime around it.
Jean shared with me that in the years following her sister’s disappearance neither one of their parents wanted to talk much about her, as it brough up too many painful memories. Because of this she told me that she doesn’t know as much about her as she would like to, but she does know that Debbie loved rock n ’roll music and had gotten caught sneaking out at night several times while she still lived with them in California.
Shortly after Deborah disappeared Joyce told me that their stepbrother had reached out to let her know about a formerly missing woman had been found murdered that happened to have some moles around her neck in a pattern similar to Debbie’s (which she said appeared to be ‘almost like a spaced apart, like a necklace’); it obviously turned out not to be her.
When I asked if perhaps Debbie had run off with a guy, Jean shared with me that was what most likely happened, despite the fact the sisters weren’t allowed to date until they were sixteen. Regarding her feelings on the recent ‘genetic genealogy’ craze and if she thought it could help solve the mystery of what happened to her sister, she said that she has never been contacted by LE about it, however at one point she was told by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children that any records possibly related to Deborah were destroyed in a fire.
In 1984 Joyce and her husband took a road trip with their grandkids to visit their great-grandmother and Hank, and while there her stepfather shared that he caught Debbie sneaking out one night and she had been smoking marijuana. He told them that this freaked him out and he tried to do a ‘scared straight’ type intervention and had reached out to the local county sheriff (who had happened to be a friend of his), who had come to the house and had a conversation with his teenage stepdaughter; Debbie disappeared shortly after that.
At the time Tomlinson disappeared in October 1973, Ted Bundy was living at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Avenue Northeast in Seattle, and where it was a five-hour drive (one way) from his residence to Eugene/Creswell, we know he had no problem with traveling long distances to look for prey. Despite being in a long term, (supposedly) monogamous relationship with Liz Kendall, while on a business trip with the Republican Party to California in the summer of 1973 he rekindled his romance with one time girlfriend Diane Edwards. Ted’s former flame visited him in Seattle on multiple occasions in the latter part of the year, and the couple at one point were even briefly engaged… but the happy times didn’t last long, and in January 1974 he abruptly and without reason cut off all contact with her.
On top of juggling two women, in September 1973 Ted enrolled in law school at the University of Puget Sound, and according to the ‘TB MultiAgency Investigative Team Report 1992,’ on Monday, October 15, 1973 when Tomlinson disappeared, he was in class. Additionally, at the time he was in between employment: in September 1973 he was the Assistant to the Washington state Republican chairman and remained unemployed until May 3 of the following year when he got a position with the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia.
In addition to Ted Bundy multiple other serial killers roamed the Pacific Northwest in the early to middle 1970’s: the first one (aside from Ted) that popped in my head was Warren Leslie Forrest, a double murderer that has been sentenced to two life terms in prison for the murders of Krysta Blake and Martha Morrison in 1974; he is also considered the prime suspect in at least five additional murders and disappearances going back as far as 1971. He has been in police custody since 1974 and on February 4, 2023 he was convicted on another murder count after DNA linked him to the murder of Martha Morrison.
On June 8, 1961, Portland police received a call from a housewife whose dog had returned home with a human foot in a paper bag, and when detectives went to her home the animal came back with a hand. Upon investigating, LE found several additional body parts around the woman’s neighborhood, and all of the appendages were deemed to be fresh and were completely drained of blood. Police went through local missing people’s reports and came across the file of twenty-three year old Joan Caudle, a housewife and mother of two that had recently been reported missing by her husband (who of course was an immediate suspect).
Joan’s husband told detectives that where she wasn’t normally a big drinker she had been a bit depressed recently because her mother had been sick, therefore there was a chance she had been at a bar having a few. Police then tracked down a barfly that had a string of arrests for public drunkenness and she told them she had been in a bar on the night of June 7 and met a man going by the name Marquette. The pair had seemingly hit it off when a woman approached them and stole his attention away, and when detectives showed the eyewitness a photograph of Joan Caudle, she said that was definitely the same woman from the bar.
Upon his arrest Marquette admitted that he raped and murdered the Portland housewife then he drained her blood, dismembered her body, and left her head to rot in the woods. Despite being found guilty of first degree murder the jury recommended leniency, and Marquette was sentenced to life in prison.After serving only eleven years of his sentence (during which he was described as a model prisoner), he was released on parole in 1973.
Not even two and a half years after Marquette was released on parole in April 1975, a fisherman discovered a mutilated corpse floating in a Willamette River slough in Marion County, Oregon; it had been bled dry and had been dismembered. Detectives determined the remains were those of thirty-seven-year-old Betty Lucille Wilson (one report said she was thirty-five), a North Carolina native who led a life of extreme poverty and had seven children since marrying her abusive husband at the age of 16. At the time she was killed she was living in an abandoned school bus.
While he was confessing to Wilson’s murder, Marquette also shared with detectives that he killed a second woman in a similar fashion sometime in 1974, and he led them to two shallow graves where he had disposed of the bulk of the remains. Unfortunately because the head was never found, there was no way the victim could be identified, and Marquette admitted that he didn’t know who she was. Her identity remains unknown.
Within a five-month period in the latter part of 1973 five young women went missing in Oregon, and three more were found murdered: first was Rita Lorraine Jolly, who disappeared on June 29 while taking a nightly walk in her West Linn neighborhood; her remains have never been found. On July 9, 1973 the body of Laurie Lee Canaday was recovered in the middle of the road at the intersection of Southeast Scott Street and McLoughlin Boulevard in Milwaukee, OR. Next was seventeen-year-old Susan Wickersham from Bend on July 11; her body was discovered in January 1976, only five miles south of her hometown; she had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Additionally, sometime in July 1973 fifteen-year-old Allison Lynn Caufman of Portland died as a result of head injuries after she was shoved from a car moving at a high rate of speed.
On August 20, 1973 twenty-four-year-old Illinois transplant Vicki Lynn Hollar was last seen getting in her black 1965 Volkswagen Beetle (with the running boards removed) after she left her place of employment at the Bon Marché in Eugene, where she had been working as a seamstress for about two weeks. It’s thought that she was headed home to her apartment, as she had plans of meeting up with a friend to attend a party in her neighborhood later that evening (she never showed up). Friends shared with police that she had a habit of picking up hitchhikers; her VW and personal belongings have also never been recovered. Just three days later on August 23, 1973, Gayle LeClair was found stabbed in her apartment in Eugene, OR. The twenty-two year old had recently moved to the area after she got a job at the Eugene City Library.
Just six days after Deborah Tomlinson was reportedly last seen, thirty-two-year-old Virginia Erickson disappeared from Sweet Home on October 21, 1973; although it’s never been proven, evidence points towards her husband being her killer and that it most likely took place while the two were ‘out on a hunting trip.’ Lastly, we have twenty-three-year-old divorcee Suzanne Justis, who went missing on November 5, 1973. From Eugene, Justis had hitchhiked to Portland (despite owning her own car), and had called her mom from a payphone outside of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum to let her know that she would be home the next day to pick up her son from school; she never showed up. Not one case has been solved.
Strangely enough, there was another young woman with the same first and last name as Deborah that had been brutally killed a little over two years after she was last seen in Colorado: nineteen-year-old Deborah Kathleen Tomlinson was murdered in her apartment complex on Belford Ave in Grand Junction on December 27, 1975. In the days that followed her murder, detectives quickly exhausted all leads and the investigation quickly went cold. Forty-five long years went by. In an article published on December 3, 2020 by the website ‘WesternSlopeNow,’ the Grand Junction PD announced a break in the case: they had partnered with a DNA Technology Company called Parabon to analyze the unknown semen and blood that had been found with the victim at the original 1975 crime scene.
About the process, Parabon’s Chief Genetic Genealogist CeCe Moore said that they analyze ‘the DNA, so we can look at 850,000 genetic markers that will allow us to predict relationships that are distant.’ Also, just as a side note, Moore is the scientist that helped solve the 1971 murder of Roman Catholic schoolteacher Rita Curran out of Vermont (who up until recently was also an unconfirmed Bundy victim). After the samples that were collected from the original 1975 crime scene were processed, Parabon built a family tree using public records in an attempt to identify the unknown person-of-interest, and it was concluded that a man named Jimmy Dean Duncan killed Deborah K. Tomlinson. As of April 2024, law enforcement has found no connection between Duncan and Tomlinson, but found that he had a family member that lived close to the college she was attending at the time of her death. Detective Sean Crocker from the Grand Junction Police Department commented that ‘we believe Mr. Duncan visited this relative, and that’s how possibly he could’ve encountered Ms. Tomlinson.’ Jimmy Dean Duncan passed away in 1987.
Arthur Tomlinson died at the age of sixty-four on January 29, 2001 in Las Vegas, NV. Deborah’s mother Sandra Lee Nelson passed away from lung cancer at the age of sixty-three on February 2, 2003, and according to her death certificate, she had been the owner/operator of a café. Sandy’s husband Henry died on March 16, 1994 at the age of 54, most likely in a medical facility in Spokane, WA. Deborah’s brother Daniel Sean Tomlinson died in 2022 at the age of fifty-three in California.
Deborah’s sister Jean retired after almost twenty years in the RV Business in November 2023, and she currently lives in Henderson, Nevada with her husband of almost twenty years, Dave. In 2019 Joyce retired from the Bureau for Child Support Enforcement with the State of West Virginia, and was married to the love of her life until he passed away on May 26, 2003. She currently resides in St Thomas, Pennsylvania. If Deborah was anything like her sisters, she was a kind, compassionate person that would have done a lot of good in this world.
In the years following Deborah’s disappearance the twins remain close, although Jean admitted her disappearance has been incredibly hard on their family. She also confessed that a small part of her always thought her big sister would reach out to one of them when they were adults, after everyone had grown up. More than anything they want closure, and at the very least wish they had a body to properly lay to rest so their sister could be with the rest of their family. Debbie would have been an aunt and great aunt multiple times over, and it’s heartbreaking to think of her never getting to meet either of her brother-in-laws, or nieces and nephews. As of October 2025, Deborah Lee Tomlinson’s case remains open and she would be 68 years old. Joyce said that the family’s DNA is on file with the NCMEC website.
* In October 2025 I finally came across the Tomlinson family’s Ancestry page, which helped give me a lot of background into Deborah’s family life and background. I also updated the article with information from an interview that I did with her sister Jean in February 2025 as well.
Works Cited:
Namus. Retrieved April 3, 2024 from namus.nij.ojp.gov/case/MP11096
Websleuths. ‘OR – Deborah Tomlinson, 16, Creswell, 16 Oct 1973.’ Retrieved April 3, 2024 from https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/or-deborah-tomlinson-16-creswell-16-oct-1973.319290/
Westernslopenow. December 3, 2020. ‘Cold case murder of Deborah Tomlinson solved after 45 years.’ Retrieved April 3, 2024 from https://www.westernslopenow.com/news/local-news/cold-case-murder-of-deborah-tomlinson-solved-after-45-years/
Another Bundy Blog. 