The following is a wealth of miscellaneous Bundy-related information including receipts, victim pictures, and other various documents not frequently seen. Courtesy of internetarchives.
‘Ted Bundy and File 1004 Documents from Seattle PD.’
Author: Another Bundy Blog.
Harborview Medical Center.
In April 2022 when I went to Seattle I arrived very late in the evening, maybe around 11:30 PM or so. I was far too excited to go to bed (despite not sleeping well the night before and flying across the country) so I explored the neighborhood I was staying in and found a 7/11. While Ubering from the Sea-Tac Airport to my Air BnB one of the places we drove past was the Harborview Medical Center and I knew right then and there that I made the right choice in coming (traveling alone across the country is completely out of character for me and I was hoping my husband would talk me out of it).
An interesting tidbit about Bundy’s time at Harborview: he interned there as a mental health counselor from June 1972 to September 1972 with Kathy Swindler (daughter of the former Captain of the Seattle Police Department), who may have introduced him to her good friend Kerry May-Hardy (an unconfirmed TB victim that disappeared from Seattle on June 24, 1972). Wow, that was the longest run-on sentence ever. Additionally during his brief stint there he stole some patient files from Dr. Jim McDermott (who was the losing Democratic primary opponent of Albert Rosellini) with zero repercussions.
Carole Ann Carson/Boone/Johnson/Anderson/Bundy??
In the Bundy community children are usually considered “off-limits,” meaning (the handful of us that do know) about adult Rosa don’t share what they know (I’m loyal to who told me and I’ll never tell a soul) and we blur out her face in any early childhood pictures. After Amazon’s “Falling for a Killer” I had hopes that there’d be a season two featuring Carole Ann and Rosa… little did I know she passed away and Rosa completely dropped out of the public eye (good for her).
Ted met Carole Ann in 1974 in Olympia, WA when they were employed at the Washington State Department of Emergency Services. When the pair first met she was newly divorced, working full time and was raising her teenage son, Jamey/James; additionally one of her uncles had just recently died. Carole’s one time colleagues said she was very maternal, and often acted like a sister/mother figure to the department. Although competent, smart, and good at her job, the young Mother still reportedly had a goofy side and often would engage in office pranks and antics with her work friends (such as starting a rubber-band war or going on a three-hour bender in the middle of the afternoon at the Voodoo Room at the nearby Bailey Motor Inn). Bundy’s brief employment with the DES (he was only there from May 3, 1974 to August 28, 1974) caused quite a commotion with both men and women, as most people employed there found him charming and intriguing. As for Carole Ann, she was immediately dazzled by him: she felt Ted was an introvert and that he carried himself with “a certain dignity.” At the time she was reportedly in a complicated relationship with “a large, unpleasant man” and Ted was still with Liz Kloepfer (although that didn’t seem to stop him from straying); their relationship didn’t turn romantic until Bundy’s Florida’s trials started in 1978. The couple famously wed in January 1980 while Ted was on trial for the murder of Kim Leach. She got pregnant with Rosa while Bundy was on death row and the pair started a very unconventional family (she gave birth in October 1982); that didn’t last long as she divorced him in 1986. About Rosa, Ted said in a letter dated November 16, 1981: “my joy over Rosa remains too sublime for words, and it” …. “that it shall stay that way for as long as I live. I have had four visits with her since her birth and the sense of the miraculous had not worn off. The extraordinary beauty of what Carole and I have created is awesome. I am fascinated with watching her whether she’s asleep, nursing, crying or studying me with those curious blue eyes of her. I’ve become very proficient at changing her diapers, too. (another pen bites the dust. This one isn’t much better) I must add.”
Carole Ann was born on April 12, 1947 in Seattle, and sadly passed away at the age of 70 on January 13, 2018. After Bundy was executed she lived under an assumed name and eventually ran into some considerable health problems (it is speculated she had multiple sclerosis and in later years was confined to a wheelchair). She checked herself into a retirement community/nursing home in Seattle, where no one knew who she was. Carole’s friends there said she “enjoyed knitting and watching soccer,” and that she “she had attitude. She loved nature programs, especially ones about sharks.”
Sara A. Survivor (Susan Roller) File.
Here is some official documentation related to the Sara A. Survivor article I finished a while ago (that I will be rewriting soon). Courtesy of cavdef.org and Erin Banks/CrimePiper.
Quora Question: ‘Have you Ever Met Ted Bundy?’
I was looking into something and came across this ‘Quora” page with the question, ‘have you ever met/seen Ted Bundy?’ Some of the answers were pretty interesting. I included them in screen shots below.
The Elizabeth Potter Perry Memorial Auditorium.
One neat thing about this project is I’m constantly finding new information and pictures of victims I already wrote about. I always update my pieces too (by the way) with the new things I learn and recently I discovered that there was an auditorium dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Perry located at the Humane Society in Golden Valley, Minnesota (she is one of the girls killed by the Jersey Shore in NJ during Memorial Day weekend in 1969).
Bundy’s Unconfirmed Victims: A List.
Instead of another in-depth deep dive here’s a brief summarization of each girls case along with a few pictures of Bundy’s more frequently discussed unconfirmed victims. I’ve written about multiple other “suspected” victims (like Kathy Kolodziej or Rita Curran) but those I didn’t include in this list as they are “easily debunked” (obviously Bundy didn’t kill Kolodziej as he was in Seattle at the time and she was in school in Cobleskill, NY and William DeRoos killed Rita Curran in Vermont).
Ann Marie Burr, 8, August 31, 1961 (disappeared). Tacoma, WA
Ann Marie Burr was born on December 14, 1952, in Del Morte County, California, to Donald and Beverly Ann (nee Leach) Burr. Eight year old Ann Marie Burr vanished from her bed without a trace on a stormy night in late August 1961. She lived a little over 3 miles away from Ted and contrary to popular belief, he was not her paperboy and his Uncle Jack did not give Ann Marie piano lessons.
Lisa Wick (20) (survived) & Lonnie Trumbull (20), June 23, 1966. Seattle, WA.
Early in the morning on June 23, 1966, roommates Lonnie Trumbull and Lisa Wick were brutally attacked as they slept in their basement apartment in the Queen Anne Hill region of Seattle. Both victims were originally from Portland, Oregon and were employed with United Airlines as flight attendants; they had only been living in the apartment for a month and (for some reason) had intentions to move into another unit in the complex later that week. Trumbull and Wick had a third roommate (Joyce Bowe), who came home around 9:30 AM to find her roommates brutally beaten. Thankfully Wick was wearing large hair curlers which helped cushion the blows of the assailant that probably saved her life. Sadly Trumbull wasn’t so lucky and she succumbed to her injuries.
Susan Perry (19) & Elizabeth Davis (19), May 39, 1969. Ocean City, New Jersey.
On May 30, 1969, 19 year-old co-eds Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry were stabbed to death near mile marker 31.9 of the New Jersey Parkway in Somers Point, NJ. The young women visited the Jersey Shore on vacation for Memorial Day since the Tuesday before. Susan had just completed her degree at an all-girls school in Godfrey, Illinois called Monticello Junior College and was set to graduate on May 25 with an associates of arts degree; Elizabeth started after her friend so she still had a ways to go in her studies before she graduated. Around 4:30 AM they left their boarding house to head back to Camp Hill, Pennsylvania in hopes of beating the holiday traffic, and before they hit the road stopped to grab a bite to eat at The Somers Point Diner. No one is really certain what happened after the girls left the restaurant roughly an hour later: A NJ trooper found their light blue 1966 Chevrolet convertible abandoned on the side of the Turnpike around noon that day and had it towed. On June 2 at about 1:30 PM, the bodies of the friends were discovered by a Garden State Parkway maintenance worker named Elwood “Woody” Faunce Jr. who searched the area of the parkway where the convertible was found. Their remains were found hidden under piles of leaves in dense woods roughly 200 yards away from the Parkway and about 150 yards from the abandoned Chevy. Davis was found completely naked and her clothes were found neatly folded in a pile nearby; Perry was fully clothed except her underwear was missing. There’s varying reports on whether or not the girls were sexually assaulted: some sources say that Perry was not raped but no determination could be made for Davis. Others claim that both girls remains were too decomposed to be able to tell, and still others that said there was “some evidence of sexual assault” but didn’t go any further in their explanation. Later news reports claim that neither girl had been sexually assaulted.
Kerry May-Hardy, 22, June 24, 1972. Seattle, Washington.
Kerry May-Hardy was born on April 3, 1950 in Seattle, Washington to John and Sheila (most recently Olson) Hardy. She grew up in the Capitol Hill district of Seattle, and attended Lincoln High School in Seattle before she dropped out her senior year. Kerry married James Garvey May on May 15, 1971 at Central Lutheran Church in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle but by the time she disappeared the couple were reportedly separated. The evening before Kerry disappeared in June of 1972 she spent the night at a girlfriends house in the Woodland Park area of Washington and from there (per a note she left behind) was going to a second girlfriends house roughly ten miles away on Beacon Hill. Years into the investigation Seattle cold case detective Mike Clestnski said that at some point it was reported she was last seen alive hitchhiking around the Woodland Park area on June 13, 1972 (a day after what was initially reported). Her remains were discovered at a golf course in September 2010 after her burial site was disturbed. May-Hardy physically fit Bundy’s victim profile, however he was executed in 1989 and never mentioning her name or claimed responsibility for her murder. Additionally Gary Ridgway has reportedly not commented on her case either.
Vicki Lynn Hollar, 23, August 20, 1973 (disappeared). Eugene, OR.
Vicki Lynn Hollar was born in Illinois on March 8, 1949, and after graduating from Southern Illinois University she moved to Eugene, OR in June 1973. At 5:00 PM on August 20, 1973 Hollar was last seen getting into her 1965 black Volkswagen Beetle with the running boards removed; she was leaving her job at Bon Marche (she was a seamstress) at 8th Avenue and Washington Street in Eugene, Oregon. Vicki and her supervisor walked out to their vehicles together after work and it’s suspected she may have been on her way to her apartment located in the 6600 block of West 27th Avenue. She had plans to attend a neighborhood party with a friend at 8:00 PM but she never came home. Vicki was never seen or heard from again. Her friends reported that she did have a habit of picking up hitchhikers and all of her possessions and clothes were found at her residence; she also never picked up her last paycheck. Vicki’s parents said that their daughter was a happy girl that was content with her life: she liked her new job and had no reason to just up and leave.
Rita Lorraine Jolly, 17, June 29, 1973(disappeared). West Linn, OR.
Rita Lorraine Jolly was born on December 6th, 1955 to Donald and Mary Elizabeth (nee Horner) Jolly of West Linn, Oregon. Jolly left her residence on Horton Road in West Linn, Oregon at 7:15 PM on June 29, 1973 to go for a nightly walk and vanished without a trace. The 17 year-old was last seen between 8:30 and 9:00 PM walking uphill on Sunset Avenue. Like so many other Bundy victims she was slender and had long, dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Jolly walked with a slight limp after a horse she was riding fell over and crushed her leg. Rita’s front teeth may have overlapped slightly and she had a small scar above her right eye just below the eyebrow.
Joyce LePage, 21, July 22, 1974 (disappeared). Pullman, WA.
Joyce Margaret LePage was born to Walter and Florence Ethelyn (nee Ham) LePage on December 4, 1949 in Pullman, Washington. Described by her family as an athletic and intelligent student, after graduating from high school she decided to attend Washington State University, which wasn’t a surprise to the LePage’s as they had a history at the school and her grandfather taught there. Despite having an off campus apartment, Joyce enjoyed sneaking into Stevens Hall, a vacant dormitory on WSU’s campus (which was also under construction at the time in the summer): she hung out on the first floor and enjoyed the quiet atmosphere and would study, write letters to her long distance boyfriend, and play the baby grand piano when the stress from the vigorous, quick-paced semester became too much. At 21 years-old, she was last seen on the schools campus on July 22, 1971. Her remains were discovered nine months later in a deep ravine south of Pullman, Washington wrapped in military blankets and a piece of missing (stolen??) carpet from Stevens Hall bound with rope. Multiple suspects have never been cleared.
Brenda Joy Baker, 14, May 25, 1974 (disappeared). Puyallup, WA.
Bespectacled Brenda Joy Baker was born on July 13, 1959, to Benjamin and Margaret (Stephens) Baker in Enumclaw, WA. Fourteen-year-old Baker was attending Tahoma Junior High School when she ran away from home on May 25, 1974; despite her young age, Baker was a frequent hitchhiker. She was last seen near Puyallup, WA on May 2, 1974 trying to thumb a ride “south” to Fort Lewis; her remains were found 31 days later on the outskirts of Millersylvania State Park not far from the Restover Truck Stop. Before she vanished, the young lady told her friends she was “planning to meet a soldier.” Baker had a long history of running away from home, even living in a foster home for an unknown period of time. However, this time the young child’s absence was immediately noticed by her family, and a missing person’s report was filed the same day. On June 17, 1974, Bakers body was found on a small road located on the outskirts of Millersylvania State Park by hikers. The young girl was positively identified as Brenda Joy Baker by Thurston County sheriff’s investigators in part due to a police report filed by her parents with King County Police as well as dental records, clothing, and jewelry (two bracelets, an earring, and a ring) found with the body. Brenda seems to come from a tragic roots, having two brothers who also passed away extremely young: Benjamin was born in 1956 and passed away at the age of 25 in 1982 and Victor who was born in 1960 but sadly died in 1981 at the age of 21.
Sandra Jean Weaver, 19, July 1, 1974 (disappeared). Salt Lake City, UT.
Sandra Jean Weaver (who went by Sandy) was born on August 5, 1955 to Bruno and Marlene of Arcadia, Wisconsin. An investigator for Mesa County Colorado Sheriff’s office said that Sandra left Wisconsin in the summer of 1974 and moved to Salt Lake City; she hitchhiked the whole way there with a girlfriend and a male friend. After the friends arrived they went to Toole and either stayed with ‘a girlfriend and a couple boys in a trailer’ or in an apartment (I read conflicting reports). She got a job roughly forty miles away in Salt Lake and hitchhiked everyday back and forth to work. Sandra was last seen leaving the “Wycoff Building” from the Salt Lake area on her lunch hour around 10/11 AM on Monday, July 1, 1974 after two individuals picked her up at her residence around 8 AM and dropped her off at her place of employment. The body of Sandra Weaver was discovered the next day on July 2, 1974 around 4:00 PM by tourists hiking in the area near DeBeque, CO by the Colorado River about sixteen to eighteen miles east of Grand Junction. Her naked body was found beaten and strangled off a service road in the Palisades Canyon (some sources say it was DeBeque Canyon) in Colorado. She had been sexually assaulted and died by suffocation due to strangulation; her fingernails were freshly manicured shortly before her death. Unfortunately her body wasn’t identified until January 1975: according to an article titled “Services Pending for Murder Victim,” she was identified through a nationwide check of persons reported missing. Law enforcement also found a very particular type of contact lens on the victims remains, and using optemetric tests forensic experts were able to determine that lens belonged to Weaver; dental records were also used.
Laurie Partridge, 17, December 4, 1974 (disappeared). Spokane WA.
Laura ‘Laurie’ Lynn Partridge was born on May 31, 1957 to Ken and Mary Partridge of Santa Monica, California. The family relocated to Spokane from Fountain Valley, CA when Mr. Partridge was transferred by the outdoor advertising firm that he worked for in August of 1974. At first Laurie was incredibly upset about the move to Washington state and had hopes of going back to California as soon as possible but she quickly settled into her new life. She even broke up with her old boyfriend in CA and started dating a new guy in Spokane. At roughly 12:30 PM on December 4, 1974 Laurie went to the administrative offices at her school after telling friends she was starting to experience menstrual cramps; she wanted to go home and lay down before her shift at work later. She didn’t have a car of her own so she called both of her parents for a ride, but they were working and told her to just hang out and wait for the bus (I read in a news article that it was rainy that day). Not willing to sit around and hoping the walk and some fresh air might help soothe her cramps, Laurie decided to trek the two miles home. She was never seen or heard from again.
Debbie Diane Smith, 17, birth date unknown. February 1975 (disappeared), SLC International Airport.
Not much is known about Deborah Diane Smith. Her stats on ‘bci.utah.gov’ website list her as 6’7” tall and 180 pounds but I wonder if this is a typo. Additionally the website says “the victim was located deceased in an open pasture located North/West of the Salt Lake International Airport. The victim was located by a Utah Power and Light worker checking on poles.”
Melanie ‘Suzi’ Cooley, 18, April 15, 1975 (disappeared). Nederland, CO.
Melanie Suzanne Cooley (also called Suzi by family and friends) was born on October 27, 1956 to Bob and Nina Cooley in Boulder, Colorado. The middle child in a family of six, Ms. Cooley was 18 years old when she disappeared close to the high school she attended in Nederland (which is about 50 miles away from Denver) on April 15, 1975. After classes were over on Tuesday, April 15, 1975, Melanie left the high school she attended in Nederland, Colorado where she was a senior and was never seen or heard from again. She was last seen by friends hitchhiking nearby campus, and it’s unclear where or when exactly she got picked up; no one saw the vehicle the young girl climbed into that day. On Friday, May 2, 1975 the body of Melanie Suzanne Cooley was discovered fully clothed and frozen by a maintenance worker on Twin Spruce Road near Coal Creek Canyon about 20 miles away from where she was last seen. Of the discovery, Jefferson County Sheriff Brad Leach said: “she had been bludgeoned, perhaps with a stone. Her hands were tied in front with a yellow nylon cord; many, many feet of it, wrapped around and around. She died from a blow to the head and strangulation. Her face had been beaten repeatedly with a rock … One contact lens was missing. The body was in pretty bad shape. What with freezing and thawing, and the wild things, two weeks lying there.”
Shelley Kay Robertson, 23, July 1, 1975 (disappeared). Golden, CO.
Shelley Kay Robertson was born on July 24, 1951 to Roberta and Elmer Robertson of Arvada, Colorado. She graduated from Arvada High School in Colorado in 1969 then spent a year doing missionary work for the United Church of Christ in Biloxi, Mississippi. After returning she attended Red Rocks Community College where she majored in Spanish. I’ve read varying reports that say she disappeared on either June 29 or July 1, 1975… what I’m deducing is she was last seen on June 29 and failed to show up to work on July 1, 1975 (I could be wrong). Seven weeks later her body was discovered in a mine shaft near Georgetown by mining students. Clear Creek County investigator Bob Denning went to Salt Lake City to discuss Robertson’s disappearance with Bundy and when asked about Robertson he said “I don’t want to talk about that.” Denning said he is 99% sure that it was Bundy who murdered Shelley.
Nancy Perry-Baird, 23, July 4, 1975 (disappeared). East Layton, UT.
Nancy Perry-Baird was born on January 14, 1952 to Kenneth and Elna (nee Dee) Perry of Provo, Utah. Nancy was divorced and had a young son when she disappeared on July 4, 1975. She was working a 3-11 PM shift (some sources say it was until midnight) as an attendant at the Fina self-service gas station in East Layton, Utah. A little after five o’clock Officer David Anderson stopped and chatted with Nancy for a bit during her shift; he bought a soda water before leaving a few minutes later to investigate a potential alcohol violation at the Shamrock gas station on the other side of the highway. When Nancy’s manager Bonnie Peck popped in to get some soda water at around 5:30 she came into a line of customers and no cashier. What happened between Officer Anderson leaving and Bonnie Peck arriving? Somehow in that 15-20 minute time frame Nancy had vanished off the face of the earth. All of her personal belongings including her car, purse, and cashed paycheck were left behind. The only thing out of the ordinary was that $10 worth of gas on a pump that hadn’t been paid for. Nancy has never been recovered.
Ted Bundy Murder Cellar.
My Salt Lake City trip was a bit of a disaster right from the start: my Mom passed away in July 2022 after a six year battle with Multiple Myeloma… then we got pregnant less than a month later after trying for over 2.5 years! Then as quickly as that happened, suddenly we weren’t anymore… despite not being in the best mindset mental health-wise, by Fall I was ready to get away. So, I planned a 4 day long trip to Salt Lake City in November 2022. Unfortunately I not only missed my flight there but I missed it home as well. I guess I just wasn’t at my best and it showed. I probably should have pushed the trip off but I did get through all the places I wanted to see.
We all know that Ted left Seattle and moved to Salt Lake City to attend the University of Utah Law School in early September 1974. He resided in a few different apartments while in SLC: he lived at 565 1st Ave N from September 1974 to September 1975 then moved to 364 Douglas Street on September 26th, 1975. His 1st Ave address is roughly 15 minutes away from the cellar where Douglas Street is just 10 minutes away. In 1976 he briefly lived at 413 B Street while on trial for the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch.
This site in Emigration Canyon is supposedly where Bundy killed up to 12 girls, although there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever proving he ever stepped foot in the area. Ted never mentioned taking his victims to a cave or cellar in any capacity. No longer a cave, it’s now just a weird old shack sitting right in between Donner Way and a condominium complex. In my opinion, it sounds like it’s all just a local urban legend. Watching videos about this place before I went to Salt Lake, it looks like it’s in a super sketchy area in the middle of the woods but it was right by the Donner Pass and strangely enough, the condominium nearby was built in 1966 (meaning it was there when Bundy was active in Utah). I put this off until last because I was pretty sure Ted never killed anyone here (meaning if I missed it I wouldn’t have been too upset). I’m shocked at how out in the open this place is. Once I knew where I was going it was easily accessible, with well worn pathways that have been used frequently.
Ted’s Death Wagon.
Susan Wickersham.
Susan Ann Wickersham was born on November 21, 1955 to Roy and Sharon Wickersham of 905 SE Roosevelt Ave in Bend, Oregon. “Susie” (as she was called by family and friends) was 5’3” tall, weighed 110 pounds, and had medium length blonde hair. One of three children, at the time she disappeared Susan was 17 years old and had just completed her junior year at Bend High School. Family and friends described her as “a likable young lady with a bubbly, outgoing personality.”
In 1973, Bend, Oregon had a population of approximately 37,000* people and contained only one high school, and (for the most part) its residents were trusting and everyone residing there felt safe. At that time in the 1970’s hitchhiking was common (and legal), as people believed in the goodness of others. At roughly 11:30 PM on Wednesday July 11th, 1973, Susan dropped the family car off at the Sage Room Restaurant where her mother was employed after joyriding around town with a girlfriend (some conflicting reports say she was at a party with friends). Sharon let Susan borrow the vehicle on the condition that she return it before her shift ended. The restaurant has since closed but was located at 855 NW Wall Street in Bend, OR. Mrs. Wickersham asked her daughter if she wanted to sit and wait with her until the restaurant closed and they could drive home together, but Susan said she was going to hitch a ride with friends across the street in front of the Owl Pharmacy. When they didn’t show up she decided to trek the two miles home. Susan was last seen walking away from the drug store toward the intersection of Wall and Franklin streets wearing a ‘brown car coat,’ white slacks, white shoes and a blue and white checkered shirt; she was carrying a brown handbag.
After Susan never came home that summer night, the Wickersham family became frantic with worry and traveled all over Bend in hopes to locate their daughter. They showed anyone willing to look her picture, begging for any information they may know about what may have happened the night she disappeared. Police said that disappearances among young people at the time were a “dime a dozen” and theorized that she took off but would “turn up soon.” Mr. and Mrs. Wickersham immediately suspected foul play and told law enforcement that Susan didn’t runaway and would never leave voluntarily: she had a steady job and no problems in her personal or family life. Unfortunately they didn’t agree and suspected the teen ran away from home. In the months following Wickersham’s disappearance, police received multiple reports of possible sightings of her: former Bend Police Chief Emil Moen said they received calls that she was seen in Vancouver, Klamath Falls, Portland, and Bend. Most of these reports were from people who had seen girls that they felt looked like Susan. Two of them said she was in Klamath Falls a few days after Wickersham disappeared; another report was given by a salesman who said he recognized her as a girl he saw eating breakfast at a restaurant in Klamath Falls after he saw a story about Susan on the news. A Bend woman said that she spoke with a girl fitting Wickersham’s description at a bus stop in Klamath Falls. All reports lead to nothing. Wickershams little sister Rhonda McMurran said that “the police tried to tell them she had run away. I just don’t think they took it real seriously at the time. We knew better.” … “I just knew she was gone, but you still have to hold hope.” The family knew deep down that something bad had happened to their Susan. Because at first they weren’t taken seriously, the Wickersham family feels that law enforcement lost valuable time and evidence in the first few years after she disappeared. The police however claim that’s not true at all, and they did follow up on multiple leads and claim they made a real effort to locate her.
Denice Blake was at the Sage Room Restaurant waitressing the night Susan disappeared in 1973 and told police she remembers seeing her childhood friend briefly when she stopped in to return her mothers car. In 2015, Denice told KTVZ: “It was just a sunny ordinary day. This was Bend, Oregon in 1973, stuff like that didn’t happen here. I worked at the Sage Room Restaurant with (Susan’s) mom. She came in that day and we said ‘hi’ and exchanged greetings. A couple minutes later, I was waiting on a table and I saw her standing across the street in front of what was then the Owl Pharmacy, and the next time I happened to look out the window, she was gone.” A different eyewitness claimed to have seen Wickersham near the Tower Theater a little later on in the night.
On January 20, 1976, Susans remains were discovered about three to five miles south of Bend in the Deschutes River Woods; I read conflicting reports that said a man scouring the area for firewood stumbled upon them and others that said “a logger near a truck weigh station close to Highway 97 found her remains near a cinder pit.” With the body were some “personal items” and scraps of clothing that helped identify her. Like most other cases involving a “dump site” in a remote location, forest creatures had scattered Wickersham’s bones all over the area. Her skull had a bullet hole behind the right ear with no exit wound, and because of this police feel that she most likely met her demise from a small caliber weapon (possibly a .22 pistol). Portland Deputy State Medical Examiner Larry Lewman determined that the bones were there for “probably two years or more” and were those of an individual in their late teens/early 20’s (but had no idea if the skeleton belonged to a male or female). Because Susan’s dental records couldn’t be located (for unknown reasons), Bend law enforcement had to mail the skull to her former dentist, Dr. David Mason (who moved to Stewart, British Columbia to treat Eskimos) in hopes he could ID his former patients teeth from memory. Dr. Lewman said that “we’re depending on memory. There are some distinctive dental characteristics (residual baby teeth, impacted wisdom teeth) which he (Mason) might remember.” Thankfully Dr. Davis did remember because he was able to confirm that the skull belonged to Wickersham as he “recognized the dental work as his own.” Former Deschutes County District Attorney Mike Dugan said that “there was no doubt that she was dead, there’s no question she met death by a homicidal act, so it became a whodunit.”
Unfortunately the amount of evidence found with Susans remains was next to nothing and the case once again went cold. To this day law enforcement has an unnamed person of interest in mind but unfortunately not enough evidence to prosecute them. In 2004 (one source said it was 2005), the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office assembled their ‘Cold Case Team,’ which consists of veteran law enforcement whose mission is to investigate cases that have long gone nowhere and still remain unsolved. According to a 2011 article published in the Bend Bulletin, “the squad consists of four retired law enforcement officials who volunteer about 20 hours each week poring over binders filled with information on unsolved crimes. And it’s Wickersham’s long-unsolved case that sparked the start of the cold case squad.” They are hoping for members of the public to come forward and help provide new information to help link the suspect to Susan’s murder. On September 12, 2006, the Cold Case Squad joined forces with a FBI crime scene processing team from Portland that included 15 volunteers from the sheriff’s office search and rescue unit. Together they searched an area near Knott and Scalehouse Roads in hopes to collect new evidence related to Wickersham’s case (however they didn’t come up with much).
In July 1973, Ted Bundy was in between jobs: from November 1972 to April 1973 he worked for the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission helping draft the state’s new hitchhiking laws (ironically he also wrote a rape-prevention pamphlet). He remained unemployed until September 1973 when he was the assistant to the Washington State Republican chairman. The ‘FBI Multi-Agency Team Report 1992‘ has no record of Teds whereabouts on 7.11.1973 (although he was in Olympia the day before and after). Bundy was in between schooling at the time as well: later on in the year he enrolled in the of University of Puget Sound’s Law School in Tacoma (that endeavor didn’t last long). He was also in a long-term relationship with Liz Kloepfer at the time as well. The drive from the Rogers Rooming House in Seattle where Ted was residing at the time to the Sage Room Restaurant in Bend was a bit over six hours, one way (or roughly 330ish miles). Receipts put him in Seattle the day before and after but in my opinion, Ted definitely could have made that trip easily with no issues. and what if he bought gas in cash (so there was no real paper trail)? Now, I know I’m not a cop or criminologist. I know that none of Bundy’s victims suffered from gunshot wounds BUT (and I’m just throwing this out there): in a 2022 interview with People magazine, Carol DaRonch said Ted “brandished a gun” when he attempted to kidnap her in 1975 in Utah. Did Bundy experiment with alternative methods aside from a crowbar and strangulation? In my article about the homicides of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry (also known as the New Jersey Parkway Murders), I wrote about how the two girls were vacationing at the Jersey Shore Memorial Day weekend in 1969 and were stabbed to death shortly after they departed for home. Were these early murders ones Bundy committed before he honed and “perfected” his technique? The human body contains a shockingly large amount of blood; was stabbing and shooting too “messy” for Ted, which is why he never returned to these methods again (that we know of anyways)? We do know he carried an extra set of clothes in his car with him at all times in case of emergencies. Personally, I do think this case is a bit of a stretch and poor Miss. Wickersham was most likely murdered by someone else. I don’t think she is a victim of Ted Bundy.
On April 19, 2022 a Reddit user suggested that Wickersham may be the victim of John Arthur Ackroyd. Born on October 3, 1949, Ackroyd was raised in the small logging town of Sweet Home, Oregon (a little over 2 hours away from where Susan was last seen); in 1977 he started working for the Oregon state highway department along US Route 20. That same year, he sexually assaulted Marlene Gabrielson and in 1978 he abducted and murdered Kaye Turner (with the “help” of an accomplice, Roger Dale Beck). Ackroyd’s stepdaughter Rachanda Pickle went missing in 1990 and he was officially charged with her murder in 2013 (he pleaded no contest). He is also suspected of killing Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders in 1992 in Lincoln County, Oregon. ‘The Oregonian’ newspaper further alleges he was involved in the murders of several additional women. Despite Ackroyd’s shady history, it was determined that he was stationed oversees in the Army between 1969 and 1976 so he couldn’t have been responsible for Susan’s death. He died on December 30, 2016.
For former Deschutes County Sheriff’s Captain Marc Mills, Susan’s case was personal. The two were classmates at Bend High School, and said that “Susan was happy, free-spirited. We would occasionally be at the same lunch table. It was sad when Susan went missing, and a shock when the town learned how she died. It was disturbing for our Class of 1974.” … “It was one of the first things I wanted to do, was pick this file up as a young detective, the youngest detective at the time. This is one of the cases I really, truly wanted to have closure.” Mills said it was upsetting for everyone in the community when Wickersham went missing, and a horrible shock when everyone learned how she died: “it was disturbing for our Class of 1974. It’s disheartening. Of course, a lot of my classmates had hope, had hope in me.” He said that detectives are “only a clue or two away from cracking the case, but the clock is ticking.” The cold case team uses the 1974 Bend High School yearbook in their interviews to help “jog memories and spark conversation” when trying to obtain new information about Susan. In 2022 former Deschutes County District Attorney Mike Dugan told KTVZ news that “it’s more of a case of a lack of concrete proof than a lack of a theory,” and that “they absolutely believed they knew who did it. The cold case unit came and tried to get us to do a prosecution. My chief deputy district attorney and I reviewed what they had and said, ‘we still don’t have enough’.”
It’s speculated that Susan’s disappearance could be linked to Rita Jolly from West Linn, OR and Vicki Lynn Hollar from Eugene, OR. Jolly vanished on June 29, 1973 while out on a nightly walk and Hollar disappeared while leaving her job at Bon Marche (she was employed there as a seamstress) on August 20, 1973. Unlike Susan, both girls haven’t been recovered. As I said earlier, I don’t think Bundy killed Wickersham but I do think he murdered Jolly and Hollar.
Rhonda said that Susan is never far from her thoughts, “probably because we never had closure. I couldn’t even imagine then that it would take this long to solve.” She hopes that one day she will learn why Susan was taken from them, saying “someday, I’d like to look the guy in the eye and say, ‘Why’d you do this?’ She was just a nice person. You think of all those things that could have been, and all the people who loved her.”
Despite her case being cold for many years, Bend police as well as Susans loved ones still think they have a pretty good idea who is responsible for her murder; they hope one day they’ll come up with enough evidence to be able to make an arrest. Rhonda thinks that she has a good idea who the killer is, saying: “it’s probably going to surprise many of us, and it’s probably going to surprise how close in proximity they were to a number of us in Bend community.” In 2015, Captain Mills said he still holds onto hope that Wickersham’s killer will be caught, and has a message for anyone that knows something but is holding back: “you’re 42 years older. You’re probably near the end of your life. Put some things in motion… at least in the event of your death, so investigators at the sheriff’s office can put this case to rest, and give what family is left closure.” Sadly both of Susan’s parents died before police were able to solve their daughters murder: Mr. Wickersham passed away in 1993 and Mrs. Wickersham in 2006.
* I’ve had numerous residents of Bend reach out to tell me they feel this number is wrong. I would know nothing about that, I pulled that figure off the website ‘oregon.reaproject.org.’
An article on Susan Wickersham published by The Bulletin on September 19, 1973.
An article on Susan Wickersham published by The Eugene Register-Guard on February 11, 1976.
Another Bundy Blog. 