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,’ investigatorswere 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 ofa 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.
Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.Some information related to the death of Geneva Joy Martin, courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.The grave stone of Geneva Joy Martin. She is buried in plot 21 at The Mulkey Cemetery in Eugene, Oregon.The family history of Ms. Martin according to myheritage.com.An article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Statesman Journal on June 17, 1972.An article about Martin’s body being discovered (but unidentified), published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 17, 1972.An article about the murder of Joseph N. Zaloom that mentions Geneva Martin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 19, 1972.A picture from an article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 19, 1972.An article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Statesman Journal on June 20, 1972.An article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 20, 1972.An article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Corvallis Gazette-Times on June 20, 1972.An article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Corvallis Gazette-Times on June 21, 1972.An article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 22, 1972.Part one of an article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Times on June 22, 1972.Part two of an article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Times on June 22, 1972.An article mentioning Martin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 24, 1972.An article mentioning Martin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 26, 1972.An article about the identification of Geneva Joy Martin-Irvin’s remains published by The Corvallis Gazette-Times on June 29, 1972.An article about the death of Geneva Joy Martin-Irvin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 29, 1972.Part one of an article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published by The Times on June 29, 1972.Part two of an article about the discovery of Martin’s remains published The Times on June 29, 1972.An article about the death of Geneva Joy Martin-Irvin published by The Spokesman-Review on June 30, 1972.An article about the positive identification of Geneva Joy Martin-Irvin’s remains published by The Capital Journal on June 30, 1972.An article about the positive ID of Geneva Joy Martin’s remains published by The Statesman Journal on June 30, 1972.An article about the death of Geneva Joy Martin published by The Greater Oregon on June 30, 1972.An article about the death of Geneva Martin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on July 6, 1972.An article about the death of Geneva Joy Martin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on July 26, 1972.An article mentioning the death of Geneva Joy Martin-Irvin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on August 29, 1972.An article mentioning the death of Geneva Martin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on September 14, 1972.An article about the death of Geneva Joy Martin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on December 26, 1972.An article mentioning the death of Geneva Joy Martin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on June 28, 1973.An article mentioning the death of Geneva Martin published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on July 19, 1978.Part one of an article about potential Bundy victims out of Oregon published after his execution from The Eugene Register-Guard on February 24, 1989.Part two of an article about potential Bundy victims out of Oregon published after his execution from The Eugene Register-Guard on February 24, 1989.Bundy’s whereabouts the week before Geneva was found murdered according to the ‘TB Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992.’An article about a burglary performed by Geneva’s ‘husband’ published in The Eugene Register-Guard on November 8, 1969.A newspaper blurb about a burglary performed by Geneva’s ‘husband’ published in The Eugene Register-Guard on January 27, 1973.A newspaper blurb about Geneva’s ‘husband’ published in The Eugene Register-Guard on March 6, 1973.An article about Harvey Irvin having another baby with his new wife published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on July 10, 1975.An article about Geneva’s ‘husband’ driving with a suspended license published in The Lebanon Express on April 12, 1976.Harvey Irvin and Lorie Ann William’s marriage certificate from 2001.Harvey Irvin’s obituary published in The Kansas City Star on February 3, 2007.Mrs. Green’s obituary.Madelon Green Mottet from the 1963 West Anchorage High School yearbook.Dr. Madelon Green Mottet, PhD.Dr. Madelon Mottet’s bio on her Amazon page.
I’ve really been enjoying writing about the unconfirmed Bundy victims lately: so far I’ve done Lisa Wick/Lonnie Trumbull (the Seattle flight attendants who were attacked in their Queen Anne Hill basement apartment), Brenda Joy Baker, Katherine Kolodziej and Sotria Kritsonis (I wrote a short article briefly discussing the disappearance of Ann Marie Burr but she deserves her own full piece*). Last spring when I was in Seattle I debated on whether or not I was going to actually follow through with my lifelong dream of starting a blog or once again take the easy way out and just post my pictures as I took them. I was genuinely nervous about putting out unimaginative, run of the mill content that’s been written about a thousand times before. So, I started digging even further into the Bundy verse, beyond the confirmed victims (such as GeorgeannHawkins) and commonly discussed places (like the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Ave in Seattle).’ So, I started looking into Ted’s unconfirmed victims. His places of employment. The former dorm building he kept a key for after moving out so he could go back and sleep there (he at one time had a room on the 4th floor in the South Tower of McMahon Hall at the University of Washington). The brick with Mr. and Mrs. Bundy’s names on it at the University of Puget Sound (where she was employed for many years as a secretary). I’m going to Utah in November and Colorado in December (I have the time off work) but I’m putting Florida off until last because it’s the state that scares me the most… Margaret Bowman‘s crime scene photos will forever haunt me.
I ran into a lot of snags in my research of May-Hardy, and unfortunately it’s becoming a consistent issue with the unconfirmed victims: I’m finding that if the woman is not directly related to Bundy there’s little or next to no information out there on them. Even simply figuring out Kerry’s exact date of birth took quite a bit of effort, and I’d like to thank my husband for allowing me to use one of his credit cards so I could sign up for another free trial of Ancestry. I was able to find some neat things on Kerry May-Hardy that I hadn’t seen anywhere else: before my discoveries I found exactly ONE picture of her on the internet (along with her composite sketch after her skeletal remains were found). I ran into this lack of information issue with BrendaBaker, the Seattle flight attendants (Lonnie Trumbull and Lisa Wick), and to an extent KathyKolodziej (I say this because I was in contact with the detective working the case as well as her cousin which helped make it a little more personal for me… plus there was a fair amount of information about her on Reddit message boards). I do want to add that after I really got digging on Kerry I found a bit more information that I was expecting… BUT at the same time there wasn’t a single YouTube video or Reddit thread on her and the small amount of information I found didn’t compare to the information you can find about (for example) Georgann Hawkins or Lynda Ann Healy. None of the unconfirmed victims got the attention that they deserved… for example, there’s next to NO information out there about the murder of 14 year-old Brenda Joy Baker and I think that’s a real shame. AND to be truthful I was struggling to find interesting facts about Brenda Ball and she was one of Ted’s more widely known Seattle victims (hers was the first skull found on Taylor Mountain). I think I read somewhere that there were 18,000 murders that occurred in 1972 across the US. It’s too bad you had to have been murdered by a serial killer to deserve any recognition for the case.
Kerry M. May-Hardy was born on April 3, 1950 in Seattle, Washington to Donald and Sheila (most recently Olson) Hardy; she had an older brother named Kenneth, two younger half-sisters (Carlee and Barbra), and a half-brother (Ed). According to a June 2011 article from the Vancouver Sun, Kerry’s parents were only married for a few years before they divorced in 1960. Sheila remarried Carol Olson the following year and Donald married Yvonne Lathrop on December 7, 1956. Mrs. Olsen described her daughter as a ‘free spirit,’ and the first person that popped in my head after I read that was Donna Gail Manson, who’s been called the same thing (and I could see it for myself looking at her pictures). Hardy grew up in the Capitol Hill district of Seattle and attended Lincoln High School in Seattle before dropping out her senior year. In a 2021 interview with ‘hi: I’m Ted’ blogger Tiffany Jean, Ken Hardy said that his sister ‘had hair like a brand new copper penny, and one of those personalities that you instantly liked her. Very friendly and outgoing, but engaging too, and when she started to talk, it didn’t matter where you came from, you wanted to listen to what she had to say.’ After graduating from high school in 1967 Ken went to serve in the Vietnam War; he came home to Seattle two years later in 1969. At that time his younger sister had left school a year early and adopted a ‘free and easy flower child way of living in the Seattle music scene.’ Hardy commented that, ‘I was the older one, so she took a back seat the whole time we were growing up, and all our friends would say, ‘oh yeah, that’s Ken’s little sister.’ But when I got back home, all of a sudden it was, ‘oh you’re Kerry’s brother!’ She really jumped out because her personality was so attractive.’
After a short courtship, Kerry Hardy married James May in a ceremony at the Central Lutheran Church in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle on May 15, 1971; at the time he was studying to be a court transcriber. Although the Hardy-Olsen clan didn’t know him very well, they immediately disliked Kerry’s new husband. Mrs. Olsen commented that ‘He wasn’t a very outgoing person. I just know she was very much in love.’ Ken on the other hand didn’t mind being more truthful, saying that his new brother-in-law ‘was a jerk, and they were always arguing.’ He also said that only six months into his little sisters brand new marriage ‘a friend of ours found out that James was beating up on her and so he got him up against a wall one night when James was alone. Warned him that if he ever did that again, he’d kill him.’ The newlyweds separated shortly after that incident, and Kerry left him and stayed with friends. It is speculated but unconfirmed that Mr. May eventually remarried and relocated to Hawaii.
Ken said that the first time he remembered that his sister was missing his ‘parents and m younger siblings were going on a family trip out of town, and Kerry was supposed to go over and help pack some clothes for my youngest sister, who has Down’s Syndrome, but she never showed up.’ Sheila said the phone calls and visits from her daughter stopped abruptly about a week before the family was supposed to leave on vacation to Minnesota. She also said that while away she ‘made frequent phone calls home during the trip to see if anyone had heard from her (Vancouver Sun, 2011).’ When the family got home in late June 1972 there still was no word from Kerry. In the time they were gone James May never thought to report his wife as missing to the police (although he did claim he didn’t see her since they separated). After calling every one of her daughters friends she could think of, Mrs. Olson went to the Seattle Police Department to report her as missing a week after returning home from vacation, however she was turned away because ‘her husband would have to report.’ She went right home and had James May do that. After he was done she immediately made a second call back to the police to file her own report, I’m assuming because there was now another (MALE) one on file? Unfortunately nothing ever came of either report and no one ever came forward to volunteer anything helpful regarding Kerry’s disappearance.
Ken Hardy commented that ‘because of the separation of her marriage, they didn’t pay that much attention to it at first, because they figured she just went off somewhere.’ The news media never reported on her disappearance, and not a single time was her name ever mentioned in the news. Weeks then months passed by, and Sheila kept contacting law enforcement over and over again, begging them to do more work on her daughter’s case. Eventually one of the officers got irritated and barked, ‘Mrs. Olson, your daughter is not dead!’ then hung up. As the years passed by with no news or resolution, Kerry mom said of her daughter: ‘I knew she was dead. … she would have called.’ Sheila described herself as ‘a mess’ the year after her daughter vanished but thankfully she was able to get herself together for the sake of her other children. She said at the time surrounding her daughter’s disappearance the thought never crossed her mind that Ted Bundy could have been Kerry’s killer.
Mrs. Olson said that her daughter, ‘knew all these people and they knew her: she was amazed, one time when, walking down the street, her daughter stopped to talk at length to a woman in a mink coat and then to a hippie down the block.’ The evening before Kerry disappeared she spent the night at a girlfriends house in the Woodland Park area of Seattle 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 MikeClestnski 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).
At some point in October 1974 Seattle law enforcement compared Kerry’s dental records against the teeth of two skulls that were discovered in Dole Valley near Vancouver, Washington. One of the bodies was immediately identified as Carol Valenzuela and after quite a few years the second was determined to be MarthaMorrison; it is strongly speculated that both girls were victims of Warren Leslie Forrest. It is unknown if there was any additional investigative work done related to Hardy’s case at the time and unfortunately the original documents related to her case file have been destroyed (why?). According to Ken, the Seattle Police Department didn’t seem overly concerned in conducting a thorough investigation into his sisters case, and they did not keep in contact with the Hardy/Olson family at all after she disappeared. With no sightings of the young flower child and no one coming forward with information Kerry’s case quickly went cold. This absolutely broke her parents’ hearts. Ken shared with Tiffany Jean a terribly sad story: ‘one day my stepdad calls up and has me come over to the house. I was a single parent then, with two young kids. My stepdad said that he was really worried about my mom and that they would get my truck fixed up and take care of my kids if I went out looking for my sister. At first I thought it was a good idea, but reality sunk in immediately. I looked at him and said, that sounds great, but where do you want me to start? New York, Florida, southern California, you know? I kept having talks with my mom about it, but there just wasn’t anything to do.’
A drug bust in Seattle’s Fremont District in 1974 helped give the family hope: according to Ken, Kerry’s estranged husband was involved in dealing drugs, however ‘he just kind of walked through the middle of this huge mess and nobody touched him… so our feeling at that point was that Kerry had probably turned state’s evidence on the drug situation and made a deal for her husband, because she still loved him. Like maybe my sister had made a deal which led to this huge bust under the condition that he didn’t get touched, you know? That’s what it seemed like.’ But as more and more time passed by this ideal scenario seemed less and less probable. ‘She wouldn’t have stayed away that long, even in witness protection, because we were close.
It didn’t take long before the Hardy/Olson clan began to suspect that somehow James May was involved in Kerry’s disappearance. Ken said that ‘James said that he’d tried to contact several mutual friends that she would have been in contact with, looking for her. We found out that that was a lie. He never contacted anybody. One time he came over to my parents’ house when I was there, and my stepdad was so pissed at him that he wouldn’t even allow him inside. When we confronted him about her disappearance, he just acted totally ignorant.‘I haven’t talked to her since she left.’ That’s all he would say. That and ‘I don’t know.’’ After a few years passed by Ken ran into his former brother-in-law at a coffee house in Seattle’s University District. ‘James was sitting at the bar, and he jumped off his stool when he saw me. He came up to me and said, ‘Hey, Ken, how ya doin?’ and boom, he hit me in the arm. I just kind of turned sideways and elbowed him in the side of the head. Laid him out on the floor and walked out.’
Ken thinks that at some point in the week before the family was supposed to leave for Minnesota James and Kerry met up and the visit turned violent: ‘I kind of assumed, knowing her as I did, that eventually she was going to think about either getting a divorce or reconciling with her husband. And I don’t know if the attempt to do one or the other of those two things got them together. I just don’t know.’ At the time Kerry vanished she wasn’t sure how she wanted to move forward with her life. Ken commented that she was still wearing her wedding ring and that ‘she wore it all the time. Getting married, even at her young age… it was an important thing for her.’ Eventually James May moved away from Seattle, and his former in-laws lost contact with him completely. Ken said that ‘all we had was speculation, no evidence.’
Over time the Hardy/Olson clan came to realize that their sweet Kerry was never coming back to them. Mrs. Olson said that ‘at some point I knew Kerry was dead. She would have called.’ Years then eventually decades passed by without any word from investigators. It wasn’t until 2004 when the King County Medical Examiner gathered DNA samples from Sheila Olson with hopes to maybe help link Kerry to one of the unidentified bodies found during the Green River Killer investigation. Sadly none were a match to her Kerry. She remained missing for six more years.
Now I know what you’re thinking? Jessica, who is this young lady and why have we never heard of her before (I know the ‘hi: I’m Ted’ page did a Patreon piece for a $3 monthly fee but I’m not sure how many people subscribe… at the completion of my article I’ve stumbled upon a few other noteworthy sources as well)?** So where’s the Bundy related evidence related to Kerry May-Hardy and is it believable? First off, Kerry’s murder took place in mid-1972… even a fledgling Bundyphile knows that his first ‘official victim’ was KarenSparks in early January 1974 (as my own personal side, note I think Bundy killed Ann Marie Burr when he was 14 and I think he’s been killing ever since then but that’s my opinion and I understand not everyone agrees with me). Aside from Hardy fitting his typical victim profile, what I think jumped out at me the most is the fact that her mother told law enforcement she thinks roughly two years before Kerry vanished she lived above a crisis clinic in Seattle’s University District (however she isn’t completely certain). Again, most Bundy aficionado’s know that he met AnnRulewhen she volunteered and he was a PT work study at the Seattle Crisis Clinic in 1971. However, Sheila Olson’s timeline alleges that her daughter lived there in 1970 and Bundy worked there in 1971, so this information doesn’t quite add up. When Kerry supposedly lived above the crisis center Bundy was employed for an Attorney Messenger and Process Service in Seattle as a file clerk and courier; he was employed there from September 1969 to May 1970 when he was fired for ‘unjustifiable absences’ (he claimed to have been babysitting Molly, Liz’s daughter). Job #2 in 1970 for Mr. Bundy lasted from June 5 to December 31, 1971 where he was a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company, a family owned medical supply company. He quit the job at the end of 1971 when the office moved to another part of Seattle. However it is worth noting that while Hardy was alive and in Capitol Hill Bundy was just 2-4 miles away the entire time, living at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Avenue in Seattle’s University District. Kerry was also close friends with CathySwindler, daughter of Herb Swindler who was employed at one time as the Head of Homicide for the Seattle Police Department and he happened to work the Georgeann Hawkins and Lynda Ann Healy investigations. Strangely enough, Cathy briefly went out with Bundy (she wasn’t aware he was still dating Elizabeth Kloepfer while seeing her). It’s speculated she introduced Kerry (who was a high school friend) to Ted while they were student interns together at Harborview Medical Center (where he coincidentally interned from June 1972 until September 1972, which is consistent with the date of Kathy’s disappearance on June 12, 1972). Physically, I think Kerry’s appearance would have been striking and memorable to Bundy: she was slender and beautiful, with long copper hair parted down the middle. … What if he stalked then approached her as she was attempting to thumb a ride and lured her into his car? Despite all this, at this time there is no actual evidence linking Ted to Hardy’s murder. Tiffany Jean points out that ‘the potential for a previous social connection is enticing. Perhaps Cathy introduced her to Ted while they were a couple, or ran into her around town while out on a date. Physically, Kerry’s appearance would have been striking and memorable. What if Ted had approached a hitchhiking Kerry a few years after dating Cathy, and lured her into his girlfriend’s car with that famous veneer of charm? ‘Hi Kerry, I’m Ted! Remember me? We met through Cathy, do you need a ride somewhere?’ Of course, without Cathy’s confirmation, this entire scenario is pure speculation, and could merely be an eerie coincidence.’
The Crisis Clinic was first located in an office close to Seattle University (which was located on 12th Street) before relocating to an old Victorian style house in Capitol Hill. AnnRule and the night supervisor at the time Bundy worked there claimed that there were no other tenants in either building due to the confidential nature of the work done and the records present on site. So if Kerry did live above a Crisis Center it must have been at a different one than the one Ted worked at. Whether or not Hardy lived somewhere close to the Crisis Clinic is under investigation at this time (per an article written in mid-2011). At the end of the day, Sheila Olson strongly feels that Bundy isn’t responsible for the murder of her daughter: ‘I just don’t… a mothers feeling.’ Ken thinks that James May seems like a far likelier suspect instead of the serial killer. At the end of their 2021 interview Ken shared with Tiffany Jean that he was ‘pretty sure, I’m pretty confident in my assumption… I think you can rule the Bundy thing out.’ Unfortunately there is no direct evidence of May’s involvement, only suspicious context. According to Ken, Kerry’s remains were close to property that the May family owned and was even dug up with machines owned by the family. A records search pretty much confirms that story: James May’s father did in fact own a large amount of land in the Kittitas County area. Perhaps what is most incriminatory is Mr. Hardy’s allegation that he was physically abusive to his sister, and as most true crime fans are aware, when a wife disappears under mysterious circumstances her husband is usually the first suspect. In her article, Tiffany Jean comments that ‘circumstantial and character evidence are always difficult to prosecute. In the case of James May, the sum value of these circumstances, while compelling to laymen, probably would not hold up in court. Without any telltale trauma to her bones, her body itself offers no clues. A third possibility, that Kerry’s murder was a random attack by an unidentified perpetrator, also remains. Sadly, without DNA evidence to analyze, and short of a confession, it seems unlikely that Kerry Hardy-May’s murder will ever officially be solved.’
Former Kittitas County Sheriff Andrea Blume said as of 2011 that detectives are still looking into the case and are ‘looking at all possibilities;’ the Seattle Police are also working with the Sheriffs on the case. I want to mention that the original missing persons file from 1972 was somehow ‘destroyed’ (that’s all the Vancouver Sun article said with no further explanation… that sounds oddly sinister). What’s interesting to me is there’s not one but TWO Seattle based serial killers that have been investigated for Hardy’s murder: the second was none other than ‘The Riverman’ himself, Gary Ridgway. In 2004, King County Sheriffs requested (and were granted) Kerry’s mothers DNA to compare it to that of the Green River Killer case and Ridgway was eventually ruled out as a killer. After Kerry’s family came forward to law enforcement that they felt the composite sketch was similar to hers, the familial DNA sample from 2004 was sent off to the University of North Texas. Kittitas County Undersheriff Clayton Myers said the DNA sample was sent to the Center for Human Remains at UNT where it was entered into a national DNA database: ‘the database would search all the human remain samples there for a match.’
Kerry May-Hardy’s disappearance remained a mystery until September 6, 2010: while digging at a construction site machinery disturbed her remains about five miles from Interstate-90 near the Suncadia Resort (a golf club) in Roslyn, Washington. Her body was uncovered when a backhoe operator digging a waterline ditch came across her remains; at first, the operator noticed her clothing mixed in with the dirt. This site is in fairly close proximity to where Ted Bundy hunted AND lived (in fact, it’s only about 5 miles away from one of his dump sites that was discovered three years after Kerry vanished). She was found in a shallow grave less than two feet below the earth’s surface (to be exact, the depth ranged from 18 to 24 inches) and her skeleton was clad in a blue-colored, long-sleeved shirt with pink buttoned cuffs and a 14-carat gold ring on her left finger, roughly a size 5-6. According to the autopsy, the woman had been dead for at least twenty years, but possibly as long as fifty. No cause of death could be determined from the remains.In a KIRO-TV article published March 22, 2011, Kittitas Sheriff’s department said of the discovery: ‘she had fairly straight teeth with extensive dental work.’ Bundy often left his victims bodies sans clothes so if this was indeed one of his victims perhaps he was in the midst of either perfecting his technique or was too inebriated and sloppy to have remembered to do it? Ted certainly was familiar with the rural portion of I-90 east of Seattle where Kerry was discovered. In early 1974 he drove down that highway many times to get to his ‘dumping grounds’ at Taylor Mountain and Issaquah. He traveled two hours further east that April to abduct SusanRancourt, a confirmed victim that attended Central Washington College in Ellensburg, WA. The Suncadia Resort is located about halfway between the Taylor Mountain gravesite (where Rancourt’s skull was found) and the college. Much like Bundy’s Taylor other two gravesites, Kerry’s burial place was wooded and remote, yards away from a gravel side road off the interstate. In 1989, Bundy described burying Colorado victim JulieCunningham in a similar location, saying he would get on the highway and just drive until he found an isolated place to turn off: “I found a side road, a dirt road, turned off onto it and drove maybe a quarter mile off the road.” He made similar declarations about Utah victims Debra Kent and Nancy Wilcox.
Kerry gravesite was roughly 100 yards away from a minor gravel road off the highway that had been around before the conversion. Law enforcement began careful excavation of the body the very afternoon it was found. Two tents were set up: one related to the excavation site, the other for processing. In addition to the Sheriff’s Department combing the area, two archaeologists from Central Washington University were also on site to help recover and preserve remains, bits of clothing, and any other evidence that was found. It took two full days to remove the entire skeleton. Law enforcement said Kittitas County didn’t have any unsolved cases involving missing women around that time, therefore they felt the victim was an outsider not from the area. One time Kittitas County Undersheriff ClaytonMyers said, ‘we have a team of investigators who are working locally and with neighboring counties for missing adult females. It’s a little too early to tell which ones are in the ballpark because we are still struggling with our time frame.’ At the time of Kerry’s disappearance in 1972 the area was isolated, heavily wooded, and used for logging, and it’s worth noting that Bundy often left his victims in remote, wooded locations (such as Taylor Mountain and the Issaquah dump site).
A report regarding the excavation of the body states that it didn’t take investigators long to realize the remains were probably moved there at one point and it wasn’t the original dumpsite (meaning it couldn’t have been Bundy since he was put to death in early 1989). It took law enforcement until the following March to determine that the young victim’s estimated date of death was determined to be sometime in between 1960 and 1990. It was further determined the young girl was between 5’4” and 5’10,” tall and was between 19 and 40 years old (I feel like date of death, height and weight range are all surprisingly broad), and had a large amount of expensive dental work done. At first it was speculated that she was possibly of Hispanic ethnicity however it was eventually determined she was not. Forensic experts entered the victims dental records into a national database and surprisingly there were no hits.
Local Kittitas County law enforcement from where the body was discovered found no female missing persons cases that took place in the county that were consistent with the found remains; because of this police felt that the victim wasn’t from the area. A facial reconstruction image was generated from the remains by forensic artist Natalie Murry in conjunction with the King County Medical Examiner’s Office in hopes that the victim would be identified. Oddly enough, Kerry’s family members did contact law enforcement after they saw the composite drawing and told them that they felt it looked like her. Jeff Norwood (Kerry’s younger sister Carlees husband) said that ‘my wife and my mother-in-law both looked at it and said, ‘Yes, that’s Kerry’’ … ‘when you put her picture up to it. It was Kerry.’ They immediately went to law enforcement to tell them their thoughts. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office used DNA from the 2004 sample they took from Kerry’s mother and compared it to DNA extracted from a bone sample that was sent to the University of North Texas’ Center for Human Remains for genetic testing.
On June 1, 2011 the remains were officially determined to be a match for Kerry May-Hardy. It was announced to the public two days later in a statement by The Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office in conjunction with Dr. Kathy Taylor of the King County Medical Examiner’s Office. On June 6, 2011 Seattle’s KOMO-TV News spoke with Kittitas Undersheriff Clayton Meyers who said investigators were still looking into the possibility that Hardy’s murder could have been related to Ted Bundy: ‘We’ll look into everything’ … ‘we’ll be working with the Seattle and King County investigators who are responsible for those Bundy cases. We don’t have anything at this point, it’s very early.’ Olson said she was almost ecstatic when it was determined that her daughter’s remains were finally identified, saying ‘I don’t care if they find who did it or not. My daughter is going to be home by the end of the week and that’s all I care for.’ Hardy’s sister CarleeNorwood was only 9 years old when her sister disappeared in 1972, however she said that none of the family ever forgot her. She told Seattle based news station KIRO-TV Channel 7 that: ‘she was fun… she was my sister…. she was very close with our whole family, with everybody.’ She went on to say the family never gave up hope that Kerry would come home to them, but that discovery in 2006 did nothing but confirm her worst fears: ‘you always hope, you never give up hope.’ … ‘realistically, I think we knew. My mom did. We all knew. But you just want that closure.’
A dailyrecordnews.com article written by Mary Swift mentions that Rick Norwood was the designated ‘Hardy-Olsen family spokesperson’ for the case, and regarding his sister-in-laws murder commented that: ‘we kind of knew then… we were shocked. We were shocked and also relieved … We’re relieved that Kerry’s been found and we are able to finish the grieving process. She had been gone almost 40 years.’ … ‘We are just now going through the process of dealing with this. At some point, we’ll probably have some kind of service but that has not been totally decided. Kerry’s remains have not been released yet. It’s now a criminal investigation. We don’t know what’s going to happen.’ Norwood never met his sister in law, however he said loved ones described her as ‘a loving family person who cared about the family very much. She was quite a bit older than my wife. She cared for and doted on my wife.’ Lastly Norwood praised the police department, saying ‘we’re grateful to the Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office and Detective Blume for all that they’ve done.’ … ‘They’ve been very wonderful with this family and helping us through this process.’
Ms. Olson was 80 years old in 2011 when her daughter’s remains were discovered, and after they were found the Hardy-Olsen family held a celebration of life in her honor. Since Kerry’s disappearance she has fallen out of touch with James May (who remarried in 1992). Sheila said she held onto one thought after being told her daughter was finally found after so many years: ‘welcome home.’ Per Legacy.com she passed away on December 9, 2015.
Bundy’s attorney PollyNelson claimed her client confessed to her that he attacked and killed a young lady in her apartment building then took her body back into the woods. Was this Kerry May-Hardy? Or one of his many other victims? Obviously her body was moved to where it was found at some point after the golf club was constructed in 2002 but… maybe it wasn’t the original killer who moved it. Maybe a big wig at the golf club who didn’t want to deal with an expensive construction project screeching to a halt stumbled upon the corpse, panicked and moved it (for whatever reason, maybe they didn’t want to deal with the police)… well, that doesn’t make sense, why would they allow a construction team to dig there in 2006? Law enforcement questioned Bundy before he was put to death in January 1989 and he claimed to know nothing about her disappearance.
As of July 2023 Kerry’s case remains unsolved. Ken Hardy still remembers and misses his sister. He grew emotional as he spoke of her, saying that ‘she was musically and artistically talented. Whatever she had decided to do in her life, it would have been cool and she would’ve been recognized for it. I often wonder, how would my life have been different, if Kerry was still here?’ Both of Kerry’s parents passed away before her case was solved: Mr. Hardy died on January 11, 1989 at the age of 59 in Federal Way, Washington; Mrs. Olsen passed on December 9, 2015. The case is being actively investigated by the Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office. If anyone has any information regarding Kerry May-Hardy in 1972, they are asked to contact Detective Andrea Blume at 509-962-7069.
**Edit one: I did eventually write a full piece on Ann Marie (and it took FOREVER).
**Edit two: The piece recently became available at no cost, which allowed me to update this article with new information.
Kerry’s yearbook picture from 1967.A color version of Kerry May-Hardy. Photo courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.”Kerry May-Hardy in her 1966 yearbook picture at Lincoln High School in Seattle, Washington. Photo courtesy of Classmates.com.The Hardy family in the 1950 census.The marriage certificate of Kerry May-Hardy and James May. Photo courtesy of Legacy.Kerry’s death certificate.Kerry May-Hardy’s Obituary courtesy of The Seattle Times.A facial reconstruction image that was generated from the remains by forensic artist Natalie Murry of ID Forensic Art in conjunction with the King County Medical Examiner’s Office.Seattle Police Departments notes for October 15, 1974 mentioning May-Hardy. Photo courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’The gold wedding band and button found in Kerry’s grave. Photo courtesy of the Kittitas County/’hi: I’m Ted.’The Victorian mansion on Capitol Hill, later converted into the Crisis Clinic where Ted and Anne worked, pictured in 1937. Photo courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’The second location of the Seattle Crisis Clinic, located on the second story.Kittitas County and the King County Medical Examiner excavating Kerry’s gravesite in 2010. Photo courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’A Kittitas County detective consults with King County Medical Examiner Kathy Taylor in 2010. Photo courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’A photo of Kerry May-Hardy’s mother, Sheila M. Olson. Photo courtesy of Legacy. Ms. Olson passed away peacefully at the age of 85 surrounded by family on December 9, 2015. Sheila Olson in 2012. Photo courtesy of Ken Hardy/’hi: I’m Ted.’Ken Hardy.Kerry’s brother Ken Hardy in 1967. Photo courtesy Ken Hardy/’hi: I’m Ted.’Ken Hardy with his kids around 1975. Photo courtesy of Ken Hardy/’hi: I’m Ted.’Ken Hardy’s marriage certificate.An article about Kerry published by The Spokesman-Review on June 04, 2011.
I won’t lie, the two Washington victims I have left to write about (Denise Naslund and Brenda Ball) are also the ones I know the least about, and the thought of doing another deep dive is incredibly overwhelming to me and I’ve been putting it off. So, I’m going to do one more unconfirmed abduction that strangely enough wasn’t discussed for the first time until February 2018. To be honest, of ALL the unusual spots I made a point of seeing during my time in Seattle, perhaps the strangest and most boring one was the bus stop where Sotria Kritsonis was allegedly abducted from, located at the intersection of Rainier Ave South and South Orcas South. If you don’t recognize the name of this victim don’t worry: much like Rhonda Stapely, Ms. Kritsonis held onto her experience for a very large portion of her life. It wasn’t until 2018 when she finally opened up and walked KIRO-7 reporter Dave Wagner through what happened to her that snowy winter day in early 1972.
Finding this site in Seattle was a bit of a challenge for me. It took a fair amount of internet sleuthing to figure it out, but with some time and effort I pulled it off. I must have driven around for a solid two hours searching for it too… When I finally was able to find it, a very curious but polite gentleman watching me from across the street seemed genuinely baffled as to why I was so interested in taking pictures of an old, run down bus stop. He kept offering to give me directions to where I was trying to go and couldn’t quite seem to grasp that was my intended destination. And now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure this was my VERY last Bundy-location I visited and I doubt he would have been able to properly understand why I was so excited: I was DONE!
Sotria Linda Kritsonis was born on April 29, 1949 in Bellevue, WA. In early 1972, the twenty two year old student was waiting in the cold for a city bus to arrive and take her to school. After about an hour of waiting a VW Bug pulled up alongside of her, and the handsome young driver politely asked if she was waiting for a bus. After sharing that he didn’t see a bus coming for miles, he asked if she would like a ride to school. Sotria didn’t think for a second that this friendly stranger would do her any harm in the middle of the day so she happily accepted his offer to get out of the brutal Seattle cold and into a warm car: ‘he goes, ‘I’ve come down Rainier Avenue and that’s a long way and there’s no bus in sight. Would you like a ride?’’ The little tan Bug immediately started driving south on I-5 toward Tukwila, which was the opposite direction of where she told him her school was located (in Renton). Sotria became increasingly concerned when he began reaching under the seats: ‘he just started yelling at me, ‘why did you take this ride? Why did you even think about taking this ride? You’re never going to make it to school.’ It was then that Kritsonis considered jumping out of the vehicle but when she reached for where the door handle should have been she realized it was missing: ‘He said, ‘don’t even think about that. You’re not making it. I told you that before.’ Despite sobbing and pleading with him to let her go, her assailant continued to yell at her to shut up and stop screaming.
It was then that Sotria said Bundy made a strange request that made her realize he’d seen her before: ‘‘take your hat off.’ And I said, ‘what do you mean, take my hat off? What for?’’ … ‘I took my hat off and he saw that something was different about me.’ Just the week prior, she cut her once long brown hair up to her shoulders. Her abductor looked at her as though he was somehow aware of this change: ‘He goes, ‘Why did you cut your hair?’’ … ‘I keep thinking, did he stalk me? Did he see me somewhere?’ … ‘Was he waiting for me, or was he watching me?’ Kritsonis felt that he must have followed her previously, in a way marking her as his next victim. It’s widely speculated that Bundy had a preference for slim, long haired brunettes, and up until about a week before she would have been his ideal victim. After aimlessly driving around for about an hour, the man eventually dumped Sotria off in front of her college, saying she was ‘lucky’ as he threw her onto the sidewalk. She never filed a police report and only told her family about what happened: ‘I didn’t talk about it, because I was a little bit embarrassed.’ It wasn’t until about a year and a half later when she saw Bundy on the news that Kritsonis realized who exactly her abductor had been: ‘I knew 100 percent that was the guy.’ … ‘I’m more than lucky. I just thank God I’m alive, every day.’
Perhaps my biggest issue with Ms. Kritsonis’ story (aside from the part about Ted not liking her new hairdo) is her account of the missing door handle. Most Bundy scholars firmly believe that the passengers door in the serial killers car was completely intact and undisturbed, which is obvious when you study the story of an actual confirmed escapee like Carol DaRonch, who never once mentioned a missing handle (and she obviously was able to use it to get away from her attacker). It’s also worth mentioning that DaRonch was abducted on November 8, 1974, which is after Sotria claimed her abduction occurred. Now, let’s really think about this: I don’t think Bundy would have done something so outlandish like taken the door handle off his vehicle when he was trying to pass as a normal, everyday law student. Also, if Ted drove Liz or Molly around I’m sure they would have been alarmed if the car’s door handle mysteriously disappeared. Personally, I think she stole this detail from Rhonda Stapley, who most likely got her serial killers mixed up: it was Ed Kemper who jacked up the passengers side door handle, often shoving something inside it (usually a tube of chapstick), preventing it from opening on the inside, essentially trapping the victim inside his deathwagon.
I’m only briefly touching on Ms. Stapley as I haven’t been to Utah yet and am not super well versed with her story. I do want to mention how similar it is to what happened to Sotria: both started at a bus stop and were able to escape their attacker. In 2016, Ms. Stapley shared her story with KUTV-2 out of Salt Lake City, telling them: ‘I was waiting for a city bus downtown by Liberty Park. A tan Volkswagen came by and offered me a ride and I got in.’ … ‘Instead of taking me back up to campus where he told me he was going to take me, we ended up in Big Cottonwood Canyon, and I was assaulted. I didn’t tell anyone for 40 years. I felt shame.’ Stapley claimed that on October 11, 1974,Bundy noticed her waiting at a bus stop in Utah and asked if she’d like a ride to her college campus. Instead, he took her to a deserted canyon, where he brutally raped and assaulted her for hours. Additionally, he strangled her multiple times to the brink of death then revived her: ‘he did that several times.’ … ‘Revive me and choke me again.’ Rhonda made her escape when Bundy turned his back on her and she bolted: ‘I was able to run. And then I tripped and fell into a mountain river that swept me away from my attacker and saved my life.’ She then hiked 10 miles back to her dormitory at the University of Utah and kept the secret to herself until 2016, when she published her book, ‘I Survived Ted Bundy: The Attack, Escape & PTSD that Changed My Life.’ About the attack, she said: ‘I bathed and just decided never to tell anybody.’ … ‘I was afraid that people would treat me differently if they knew what happened. I wanted to put it behind me and get on with my life, pretend it never happened.’ Now, I do NOT want to victim doubt or shame, I don’t know what happened to Rhonda and there’s only two people (maybe three) in the entire world that do: Ted, Rhonda, and the potential assailant if it wasn’t Bundy. I feel one of the most important things worth mentioning is, like Kritsonis, Rhonda claimed the passengers side door of the VW Beetle had no inside handle, and that’s why she couldn’t escape.
While doing research for this article I stumbled upon a piece written by Shane Lambert titled, ‘Bundy, His Timeline, and Sotria Kritsonis: Filling in a Gap,’ published on January 6, 2021. In it, he dissects Sotria’s story and claims based largely on information found in the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Team Report 1992,’ which has been described as ‘exhaustive documentation of Bundy’s activities… in the hopes that his suspected participation in crimes other than those he confessed to can be clarified’ (from the report’s ‘Director’s Comments’). Not only does it contain important events related to Ted’s murders (for example the time and places of where he was when he killed his confirmed victims), but it also includes normal, everyday events, like what supermarket he did his grocery shopping at and where he bought gas. Lambert comments that the news piece done by KIRO-7 is not entirely accurate because it doesn’t give complete information; for example, the exact date of Kritsonis’ encounter isn’t given as well as the address where the abduction occurred. But, in a way I sort of get that: Bundy was a hot topic at the time the story was on the news and people were clamoring for any information related to him. Plus, in a way it was just a fluff piece for a local news station, not a scholarly journal article that required every single minute detail. I mean, let’s say the story is true. It doesn’t help that it happened over 45 years ago, and the memory doesn’t usually improve with time. However, the general time frame in question was given (winter of 1972) and the location can be found (obviously, as I was able to go there). Now, did it occur in early 1972 or late 1972? Living in Buffalo I am well aware you can have snow at two completely different times of the year: beginning (January, February, and March), and end (October, November, December). Lambert feels (and I agree) that the alleged abduction most likely occurred in early 1972 because Kritsonis says she was 22 at the time and at the end of the year she would have been 23. Thus, the time frame in question is January to March of 1972, and there’s no information provided during that time period in the ‘TB Multi agency Report 1992.’ It shows an entry for Bundy on New Year’s Eve in 1971 then nothing until April 15th, 1972. The encounter between Bundy and Kritsonis appears to be somewhere in that period of time and if we take her story to be true, then it shows that he was active during this period.
I’m not going to talk about everything Lambert discussed in his article (you can read it yourself, I’ll include the link at the end) but another important thing I want to touch on is that the news piece says that Kritsonis saw Bundy on television a year and a half after her botched kidnapping. If this is true, and she did in fact see him on the news in 1973, then what was it related to? Ted didn’t get arrested until August 1975, seeing him on TV before then makes absolutely no sense. I mean, we all know about how Bundy posed as a college student during 1972’s election and that he secretly traveled with Governor’s Dan Evans Democratic opponent monitoring their campaign activities. That did make the news in August of 1973 and could have been when Sotria claims she saw, but I doubt it.
Like Lambert, I don’t believe this woman’s story, however I disagree with his timeline on when Bundy started killing: he thinks it was in 1974, however I feel the murders started years earlier and Lynda Ann Healy wasn’t his first victim (although I think he thought he killed Karen Sparks). Just my personal opinion, I guess I’ll elaborate more at a different time. I also did not read the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992’ so I can’t comment much on that either (in fact I didn’t know it existed until now). Lambert also pointed out that it was a coincidence a good amount of the victims had long dark hair parted down the middle, as it was the style at the time (I can attest to this, in a picture from 1974 my Mom is a dead ringer for Kathy Parks). However, not all of his victims had brown hair:Lynette Culvers hair was light blonde, and little Kim Leach had dirty blonde locks (both girls were coincidentally only 12 years old by the way, and were also Bundy’s youngest confirmed victims). It’s also worth mentioning that the only victim Ted admitted to letting go was a woman in Seattle who claimed she had a child waiting for her at home.
I do want to touch on another unconfirmed escaped victim briefly, just because I want to ‘share the wealth of Bundy-knowledge,’ so to speak. When I was in Seattle I didn’t sleep very well being away from my new husband so I spent many late nights going down the true crime rabbit hole, so to speak. One of the WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIRDEST things I discovered was a book written by another supposed living victim named Sara A. Survivor. The review on Amazon says, ‘Reconstructing Sara is not a ‘story.’ It is testimony. Anyone thinking of buying the book and expecting some dramatic recounting of events that reads like a story is going to be disappointed. Sara does not have the ability to do that even though she writes for a living. Her mind simply can’t function that way due to the severe trauma she sustained while under the control of Ted Bundy.’ In a nutshell, this woman claims to have been repeatedly raped and assaulted by Ted Bundy; she also alleges that Bob Keppel mocked victims and destroyed important evidence related to the Bundy case. About the author, Amazon says, ‘Sara A Survivor is a pseudonym for the actual victim of Ted Bundy. She is writing the book under a pseudonym to protect her identity as she continues to move through the healing process as a survivor and tries to rebuild her life. The impact of the kidnappings and ‘relationship’ with Ted developed through intimidation, stalking, rape and coercion, lasted nearly a lifetime. The memory loss of the events of that time period for so many decades delayed the healing; but she was lucky in that she survived. What happened to Sara may help others in similar situations.’ I don’t want to get too off topic but this is something worth looking into (if just because she’s a wacko and this is entertaining) and there’s a wealth of information on her website despite the book being out of print. Per Amazon, ‘Reconstructing Sara is being taken out of circulation to be rewritten by a professional writer with new areas of information added. The original version will be available to professionals only upon request. Reconstructing Sara is not a story, it is a testimony.’ Maybe I’ll do a separate piece on this at a later point in time (after I do my research), but I do want to comment that I couldn’t find a copy of this book ANYWHERE and I tried looking in some pretty unconventional spots. I got nada. So, the search continues.
I am good friends with Erin Banks, and before I even went to Seattle I remember being surprised when I stumbled upon her write-up on this victim, because I never heard about her. At the end of Ms. Banks article on her wonderfully written blog ‘The Crimepiper” was a comment left by Ms. Kritsonis’s brother defending his sister, saying something along the lines of ‘you didn’t see the look on her face that day she saw him on the news…’ I don’t know. I guess a part of me kind of gets it: he believes her, and wants to defend his sister, who he loves and wants to protect.
Now, keep in mind this is my personal opinion. Take this information and please formulate your own thoughts. I feel perhaps Ms. Kritsonis was briefly kidnapped by a man in a VW Bug (it was after all a very popular car at the time), but I don’t think it was Ted Bundy who did it. It just makes no sense to me, especially when she claims she saw him on TV only a year and a half later in 1973. Also, I don’t think her new haircut would have stopped him either, not when she was already in his vehicle, unable to escape. And why would he randomly ask her to take her hat off? It’s almost as if Kritsonis was searching for excuses that Bundy didn’t assault and take her life. That paired with the obvious door handle lie just doesn’t add up.
Kritsonis’ sophomore year picture from the 1965 Franklin High School yearbook.A photo of Kritsonis in the 1970’s, courtesy of KIRO-7.A photo of Sotria Kritsonis with her brown hair cut short, courtesy of KIRO-7.A close-up of Kritsonis’ short haircut Sotria Kritsonis in 2018, walking the route of her abduction with KIRO-7 reporter Dave Wagner.A photo of Kritsonis as she give an interview to KIRO-7 reporter Dave Wagner, courtesy of KIRO-7.A more current photo of Sotria Kritsonis, courtesy of Facebook.A more current photo of Sotria Kritsonis, courtesy of Facebook.A more current photo of Sotria Kritsonis, courtesy of Facebook.TB’s whereabouts in early 1972 according to the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992.’An article mentioning Bundy before his 1975 arrest published by The Tri-City Herald on May 17, 1973.An article mentioning Bundy spying on Dan Evans Democratic opponent before his 1975 arrest published by The Olympian on August 29, 1973. An older shot of the bus stop where Sotria Kritsonis said she was kidnapped from by Ted Bundy in 1972.A current shot of the scene across the street from where Sotria Kritsonis claims she was abducted from, 2022.A current shot of the scene across the street from where Sotria Kritsonis claims she was abducted from, 2022.A current shot of the scene across the street from where Sotria Kritsonis claims she was abducted from, 2022.A current shot of the scene across the street from where Sotria Kritsonis claims she was abducted from, 2022.A current shot of the scene across the street from where Sotria Kritsonis claims she was abducted from, 2022.A current shot of the scene across the street from where Sotria Kritsonis claims she was abducted from, 2022.A current shot of the scene across the street from where Sotria Kritsonis claims she was abducted from, 2022.A current shot of the scene across the street from where Sotria Kritsonis claims she was abducted from, 2022.It’s worth noting that the water levels at the time Stapley claims she was assaulted in the canyon were checked by some dedicated Bundy researchers and they came to the conclusion that they weren’t high enough to have swept her away.‘I said, ‘My name is Rhonda, and I’m a first-year pharmacy student.’ And he said, ‘My name is Ted, and I’m a first-year law student. It didn’t seem scary or wrong. He just seemed like a fellow college student,” said Stapley. ‘There was nothing alarming at all about him.’A more current photo of Ms. Rhonda Stapley, who claims she was sexually assaulted by Bundy in 1975 but didn’t come forward with her story until 2016. ‘I thought he was going to kiss me & instead he said I’m going to kill you. And then he started strangling me.’‘She was an innocent Mormon girl. He was America’s most notorious serial killer. When their paths crossed on a quiet autumn afternoon, he planned to kill her. But this victim had an incredible will to survive and would live to tell her story nearly three decades after he met death in a Florida electric chair. Ted Bundy brutally attacked Rhonda Stapley in a secluded Utah canyon in 1974. She miraculously escaped and hid her dark secret until now. This compelling real story of triumph over tragedy is both shocking and inspiring and told with the true courage of a victim turned survivor (foreword by Ann Rule).’Sara A. Survivor, at the age of 17. Photo courtesy of reconstructingsara.com.Sara with the 1972 Daffodil Princesses, photo courtesy of Facebook.Here is a picture of the inside passengers side door of Bundy’s VW Beetle. You can clearly see the door handle is in perfect condition on the car. Today, Bundy’s tan 1968 VW Beetle is among the star attractions at the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.Edmund Emil Kemper III is an American serial killer who murdered six college students before murdering his mother and her best friend from September 1972 to April 1973, following his parole for murdering his paternal grandparents.On the outside it seemed a harmless ride to the next destination, but inside was a murderous trap: Ed Kemper’s car was a used yellow 1969 Ford Galaxie 500 with a black interior and hardtop. He bought it with the money he received after suing a female driver after he broke his left arm in a motorcycle accident. Not long after he got the Ford Galaxie, he crashed it, causing some damage to the left rear fender. Kemper roughly patched the rear bumper and light himself and it was in this condition when he was arrested. While driving around, he noticed a large number of young women hitchhiking, and began storing plastic bags, knives, blankets, and handcuffs in his car. He then began picking up girls and peacefully letting them go, and according to Kemper, he picked up around 150 hitchhikers before he began acting on his homicidal sexual urges, which he called his ‘little zapples.’ As a side note, the first thing that popped in my head after reading about this was BTK’s ‘factor X,’ which he described as the internal, insatiable drive to kill that he does not comprehend.Heres an interesting tidbit: while in prison, Ed Kemper voiced many audio books, including Star Wars and Flowers in the Attic.Ed Kempers deathwagon. He often jammed a foreign object (usually a chapstick tube) in the passengers side door handle so his victim couldn’t escape. Rhonda Stapley most likely confused her serial killers when she concocted her story in 2016.A photo of Clarnell State after she was killed by her son, Edward Kemper on April 21, 1973.Aside from having to travel to court a few days here and there, after the attack DaRonch said, ‘My life continued normally.’ … ‘I was able to detach myself from an event that could have ruined my life.’ … ‘It may not be a reasonable solution for everyone, but it is how I have been able to move on.’ Aside from an incident right after the attempted kidnapping, when a magazine-seller approached her car in a grocery store parking lot, DaRonch has expressed that she’s experienced no fear regarding the attempted kidnapping has lingered in her. However, she grew ‘more cautious around strangers, more aware of my surroundings and less trusting,’ however she didn’t allow Bundy to take up space in her head. Bundy’s periodic trials were only pauses in her return to normalcy, including night classes and weekends away to the lake with her boyfriend. DaRonch went on to earn a degree in business management and has long worked in the telecommunications industry, where she met Michael, her current partner of over 15 years. They live together in a suburb of Salt Lake City, the same place she was living with her parents when Bundy first approached her. ‘Even reliving it now, I’m not entirely comfortable.’ … ‘I enjoy my anonymity, when I have it. I also realize that it is an important story to tell, and if someone can benefit in a positive way from it, then that’s what I want.’
Another Bundy Blog. 