Bundy’s Confirmed Victims: A List.

I’ve been spending a good chunk of my time writing about the unconfirmed victims so in this installment of ‘All Things Bundy,’ I’m going over his confirmed kills.

Karen Sparks-Epley (18). January 4, 1974. Survived, Seattle, WA.

Also referred to as ‘Joni Lenz,’ Sparks was brutally assaulted by Ted Bundy while asleep in her basement apartment in the University District of Seattle. She was his first known victim. Thankfully Bundy didn’t kill her, however she was badly beaten with a metal rod, sexually assaulted, and left unconscious for hours before her roommates discovered her later that night. Ted left her with a number of serious long-term injuries she still struggles with to this day.

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Karen Sparks.
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Karen Sparks.
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Karen Sparks.
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Karen Sparks in the Amazon documentary, ‘Falling for a Killer.’

Lynda Ann Healy (21). February 1, 1974. Murdered, Seattle, WA.

On January 31st, 1974, Healy borrowed a friends car to go shopping for a family dinner she was preparing the next night and returned with her groceries at roughly 8:30 PM. Shortly after, Lynda and her roommates went drinking at a popular bar called Dante’s Tavern located at 5300 Roosevelt Way NE. The establishment was a five minute walk from her apartment but the friends didn’t stay out long because Lynda needed to be up at 5:30 AM to be at her job giving the ski report for a local radio station. A number of sources report that Bundy used to go to Dante’s often and it is hypothesized that he first saw Lynda there then followed her home. In the early morning hours of February 1, 1974, he broke into Healy’s basement room, beat her, took off her bloody nightgown (making sure to neatly hang it up in her closet), dressed her then carried her off into the night. It is theorized that Ted only took clothes to make it appear as if Lynda left on her own but obviously we’ll most likely never know the truth. Her body found in March 1975 on Taylor Mountain, near Issaquah outside of Seattle.

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Lynda Healy, in the middle holding her little sister.
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Lynda Ann Healy (middle) with her siblings.
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Lynda Ann Healy.
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Lynda Ann Healy.

Donna Gail Manson (19). March 12, 1974. Murdered, Olympia, WA.

On the day of her abduction, Donna planned on going to a folk dancing class at the College Activities Building at Evergreen State College (where she attended). Later that same night, she made plans to go to a jazz concert at the Daniel J. Evans Library (also on campus), which was scheduled to start at 8 PM. Donna departed her dormitory just after 7 PM and set out for the dance class, which was just a two minute walk away. Despite how close the College Activities Building was to her dorm, no one recalls seeing her at either the dancing class or the jazz recital, making it highly unlikely that she ever made it that far. Manson was never seen alive again. After confessing to her murder, Bundy said he burned her skull in Liz Kendall’s fireplace.

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Donna Gail Manson.
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Donna Gail Manson.
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Donna Gail Manson.
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Donna Manson.

Susan Elaine Rancourt (18). April 17, 1974. Murdered, Ellensburg, WA.

Shortly before 8 PM the evening she disappeared from her college campus at Central Washington University, Susan Rancourt put some clothes in a washing machine in Barto Hall (her dorm building). She then went to a meeting about becoming a Residential Advisor at Munson Hall. When it ended at 10 PM Sue left to walk back to her dorm to switch out her laundry but was never seen alive again. She had plans later that night to watch a movie with a friend but never showed up. Rancourts skull was later found near Taylor Mountain, where Bundy placed several bodies during his reign of terror.

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Susan Elaine Rancourt.
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Susan Elaine Rancourt.
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Sue Rancourt.
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The Susan Rancourt Memorial Garden at CWU. Photo taken in April 2022.

Roberta Kathleen Parks (20). April 17, 1974. Corvallis, OR.

A student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Parks was abducted from her college campus, which is over a four and a half hour drive for Bundy (who was living at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Ave NE in Seattle at the time). Shortly before 11:00 PM the night she disappeared, Parks encountered Bundy in the Memorial Union Commons cafeteria at OSU. During Teds interviews with journalists Hugh Aynesworth and Stephen Michaud, he ‘confessed’ in the third-person that Kathy may have encountered her killer while in the cafeteria. Bundy then said he was able to convince her to leave with him and as soon as the opportunity presented itself he immediately overpowered her. He most likely bound and gagged Parks during the 250-mile trip back to Seattle, where then killed her and dumped her body on Taylor Mountain.

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Roberta Parks, second from the left.
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Roberta ‘Kathy’ Parks.
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Kathy Parks.
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One of the more frequently used pictures of Kathy Parks.

Brenda Carol Ball (22). June 1, 1974. Murdered, Burien, WA.

In the wee hours of June 1st, 1974, Brenda Ball seemingly vanished into thin air after seeing a band play at The Flame Tavern located at 12803 Ambaum Boulevard in Burien, WA. She arrived at the bar alone and stayed until closing. As the act was wrapping up their set at the end of the night Brenda asked one of the members she knew for a ride home back to her house but he was heading in the opposite direction so he couldn’t help out. There are two conflicting reports about how she could have left the bar that night: one is that she left by herself and was planning on hitchhiking home, and the other claims that she left with an unidentified man wearing an arm sling. Despite law enforcement being hesitant to officially say her disappearance was related to the other missing girls in Seattle, her skull was the first discovered on Taylor Mountain in March of 1975.

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Brenda Ball’s senior picture from the 1970 Mount Rainier High School yearbook.
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A barefoot Brenda Ball.
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Brenda Carol Ball.
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Brenda Ball.

Georgeann Hawkins (18). June 11, 1974. Murdered, Seattle, WA.

A student at the University of Washington, Georgann Hawkins disappeared from an alley behind her sorority house in June 1974. The night before she vanished, Hawkins went to a party, where she had a few mixed cocktails. Because she had a Spanish final coming up that she needed to study she didn’t stay long; she did mention to a sorority sister that she was planning on swinging by the Beta Theta Pi House to pick up some Spanish notes from her boyfriend. Hawkins arrived at the frat at approximately 12:30 AM on June 11 and stayed for approximately thirty minutes. After getting the notes and saying goodnight to her beau, Georgann left the fraternity house for her sorority house, Kappa Alpha Theta. Before he was executed, Ted told law enforcement that he approached her in an alley on her way home, feigning injury with a hurt leg (using his crutches as a ruse) while dropping his briefcase. Bundy asked Hawkins for help carrying the prop to his VW Bug, which was waiting in a parking lot roughly 160 yards north of the alley. She agreed and as she bent over to put the briefcase in his vehicle, Ted grabbed a conveniently placed crowbar and knocked her out with a single blow to the head. He then pushed George into his car and drove off into the night. Bundy claimed that while driving she regained consciousness and started to incoherently babble about her upcoming final, thinking he was her Spanish tutor. He again knocked her out with his crowbar. Once at his intended location, Ted took her unconscious body out of his car and strangled her with an old piece of rope. According to him, the parts of Georgann’s body he had not buried were recovered in Issaquah with the bodies of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. He confessed to murdering Hawkins shortly before his 1989 execution.

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Georgeann and her pom poms, from her time at Lakes High School, in Lakewood, WA.
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A photo of George from the 1973 Washington State Daffodil festival.
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A b&w photo of Georgeann Hawkins.
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Georgann Hawkins.

Janice Ann Blackburn-Ott (23). July 14, 1974. Murdered, Issaquah, WA.

At the time she was murdered, Janice Ott worked as a probation case worker at the King County Youth Service Center in Seattle, WA. In December of 1973, she married Jim Ott, who at the time of her death was in California for graduate school. After her car was broken into while living in Seattle, she moved in with a roommate to 75 Front Street in Issaquah (she felt the smaller community would be safer). The morning she disappeared, Janice spent a few hours at doing laundry and having a cup of coffee with a friend. After her errands and chores were completed, she rewarded herself with a trip to Lake Sammamish. Ott was abducted by Bundy at around 12.30 PM, and just a mere three and a half hours later he returned to the same park and abducted Denise Naslund.

Janice Ott and her younger sister standing outside her VW Bug.
Janice Ott.
Janice and Jim Ott.
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Janice Ott.

Denise Marie Naslund (18). July 14, 1974. Murdered, Issaquah, WA.

On a beautiful, picture perfect sunny day, Naslund disappeared from a very busy Lake Samammish State Park (that day was Rainier Beer’s annual picnic, there were over 40,000 people there). She was there with her boyfriend and another couple, and after telling them she was going to the restroom Denise was never seen alive again. Naslund lived with her mother in Seattle and was studying to become a computer programmer. Eleanor Rose said her daughter had the kind of helpful nature that would easily place her in danger. Denise’s remains were found on a hillside near Issaquah roughly two months later in September 1974, only two miles away from Lake Samammish. Bundy confessed to her murder shortly before his execution.

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Denise Marie Naslund.
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Denise Marie Naslund.
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Denise Naslund.

Nancy Wilcox (16). October 2, 1974. Murdered, Holladay, UT.

The first of Teds confirmed Utah victims, Wilcox went missing after she went on a walk to buy a pack of gum (it’s also speculated that from there she was on her way to her high school to visit her boyfriend). She left the house in a huff after getting into a fight with her Dad about her bf’s pick-up truck leaking oil on the families driveway. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox said that because of this law enforcement initially considered her to be a runaway even though they knew their daughter would never voluntarily leave home and had no troubles whatsoever in her personal life. Nancy left all of her personal belongings behind including some expensive jewelry that held deep sentimental value to her. Before he was executed Bundy confessed to sexually assaulting and strangling her, then burying her body about 200 miles away near Capitol Reef National Park. Sadly her body has never been found.

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Nancy Wilcox.
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Nancy Wilcox.
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Nancy Wilcox.

Melissa Smith (17). October 26, 1974. Murdered, Midvale, UT.

Bundy abducted Smith shortly after she left a pizza parlor on West Center Street in Midvale at around 9.30 PM on October 26, 1974. One unconfirmed report suggests that he may have been asking women in the area to help him with a car issue. Melissa was the daughter of Midvale Police Chief Louis Smith, and her murder took place just sixteen days after Nancy Wilcox vanished from the nearby city of Holladay (and five days before Laura Aime). On the night she disappeared, Smith was supposed to sleep over at a girlfriend’s house but those plans fell through after she didn’t answer the phone. After realizing she had been stood up, she decided to leave the pizzeria and walk back to her house on Fern Drive. At some point during her walk, its speculated that Bundy grabbed Melissa off the street and killed her. She never made it home.

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Melissa Smith.
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Melissa Smith.
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Melissa Smith.

Laura Aime (17). October 31, 1974. Murdered, Lehi, UT.

Shortly before she disappeared Aime dropped out of high school, left home (she frequently couch surfed at various friends’ homes), and worked a few menial part-time jobs. Surprisingly she still remained in contact with her family and according to her parents, they were just beginning to accept her ‘nomadic lifestyle.’ So, when she first disappeared no one really seemed overly concerned. Thanks to my newspapers.com subscription it didn’t take long for me to realize there were no news articles mentioning Laura Aime’s disappearance at first, and her name only began to appear in ink after two hikers discovered her remains in American Fork Canyon. Additionally, when her body was first discovered, law enforcement first speculated it belonged to Deborah Kent.

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Laura Ann Aime, photo courtesy of ThisInterestsMe.
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Laura Ann Aime, photo courtesy of ThisInterestsMe.
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Laura Ann Aime.
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Laura Ann Aime.

Carol DaRonch (18). November 8, 1974. Survived, Murray, UT.

The evening she was abducted Carol DaRonch parked her maroon 1974 Camaro on the southern side of The Fashion Place Mall in Murray, UT. As she was window shopping outside Walden Books, DaRonch was approached by Bundy, who was posing as a police officer. He said that her car had been broken into and asked her to drive down ‘to the station’ with him to file a report with him. However as they were on their way he attempted to subdue and handcuff her but was unsuccessful: she was able to fend him off and escape. Of the encounter, DaRonch said that she ‘thought he was kind of creepy … I thought he was a lot older than he was.’ She also commented that she could smell alcohol on his breath.

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Carol DaRonch.
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Carol DaRonch.
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Carol DaRonch.
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DaRonch as she looks today.

Debra Jean Kent (17). November 8, 1974. Murdered, Bountiful, UT.

After Bundy was unsuccessful in his attempts to kidnap Carol DaRonch he quickly realized he was going to need a new victim. So he made the twenty-two minute drive away to Viewmont High School, where he successfully abducted Debbie Kent. Kent was watching a play with her family but left the school at approximately 10:30 PM to pick up her brother from the nearby Rustic Roller Rink. She never made it to the rink and was most likely abducted in the parking lot. According to an eyewitnesses, there was loud screaming coming from the area at roughly the time that Debra was last seen, and another person saw a light-colored VW Beetle speeding away from the school. After the Kent’s realized their daughter hadn’t even made it out of the parking lot, they found a handcuff key on the ground by their car. Bundy confessed to killing Deb and burying her body in the same area as Nancy Wilcox.

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Debra Kent.
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Debra Kent.
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Debra Kent.

Caryn Campbell (23). January 12, 1975. Murdered, Estes Park, CO.

Bundy abducted the 23-year-old nurse from the Wildwood Inn in Snowmass Village. While staying at the inn with her fiance and his children, Campbell went missing after going upstairs to her room to retrieve a magazine. Although we will never know for certain how exactly Ted managed to abduct the attractive young woman, it is highly likely he feigned an injury and asked her to help him carry something back to his vehicle. After he lured her away from the hotel to a darkened parking lot he hit her over the head then quickly snuck her into his Bug. Roughly five weeks after Campbell disappeared her body was found less than three miles away from the Wildwood Inn. Someone driving by her remains noticed a large amount of birds flying over the area. Using dental records, police determined that the remains belonged to Caryn. The postmortem examination revealed that her skull had sustained three heavy blows. Before Ted’s run in with Ol’ Sparky, he confessed to Campbells murder.

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The day before Bundy was executed Campbell’s father Robert did an interview with the Free Press saying that ‘you never really forgive someone for something like that,’ Robert Campbell said. ‘You just try to put it behind you. … The thing I’d like to have back, I can’t have.’ … ‘I’m not a vindictive person, but certainly you can’t go around killing people. I suppose I approve of his execution reluctantly, but I don’t think executing Bundy will be a deterrent. People will keep killing.’
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Caryn Campbell.
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Caryn Campbell.

Julie Cunningham (26). March 15, 1975. Murdered, Vail, CO.

Cunningham disappeared early in the evening on March 15, 1975 after leaving her Apollo Park apartment in Vail to go a nearby bar to meet up with a friend. Bundy told law enforcement that he pretended to be an injured skier on crutches that needed help carrying a pair of ski boots to his car. According to Ted, the pair walked over half a mile together before they finally reached his vehicle. Once there, Bundy knocked her unconscious, put her in his car then drove to a remote area roughly eighty miles west of Vail and sexually assaulted her. When finished, he strangled her to death and dumped her remains in a shallow grave near Rifle, CO. Julie’s body has never been recovered.

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Julie Cunningham.
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Julie Cunningham.
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Julie Cunningham.

Denise Oliverson (24). April 6, 1975. Murdered, Grand Junction, CO.

On April 6, 1975, Denise Oliverson set out on a bike ride to her parents house but was never seen alive again. The next day, a search party found her bicycle and shoes under the Fifth Street Bridge by some railroad tracks. Just days before he was executed in January 1989, Bundy told law enforcement he abducted Oliverson then disposed of her body in a river about five miles West of Grand Junction. Her remains have never been found.

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Denise Oliverson.
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Denise Oliverson.
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Denise Oliverson on her wedding day.

Lynette Dawn Culver (12). May 6, 1975. Murdered, Pocatello, ID.

Although the details surrounding Culvers murder seem to vary between sources, it’s strongly speculated she was last seen at Alameda Junior High School. It’s worth mentioning, this was a two and a half hour drive from where Bundy was living at the time in Salt Lake City to Pocatello, Idaho. Some places say that she left campus during her lunch period, where others claim Lynette was last seen getting on a bus. When considering her healthy and happy relationship with family and friends as well as and her stellar academic performance, she most likely was taken against her will. In his death row interviews, Bundy confessed to killing Lynette then dumping her body in the Snake River. He also said he raped and drowned the 12 year old child in a hotel room after abducting her. Law enforcement didn’t fully accept his confession despite providing some convincing details.

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Lynette Dawn Culver. 
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Lynette Dawn Culver. 
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Lynette Dawn Culver.
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Lynette Dawn Culver.

Susan Curtis (15). June 27, 1975. Murdered, Provo, UT.

At the time she was murdered, Susan was a freshman at Woods Cross High School. She had a history of running away from home for days at a time but never was gone for very long. Susan was originally from Bountiful, Utah but at the time of her disappearance was attending a youth conference at Brigham Young University in Provo. A natural athlete, Curtis had ridden her bicycle 50 miles from Bountiful to Provo to attend the conference. She vanished on the first evening of the conference after a formal banquet: she left her friends to make the quarter mile walk back to her dormitory to brush her teeth but was never seen or heard from again. As Bundy walked down to the hall to be executed Curtis was his last death row confession. Since her body has not been recovered she is still regarded as a missing person.

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Susan Curtis.
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Susan Curtis.
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Susan Curtis.
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Susan Curtis.
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Susan Curtis.

Margaret Bowman (21). January 15, 1978. Murdered, Tallahassee, FL.

In the early morning hours of January 15, 1978, a group of young women residing at the Chi Omega house at Tallahassee’s Florida State University were asleep in their beds when evil crept in… Margaret Bowman was born in Honolulu and moved to Florida in 1973 after her father retired from the US Air Force. Bowman was one of four women Bundy attacked when he broke into the sorority house at around 3 AM on January 15, 1978. He beat her with a piece of firewood as well as a telescope and strangled her to death with her own tights. Despite the violent nature of the crime, the initial investigation failed to produce any evidence of sexual assault or struggle. The severity of the beating was so extreme that part of Bowman’s brain was visible.

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A picture of Margaret Bowman from high school. I hate that it has ‘RIP’ on it but I couldn’t find another copy.
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Margaret Bowman.
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Margaret Bowman.
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Margaret Bowman.

Lisa Janet Levy (20). January 15, 1978. Murdered, Tallahassee, FL.

Lisa was born in St Petersburg, FL and attended Dixie Hollins High School, where she played flute in the band for two years. At FSU, she majored in fashion merchandising and worked at the Colony Shop near campus. When law enforcement got to the crime scene Levy’s was the first sister that officers found dead. Medical Pathologists discovered that she had been beaten on the head with a log, sexually assaulted with a hair spray bottle then strangled. Additionally, they found bite marks on her buttocks and one of her nipples had been so savagely bitten that it was almost completely severed from the rest of her breast.

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Levy.
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Lisa Levy.
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Levy.
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Lisa Levy and her boyfriend.
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Lisa Levy and her boyfriend.

Kathy Kleiner-Rubin (20). January 15, 1978. Survived, Tallahassee, FL.

Kathy Kleiner-Rubin and Karen Chandler shared a room at the Chi Omega sorority house. That night she was attacked Kathy went to bed first, with Chandler following shortly after. After Bundy attacked and murdered Lisa Levy, he went into the room next door and brutally assaulted Kleiner-Rubin and Chandler. In an interview, Kathy said that was awoken that morning by the sound of her bedroom door opening. The assailant then tripped over a chest that was in-between the girls twin beds. Ted then assaulted her with a piece of firewood, which left her with a broken jaw, concussion, skull fracture, broken arm and finger. Miraculously, she survived her injuries and testified against Bundy in his death penalty trial.

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Kathy Kleiner-Rubin at Bundy’s trial.
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Kathy Kleiner-Rubin.
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Kathy Kleiner-Rubin as she looks today.
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Kathy Kleiner-Rubin as she looks today.

Karen Chandler (22). January 15, 1978. Survived, Tallahassee, FL.

As I said earlier, Karen Chandler was Kathy Kleiner-Rubin’s roommate in the Chi Omega house. After Bundy was done brutally assaulting Kathy he moved onto Chandler. Bundy knocked out four of her teeth and beat her so severely that he broke her jaw and right arm. Somehow Chandler survived. She took the rest of the academic quarter off, but later returned to the Chi Omega house at FSU.

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Karen Chandler.
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Karen Chandler.
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Karen Chandler.
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Karen Chandler.
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Karen Chandler as she looks today.

Cheryl Thomas (21). January 15, 1978. Survived, Tallahassee, FL.

After Bundy was finished with his atrocities at the Chi Omega sorority house, he wandered a few blocks over and climbed into an open kitchen window in Cheryl Thomas’ apartment. He attacked her and Thomas barely escaped with her life: her jaw was broken in two places, her shoulder dislocated, and she had five skull fractures, which left her permanently deaf in her left ear. In 1978 Thomas was a student at FSU and a member of the schools dance team. The night she was attacked was alone in her apartment but thanks to some attentive neighbors who heard the assault her life was saved.

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Cheryl Thomas.
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Cheryl Thomas.
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Cheryl Thomas.
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Cheryl Thomas.
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A more recent picture of Thomas.

Kimberly Dianne Leach (12). February 9, 1978. Murdered, Lake City, FL.

In 1978, Kim Leach was a 12-year-old seventh-grader at Lake City Junior High School, where she was a straight-A student and the runner-up Valentine Queen. Leach was one of Bundy’s youngest and his last victim. On the morning of February 9, 1978, Kimberly arrived at Lake City Junior high School on time. Just before 9 AM, she left her first period class to go and pick up her purse that she had accidentally left behind in her homeroom. After she recovered the purse she headed back towards her classroom in the pouring rain but never arrived. That afternoon, Kimberly’s parents became concerned when their daughter didn’t come home after school. They called everybody they knew, but nobody could account for Kimberly. Their concern escalated to fear when they learned she had been at her first period class but then never returned. They immediately called law enforcement to report their daughter missing. A search party quickly formed and concentrated on Suwannee River State Park for weeks. Kims remains were eventually found on April 7, 1978 in an abandoned hog pen with a small metal lead-to. She was nude other than for a pullover jumper, her clothes were piled up beside her body. She was in an advanced state of decomposition, but she was identified thanks to dental records. Leach had suffered homicidal violence about the neck region.

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Kim Leach.
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Kim Leach.
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Kim Leach.

Miscellaneous:

There is no consensus as to when or where Bundy began killing. He told different people varying stories to and refused to give the specifics of his earlier crimes, even as he shared in graphic detail to dozens of later murders in the days before he was his executed. He told one of his attorneys Polly Nelson that he attempted his first kidnapping in 1969 in Ocean City, NJ, however did not kill anyone until sometime in 1971 in Seattle. He told Portland forensic psychologist Dr. Art Norman that he murdered two women in Atlantic City while visiting family in Philadelphia in 1969. Bundy hinted to former homicide detective Dr. Robert Keppel that he committed a murder in Seattle in 1972 and another murder in 1973 that involved a hitchhiker near Tumwater, but he refused to elaborate. Rule and Keppel both believed that he might have started killing as a teenager. Bundy’s earliest documented homicides were committed in 1974, when he was 27 years old. By his own admission, he had by then mastered the necessary skills to leave minimal incriminating forensic evidence at crime scenes.

On September 2, 1974, Bundy drove through Boise while moving from Seattle to Salt Lake City and during that trip, he picked up a still unknown hitchhiker and killed her. Ted returned the next day to photograph and dismember the corpse then dumped her remains in the Snake River. Reports from Gonzaga University’s student newspaper ‘The Gonzaga Bulletin’ claim that Bundy stopped by a campus dorm for a party in the 1970’s and drove a female student to Pullman. She miraculously survived.

Bundy confessed to detectives from Idaho, Utah, and Colorado that he had committed numerous additional homicides, including several that were unknown to the police. He explained that when he was in Utah he could bring his victims back to his apartment, ‘where he could reenact scenarios depicted on the covers of detective magazines.’ A new ulterior strategy quickly became apparent: he withheld many details, hoping to parlay the incomplete information into yet another stay of execution. ‘There are other buried remains in Colorado,’ he admitted, but refused to elaborate. The new strategy (which was referred to as ‘Ted’s bones-for-time scheme’) served only to deepen the resolve of authorities to see Bundy executed on schedule, and yielded little new detailed information. In cases where he did give details, nothing was found. Colorado detective Matt Lindvall interpreted this as a conflict between his desire to postpone his execution by divulging information and his need to remain in ‘total possession, and the only person who knew his victims true resting places.’

  • in Oregon, 2 (both unidentified)
  • in Idaho, 2 (1 unidentified)
  • in California, 1 (unidentified)

After being sentenced to death, Bundy spent 11 years on death row, before he was executed by electric chair on 24 January 1989.

Carol Louise Platt-Valenzuela.*

Carol Louise was born on December 30, 1955 to William and Barbara (nee Johnson) Platt in Bemidji, Minnesota. The couple had five children: Carol, David, Gary, Robert, and Gail. After high school Bill Platt attended Bemidji State University and worked in general construction before entering the US Navy during World War II. He returned to the Turtle River area of Minnesota after he was discharged and married Barbara on April 10, 1950. After the couple got hitched, Mr. Platt worked in the local mines, on the iron range, and was self-employed in his later years; Mrs. Platt was a trained cook and worked various jobs including at the Lake Julia Nursing Home, Markham Hotel, Viking Supper Club, and the Turtle Club. Carol eventually relocated to Camas, Washington. Like so many of the other unconfirmed victims I wasn’t able to find much about her background.

Seventeen-year-old Carol married Robert Valenzuela on August 17, 1973 and shortly after the couple became the parents of twins (they were ten months old when she was murdered). The couple were only married for about a year when on August 2, 1974 Carol disappeared after hitchhiking from Camas to Vancouver: she apparently made it to her intended destination and was last seen at a welfare office in Vancouver. At 11:00 AM a case worker told her to come back later that same afternoon at 1 PM to receive food stamps, however she never returned to the office and was never seen from again. Robert reported her missing two days later on August 4; she was eighteen years old. Ms. Valenzuela was not known to be involved in prostitution and had no criminal record. The case quickly went dry.

On the morning of October 12, 1974 a deer hunter stumbled upon a mass of hair in a heavily wooded area roughly fourteen miles northeast of Vancouver not far from the Oregon border. He thought it was an unusual place to find a wig and after investigating the mass with the shank of his gun quickly realized it was attached to a skull and that it wasn’t a wig at all. After law enforcement arrived they quickly realized there wasa second victim and their skeletal remains were scattered throughout the area. According to lab reports, the bones had not completely oxidized and it was determined that their deaths most likely did not occur suddenly, and possibly took place as a result of suffocation. Thebodies were discovered within a mile or so of where 16-year-old Jamie Grissim’s ID was found (she vanished on December 7, 1971 and to this day her remains have never been recovered). It was determined that the second woman’s death took place roughly six weeks before Valenzuela’s. Former Clark County Sheriff Gene Cotton reported that Robert Valenzuela was initially held as a ‘material witness’ although no charges were ever filed against him.

Eventually it was determined that the physical characteristics of the first skeleton matched those of Valenzuela. Former Curator of the Physical Anthropology department at the Smithsonian J. Lawrence Angel said that the second victim was ‘white, between 17 and 23 years old, and was of slender build, weighing about 125 or 130 pounds.’ … he also said that ‘the woman probably had a small face and long, dark brown hair which was coarse, thick and probably with a natural curl.’ He also commented that her upper teeth were ‘noticeably decayed’ and she had a ‘splayed back, protruding buttocks and had apparently given birth.’ When the two bodies were initially found their dental charts were sent to Bemidji, Minnesota as part of a routine check of missing persons in the area, which resulted in the identification of Mrs. Valenzuela. The remains of the second victim were sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington, DC but went unidentified for many years.

Martha Morrison resided in Portland, Oregon and vanished without a trace on September 1, 1974. She grew up in foster care while living in Lane County, Oregon and had a history of substance abuse and running away from home (both her biological and foster families). Morrison was last seen leaving the apartment she rented with a boyfriend; they had reportedly gotten into an argument. DNA was obtained from Morrison’s sister and half-brother, which helped develop a genetic profile to compare to potential matches. After the testing was complete, it was compared to the currently unidentified remains, whose DNA profile was developed in 2012. Similarities in the genetic material were noted, however a definite match was not immediately established. It didn’t help that Morrison’s skull and some other bones were mislabeled as Valenzuela’s while they were sitting in storage (which was one of the reasons why the remains were unidentified for so long). The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children paid to have Morrison’s Fathers body exhumed so they could obtain his DNA to compare it to the unidentified remains, which resulted in a positive identification that the remains were those of Martha Morrison on July 17, 2015. After her body was successfully ID’d, police went to the public, encouraging them to submit tips to help solve the case. In August 2017, law enforcement matched her blood with remnants on a pistol owned by Warren Leslie Forrest, who was a longtime suspect. Before Forrest was named as their killer both Ted Bundy and Randall Woodfield (the I-5 Killer) were both considered as ‘people of interest’ in both women’s murders. Forrest was officially charged with Morrison’s homicide in 2020.

At the time Valenzuela disappeared in the summer of 1974 Bundy was still in a long term relationship with Liz Kloepfer and was residing in the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Avenue in Seattle. He was getting ready to move to Salt Lake City to begin his second attempt at law school and was employed with The Department of Emergency Services in Olympia (he worked there just for a few months from May 3, 1974 until August 28). Bundy told law enforcement that he wasn’t responsible for the death of Valenzuela, which is one of the only murders from the Pacific Northwest that he was suspected of that he denied. Most likely because Ted was a habitual liar he remained a suspect of Valenzuela’s murder for quite a few years, as he told investigators before he was executed he may or may not be responsible for additional murders other than the ones he was convicted of.

Enter Warren Leslie Forrest. Forrest apparently liked to pose as a Seattle University photography student and liked to approach women asking if they’d like to pose for pictures for a fee of thirty to forty dollars. The victims would leave with him in his blue murder van where he quickly subdued them and bound them with rope at the ankles and wrists. Forrest was a government employee with the Parks Department which gave him access to a lot of restricted areas in local recreation areas. One of his victims managed to escape after he kidnapped and brutally raped her, and thankfully she was able to get away and flag down a passing motorist who took her to the police. Forrest was eventually tracked down and although law enforcement couldn’t place him in the area at the time of Valenzuela’s disappearance detectives were intrigued by the recurring pattern of victims that were dumped in the woods. They were also struck by the testimony of Forrest’s friends, who were shocked at his actions and claimed he was just a normal, regular guy (which is similar to the way psychologists predicted Bundy acted with his friends).

Warren Leslie Forrest has been in prison on a single murder count since 1974, when he was charged with the murder of nineteen year old Krista Kay Blake. In 2014, detectives began taking another look at physical evidence related to Forrest’s criminal history to help link him to any possible unsolved crimes, but it wasn’t until 2019 that DNA evidence helped link him to the murder of Morrison. Forensic experts from the Washington State Police Crime Lab isolated a partial DNA profile from bloodstains found on Forrest’s dart gun and cross-referenced it with Morrison’s DNA, which led to the positive identification of her remains. As a result, Forrest was identified as her killer. In January 2020 Forrest was extradited to Clark County to await charges in Martha Morrison’s murder. For the first time in 40 years he appeared in court on February 7, 2020, pleading not guilty. The trial was originally scheduled to begin on April 6 2020, but was delayed several times due to the COVID pandemic. The trial finally resumed in early 2023 and on February 1, 2023 a jury found him guilty of the murder of Martha Morrison. Sixteen days later, Forrest was given another life sentence. During the proceedings, he was still apprehensive about admitting his guilt, but freely gave his opinion that ‘girls from socially disadvantaged environments should not hitchhike or get into cars with strangers due to their vulnerable disposition.’

Sadly, Carols father Bill and her brother David died on January 2, 1986 in a car accident north of Bemidji; Bill was 58 and David was 28. Barbara Platt passed away on February 9, 1993 at the age of 61 in Fargo, ND. It does seem that Robert Valenzuela did eventually remarry. I’m respecting Carols family and will not disclose anything about her twins.

* In October 2024 one of Carol’s grandchildren reached out to me to not only point out some things that were incorrect in my piece but to also voice concern that her grandmothers article didn’t belong on a website about Ted Bundy. After a bit of back and forth I told her I would not remove the article but would add a disclaimer that Carol was not a victim of the serial murderer and more likely was killed by the hands of Warren Leslie Forrest. This blog may have Ted Bundy in the title but it’s turned into so much more than that. And I also want to add that I didn’t pay someone to go find me secret files about Ms. Valenzuela: everything I found was in the public domain and was literally at my fingertips. Where I do understand that it must be incredibly invasive to do a Google search and find an entire article written about your grandmother that was murdered in an incredibly brutal way, but everything I found was either in a newspaper article or from some sort of historical website, like Ancestry/MyHeritage. Also, if something is misspelled (like a name), that is information I pulled from another source, so if it’s not correct in my article it’s also incorrect in the original. I didn’t pull it out of thin air, it came from somewhere. Instead of Googling someone and having to go through 7-8 websites to get everything you need, I’m trying my hardest to be a complete resource. All of this information was easily found, and was free.

Carol Valenzuela.
Carol (middle).
Carol with her twins; they were ten months old when she disappeared.
William Platts WW2 draft card.
Carol Valenzuela’s death certificate.
An announcement about Robert and Carol published by The Pioneer on April 24, 1974.
Robert Valenzuela
A clipping about the murder of Carol. Published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on October 24, 1974.
A clipping about the murder of Carol published by The Corvallis Gazette-Times on October 24, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by the Eugene Register-Guard on October 23, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by The Columbian on October 23, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on October 23, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by The Longview Daily News on October 23, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by The Spokesman-Review on October 24, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by The Capital Journal on October 24, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by The Capital Journal on November 30, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by The News Tribune on November 30, 1974.
A picture about of the unidentified victim (that turned out to be Martha Morrison) in an article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by the Eugene Register-Guard on November 30, 1974.
An article about Carol published by The Columbian on November 29, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by the Eugene Register-Guard on November 30, 1974.
An article about the identification of Carol Valenzuela published by the Columbian on December 2, 1974.
An article about Bundy’s King County victims and their possible relation to Valenzuela’s published by The Columbian on March 12, 1975.
An article mentioning Valenzuela published by The Columbian on July 20, 1975.
An article mentionong Carol published by The Columbian on July 30, 1978.
An article about the possible finding of the remains of plane hijacker DB Cooper that mentions Carol Valenzuela published by the Eugene Register-Guard on February 27, 1980.
An article about Bundy’s victims that mentions Carol, published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on January 19, 1989.
An article about Bundy’s WA state victims that mentions Carol Valenzuela, published by The Telegraph on January 23, 1989.
Part two of an article about a possible stay for Bundy’s January 1989 execution that mentions Carol Valenzuela, published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on January 23, 1989.
An article about Bundy’s victims that mentions Carol, published by The Gainesville Sun on January 23, 1989.
An article about Bundy’s suspected victims that mentions Carol, published by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on January 24, 1989.
An article about Bundy’s suspected victims that mentions Carol, published by The Gainesville Sun on January 25, 1989.
An article that mentions Carol, published by The Columbian on January 27, 1994.
An article mentioning Valenzuela published by The Statesman Journal on August 25, 2017.
An article mentioning Valenzuela published by The Longview Daily News on January 20, 2020.
The house where Carol was living at the time she was abducted, located at 825 Northwest Ivy Street in Camas, Washington.
Carol’s grave stone.
Ted’s whereabouts on August 2, 1974 when Carol Valenzuela disappeared according to the ‘TB Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992.’
Bundy’s possible route from his room at the Rogers Boarding House to Vancouver, where Carol was last seen.
It’s important to keep in mind that Warren Leslie Forrest didn’t always look like the old, ragged dirtbag he is today: at one time he was young and handsome.
Some mugshots of a younger Warren Leslie Forrest.
A more recent picture of Warren Leslie Forrest.
Warren Leslie Forrest’s blue murder van. 
Bundy told law enforcement that he wasn't responsible for the death of Valenzuela, whhich is the only murder out of the PacficNorthwest that Bundy wassuspecterd of that he denied.
A picture of Warren Leslie Forrest victim Martha Morrison.
Jamie Grissim.
Some suspected victims of Warren Leslie Forrest.
Randall Woodfield, an American serial killer nicknamed the I-5 Killer after the highway he hunted his prey (which ran from Washington to California). Originally from Oregon, Woodfield was convicted of three murders and is suspected of killing up to eighteen people. He is currently incarcerated at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Sandra Jean ‘Sandy’ Weaver.

Edit, November 2023: One thing I routinely try to do is go through my resources and update my articles when I find more information. When I was in Florida this past May I came across a 59 page document from the Trempealeau County Sheriff’s Department in Wisconsin regarding the case of Sandra Jean Weaver. At first, I thought about putting the new information in a simple addendum, but there’s so much that I’m just going to rewrite the entire piece. The report is broken down into four parts: the first is a write up (almost like a report) that Detective Daryl L. McBride had with Weaver’s friend, Joan Elkins at the LaCrosse Police station on January 11, 1975. The second is a verbatim interview between Glade Gamble and the Toole County Sheriff’s Department, Detective Jerry Thompson from the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s department, and Officer Milo Vig from the Mesa Co. Sheriff’s Department on January 22.  The third is an interview between Ken Jones and the same members of LE as the Gamble interview that took place on January 22, 1975, and the last portion is an interview with the same officers and Phillip Quintana on January 21, 1975.

Sandra ‘Sandy’ Jean Weaver was born on August 5, 1955 to Bruno and Marlene of Arcadia, Wisconsin. She had two brothers (Randy and Billy) and two sisters (Nancy and Julie); the Weavers also had a son named Joseph who sadly passed away two days after he was born in 1961. Sandy had blue eyes, was 5’7” and weighed 120 pounds; she wore her brown hair long and parted down the middle. She attended Arcadia High School, and during her time there was on the drill team, participated in the Future Homemakers of America, Girls Athletic Association, worked PT as a librarian and was the junior editor of the newspaper. After graduating in 1973, she studied commercial art at Western Wisconsin Technical Institute in La Crosse, WI.

Sandra left home in the summer of 1974 and moved to Salt Lake City, hitchhiking the entire way there with her two friends, Joan Elkins and Jeffrey L. Skarboszewski. According to an investigator for the Mesa County Sheriff’s office, after arriving in Utah the friends went to Toole, where they stayed in a canyon for a few days. It was there they met a guy named Ken Jones, who invited them to come stay in his trailer near Toole. Jeff got a job part time working with Jones father and both girls found employment full time for the Manpower program. Looking into it, Manpower appears to be sort of on the job training program based out of SLC. For their first week the girls took inventory of motion picture products, and the second week they were sent to the Wycoff warehouse (which was a trucking company); Weaver had been on the job for a little over a week when she was murdered. The position was roughly forty miles away from Jones’ trailer, and the friends hitchhiked back and forth everyday. In a conversation with her mother in June 1974, Sandra said she was planning on going home for her sister Nancy’s wedding on July 27th, but didn’t specify an exact date she planned on being back. It’s known that Weaver was a frequent, heavy drug user and had a tendency to ‘sleep around’ (oh good Lord, weren’t we all young once?). The guy she was with the night before her disappearance (a young man named Glade Gamble) said that they engaged in intercourse the night before she vanished (but more on him later)…

On Friday, June 28 Sandra and Joan bought some groceries in SLC then hitchhiked back to Jones’ trailer, arriving around 7 PM. At around 11:00 that evening a friend from their new job named Phillip Quintana (aka Phillip Martinez) showed up with the intention of spending the weekend with them (he arrived with a random friend). In addition, Jones had a friend that was staying with him that was between 18 to 20 years old and was an ‘athletic freak.’ That night, Sandra slept with Ken and Joan slept with Phill (his friend spent the night in a chair). The following day, Weaver left the residence and went to a friend named Jeanine’s trailer in Toole. There, Weaver met Glade Gamble and the two took a drive through the canyon in Jeanine’s blue VW Beetle.

At roughly 7 PM on June 29th, Weaver returned to Jones’ trailer and picked up Joan, Phillip, and his friend. From there, the group got dinner then went to a party at Jeanine’s trailer. At the gathering, Weaver introduced Elkins to a guy named Bruce Bolinder, who she had met that afternoon while driving around with Gamble. According to Weaver, Bolinder was supplying Gamble with THC. It is speculated Sandy snorted some THC and used some phenobarbital (and possibly Nembutal) at some point in the evening. There were roughly 25 people at the gathering and most of them were imbibing in some form of drug use. At some point early in the evening Phillip fell asleep on the floor of the trailer, and after a while Joan woke him up to go sleep outside in Gambles VW van. Around midnight she woke Phillip up for a second time to let him know they could catch a ride back to Jones’ trailer with Bolinder. Weaver stayed behind at Jeanine’s trailer. At some point in the conversation with law enforcement Elkins mentioned that when she left her friends trailer with Phillip, there were four vehicles in the driveway: Bruce Bolinders gold Cadillac, Glades red and white VW Bus, Jeanine’s VW Bug, and a fourth vehicle (she wasn’t sure of the make and model or its owner).

At some point during the day, Weaver purchased $15 worth of phenobarbital from Bolinder. Joan said Sandy used some the night of the party as well as on June 30 and July 1, and during this time she stayed at Jeanine’s trailer. At some point on Sunday, June 30 Elkins called Jeanine’s trailer and talked to Gamble, asking to speak to Sandy. He told her she was sleeping but that he would take them to work the next morning. On Monday, July 1, 1974 Sandra returned to Ken’s trailer to change her clothes and wake up Joan for work. Elkins told her she wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t going in that day. Weaver asked to borrow some cash, and she gave her $5 from her purse (which at some point during the day Elkins noticed was missing). Joan said Sandy was wearing blue corduroy shorts and a halter top, and this was the last time she saw her friend. The next day on July 2, she received a call from the secretary at Manpower asking why either of them hadn’t come into work. Joan told her that she was sick, to which the secretary replied, ‘yes I know, Sandy told me.’ She went on to tell her that Weaver had worked until 11:30 in the morning the day before then left and never returned.

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 beaten and strangled, found off a service road in the Palisades Canyon (some sources say it was DeBeque Canyon) in Colorado; the only item found on her body was ‘a tiny wooden cross on a gold chain around her neck’ (which she was most likely wearing when she was last seen). I know I’m jumping the gun a bit here but something odd is jumping out at me: two other Utah victims (Laura Ann Aime and Melissa Smith) were also both found the same way: naked only wearing a ‘small necklace.’ Additionally, both girls were strangled in the same fashion as Weaver. Sheriff Haywood has ‘no doubt’ that the killer of Aime and Smith killed Sandra as well. Additionally, Salt Lake City Detective Jerry Thompson said that the facts in the Weaver case ‘are very similar’ to the ones surrounding those of the Smith and Aime murders. She had been sexually assaulted and died by suffocation due to strangulation; her fingernails were also freshly manicured shortly before her death. Because there were no footprints or drag marks found anywhere near Weaver’s remains it’s speculated she was killed somewhere else then dumped off at the top of the canyon, and she just sort of rolled down it. Unfortunately her body wasn’t identified until January 1975: according to an article titled ‘Services Pending for Murder Victim, Weaver was identified through a nationwide check of persons reported missing. Law enforcement also found a very particular type of contact lens on the victim, and using optometric tests forensic experts were able to determine that it belonged to Weaver; dental records were also used.

In a conversation with detectives on January 11, 1975, Elkins said that Sandra was ‘pretty doped up’ when she returned to Jones’ trailer on the morning of July 1, 1974. She suspects this may have been the reason that she showed up to work without shoes on.  Later in the day on July 2nd, Bolinder came to Jones’ home and visited a bit with Joan. He came to see her a few more times in the next few days and eventually invited her to move in with him, which she did a little over two weeks later in the latter part of July 1974 (bringing Glade Gamble with her). Joan finally reported Weaver as missing to the SLC police around the 5th or 6th of July; they advised her to call the Toole County Sheriff’s as well. She also shared the news with Sandra’s mother in Wisconsin. She told LE that she asked Bolinder to help her locate Weaver, but he just pushed her request off. Elkins stayed with him for about three weeks then moved in with another friend named Danny Quinn. She eventually left SLC and returned home to LaCosse on August 15, 1974. She brought all of Sandra’s belongings back with her, returning them to her parents.

Seventeen year old Dick Pehrson was a former employee of the Wycoff warehouse and a friend of the girls. He told Joan that Phillip Quintana got dropped off with Sandra the morning she disappeared but he didn’t know who was driving. He also told her that Quintana told a secretary at Manpower that Weaver had been talking to a truck driver the morning she disappeared. Additionally, the same secretary told Marlene Weaver that Quintana told her that her daughter had been seen on a bus headed for Idaho.

Bruno Weaver traveled from Arcadia to Salt Lake and Toole in November 1974 and got in touch with a number of his daughter’s friends/acquaintances; he also spoke with Quintana on the phone around the same time. During that conversation, Phillip denied going to Jeanine’s party the night of July 29 but said that his friend ‘Martinez’ was there. Mr. Weaver also spoke with Bruce Bolinder, who shared with him that a friend named Steve Symonds gave Sandra and Phillip a ride to Salt Lake City the morning of July 1st. The police report stated that ‘all of the men seemed uncooperative and hesitant to talk to Mr. Weaver.’ Jones did tell Mr. Weaver that he had a pair of Sandra’s shoes at his trailer despite both Joan and Jeff telling him she only brought two pairs with her (which were already accounted for). Skarboszeski told LE that to the best of his memory he never saw Sandra go to work without shoes on and didn’t think she would ever go to her POE barefoot.

Elkins admitted to using some of the phenobarbital Weaver bought on June 30 and July 1, but couldn’t explain how the drugs got back to Jones residence because her friend hadn’t been back to his trailer at that point (she briefly came back the morning of July 1 to borrow money and change her clothes before leaving right away for work). Strangely enough, the blue corduroy shorts that Joan claims she last saw Sandy wearing were found amongst her belongings that were returned to the Weavers.      

In the second portion of the document from the Trempealeau County Sheriff’s Department, Glade Gamble sat down with members of law enforcement (specifically, the Toole County Sheriff’s Department, Jerry Thompson, and Milo Vig). The interview began at 1:35 in the afternoon on January 22, 1975 and lasted for 45 minutes. In the beginning, Gamble is shown a picture of Weaver and was asked if it resembled the individual he spent time with in June of the previous year. He said yes it did and that she was ‘a good looking girl.’ I mean, most of the ‘interview’ is traditional back and forth between suspect and police, however one particularly interesting portion jumped out at me: investigators questioned, ‘within hours of leaving you, she was murdered brutally, and I am not kidding you when I say brutally. I probably shouldn’t do this but there is a little difference isn’t there? As you can see, I don’t think many human lives deserve that kind of treatment. So if you can help me for God’s sake, give me some information. I don’t care if any drugs were involved, cause we’re not here or have no interest at all in petty crimes or drugs at this time, I am interested in that.’ In response to that, Glade said that he told them everything he knew the first time they spoke except for dates, which he didn’t elaborate on so I don’t know if he meant he forgot them or was purposely withholding information. He said the only phone number Sandra probably had was Ken Jones’ at his trailer.

Some of the key points I took away from this interview are as follows: Mr. Weaver met with Gamble at his house sometime in November 1974. He said the majority of the time he saw the two friends they were wearing shorts, although he thinks he remembers Sandy wearing pants the last time he saw her (since she was on her way to work). He made it clear to the detectives that he didn’t remember if she was wearing shoes or not the last time he saw her and had to be told by a friend that she showed up at work barefoot later that morning. Gamble was able to tell LE that he remembered she normally wore a pair of slip-on clogs but she left them behind at Jeannine’s (if she’s anything like me she probably figured she’d be back there soon enough and it was no big deal). He also speculated that Elkins may have picked the clogs up with the rest of Sandra’s belongings before she returned home to WI. He left Jeanine’s trailer at around 6 AM and speculated that Weaver was stopping back at Jones’ residence before going into work and that she would just pick up another pair of shoes there. He did share that he remembers someone saying that Joan’s purse got stolen, and wondered if it happened at the party the Saturday before Sandy disappeared. He also said that he took off the Tuesday after she disappeared but couldn’t remember the reason why.

When LE asked Gamble how Elkins felt about Bruce Bolinder he replied that she may have been a bit afraid of him in the sense that she worried he might kick her out and send her home. Apparently, he had a bit of a reputation as a ‘ladies man’ and speculated that Joan was probably aware of this and was nervous that he might get sick of her and move on; he didn’t remember the two ever arguing or fighting in any way. Also on the topic of Bruce being a ladies man, Gamble said that he thought that girls in general seemed to like him but didn’t get close with him. He also said that he thought Sandra and Joan met him on June 29th (which was the night of the party) and that he asked Sandy out a time or two but nothing ever came of it. When asked if Bollinder had a violent temper, Gamble replied that he ‘heard of him fighting but had never been there.’ He also allegedly had deep contacts in the local drug world that neither girl was aware of. When Glade was questioned on whether or not he knew of anyone that would have a reason to kill Weaver, he said he had no idea why anyone would want to ‘brutally murder a girl like this.’ and that ‘nobody really argued with her that he knew about.’ He speculated that Joan probably left them to go back to Kenny’s trailer with Phillip because she most likely ‘just got tired of Bruce.’

The detective repeated the question: why would anyone want to brutally murder a girl like Sandra, asking: ‘you certainly couldn’t say it was a sexual act because she certainly would have given in (gross).’ Gamble told them that the only thing about Weaver that upset him was that she was kind of ‘slow mentally’ and wasn’t very quick to react to things, but that he would never act on his frustrations and didn’t know how anyone could do that. When questioned about when he became aware that Sandy may have either been abducted or murdered, he said that he quickly grew suspicions after no one heard from her and that both him and Joan almost immediately wondered if she was dead after she stopped coming around: ‘I didn’t know why anyone would kill her or how or anything else but I figured she would have gotten ahold of somebody sooner or later.’ He also told detectives that he was aware that Joan had some minor drug charges but nothing major and he had some minor charges as well as a drunk driving arrest. He told them that he had no contact with Elkins in any capacity after Sandy disappeared.

Per Gamble, Sandy had taken two downers he gave her on Friday night, and that he wasn’t sure if Joan ever reported her friend as missing as he never witnessed her make a call to Toole LE. He also said he wasn’t sure if he was there when she talked to Sandy’s parents on the phone but that he was there when she made some calls to Wisconsin regarding her friend. The last time he claimed to have sex with Weaver was sometime after midnight on Sunday night/early Monday morning, but wasn’t sure what the exact time was. When asked if they engaged in anal intercourse Gamble didn’t respond to the question. To the best of his knowledge he said that he wasn’t sure if Sandy had slept with anyone else in that Friday/Saturday/Sunday time frame other than him, and that he ‘wasn’t with her all the time,’ but did clarify that he spent two nights with her. The last time he saw her she was getting into a car with Steve Simons and Scott Williams to go to SLC for work around 6 AM on Monday, July 1. He said that he learned of Weaver’s death after seeing it on the news but didn’t know when she died. By the time of the interview in early 1975 Gamble sold his VW bus and purchased a 1972 Grand Prix. He shared that even though he didn’t know her very well he knew that Joan wasn’t overly fond of cops and wasn’t sure if she would hold anything back for that reason. The interview ended with Gamble agreeing to take a voluntary polygraph examination.

The third interview took place with the same members of law enforcement and Kenneth H. Jones on January 22, 1975. He told the detectives that he met all three friends when they were ‘up hitchhiking up in Settlement Canyon’ around June 10/11, 1974 and that somehow turned into them coming and staying with him. He further shared that Glade Gamble met the girls at his trailer and that he didn’t know Bruce Bolinder very well. In the beginning of the conversation LE told him that the reason they are speaking to him for a second time is because it was determined that Sandra had been murdered shortly after leaving his trailer. There’s a lot of back and forth between the officers and the suspect, with LE saying they ‘needed to get some answers if we can. I realize this was six months ago and it is hard to remember, and I don’t expect you to remember everything. We have had a chance to go over this and some other things that have come up that need to be answered, and I was hoping that you could help me or hide me to the right person. Now correct me if I’m wrong. I understand that Sandy left the trailer on Monday morning, July 1st to go to work with a Mexican kid by the name of Phillip Quintana, who had stayed at the trailer that night with Joan. Is that correct?’ To this, Jones simply answered, ‘ah huh.’ He said that he didn’t attend the party at Jeanine’s trailer the Saturday before Sandy disappeared and wasn’t home when Joan and Phillip got back early Sunday morning. He also shared that he wasn’t sure who was left behind at the trailer when Sandy and Quintana departed for Salt Lake around 7/7:30 AM the Monday morning she disappeared. He did say that when he came home from work around 4 PM Elkins was still there and ‘it wasn’t right away but she couldn’t figure out why she didn’t come back. You know she figured maybe she would come back later, and she never did. She was worried about her.’ … ‘Well right at first, you now she thought she might have had a pretty good excuse and then after she didn’t show up for a day or so, well then she was getting worried.’ When detectives inquired, ‘I don’t know how much attention you paid, but this is a really critical point in the line of clothing, I understand both these girls had very little clothing when they lived here, is that correct?’ .. ‘ As far as you seen, give me an idea, five or six changes, one of two? Can you give me an idea? Did they wear shorts much of the time, a lot?’ He replied, ‘yeah, they wore shorts,’ but did specify that Elkins had a home made dress made out of Levi’s jean material.

Like with the other interviews, the investigators were very focused on the girl’s footwear and asked Jones if Weaver had a lot of shoes, to which he replied she had a pair of sandals and some clogs and that Elkins took them with her when she went home to Colorado. About a week after Sandy disappeared Elkins left Ken’s trailer and moved in with a guy named Danny Quinn; she didn’t give an explanation as to why she left but it was on her own accord and he didn’t ask her to leave. Jones told LE that he was aware that the girls mainly hitch hiked to get around and frequently caught rides with both friends and strangers. He also shared that at no point after her friend disappeared did Elkins ever mention that she was going to go look for her, but that she ‘contacted Sandra’s parents and they decided to put it in the paper, her picture, and I think she turned it in, she said she turned it in.’ Jones said that when Joan finally got around to notifying the Toole County Sheriff’s department about Weaver’s disappearance they told her to also get in touch with SLC LE as well. When asked if he thought Sandy and Elkins were ‘close’ he replied, ‘yes, they were real close.’ He also commented that she seemed to be almost smitten with Bruce Bolinder and talked about him a lot. He said the weekend before Sandra disappeared she wasn’t at his trailer at all but that she most likely came back early Monday morning to get Joan and get ready to go to work. When asked if he knew of anyone that had ‘heard if Sandy came back into town that Monday morning after she left and went back to work that morning,’ Jones simply said ‘no.’

According to Ken, Sandy’s father came to see him about a month and a half before the interview (so November/December 1974). When asked what he thought happened to Weaver he replied that if she made it to work that day then it must have been someone from her POE that she ‘decided to go with.’ Ken said he felt it ‘must have been somebody she didn’t know or she just met that day or somebody she just went with. Maybe they told her they would give her a ride home or take her out somewhere else overnight or something.’ He also shared that Joan had no idea what happened to her friend and she thought that maybe she left with somebody from work or ‘something like that.’ When Ken was confronted with ‘well like I said, we realize the drug traffic. We are not here to bother anyone, that we are not trying to make a case. Did she know anything about any major drug deals and somebody thought she knew too much that you know of?;’ he again replied with a simple, ‘no.’ When the detectives inquired, ‘you wouldn’t have to kill her to rape her, correct?,’ Jones answered ‘uh huh’ and that she would probably just go along with it.

Ken said that when he returned home from work at 4:30 around that Monday, Joan was there (she was sick and didn’t go into work) and the last time he saw Sandy was on Friday the night before she left for the party. When the investigators commented that they understood he told Mr. Weaver that he had a pair of his daughter’s shoes, he clarified ‘after she had left and it was either that night or the next day she didn’t show up Joan said something about ‘that is the only pair of shoes or something.’ And she left them and she ain’t got no shoes or something. She couldn’t figure out why she would leave without shoes.’ There was a lot of back and forth about the missing footwear, with the investigators trying to make Jones admit that he had them (which he vehemently denied). When they asked if Weaver’s last paycheck ever got mailed to his trailer or if Joan ever mentioned what happened to it he said that Elkins had it but he wasn’t certain if she cashed it or not (but he strongly suspects that she did). Jeff Skarboszewski left SLC about a week before Sandra disappeared and went to Phoenix. About the trios mystery friend, Jones said that Jeff seemed to treat both girls real good and always wanted to do what was best for them. At the end of the interview he agreed to a voluntary polygraph examination.

In between the third and fourth parts is a photocopy of Bruce Bolinder’s drivers license.

The fourth part of the document is an interview between investigators and Phillip Quintana that took place on January 25, 1975 (this is where things get interesting). The conversation starts out strong right from the get go, with LE asking if he remembers telling a friend named Dirk that Sandra had gone to Idaho or someplace out of state, and where he got that information from. To this, Phillip said it was one of two hitchhiking incidents that took place in the second half of 1974 in which Weaver’s name came up: ‘this guy that picked her up hitchhiking, but I can’t remember his name. He said he saw her and she was supposed to be living with this guy that she was living with in Memory Grove she was supposed to leave with him to Idaho.’ … ‘I was just asking if he knew Joan and Sandy from Toole and he said yeah, that Sandy was supposed to be living in Memory Grove with some guy.’ Quintana said the man was driving a newer model white Ford and was around 21/22 years of age, between 6’2″/6’3” tall, and had shaggy brown hair. One of the detectives told him it was a man named Danny Brumfield that picked him up that day and the event took place sometime around August/September of 1974.

The second hitchhiking incident took place around Halloween 1974 and involved a 23/24 year old man driving an older model light red/dark orange GMC pickup truck. When asked by this mysterious stranger if he wanted to go to a party that both Joan and Sandy would be at, Phillip told him that he had just been to one and had no interest in attending another: ‘well, I was hitchhiking. He picked me up then asked if I wanted to go to a party, he said do you smoke dope, I said yeah, and he said do you want to go to a party, and I said no, and he lit up a joint, and he asked me if I wanted to go to a party out in Toole and said no, and he said, and then I said who is going to be out there, do you know a lot of people out there and he said, ‘I know a chick named Joan and one named Sandy and this dude named Glade, that Glade was supposed to be having it,’ and I told him no I was, and he just dropped me off.’ … ‘They said Sandy and Joan, I don’t know if they were the same chicks but he said Sandy and Joan. Might be two different chicks, I don’t know.’ When questioned about the day Sandra disappeared Phillip said that he ‘thought she was going back to work, she was going to work, and anyway they didn’t want me back over there and so I just went down to my moms’ and that he never saw either girl again after July 1st (I deduced that he was briefly employed with Manpower but was terminated). He acknowledged to LE that he was aware that Elkins was trying to get in contact with him around the 13th of July but wasn’t successful in her attempts. When asked if he knew that Weaver was missing at this point in time Phillip said no and that he didn’t know she was gone until the month before (which would have been December 1974).

Quintana said that he and Joan went back to Jones’ trailer at around 3 or 4 in the morning and crashed immediately; they woke up around 6 PM the following evening. He said Monday morning Sandy called Joan at Ken’s trailer and asked if she was going to go to work, and he told her that Joan wasn’t going to but he was getting a ride to SLC and could bring her along. He reported that Manpower attempted to get in touch with him about Sandra’s disappearance around the 1st or 2nd week of December but that he never talked to Bruno Weaver. In response to that, investigators said that ‘he claims he did, how about him calling you on the phone Phillip. I am going to try to refresh your memory. And you told him: ‘he asked you if you were at a party with his daughter in Toole, and you said no not me but my friend Martinez.’ Do you recall that?’ … ‘see, I talked to Mr. Weaver, Sandra’s Dad and he said he called you on the phone, I have the date written down and I will be getting it; him and his attorney was out here and he called you on the phone and he asked you, he talked to Phillip Quintana, he asked about  the party, you said, or this Quintana said that he knew Sandra, that he didn’t attend the party in Toole but a friend Martinez did. You don’t recall him saying that to you?’ In response to the third degree, Phillip said, ‘I don’t even remember talking to him, I am pretty sure I didn’t.’

This is when he talked about his two last names, clarifying that his legal name is Quintana and it’s the one he always went by: ‘I guess you came out to my moms, she said that you were looking for me, she said that you asked for Phillip Martinez, or a Phillip Quintana, and she asked me if I was using another name and I told her no. Because I found well, when my Dad got married when he first married my mother I was on probation and I started using his last name and it took them six months to find me, and when they did they told me if I used it again they would stick me in state school because I was using an illegal name.’ When asked what the illegal name he used was he responded with ‘Gurule,’ but that he has used his real name ever since and that he now has a clean record. Later in the interview he repeated himself that he never spoke with Bruno Weaver and when asked if anyone at the party went by the last name of Martinez he said he wasn’t sure because people mostly only went by their first names.

When the investigators asked how the girls got to work everyday Phillip said that after the first day they all drove in together, and ‘when Manpower had a job for them they have them a call out in Toole and they hitchhiked to the job. The very first day they started Manpower called them about 8:00 I guess, they got there around 10:00 10:30.’ When asked if he recalled what time Sandra arrived back at the trailer the Monday morning she disappeared Phillip responded that ‘she had to be to work at 8:00 AM so it was around 7:00 AM;’ he also shared that after she left for the day he wasn’t sure who was left behind in the trailer. Also in the vehicle were two other guys, Steve Simons and Scott Williams; they dropped Weaver off near the Wyckoff building at 3rd West but that she wanted to stop at the store before her shift started to buy some cigarettes. The boys dropped Phillip off at his moms, which wasn’t far from Weaver’s POE. He commented that on their drive Williams and Simons mostly talked to each other and didn’t really seem interested in chatting with him or Sandy. When LE asked him if ‘Sandy gave him any indication when she got off that she was going to come back at noon, or that she didn’t feel well, or that she was going to go back and see Joan or anything like that,’ Quintana responded that ‘she said that cause she didn’t feel well that morning she was kind of burned she said that if she still felt that way at lunch she was just going to go back to Toole’ but didn’t elaborate on how she was going to get there. The detectives shared with him that they knew she took some speed that morning before she left for work and that he took some as well (she gave him five and a friend named Danny another five). To that Phillip responded that he thought she took downers and had a baggie of about 50 of them with her (apparently she purchased 100 of them at the beginning of the weekend but was going through them pretty quickly).

After Phillip mentioned that Joan wasn’t feeling well and had menstrual cramps the detectives asked if she started her period the day before. He replied that he thought ‘she started it that day because the night she was starting to get them bad’ and that she might have gotten her monthly on Sunday night (but he ‘didn’t check’). In response to this, the officers replied: ‘oh Jesus, you know you got me almost to think I am going to send you out to the nut farm and have you checked out there. Was she pretty well smashed out, Joan, that Monday morning or was it mainly from her cramps.’ (wow). To this, he responded it was ‘mainly from her cramps.’ When asked if Joan had a thing for Glade Gamble, Quintana replied that he wasn’t sure but it wouldn’t have surprised him because she ‘acted kind of funny towards him.’ When asked how she may have felt about Bruce Bolinder he said that it seemed as if she wanted nothing to do with him and when they all got in the car together she made a comment about Gamble sitting next to him, and seemed irritated when he refused. When the investigators asked him how the girls may have felt about Kenny Jones he said that ‘they said they liked him, he was a pretty nice guy, but they were just staying because of their relationship, just a place to stay I guess. I guess they were giving him something to say there, some money or something to stay with him but they never did say. He said that he showed up at the party but ‘came a little later.’ When the investigators asked Phillip if Elkins was afraid of any of the guys that they hung around with he answered ‘no, not that I know of, she didn’t tell me’ and when they asked the same question about Weaver he said ‘well they got along real good with everybody out there as far as I know.’

When asked if any of the guys Weaver hung out with ‘would kill that girl,’ Phillip’s initial answer was ‘I can’t really say… I don’t know them, but I know what kind of people they are.’ However he quickly changed his tune and said that the owner of the gold Cadillac (Bruce Bolinder) was the only person he could think of that ‘looked like he could do something like that.’ He elaborated that he didn’t talk much and was kind of mean; Bolinder was also where Gamble was getting his dope from. There’s something interesting that jumps out at me at the end of page 56: the detectives ask Phillip if he remembers telling anyone that ‘he saw Sandy talking to a Wycoff truck driver at about 11:30 on the 1st of July,’ to which there is no verbal (or written) answer. Quintana later stated that the last time he saw her was when she was dropped off at her POE and doesn’t remember ever seeing her talk to a truck driver. He also shared that he didn’t hear from Joan at all after she left for CO and that he knew she lived in WI but wasn’t exactly sure where. Just like with the other gentleman, LE asked if he was willing to undergo a polygraph examination, to which he responded sure and that he had nothing to hide.

As far as the confirmed victims go, Bundy killed 18 year-old Georgeann Hawkins on June 11, 1974 after abducting her from the University District in Seattle (just eleven days earlier he murdered Brenda Ball on June first). Almost two weeks after Weaver was abducted and killed on July 14, 1974 he abducted both Janice Ott and Denise Naslund from Lake Sammamish State Park in Issaquah. When it comes to the unconfirmed victims, Brenda Joy Baker disappeared on May 27, 1974 from Puyallup and on August 2, 1974 Carol Valenzuela was last seen hitchhiking near Vancouver, WA. At the time of Weavers murder Ted was living at the Rogers Rooming house on 12th Ave in Seattle and was employed with the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia (he was there from May 3, 1974 to August 28, 1974). Obviously the drive to SLC wasn’t exactly impossible, as he eventually moved there for law school, but it definitely wasn’t just a quick jaunt down the street. The route Ted would have driven to SLC from Seattle then to DeBeque, Colorado where her remains were found was roughly 1,150 miles ONE WAY (he obviously would have had to take the same trip BACK to Seattle). This is a lot of driving. He was in between schooling at the time, as he graduated from the University of Washington in 1972 and didn’t move to Salt Lake City for law school (part deux) until September 2, 1974. Did Bundy kill Weaver on a trip to Utah to do something for his upcoming education (maybe he had to fill out something at the bursar’s office or check out an apartment)? According to the ‘TB Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992,’ Ted went on leave (without pay) from the Department of Emergency Services in Seattle, WA on July 1, 1974 (the same day of Weavers abduction); additionally, gas receipts put him in Seattle the same day. Lets not also forget he was in a relationship at the time with Liz Kloepfer, which was just one more thing taking up his time.

This is a rare instance where the more I researched the more information I found, which I know sounds fairly obvious but I have run into countless dead ends writing about some of these girls. For example, I can’t even find Deborah Lee Tomlinson on Ancestry, so I tried to think outside the box and joined a few Facebook groups related to her hometown of Creswell OR, in hopes that maybe I would find a relative or an old friend of hers that could help fill in the gaps surrounding her background… but again, I got nothing. Right before I was about to re-publish this I found even more information about Weaver on cavdef.org… nothing huge or ground breaking, just a few small details. In a comment on the website ExecutedToday.com, an individual going by the name of Philip Conrad commented that he ‘knew Sandra Weaver, the Colorado detectives talked to me and my x wife in lacrosse wi because we thought the guy that left with her might have had something with her death. I do believe Ted Bundy killed her.’ Additionally I found Glade Gambles obituary (which I included below).

In an article written by a Salt Lake journalist after Bundy was executed, Pete Haywood said that authorities placed Bundy in Utah as early as 1970 when he was only 23, which ‘certainly widens the window of time we are looking at in terms of unsolved cases.’ There’s conflicting reports that say the serial killer mentioned Weavers during his death row confessions: some sources say he did, others say he didn’t. Former Mesa County Sheriff said two different television stations ran stories claiming that Bundy took responsibility for Weavers death, and the Salt Lake Tribune ran a story saying the same.

Weaver in her freshman year photo from the 1970 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Weaver in a group picture for the drill team from the 1970 Arcadia High School yearbook. She’s the first girl in the first row.
Sandra Weaver in a group picture for the Future Homemakers of America from the 1970 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Sandra Jean Weaver’s sophomore year picture from the 1971 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Sandra Jean Weaver in a group shot for the Future Homemakers of America from the 1971 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Weaver in a group picture from the Drill Team from the 1971 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Weaver in a group picture from the 1972 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Weaver in a group picture for the newspaper from the 1972 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Weaver in a group picture for the Girls Athletic Association from the 1972 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Sandra Jean Weaver’s senior picture from the 1973 Arcadia High School yearbook.
I pulled this from ‘Classmates.com;’ it looks like Weaver signed above her picture in the 1973 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Weaver in a group picture for the school play from the 1973 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Another shot of Weaver in a group picture for the school play from the 1973 Arcadia High School yearbook. It looks like she is in the middle row, second from the right.
Weaver’s senior year activities from the from the 1973 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Sandra Jean Weaver.
Sandra Jean Weaver.
A caricature of Sandra Weaver drawn by John Krupa (from the ‘Freedom to Draw Unsolved Mysteries’ YouTube page).
An announcement that Bruno Weaver was going to serve in the Korean War, published by The Winona Daily News on February 29, 1952.
Bruno and Marlene Weaver’s marriage announcement, published in The Winona Daily News on July 14, 1954.
An article about Bruno and Marlene Weaver’s son, who was born in March 1961 but passed away shortly after; death notice published in The Winona Daily News on March 29, 1961.
Nancy Weaver from the 1971 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Cheryl Weaver’s freshman year picture from the 1972 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Randall Weaver’s picture from the 1973 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Bryan Weaver’s picture from the 1978 Arcadia High School yearbook.
Marlene Weavers picture fro the 1974 Arcadia High School yearbook. It looks like she worked there as a cook.
A more recent picture of Marlene Weaver, courtesy of Facebook.
A more recent picture of Nancy Weaver, courtesy of Facebook.
Bruno Weaver’s death notice from by The Winona Daily News published on June 17, 1996.
Some notes about Sandra Weaver from a document titled ‘Bundy History’ on the Internet Archives (it’s a document from the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department that was released on November 24, 1975).
Page two of a document pertaining to Weavers murder from the SLC PD.
Page three of a document pertaining to Weavers murder from the SLC PD.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune on January 11, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The La Crosse Tribune on January 11, 1975. 
An article titled ‘Services Pending for Murder Victim’ about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Eau Claire Leader Telegram on January 11, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Sheboygan Press on January 11, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Daily Sentinel on January 11, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Stevens Point Daily Journal on January 11, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Ironwood Globe on January 11, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Janesville Gazette on January 11, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Racine Journal Times on January 11, 1975.
An article titled ‘Murder Victim may be Arcadia Girl’ about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Winona Daily News on January 12, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Daily Sentinel on January 13, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Winona Daily News on January 13, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Madison Capital Times on January 13, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Winona Daily News on January 14, 1975.
An article titled ‘Services Pending for Murder Victim’ about Sandra Weaver, published by the Winona Daily News on January 16, 1975. 
Part one of an article titled ‘Services Pending for Murder Victim’ about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Winona Daily News on January 16, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the Winona Daily News on January 17, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Daily Sentinel News on January 17, 1975. 
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Desert News on January 20, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Daily Sentinel on January 21, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Logan Herald Journal on January 21, 1975. 
An article about the murder of Sandra Jean Weaver published in The Daily Herald on January 21, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Salt Lake Tribune on January 21, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Ogden Standard-Examiner on January 21, 1975.
In an
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by the La Crosse Tribune on July 2, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Daily Sentinel on October 3, 1975.
An article about Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Daily Sentinel on October 13, 1975.
An picture mentioning Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Salt Lake Tribune on January 23, 1989 before Bundy was executed.
An picture mentioning Sandra Jean Weaver, published by The Salt Lake Tribune on January 23, 1989 before Bundy was executed.
beaten and strangled near DeBeque, Colorado
An article about Sandra Weaver published by the La Crosse Tribune on January 24, 1989.
An article about Bundy possibly being linked to the murder of Sandra Weaver published by The Winona Daily News on January 25, 1989.
An article mentioning Sandra Weaver after Bundy was executed in 1989.
utah law officers follow up on serial killers confessions
An article mentioning Sandra Weaver after Bundy was executed in 1989.
An article mentioning the possible discovery of the remains of Sandra Weaver published by The Salt Lake Tribune on November 9, 1996.
Photo courtesy of journal6other.files.wordpress.com.
A picture of Sandra’s friend Joan Elkins from the 1971 Logan High School yearbook.
Another picture of Joan Elkins from the 1971 Logan High School yearbook.
A picture of Sandra’s friend Jeff Skarboszewski from the 1970 Central High School yearbook.
Bruce L. Bolinder from the 1965 Grantsville High School yearbook.
Bruce L. Bolinder’s wedding announcement published in The Tooele Bulletin on April 11, 1967.
Bruce Bolinder’s divorce announcement published in The Transcript-Bulletin on September 12, 1969.
A photocopy of Bruce L. Bolinder’s ID pulled from the investigative documents regarding her murder from the Trempealeau County Sheriffs Department.
Glade A. Gamble obituary published in The Tooele Transcript-Bulletin on January 21, 1997.
A map of the (one way) route Ted would have had to drive to SLC from Seattle then to DeBeque,Colorado. He obviously would have had to take the same trip BACK to the Rogers Rooming house. This is a lot of driving.
I tried finding a picture of the old Manpower building Sandra worked at but wasn’t successful.
Weavers grave site. Notice her brother that passed away in March 1961 is buried next to her.

Katherine ‘Kathy’ Kolodziej.

One of the things that has always gotten under my skin about Ted Bundy (aside from his crimes against humanity) was how little he confessed to during his time on death row. He essentially used his secrets as a bargaining chip to extend his life right up until the very end. So, he could have killed the neat and tidy 30 women he confessed to, or he may have murdered over 100 as he told his attorney John Henry Browne… as I said in a previous article, unless someone discovers his long-lost diary where he candidly spoke of his dastardly deeds no one will ever truly know the full extent of Bundy’s crimes. There’s so many murdered and missing women he could possibly be responsible for but little to no concrete evidence to prove it. In my cross-country tour of anything related to Ted, I’ve already been to Washington and Pennsylvania with hopes of going to Colorado in December (edit, November 2023: I’ve been to Florida and Utah since, I have Oregon, Idaho, and Colorado left).

Whenever you hear the run-down of states Bundy had any possible activity to, New York is usually brought up last and is followed with, ‘but he was quickly ruled out as a suspect.’ The possible murder in question is that of Katherine Kolodziej. Kathy was only seventeen-years-old at the time of her homicide in early November of 1974, and was a SUNY Cobleskill student majoring in animal husbandry. The attractive young student was last seen in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 2, 1974 walking out of a local tavern called ‘The Vault’ in the village of Cobleskill. She went out dancing with a few girlfriends but turned down a ride back to campus, saying wanted to stay out a bit longer and was going to be getting a ride home from someone else. According to her cousin Vicki Szydlowski, Kathy spoke to her mother just a few hours before her night out, and Mrs. Kolodziej asked her to stay at her dorm that night and study. Kathy was responsible and a good student, not a partier by any means, but this time she disregarded her moms request because she wanted to go out with her college friends. I probably would have done the same thing when I was 17. About her cousin, Vicki said: ‘she was a good kid, but it was a Friday night and she wanted to go out with her friends to the local bar. It was a small community; everybody knew everybody and that’s just what we all did back then.’

Katherine ‘Kathy’ Kolodziej was an only child born to Andrew and Hedwig (nee Szydlowski) Kolodziej on December 7, 1956 in Ronkonkoma, New York. Hedwig was born on April 10, 1919 in Jamaica, NY; Andrew was born on April 12, 1922 in Wysne Lapse Poland and emigrated to the United States in the early 1940’s. Despite the fact that Kathy’s case went cold nearly 50 years ago, NYS Police investigator David Ayers told Andrea Cavallier from Dateline in December 2020 he isn’t about to let the young girl’s killer get away: ‘it’s a very tough case, and a lot of time has passed. But let’s just say, anything is possible. It’s not hopeless.’ Ayers went on to tell Cavallier that Ms. Kolodziej was last seen at roughly 1:30 AM leaving the bar wearing a red coat and crossing the street, most likely beginning her walk back to campus, which was only about a mile away ( I made the drive myself earlier today and it was indeed very short). It was the last time she was seen alive. It wasn’t until the weekend was coming to an end that her loved ones knew something was very wrong: she’d never just disappear without telling anyone where she was going. After Kathy’s story made the local news, a witness came forward claiming they saw a young woman get into a yellow Volkswagen Beetle around 1:45 AM the morning she vanished; to this day it has not been confirmed by authorities whether or not it was her.

Twenty-five long days went by. Law enforcement, Cobleskill campus security, and volunteers spent thousands of combined man hours combing the area looking for any trace of the missing girl. Finally, on November 23, 1974 law enforcement received a tip that hunters found a single blue shoe at the intersection of McDonald and Cross Hill Road in Richmondville, NY; Police later found its pair up the road. That same day Kolodziej’s remains were found by a group of deer hunters in a field on McDonald Road in Richmondville. Detective Ayers informed Dateline a man (who thankfully was aware of the missing co-ed in the area) had noticed a piece of red cloth in the distance through his binoculars and immediately notified the police. Upon arriving at the scene, state police discovered the badly decomposing body of Kathy Kolodziej discarded on a low rock wall; she was naked from the waist down but the lower part of her body was covered up by her red coat that was draped over her like a blanket. According to an autopsy performed at the Albany Medical Center, she had been stabbed seven times with two different weapons.

There would be no Thanksgiving celebration that year for the Kolodziej family. Instead of gathering together for a happy meal, Kathy’s parents started to prepare to bury their only child. Vicki Szydlowski said of that day: ‘we were supposed to go to Aunt Hattie’s at their home in Ronkonkoma that day for Thanksgiving. But then they got the call about Kathy. Nothing was ever the same.’ She went on to say that she and her siblings were close to her in their younger years however as they grew older and went to different colleges they eventually drifted apart, ‘but we always came back together at family gatherings; we had that cousin bond.’ Vicki described her cousin as a kind, good person who always made them laugh, especially with her different accents: Kathy had perfected her father’s thick Polish accent, which made everyone laugh when she pretended to speak like him.

Vicki shared a story with Dateline that when Kathy begged her parents for a horse her father built a stable in the backyard of their Lake Ronkonkoma home, and that: ‘she loved all animals, was always bringing them home. But she really loved horses, loved riding them, caring for them. It was her passion. And it led to what would have been her career.’ In her senior year of high school Kolodziej attended BOCES, majoring in ‘Horse Care & Horse Training.’ After graduating in 1974, she decided to turn her love for horses into a career and enrolled at the State University of New York at Cobleskill majoring in animal husbandry in hopes of becoming a veterinarian one day.

In a 1979 news interview, Kathy’s uncle Charles Szydlowski (a retired New York State police detective) recalled the phone call he got from his sister about his niece’s disappearance: ‘She said, ‘Charlie, Kathy is laying on the side of the road somewhere dead, I know it.’’  He attempted to tell her that her only child would turn up safe: ‘I said, ‘Heddy, there are 13 million people in New York State. What are the chances this is going to affect us this way? But she was right. Her first thought was that her daughter was dead, and she was right … I told Hattie… I told her that she’ll be all right. But my sister was so upset. She kept saying that Kathy was dead. Dead on the side of the road somewhere. Turns out, she was right.’ In the years that followed Kathy’s death, Andrew and Hedwig Kolodziej tirelessly worked next to law enforcement in hopes of helping them solve their daughter’s murder. Of her aunt and uncle, Vicki said: ‘they mourned their daughter for so many years, but they died before knowing who did this to her. It’s heartbreaking.’ After the death of Mr. and Mrs. Kolodziej, Vicki and Charles have taken on the duty of reaching out to investigators about any developments or updates about Kathy’s case. Mr. Szydlowski said that he’s hopeful his niece’s case will be solved soon: ‘our family would like closure. I would like to know. And one day, I’ll be able to tell my sister what happened.’

In addition to the New York State Police, many other investigating agencies have helped interview thousands of people about Kathy’s murder over the past almost 50 years. Friends, family, classmates, casual acquaintances… if anyone so much as walked by Kathy on Cobleskill’s campus, law enforcement spoke with them. However, with each year that goes by the chances of catching the coed’s killer becomes less and less likely as witnesses (and the killer themselves) are growing old and passing away. Detective Ayers inherited the cold case in 2016 and shared with Dateline that while he is unable to disclose specifics regarding DNA findings in Kathy’s case: ‘it’s an investigative avenue we continue to explore due to the advancements made with DNA technology. I do believe that any developments made with DNA evidence will be a huge step towards getting answers and possibly solving the investigation.’ HE also said that investigating LE agencies have reached out to the public on multiple occasions, encouraging them to report any information that could potentially help lead to an arrest: ‘individuals who may have had information of what happened are older now, some have even passed away, but we’re still hoping to track someone down who we missed before. We received numerous tips over the years, but the more time that passes, the harder it becomes.’

Tom Cioffi was the NYS Detective in charge of the case before Ayers took over; in 2012 he put up billboards in the Cobleskill area regarding Kathy’s disappearance and made requests for information through the media in an attempt to keep her murder on the public radar. The most recent one was put up in the fall of 2017 by Detective Ayers on Route 7 in Cobleskill: on it was a photo of Kolodziej along with a plea to the public that anyone with information regarding her homicide to call authorities. In addition to the well-placed billboards there’s also a Twitter handle and a police-run Facebook page titled ‘@Justice4Kathy Facebook Page.’ Its purpose is to provide the public with updates on the case and invites those who knew her or lived in the area to share stories and submit information. About the Facebook page, Ayers said that ‘we hope that by sharing Kathy’s story, and photos of the local bar and the area of Cobleskill, it will jog someone’s memory and they’ll have the information we need. There’s always somebody we might have missed, or someone who was reluctant to talk. We hope now is the time they come forward.’ He hopes that the billboards combined with the social media page will help put a renewed buzz in the case, and hopefully Kolodziej’s killer can finally be brought to justice. ‘We’re coming up on 50 years since Kathy’s murder, but we haven’t given up. There’s always a chance for closure. There’s always hope.’

The young student only lived in the area for about two months before she was murdered, which really didn’t give her a lot of time to form a lot of intimate and meaningful relationships (especially ones off campus). This is worth mentioning because Kathy was found in such an intimate way: her assailant was very careful to cover up the lower part of her body (despite being the one responsible for taking her clothes off in the first place). The fact that the killer seemed to know the ins and outs of the close knit area makes me speculate that maybe at one point they lived locally and weren’t just a drifter passing through. If (and this is a BIG if), she was held captive for any amount of time before she was killed then I would think she was murdered by someone that most likely lived alone and away from a lot of people (possibly in the country or a more remote area).

After the grim discovery investigators interviewed not only members of the student body at SUNY Cobleskill but also patrons of the bar she was last seen at. In addition, because of the report that Kathy was last seen getting into a yellow Volkswagen, law enforcement also tracked down and interviewed Bug owners in the area as well as anybody that may have had a connection to the murders of young women in the Northeast area. Despite the countless number of police interviews conducted over the years not a single serious suspect can be identified. Quite a few serial killers were investigated for the murder, including Ted Bundy, Lewis Lent, Donald Sigsbee, and John William Hopkins but all were eventually cleared.

So, we all know that Bundy didn’t kill this girl. In fact, I (very) briefly spoke with Detective Ayers on the phone and he flat-out told me he wasn’t guilty either (I’m an insurance agent with no police training, I will never pretend I know more than a trained law enforcement officer does). We know that on August 30, 1974 Bundy moved to Utah to start law school (ahem, again), and on October 31st he abducted and murdered Laura Ann Aime after she attended a Halloween party at Brown’s Café with friends in Lehi, Utah. Now, the café is 2,191 miles away from The Vault in Cobleskill and takes well over a full day to drive to (straight through, no stops). This means if Bundy did kill Kathy, he would have had to kill Aime then immediately get in his car to make the one day, nine hour drive to NYS to kill Kathy, who disappeared early in the morning on November 2nd. I mean, I suppose it’s plausible, but I just don’t think it happened. I listened to Dr. Keppels book ‘Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder’ on Audible while driving to Cobleskill and one of my biggest takeaways related to this case was that Bundy apparently made a real attempt to attend a good amount of classes his first semester back at law school. So the idea of him driving to NYS to commit a single murder just doesn’t make sense. Especially since on November 8th, just 6 days after Katherine Kolodziej was abducted, Bundy hit twice in Utah (Carol DaRonch then Debra Kent): The Fashion Place Mall in Murray Utah is 2,170 miles away from SUNY Cobleskill (and a 32-hour drive). We also must keep in mind the fact that law enforcement said that they had evidence that Kathy was most likely kept alive until the day before her body was discovered… I’m sorry, it’s just completely improbable that Bundy made this trip and committed this murder.

The serial killer Donald Sigsbee lived in Madison, NY (roughly 61 miles away from Cobleskill) and in March, 2004 he was convicted on two counts of second-degree murder for the 1975 death of 19-year-old SUNY Morrisville student Regina Reynolds. Ms. Reynolds was last seen hitchhiking at the intersection of Route 20 and 46 in Morrisville, NY. It is also speculated that he is responsible for the death of 21-year-old Martha Louise Allen, whose body was found by a boater on Black Creek on July 25, 1973 in the area of Verona Beach State Park. An index card with Ms. Allen’s name on it was discovered with paperwork related to Sigsbee’s cabinet business two years after her death. Law enforcement briefly considered him as a suspect in Ms. Kolodziej’s murder but he was eventually ruled out. In 2004, Sigsbee was found guilty of second-degree murder for the stabbing death of Reynolds and he died of natural causes on October 26, 2009 in Mohawk Valley Correctional Facility in Rome, NY.

WOW: I never heard of Lewis Lent but boy am I glad I looked him up… he reminds me of the wish.com version of Ed Kemper. I know it’s insensitive to make light of a murderer but come on… it’s a bit obvious. Anyways, Lent was a former Massachusetts janitor that murdered two children (but possibly more). Despite living in a different state at the time of the murders his childhood home was in Newfield, NY which is only about a 2.5 hour drive from Cobleskill. He claimed to be the subject of blackouts and memory lapses, and in one AP interview he blamed it on a close encounter with UFO occupants while in Virginia. It’s worth noting that his victims were much younger than Kathy (two were only twelve years old). It’s speculated that Lent didn’t act alone and that his accomplice(s) are still at large.

John William Hopkins’ first confirmed victim was the last he was officially linked to: Joanne Pecheone was a 19-year-old St. Francis de Sales School student when she was murdered on January 12, 1972. The school is located in Utica, NY, which is roughly 60 miles away from Cobleskill. Next was 17-year-old Cecelia Genatiempo, who Hopkind killed on July 24/25, 1976 in Gloversville, NY. His third and final confirmed victim was Sherrie Anne Carville, a 17-year-old high school student he kidnapped from a bar in her hometown of Johnstown, NY on October 22, 1978. Because of some striking similarities in the Hopkins murders and Kathy’s case, Tom Cioffi and Schoharie County Sheriff Tony Desmond (also a NYS Trooper) believe Hopkins could have possibly had some sort of role in Katherine’s murder. When he was arrested in 1979, he admitted to the murder of three young women total, but would only name and discuss two of them: for unknown reasons he refused to discuss anything related to his third victim. In relation to the homicide of Kathy Kolodziej, Sheriff Desmond said that ‘three of the victims were the same age as Kathy, and if you look at some of the pictures of these victims, the hairstyle parted in the center, long and combed down, it’s similar. And they were all college students.’ However, NYS Trooper senior investigator William John said evidence linking John to Kathy’s homicide was still minimal, and that: ‘we’re not sure if it was Hopkins. We’re looking at means and opportunities.’ He went on to say that Hopkins raped his victims and there was no evidence that Katherine was sexually assaulted in any way (despite the young girl being found naked from the waist down). I feel it’s worth mentioning that Hopkins appeared to have an unhealthy obsession with knives, and would often carry several of them on him in various sheaths (Kathy was stabbed eight times with two different weapons). The mystery of his third victim was a secret the killer thought he took he took with him to the grave: on June 3, 2000 while incarcerated at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, NY Hopkins committed suicide by slashing the back of his legs and wrists with a razor. After a cold case review, in 2011 the Oneida County DA Scott McNamara announced in a press release that police in Utica finally closed the case of Joanne Pecheone, naming Hopkins as her killer. There have been some speculations that he may have had additional victims on top of the three he was convicted of (including Kathy’s), however authorities have been unable to successfully link him to anything as of November 2023.

Redditor ‘whiskeyandtea’ had a lot of interesting insights regarding Ms. Kolodziej’s tragic murder, saying: ‘I’ve been researching this case for about a year and a half now. Some of my opinions are:

  • It was probably someone local.
  • As others have said, this road is not exactly easy to stumble upon.
  • In a recent interview the investigator assigned to the case said that a forensics report at the time suggested she was killed within a day of her body being discovered. Her body was discovered 3 weeks after she vanished. If this piece of information is true, where was she being held this whole time? Granted this piece of evidence contradicts what previous investigators have suggested (they believe she was killed almost immediately after being taken). Still, it’s a consideration.
  • It was someone she trusted.
  • No one reported hearing screaming, to my knowledge. In Cobleskill, at that time of night, if someone forces a person into a car, someone will likely hear the scream. So she probably got into the car willingly.
  • She turned down a ride home and said she was going to be getting a ride home from someone else. She probably did, and that person is probably the person who killed her. Why would you turn down a ride home from someone you know to catch a ride with some one you don’t?
  • The way the body was covered and carefully placed on the wall in the field seems like it might be a demonstration of remorse, to a degree, which you might expect from someone who knew her.
  • It was probably someone from the college, although it may also have been a townie from a bar.
  • She was only in town for 2 months. That’s not enough time to meet that many people, especially outside of campus, especially when you are acclimating to a new environment.
    Again, because it seems likely that she took a ride from someone she knows and trusts. How many people would you know and trust after living somewhere for only 2 months. If, and this is a BIG if, she was in fact held captive for a duration of time before being killed: it was probably someone who lived alone. This would eliminate most students, which means this should be cautiously evaluated, because there is probably a decent chance it was a fellow student.’

In a comment on an ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ Reddit post about Kolodziej’s disappearance, ‘TheEvilWoman‘ commented that they ‘live only a few miles from where her body was found. McDonald Rd is a really small road. You can hardly see it in the dark. I seriously doubt it was a random murderer. My guess is that it was someone local to the area. Someone she knew from hanging out in the bars. As for the Sheriff’s dept in this county, they are a joke. I ask the state troopers if I need the police. I doubt they will solve Kathy’s murder unless someone confesses. Her killer ‘most likely still lives in the county, probably in Richmondville.’ In response to that, a second Redditor by the handle Amj9412 commented, ‘you’re right it would be a weird spot to leave someone if you didn’t know your way around. Creepy to think he could still live around town!’ I will say, this past weekend I went to Cobleskill and did some exploring in the area and they are absolutely right: McDonald Road is extremely short, and is absolutely located in an odd, secluded spot ‘off the beaten track.’ Therefore, my educated assumption is someone must have known the area fairly well to leave the remains of the young lady in such a particular spot.

In the offices of the Princetown State Police Station located in Schenectady, NY the files related to the Katherine Kolodziej case are split into three cardboard boxes, her last name scribbled on the sides in dark black permanent black marker. Two of them can be found at the Trooper barracks in Rotterdam, and the third at their station in Cobleskill. Inside is information related to the case, including photos of Kathy, her autopsy report, information pertaining to leads, and crime scene photos. Currently, the only consistent phone calls law enforcement receive regarding the cold case are the twice-yearly inquiries from a former college classmate of Kolodziej’s who lives in Florida (Barbara Rose Lanieri). Despite many years going by since the murder took place, NY State Police remain hopeful that Kathy’s case can still be solved. Regarding the murder, Tom Cioffi said, ‘I still think this case can be solved. I really do.’

Andrew Kolodziej passed away on February 13, 2001 in Ronkonkoma at the age of 78; Mrs. Kolodziej died less than a year later on January 9, 2002 in Ronkonkoma at the age of 82. They’re buried in the same plot as their daughter at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Coram, New York.

New York State Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of up to $2,500 for information that directly leads to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for the homicide of Katherine Kolodziej. If you have any information in this case, please contact Investigator David Ayers at (518) 337–1223 and/or 24 hours (518) 234–3131. You can also leave an anonymous tip through Crime Stoppers. Use the ‘leave a tip’ tab on the Facebook profile or call their hotline at 1–866–313-TIPS (8477).

Works Cited:
http://cbs6albany.com/news/local/police-1974-cold-case-for-katherine-kolodziej-still-active
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/223882
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Cold-case-but-not-forgotten-933328.php
https://www.newsday.com/long-island/crime/murder-woman-missing-ronkonkoma-1.14699303

 

A photo of Kathy with her cousins.
A photo of Kathy with her cousin, courtesy of Maria Kolodziej.
Kathy Kolodziej eating a meal with family.
A photo of Kathy with her horse, Sandy.
A second photo of Kathy with her horse, Sandy.
Another photo of Kathy with her beloved horse, Sandy.
Kathy.
A photo of Kathy with her cousins.
A photo of Kathy, courtesy of Maria Kolodziej.
Kathy Kolodziej.
A yearbook photo of Kathy.
A photo of Kathy with her Cobleskill dorm mates.
Kathy.
TB’s whereabouts on November 2, 1974 according to the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992.’
Original missing persons flyer from November 1974.
Case information sheet on Homicide Victim Katherine Kolodziej.
The house Kathy grew up in located at 2867 Chestnut Avenue in Ronkonkoma, NY.
An article about Kathy published by The Glens Falls Post Star on November 29, 1974.
An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on November 29, 1974.
Part one of an article on Kathy’s death published by Newsday on November 29, 1974.
Part two of an article on Kathy’s death published by Newsday on November 29, 1974.
Part three of an article on Kathy’s death published by Newsday on November 29, 1974.
An article about Kathy published by The Daily News on November 29, 1974.
An article about Kathy published by The Glens Falls Post Star on November 30, 1974.
An article about Kathy published by Newsday on November 30, 1974.
An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on December 3, 1974.
An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on December 9, 1974.
An article about Kathy published by Newsday on December 2, 1974.
An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on January 2, 1975.
An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on February 15, 1975.
An article mentioning Kathy published by the New York Oneonta Daily Star on March 15, 1975.
An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on March 18, 1975.
An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on July 8, 1975.
An article about Kathy published by the Syracuse Herald Journal on November 2, 1975.
An article about Regina Reynolds mentioning Kathy published by the Syracuse Herald Journal on November 13, 1975.
An article mentioning Kathy titled ‘Missing Sidney Girl found Dead’ published by The Daily Star on November 20, 1975.
Part one of an article mentioning Kathy published by The Daily Star on November 21, 1975.
Part two of an article mentioning Kathy published by The Daily Star on November 21, 1975.
Part three of an article mentioning Kathy published by The Daily Star on November 21, 1975.
Part one of an article mentioning Kathy in high school published by the Syracuse Herald American on November 23, 1975.
Part two of an article mentioning Kathy in high school published by the Syracuse Herald American on November 23, 1975.
An article about Kathy published by The Daily Star on April 27, 1976.
An article mentioning Kathy published by The Bangor Daily News on January 4, 1978.
An article mentioning Kathy published by The The Journal News on January 4, 1978.
An article mentioning Kathy published by The Star-Gazette on January 4, 1978.
An article about Kathy published by Newsday on May 19, 1999.
An article mentioning Kathy published by Newsday on October 6, 1999.
Part one of an article mentioning Kathy’s murder published by Press and Sun-Bulletin on June 12, 2002.
Part two of an article mentioning Kathy’s murder published by Press and Sun-Bulletin on June 12, 2002.
Part one of an article about Kathy published by the Syracuse Post Standard on April 4, 2004.
Part two of an article about Kathy published by the Syracuse Post Standard on April 4, 2004.
Part three of an article about Kathy published by the Syracuse Post Standard on April 4, 2004.
An article mentioning Kathy published by Newsday on April 25, 2006.
An article reexamining Kathy’s case published by Newsday on February 19, 2011.
An article reexamining Kathy’s case published by The Daily News on September 9, 2018.
An article mentioning Kathy published by the Syracuse Post Standard on May 6, 2021.
An article about the 49th anniversary of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej published by The News of Schoharie County on November 9, 2023. Courtesy of my friend, Michelina Serino.
An article about the 49th anniversary of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej published by The News of Schoharie County in November of 2023. Courtesy of my friend, Michelina Serino.
A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.
A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej in November 1974.
The scene of where Kathy Kolodziej’s body was found in November 1974.
The rock wall where Kathy Kolodziej’s body was found in November 1974.
A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.
A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.
A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.
A photograph from the crime scene of the murder of Kathy Kolodziej taken on November 23, 1974.
A photo from the crime scene.
Kathy’s discarded blue shoe found by hunters.
The coffin bearing the body of Katherine Kolodziej is carried from St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church in Lake Ronkonkoma on December 2, 1974. Photo courtesy of Walter del Toro.
The gravesite of Kathy and her parents.
Kathy’s uncle Charles Szydlowski, a retired New York State police detective.
A memorial close to where Kathy’s remains were found on McDonald Road.
A memorial close to where Kathy’s remains were found on McDonald Road.
The latest billboard from 2017 regarding Kathy’s 1974 unsolved homicide.
Schoharie County District Attorney James Sacket, (front left) Investigator Dave Ayers and New York State Police Captain Richard J. O’Brien speak to reporters in front of a billboard asking for information about the murder of Kathy Kolodziej in Cobleskill.
A photo of the original investigators of the Kolodziej case in more recent years.
Tom Coiffi with evidence boxes containing information about Kathy Kolodziej’s case.
A Google Maps image of the area where Kathy was discovered.
View of SUNY Cobleskill during the 1980’s.
An aerial shot of SUNY Cobleskill taken in the 1980’s.
An older B&W snapshot of ‘The Vault’ in Cobleskill in the early 80’s.
An older color snapshot of ‘The Vault’ in Cobleskill.
The Vault as it stands today in 2022.
Please ignore my dirty car. Another shot of The Vault as it stands today, August 2022.
The entrance to SUNY Cobleskill, August 2022.
SUNY Cobleskill Equestrian Center.
A 2022 map of SUNY Cobleskill.
Part of the SUNY Cobleskill campus where Kathy would have taken courses for her major in Animal Husbandry.
McDonald Road, where Kathy’s remains were found.
The best shot I could get of the rock wall where Kathy’s remains were found without trespassing. 2022.
Another shot of the rock wall, 2022.
Another shot of the rock wall, August 2022.
Some friends gathering at the site of where the remains of Kathy Kolodziej were found at a memorial service on November 13, 2023. Photo courtesy of Michelina Serino.
Some friends gathering at the site of where the remains of Kathy Kolodziej were found at a memorial service on November 13, 2023. Photo courtesy of Michelina Serino.
A cross marks the spot where the remains of Kathy Kolodziej were found at a memorial service on November 13, 2023. Photo courtesy of Michelina Serino.
The Naturalization Records for Andrew Joseph Kolodziej from when he emigrated to the US from Poland.
Mr. Kolodziej’s WW2 draft card.
Hedwig Kolodziej’s senior picture from the 1938 John Adams High School yearbook.
Kathy’s parents, Andrew and Kathy Kolodziej.
Lewis Lent, a janitor from Massachusetts, confessed to kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and killing 12 year-old Sara Wood in August 1993, however he refused to tell law enforcement where he buried her body. He had also plead guilty to the 1990 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Pittsfield, MA native Jimmy Bernardo. Lent abducted Jimmy from the Pittsfield movie theater where he worked as a janitor. Lent was sentenced to life without parole for the Bernardo murder and sentenced to 25 years to life for the Wood murder and is currently in prison in Massachusetts. He is also suspected in a number of other child kidnapping cases. Lent recanted his confession and refuses to disclose the location of Sara’s body. Lent has said that he can’t say where her body is because she is not buried alone. It has been speculated that Lent did not act alone and that his accomplice(s) are still at large.
Joanne Pecheone.
Correspondence between murderer Lewis Lent and reporter Christine O’Donnell discussing the murder of Kathy Kolodziej; he denied any involvement in her murder.
Correspondence between murderer Lewis Lent and reporter Christine O’Donnell discussing the murder of Kathy Kolodziej; he denied any involvement in her murder.
Donald Sigsbee. He was convicted in March 2004 on two counts of second-degree murder in the death of Regina Reynolds in Onondaga County Court. Reynolds was a 19 year-old SUNY Morrisville student, killed in 1975. She was last seen alive hitchhiking at the intersection of state Route 20 and Route 46 in Morrisville. NY. He died on October 26, 2009 in Mohawk Valley Correctional Facility in Rome, NY.
John William Hopkins, AKA The Mohawk Valley Ripper.

Lake Sammamish.

On July 14th, 1974, Ted Bundy abducted two women from Lake Sammamish state park in Issaquah, Washington. That bright and cheerful afternoon, Bundy approached Janice Ann Ott and Denise Marie Naslund in broad daylight and asked them to assist him unload a sailboat at his parent’s house. Bundy donned a fake sling and explained that his arm was injured and that he was unable to unload it by himself. He also claimed that his parent’s house was ‘just up the hill.’

The abductions of Ott and Naslund occurred separately, just four hours apart. On both of these occasions, he convinced his victim to get into his Volkswagen Bug and accompany him to his sailboat, which in reality did not exist. Once his victims got into his car, it is likely that he immediately drove them to a secluded dump site in Issaquah known as Tiger Mountain and murdered them. This is the same site where Ott and Naslund’s skeletal remains were discovered roughly two months later.

Janice Ann Ott was abducted at around 12.30 PM; three and a half hours after her abduction Bundy returned to look for a second victim, Denise Naslund. At roughly 4:30 PM, he approached Denise Naslund by the restrooms and, using the same technique he used with Ott, was able to convince her to help him as well.

During the investigation into the disappearance of Ott and Naslund, it emerged that a man calling himself “Ted” had approached multiple women at Lake Sammamish that afternoon in 1974. Bundy’s decision to kidnap two women within four hours of each other was a brazen deviation from the norm. Because of this, many Bundy Scholars have speculated that he was attempting to “increase his high” by attacking two women at the same time. In other words, it is speculated that he may have incapacitated Janice Ott, gagged her (not killing her) and then returned to the park to search for a second victim. Although Bundy did insinuate that one had to watch the other die, this “confessin” was during one of his third-person pseudo-confessions to Stephen Michaud. We also know that Ted was a narcissist and a habitual liar who loved to paint himself as a bold and highly-intelligent serial killer. Therefore, we need to be extremely careful about taking his word as fact.

It has been hypothesized that Bundy tied Ott to a tree and then left her there. The area in question was pretty secluded and it is fairly unlikely that someone would have stumbled upon her, especially if she was gagged. Another plausible theory is that Bundy murdered Ott before he returned to Lake Sammamish with his second victim. There is a noticeable gap between the abduction of Ott at 12.30 PM and Bundy’s return to the park at around 4 PM and if we take into account the length of the journey between the park and the dump site, then it means that he was with Ott for 2-3 hours. That seems like a lot of time if the original plan was to kidnap two women and then attack them at the same time. His decision to hunt for a second victim may have also been driven by other factors. For example, an event may have occurred during the murder of Janice Ott which prevented Bundy from achieving sexual gratification. At this point in time we’ll most likely never really know.

Janice Blackburn-Ott
Janice Blackburn-Ott
Janice Ott and her husband Jim.
1974 was an eventful time for 23 year old Janice: she not only graduated from Eastern Washington State College, but she also had to come to terms with her husband moving away to California for school. She remained in Issaquah and worked as a probation case worker at the King County Youth Service Center in Seattle.
Denise Marie Naslund.
An old, aerial photograph of Lake Sammamish State Park, photo courtesy of King County Archives.
This aerial map of Lake Sammamish state park shows the exact locations where Bundy approached Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. It also pinpoints the general area where Bundy’s VW Beetle was parked. Bundy approached Ott at 12.30 PM while she was sunbathing on the beach. Then, four hours later, he lured Naslund away from the restrooms by the parking lot. In 2022, the restroom in question no longer exists, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
The afternoon of the abduction Bundy parked his VW Beetle in the middle of the car park, photo courtesy of thisinterestsme.com.
This aerial image of Lake Sam shows where Denise and her friends were sitting. Additionally it highlights the location of the restrooms, photo courtesy of thisinterestsme.com.
On July 14th, 1974, Ted Bundy abducted two women from Lake Sammamish state park in Issaquah, Washington, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
An aerial photograph of the park from 1977; not much about it has changed, photo courtesy of oddstops.com/USGS.
This map from the King County Sheriff’s Office shows the exact locations where Bundy approached several women, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
A Google Maps Street View image of the parking lot at the park; during the abduction of Ott, Bundy’s VW was parked beyond the cars that are circled in red, photo courtesy of thisinterestsme.com.
It would have taken roughly 10-15 minutes to drive between Lake Sam and the dump site at Issaquah. The route in question is about four miles long. Driving this exact same route yesterday it was eerily close, he truly was fearless.
A newspaper article about the disappearance of Ott and Naslund.
Following Ott and Naslund’s disappearance, the police released a composite sketch of the suspect. After Liz saw it in the newspaper along with the name “Ted” she immediately began to suspect that it was him, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
An off-duty DEA agent named Kelly Snyder was at Lake Samammish that day. He was close enough to witness Bundy approaching Janice Ott. “I noticed a guy that was walking down the beach. A young man. Probably in his mid-to-late twenties. He was wearing white shorts and they had a red stripe, which immediately caught my eye. When he got close, I noticed he had really curly hair and his left arm was in a sling. It piqued my interest because every time he approached a woman, or a group of two or three women, he was getting turned down. And I just kept watching him and he eventually ended up being right in front of me, where he approached a young girl. She was a young and attractive blonde girl. And he asked her… words to the effect of… ‘I need some help.’ She’s saying that she just got here… So obviously, going through her mind is ‘I’d like to help you out, but I’m here to relax.’ He kept on and on and on, and he talks her into whatever he talked her into. He said something about a catamaran. And ultimately, she gets up… reluctantly… because her head is down and she is like ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’ And then she started walking back past me. She had this frown on her face, like, ‘I’m helping this guy when I should be enjoying myself on the beach.’ And the end the result is she’s no longer with us because she was a nice person.” Photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
A picture of a younger Eleanor Rose, Denise’s Mother.
Mrs. Eleanor Rose, Mother of Denise Naslund taken on July 28, 1974. Denise was studying to become a computer programmer and worked part time to help pay her way through night school. Mrs. Rose said Denise had the kind of helpful nature that could place her in danger with the man who called himself “Ted.”
This is Eleanor Rose, the mother of Denise Naslund. Ms. Rose left her daughters bedroom the same as it was in 1974 for many years after her abduction. Regarding her daughters abduction Ms. Rose has said, ‘I don’t think anything will ever been the same again or anywhere near it. Part of me is gone and I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ Denise was the last of the known eight ‘Ted’ victims in Washington state.
Dr. DE Blackburn and his wife while in Seattle looking for their daughter, taken on July 28, 1974.
James Ott is showed here on August 18, 1974 posting the first of hundreds of missing posters asking for information about Janice, who had been missing for five weeks at that point. He posted this it in front of the King County Juvenile Court, which had offered office space as well as the part time help of a probation officer, Carol Hasman, to the ‘Janice Ott Committee to find the Missing Woman.’
Police arrive at Lake Sam, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
A still image from a video taken at Lake Sam the day Ott and Naslund were abducted from. Just about 40,000 people visited the state park the afternoon of Ott and Naslunds disappearance. It was sunny and the temperature ranged between 80 to 90 degrees, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
At around 4:30 PM, Denise Naslund went to the bathroom by the parking lot and never came back. It wasn’t long before her boyfriend and friends realized that something was wrong. Don’t forget that only four hours earlier Janice Ott went missing at the same park. Due to the fact that a few other women had recently gone missing in the Seattle area, everyone was well aware that a predator was on the loose, so the authorities immediately responded to the scene, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
A Picture of a VW parked in the front row of cars at Lake Sammamish on Sunday, July 14, 1974. Behind it is a line of police vehicles blocking it, as they dealt with a problem pertaining to a biker gang that was taking place close to where the car was parked. The photo appears to have been taken in the afternoon, obviously before Denise Naslund was led away by Bundy. Years later, when Bob Keppel questioned Bundy about the photo (Keppel believed it was Bundy’s Bug), Bundy recognized the scene and said “law-breakers,” insinuating that he knew what was happening there. What follows is from the record:
Keppel: “Is that you? It’s Lake Sammamish State Park, 1974. The tree, cops roll in and take care of the …”
Bundy: “Law breakers.”
Keppel: “Ya?”
Bundy: “Well, I mean, we’re in the ballpark.”
By saying “law breakers” and telling Keppel he was in the ballpark, Bundy was admitting he had personal knowledge concerning what was taking place. When Keppel asked him about the car, believing it was his and wanting him to admit it, Bundy responded “Well, I—is it?”
Bundy knew that wasn’t his car, but he was telling the investigator he was in the ballpark, meaning hid own Beetle was nearby. Photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
One picture taken at the park that day Ott and Naslund vanished that shows a light colored VW Bug in the background, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
The police showed up at the park to deal with a group of bikers, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
A sign at the entrance of Lake Sammamish Park, April 2022.
Beach at Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Beach at Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Beach at Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Beach at Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Concession stand at Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
A sign at Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Beach at Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Beach at Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.
Lake Sammamish Park, 2022.

Georgann Hawkins.

Georgann Hawkins was born on August 20, 1955 in Sumner, Washington to Warren and Edith Hawkins. She had an older sister named Patti and both girls were brought up in an upper middle class, Episcopalian household. Affectionately nicknamed ‘George’ by family and friends, Mrs. Hawkins described her daughter as a ‘wiggle worm’ because she was always full of energy and was unable to sit still. Georgann seemed to be universally adored by everyone around her, and she was always surrounded by a close-knit group of friends. At one point in her early childhood Hawkins went through a bout of Osgood-Schlatter Disease, which is described as painful inflammation found just below the knee that is made worse with physical activity and made better with lots of bed rest. One or both knees can be affected by this disease and flare-ups may occur after the initial episode has passed. Thankfully it never came back after George’s initial bout (although she was left with several small, barely noticeable bumps just below her patellae).

Despite her health challenges, Georgann went on to become a star athlete at Lakes High School in Lakewood, Washington: she was on the swim team in her early years but eventually gravitated towards cheerleading, winning numerous medals and competitions while on her high schools cheerleading squad (where she cheered all four years). In addition to her impressive athletic accomplishments, Hawkins was also a straight A student throughout the entirety of her academic career. During her senior year in 1973, Georgann was awarded with the title of princess to the royal court of the annual Washington Daffodil Festival. As Daffodil Princess, she traveled around Washington State with the other court members and their ‘duties’ involved being interviewed by newspapers, meeting children, riding in parades, attending concerts, and signing autographs at charity events. Georgann even gave a speech in the spring of 1973 addressing lawmakers at the Washington State Legislature.

Patti Hawkins went to Central Washington University in Ellensburg, which is the same school that Susan Rancourt attended before she was abducted by Bundy in April 1974. Georgann originally planned on following in her sisters footsteps and attending CWU as well, however her mother was strongly against it; she wanted her younger daughter to attend college at the University of Washington Seattle Campus, which was only about 30 minutes away from Sumner. Agreeing to this arrangement, Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins paid for Georgann’s tuition, books, room and board. To earn some extra spending money, she worked in Seattle throughout the summer, occasionally returning to her family home on weekends. The final time Georgann saw her parents was on Mother’s Day weekend of 1974.

Georgann’s freshman year at the University of Washington was a busy one: she joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and decided to major in either broadcast journalism or reporting. Despite having some troubles with a Spanish course she maintained a straight A GPA and found love with a Beta Theta Pi fraternity brother named Marvin Gellatly. Georgann planned to return to her parents house for the summer on June 13th and had plans to start a summer job on Monday, June 17th.

At the time of her disappearance in spring 1974, Georgann stood at a petite 5’2” and weighed a mere 115 pounds. She has long chestnut hair that went down her back and big, doe-like brown eyes. Earlier on the day on June 10th, Hawkins called her mother to tell her she was going to study as hard as she possibly could for her next days Spanish final so she wouldn’t have to retake it later. But before hitting the books she went to a party, even imbibing in a few mixed cocktails. But, because she needed to study didn’t stay long; Hawkins did mention to a sorority sister that she was planning on swinging by the Beta Theta Pi House to pick up some Spanish notes from her boyfriend. She arrived at the frat at 12:30 AM on June 11 and stayed for approximately thirty minutes. After getting the notes and saying goodnight to her beau, Georgann left the fraternity house for her sorority house, which was only about 350 feet away.

Although typically a very safe and cautious young woman, Georgann thought nothing of this short walk that she took hundreds of times before, as it was in a well lit and busy area. While on her way of what should have been just a quick jaunt home, a friend called out to her from his window and she stopped to chat for a few minutes. She said goodnight to him and continued her short walk back to her dorm. Hawkins sorority sisters knew something wasn’t right when the typically reliable George didn’t arrive home two hours later. One of them even called her boyfriend, who informed her that she left his place at around 1 AM. After hearing this, the sister woke the housemother, and together they waited up for Georgann until morning. When morning came and she still didn’t arrive home they called Seattle police, and because of the recent disappearance of fellow University of Washington student Lynda Ann Healy, they immediately sprung to action. They later were informed that one of the other housemothers had awoken that night to a high pitched scream: she thought it was some people joking around and went back to sleep. Bundy confessed to Georganns murder moments before his execution, and though he was foggy on some of the more specific details he distinctly remembered how kind and trusting she was. He went on to say that he asked her for assistance carrying his briefcase to his car (because of his prop cast), and she happily obliged. As Bundy was approaching the young coed he pretended to fumble with the briefcase he was carrying. This was a common practice Bundy used in order to gain his victims trust and get them to lower their defenses; he later switched things up a bit and used an arm sling during his Lake Sammamish abductions (most likely because he couldn’t drive with a ‘broken leg’). As she bent over to put the briefcase in his vehicle, Ted grabbed a conveniently placed crowbar and knocked her out with a single blow to the head. He then put George’s tiny body in the passengers seat of his car and drove off into the night, never to be seen again. Haewkins briefly regained consciousness and in her confused state asked Bundy if he was there to help study for her Spanish exam. He then knocked her unconscious again, pulled his VW Bug over to the side of the road near to Lake Sammamish State Park and strangled her using a piece of rope. Before his execution he claimed that part of her remains were included in those found at his Issaquah dump site.

The day after her brutal murder, Bundy returned to check on Georgann’s body and discovered that one of her shoes was missing. He immediately began to worry that it had fallen off in the parking lot during the abduction and that someone might remember seeing his car parked in the area. Ted was also worried people were going to piece things together because just two weeks prior he had attempted the exact same abduction technique on a different young woman but something spooked him and he decided against it. He was terrified that this unknown woman might come forward and mention the strange encounter if Hawkins belongings were discovered in the same parking lot. The morning after Hawkins abduction, law enforcement taped off the alley and searched it thoroughly for any evidence… but they left the parking lot where Bundy first approached her untouched. Because of this oversight, he was able to return at roughly 5 PM the next evening and retrieve the missing shoe as well as both of Georgann’s earrings that were misplaced as well.

Bundy also claimed he returned to Hawkins body again on June 14th, and at that point made the decision to cut off her head. His third (and final) post-mortem visit to her remains occurred about a week or two later, when he came back to ‘see what was going on.’ During his death row confession, Ted also hinted at acts such as necrophilia so who knows what he meant when he said he went back to ‘see what was going on’ with poor Georgann’s corpse. While going through the bones recovered from the Issaquah dump site, forensic experts found a femur they strongly thought to be Hawkins but is considered ‘impossible to identify.’ It’s also been said that Bundy himself admitted that one of her femur bones discovered at the Issaquah dump site was Georgann’s, but this statement has never been confirmed.

I’ve always wondered about Georgann Hawkins’ family and how they coped with the loss of their daughter. Many family members of other Bundy victims have been vocal with their opinions regarding Bundy’s fate and what happened to their loved ones (specifically Lynda Healy’s sister (Laura) was active in the Amazon mini-series “Falling for a Killer” as well as Susan Rancourts Mom and Sister) but it was tough for me to find anything about Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins. I did stumble across an article Georgann’s mother did with “Green Valley News” titled “Georgann Hawkins died at the hands of Ted Bundy, but that’s not how her mom wants her remembered” that was published on June 11, 2014. In it, Mrs. Hawkins fondly remembers her daughter, saying that “she was a very self-confident little girl … she wasn’t vain, she wasn’t arrogant and she wasn’t snooty. That’s why kids liked her.” She went on to say that her daughter was an avid swimmer who was active in the Brownies (however swimming eventually fell to the wayside once she discovered boys). Years after Theodore Robert Bundy was executed for his crimes against humanity by the State of Florida Georgann’s friends held a memorial for her at their alma matter: Lakes High School. Warren and Edie Hawkins did not attend. She explained, ‘my feeling at the time was, ‘What was it for,’ you know? It wasn’t going to help me any.’ She went on to elaborate that she didn’t keep in touch with anyone in her daughters life nor did she want to. Over the years many newspapers and magazines reached out to the Hawkins family for interviews about their beloved daughter but they turned them all down (aside from a single sentence Edie gave to the associated press after Bundy was executed, saying ‘I’ve never, ever, ever dwelt on how she died. I didn’t want to know how she died’). She didn’t like the idea of anyone making money off the death of her daughter.

THIS was an incredibly eerie experience for me. I felt a lot of sadness and fear at this particular site. When my Google Maps alerted me when I came to the supposed exact location (figured right down to latitude and longitude) I didn’t linger long, plus there was a cop just sitting there, watching the area.

Georgann Hawkins sophomore picture from the 1971 Lakes High School yearbook.
Georgann Hawkins junior picture from the 1972 Lakes High School yearbook.
Georgann Hawkins in a group cheerleading picture from the 1972 Lakes High School yearbook.
Georgann Hawkins and a friend from the 1972 Lakes High School yearbook.
Georgann Hawkins senior picture from the 1973 Lakes High School yearbook.
A photo of George from the 1973 Washington State Daffodil festival.
As Hawkins had previously lost her key to the house, Dee Nichols, Hawkins’ roommate, had been waiting for the familiar rattling sound of small stones hitting the window, signaling her to run downstairs to let Hawkins into the house. When Hawkins failed to return by 3:00 AM, Nichols became concerned, and informed the housemother
Photo courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’
Georgeann Hawkins from her high school cheerleading days.
Georgeann and her pom poms, Lakes High school.
Georgeann Hawkins and the Lakes High School cheerleading squad pose for a yearbook photo.
Photo courtesy of the Lakewood Historical Society.
A photo of Georgeann Hawkins for her high school yearbook.
Georgeann Hawkins top left, 1972.
A b&w photo of Georgeann Hawkins.
Bundy’s statement regarding the identity of the partial skeletal remains being those of Georgann Hawkins has never been confirmed. Although Hawkins is presumed dead, she is still officially listed as a missing person and no public records indicate that she has been declared legally dead.
During his death row confessions, Bundy claimed he decapitated Hawkins and buried her head 25-50 yards from the rest of her body, and buried it roughly 10 yards from the roadside on a rocky hillside. He stated that a leg bone and vertebrae found with two other victims belonged to Georgann. However, Bundy’s confession has never been confirmed and Hawkins’ case remains open.
Georgann and Phyllis Armstrong.
Georgann Hawkins, 1973 (I’m not sure why but this is my favorite picture of Georgann. She seems so confidant and sure of herself, I’m envious of people like that).
Phyllis Armstrong and Georgann Hawkins (the two in the front).
Bundy went on to tell Seattle Detective Robert Keppel that Georgann was quite lucid in the car, and that ‘she thought she had a Spanish test the next day, and she thought I had taken her to help tutor me for a Spanish test. It was kind of odd. An odd thing to say.’
Phillis Armstrong and Georgann Hawkins, 1973.
The 1973 Daffodil Royal Court visit the WA Senate (Georgann is at the top right).
Georgann Hawkins in the Seattle Police Files.
Georgann and her Father, Warren.
At the time of her abduction (because of Hawkins’ near-sightedness) Seattle Police theorized that if the perpetrator of her abduction had been surreptitiously lurking in the shadows of the alleyway and had overheard Hawkins’ name after overhearing her friend refer to her by her nickname ‘George,’ that he could have easily called to her using her nickname as means to lure her in his direction. This would have given her abductor the chance to overpower and silence her. However, no witnesses reported seeing or hearing any signs of a struggle at the time of her disappearance. 
As Georgann was walking the 350 foot walk home from her boyfriends fraternit, Ted Bundy approached her using crutches and faking a limp. He often used this technique to appear more vulnerable and less dangerous, thus helping garner sympathy from his victims and earn their trust.
Hawkins was nearsighted, and typically wore eyeglasses or contact lenses to correct her vision, although she had neither in her possession at the time of her disappearance. Her roommate told police that the reason why Hawkins did not have her eyeglasses or contact lenses with her that evening was because ‘she’d worn her contacts all day to study, and after you’ve worn contact lenses for a long time, things look blurry when you put glasses on, so she wasn’t wearing them either.
Georgeann Hawkins at a party during her freshman year at the University of Washington in 1974.
Georgann Hawkins with Phyllis Armstrong (fellow Daffodil Princess and student at the University of Washington). Photo of Georgann Hawkins and friends from the Seattle Police Files.
Photo courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’
A photo of Georgann Hawkins from the Seattle Police Files.
Newspaper clipping of photographs of Ted Bundy victim Georgann Hawkins and her father. Photo courtesy of the Seattle Police Files.
A B&W photo of the alley where Georgann was abducted, 1974.
A photograph of where Georgann stopped to briefly chat with a friend through his window minutes before her abduction.
A B&W photo of Georgann Hawkins dorm room taken in 1974.
Alley where Georgann Hawkins was abducted from in B&W, 1974.
The morning after Georgann’s abduction, students and news crews started to gather at Greek Row.
A photo taken at Taylor Mountain upon the discovery of Bundy’s dump site, courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’
Taylor Mountain, courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’
Taylor Mountain, courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’
A photo of the possible burial site of Georgann Hawkins, courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’
A photo of the possible burial site of Georgann Hawkins, courtesy of ‘hi: I’m Ted.’
A computer generated map of the crime scene of Georgeann Hawkins in 1974.
A newspaper clipping about the abduction of Georgann Hawkins.
Diagram of the crime scene surrounding the abduction of Georgann Hawkins as it was in 1974, photo courtesy of King County Archives.
A 1965 map of Issaquah, photo courtesy of King County Archives.
This aerial photograph is from 1977: the blue line shows the route that Bundy and Georgann walked the night of her abduction. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
1. Georgann leaves her boyfriends fraternity, the Beta Theta Pi House.
2. As Hawkins is walking back to her sorority house, Bundy approaches her on crutches and asks for help carrying his briefcase to his car.
3. Once they are in the parking lot, he hits her over the head with a crowbar and kidnaps her.
Photo courtesy of OddStops.
A map of the Issaquah crime scene from King County Archives.
A hand drawn map of the Issaquah dump site with the alleged location of Georgeann’s body labeled. This was drawn by Bundy in 1989 before he was executed. From ‘Terrible Secrets’ by Bob Keppel and Michaud.
Hand-written notes surrounding Georgann Hawkins murder case.
During Bundy’s abduction of Hawkins he misplaced both of her hoop earrings as well as one of her shoes. Luckily for him, he was able to retrieve all three items the next evening while the police was busy investigating other crime scenes.
Georgann Hawkins Missing Persons Photo.
News Bulletin released by the Seattle Police Department regarding the mysterious disappearance of Georgann Hawkins.
An article about Georgann published by The News Tribune on December 12, 1972.
A photo of Georgann (front row to the far left) published in The Tacoma News Tribune on February 18, 1973. Photo courtesy of Julia Larina and her group ‘The Study of the material for educational purposes and research: TRB.’
Georgann featured in The Tacoma News Tribune on February 22, 1973.
An article about Georgann published by The Tacoma News Tribune on March 4, 1973. Photo courtesy of Maria Serban.
A newspaper article about the disappearance of Georgann Hawkins.
An article about Georganns disappearance from the Statesman Journal (a local paper from Salem, Oregon), published in June 1974.
A newspaper article about the disappearance of Georgann Hawkins.
A newspaper article mentioning the disappearance of Georgann Hawkins.
A newspaper article about the disappearance of Georgann Hawkins.
An article about Georganns disappearance published by The Tacoma News Tribune on June 13, 1974.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on July 24, 1974.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Vancouver Sun on July 25, 1974.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Bulletin on August 7, 1974.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokane Chronicle on August 7, 1974.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Daily News on September 8, 1974.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on September 10, 1974.
A newspaper article about the disappearance of Georgann Hawkins published by The Bulletin on September 11, 1974.
A newspaper article about the disappearance of Georgann Hawkins published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on September 11, 1974.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokane Chronicle on September 25, 1974.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Lodi News-Sentinel on September 25, 1974.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on September 25, 1974.f
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on October 16, 1974.
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A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokane Chronicle on October 16, 1974.

A newspaper article about Kathy Parks that mentions Georgann Hawkins published by The Eugene Register-Guard on March 7, 1975.
A newspaper article about Kathy Parks that mentions Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokane Chronicle on March 7, 1975.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Lewiston Tribune on March 8, 1975.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Eugene Register-Guard on March 10, 1975.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The News Tribune on March 18, 1975.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokane Chronicle on August 28, 1978.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokane Chronicle on August 28, 1978.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokesman-Review on August 28, 1978.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Deseret News on August 28, 1978.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Lewiston Tribune on August 28, 1978.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokesman-Review on August 19, 1979.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Edmonton Journal on September 8, 1979.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on July 2, 1986.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokesman-Review on July 2, 1986.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Longview Daily News on July 2, 1986.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Corvallis Gazette-Times on July 2, 1986.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The St. Petersburg Times on January 26, 1989.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Ocala Star-Banner on February 6, 1989.
A newspaper article mentioning Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokesman-Review on August 7, 1995.
A newspaper article about a memorial service for Georgann Hawkins published by The Spokesman-Review on February 6, 1989.
Gravel roadway at the Issaquah dump site, September 1974. Photo courtesy of King County Archives.
The ‘little dirt road that went up the hill, across some railroad tracks’ and entrance to the dump site in Issaquah, from September 1974. Photo courtesy of King County Archives.
Sight of Georgann Hawkins Abduction, 2022.
Photo of the alley where Georgann was abducted, April 2022.
Photo of the alley where Georgann was abducted, April 2022.
Photo of the alley where Georgann was abducted, April 2022.
Photo of the alley where Georgann was abducted, April 2022.
Photo of the alley where Georgann was abducted, April 2022.
Ted Bundy lured Georgann Hawkins to this parking lot, hit her over the head then abducted her. During the attack, he hit her head with such force that both of her hoop earrings flew off as well as one of her shoes. However, Bundy was able to retrieve these the next evening while the police were busy investigating the alley and searching local parks. According to his confession in 1989, he observed the police from afar and watched as they cordoned off the alley but completely overlooked the parking lot.
The following quote from Bundy’s confession in 1989 confirms the location of this lot:
‘About halfway down the block I encountered her (Georgann) and asked her to help me carry the brief case, which she did. We walked back up the alley, across the street, turned right on the sidewalk in front of the fraternity house on the corner, rounded the corner to the left, going north on 47th. Well, midway in the block there used to be a… y’know… one of those parking lots they used to make out of burned-down houses in that area. The university would turn them into parking lots… instant parking lots. There was a parking lot there… (it had a) dirt surface, no lights, and my car was parked there.’
Georgeann’s dormitory, photo taken in April 2022.
Georgeann’s dormitory, photo taken in April 2022.
Silvia Storaasli, left, Jamie Mayberry Rogers, right, and Sarah Williams, foreground, share tearful memories of Georgann Hawkins at a tribute at Lakes High School in suburban Tacoma on February 5, 1989.
A photo of Mrs. Edie Hawkins taken for the Green Valley News in 2014, who commented: ‘I haven’t thought about forgiving him. How could you forgive somebody who hurts your child? I’m not that gracious an individual.’

Residence of Lynda Ann Healy, 1974 vs. 2022.

Lynda Ann Healy’s House, 1974 vs 2022.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The former apartment where Lynda Healy lived, photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
A photo of some of the Healy children.
Lynda with a very large cat.
A photo of some of the Healy’s with their dog.
A photo of some of the Healy children.
Some B&W pictures of the Healy family.
Lynda Ann Healy.
Lynda Ann Healy.
Lynda Ann Healy and a fish she caught.
Lynda Ann Healy.
Lynda Ann Healy.
Lynda Ann Healy.
Lynda Ann Healy and her Mother.
Lynda with her mother and some of her siblings.
Lynda and some of her brothers, photo courtesy of Amazon Prime.
Lynda with her brother unboxing Christmas presents, photo courtesy of Amazon Prime.
Lynda and one of her brothers at Christmas, photo courtesy of Amazon Prime.
A young Lynda Healy, photo courtesy of Amazon Prime.
A picture of Lynda with a camera; her friends and family said she was an avid photographer and rarely left home without it.
Lynda painting her apartment.
Lynda’s bedroom in her apartment in Seattle.
A photo of the crime scene of blood on Lynda’s bed.
Bloodstains were visible on Lynda’s pillow.
The side door provided quick and easy access to the basement.
The Old Dante’s Tavern.
Dantes Tavern before it caught fire and was demolished.
The inside of the old Dante’s Tavern.
The infamous “Bundy booth” at Dante’s.
Dante’s in flames.
The parking lot where Dante’s once stood, April 2022.
A search team at Taylor Mountain.
Captain Mackie.
A chart of Bundy’s Seattle victims.
A still image from a news story investigating Lynda’s disappearance.
Lynda’s roommates.
Lynda read the ski report for a local radio station.
A clipping from The News Tribune published on July 28th, 1974, photo courtesy of thisinterestsme.com.
The basement window to Lynda Healy’s bedroom.
An aerial map that shows the quickest route between Dante’s Tavern and Lynda Healy’s house; she lived about two blocks away, photo courtesy of thisinterestsme.com.
The Taylor Mountain dump site where Bundy dumped Lynda’s body; a search team discovered her lower jaw bone in the area circled in red, photo courtesy of thisinterestsme.com.
An aerial image of Lynda’s apartment compared to where Liz Kendall lived, photo courtesy of thisinterestsme.com.
Lynda Ann Healy’s old apartment, April 2022.
Lynda Ann Healy’s old apartment, April 2022.
Lynda Ann Healy’s old apartment, April 2022.
Lynda Ann Healy’s old apartment, 1974.
It’s strongly suspected Bundy carried Healy out this side door.
An article about the disappearance of Lynda Ann Healy, published by The Seattle Times.
A newspaper about the disappearance of Lynda Healy.
The gravestone of Lynda Healy.

Brenda Joy Baker.*

When I went to Seattle in April 2022 I really tried to focus on going to locations related to the confirmed victims (largely because I was new at writing and was just sort of getting my bearings about me). However, I did find a few cases that were particularly intriguing to me and that didn’t seem to have any other real suspects worth looking into other than Bundy. I already wrote about the United Airlines flight attendants Lisa Wick and Lonnie Trumbull that were attacked in their Queen Anne Hill neighborhood in Seattle (Trumbull didn’t survive), but there’s another much younger victim I now want to focus on: Brenda Joy Baker. I can’t seem to find much on her background or tragic death AT ALL, not just information related to TB’s involvement.

Bespectacled Brenda Joy Baker was born on July 13, 1959, to Benjamin and Margaret (nee Stephens) Baker in Enumclaw, WA. The couple had seven children: three boys (Larry, Victor, and Randall) and four girls (Brenda, Margaret, Leslie, and Tina). Mr. Baker was born on March 1, 1924 in Bay County, Florida and Mrs. Baker was born on January 29, 1920 in Sedalia, Missouri. Margaret (who went by Maggie) was previously married to a man named John Beard Jr. (who passed on October 11, 1969). Brenda seems to come from a tragic roots, having two brothers that also passed away extremely young: Benjamin was born in 1956 and died at the age of 25 in 1982 and Victor (who was born in 1960) sadly died in 1981 at the age of 21. Her sister Tina passed away at the age of 51 on June 27, 2009. 

Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Baker raised their family at 21907 237th Ave SE in Maple Valley, Washington. At the time she was murdered, fourteen-year-old Brenda was attending Tahoma Junior High School and despite her young age, she was a frequent hitchhiker and liked to run away from home. She was last seen roughly four blocks away from her home near Puyallup, WA on May 25, 1974 trying to thumb a ride ‘south’ to Fort Lewis. Before she disappeared, Brenda shared with her friends that she was ‘planning to meet a soldier.’ Baker had a history of running away from home and even lived in a foster home for an unknown period of time. However, this time her absence was immediately noticed by her family and a missing person’s report was filed the same day. This was the second runaway report submitted by the Bakers: she was apprehended by Olympia police in one prior incident. The body of Brenda Joy Baker was found 31 days later on the outskirts of Millersylvania State Park not far from the Restover Truck Stop.**

When her body was first found, Tacoma based pathologist Dr. Charles P. Larson thought the individual was between 28-32 years old, approximately 5’2″ and was ‘slightly overweight.’ She also had a surgical scar located somewhere on her body. Dr. Larson was summoned from Tacoma after two local Pathologists were unavailable. He said the victim appeared as if she had been dead for about four weeks and there were no clues found on or around the body. They were found dressed in brown leather alligator shoes, white socks, bright red stretch knit bell-bottom pants and a large tan corduroy mid-waist jacket.

On June 17, 1974 the body of Brenda Joy Baker was found on a small road in an inaccessible area located on the outskirts of Millersylvania State Park just outside of Seattle. Her remains were covered by two logs as well as some brush and it appeared that some attempts were made to try to conceal her body. She was almost completely decomposed from the waist up. Her body was found slightly after noon by Tom Albert Ismay and his two friends, Mary Etta Rinehart and May Harnit. According to Sergeant Mike Celund, Ismay owned 195 acres west of Millersylvania State Park and told officers he came across the young girl’s remains about five feet off the roadway as he was walking down a dirt pathway off McCorkle Road at the north end of the park. He immediately called the sheriff’s department, who in turn summoned Deputy Coroner WW Frazier and Captain Harold Bade. Ismay told law enforcement that ten days before the discovery he placed an old tree across the road to keep trespassers off his property and was checking the effectiveness of his roadblock when he stumbled upon the remains, which were about 25 feet away. Despite some discrepancies in the possible age of the victim by medical experts in the beginning, the body was quickly identified as Brenda Joy Baker by Thurston County Sheriff’s investigators; this most likely happened so quickly because of a missing persons report her parents filed with King County Sheriff’s Department. Law enforcement also compared the body to Bakers dental records, the clothes she was last seen wearing, and the jewelry found with the body (specifically two bracelets, an earring, and a ring); everything came back a match. Her father also said that the body belonged to his daughter as well. Despite the body’s advanced decomposition it was determined tat the victim’s throat had been cut. Anything beyond that is unknown, as detectives admitted they couldn’t find any additional physical evidence or foreign DNA on (or near) her remains because it had been in a state of decomp for far too long.

Following a preliminary autopsy, Dr. Larson and his two assistants, Dr. Harvey Snyder and Dr. Jack Bohanan felt the victim’s age was somewhere between 28 and 34 years. In a separate, unrelated study using X-ray waves and other ‘extensive examinations,’ radiologist Dr. William Veach determined the body to be between 14 to 19 years old. Even though age is not the most important factor when attempting to identify an unknown victim, Undersheriff Jack Crawford did point out that the discrepancy helped to create a wider search field and it’s not abnormal to have extensive variances in age assumptions: ‘it’s not abnormal to have such a discrepancy in age. Right now we are working on the theory this woman is anywhere between the ages of 12 and 50. We are working on names not ages. We will try to identify her by her clothing and the like. Besides that, one man says one age, another is sure it’s another age. It’s only an opinion on their part. What we are doing is working as fast as we can, as accurately as we can to get this person identified, then worry about the age. … ‘Both are experts, but that’s only their opinion. We will continue to work on the 12 to 50 age bracket.’ … ‘There are many people who are worried sick now that it might be their relatives we might have. If we lower the age to 14 or so we open the door for a whole bunch more people.’ Crawford also cited King County missing persons and runaway statistics as 10,000 people in the age category of 14 to 19: ‘we have 40 of 50 here in Thurston county alone.’ … ‘ We are working around the clock because the sooner we come up with a name, the sooner we will see the case through. It’s critical to identify the dead person as soon as possible.’ Obviously they did something right because it was eventually determined the body was Bakers.

In a joint announcement between County Fultz and the Thurston County Sheriff‘s Department, there was no doubt that the body belonged to Brenda Joy Baker. Fultz listed her death as a homicide and that she most likely died either by strangulation or knife wounds. Regarding the 48 hour identification process, Crawford said it was ‘like the spokes on a wheel. All the clues we had seemed to lead back to one hub and that hub was Brenda Joy Baker.’ He also said that the King County runaway report helped lead deputies to the final conclusion and that the clothing found with the body was sent to an FBI laboratory for analysis. Fultz released the body to the Baker family to bury. After the ID was made, Crawford said that they had no material witnesses in Brenda’s death but they ‘had a lot of people to talk to.’ On Thursday June 20, 1974, the Thurston County sheriff’s department traveled to Seattle in an attempt to retrace the last steps of the child. Because both girls were last seen hitchhiking, there was a brief period of speculation that Baker’s disappearance was somehow linked to the murder of 14 year-old Kathy Devine (also from the Seattle area): about six months before Baker disappeared on November 25, 1973 Devine was last seen hitchhiking near Olympia. Her body was found in the Capitol State Forest on December 6, 1973 after a young couple stumbled upon her remains. It was eventually determined that Bundy had nothing to do with the young girls murder: on March 7, 2002 Thurston County authorities revealed that recently discovered DNA evidence cleared him and pointed to a different man as her killer: William E. Cosden Jr. (who coincidentally was already in prison for rape).

In an article about the Baker case published in the Olympian on June 23, 1974, an anonymous male called the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department and told them he had been grouse hunting in late November 1973 when he came across a shack in the woods, where he saw a male with two girls, around 12 to 14 years old at a time that roughly corresponded with the murders of Kathy Devine and Brenda Baker. He returned to the secluded shack on the Black River in January 1974 and found it abandoned, but scattered around the structure were the carcasses of six dogs and one cat, all of which had been skinned with the bones removed. The shack apparently remained vacant until the beginning of June 1974, when the caller said he returned and saw the same man. The mystery caller returned for a final time on June 20th with a friend, but on this occasion he said they were ‘fired upon.’ He told law enforcement that the time he saw the man at the shack was very close to the time of the two homicides. Additionally, the same article reported that a Seattle man and his wife told police they saw a girl matching Bakers description hitchhiking near the Scott Lake interchange on the I-5 in May. Additionally, a man named Bill Sullivan (also from Seattle) reported that he stopped with his wife at a truck stop at the Scott Lake interchange and saw a young girl matching Bakers description. She was hitchhiking and had gotten into an older model, light colored panel truck driven by a bearded man that came from the direction of Scott Lake.

According to the ‘TB Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992,’ Bundy was in Seattle the day Brenda disappeared, which wasn’t that far away from Puyallup and Millersylvania State Park (it was about an hour and a half one way, I made the drive with no problems). In May 1974, he was living at the Rogers Rooming House in Seattle on 12th Avenue and was employed at the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia (he was there from May 3, 1974 to August 28, 1974). Ted was in between schooling at the time and didn’t start at the University of Utah School of Law until September 1974; he was also dating Liz Kloepfer at the time.

There has been an effort to tie Bakers murder to Ted Bundy, however during his death row confessions he told Dr. Robert Keppel that he had no knowledge of the girl or her murder. I mean, who knows if he was telling the truth or not (Lord knows he didn’t do it often). Since he went to the electric chair in Florida on January 24, 1989 we’ll probably never know what really happened to young Brenda Baker (unless some unearthed, long lost evidence comes to light). Her murder is still treated as a cold case. I wish I had more time to hike through Millersylvania State Park when I was in Seattle, because the little of it I did see was beautiful. Ted committed SO MANY atrocities in Washington state alone that I barely had enough time to cram everything into my eight-day trip (I literally finished at 8 PM the night before I went home). When I told my husband about all the states I need to go to for my ‘little writing project, he was absolutely shocked. His exact words: ‘what a monster.’ I married a smart man.

Sadly both of Brenda’s parents passed away before her murder was solved: Mr. Baker died on January 18, 1979 at only 54 years old in King County, WA; he was cremated and per his last request his ashes were scattered in the Gulf of Mexico. Margaret Baker passed away on January 18, 1989 (just a few days before Bundy was executed) at the age of 68.

* Edit, July 2024: I had someone in Washington state that was in touch with the Baker family reach out and tell me that a good amount of information out there on Brenda’s case was wrong, including the most commonly used picture of her. However she didn’t elaborate beyond that and I’m unsure what I needed to fix.

**Edit, October 23, 2023. The Restover Truck Stop is oddly enough where William Cosden Jr. worked (it was owned by his father. I was chatting with Kathy Devine’s sister Charlene the other day and we talked about the idea that Cosden killed Brenda, and it was like a light bulb went off in my head. The more I think about the more it makes sense.

One of the very few photos I could find of Brenda Joy Baker that according to her family isn’t even her.
One of the very few photos I could find of Brenda Joy Baker.
The grave site for Brenda Joy Baker, photo courtesy of FindAGrave.
Bennie Baker and his first cousin, Christine Williams. Mr. Baker was born on March 1, 1924 in Panama City, Florida to Victor (26) and Elizabeth (20) Baker. In 1976 he married Margaret ‘Maggie’ Frances (nee Stephens) and relocated to Washington state. He passed away at the age of 54 on January 18, 1979 in Maple Valley.
Bennie Baker receiving his brother Victor’s Silver Star awarded posthumously, published by The Panama City News Herald on September 26, 1951.
Margaret Baker.
Margaret Baker is the second from the right and Bennie Baker is on the far left.
Margaret Baker and family.
Margaret Baker and family.
The grave site for Brenda’s mother, Margaret Frances ‘Maggie’ Stephens Baker, photo courtesy of FindAGrave.
Brenda’s sister Margaret and her son, John.
Tina Louise Baker’s freshman picture from the 1974 Tahoma High School yearbook. Tina was born on April 16, 1958 in Enumclaw and died at the age of 51 on June 27, 2009 in Maple Valley.
Tina Louise Baker’s sophomore picture from the 1975 Tahoma High School yearbook.
Tina Louise Baker’s senior picture from the 1978 Tahoma High School yearbook.
Randy Baker’s sophomore picture from the 1978 Tahoma High School yearbook.
Leslie Baker’s freshman picture from the 1994 Tahoma High School yearbook.
Leslie Baker’s junior picture from the 1996 Tahoma High School yearbook.
This is the only picture I could find of Brenda’s brother, Benjamin Lawrence ‘Larry’ Baker, photo courtesy of FindAGrave. Baker was born on December 4, 1956 in Enumclaw and died on January 13, 1982 in Grants Pass, OR. He was buried in Auburn, Washington.
The Baker family tree, screen shot courtesy of myheritage.
Margaret Bakers first marriage application.
Margaret Bakers first marriage certficate.
The home the Baker family resided in located at 21907 237th Ave SE in Maple Valley, WA.
A map from the Rogers Rooming House where Bundy was living at the time to Millersylvania State Park where Brenda was dumped. Bundy absolutely could have made that drive from Seattle, where the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992’ places him the day Brenda was abducted (she was found 2 days later in Millersylvania State Park.
A possible route Bundy took the day he abducted Brenda Joy Baker, from the Rogers Rooming House to Puyallup to Millersylvania State Park.
Bundy’s whereabouts the day Brenda Joy Baker disappeared according to the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992.’
Brenda Bakers death certificate.
An article about a found body that turned out to be Brenda Baker, published by The Olympian on June 18, 1974.
An article about a found body that turned out to be Brenda Baker, published by The Olympian on June 19, 1974.
An article about Brenda Baker, published by The Tri-City Herald on June 20, 1974.
An article about Brenda Baker, published by The Ellensburg Daily Record on June 20, 1974.
An article about Brenda Baker, published by The Longview Daily News on June 20, 1974.
An article about Brenda Baker published by The Spokane Chronicle on June 20, 1974.
An article about Brenda Joy Baker, published by The Centralia Daily Chronicle on June 20, 1974.
An article about Brenda Joy Baker, published by The Olympian on June 20, 1974.
An article about Baker, published by The Kitsap Sun on June 20, 1974.
An article about Brenda Joy Baker, published by The Columbian on June 20, 1974.
paul henderson
An article about Brenda’s murder published by The Olympian on June 21, 1974.
An article about Brenda’s murder published by The News Tribune on June 21, 1974.
An article about Brenda’s disappearance published by The News Tribune on June 21, 1974.
An article about Brenda Baker published in the Daily Chronicle on June 22, 1974.
An article about Brenda Baker published in the Olympian on June 23, 1974.
An article mentioning Brenda Baker published in The Daily Chronicle on June 26, 1974.
An article mentioning Brenda Baker published in The Daily Chronicle on June 28, 1974.
An article about Brenda Baker published in The Olympian on June 30, 1974.
An article about Brenda Joy Baker, published by The Walla Walla Union Bulletin on July 1, 1974.
An article about Brenda Joy Baker, published by the Centralia Daily Chronicle on July 2, 1974.
An article about Baker published by The News Tribune on July 2, 1974.
An article about Brenda Joy Baker, published by The Daily Chronicle on July 2, 1974.
An article about Brenda Joy Baker, published by the Daily Sitka Sentinel on July 2, 1974.
An article about Brenda Joy Baker, published by The News Tribune on July 3, 1974.
An article about the missing Seattle victims mentioning Brenda Joy Baker, published by The Olympian on July 4, 1974.
An article about the missing Seattle victims mentioning Brenda Joy Baker, published by The Spokesman-Review on July 4, 1974.
An article mentioning Baker, published by the Albany Democrat-Herald on July 4, 1974.
An article about Brenda Joy Baker, published by The Columbian on July 4, 1974.
An article mentioning Brenda Baker published by The Daily Chrinicle on July 5, 1974.
An article about the missing Seattle girls that mentions Brenda’s disappearance published by The Daily Chronicle on July 5, 1974.
An article about the missing Seattle girls that mentions Brenda’s disappearance published by The News Tribune on July 28, 1974.
The first part of an article that mentions Brenda Baker published by the Cooper Point Journal on August 11, 1974, photo courtesy of the Evergreen State College Archives.
The second part of an article that mentions Brenda Baker published by the Cooper Point Journal on August 11, 1974, photo courtesy of the Evergreen State College Archives.
An article mentioning Brenda Baker, but if you look at the far right column you’ll see a short blurb about the Issaquah dump site published by The Daily Chronicle on September 19, 1974.
An article about Brenda Baker published published on June of 1974.
An article about the missing Seattle girls that mentions Brenda’s disappearance.
An article mentioning Brenda Baker.
An article mentioning Brenda Baker published by the
An article mentioning Brenda Baker.
An article about Ted regarding his execution mentioning Brenda Baker at the bottom.
A mugshot of William Cosden Jr. in his younger days.
 A photo of William Cosden Jr.’s burnt truck, which coincidentally caught fire a little after midnight the day after Kathy Devine disappeared on November 26, 1974. An eyewitness reported seeing blood inside the truck.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.
Millersylvania State Park, April 2022.

Janice Ann Blackburn-Ott.

Janice Ann Blackburn-Ott was born on February 14, 1951 in McMinnville, Oregon to Dr. Donald Edwin and Ferol Lorraine (nee Hunter) Blackburn. Donald was born on May 14, 1922 in Lovell, WY, and during WWII he was in the US Navy; when he was done serving his country he continued with his education and earned his PhD from the University of Idaho. Ferol was born on August 2, 1921 in Moscow, ID and the couple were wed on July 18 1946. They had two children together: Janice and her older sister, Illona Lynn (who was born in February 1949). Dr. Blackburn was a high school teacher and coach in Idaho before the family relocated to Washington state, where he became a counselor and administrator for the Spokane School District (specifically at school #81).

Well-liked by her peers, Janice was bright and bubbly (this trait even earned her the nickname ‘Sunshine Girl’ at her job), and had a very busy schedule while she was a student at Shadle Park High School: she was a member of the ‘Hi-Lassies’ (which looks like some sort a cheerleading squad), the ski club, the ‘Eldah Tra Art Club,’ and helped out in the library. In a strange twist of fate, she was high school sweethearts with Susan Rancourt’s (another Bundy victim) older brother, Dennis. She graduated from high school in 1969 with high honors and went on to earn her Bachelor’s degree in social work from Eastern Washington State University.

Janice was a petite girl, and only stood at 5’1” tall and was estimated to weigh less than 100 pounds; she had long blonde hair that she wore long and parted down the middle and had smokey green eyes. Affectionately nicknamed ‘Jan’ by her loved ones, she married James Douglass Ott on December 15, 1972 and at the time of her murder worked as a probation case worker for the King County Youth Service Center. After her car was broken into while living in Seattle, Janice felt that living in a smaller community would be safer and moved in with a roommate in nearby Issaquah (located just two doors down from ‘The Issaquah Press’). At the time of his wife’s disappearance, Jim Ott was in graduate school in California (some articles reported that he was in medical school, where others said he was earning ‘an advanced degree in prosthetics’).

On the morning of Sunday, July 14, 1974 Janice spent a few hours washing her clothes at the laundromat, and from there she had a cup of coffee with a friend. After her chores and errands were finished, she went home and put on her black bikini, cut-off shorts, and a white blouse she wore tied at her midriff. Before leaving she made sure to leave a note for her roommate, one that read, ‘I’ll be at Lake Sammamish sunin’ myself. See ya.’ The park is still a popular destination for Issaquah locals, which is a suburb located right outside of Seattle. It contains several beaches and is known to get very crowded during the hot summer months. Ott then hopped on her yellow 10-speed Tiger bicycle and rode to the park; when she arrived at roughly around 12:00-12:30 PM, many beachgoers noticed the attractive young woman, and some even said they remembered her stripping down to her bathing suit and applying a layer of cocoa butter to her skin. That day at the park, Rainier Beer Company was hosting its annual summer picnic, and it was said that there were upwards of 40,000 people there. In addition to happy park goers, Theodore Robert Bundy was there as well, prowling for his next victim (or in this case, victims).

Before Bundy abducted Ott, he approached a young park goer named Janice Graham at the bandstand area. After he said hello and introduced himself to her as Ted, he asked the 22-year-old if she would be able to help him load a sailboat onto the top of his car. She initially agreed, however once the pair reached his vehicle she quickly noticed there was no sailboat, and it was then that her new friend shared that it was actually at his parents’ house that was ‘just up the hill.’ Realizing it was going to be more than just a quick favor, Janice told Ted that she was unable to help him because she was supposed to meet up with her husband and parents shortly. Bundy replied ‘Oh, that’s OK. I should have told you that it wasn’t in the parking lot.’ He then walked the young woman back to the bandstand area, apologized one last time then took off to his right. Graham later reported to law enforcement that the man was wearing a ‘beige sling’ and on three separate times during their short walk from the bandstand to the VW he stopped to rub his ‘injured’ arm, claiming it was from a racquetball injury. Immediately after he parted ways with Graham was when he ran into Janice Ott, as she lay in her black bikini soaking up the rays on Lake Sammamish’s Tibbett’s Beach.

Before Bundy abducted Ott, he approached a young woman named Janice Graham at the bandstand area, and after he said hello and introduced himself to her, he asked the 22-year-old if she would be able to help him load a sailboat onto the top of his car. She initially agreed, however once the pair reached his vehicle she quickly noticed there was no sailboat, and it was then that her new friend shared that it was actually at his parents’ house that was ‘just up the hill.’ Realizing it was going to be more than just a quick favor, Janice told Ted that she was unable to help him because she was supposed to meet up with her husband and parents shortly. Bundy replied ‘Oh, that’s OK. I should have told you that it wasn’t in the parking lot.’ He then walked the young woman back to the bandstand area, apologized one last time then took off to his right. Graham later reported to law enforcement that the man was wearing a ‘beige sling’ and on three separate times during their short walk from the bandstand to the VW he stopped to rub his ‘injured’ arm, claiming it was from a racquetball injury. Immediately after he parted ways with Graham was when he ran into Janice Ott, as she lay in her black bikini soaking up the rays on Lake Sammamish’s Tibbett’s Beach.

Janice was only at Lake Sammamish for about twenty minutes before she was approached by a tall, dark-haired man dressed in tennis shorts (white with a red stripe on the side), a white shirt, and tennis shoes. People nearby that overheard small pieces of their exchange reported that he asked Ott for her assistance with putting a sailboat on his car, which was ‘just down the road’ at his parents’ house in Issaquah. She invited the handsome stranger to sit down next to her so they could ‘talk about it,’ and he did. Fellow beach goers heard Jan say to Bundy that she always had an interest in sailing but never really tried to learn, and flirtatiously asked if she could ‘have a ride in the boat;’ she seemingly agreed to help if he would take her out for a ride afterwards. People also overheard her tell the man that she had her bike with her and she didn’t want to leave it behind out of fear that it would get stolen. He assured her that there was lots of room in his trunk for it, and she then said to him, ‘OK, I’ll help you.’ As the pair walked away, one witness overheard Ott say, ‘hi, I’m Jan,’ to which the man responded, ‘hi, I’m Ted.’ She was never seen alive again.

There were a few people that were sitting close to Ted and Ott that had a first hand account as to what happened: Jerry/Kelly Snyder is a retired DEA agent that was sitting roughly 30 feet away when the exchange occurred, and he has said that he noticed Bundy was only asking women for help, and that he appeared to be ‘trying to find someone who met certain qualifications.’

About the exchange, Snyder said: ‘I noticed a guy that was walking down the beach. A young man. Probably in his mid-to-late twenties. He was wearing white shorts and they had a red stripe, which immediately caught my eye. When he got close, I noticed he had really curly hair and his left arm was in a sling. It piqued my interest because every time he approached a woman, or a group of two or three women, he was getting turned down. And I just kept watching him and he eventually ended up being right in front of me, where he approached a young girl. She was a young and attractive blonde girl. And he asked her… words to the effect of… ‘I need some help.’ She’s saying that she just got here… So obviously, going through her mind is ‘I’d like to help you out, but I’m here to relax.’ He kept on and on and on, and he talks her into whatever he talked her into. He said something about a catamaran. And ultimately, she gets up… reluctantly… because her head is down and she is like ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’ And then she started walking back past me. She had this frown on her face, like, ‘I’m helping this guy when I should be enjoying myself on the beach.’ And the end, the result is, she’s no longer with us because she was a nice person.’

Theresa Marie Sharpe was much closer to Ott than Snyder, and thankfully she was able to give investigators a detailed description about the exchange between the two strangers and what exactly they said. Sharpe also shared with LE that she ‘didn’t feel his arm was really hurt. I do remember he took his arm out of the sling and moved it around.’ A second young woman named Sylvia Valint was sitting closest to the pair, and where she was incorrect about his height (she said he was roughly 5’6” to 5’7”) she got the rest of his physical description correct. The fifteen-year-old was also able to tell detectives what was said between the two almost verbatim and provided them with details that no other witness was able to. Per a police report, ‘at about 12:30 hours, Sylvia Valint was laying on the beach at the park with her two friends. Jerry Snyder was about 15 feet from Valint with his wife. Theresa Sharp was with her family about 10 feet from Valint. They were all on the beach, about 200 yards directly in front of the east restroom. The above three witnesses all observed Janice Ott arrive on the beach and position herself between them.’

As we know, Bundy returned only four hours later and abducted Denise Naslund from the same park at around 4:30 PM, and it is the first time that he drastically switched up his MO and took two victims in the same day. It is strongly speculated that he abducted Ott, incapacitated and gagged her, then returned to Lake Sammamish to hunt again. Many TB scholars have theorized that by doing so he was attempting to increase the ‘high’ by taking one woman and returning to the scene only a few hours later to take a second one.

Although Bundy did (sort of) admit to journalists Hugh Aynesworth and Stephen Michaud what happened on July 14, 1974, it was during one of his third person, pseudo-confessions that didn’t directly incriminate him. When asked about Ott and Naslund, the killer theorized that ‘one of the women would probably have watched the other die; he later admitted that it was true while speaking to FBI Agent Bill Hagmaier during his time on death row. Despite finally (maybe… possibly??) telling the truth about how the two women were killed he refused to tell investigators the exact location of where he held them, or if the murders took place indoors or outside in a wooded area. We know that Ted was a liar and a narcissist, so we really need to be careful about taking his word as fact. It’s also possible that Ted tied Ott to a tree somewhere and left her there while he went and hunted for Naslund, and since the area he took the women to was most likely secluded and off the beaten track, it was highly unlikely that anyone would have stumbled upon her, especially if she was silenced (gagged).

Another possible theory is that Bundy lied completely, and he murdered Ott right away, then returned to Lake Sammamish to abduct Denise. Logically, there is a large chunk of time between when she was abducted at 12:30 PM and Ted’s return to Lake Sam at around 4 PM, and if we consider the length of the journey (12 miles, each way) between the park and the Issaquah dump site it means that he was most likely with poor Ott for a good 2-3 hours. If the original plan was to kidnap two women then attack them at the same time, it seems like a lot of time to spend with just one victim. I am including this thought while editing this article in July 2024, but I wonder if he did unspeakable horrors to the poor young woman for the entire 2-3 hours, and brought her to the brink of death over and over… only to revive her each time, so that she was alive when he brought Naslund back. Or, maybe Bundy took a second victim that day because something happened during Otts murder that prevented him from achieving complete sexual gratification. Or… perhaps the event wasn’t planned out at all, and he just wanted to try something brand new, right then and there. We will most likely never know.

A few hours later (at roughly 4 PM), Bundy returned to the same parking lot that he parked in earlier and began his ruse all over again. He approached Sindi Siebenbam and asked her for help getting his sailboat. The 19-year-old was on her way back from the bathroom when a visibly nervous Ted approached her asking for help. She immediately asked what happened to his arm, and he told her that he sprained it. Siebenbam also said that the man used his injured arm to gesture with his elbow, and even tugged on her arm in a way that somehow seemed to point her in the direction of his car. When she looked into his cold, dark eyes, she finally had enough of him and firmly told him, ‘no, I’m sorry. I’ve got people waiting.’ Even still, Ted almost seemed reluctant to accept her answer, and even tried a few more times to get her to go with him. The last time she saw him he was wandering towards the restrooms. 

Patricia Ann Turner reported a very similar encounter with a stranger that matched Bundy’s description: at around 4:15 PM a tall, dark haired man with his arm in a sling approached her on her way to the concession stand. They chatted briefly and it didn’t take long for him to ask ‘a really big favor.’ Turner told him that she was in a hurry and wasn’t able to help and after that he just sort of wandered away. Approximately five minutes later, Jacqueline Plischke arrived at Lake Sam wearing a bikini and cut-offs, and as she was locking up her bike she noticed a man just staring at her from a short distance away. He quickly walked up to her and asked for help, but she was quick to tell him that she wasn’t very strong and was waiting for someone. Plischke also advised him that he might be better off if he asked someone that was alone (as she was waiting for a friend). Not willing to waste time on someone unwilling to help him, Ted quickly moved on and approached Naslund, who (as we all know) unfortunately agreed to help him.

I’m not going to get super in-depth about Denise Naslund’s background because I’m going to write a separate piece on her (but for obvious reasons, it’s important to discuss her in some capacity as she plays an important role in the murder of Jan Ott). Naslund was a 19-year-old student studying software development at night school. She worked in an office setting during the day to make money to help pay for college, and at the time of her abduction she was living with her mother and seeing a man named Ken Little.

At around 1 PM, Denise and Little arrived at Lake Sammamish along with her dog and another couple, Bob Sargent and Nancy Battema. The small group of friends decided to sit on the lawn on the east side of the park, roughly 200 feet north of the restrooms. According to Battema, Naslund took four Valium tablets when they arrived, and at some point in the afternoon she and her boyfriend got into an argument. Shortly after 4 PM, Ken and Bob fell asleep after the group had eaten hot dogs and potato chips and Denise then told her friend that she was ‘feeling high’ and after a short discussion about the time, she got up and walked towards the restrooms. It was the last time Battema ever saw her. Naslund had driven her friends to the park in her car, and as it got later and later in the day her vehicle stood out in the lot by itself. Over the next couple of days, it started to dawn on investigators that not one but two women had gone missing from Lake Sammamish on the exact same day, just hours apart from each other. Denise was well known for her sweet nature and friendly personality, and her family said she would have most likely agreed to help any person that was in need without a second thought, especially if they were hurt or handicapped.

After Bundy killed Ott and Naslund, he dumped their bodies along the side of a service road near Issaquah. Roughly eight weeks after their abduction on September 6, 1974, a pair of grouse hunters stumbled across their remains scattered amongst a grassy patch in a wooded area near Issaquah, roughly seventeen miles east of Seattle and two miles from Lake Sammamish. The hunters reported to police that they ‘found two shallow graves, and there’s one with long, black hair.’ King County police immediately sealed off the area and after a three-day search found two skulls as well as some other bones, teeth, and tufts of reddish blonde and dark brown hair. By that time, the remains had fully decomposed and had been dispersed throughout the area by forest critters. An absence of clothing and jewelry on or near the victims made investigators believe that the bodies were left at the scene completely naked. Using dental records as well as hair samples (taken from the victims hairbrushes), the skulls were identified to be those of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. In addition, there was a third set of remains discovered in the form of a femur as well as several vertebrae believed to have belonged to Georgann Hawkins, but sadly they were impossible to identify.

As the investigation heated up investigators learned that Ted had scoped out the park the weekend before the murders, which would have been July 6/7, 1974. They were also able to place him in Issaquah on July 14 by matching up his credit card receipts, and it has been confirmed that he filled up his car at a gas station located at the northwest corner of Front Street and Sunset Way, where the Issaquah Library now stands. Before he murdered Ott it’s speculated that Bundy may have stopped at ‘The Issaquah Press,’ and after his mugshot was released to the public, their bookkeeper insisted that she had sold him a copy of the newspaper (if you recall, I brought this business up earlier as it was two doors down from where Janice was living at the time).

By this time in the summer of 1974 most Washington residents were aware there was a predator targeting young women in the Pacific Northwest, but despite this the abductions at Lake Sammamish still came as a huge shock to locals. But thankfully, because Bundy had asked several women for help before finding Ott and Naslund, for the first-time law enforcement was able to put together a composite sketch of the infamous ‘Ted:’ Fliers were hung up throughout the Seattle/Issaquah area and women were told to be cautious of men matching the description.

A little over six months after the Issaquah dump site was discovered on March 1, 1975 forestry students from Green River Community College stumbled upon the skull of Brenda Ball on Taylor Mountain while doing field work; this is approximately thirty miles away from the Flame Tavern, where she was last seen. Two days later, King County Detective Bob Keppel found the skull of Susan Rancourt, who had vanished from Central Washington State University in Ellensburg on April 17, 1974, roughly eighty-seven miles away from where she was recovered; like Ball, her skull had been fractured from blunt force trauma. Roberta ‘Kathy’ Parks was found next: the twenty year old was abducted from the campus of Oregon State University, which is 265 miles (or a 4.5 hour drive) away from the Issaquah dump site. Like the others, her skull showed signs of trauma. The last of the remains found on Taylor Mountain were those of Lynda Ann Healy, and unlike the previous victims only her mandible was found, which was later identified through dental records. No remains of Donna Manson or Georgann Hawkins were ever recovered.

Because of the distance between them, Janice and Jim Ott would frequently write to each other, and after her death he received a letter she had sent right before her abduction. In it, she complained about how long it took for mail to be delivered from Washington to California, saying: ‘five days! Isn’t that a drag? Someone could expire before you ever got wind of it.’ Jim waited by the phone all evening on July 14, 1974, and after dozing off a bit he woke up around 10:45 PM, claiming he heard her voice calling his name over and over in his head, begging him to come help her; the following day, he woke up to learn that she was missing. In the true crime classic ‘The Stranger Beside Me,’ Ann Rule tells of a conversation she had with Ott regarding Jan’s disappearance, and in his last letter to her he begged her to be careful: ‘And then I wrote at the bottom (and I don’t know why I choose those words) ‘please take care of yourself. Be careful about driving. Be careful of people you don’t know. I don’t want anything to happen to you. You’re my source of peace of mind.’’

On January 24, 1989 Bundy was put to death by Florida’s ‘Old Sparky’ electric chair, and he confessed to both Ott and Naslunds murders less than 24 hours before his execution: he told FBI Agent Bill Hagmaier that he drove an unconscious Jan to a secluded cabin 2-3 miles from Lake Sammamish and repeatedly raped her before knocking her out again and tying her up, and when he returned with a second victim, he said she at some point regained consciousness. He then raped and murdered Denise in front of her before eventually taking her life as well. After this confession came to light Dr. Blackburn said that he would have rather not known what happened to Janice, saying ‘would you like to hear the story of what happened to your daughter?

While doing research into Dr. and Mrs. Blackburn in the years following their daughter’s murder, I discovered there was an ongoing legal battle between them and the King County Sheriff’s department over Janice’s remains: police told the Ott and Naslund families that their remains could not be turned over for burial because they were needed as evidence but unfortunately, this wasn’t true and it turned out that they were misplaced. Both families filed a lawsuit against the county in 1984, and where a trial had been set for December a settlement was reached on November 2: Denise’s mother Eleanor Rose originally sought $750,000 (she got roughly $112,500), and James Ott and the Blackburns sought $2 million each (in the end they received about the same amount as Rose, which was divided equally between the two parties). Additionally, Denise’s father Robert sought $750,000 but the county refused to settle with him (although they gave her brother Bob about $5,000).

Dr. and Mrs. Blackburn were married for 64 years at the time of his death on June 3, 2010; he was 88. Ferol Blackburn died at the age of 97 on December 8, 2018 in Spokane, WA and is buried in Fairmount Memorial Park in Spokane. Janice’s sister Illona married a man named Gary Clark in 1971 and relocated to Lompoc, CA; the couple have two children together.

* Edit, July 2024: I would like to thank an individual named Anna, who was kind enough to reach out and let me know that I included a picture of the wrong Jim Ott’s grave stone on here. Looking at it I can’t believe I made such a glaringly obvious mistake, and I’m now even more confident in my decision to put off writing any new articles until I go back and make sure that my old stuff is up to snuff. Also, thank you for being so kind about it. So many people would have publicly blasted me, via a comment at the end of the post pointing out all of my errors. Reaching out through email was very classy, and I appreciate you.

A photo of Janice Ott from high school.
Jan’s sophomore year picture the 1967 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
Janice Blackburn in a group picture from the “ASB Fall Council,’ taken from the 1967 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
Jan’s junior year picture the 1968 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
A photo of Janice Blackburn from the 1968 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
Jan Blackburn’s senior year pic from the 1968 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
A blurb from the 1969 Shadle Park High School yearbook that mentions Jan Blackburn.
A picture of Jan in a group shot for the “Hi-Lassies’ from the 1969 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
A photo of Janice Blackburn from the 1969 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
A photo of Janice Blackburn from the 1969 Shadle Park High School yearbook (she is in the top row in the middle).
A photo of Janice Blackburn from the 1969 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
A photo of Janice Blackburn from the 1969 Shadle Park High School yearbook (she is on the bottom row, far right).
A photo of Janice Blackburn from the 1969 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
A shot of Janice Blackburn in a group photo for the dance committee from the 1969 Shadle Park High School yearbook (she is in the middle row, second from the right).
A shot of Janice Blackburn in a group photo for the ski club from the 1969 Shadle Park High School yearbook (she is in the bottom row, far right).
Photo taken on June 16, 1974. Janice is wearing the same pair of shorts from the day of her abduction and she is standing next to her Volkswagen.
A picture of Janice Ott and Dennis Rancourt. Photo courtesy of Tiffany Jean.
Janice Ott. Photo courtesy of Tiffany Jean.
Jan Ott. Photo courtesy of Tiffany Jean.
Janice Ann Ott, July 1974.
A candid picture of Jan Ott.
Janice and Jim Ott.
Janice and Jim Ott.
James and Janice Ott in the Fall of 1972.
A photo of Janice Ott from October 1972.
A photo of Jim and Janice Ott from October 1972.
James and Janice Ott. After Janice passed he got remarried Angela (Reed) Ott.
Some photos of Jim and Janice Ott from October 1972.
An excerpt from Ann Rule’s ‘The Stranger Beside Me’ that mentions Ott, published in 1980.
James Ott sitting in a motel room waiting on word regarding the search for his missing wife.
James Ott.
A photo of James Ott posting the first of hundreds of missing posters asking for information about his wife.
James and Janice Ott’s marriage certificate. Photo courtesy of Erin Banks/CrimePiper.
A picture of a young Dr. Blackburn published in The Spokesman-Review on February 23, 1938. He was on the track team at the University of Idaho, where he earned all three of his degrees including his doctorate.
A picture of Dr. Donald Blackburn, courtesy of Legacy. Don and his father owned and operated a Pepsi Cola Bottling Company in McMinnville, OR, and at some point during his career he was also employed with the local Welfare Department and Board of Prison Terms and Parole for the state of Washington. 
A screen shot of Dr. Donald Blackburn pleading for the safe return of his daughter.
An article mentioning Dr. Blackburn titled ‘Safer, More Creative Playgrounds Stressed’ that was published in The Spokesman-Review on December 19, 1974.
This is the house Janice Ott lived in Issaquah when she disappeared, located at 75 Front Ave. It’s only a five minute drive away from where her remains were discovered.
This is the house Janice Ott grew up in located at 2337 West Longfellow Avenue in Spokane. Photo courtesy of Google Earth from August 2023.
A description of the different accessories of the Tiger model bike Janice Ott was riding the day of her abduction.
A photo of the same model Tiger bike Janice Ott rode.
It would have taken roughly 10-15 minutes to drive from Lake Sam and the dump site at Issaquah; the drive is about four miles long.
It would have taken Jan little more than 15 minutes to ride her bike to Lake Sam from her home on Front Street in Issaquah.
This aerial map of Lake Sammamish shows the locations where Bundy approached Janice Ott and Denise Naslund and also points out the general area where his VW was parked. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
That afternoon, Ted Bundy parked his VW Bug in the middle of the car park. Photo courtesy of ThisInterestsMe.
An aerial photograph of the park from 1977; the layout of the park has remained the same. Photo courtesy of ThisInterestsMe.
Early in the afternoon on the day of the Lake Samammish abductions Bundy approached Janice Graham at the bandstand area wearing a beige colored sling. After politely introducing himself as Ted, he asked the 22-year-old if she could help him load a sailboat onto his car. After agreeing to help, they walked towards the parking lot, but once they reached the car she quickly realized there was no boat and got spooked and rescinded her offer. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
Roughly 40,000 people visited Lake Sammamish state park on the afternoon of Ott and Naslunds abduction. It was sunny and the temperature ranged between 80 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This nice weather provided people with a much-needed break from the typical damp and gloomy climate of the Pacific Northwest. Photo courtesy of the Kings County Sheriffs Department.
An older map of the Lake Sammamish/Issaquah area. Photo courtesy of the Kings County Sheriffs Department.
Another aerial image of the dump site from September of 1972. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
An old map of Issaquah from 1950. Bundy’s dump site was north of an abandoned cabin, on the north side of the railway (that no longer exists), and its exact location is just a hair to the left of the red dot. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
An aerial photograph of the Issaquah dump site where they found the remains of Janice Ott from 1977. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
The area in red is where the Issaquah dump site is located. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
A labeled police photograph of the Issaquah dump site. Ted left the women’s bodies at a clearance right before the trees. The location of the red dots probably isn’t too precise as the remains were strewn around the location by wildlife. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
On the left is an older map showing the exact location of the dump site, and on the right is a recent aerial photograph of the area. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
A hand drawn map of Lake Sammamish. Photo courtesy of the Kings County Sheriffs Department.
A wide view of Lake Sammamish Park.
Off duty DEA agent Jerry (or Kelly Snyder) was at Lake Sam on the day of Ott and Naslund’s abductions and was close enough to see Bundy approach Jan. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
A news anchor giving a report regarding the abductions from Lake Sammamish, 1974. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
A picture taken at Lake Samammish on July 14, 1974. Photo courtesy of OddStops.
A picture snapped of a police car with what looks like Bundy’s VW Bug in the background.
A B&W picture snapped of a police car with what looks like Bundy’s VW Bug in the background.
If you take a screen shot from these stop slides, you can make out the license plate in the shadow of the young man. I will leave that up to you, but no combinations are associated with any plate Bundy ever had. He even told Bob Keppel he didn’t park there.
After the girls were reported missing every picture and video that was turned over to police was meticulously analyzed. If you look closely behind this group of people you can see a yellowish/tan VW Bug.
If you take a screen shot from these stop slides, you can make out the license plate in the shadow of the young man. I will leave that up to you, but no combinations are associated with any plate Bundy ever had. He even told Bob Keppel he didn’t park there.
A pic of Lake Sam the day of Ott and Naslund’s disappearance.
A member of the search team goes through the Issaquah dump site looking for remains of the missing Seattle girls.
Once the remains were discovered, an extensive search was carried out.
Some of the remains found at the Issaquah dump site on September 6, 1974 by two grouse hunters.
The skull of Bundy’s ninth victim, Denise Naslund, discovered by two grouse hunters close to Issaquah, Washington.
Some of the remains found at the Issaquah dump site on September 6, 1974 by two grouse hunters.
Ott’s death certificate.
A 1974 Rainer Beer advertisement.
A 1974 Rainer Beer advertisement.
An article mentioning Ott standing up in a friends wedding published by The Spokesman-Review on June 5, 1970.
Janice and Jim Ott’s wedding announcement published by The Spokane Daily Chronicle on January 17, 1973.
An article mentioning Ott published in The Tacoma News Tribune on July 17, 1974.
An article on Jan Ott published on The Times on July 26, 1974.
An article mentioning Ott published in The News Tribune on July 28, 1974.
The Spokane Chronicle on July 31, 1974.
An article mentioning Ott published in The News Tribune on July 31, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The Albany Democrat-Herald on August 27, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The Daily Olympian on August 28, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The Daily News on September 8, 1974.
An article about the identification of Janice Ott published by The Spokane Chronicle on September 10, 1974.
The Capital Journal on September 10, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The Albany Bellingham Herald on September 11, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The Enterprise-Record on September 11, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The News Tribune on September 11, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The Napa Valley Register on September 11, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by (my hometown newspaper) The Buffalo News on September 11, 1974.
Part one of an article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The Albany Lexington Herald on September 12, 1974.
Part two of an article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The Albany Lexington Herald on September 12, 1974.
An article mentioning Ott published in The News Tribune on September 12, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The News Tribune on September 13, 1974.
After graduating from Shadle Park High School with high honors Ott attended Eastern Washington State University ,earning a degree in social work.
Ott’s obituary published by The Spokesman-Review on September 13, 1974.
Part one of an article mentioning Ott published by The Bradenton Herald on September 15, 1974.
Part two of an article mentioning Ott published by The Bradenton Herald on September 15, 1974.
An article mentioning Ott published in The Olympian on September 16, 1974.
An article mentioning Ott published by The Philadelphia Inquirer on September 17, 1974.
An article mentioning Ott published by The Spokane Chronicle on September 18, 1974.
An article about Jan Ott published by The News Tribune on September 22, 1974.
An article about the disappearance of Janice Ott published by The Fort Worth Star-Telegram on September 27, 1974.
An article mentioning Ott published in The Capital Journal on October 14, 1974. The killer they’re talking about is Warren Leslie Forrest.
An article on another missing girl, Nellie Davis published by The Daily Herald on January 30, 1975.
The Spokesman-Review on February 2, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The Spokane Chronicle on March 4, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published by The Coeur d’Alene Press on March 5, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The News Tribune on March 6, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The News Tribune on March 9, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The San Francisco Examiner on March 9, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The Albany Democrat-Herald on March 11, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The Playground Daily News on March 13, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The News Tribune on March 18, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The News Tribune on March 26, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The Daily Herald on March 27, 1975.
An article mentioning Ott published in The News Tribune on July 1, 1976.
This is an interesting find I came across while doing my research on Ott: an article published by The Detroit Free Press on August 29, 1975 that suggests the killer from the Pacific Northwest also killed two women in Florida. This is obviously well before Bundy’s second escape in late 1977.
The News Tribune on February 17, 1978.
Part one of an article mentioning Ott after Teds arrest in Florida published in The Daily Sentinel on February 21, 1978.
Part two of an article mentioning Ott after Teds arrest in Florida published in The Daily Sentinel on February 21, 1978.
Part one of an article written about Ted’s first Florida trial that mentions Ott published in The Pensacola News on July 9, 1979.
Part two of an article written about Ted’s first Florida trial that mentions Ott published in The Pensacola News on July 9, 1979.
An article mentioning Ott published in The Santa Fe New Mexican on July 11, 1979.
An article mentioning Ott published in The Vancouver Sun on September 8, 1979.
An article about Bundy killing Ott after he was already incarcerated published by The News Journal on January 6, 1980.
An article about Ann Rule’s true crime classic, ‘The Stranger Beside Me’ that mentions Ott published in The Miami News on October 23, 1980.
A police sketch of Ted after the Lake Sammamish abductions in July 1974.
The unibrow could definitely use some work, but this composite sketch of Bundy after the Lake Sammamish murders is pretty good. Even his coworkers and a professor at his college recognized the sketch as Bundy, however police weren’t so sure. It was hard to believe that a law student with no record could be responsible. As a result, Bundy kept on killing.
A colorized composite sketch of ‘Ted,’ seen at Lake Sammamish State Park on July 14, 1974.
On Monday, July 22, the Seattle Times ran a sketch (above) of a man named ‘Ted,’ who had been observed by witnesses talking to both the young women who disappeared from Lake Sammamish the previous week. A co-worker of Ted’s GF Liz showed her the drawing, saying, ‘Do you think this looks like someone you know? … Doesn’t your Ted drive a VW?’ She knew he was joking, but had to admit the sketch did resemble her BF.
The only clue to the baffling disappearance is this police sketch of ‘Ted,’ who was seen with at least one of the missing girls.
Some of the cleared suspects from the July 14, 1974 murder of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund.
A magazine piece about the missing Seattle girls…
Denise Naslund, who was Bundy’s second Lake Sam victim on July 14, 1974.
A special news bulletin about the abduction of Denise Naslund.
This is Eleanor Rose, the mother of Denise Naslund. After her daughter was murdered she suffered from severe agoraphobia to the extent of where she could not leave her house. Until the day she died, Eleanors grief consumed her and it was as if her life stopped the day her daughter was murdered.
A photo of Bundy’s VW, sitting in police lock up.
Donald Blackburn’s WWII draft card.
The back of Donald Blackburn’s WWII draft card.
Donald and Ferol Blackburn’s wedding certificate.
Illona (‘Lonnie’) Lynn Blackburn’s junior year photo from the 1966 Shadle Park High School yearbook.
Janice’s sisters wedding announcement published by The Spokane Daily Chronicle on September 9, 1970.
Dr. Donald & Mrs. Ferol Blackburn, parents of Janice Anne Ott. Photo courtesy of The Yakima Herald.
Dr. Donald & Mrs. Ferol Blackburn, parents of Janice Anne Ott. Photo courtesy of The Yakima Herald.
Dr. Donald & Mrs. Ferol Blackburn, parents of Janice Anne Ott. Photo courtesy of The Yakima Herald.
Ferol Lorraine Blackburn. Photo courtesy of Legacy.
I thought these two memories for Mrs. Blackburn on the website ‘We Remember,’ and I thought they were so sweet that I had to include them. Screenshots courtesy of Legacy.
A memorial site for Ferol, Donald, and Janice Ott.
A close up of the memorial site for Ferol, Donald, and Janice Ott.
After Janice’s murder James Ott got remarried to a woman named Angela. This is his daughter, Casie Rebecca Ott, born on June 13, 1983 and she passed away on July 22, 2006 at age 24 after a long battle with heart disease.

Susan Rancourt Memorial Garden.

This (short) article is mostly going to be about the memorial garden that Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington dedicated to Susan Rancourt in October of 2012; I will focus on her life and murder in a separate article at a different point in time.

The life of Ted Bundy victim Susan Rancourt was memorialized on Friday, October 12, 2012 during the grand opening of the newly renovated Barto Hall at Central Washington University. Rancourt attended the university in 1973 and 1974 before she was abducted on campus and later killed; a beautiful garden was planted near the newly renovated dormitory and dedicated to her memory. While attending CWU as a Biology major, Sue lived at Barto Hall, a dormitory named after the schools’ former registrar, Harold Peter “Pete” Barto. In addition to serving as registrar, Barto also taught history PT and eventually left the role to teach full time (and served as chair of the Division of Social Work for roughly a year). He retired from teaching in 1961 and sadly passed away just a few years later. After his death, CWU built a three-story dormitory and named it after him; it fit 174 beds and opened in 1962.

In attendance at the ribbon cutting ceremony was Susan’s mother Vivian and her husband Bob Winters from Ephrata, WA (unfortunately Susan’s father Theodore “Dale” Rancourt passed away in August, 1990); her sister Judy and (her husband) Tom Zimmerman from La Conner, WA; her brother Dennis Rancourt from Orcas Island, WA; two of Judy’s daughters and Rancourt’s niece, Elena Carter. Mrs. Winters proudly cut the bright red ribbon outside the newly updated Barto Hall, where the beautiful, horseshoe-shaped garden was built in memory of her beautiful Susan. Judy said a few words on behalf of the family during the ribbon cutting ceremony:

“In the late ’60s my brother, Dennis, played football for the Wildcats and graduated with a teaching degree. Four years later my sister, Susan, told my parents she was attending Central.” … “My folks lived in Alaska at that time, my husband and I lived in La Conner.” … “We brought her to Ellensburg and moved her into Barto Hall.”

Zimmerman said that it was a “day of celebration,” and that her little sister really loved life while attending CWU. “On April 18, 1974, Sue’s roommate at Barto Hall phoned me to tell me Susan had not come home from a dorm-leaders meeting the previous evening.” … “My brothers and sisters, my mom and dad, Tom and I immediately came to Ellensburg from all points” … “We were supported in every way by this campus family in the following days” … “We would not find Susan’s body until the following year.” She said that during this incredibly hard time for them, the staff at Central Washington University took very good care of them, putting the family up in dorms and giving them food vouchers for the dining hall on campus. This must have been especially convenient for Dale and Vivian, as they were living in Alaska at the time of their daughters abduction.

“Eighteen years later our son, Tyler, announced to us that he wanted to become a CWU student. My heart froze,” Judy said. But while attending a parent session, any anxiety or fear she felt quickly dissipated, and both of her sons went on to attend the school. It was the right environment, both boys said, and it “felt like home.” Coincidentally, the day of the garden dedication ceremony would have been Susan’s 56th birthday: “It’s just dumb coincidence that this is the day,” Judy said. She went on to thank her niece for helping organize the event: at the time Elena Carter was a senior at CWU and played soccer for the school. “My family is thrilled that you are honoring Susan today. We really are. We humbly thank you for helping us remember our beautiful young Susan, happy and healthy and in her element on this great campus,” Judy said.

The associate dean of students for Student Living Richard DeShields said he hoped that many of Rancourt’s traits would be emulated in today’s students, such as her love for CWU, her passion for learning, and her helpful and kind nature. Sue was premed, majoring in Biology with plans to attend medical school after undergrad. Not only did Sue do very well academically but she also was very active in extracurricular activities around campus: she would sew patches on the uniforms of campus police officers and even went running with them after class. She was also an avid baker and tutored struggling students in German and Biology. About Rancourt, university President James Gaudino said, “she was taken from us too soon.” … “We are honored today to celebrate her life in this memorial.”

On March 2nd, 1975, two forestry students discovered the skull of Brenda Ball while doing field work over 90 miles away from CWU on Taylor Mountain (or as the locals call it, Tiger Mountain)… a day later, King County detective Robert Keppel was combing the area when he fell over a branch and stumbled across the skull of Susan Rancourt. After this gruesome discovery, it immediately became clear to law enforcement that they were dealing with another one of “Ted’s” dump sites: six months prior (and only 12 miles away), two grouse hunters discovered Ted’s Issaquah dump site.

On January 24, 1989 Theodore Robert Bundy was put to death for his heinous crimes against humanity, including the murder of Susan Elaine Rancourt. That morning, Seattle based news station KOMO-TV invited Susan Rancourt’s mom, Mrs. Vivian Winters to appear on TV through satellite from her home to share memories of her daughter as well as her feelings regarding Ted Bundy’s impending death. Just two days earlier, Bundy confessed to her daughters murder and I can only imagine the raw emotion she must have been feeling that morning of his execution. On top of Mrs. Rancourt being live on air, KOMO-TV reporter Dana Middleton Silberstein went to the Bundy family home in Tacoma and asked the emotionally fragile Mrs. Bundy if she would like to talk to one of the mothers of the victims (live, while on air of course). The reporter said that “John Bundy” was surprisingly easy to locate in the Tacoma phone book (despite the family having to change their number multiple times over the years due to threats and obscene calls). Surprisingly, Louise said yes and agreed to talk to Vivian live on air later that morning. On air, Mrs. Rancourt said to the timid Mrs. Bundy: “First of all, we send hugs to her, too” … “It has to be terrible for her. Our suffering is over, our answers are all there, and I think hers are probably just beginning.” When asked if she would like to say anything in response to Vivian, Louise hesitated then says, “I’m glad to be able to say it directly to one of the moms” … “We don’t know why this happened, we feel so desperately sorry for you. We didn’t want our son to do these things. We have two beautiful daughters of our own, and we know how we would feel. I am sorry.” In that moment, they were just two mothers who lost a child.

Despite this being slightly off topic I’m including it anyways (just because this only helps show what a monster Ted actually was, not the handsome, clean cut law student Bundyphiles drool over): When Dana Middleton-Silberstein went to visit Mrs. Bundy the morning of her son’s execution, she made a comment that he was “popular.” Middleton-Silberstein thought to herself that this “popular” man bit one of his victims nipples off during an attack, had sex with their dead corpses, and eventually dismembered them. One of his own lawyers described him as “the very definition of heartless evil.”

I would like to finish this short piece with a quote from Susans Mom: she pointed out that many of the women that became Bundy’s victims attempted to help assist him in some way (he was known to have frequently worn an arm sling or leg cast when hunting for victims). “They did not invite him into their lives.” … “The worst thing most of them did was to try and do a good thing. They offered him help. And it turned out to be the worst mistake they made in their lives.”

I wish I got the see the garden in spring, when the flowers were in bloom. 2022.
The Susan Rancourt Memorial Garden, April 2022.
The Susan Rancourt Memorial Garden, April 2022.
The Susan Rancourt Memorial Garden, April 2022.
The Susan Rancourt Memorial Garden, April 2022.
One thing I loved about going to Seattle was how many bookstores I got to go to! I love this placard I found at CWU: it took me 38 years to figure myself out. I’m glad I stuck it out.
A quick shot of Barto Hall (my rental car is slightly out of shot)…
Surrounded by family, Vivian Winters cuts a ribbon for a garden at Barto Hall dedicated to the memory of her daughter, Susan Rancourt. Photo courtesy of Brian Myrick.
Vivian Winters looks at her daughter Susan’s name in the concrete of a Memorial bench in front of Central Washington University’s new Barto Hall on Fridau, October 12, 2012. Susan, who was a former CWU student and a resident of the original Barto Hall, was murdered by serial killer Ted Bundy in 1974. Photo courtesy of Brian Myrick.
A painting of former Central Washington University student and original Barto Hall resident Susan Rancourt sits in front of the room as CWU president James Gaudino speaks during a dedication ceremony at the new Barto Hall, on Friday October 12, 2012. Photo courtesy of Brian Myrick.
What you see as you’re driving up to CWU in Ellensburg, WA
I had a little bit of trouble finding the memorial garden so I stopped and asked some students. They had NO idea what I was talking about, and there were three people there too. Thankfully a super helpful gal at res life helped me out and pointed me in the right direction. Something else I noticed in Seattle: no one cares about Ted Bundy anymore. I actually got the impression he is a bit of a stain on the city.
One big theme I noticed while doing my Bundy-hunting in Seattle was safety: This is what we used to call “blue rape phones” (which are really just an automatic line to campus safety). It’s found right outside of Barto Hall, where Sue used to live. Outside of where Georgann Hawkins was abducted was a Seattle police officer just watching the area. Also, a dog was chained to a tree in front of Gary Ridgway’s old home, almost like it belonged there simply to guard the house.
An article about the disappearance of Susan Rancourt.
Mr. and Mrs. Rancourt pleading with the public for the safe return of their daughter.
A missing poster for Susan Rancourt after her mysterious disappearance in 1974.