‘Legal Ethics: Confidentiality and the Case of Robert Garrow’s Lawyers,’ Written by Jeffrey Frank Chamberlain of the Buffalo Law Review and published on October 1, 1975.
1975.
Pictures Related to the Taylor Mountain Crime Scene, Courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.
Pictures from the King County Sheriff’s Office investigation file 75-29267, for the Taylor Mountain homicide associated with Ted Bundy.
‘Detention, Arrest, and Salt Lake City Police Practices,’ written by John D. O’Connell.
Jane Ellen Hallberg-Wakefield.
Background: Jane Ellen Hallberg was born November 19, 1948 to Richard and Pauline Hallberg in Ludington, MI. Richard Eric Hallberg was born on June 13, 1924 in Ludington, Michigan and Pauline J. Rebman was born on April 5, 1925 in Elroy, WI. Richard only finished two years of high school and was drafted into the US Army on June 30, 1942 in Kalamazoo, Michigan; while serving in April 1944 he suffered from malaria. The couple were married on December 17, 1945 in Wisconsin and went on to have three daughters together: Jane, Susan Jean (b. 1947), and Karen (b. 1949); they went onto divorce on August 6, 1968 after twenty years of marriage in Minneapolis. After Richard’s split with Pauline, he went on to marry Alice Cardeen Jacobson on May 6, 1968 in Cass, MI, who was born on February 1, 1928. He was married for a third time to Vicki Irene Hallberg, who was born on May 9, 1928.
Academics: during her time at Bloomington High School, Jane excelled at academics and was involved with a great number of after school activities and sports as well, including National Honor Society, Spanish Club, and Swim Club. It’s worth noting that the Iowa DPS had her classified as simply ‘disabled’ with no elaboration, and no clarification was ever provided. While she was in seventh grade Wakefield met a friend named Carol, and during their senior year of high school they both realized they had plans of attending Morningside College in Sioux City, and immediately decided to room together when they started their freshman year in 1966.
Marriage: in 1966, Jane got a job at Sioux City’s Public Museum, and in the spring of 1967 she met John Wakefield through a co-worker, who was a graduate student in business administration at the University of Iowa. After she completed her freshman year in the spring 1967, she moved in with John for the summer, and the two were married on September 9, 1967 in the Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis*. I’m assuming Jane had some sort of falling out with her father as he wasn’t mentioned in her wedding announcement at all and she was given way by a man named ‘George Ebans.’ For her wedding ceremony, Jane wore a ‘street-length gown’ that was fashioned of ‘off-white lace,’ and her head piece was a short illusion veil.’ At the time of their wedding John Wakefield was a PhD candidate at the University of Iowa, and the bride attended Morningside College before she transferred to the same school as John. * I would like to point out that I was contacted numerous times by family members of John, and they felt it was important to point out the wedding announcement was wrong and the couple were married in Sioux Falls, and not Minneapolis.
John Albert Wakefield was born on March 19, 1944 to George Rederich and Beth Louise (nee Carson) Wakefield in Sioux City, Iowa. Shortly after their wedding Jane transferred to The University of Iowa, where she graduated with a BS in psychology in 1970; she went on to teach in two area school districts (Prairie and WACO) before she accepted a position at Penn Elementary School in North Liberty, Iowa in August 1975.
Car Accident: around 2:30 PM on July 19, 1967, Jane was involved in a fatal accident after she pulled out of a service station at an intersection on Rocky Shore Drive during a heavy rainstorm: fifty-one-year-old Allen R. Neal died as a result of the injuries he sustained from the accident. Neal was employed at the Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids and had a wife (Viola) and two children (Brad and Joleen). In October 1968 his widow sued the Wakefield’s along with Hoak Oldsmobile-Cadillac Company for $50,000, claiming her husband died from injuries he suffered from the car accident Jane caused (I couldn’t find the resolution of the case).
Divorce: Jane filed for divorce from John in March 1975 and moved out of the couple’s apartment (that was located at 923 Iowa Ave in Iowa City) and into the Bon Aire Mobile Home Park in Iowa City. Right before she vanished she had become romantically involved with another man, even though her divorce was being held up over disagreements on how she and John would divide the two businesses he owned.
September 6, 1975: twenty-six-year-old Jane Wakefield wore her blonde hair short at the time she disappeared and was 5’2” tall, weighed 112 pounds, was missing her #14 tooth and wore gold wire-rimmed eyeglasses. She had just started the school year and was employed as a math and reading teacher at Penn School in North Liberty, and had been last seen on a ‘cross-country bicycle ride’ with six of her girlfriends at roughly 2:30 PM on September 6, 1975 (one report said she ‘disappeared without a trace from her Iowa City mobile home sometime between late Saturday night on September 6, 1975 and early Sunday morning, September 7, 1975). Before they parted ways, Wakefield had told her friends that she had to get home for ‘an appointment,’ and a neighbor that had briefly spoken with her later in the afternoon told investigators that said nothing seemed out of the ordinary with her. Jane loved her friends and family and was heavily relying on their support during her divorce.
The ‘Jesus People:’ early reports speculated that Wakefield may have left the area with a religious group called the ‘Jesus People’ that had been camping near Coralville Lake at the time she disappeared despite her family never believing she would have joined a cult, and they told ‘The Gazette’ that Jane was ‘too much on top of things’ to join a cult, In an attempt to investigate the rumors, one of Jane’s friends, John Morrison, traveled to Huntsville, Arkansas where the cult had relocated to about ten days after she was last seen and searched the area with a sheriff’s deputy, but they didn’t find her. According to Morrison, ‘she was not the kind of person to get involved in that. She was just a little too much on top of things.’
The Investigation: Jane’s neighbors told police that in the late-night/early morning hours of Saturday, September 6th they heard someone ‘yelling or screaming’ that came from the direction of Jane’s home, but they weren’t certain where it were coming from but assumed it came from a different neighbors party, and did not reach out to LE. When a friend of Jane’s stopped by the following day, no one answered so they left, and according to Iowa City Police Department Capt. Patrick Harney: ‘obviously, between Saturday night and Sunday morning, she disappeared.’
When Jane didn’t report to Penn Elementary School on the morning of Monday, September 8, 1975 her principal Larry Sharp tried calling her but was unsuccessful; from there, he reached out to the mobile home parks main office, and the manager contacted her boyfriend, who immediately came to meet him and together they went to her residence. According to Jeff Burnham of ‘The Gazette: ‘outside, they found her bicycle locked to the yard lamp, and her Fiat in its parking space. Inside, they found her purse and other belongings, but no sign of Jane Wakefield.’ Sharp also called the Iowa City police department and reported her as missing, who upon arrival found everything to be in order and they determined that nothing was missing or out of place; they also said evidence suggested she had recently showered before she left.
In October 1976 a thousand-dollar reward was offered by Wakefield’s parents for any information leading to the arrest of the person (or persons) that were responsible for the disappearance of Jane. According to Investigator Kidwell, ‘there was nothing in her home to indicate violence. It would appear that she had just left the trailer and was going to come back.’ About his estranged wife, John said ‘it seems to me if she decided to drop out and take a new identity, somewhere along the way she would have given me a call. She’s either decided never to resurface, or she’s dead.’ About Jane, Captain Patrick Harney said ‘you don’t have a body. You have no elements to prove there actually was a death. But it’s surrounded by circumstances all pointing to the fact that she’s dead.’
Iowa City police and the state department of Criminal Investigation officials in charge of the investigation said they approached Jane’s case as if it were a murder, not a disappearance and that although there was an unnamed suspect at one time, no one was ever charged in connection with her possible death.
Drainage: on October 2, 1975 Iowa City deputies drained two lagoons that were in close proximity to the mobile home park where Wakefield was residing at the time she vanished, and after the nine-and-a-half-hour-long process they never found any trace of her (one report said this was on September 10, 1975). The undertaking began after a man from Emporia, Kansas reported that they overheard a conversation between two male voices in a motel room discussing getting rid of a woman, ‘the same way we did that one back in Iowa City… in a sewage lagoon.’
A Break: four months after Jane disappeared, detectives got their first major break in the case when a Confidential Informant (who happened to be a friend of her husband, who was the main suspect) told investigators that John had killed his estranged wife, cremated her body in an industrial-scale incinerator behind the apartment building he owned (and lived in), then spread her ashes along a ditch on the Interstate-80 (one report said it was the I-40) just outside of Iowa City in the middle of the night (he actually deposited the majority of them in a rest stop garbage can). Wakefield had access to this piece of equipment thanks to one of his business endeavors, something that he and Jane were actively trying to figure out how to split up during their divorce. He had even gone so far as to shift the blame on her new boyfriend, and on September 6, 1975 had rented a car from the Cedar Rapids Airport that was a near match to the one driven by her new bf then drove to her residence late that night and choked her to death. He then put her in the trunk and drove it to his Iowa City apartment building.
According to the CI, Wakefield then placed a large amount of charcoal into an industrial sized trash incinerator, lit it, and placed Jane’s body inside; when the fire went out, he swept up its contents and placed them into a garbage can. The following night he drove out to the I-80 near Iowa City, pulled off to the side of the road then spread the bags contents along the ditch. Where Iowa detectives declined to disclose the identity of the CI, they confirmed he was friends with the suspect, and he passed a polygraph test. A series of lie detector tests narrowed the short list of suspects down to one, who refused to submit to one and questioned the ‘validity of such tests.’
At roughly 10:15 AM on the morning of January 30, 1976, Captain KL Stock of the Iowa City Police Department announced they had received ‘significant new evidence’ regarding the disappearance of Jane Wakefield. Armed with three search warrants for the apartment building the two businesses owned by John Wakefield, ‘Magoo’s Lounge’ (located at 206 North Linn Street) as well as ‘Four Cushions, Inc‘ (a billiards parlor located on Clinton Street). Captain Stock said a vacuum cleaner was taken from Wakefield’s residence and five more were seized across his two businesses; their contents were sent to ‘various labs’ for examination; additionally, forensic experts sifted through the contents of the incinerator and sent them to the state crime lab in Des Moines. Everything came back inconclusive.
From the apartment, Iowa state detectives along with agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation seized miscellaneous pieces of ‘bone debris,’ a small hunk of metal that looked to be a dental filling, along with a ‘small, white chip of bonelike material.’ They also seized five vacuum cleaners from the two businesses and the following week on February 6, 1976 roughly twenty detectives returned to the area and searched (on their hands and knees) through several miles of ditches north of Iowa City along the I-80; lab analysis of bone fragments found in the incinerator were inconclusive.
From the apartment, Iowa state detectives along with agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation seized miscellaneous pieces of ‘bone debris,’ a small hunk of gold that appeared to be a dental filling that was found in the base of the incinerator, along with a ‘small, white chip of bonelike material.’ The following week on February 6, 1976 roughly twenty detectives returned to the area and searched (on their hands and knees) through several miles of ditches north of Iowa City along the I-80. Because of a lack of proper forensic technology, the bones were never confirmed to be Jane’s and tests on the fragments came back as inconclusive. John Wakefield was never charged with anything related to his estranged wife’s disappearance and is ‘officially’ not considered to be a suspect in this case (although her family strongly considers him to be a suspect).
According to Hank Reed, who was a friend of the couple, Jane was ‘a real nice, loving person. She liked kids a lot. That’s the reason she went into teaching.’ He also said that he believes his friend is dead but can’t elaborate further or explain why he feels that way. According to Willim Kidwell, a former Iowa state trooper turned PI, ‘ it naturally causes you to think that foul play was involved. Jane could be living happily somewhere, and no one would even know.’
I did notice a LOT of small inconsistencies that should have been caught in relation to this case:, as multiple articles have dates wrong. Iwa detectives believe Wakefield was the victim of foul play and is deceased. Looking into it, the apartment where John Wakefield was living at the time Jane disappeared was demolished after it was largely destroyed after a tornado ripped through Iowa City, so going back and searching through it isn’t a possibility.
923 Iowa Avenue: while doing my research, I learned the apartment where John Wakefield lived at the time his wife disappeared was demolished after it was mostly destroyed after a tornado ripped through Iowa City, so going back and searching through it for clues really isn’t possible.
Ted Bundy: on September 6, 1975, Ted Bundy was living in a room in a boarding house on East 1st Avenue in SLC (he was there until the following month), and by that time he had already been arrested and was under intense investigation by authorities (across multiple states). Oddly enough, it was the same day that the remains of Lake Sammamish victims Janice Ott and Denise Naslund and a third victim were discovered in Issaquah. At that time Ted was still actively working toward his law degree (despite the legal charges that were pending against him) and was still in a relationship with Elizabeth Kloepher (although their love had grown very rocky by that point). Bundy was actively trying to evade suspicion and was in the process of trying to sell his VW Big, which was later seized by LE.
Though not yet arrested for murder, police in Washington and Utah were narrowing in on Bundy and within weeks Carol DaRonch identified him in a police lineup, which lead to his first arrest in October 1975. I do want to say for the record, no part of me ever thought Ted was responsible for Jane’s disappearance: I kept coming across her story on Pinterest and I decided I had to write about her.
Robert Ben Rhoades: Ms. Wakefield is the first young woman I’ve written from Iowa, so I had to spend a fair amount of time looking into active serial killers that fit into that time frame, and one name that jumped out to me was Robert Ben Rhodes, aka ‘The Truckstop Killer.’ Rhodes is confirmed to have tortured and killed at least two couples in Illinois and Texas in 1989 and 1990, and he is suspected of torturing, raping, and killing more than fifty women between 1975 and 1990 based on data that has been collected about his driving routes and missing/murdered women that fit the profile of his preferred victims. At the time Rhoades was apprehended, he claimed to have been participating in these activities for fifteen years.
Jane’s Family: Jane’s mother Pauline remarried a man named John Burkhardt and died at the age of sixty-one on May 3, 1986 in Minneapolis. Karen Hallberg got married at the tender age of sixteen to twenty-two-year-old John McRew on August 24, 1968; the couple had three daughters together and according to his obituary they divorced in 1974. She died at the age of sixty-two on November 23, 2014.
Richard Eric Hallberg died at the age of fifty-one on October 1, 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri. According to his obituary, he attended school in Ludington, MI and was an employee of the Park Dairy while he lived there; before his death he lived in Kansas City and it’s worth noting that none of his daughters are listed by name in the write-up. His wife Vicki Irene Hallberg died at the age of forty-nine on May 10, 1977 and she is buried next to him in Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery in Kansas (even though his obituary said he was married to a woman named ‘Rosemary’ at the time of his death).
Conclusion: seven years after she was last seen alive, Jane Ellen Hallberg-Wakefield was declared legally deceased on September 5, 1982. No charges were ever filed in relation to her disappearance. As of April 2026, no sign of Jane has never been found and she would be seventy-seven-years-old. Pauline Hallberg had her daughter’s Fiat, her last paycheck from the Iowa City Community School District, and other items totaling around $15,000 in value were placed in a conservatorship. Wakefield’s case has been considered ‘inactive’ since 1976.
According to a background check done by a Redditor, John has lived all over the US since his wife mysteriously disappeared in the fall of 1975, and has resided in North Sioux City, SD, Jefferson, SD, Iowa City, IA, and Oviedo, FL. Per their father’s obituary, his brother Robert Wakefield is an ordained minister and a Reverend and resides in St. Croix, which is an island in the US Virgin Islands.
Works Cited:
charleyproject.org/case/jane-ellen-wakefield
‘JANE ELLEN WAKEFIELD: Missing from Iowa City, IA – 8 Sept 1975 – Age 26.’ Taken April 16, 2026 from crimewatchers.ne
missingpersons.iowa.gov
Quinn, Megan. (January 20, 2022). ‘Meg’s Cold Cases: Jane Wakefield.’ Taken April 16, 2026 from thelibertylivewire.com
‘Missing: Jane Wakefield.’ (April 1, 2023). Taken April 16, 2026 from uncovered.com/cases/jane-wakefield
Colorado Case Files.
Courtesy of the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department.
Karen Louise Wiles.
Karen Louise Wiles was born on January 21, 1950 to Richard and Phyllis Wiles in Tacoma, WA. Richard Frederick Wiles was born on September 7, 1923 in Burlington, WA and Phyllis Irene Hurn was born on November 10, 1927 in Sunnyside, Washington. After ‘Dick’ served in both WWII and the Korean War, he returned home and the couple were married on April 10, 1946; at first the family resided in Sedro-Woolley before they relocated to Burlington in 1958, where they laid down roots. They had five children together: Dianne (b. 1952), Karen, Brenda (b. 1963), Stephen, and Randall (b. 1956).
Details about Karen’s life are basically non-existent: the only real ‘fact’ I was able to find about her is that she had some sort of diminished mental capacity and during her adolescence attended/lived at the Fircrest School in Shoreline, WA. Fircrest was a major Residential Habilitation Center for those that suffered from intellectual disabilities and was designed to provide residential care, nursing, and habilitative services for those with ‘unique medical needs;’ it operated under the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. Sadly, I was only able to find one black and white picture of Karen in an article that was published after her murder, most likely due to the fact that she never attended any sort of formal schooling (for example, Fircrest isn’t on classmates.com). Around three weeks prior to her death, Karen was voluntarily committed to Western State Hospital on February 4, 1975 after she was confined ‘in a series of Seattle mental-health facilities.’ Detectives said she had briefly resided there in October of 1974 but left after only two weeks; she was found by police the following month and was ‘returned to care in Seattle.’
Around noon on February 21, 1975 the semi-nude remains of Karen Wiles were found around eight miles from Western State Hospital in a blackberry patch by a Port of Tacoma employee that had been inspecting a tidal gate at a dead end of Lincoln Avenue (one source said it was Taylor Avenue). It was an area known as the ‘tideflats,’ and during the daytime it was a semi-busy area close to Seattle… but at night, it transformed into a dark, deserted place that was known for attracting unsavory individuals that were typically partaking in some sort of illegal activity (aka: it was the perfect place to dump a body). It was strongly believed by investigators that she’d been murdered somewhere else and dumped at the tideflats.
At the time she had been found, Wiles was only wearing stockings and a dress that had been pulled up to her hips, and she was naked from the waist down; her shoes, jacket, and underclothing were found nearby. According to the Pierce County Coroner Jack Davelaae, her cause of death was strangulation, and detectives said twine had been found wrapped around her neck; she also had noticeable impressions on her wrists, which were an indication that she’d been bound when she was alive. Close to where her remains were found, investigators found a three-foot-long black plastic hose, which is interesting because Warren Leslie Forrest’s first victim said that at one point during her attack her assailant had penetrated with a hose which had been seized as evidence from Warren’s van: it was described as being approximately two inches in diameter and a couple of feet long and was very similar to the one found near Karen’s body (which unfortunately had gotten lost at some point after being brought into evidence).
Just a few weeks prior to her admission to the facility, suspected serial killer Warren Leslie Forrest had been committed after it was determined he had been ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ after he got caught attacking his Lacamas Lake victim, and on January 31, 1975 he was committed to the Western State Mental Hospital in Steilacoom, WA.
Authorities had no other choice than to turn to the public for help in identifying the young victim and turned to the local news: after the story aired some nurses at WSH came through forward and made the positive identification. According to Detective Lieutenant Grenville Legge, the twenty-five-year-old Wiles was last seen at the Western State Penitentiary around 6 PM on Tuesday, February 21. 1975: she had been wearing a blueprint blouse, red and white checkered double-knit slacks, white stockings, blue tennis shoes, and a blue ski jacket. She was 5’8,” weighed around 175 pounds and had long brown hair and blue-grey eyes.
A spokesman for Western State Hospital said that because Wiles had voluntarily entered the facility and was not a minor, they were under no obligation to notify her parents when she left their care. Detective Legge said that in the days that immediately followed her disappearance investigators interviewed hospital employees along with their residents about the activities of Karen on the morning she was last seen; he also said they had ‘briefly’ chased a lead regarding a report of a vehicle with its headlights out that had been seen leaving the area on the evening she was last seen alive (nothing ever came of it).
According to investigators, statements made by Wiles family and other patients at Western State Hospital were ‘conflicting:’ one fellow patient said that in the morning on the day she vanished Karen had told her about her intentions of hitchhiking to Seattle, but this was only if she was able to leave the hospitals grounds; also, according to the same patient, she had returned to her room in the ‘early afternoon’ and changed her clothes. Additionally, a resident of Lakewood, WA came forward and told Pierce County Sheriff’s that they saw a woman that matched Wiles description hitchhiking ‘towards Tacoma’ on Steilacoom Boulevard around 2:30 PM on February 21. 1975… however, they also said that they received several additional reports that she was at a few other locations across Washington at the time as well.
These reports that Karen was seen hitchhiking in the middle of the afternoon are in direct conflict with a finding from the pathologist’s report from her autopsy: the food that had been found in her stomach matched the meal that had been served at Western State Hospital that evening, which took place between 4 PM and 6 PM; they also said that the ‘digestion was not far advanced.’ Which means is her last meal had been at the hospital, then she may have been killed sometime between dinner and 8 PM. Investigators were also looking into several vehicles that were seen near the facility on the day of and after she was last seen alive. The RN’s at the hospital that identified Karen’s remains told detectives that she ‘would do anything to get a drink,’ and had gotten caught with alcohol at the facility before she disappeared. They also said she had ‘self-destruction’ tendencies and had recently ‘superficially’ cut herself. Police passed her picture around in the lower Pacific Avenue bars as well as at the hospital and around the tideflats area where her remains were recovered, but they came up empty handed.
These reports that Karen was seen hitchhiking in the middle of the afternoon are in direct conflict with a finding from the pathologist’s report from her autopsy: the food that had been found in her stomach matched the meal that had been served at Western State Hospital that evening, which took place between 4 PM and 6 PM; they also said that the ‘digestion was not far advanced.’ Which means is her last meal had been at the hospital, then she may have been killed sometime between dinner and 8 PM. Investigators were also looking into several vehicles that were seen near the facility on the day of and after she was last seen alive. The RN’s at the hospital that identified Karen’s remains told detectives that she ‘would do anything to get a drink,’ and had gotten caught with alcohol at the facility before she disappeared. They also said she had ‘self-destruction’ tendencies and had recently ‘superficially’ cut herself. Police passed her picture around in the lower Pacific Avenue bars as well as at the hospital and around the tideflats area where her remains were recovered, but they came up empty handed.
According to ‘Stolen Voices of Dole Valley,’ the murder of Karen Wiles has recently been reopened, and for the first time since her death detectives in Tacoma questioned Warren Leslie Forrest about her death (however all their attempts were unsuccessful, as he refused to answer their questions). The use of a ligature to strangle the victim along with the sexual assault was consistent with Forrest’s MO, and it’s been reported that he worked with Karen in the hospitals kitchen; despite some restrictions (he wasn’t supposed to leave the facilities grounds the first few weeks he was there), he was still somehow able to leave the hospital and he did have access to his vehicle (I also saw he had access to the facilities van).Also, interestingly enough, Warren Forrest’s then wife Sharon claimed he was having an extramarital affair with one of the members of the staff at Western State Hospital, a fact that one of his ‘good friends’ verified when they were interviewed by detectives (he said that her name was Nancy). This is interesting to me, because in 1984 he married one of the nurses at the prison he was incarcerated in (Walla Walla State Penitentiary).
Because of not wanting to write about the same things repeatedly, I’m not going to go over the more commonly discussed victims of Warren Leslie Forrest, only because I have written about them all in the last two articles about him. The use of a ligature to strangle the victim along with the sexual assault was consistent with Forrest’s MO, which targeted young girls and women in the Clark County area of Washington state in the early to middle 1970’s (often those who were hitchhiking or walking alone). He frequently used a blue 1973 Ford Econoline van in his attacks, and in one of his cases where the victim survived, she said that he used a knife to threaten her then he forced her into the back of his vehicle. During abductions, he questioned victims about their age, relationships, and sexual history to assess them according to his own notions of morality. WLF’s preferred torture tool (which was a unique signature in relation to his MO) was an air-powered dart pistol, and he shot his victims with darts as a form of torture before eventually abandoning and/or killing them. He often left the women in remote, heavily wooded areas such as Dole Valley, Lacamas Lake, or Tukes Mountain in a state park (which makes sense, as he worked for the parks department) and they were typically bound with rope or baling twine, and were frequently tied between trees. Forrest’s primary methods of murder were strangulation and stabbing, with wounds that were typically consistent with the use of an ice pick or darts.
Investigators involved in Karen’s case said that in relation to Warren Leslie Forrest, although circumstantial evidence aligns in the case, it lacks physical proof: Tacoma Detective Sergeant Julie Deer said: ‘there are similarities that one can’t ignore… but we have to have evidence.’ According to current members of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, the staff at the Western State Hospital didn’t cooperate with the original detectives from the Tacoma Police Department back in 1975, which was detrimental when it came to the investigation. During his interview with Carolyn Osorio, retired Pierce County Police Chief WW Parrott made it clear that investigators were extremely suspicious about the goings on at Western State Hospital in the 1970’s, and the murder investigation hit a wall in 1978 partially due to ‘uncooperative staff, and: ‘investigators were extremely suspicious’ and had been ‘stymied by the staff at Western at every turn.’ Because Wiles was ‘a marginalized woman’ without close family advocates, investigators said her murder sadly became an afterthought, and her case quickly fell to the wayside.
According to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, some of the evidence related to Wiles case was either ‘mishandled or lost,’ and crucial biological evidence that could have belonged to the suspect (such as swabs and pantyhose) was lost. Before Tacoma PD Detective Lindsey Wade retired in 2018, she submitted some of Weil’s clothing to a lab in Washington state for DNA testing, along with the twine that had been recovered from around her neck; the results came back as ‘inconclusive,’ meaning no DNA from the suspect had been identified.
According to Chief Parrott, ‘the majority of my investigation into this homicide was conducted in and about the grounds of Western State Hospital. And I don’t feel I have to capitalize on you the difficulty that one is confronted with when attempting to conduct major investigations at this institution. It’s been my feeling from the mere outset of my investigation into this homicide that the suspects responsible for the demise of Karen Wiles were somehow connected to the hospital in one capacity or another. However, I have yet to be successful in attaching suspicions to any one person.’
Richard Frederick Wiles died at the age of eighty on December 5, 2003 in Burlington, Washington. Karen’s mother Phyllis Irene Wiles passed away at the age of eighty-six on August 18, 2014 at home with her family by her bedside; the mother of five enjoyed crocheting ‘beautiful doilies,’ and loved to bake apple pie (her family’s favorite dessert) for every occasion; cinnamon rolls and pineapple upside down cake were also a specialty of hers. According to her obituary, Phyllis loved animals, country music, movies, and the beautiful flowers that her son was always bringing to her, and she never left home without her earrings on and always wore a heartfelt smile.
Karen’s sister Dianne died at the age of seventy-three on November 29, 2025 at Riverside Village, and according to her obituary, after high school she relocated to Oregon and was a co-owner of ‘His and Her’s Locksmith’ in South Bend for twenty years. Upon retiring Dianne returned to Washington to take care of her mother, and she adored being a mom and grandmother; she also loved to cook and was an avid reader, and had an extensive library of books (she especially was fond of cookbooks).
Both of Karen’s brothers are still alive: after college Stephen relocated to Collierville, Tennessee, and Randy Wiles stayed in Burlington, WA. Her sister Brenda Wiles-Harley is currently residing in Mount Vernon, WA.
Works Cited:
Carolyn Osorio. (September 9, 2025). Stolen Voices of Dole Valley, Episode 5: The Good-Looking Stranger. Taken February 12, 2026 from https://pod.wave.co/
Stephen Arnold ‘Buzzy’ Ware.
Stephen ‘Buzzy’ Arnold Ware was born on January 23, 1943 to Arnold and Freda (nee Cowperthwaite) in Santa Maria, CA. Arnold Grassel ‘Barney’ Ware was born on June 11, 1915 in Butler, IL, and Freda Catherine Cowperthwaite was born on September 9, 1916 in Golden, CO. The couple were wed on March 7, 1941 in Denver, Colorado and had three children together: Stephen, Randolph ‘Stick’ Howard (b. 1944, Santa Barbara), and Mary Ann (b. 1949, Detroit). The elder Mr. Ware lived quite an extraordinary life: he earned his MS in Biochemistry from the University of Colorado in 1939 and went on to get his PhD from the same institution in 1942. He was an Army Captain in the Pacific during WWII (he served from 1941-1945), and upon returning home got a position as the director of a medical lab at a Los Angeles County Hospital, where he was employed until 1973. Later in the same year, he became the co-owner of Biocon Lab in Pasadena (he retired in 1984) and he was an assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Southern California’s Medical School.
After graduating from South Pasadena High School in 1960, Buzzy went on to receive his Bachelors from the University of Colorado in 1964, and earned a law degree from the University of Southern California in 1968. After he passed the bar exam, he opened a law practice in Aspen, and in July of 1977 he was appointed as Ted Bundy’s attorney in his first-degree murder case.
Stephen married Pamela Craven-Rutherford on December 13, 1974 in Aspen, CO. The daughter of a prominent General Practitioner in Boulder, Pam was born on August 23, 1946 in San Diego, CA (one source said it was Boulder, CO), and was one of nine brothers and sisters. She graduated from Boulder High School in 1964 and went on to attend Western State University, where she dually majored in Sociology and Psychology. While there, she was very active in extracurricular activities, and was a member of Ski Club, Water Ski Club, and the Association of Women Students.
On June 16, 1977, Judge George E. Lohr appointed Ware as the new counsel for Theodore Robert Bundy for the murder of Michigan nurse, Caryn Campbell: at the time he was an ambitious young lawyer that looked ‘more like a ski bum than an attorney,’ and despite only being in his early thirties, he had already began to make a name for himself in Aspen: he had never lost a jury trial and flew his own plane and rode a motorcycle; he was also known as the man to have on your side in narcotics cases. Immediately after he was appointed as Bundy’s case, Ware flew to Texas as defense counsel in a major federal racketeering case.
According to Ann Rule’s true crime classic ‘The Stranger Beside Me,’ Ware was known around Colorado as ‘a winner,’ and Bundy somehow sensed that: in a phone call between Ted and the author, he sounded ‘jubilant’ when he talked about his new attorney, and she sensed that any residual feelings about his recent failed escape (which was between June 7th to June 13th, 1977) were quickly forgotten by August when he filed a motion for a retrial in Utah; this was done in relation to the Carol DaRonch case (due largely to what he felt were Detective Jerry Thompson’s suggestions to her that she pick out his photo from a line-up).
In an attempt to beef up its case against Bundy, the prosecution team brought in ‘similar transactions’ that were reminiscent of Campbells murder: they introduced testimony about the kidnapping conviction of Carol DaRonch, the murders and the disappearances of Melissa Smith, Laura Aime, and Debbie Kent in Utah, and the eight missing girls from Seattle. They tried to prove that the crimes attributed to Bundy fit some sort of ‘pattern,’ and they shared some commonalities, but when considered individually each one lacked ‘clout.’ Unfortunately (as we all know), Ted escaped for a second to Florida at the very end of 1977 and Campbell’s trial never happened).
One can only speculate what might have happened if Ted had had the continued support of his promising young attorney that fed new energy into his defense: on the night of August 11, 1977 Ware and his wife were involved in a motorcycle crash in the shale bluffs of Aspen, an event that killed Mrs. Ware on impact and left Buzzy with skull and facial fractures, countless internal injuries, and a broken leg. He was taken first by ambulance to Aspen Valley Hospital then was airlifted to St. Anthony’s Hospital in Denver.
According to one of the responding officers, James Loyd of the Colorado Highway Patrol, there was ‘no apparent reason for the accident,’ and the motorcycle veered off the left side of the pavement on a right hand curve, where he hit an embankment that stopped him at impact, throwing both Ware and Pamela off the bike, which caught fire shortly after the crash and was completely incinerated by the time help arrived. In the days that immediately followed the accident Buzzy was placed in a coma, and there were some worries that he could have possibly suffered from permanent paralysis.
There was no doubt about it: Ware would be in no shape to represent Bundy in court and once again, he was alone. Ted was devastated by the accident, as he had been counting on him to help clear his name in relation to the murder of Caryn Campbell. Although he never completely recovered from the accident, Buzzy continued to practice law in Denver and Boulder, and after he retired he relocated to Southern California, where he dabbled in pro-bono work, wrote several books, and ‘continued his lifelong fascination with fiction.’ He never remarried.
Buzzy Ware died of natural causes on September 3, 2006 in Portland, OR at the age of sixty-three (one source lists San Gabriel, CA). In his obituary, he was said to have had ‘a colorful character,’ and was loved by many close family members and friends, who said although his ‘injuries were deep both physically and emotionally, his generosity and the goodness of his heart were constant.’ Buzzy is laid to rest in the Ware Grove Cemetery located in Butler, IL.
Buzzy’s mother Freda passed away on August 11, 1977 in Denver, Colorado at the age of ninety-six. Buzzy’s father ‘Barney’ died at the age of seventy-one on January 25, 1987 in Pasadena, CA. His sister Mary Ann Ware currently resides in Portland, OR with her husband and is a retired Medical Doctor that specialized in internal medicine (some sources say she was a tuberculosis specialist). She graduated from the Utah School of Medicine in 1977 and completed her residency in Internal Medicine from University of Rochester Medical Center in 1980.
Like his brother, Stick Ware graduated from the University of Colorado: he earned multiple Bachelors degrees in Math, Chemistry, and Physics, his MS in Physics, and his PhD in Experimental Nuclear Physics. He is the Founder and Chief Scientist of Radiometrics, which is a manufacturing company that deals with appliances and electronics that is based in Boulder, CO; per his LinkedIn profile, it is a ‘world leader in the development of ground-based remote sensing.’ Stick is also the ‘founder emeritus’ of Boulder Beer, which was established in 1978. He currently resides in Boulder with his wife.
Bryan Severson.
On September 17, 1975, in an attempt to ditch the vehicle to keep it out of the hands of the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department (who were interested in searching it for evidence linked with his multi-state murder spree), Ted Bundy sold his beige 1968 Volkswagen sedan to eighteen-year-old Bryan Severson: titled ‘Bill of Sale’ and written on what appears to be a yellow legal pad, the receipt is hand-written in red ink and states that on that date, Bryan Severson ‘has bought and paid for in full the sum of $800 (eight hundred dollars),’ signed Theodore R. Bundy. Hairs from three of Bundy’s victims were later found in the VW, according to reports. Bryan was born on February 5, 1958 and currently lives in Bountiful, Utah. Over the years Severson’s memory may have gotten a bit hazy in regards to the encounter: in October 2022 he did an interview with true crime researcher Chris Mortenson, who said that Bundy immediately ‘took off’ after he paid him for that car, but in a different interview conducted in front of Ted’s rooming house, he said he had driven Ted back to his rooming house after the purchase was completed… so, who knows? Interesting fact: he went to the same high school as Melissa Smith, and was a year below her.
Linda Benson, Documents from the Grand Junction PD.
Grand Junction Police Department records related to the July 25, 1975 murder of Linda Benson and her five-year-old daughter, Kelly Ketchum. Their murders were only a small part of a much larger and ongoing crime spree in Grand Junction, CO that seemed to target individuals that knew too much about the region’s narcotics activities linked to corrupt law enforcement such as former police chief Ben Meyers. It was said that one of Linda’s neighbors reported to seeing a man that matched Ted Bundy’s description around the complex right before the murder took place.
Susanne ‘Sue’ Arlette Swanson-Crawford.
Susanne Arlette Swanson was born in May 1955 to Herbert and Blanche (nee Haynes) Swanson in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Blanche Ethel Haynes was born on July 12, 1916 in Mason, MI, and Sue’s father Herbert Clarence Swanson was born February 9, 1918 in Tacoma, WA. The couple were married in Flagstaff, Arizona on October 13, 1948 and had two daughters together: Susanne and her sister, Holly. After serving in WWII Herb went to school and got a degree in engineering, and after he graduated he got a position with the LA Department of Water and Power, and would frequently talk about how much he loved going to work every single day, not just for his love of engineering but also because of the wonderful people that he worked with.
Sue was a strong student and while she was attending Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in Los Angelas she was in Spanish Club, Advanced Girls Ensemble, and concert choir. After she graduated in 1973 she relocated to Salt Lake City and enrolled in Brigham Young University. Susanne married LeRoy Crawford on May 23, 1975 in their temple in SLC and the couple had four children together: Kristi , Jaden, Glen, and David. Leroy Dalley Crawford was born on November 9, 1949 in Summit, Utah.
One hot day in early August 1975 after registering for a Spanish class for the upcoming semester at BYU, Crawford made a quick call on a pay phone in the Wilkinson Center. After she hung up, she nearly ran into ‘a handsome, curly haired man in his early 30’s’ that had ‘mesmerizing clear green eyes,’ ones that she had felt for sure were fixated on her as she finished up with her phone call moments before. The young newlywed softly apologized and quickly walked off, but the attractive stranger stayed with her and placed himself between her and the exit; she said that his voice was ‘deep’ and ‘rhythmic,’ and it ‘sounded poetic’ to her… she also thought to herself that his smile was perfect and his ‘handsome dimples’ drew her to every word that came out of her mouth. He told her: ‘you have such long, beautiful hair. You really are a pretty woman…. I love your eyes, they are captivating.’ Then came the question that stuck with her for the next forty years: ‘may I walk you to your car?’
Crawford lied, and told him: ‘thank you, but my husband is going to pick me up shortly,’ then flashed her diamond ring at him (which she pointed out had been in plain sight during the entire interaction). She said in response the man said nothing, but quickly turned and darted out of the building. At the time she thought the encounter was unusual and he offered her no explanation to his quick departure, like ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were married,’ or ‘it was nice talking to you.’ He simply turned away from her then fled.
She later concluded that he probably was anxious to go and: ‘find his next victim, to captivate her with his charm, wit, intelligence and charisma. I had no idea who this evil man was until many years later. ’She said that fourteen years later (which would have been roughly around the time of his 1989 execution) she was watching the news and a story about none other than Ted came on and it dawned on her who it was that she had run into in August of 1975: ‘I saw him for the first time after all those years in three-dimensional form, walking and talking as I had remembered.’ Crawford said that even though she had seen Bundy’s face ‘multiple times over the years’ in the newspaper and on newscasts she didn’t realize it was him because he ‘had so many different faces, each captivating with an array of hairstyles and looks. His eyes seemed to mutate from green to brown and then back to a hue of green again while we were talking that day in 1975.’
Sue said she’ll obviously never know what would have happened if she had never gotten married only six months prior, and strongly believes that she ‘would have allowed him to walk me to my car if I had not been married’ because she ‘sensed no danger in his presence.’ Thinking about it, she realized that she ‘fit into his pattern of victims: young, tall and thin, with long brown hair parted in the middle.’ ‘It had to be him,’ she thought to herself. At that time in early 1989 she was stuck in an unhappy marriage and remembered that the man was the only person in the past fourteen years that had bothered to pay her a single compliment.
At the time Crawford claimed she had her encounter with Ted in early August 1975 he had been a law student at the University of Utah and was in the final stages of his relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer (although by then we knew he was being unfaithful to her). According to her, ‘Bundy was arrested two weeks after my meeting him when police finally caught up with him on August 16, 1975. It was also a little more than a month after the abduction and murder of Susan Curtis, a 16-year-old girl attending a youth conference at BYU.’ This statement is at the very least confirmed to be true: According to the ‘1992 FBI TB Multiagency Team Report,’ on June 27, 1975 after she left the Wilkenson Student Center to go back to her room during a youth conference but she was never seen or heard from again.
At the time she wrote her article for Spectrum, Crawford was a resident of Ivins City, UT (according to her FB page she still lives there) and was a student at Dixie State University; she is a grandmother to six and concluded her article by saying: ‘these days I can count four wonderful children and six darling grandchildren. They never would have been born had I accepted Ted Bundy’s offer.’
Herbert Clarence Swanson passed away on February 15, 2008, and at the time of his death, he had been married to Blanche for close to sixty years. According to his obituary, Herb was a gifted gymnast in his youth and loved to roller skate, go camping, and go out flying with his brother, Fred (who was a pilot). Sue’s mother died only ten months after her husband on December 24, 2008. Blanche was gifted in music (she excelled at the piano) and poetry, and in her younger days taught at a small school in the country. Her obituary said that: ‘her greatest gift, and most beloved of her family, was her kind and gracious heart and the sweetness which she radiated to all who knew her. Her greatest passion in life was dancing, and we as her family in our mind’s eye, can see her dancing once again as she once used to!’ During Herb and Blanche’s time together, they enjoyed traveling through the continental United States (including Canada and Alaska).
Leroy Dalley Crawford passed away suddenly on August 9, 2016 at the age of sixty-six of Richfield, Utah. According to his obituary, he was a huge fan of music, and knew how to play the piano, the organ, and a variety of different wind instruments (his favorite being the tuba, which he played in the Utah Valley Symphony while he attended BYU). He was called to the Southwest Indian Mission in 1969 where he served the Navajo Native Americans in the four corners area of the US (where Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet), and while there he learned how to speak Navajo fluently.
Works Cited:
Crawford, Susanne. ‘A chance encounter with serial killer Ted Bundy.’ (March 8, 2015). Taken December 11, 2025 from http://www.spectrum.com
Another Bundy Blog: My Adventures around the Pacific Northwest (and everywhere else). 