Note: While on vacation with my husband in the Adirondack Mountains this past October I came across the name ‘Gini McNair’ in relation to Ted Bundy on a website called ‘Bartleby;’ there’s no author credited, and I have no idea who wrote it or where it came from (Google was also incredible unhelpful). When I looked ‘Gini McNair’ up on multiple search engines the same (poorly written) essay came up three times (all with no author). After a little bit of research, I was able to find out more about McNair’s background (as well as her full first name), however because her story is short and mostly unremarkable (and most likely made up), I’m not going to go super deep into her background.
Background: Virginia Ingraham was born sometime in 1953 to Lowell ‘Bud’ Everett and Lillian Marie (nee Tasker) Ingraham in Binghamton, NY. Mr. Ingraham was born on September 13, 1915 in Binghamton, and Lillian was born on July 2, 1918 in Arlington, Virginia. The couple were married on July 21, 1940 in Binghamton and went on to have five children together: James, Martha, Margaret, Raymond, and Gini. After serving in the Army during WWII Bud went on to get a job with IBM, where he worked for twenty-nine years; the family relocated to Colorado in 1965 after he was transferred and they settled down in Boulder. In 1975 Gini graduated with a bachelor’s in fine arts from the University of Colorado and she married Bob McNair in 1977; the couple settled down in Hotchkiss, CO.
Ted Bundy?: One chilly afternoon in late 1977 (the description of the encounter is incredibly vague and there is no exact time frame given) the twenty-six-year-old newlywed had been dropped her off at her car on Sugarloaf Road near Boulder Canyon by her sister-in-law. After saying goodbye, Gini unlocked her ‘dusty red’ Volkswagen Beetle and got in, and as she sat there waiting for it to get warm she looked up and noticed a second VW almost identical to hers (except for the fact it was light blue in color) coming towards her.
As the vehicle got closer to her McNair was able to get a good look at the driver, who took the brief opportunity to size her up as well, and when his eyes met hers, she it was as if she had been punched in the gut. After the man drove by her, he continued along until he reached the bottom of the road, that’s when he briefly stopped then quickly made a U-turn and began making his way back to her. When he pulled up to the scene, he parked his own VW and got out, and as he confidently walked towards her window she started to roll it down, and he leaned in close and asked if she was ‘having car trouble?,’ to which she hastily replied, ‘no.’ In return, he loudly said back to her, ‘oh, well I am!’ Gini looked up at him with a surprised look on her face, and it was at that point that she knew she had to get away from him, and she quickly blurted out, ‘well, I’m sorry, but I don’t really know anything about cars. I don’t think that I would be able to help you!’ The man became angry and said to her: ‘well, maybe you COULD!’ McNair said ‘no’ for a second time then rolled up her window and sped away.
McNair said that in the days that immediately followed the event she didn’t tell many people about her strange encounter, and wondered if it had simply been one of those weird events that happened to people on occasion… But one night, a few months later, her and Bob were watching the news and a story about Ted Bundy came on: he had just been recaught in Florida, and as they were watching the station showed a picture of the killer and Gini’s mouth dropped to the floor in shock: it was the same man that claimed to have car problems that afternoon in late 1977. From that moment forward, McNair said that she always made a habit of trusting that little voice in the back of her head that had been with her that day.
If I can be candid, I think Mrs. McNair is mistaken in her identification of Ted Bundy that night in Boulder in late 1977: by that time his movements were incredibly well documented and tracked (as he was in police custody for most of the year), and in total was technically only ‘free’ for a total of seven days (although only one can really be considered as six of the seven days were in June). According to the ‘1992 FBI TB Investigative Report,’ from January 1-29, 1977 he was incarcerated in the Utah State Prison, and from January 29th to April 11, 1977 he was in the Pitkin County Jail; from April 11th to June 7th he was in the Garfield County Jail (with the occasional overnight trip to the Pitkin County Jail). Let’s not forget his daring escape where he was free between June 7th to the 13th, and after he was recaptured he was sent back to the facilities in both Garfield and Pitkin Counties until his second escape early in the morning on December 31, 1977… so unless McNair’s encounter happened on New Years Eve, (which one would think is a pretty memorable day), then it was most likely not Ted Bundy that needed car help. Also he was not said to have been in Boulder that day, only Glenwood Springs, Vail, and Denver; from there he took a plane to Chicago.
Gini is an established artist and ceramicist that has over forty-five years of experience in her field (she also makes fused glass jewelry); she has a physical storefront with her husband called ‘McNair Studios’ and most days you can find them in their respective studios or outside working in their garden. She opened ‘Fat Cat Pottery’ in Grand Junction (which is still open as of December 2025), which is described as a ‘successful, next door, do-it-yourself pottery studio,’ and has multiple storefronts across the internet (I was able to easily find her Etsy page). Bob is retired from a successful career of the field of custom home construction, and he now creates hand carved wooden spoons; in August 2006 the couple opened a coffee shop called ‘Doghouse Espresso.’ When she is not creating her art Gini enjoys gardening, spending time with her daughter and granddaughter, cooking, baking, entertaining friends, and enjoying the inspiring mountain view from her deck. I was unable to find anything related to McNair after 2021 online, and her Etsy shop is currently closed.
According to her Etsy page, Gini has ‘been fascinated by clay since I was a child. I grew up in the rural countryside of upstate New York and while most kids were content making ‘mud pies,’ I loved making complete sets of tiny dishes with the clay that I dug up near the pond in our backyard. That love was reawakened during my first year of college when I stumbled into my first pottery class at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I immersed myself in the study of ceramics and took many workshops with some of the best potters of that era; Warren MacKenzie, David Shaner, Ken Ferguson, John Reeve and others. I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in 1975 and have had a love affair with clay ever since.’
Mr. Ingraham died at the age of seventy-four on March 7, 1990 in Boulder, Colorado after a sudden illness. According to his obituary, he retired in 1972 and was a member of the Nederland Presbyterian Church and was active in the Nederland Lions Club as well as several other groups aimed for senior citizens, and in his spare time enjoyed gardening, fishing, and photography. Lillian Marie Ingraham died at the age of ninety-one on September 2, 2009 in Boulder. Gini’s brother Raymond Charles Ingraham passed away suddenly at the age of sixty-four on June 20, 2013; her sister Margaret Jean (Peg) Craven died at the age of seventy-nine on September 9, 2024, in Fort Lupton, Colorado.
Another Bundy Blog. 