Listed below are Non-Exempt Investigatory Records courtesy of the Moscow Police Department related to State of Idaho versus Bryan Kohberger (Latah County Case CR29-22-2805, Ada County Case CR01-24-31665, and MPD Case No. 22-M09903) that have been redacted pursuant to the Idaho Public Records Act and authorized for release to the general public. Released on July 23, 2025.
An interview between Ted Bundy and Dennis Couch that took place only thirty-six hours before he was executed on January 22,1989.
Information related to the 1992 TB Multi-Agency Investigative Team Report Conference that was held at Quantico between February 20 and February 24, 1992.
During his death row interviews in January 1989 Ted Bundy confessed to Idaho Investigators Randy Everitt and Russ Reneau that he killed a young hitchhiker in Idaho on September 2, 1974 near Treasure Valley by the Eisenmann exit on the I- 84 on the outskirts of Boise. The handsome twenty-seven-year-old was in the process of relocating from Seattle to Salt Lake City for his second attempt at law school when he stumbled upon the girl who he said had light brown hair, was between 16 and 18 years old, around 5’6″ tall; she was carrying a green backpack and wore a ‘simple beaded necklace with black and light-colored beads resembling spaghetti.’ Bundy said he strongly suspected that she was a runaway from Boise and was making her way to Montana or Wyoming, but he never gave investigators her name as he claimed to not know it.
Upon leaving the I-84 (as he remembered it) in ‘the outskirts of Boise’ Bundy noticed a young woman hitchhiking at the top of the on ramp of the 1-84, which ran through a neighborhood he said was filled with ‘ranch style suburban houses.’ Ada County Sheriff’s deputy Tim Cooper said that he initially felt there were some inconsistencies regarding the description he gave of the area and 84 but eventually realized the area was under construction at the time he would have passed through in early September 1974. Judging from Ted’s recollection of ‘ranch styled houses’ on the edge of Boise, Cooper strongly feels that he picked up his young victim by the Eisenmann Rd exit located southeast of the Boise airport.
Many investigators believe that Bundy’s confession about the unknown Idaho hitchhiker is legitimate and may be one of his more honest moments, as he was largely truthful when discussing other confirmed homicides during his final days, including Lynette Culver, who is the killers only confirmed Idaho victim and whose remains have also never been recovered. During the hour long conversation, he told LE that the young girls green backpack did not go into the river like everything else that belonged to her, and it went with him to SLC, where he tossed it out his VW’s window near some garbage dumps (as it wasn’t strange to see discarded items scattered around the area). While being questioned by Idaho investigators, Bundy said that he could no longer remember her name and after he killed her he burned her identification card.
There’s some discrepancy in what happened immediately after the murder took place: the ‘TB MultiAgency Team Report’ says nothing about Ted returning to the area to dispose of the body on September 3rd, as it was never mentioned to Everitt and Reneau during their interview on January 22, 1989. However, according to Polly Nelson, the following day her client returned to the body and took Polaroids of the remains then dismembered her and dumped the pieces in a nearby river that is strongly believed to be the Snake River, a major waterway in the Pacific Northwest that is about 1,080 miles long.
Elizabeth Kendall gave some details about her personal recollection surrounding when Bundy left for law school on September 2, 1974 in early September 1974 in her 1981 book, ‘The Phantom Prince:’ that morning, her friend Mary Lynn Chino made everyone a big breakfast on her houseboat before he left for Utah, and during his drive Ted called her in the late afternoon/early evening from Nampa, ID to tell her that he loved her. She mentions that they had picnicked there on one of their vacations to Utah: ‘he called me again from outside of Salt Lake City to tell me where he was, and he called me from his apartment to tell me how much he loved the place I had found for him. We talked several hours a week, running up huge phone bills.’ Nampa was slightly over twenty-two miles from Boise, which would have put Bundy in the middle of the city in slightly over thirty minutes after he spoke with Kendall.
It’s worth noting that according to the ‘1992 TB Multiagency Team Report,’ Bundy stopped for gas the fourth time on September 2, 1974 somewhere within the city of Boise, although I do want to point out that Kevin Sullivan refers to different locations that Ted got gas that don’t quite match the 1992 TB MultiAgency Report: he said that he stopped for fuel the third time within ‘the Boise city limits’ and got fuel for the fourth and last time in the early hours of September 3rd in Burley, Idaho.
According to Russ Reneau, when he showed up to talk to Bundy in Starke, Florida ‘it was the first time I’ve ever been invited by a serial killer himself to come talk with him.’ … ‘It was clear that he was fatigued. I saw signs of stress and, through all of that, he was polite and actually amiable.’ … ‘In spite of his friendly persona, it was clear to me that we were dealing with an evil, a truly evil man.’ During their conversation the condemned man also gave very precise details about how he raped then killed Lynette Culver of Pocatello on May 6, 1975 and volunteered details that only her killer would have known. Regarding Culvers murder Reneau said that he strongly believed Bundy was responsible: ‘I feel like what we came away from out of that interview was able to bring closure to one Idaho family. That is always a good outcome.’ About both girls murders Tim Cooper commented that: ‘it begs the question why would he lie about our Jane Doe case and then tell the truth about Lynette Culver.’
Lynette Culver was born on July 31, 1962 in Renton, WA and was killed by Ted Bundy on May 6, 1975 in Pocatello, ID. She was last seen leaving Alameda Junior High School during her lunch period boarding a bus, and after abducting her he brought the 12-year-old back to his room at the Holiday Inn, where he sexually assaulted then drowned her in the bathtub before eventually disposing of her body in a river north of Pocatello (possibly the Snake). In the time following her disappearance, police assumed she was a runaway, however as time went by, they received no reports of any sightings of her they began to lean towards foul play. During his Idaho confession in January 1989 Bundy confessed to killing a young girl that matched Culver’s general description. According to (retired) Idaho Attorney General Jim Jones, he was ‘frankly astounded by the detail that he was able to provide with respect to Lynette, and of course we had a total absence of detail on the other one he confessed to the hitchhiker.’
After looking into the confession Idaho investigators determined there was no missing person report that matched his supposed victim and nobody was ever recovered. Of the confession of the Idaho hitchhiker, Reneau wondered ‘did he fabricate it? I’m not sure, or was he simply withholding information in the hopes that we would extend his life? I’ve never been able to resolve that in my mind over the years.’ … ‘I was expecting someone that I could read better. He was not nervous at all during the interview I had with him, much different from any other homicide suspect I’ve ever interviewed.’
In a podcast with Ada County Sheriffs department, Deputy Lauren Monte sat down with Cold Case Investigator Detective Tim Cooper and went over details related to the Snake River Jane Doe. About the necklace the victim was wearing, Detective Cooper clarified that the ‘kinds of whatever it was they were more like long, little sections of spaghetti with a with a strings F through it and they were black and well black and a lighter color.’
About the Snake River Jane Doe, Tim Cooper said that what Bundy ‘had to say about Jane is credible, and a lot of that has been that we have from the audio is her description and again what sparse details that he could recall. He said that he thought she was from Boise, from Ada County, and hat she was maybe trying to get to Montana. He estimated her age to be younger, maybe not even 18 yet. He provided a clothing description and description of her. Mr. Bundy indicated that he was traveling eastbound on Interstate 84 in what he believed to be Ada County or the Boise area, on the outskirts. It sounded like, from what he said of Boise, when he first encountered our Jane, who appeared to be hitchhiking or standing alongside the highway as if she needed a ride. I picked up a young woman who was hitchhiking, traveling. Well, I was traveling east at the time. She was standing… it wasn’t downtown, but it was further out of the city. It seems like they were like ranch style suburban houses. He pulled over and offered her a ride, which she accepted and she got into his notorious yellow Volkswagen Beetle and away they went, eastbound on I-84. Based on the description that Mr. Bundy provided, and this isn’t 100%, but we have to go off of what details we have. I’ve looked at old maps and old photos of the interstate from that era and have tried as diligently as I can to form an idea of where she was picked up, and I think the closest that I’ve been able to get to is possibly in the vicinity of Eastbound 84 at Eisenman Road. In that area, this is on the outskirts of Boise, there were and still are in fact some ranch style homes that are visible from that particular exit, and this would not have been the case at many of our other exits that would have been considered outskirts, like Vista or Broadway. So that seems to fit very closely, but again it’s not for sure but this may be where he picked up Jane Doe. It sounds like his confessions have come under quite a bit of scrutiny. … ‘I do believe the confession is reliable, and I understand why his confession may come under scrutiny, or may have in the past. I think it’s likely because some felt that Bundy was lying to get a state of execution at that time. The problem with that is, the Governor of Florida was publicly adamant that no stay would be given in the weeks leading up to Bundy’s execution date, which is actually I think what prompted Mr. Bundy to talk about these unsolved cases, as he stated he wanted to absolve himself of sin before his death.’
The following is an excerpt from Polly Nelson’s book, ‘Defending the Devil’ about how Ted confused to her killing the unknown Idaho hitchhiker, and where I’d normally paraphrase large sections like this I decided to include it in its entirety: ‘he had been driving around in the hills of Idaho, getting to know the area, looking for safe sites to take a victim. He was a meticulous researcher. It was an important part of a ritual so elaborate that, when I asked him about reports that he had killed over one hundred people, he actually chuckled and shook his head at the naivete of non-murderers: ‘They have no idea what it takes to do one, what it takes out of you.’ I asked him if the figure of thirty-five, which I’d seen in other accounts, was correct. He paused, stared at me, and scanned his censor to decide whether to admit to such a detail, because that was where he had always drawn the line before. He had freely implied everything, but never outright admitted one detail, like some superstitious child’s idea of what could be held against him. He finally nodded and mumbled, ‘yes.’ While driving, he spotted a hitchhiker, a girl around fifteen years old. He had not planned to do anything while scouting, but there she was. He checked the rearview mirror for other cars. None. She got in and started talking to him. He had to act fast: he did not like his victims to talk, he did not want to get to know them, he did not want to know they were real. He reached back for his tire iron and hit her over the head. She slumped in the seat, but awoke soon afterward, moaning. He knocked her out again. I noticed for the first time how strong Ted’s arms were. He had his elbows on the table and his forearms outstretched toward me as he talked. His arms were firm and sinewy, with bulging veins. His hands were large and bony. I looked at his face. Ted’s skin was darkening as he spoke. He was on a roll now, in a sort of trance, recalling every detail as he reviewed the fifteen-some-year-old film in his head, frame by frame. No detail was too small to recall, everything was important, everything had meaning. He was like a reverent disciple describing a spiritual revelation. Ted was no longer censoring himself; he had slipped into a warm wave of memory and was transported. For the first time ever, I was afraid of him, acutely aware of how swiftly he could reach me with his hands if he wanted to, of how it would be too late by the time the guards on the other side of the glass reacted. It was the absolute misogyny of his crime that stunned me, his manifest rage against women, that left me no place to retreat to. He had no compassion for this victim at all. It wasn’t that Ted took sadistic pleasure in telling his story, it was just that he was totally engrossed in the details. His murders were his life’s accomplishments. To him, each recollection was a profound illustration of his skill, his willingness to go forward, his good luck. There had been no guarantees — to Ted, each completed murder had seemed like a small miracle. He drove across the state line to a secluded place in the woods that he was already familiar with. He led the girl out of the car, assuring her that no harm would come to her. He made her strip and kneel on her hands and knees while he took Polaroid pictures of her. (For Ted, another small miracle had been that when his apartment had been searched upon his first arrest in Utah, the investigators had failed to check the building’s utility room. When he was released on bail for the attempted abduction of Carol DeRonch he retrieved the shoebox of photos he’d hidden there and destroyed the most graphic and conclusive evidence of the true depth of his depravity). She cried. He could see the look of terror in her eyes, her eyes begging for mercy. He kept reassuring her. He didn’t like to see their hurt, he said, he didn’t like to see his victim as a person: he wasn’t the kind of person who would harm another. On several occasions, Ted had told me, ‘believe me, Polly, I am not the kind of person who would hurt a fly. I never even hit a man. Except once, on the playground at grade school, and I didn’t even want to do that, but the other kid forced me. I felt terrible afterward, disgusted with myself.’ Then he got behind her, slung a noose around her neck, and strangled her as he raped her. He’d continued to reassure her he would let her go, and she had seemed to believe him. He said he’d felt a little sad that he could not let her go, that he had to kill her, but she would be able to identify him, of course. Afterward, he pulled her body deeper into the woods and, the next day, drove back to take more pictures and to cut her body into pieces (Defending the Devil, 257-259).’
It is important to point out that Bundy’s retelling of events taken from Nelson’s book is dramatically different from the one he told Idaho investigators on January 22, 1989 in Starke, Florida. For example, Nelson states that her client confessed to her that he’d been ‘driving around the hills of Idaho, getting to know the area, looking for safe sites to take a victim,’ however this is not what he told Russ Reneau. Also, during his hour-long conversation with Reneau, he made no mention of coming back to the body the next day, and said that he immediately placed her in the river.
In the days after Bundy’s death row confessions, Pocatello police strongly felt that he was responsible for Lynette’s murder, however more recently investigators have challenged this, as they feel she was the first of a string of abductions and homicides that occurred in the area between 1978 and 1983. After Lynette disappeared Patricia Campbell and Tina Anderson were both taken in July 1978, and their bodies were found in October 1981 in Malad City, Idaho. Christina White was last seen on April 28, 1979 during the Asotin County Fair in Asotin, WA. At 2:30 PM, she called her mother from a friend’s house to say she was feeling sick from the heat and was last seen sometime between 7:00 and 10:00 PM, and when her mom went to pick her up she wasn’t there. Twenty-two year old Kristin Noel David was last seen alive on June 26, 1981, while bicycling southward on US Highway 95 towards Lewiston, Idaho. A little over a week later on July 4, her dismembered remains started to turn up along the Snake River roughly six miles west of Clarkston, Washington. The next young woman that vanished was twelve year old Linda Smith, who was taken from her bedroom on June 14, 1981; her remains were found in May 1982 below Hospital Way in a hilly area near East Center Street in Pocatello. On September 12 ,1982 eighteen year old Brandy Miller and her stepsister twenty-one year old Kristina Nelson vanished after leaving Nelson’s apartment to walk to a nearby grocery store. On March 19, 1984, the remains of both women were found down a hillside off Highway 3, roughly forty miles outside of Lewiston. The last (female) murder was 14-year-old Cindy Bringhurst, who vanished in June 1983 and was discovered deceased the next month. While some sleuths strongly believe the abductions and murders to be related, the idea has failed to gain any steam.
In June 1982, the remains of a man were discovered in the Snake River near the mouth of the Grand Ronde River in Nez Perce County, Idaho. The Nez Perce County Coroner estimated that the indivudual was between eighteen and twenty-two years old, 5’11” tall, and weighed between 145 and 160 pounds. It was also noted that he had straight dark brown/black hair that was 3-4 inches long, a 2-inch scar on his right ankle, and calluses on both palms, pointing that he had had a job involving physical labor. The details of the case were entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) as UP3041 in December 2008, and the man became known as Snake River John Doe. In 2023, the Nez Perce County Sheriff’s Office and Idaho State Police Forensic Services submitted genetic evidence to Othram Laboratories in The Woodlands, Texas to determine if DNA testing could help identify the unidentified subject, which led to the positive identification of the man, who was determined to be Dewayne Surls.
I strongly suspect that Bundy was mistaken that the unknown young woman he abducted and killed from Idaho was from Boise, and wonder if maybe she was just passing through and was ready to move on when she ran into him. When Ted said he burned her identification, did he insinuate that he looked at it and at the very least remembered where she was from? I strongly suspect the young woman he abducted wasn’t from Idaho at all, and was from a surrounding state and just happened to be passing through when he killed her.
Deborah Lee Tomlinson was last seen on her sixteenth birthday on October 15, 1973 in Creswell or Eugene Oregon. The brunette had brown eyes, was 5’5” tall, weighed 140 pounds and had left home with an unnamed teenage girlfriend; she has never been seen or heard from again. Another good fit is Peggy Ann Reed, who was last seen possibly hitchhiking on March 28, 1974 in Santa Rosa, CA in the area of Guerneville Road and Coddling Town Mall. The fifteen year old was 5’2,” weighed 110 pounds, blue eyes and brown hair that was frosted at the time of her disappearance. A young woman that is possibly a good fit for the Idaho Hitchhiker is Charlotte Ann Erdman, who was 15 years old when she disappeared from Watertown, Wisconsin on July 18, 1974. She had light brown hair, blue eyes, was somewhere between 5′ 7″ and 5′ 9″ tall and weighed somewhere between 125 and 165 pounds.
Twenty-five year old Linda Lee Lovell and her male friend Stephen Locke Packard disappeared in June/July 1974 from Stinson Beach, California. Lovell was a resident of Missoula Montana, and eighteen year old Stephen was originally from New Jersey, and where it is unknown how the two knew each other or for how long it was determined that they were traveling along the California coast, hiking and possibly hitchhiking their way around and planned to make their way to Washington State for the world’s fair, before returning home. On June 10, 1974, Stephen called his family from Stinson Beach, and postcards were received by their respective families from the area in California as well, and on June 20 a travelers check in his name was cashed at a store in Westport, which is about a four hour drive away from Stinson Beach.
Deborah Rae Meyer lived in Red Lodge, Montana at the time of her disappearance on August 4, 1974 however she and her family were visiting relatives in Rawlins, Wyoming at the time she went missing. Meyer was last seen leaving a family member’s house near Seventh and Spruce Streets and was planning to walk to a nearby movie theater, but never arrived; she was never seen or heard from again. At the time she disappeared Deb was 14 years old, stood at 5’4” tall, weighed 115 pounds, and had brown hair; she also had a small circle shaped growth roughly the size of a pencil eraser on her left ear and wore a full set of dentures. Three other young women disappeared in July and August 1974 in the Rawlins area: nineteen year old Carlene Brown and her 19-year-old friend Christy Gross disappeared from the Rawlins fairgrounds on July 4, 1974; ten-year-old Jayleen Dawn Banker vanished from the area on August 23, 1974.
Seventeen year old Susan Rhonda Labbe was last seen hitchhiking in Lawrence, Massachusetts on August 7, 1974; she was 5’5” tall, weighed around 120 pounds and had green eyes. Belinda VanLith was last seen house-sitting for a neighbor around 8 AM on June 15, 1974 located on Little Eagle Lake, Minnesota. The seventeen year olds parents were expecting her home for her sister’s graduation party, but she never arrived, and they reported her missing the following day. She was 5’5” tall and weighed 110 pounds.
About the Snake River Jane Doe, ACSO Cold Case Investigator Tim Cooper said ‘I think this is one of those cases where we’re fifty years down the road, where the public is going to be a big part in solving this.’ If you remember someone who went missing around September 1974, or if anything in this description rings any bells, please contact ACSO at 208-577-3102 or lmontague@adacounty.id.gov.
Works Cited:
‘ACSO Seeks Public’s Help to Identify Teen Abducted by Ted Bundy in 1974.’ (November 1, 2024). Taken February 14, 2025 from adacounty.id.gov
Bertel, Steve & Darrow, Lacey. ‘Idaho investigator speaks of interviewing Ted Bundy.’ (2016). Taken February 15, 2025 from kivitv.com/
Blanchard, Nicole. ‘Serial Killer Ted Bundy said girl in Boise was a victim, Officials want to identify her.’ (2024). Taken February 16, 2025 from idahostatesman.com
Cavallier, Andrea. November 8, 2024). Serial killer Ted Bundy claimed he killed a girl while driving through Idaho in 1974. An investigator is determined to ID her.’ Taken February 13, 2025 from ‘theindependent.com’
Kendall, Elizabeth. ‘The Phantom Prince: My Life With Ted Bundy.’ (1981).
Mortenson, Chris. ‘Idaho AG Investigator On Ted Bundy’s Confession.’ (September 26, 2021). Taken February 14, 2025 from YouTube.com
Nelson, Polly. ‘Defending the Devil: My Story As Ted Bundy’s Last Lawyer.’ (1994).
Sullivan, Kevin M. ‘The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History.’ (2009).
Tuttle, Zoe. (November 1, 2024). ‘Sheriff seeking identity of Ted Bundy’s Idaho victim known as ‘Snake River Jane Doe.’’ Taken February 13, 2025 from ktvb.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.’
After being sentenced to death, Bundy spent 11 years on death row, before he was executed by electric chair on 24 January 1989.
On November 13, 1975 a meeting was held in Aspen, Colorado for representatives of various police agencies from Washington, California, Utah, and Colorado to discuss cases of great similarities regarding homicides of young females occurring in these states.
Another Bundy Blog. 