Lake Samammish: Information from the King County Sheriff’s Archives.
Lake Sammamish
Ted Bundy’s Issaquah Dump Site: Information & Pictures from the King County Archives.
Janice Ann Blackburn-Ott: Information from the King County Sheriff’s Archives.
Denise Marie Naslund: Information from the King County Archives.
Lake Sammamish, ‘All Files in One.’
Information from the King County Police Department on TB’s Lake Sammamish murders: on July 14, 1974 Bundy abducted then killed Denise Naslund and Janice Ott, mere hours apart from one another. Document courtesy of Maria Serban and Dr. Rob Dielenberg.
Ted Bundy Crime Scene Locations as they Appear Today, My Personal Pictures.
Up until about five years ago I lived paycheck to paycheck, and after getting two really good jobs I banked quite a bit of money and decided to start traveling. In April 2022 I went to Seattle and since then have been to Florida, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Colorado, Cobleskill (in NY, for a suspected Bundy victim) and Portland (on that trip I also went back to Seattle). I’ve been retracing the steps of Ted Bundy and taking pictures along the way.
Bundy entered the dormatory armed only with a piece of firewood, and killed twenty-one-year-old Margaret Bowman and twenty-year-old Lisa Levy; he also brutally harmed Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, but thankfully both women survived. Picture taken in May 2023.
Ted Bundy’s Issaquah Dump Site.
When I went to Seattle in April 2022 there were a few places I never got around to seeing, one of them being Bundy’s Issaquah dump site… but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying: I drove around the same three mile area for almost two hours one day trying to find it (Google Maps really dropped the ball with that one, IMO). I finally had to give up because it was taking precious time away from other places I needed to see, and as I was driving away I remember thinking to myself that I’d never get back there again and I blew it. But, thankfully in May 2024 I was able to spend a few days in Washington state during my vacation to Oregon and I was finally able to locate it, with a little help with my friend Cole Kaiser, who is awesome and deserves recognition for his help.
Issaquah is a small city located about fifteen miles east of Seattle. Back in 1974, it was much (much) less populated than it is today, going from 4,500 residents to roughly 40,000. The Issaquah dump site is where Ted Bundy dumped the bodies of Janice Ann Ott, Denise Marie Naslund, and (most likely) Georgann Hawkins (despite her body never positively being identified). A University of Washington student, Hawkins was last seen in the early morning hours of June 11, 1974 after leaving a party early and stopping by her boyfriend’s dormitory room to get some Spanish notes for an upcoming final she was worried about. She stopped and chatted with a male friend named Duane (who was a Beta Theta Pi fraternity brother, like her bf) out his window then walked off into the night and was never seen again. Twenty-three year old Ott and nineteen year old Naslund both disappeared on July 14th, 1974 from Lake Sammamish State Park, which is located just ten minutes away from the dump site. All three girls vanished without a trace until later that year on September 6th, when two hunters discovered what they strongly suspected were human skeletal remains while out looking for grouse.
Upon arrival Seattle based LE discovered a variety of human bones, most of which had been dispersed throughout the wooded area thanks to local wildlife (including, but not limited to, bobcats, bears, coyotes, and cougars). Among the bones found were teeth, a jawbone, pelvis, a skull, five femurs, and a spine, and investigators quickly determined that some of them belonged to Ott and Naslund. During Bundy’s death row confessions he also claimed that he buried Hawkins at the site as well, but investigators were never able to positively confirm this.
At the time of the murders in the mid-1970’s forensic experts (in most cases) needed either a mandible or skull to make a positive ID, as they often relied on matching teeth against dental records due to the fact that DNA testing wasn’t a ‘thing’ back then. Some of the bones that were found at the site were cremated and as a result were never able to be tested, as it was apparently ‘department policy’ to incinerate bones that were left unidentified in storage for too long. As I said earlier, the search team recovered five femur bones from the area, which retired King County Detective Dr. Robert D. Keppel said proved that Bundy dumped at least three victims there.
Looking at the pictures that I included below (of the site from the 1970’s to now), it’s obvious the area has undergone quite a transformation over the past fifty years. For example, Highlands Drive wasn’t there at all, and the Swedish Issaquah Campus wasn’t built until over 30 years after the murders took place. Additionally, back in 1974 the area could only be accessed through a narrow and winding dirt pathway, and the railway line that ran through the city’s Olde Town neighborhood was taken out and replaced by the Rainier and Issaquah-Preston walking trails that are still there today.
Despite The Issaquah dump site being the first one that was found it wasn’t the first one that Bundy utilized: six months after its discovery in March 1975 a second dumping ground of bodies was discovered at nearby Taylor Mountain (also called Tiger Mountain) when two forestry students from nearby Green River Community College stumbled upon skeletal remains while marking trees for a school project. I wonder what Bundy’s logic was for switching up his dump sites, moving from Taylor Mountain (where he left Lynda Healy, Brenda Ball, Kathy Parks, and Sue Rancourt) to Issaquah. Did he want to move somewhere else in an attempt to throw off law enforcement? We also know that he was impulsive and often made decisions quickly and without much thought: did he just stumble across this location one day and decide to utilize it? Or did Ted maybe have a close call at Taylor Mountain, possibly running into other (late night) hikers or even a policeman out on patrol?
During his January 1989 confession Ted told Dr. Keppel that he buried Georgann’s head in an area that was very close to the dump site, roughly 25–50 yards north parallel to the dirt road before turning left and walking about ten years ‘through the trees, eventually coming across an area he described as ‘very rocky’ and ‘very rocky.’ Investigators didn’t wait long to go looking for Hawkin’s remains after Bundy was put to death, and on February 15, 1989 search teams combed through the Issaquah dump site once again, but were unable to find any trace of the young co-ed. We do know that Ted was known to imbibe during his murders, and very well could have been drunk, high, or both. When you consider that and the fact that the murder was committed nearly fifteen years prior to his confession it might explain why no trace of George was ever found. Or… was Bundy purposefully giving investigators the bare minimum in an attempt to get another stay of execution. Or, was it all just another lie?
Bundy’s Confirmed Victims: A List.
I’ve been spending a good chunk of my time writing about the unconfirmed victims so in this installment of ‘All Things Bundy,’ I’m going over his confirmed kills.
Karen Sparks-Epley (18). January 4, 1974. Survived, Seattle, WA.
Also referred to as ‘Joni Lenz,’ Sparks was brutally assaulted by Ted Bundy while asleep in her basement apartment in the University District of Seattle. She was his first known victim. Thankfully Bundy didn’t kill her, however she was badly beaten with a metal rod, sexually assaulted, and left unconscious for hours before her roommates discovered her later that night. Ted left her with a number of serious long-term injuries she still struggles with to this day.
Lynda Ann Healy (21). February 1, 1974. Murdered, Seattle, WA.
On January 31st, 1974, Healy borrowed a friends car to go shopping for a family dinner she was preparing the next night and returned with her groceries at roughly 8:30 PM. Shortly after, Lynda and her roommates went drinking at a popular bar called Dante’s Tavern located at 5300 Roosevelt Way NE. The establishment was a five minute walk from her apartment but the friends didn’t stay out long because Lynda needed to be up at 5:30 AM to be at her job giving the ski report for a local radio station. A number of sources report that Bundy used to go to Dante’s often and it is hypothesized that he first saw Lynda there then followed her home. In the early morning hours of February 1, 1974, he broke into Healy’s basement room, beat her, took off her bloody nightgown (making sure to neatly hang it up in her closet), dressed her then carried her off into the night. It is theorized that Ted only took clothes to make it appear as if Lynda left on her own but obviously we’ll most likely never know the truth. Her body found in March 1975 on Taylor Mountain, near Issaquah outside of Seattle.
Donna Gail Manson (19). March 12, 1974. Murdered, Olympia, WA.
On the day of her abduction, Donna planned on going to a folk dancing class at the College Activities Building at Evergreen State College (where she attended). Later that same night, she made plans to go to a jazz concert at the Daniel J. Evans Library (also on campus), which was scheduled to start at 8 PM. Donna departed her dormitory just after 7 PM and set out for the dance class, which was just a two minute walk away. Despite how close the College Activities Building was to her dorm, no one recalls seeing her at either the dancing class or the jazz recital, making it highly unlikely that she ever made it that far. Manson was never seen alive again. After confessing to her murder, Bundy said he burned her skull in Liz Kendall’s fireplace.
Susan Elaine Rancourt (18). April 17, 1974. Murdered, Ellensburg, WA.
Shortly before 8 PM the evening she disappeared from her college campus at Central Washington University, Susan Rancourt put some clothes in a washing machine in Barto Hall (her dorm building). She then went to a meeting about becoming a Residential Advisor at Munson Hall. When it ended at 10 PM Sue left to walk back to her dorm to switch out her laundry but was never seen alive again. She had plans later that night to watch a movie with a friend but never showed up. Rancourts skull was later found near Taylor Mountain, where Bundy placed several bodies during his reign of terror.
Roberta Kathleen Parks (20). April 17, 1974. Corvallis, OR.
A student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Parks was abducted from her college campus, which is over a four and a half hour drive for Bundy (who was living at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Ave NE in Seattle at the time). Shortly before 11:00 PM the night she disappeared, Parks encountered Bundy in the Memorial Union Commons cafeteria at OSU. During Teds interviews with journalists Hugh Aynesworth and Stephen Michaud, he ‘confessed’ in the third-person that Kathy may have encountered her killer while in the cafeteria. Bundy then said he was able to convince her to leave with him and as soon as the opportunity presented itself he immediately overpowered her. He most likely bound and gagged Parks during the 250-mile trip back to Seattle, where then killed her and dumped her body on Taylor Mountain.
Brenda Carol Ball (22). June 1, 1974. Murdered, Burien, WA.
In the wee hours of June 1st, 1974, Brenda Ball seemingly vanished into thin air after seeing a band play at The Flame Tavern located at 12803 Ambaum Boulevard in Burien, WA. She arrived at the bar alone and stayed until closing. As the act was wrapping up their set at the end of the night Brenda asked one of the members she knew for a ride home back to her house but he was heading in the opposite direction so he couldn’t help out. There are two conflicting reports about how she could have left the bar that night: one is that she left by herself and was planning on hitchhiking home, and the other claims that she left with an unidentified man wearing an arm sling. Despite law enforcement being hesitant to officially say her disappearance was related to the other missing girls in Seattle, her skull was the first discovered on Taylor Mountain in March of 1975.
Georgeann Hawkins (18). June 11, 1974. Murdered, Seattle, WA.
A student at the University of Washington, Georgann Hawkins disappeared from an alley behind her sorority house in June 1974. The night before she vanished, Hawkins went to a party, where she had a few mixed cocktails. Because she had a Spanish final coming up that she needed to study she didn’t stay long; she did mention to a sorority sister that she was planning on swinging by the Beta Theta Pi House to pick up some Spanish notes from her boyfriend. Hawkins arrived at the frat at approximately 12:30 AM on June 11 and stayed for approximately thirty minutes. After getting the notes and saying goodnight to her beau, Georgann left the fraternity house for her sorority house, Kappa Alpha Theta. Before he was executed, Ted told law enforcement that he approached her in an alley on her way home, feigning injury with a hurt leg (using his crutches as a ruse) while dropping his briefcase. Bundy asked Hawkins for help carrying the prop to his VW Bug, which was waiting in a parking lot roughly 160 yards north of the alley. She agreed and as she bent over to put the briefcase in his vehicle, Ted grabbed a conveniently placed crowbar and knocked her out with a single blow to the head. He then pushed George into his car and drove off into the night. Bundy claimed that while driving she regained consciousness and started to incoherently babble about her upcoming final, thinking he was her Spanish tutor. He again knocked her out with his crowbar. Once at his intended location, Ted took her unconscious body out of his car and strangled her with an old piece of rope. According to him, the parts of Georgann’s body he had not buried were recovered in Issaquah with the bodies of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. He confessed to murdering Hawkins shortly before his 1989 execution.
Janice Ann Blackburn-Ott (23). July 14, 1974. Murdered, Issaquah, WA.
At the time she was murdered, Janice Ott worked as a probation case worker at the King County Youth Service Center in Seattle, WA. In December of 1973, she married Jim Ott, who at the time of her death was in California for graduate school. After her car was broken into while living in Seattle, she moved in with a roommate to 75 Front Street in Issaquah (she felt the smaller community would be safer). The morning she disappeared, Janice spent a few hours at doing laundry and having a cup of coffee with a friend. After her errands and chores were completed, she rewarded herself with a trip to Lake Sammamish. Ott was abducted by Bundy at around 12.30 PM, and just a mere three and a half hours later he returned to the same park and abducted Denise Naslund.
Denise Marie Naslund (18). July 14, 1974. Murdered, Issaquah, WA.
On a beautiful, picture perfect sunny day, Naslund disappeared from a very busy Lake Samammish State Park (that day was Rainier Beer’s annual picnic, there were over 40,000 people there). She was there with her boyfriend and another couple, and after telling them she was going to the restroom Denise was never seen alive again. Naslund lived with her mother in Seattle and was studying to become a computer programmer. Eleanor Rose said her daughter had the kind of helpful nature that would easily place her in danger. Denise’s remains were found on a hillside near Issaquah roughly two months later in September 1974, only two miles away from Lake Samammish. Bundy confessed to her murder shortly before his execution.
Nancy Wilcox (16). October 2, 1974. Murdered, Holladay, UT.
The first of Teds confirmed Utah victims, Wilcox went missing after she went on a walk to buy a pack of gum (it’s also speculated that from there she was on her way to her high school to visit her boyfriend). She left the house in a huff after getting into a fight with her Dad about her bf’s pick-up truck leaking oil on the families driveway. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox said that because of this law enforcement initially considered her to be a runaway even though they knew their daughter would never voluntarily leave home and had no troubles whatsoever in her personal life. Nancy left all of her personal belongings behind including some expensive jewelry that held deep sentimental value to her. Before he was executed Bundy confessed to sexually assaulting and strangling her, then burying her body about 200 miles away near Capitol Reef National Park. Sadly her body has never been found.
Melissa Smith (17). October 26, 1974. Murdered, Midvale, UT.
Bundy abducted Smith shortly after she left a pizza parlor on West Center Street in Midvale at around 9.30 PM on October 26, 1974. One unconfirmed report suggests that he may have been asking women in the area to help him with a car issue. Melissa was the daughter of Midvale Police Chief Louis Smith, and her murder took place just sixteen days after Nancy Wilcox vanished from the nearby city of Holladay (and five days before Laura Aime). On the night she disappeared, Smith was supposed to sleep over at a girlfriend’s house but those plans fell through after she didn’t answer the phone. After realizing she had been stood up, she decided to leave the pizzeria and walk back to her house on Fern Drive. At some point during her walk, its speculated that Bundy grabbed Melissa off the street and killed her. She never made it home.
Laura Aime (17). October 31, 1974. Murdered, Lehi, UT.
Shortly before she disappeared Aime dropped out of high school, left home (she frequently couch surfed at various friends’ homes), and worked a few menial part-time jobs. Surprisingly she still remained in contact with her family and according to her parents, they were just beginning to accept her ‘nomadic lifestyle.’ So, when she first disappeared no one really seemed overly concerned. Thanks to my newspapers.com subscription it didn’t take long for me to realize there were no news articles mentioning Laura Aime’s disappearance at first, and her name only began to appear in ink after two hikers discovered her remains in American Fork Canyon. Additionally, when her body was first discovered, law enforcement first speculated it belonged to Deborah Kent.
Carol DaRonch (18). November 8, 1974. Survived, Murray, UT.
The evening she was abducted Carol DaRonch parked her maroon 1974 Camaro on the southern side of The Fashion Place Mall in Murray, UT. As she was window shopping outside Walden Books, DaRonch was approached by Bundy, who was posing as a police officer. He said that her car had been broken into and asked her to drive down ‘to the station’ with him to file a report with him. However as they were on their way he attempted to subdue and handcuff her but was unsuccessful: she was able to fend him off and escape. Of the encounter, DaRonch said that she ‘thought he was kind of creepy … I thought he was a lot older than he was.’ She also commented that she could smell alcohol on his breath.
Debra Jean Kent (17). November 8, 1974. Murdered, Bountiful, UT.
After Bundy was unsuccessful in his attempts to kidnap Carol DaRonch he quickly realized he was going to need a new victim. So he made the twenty-two minute drive away to Viewmont High School, where he successfully abducted Debbie Kent. Kent was watching a play with her family but left the school at approximately 10:30 PM to pick up her brother from the nearby Rustic Roller Rink. She never made it to the rink and was most likely abducted in the parking lot. According to an eyewitnesses, there was loud screaming coming from the area at roughly the time that Debra was last seen, and another person saw a light-colored VW Beetle speeding away from the school. After the Kent’s realized their daughter hadn’t even made it out of the parking lot, they found a handcuff key on the ground by their car. Bundy confessed to killing Deb and burying her body in the same area as Nancy Wilcox.
Caryn Campbell (23). January 12, 1975. Murdered, Estes Park, CO.
Bundy abducted the 23-year-old nurse from the Wildwood Inn in Snowmass Village. While staying at the inn with her fiance and his children, Campbell went missing after going upstairs to her room to retrieve a magazine. Although we will never know for certain how exactly Ted managed to abduct the attractive young woman, it is highly likely he feigned an injury and asked her to help him carry something back to his vehicle. After he lured her away from the hotel to a darkened parking lot he hit her over the head then quickly snuck her into his Bug. Roughly five weeks after Campbell disappeared her body was found less than three miles away from the Wildwood Inn. Someone driving by her remains noticed a large amount of birds flying over the area. Using dental records, police determined that the remains belonged to Caryn. The postmortem examination revealed that her skull had sustained three heavy blows. Before Ted’s run in with Ol’ Sparky, he confessed to Campbells murder.
Julie Cunningham (26). March 15, 1975. Murdered, Vail, CO.
Cunningham disappeared early in the evening on March 15, 1975 after leaving her Apollo Park apartment in Vail to go a nearby bar to meet up with a friend. Bundy told law enforcement that he pretended to be an injured skier on crutches that needed help carrying a pair of ski boots to his car. According to Ted, the pair walked over half a mile together before they finally reached his vehicle. Once there, Bundy knocked her unconscious, put her in his car then drove to a remote area roughly eighty miles west of Vail and sexually assaulted her. When finished, he strangled her to death and dumped her remains in a shallow grave near Rifle, CO. Julie’s body has never been recovered.
Denise Oliverson (24). April 6, 1975. Murdered, Grand Junction, CO.
On April 6, 1975, Denise Oliverson set out on a bike ride to her parents house but was never seen alive again. The next day, a search party found her bicycle and shoes under the Fifth Street Bridge by some railroad tracks. Just days before he was executed in January 1989, Bundy told law enforcement he abducted Oliverson then disposed of her body in a river about five miles West of Grand Junction. Her remains have never been found.
Lynette Dawn Culver (12). May 6, 1975. Murdered, Pocatello, ID.
Although the details surrounding Culvers murder seem to vary between sources, it’s strongly speculated she was last seen at Alameda Junior High School. It’s worth mentioning, this was a two and a half hour drive from where Bundy was living at the time in Salt Lake City to Pocatello, Idaho. Some places say that she left campus during her lunch period, where others claim Lynette was last seen getting on a bus. When considering her healthy and happy relationship with family and friends as well as and her stellar academic performance, she most likely was taken against her will. In his death row interviews, Bundy confessed to killing Lynette then dumping her body in the Snake River. He also said he raped and drowned the 12 year old child in a hotel room after abducting her. Law enforcement didn’t fully accept his confession despite providing some convincing details.
Susan Curtis (15). June 27, 1975. Murdered, Provo, UT.
At the time she was murdered, Susan was a freshman at Woods Cross High School. She had a history of running away from home for days at a time but never was gone for very long. Susan was originally from Bountiful, Utah but at the time of her disappearance was attending a youth conference at Brigham Young University in Provo. A natural athlete, Curtis had ridden her bicycle 50 miles from Bountiful to Provo to attend the conference. She vanished on the first evening of the conference after a formal banquet: she left her friends to make the quarter mile walk back to her dormitory to brush her teeth but was never seen or heard from again. As Bundy walked down to the hall to be executed Curtis was his last death row confession. Since her body has not been recovered she is still regarded as a missing person.
Margaret Bowman (21). January 15, 1978. Murdered, Tallahassee, FL.
In the early morning hours of January 15, 1978, a group of young women residing at the Chi Omega house at Tallahassee’s Florida State University were asleep in their beds when evil crept in… Margaret Bowman was born in Honolulu and moved to Florida in 1973 after her father retired from the US Air Force. Bowman was one of four women Bundy attacked when he broke into the sorority house at around 3 AM on January 15, 1978. He beat her with a piece of firewood as well as a telescope and strangled her to death with her own tights. Despite the violent nature of the crime, the initial investigation failed to produce any evidence of sexual assault or struggle. The severity of the beating was so extreme that part of Bowman’s brain was visible.
Lisa Janet Levy (20). January 15, 1978. Murdered, Tallahassee, FL.
Lisa was born in St Petersburg, FL and attended Dixie Hollins High School, where she played flute in the band for two years. At FSU, she majored in fashion merchandising and worked at the Colony Shop near campus. When law enforcement got to the crime scene Levy’s was the first sister that officers found dead. Medical Pathologists discovered that she had been beaten on the head with a log, sexually assaulted with a hair spray bottle then strangled. Additionally, they found bite marks on her buttocks and one of her nipples had been so savagely bitten that it was almost completely severed from the rest of her breast.
Kathy Kleiner-Rubin (20). January 15, 1978. Survived, Tallahassee, FL.
Kathy Kleiner-Rubin and Karen Chandler shared a room at the Chi Omega sorority house. That night she was attacked Kathy went to bed first, with Chandler following shortly after. After Bundy attacked and murdered Lisa Levy, he went into the room next door and brutally assaulted Kleiner-Rubin and Chandler. In an interview, Kathy said that was awoken that morning by the sound of her bedroom door opening. The assailant then tripped over a chest that was in-between the girls twin beds. Ted then assaulted her with a piece of firewood, which left her with a broken jaw, concussion, skull fracture, broken arm and finger. Miraculously, she survived her injuries and testified against Bundy in his death penalty trial.
Karen Chandler (22). January 15, 1978. Survived, Tallahassee, FL.
As I said earlier, Karen Chandler was Kathy Kleiner-Rubin’s roommate in the Chi Omega house. After Bundy was done brutally assaulting Kathy he moved onto Chandler. Bundy knocked out four of her teeth and beat her so severely that he broke her jaw and right arm. Somehow Chandler survived. She took the rest of the academic quarter off, but later returned to the Chi Omega house at FSU.
Cheryl Thomas (21). January 15, 1978. Survived, Tallahassee, FL.
After Bundy was finished with his atrocities at the Chi Omega sorority house, he wandered a few blocks over and climbed into an open kitchen window in Cheryl Thomas’ apartment. He attacked her and Thomas barely escaped with her life: her jaw was broken in two places, her shoulder dislocated, and she had five skull fractures, which left her permanently deaf in her left ear. In 1978 Thomas was a student at FSU and a member of the schools dance team. The night she was attacked was alone in her apartment but thanks to some attentive neighbors who heard the assault her life was saved.
Kimberly Dianne Leach (12). February 9, 1978. Murdered, Lake City, FL.
In 1978, Kim Leach was a 12-year-old seventh-grader at Lake City Junior High School, where she was a straight-A student and the runner-up Valentine Queen. Leach was one of Bundy’s youngest and his last victim. On the morning of February 9, 1978, Kimberly arrived at Lake City Junior high School on time. Just before 9 AM, she left her first period class to go and pick up her purse that she had accidentally left behind in her homeroom. After she recovered the purse she headed back towards her classroom in the pouring rain but never arrived. That afternoon, Kimberly’s parents became concerned when their daughter didn’t come home after school. They called everybody they knew, but nobody could account for Kimberly. Their concern escalated to fear when they learned she had been at her first period class but then never returned. They immediately called law enforcement to report their daughter missing. A search party quickly formed and concentrated on Suwannee River State Park for weeks. Kims remains were eventually found on April 7, 1978 in an abandoned hog pen with a small metal lead-to. She was nude other than for a pullover jumper, her clothes were piled up beside her body. She was in an advanced state of decomposition, but she was identified thanks to dental records. Leach had suffered homicidal violence about the neck region.
Miscellaneous:
There is no consensus as to when or where Bundy began killing. He told different people varying stories to and refused to give the specifics of his earlier crimes, even as he shared in graphic detail to dozens of later murders in the days before he was his executed. He told one of his attorneys Polly Nelson that he attempted his first kidnapping in 1969 in Ocean City, NJ, however did not kill anyone until sometime in 1971 in Seattle. He told Portland forensic psychologist Dr. Art Norman that he murdered two women in Atlantic City while visiting family in Philadelphia in 1969. Bundy hinted to former homicide detective Dr. Robert Keppel that he committed a murder in Seattle in 1972 and another murder in 1973 that involved a hitchhiker near Tumwater, but he refused to elaborate. Rule and Keppel both believed that he might have started killing as a teenager. Bundy’s earliest documented homicides were committed in 1974, when he was 27 years old. By his own admission, he had by then mastered the necessary skills to leave minimal incriminating forensic evidence at crime scenes.
On September 2, 1974, Bundy drove through Boise while moving from Seattle to Salt Lake City and during that trip, he picked up a still unknown hitchhiker and killed her. Ted returned the next day to photograph and dismember the corpse then dumped her remains in the Snake River. Reports from Gonzaga University’s student newspaper ‘The Gonzaga Bulletin’ claim that Bundy stopped by a campus dorm for a party in the 1970’s and drove a female student to Pullman. She miraculously survived.
Bundy confessed to detectives from Idaho, Utah, and Colorado that he had committed numerous additional homicides, including several that were unknown to the police. He explained that when he was in Utah he could bring his victims back to his apartment, ‘where he could reenact scenarios depicted on the covers of detective magazines.’ A new ulterior strategy quickly became apparent: he withheld many details, hoping to parlay the incomplete information into yet another stay of execution. ‘There are other buried remains in Colorado,’ he admitted, but refused to elaborate. The new strategy (which was referred to as ‘Ted’s bones-for-time scheme’) served only to deepen the resolve of authorities to see Bundy executed on schedule, and yielded little new detailed information. In cases where he did give details, nothing was found. Colorado detective Matt Lindvall interpreted this as a conflict between his desire to postpone his execution by divulging information and his need to remain in ‘total possession, and the only person who knew his victims true resting places.’
- in Oregon, 2 (both unidentified)
- in Idaho, 2 (1 unidentified)
- in California, 1 (unidentified)
After being sentenced to death, Bundy spent 11 years on death row, before he was executed by electric chair on 24 January 1989.
KCSO: Third Installment of Bundy investigation photos: Janice and Jim Ott color photos.
The third installment of Ted Bundy-related records released by the King County Sheriff’s Office’s Public Disclosure Unit. On July 14, 1974 twenty-three-year-old Janice Ann Ott disappeared from Lake Sammamish State Park, after having been last seen leaving the area with a young man that called himself ‘Ted.’ Her skeletal remains were found by two grouse hunters four miles away on September 7, 1974.’ Photos courtesy of the ‘Internet Archives’/Maria Serban.
Lake Sammamish.
On July 14th, 1974, Ted Bundy abducted two women from Lake Sammamish state park in Issaquah, Washington. That bright and cheerful afternoon, Bundy approached Janice Ann Ott and Denise Marie Naslund in broad daylight and asked them to assist him unload a sailboat at his parent’s house. Bundy donned a fake sling and explained that his arm was injured and that he was unable to unload it by himself. He also claimed that his parent’s house was ‘just up the hill.’
The abductions of Ott and Naslund occurred separately, just four hours apart. On both of these occasions, he convinced his victim to get into his Volkswagen Bug and accompany him to his sailboat, which in reality did not exist. Once his victims got into his car, it is likely that he immediately drove them to a secluded dump site in Issaquah known as Tiger Mountain and murdered them. This is the same site where Ott and Naslund’s skeletal remains were discovered roughly two months later.
Janice Ann Ott was abducted at around 12.30 PM; three and a half hours after her abduction Bundy returned to look for a second victim, Denise Naslund. At roughly 4:30 PM, he approached Denise Naslund by the restrooms and, using the same technique he used with Ott, was able to convince her to help him as well.
During the investigation into the disappearance of Ott and Naslund, it emerged that a man calling himself “Ted” had approached multiple women at Lake Sammamish that afternoon in 1974. Bundy’s decision to kidnap two women within four hours of each other was a brazen deviation from the norm. Because of this, many Bundy Scholars have speculated that he was attempting to “increase his high” by attacking two women at the same time. In other words, it is speculated that he may have incapacitated Janice Ott, gagged her (not killing her) and then returned to the park to search for a second victim. Although Bundy did insinuate that one had to watch the other die, this “confessin” was during one of his third-person pseudo-confessions to Stephen Michaud. We also know that Ted was a narcissist and a habitual liar who loved to paint himself as a bold and highly-intelligent serial killer. Therefore, we need to be extremely careful about taking his word as fact.
It has been hypothesized that Bundy tied Ott to a tree and then left her there. The area in question was pretty secluded and it is fairly unlikely that someone would have stumbled upon her, especially if she was gagged. Another plausible theory is that Bundy murdered Ott before he returned to Lake Sammamish with his second victim. There is a noticeable gap between the abduction of Ott at 12.30 PM and Bundy’s return to the park at around 4 PM and if we take into account the length of the journey between the park and the dump site, then it means that he was with Ott for 2-3 hours. That seems like a lot of time if the original plan was to kidnap two women and then attack them at the same time. His decision to hunt for a second victim may have also been driven by other factors. For example, an event may have occurred during the murder of Janice Ott which prevented Bundy from achieving sexual gratification. At this point in time we’ll most likely never really know.
Keppel: “Is that you? It’s Lake Sammamish State Park, 1974. The tree, cops roll in and take care of the …”
Bundy: “Law breakers.”
Keppel: “Ya?”
Bundy: “Well, I mean, we’re in the ballpark.”
By saying “law breakers” and telling Keppel he was in the ballpark, Bundy was admitting he had personal knowledge concerning what was taking place. When Keppel asked him about the car, believing it was his and wanting him to admit it, Bundy responded “Well, I—is it?”
Bundy knew that wasn’t his car, but he was telling the investigator he was in the ballpark, meaning hid own Beetle was nearby. Photo courtesy of oddstops.com.
Another Bundy Blog. 