Background: Lynda Ann Healy was born on July 3, 1952 to James and Joyce (nee Strickland) Healy in Portland, Oregon. James Russell Healy was born on August 1, 1926 in Logan, Utah, and after graduating from Grant High School he went on to attend Notre Dame University, where he earned a degree in military sciences. At some point he went to the University of Oregon, where he met his future wife. The daughter of a prominent physician, Joyce Ann Strickland was born on August 17, 1927 in Forest Grove, OR and after high school attended the University of Oregon, where she was a member of the Alpha Phi sorority and graduated with a business degree in 1949. James and Joyce were married at her parents’ house in Oregon City on August 14, 1949, and in their early years as husband and wife lived in a house on Siskiyou Street in the northwest part of Portland. Before her kids were born, Mrs. Healy was employed at ‘Meier & Frank’ (a prominent department store chain that operated primarily in Oregon, Washington, and Utah) for several years before she left the workforce and became a dedicated stay at home mother. The couple had three children together: Lynda, Robert (b. 1954), and Laura (b. 1957).
In 1962 the Healy’s moved to Washington state and bought a house in the Newport Hills area of Bellevue, located just five miles away from Seattle and Lynda grew up in a happy, middle-upper class home. According to those that were close with her, she was a talented musician, excellent singer, and was ‘full of life’ as well as self-confidence, and was looking forward for her future. Lynda stood at 5″7″ tall and wore her brown hair long and parted down the middle; she had blue eyes and had a 1/2 inch long scar on the bridge of her nose. An above-average student, she enjoyed school and had dreams of one day working with children with disabilities. After she graduated from Newport High School in Bellevue in 1970, Healy went on to attend the University of Washington in Seattle, and during her first few years lived in residence halls on campus (she even resided in McMahon Hall at one point, which is where Bundy lived years prior) before she eventually moved to a house off campus towards the end of her education.
University of Washington: In early 1974, the 21-year-old psychology major lived in a pale green house that wasn’t very far from the University of Washington campus on 12th Avenue Northeast in the northern end of the ‘U-District, with four other women: Joanne Testa, Ginger Heath, Karen Skaviem, and Monica Sutherland. Lynda shared the basement with one of her roommates, their designated spaces separated only by a thin piece of plywood, and she worked part-time for ‘Western Ski Promotions’ broadcasting the ski condition report that was played on twenty different radio stations across Washington and Oregon; she concluded each sixty-second spot with her catchphrase: ‘this has been Lynda with your Cascade ski report.’
January 31, 1974: The day started out like any other normal day for Lynda Ann Healy: in the morning she woke up to her alarm at 5:30 AM, got dressed, then hopped on her bike and rode over to the ski report office, located just a few blocks away. After work she went on to spend the day in class, and attended chorus practice on campus sometime in the afternoon.
At one point in the day Healy wrote a quick note to a good friend, describing how she was going to make what her mother called ‘company casserole’ for dinner for her parents and brother the following evening on February 1. It was an upbeat, happy letter, and in it she shared with her girlfriend how happy she was with life lately and how great things were going for her.
According to Ann Rule’s true crime classic, ‘The Stranger Beside Me,’ at 5 PM that evening her roommate ‘Jill Hodges’ (which is a pseudonym, and really Joann Testa) picked Lynda up on campus and and they went home and ate dinner with their other roommates; when Lynda was finished eating she borrowed one of the girls cars and ran to a nearby Safeway, returning home around 8:30 PM. From there, Lynda, along with Joanne, Ginger, and a young man named Pete Neil, went to Dante’s Tavern, which was only a five-minute walk away. Because Pete had to catch the 9:41 bus home, the friends shared some beers and called it an early night and left shortly after 9:30 PM. When the group of friends arrived back at Healy’s house, Neil grabbed some of his records and left to catch the bus.
At some point after Pete left Heath’s brother and one of his friends stopped by for a visit, and as everyone settled down in front of the TV Lynda left the room to call her boyfriend, and the two talked for about an hour. Even though everyone hadn’t returned home yet the atmosphere in the house was beginning to settle down, and the girls started to get ready for bed.
According to Kevin Sullivan’s 2009 book, ‘The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History,’ in an odd foreshadowing of events, it has been reported that one of the young women saw a ‘shadow’ that night which ‘moved’ just outside a window on the side of the house, but apparently thought little else about it. Karen Skaviem, who had been out studying at the library before she went out with her boyfriend for a few drinks, returned home around midnight, and noticed that ‘a single living room light was on,’ When she got inside Karen notices that Joann’s light was still on and stopped by her room for a chat, and around 12:45 PM the two women said goodnight and Skaviem went to the basement, where she had the room next to Healy’s. As she walks down the steps she didn’t check to make sure the door leading out of the basement was locked, and noticed that the only light that was on was in the storage area, and as Karen walked by, she noticed that Healy’s lights were off and she assumed she was asleep. She would later tell detectives that she had some problems settling down that night and didn’t fall asleep until around 1:30 AM; she heard nothing out of the ordinary the rest of the night.
In the time that the girls lived in the mint green house on 12th Avenue Northeast, they had lost a few sets of keys for their front door, and although they intended to get replacement sets made they usually just left it open ‘as a courtesy to those coming and going late at night. This would prove to be a fatal mistake, for the killer of young woman, long before anyone had gone to bed that evening, would place his hand on the doorknob and turn it ever so gently until the door gave way and he was free to enter the house, something he chose not to do. No, he reasoned, he could return later when everyone was in a deep sleep and explore the dwelling at that time (Sullivan, ‘The Bundy Murders, 17-18).’
At 5:30 AM on February 1, 1974 Skavien woke to her roommates alarm going off, but stayed in bed until her own clock went off at 6 AM. This was unusual. Karen got up and turned off both alarms and immediately noticed that Lynda’s room had been cleaned and was near spotless and that her bed was made, which was unusual as it was something that she usually waited to do when she got back from work. Even though the partition between the girls rooms was thin, Karen said that she hadn’t heard any disturbances during the night.
Skavien said ‘I got up, Lynda’s alarm was still going. I went past her room and heard the radio but thought she was lying in bed listening to it and didn’ have to go to work. At 6:30 the phone rang, it was Northwest Ski Promotions asking why Lynda wasn’t at work. I went to her room and called her. When she didn’t answer I turned on the light and went in. Her radio was still going and her bed was made, perfectly. I was concerned she hadn’t slept in it because there were no wrinkles and the spread was ticked neatly under the pillow.’ As Karen slowly began to assess the situation she realized that the back door was left open, which was out of character for Lynda: typically she would leave her bicycle parked inside of the house in the hallway just next to the side door ‘on the landing,’ and would make sure the door was locked behind her.
Skavien said she then called up the stairs to see if any of the other girls knew where Lynda may have been, but they told her that no one had seen her. Monica responded that perhaps she was out somewhere with her boyfriend, a suggestion that was immediately shot down by the others because it was atypical of their friend, as she wouldn’t blow off her responsibilities like that. Around 6:30 AM the Northwest Ski Promotions called and asked where Lynda was, as she never made it into work. They quickly realized that her bike was still in the basement, which caused fear and panic among the girls who were beginning to suspect the worst, as Lynda was very dependable and had never missed a day of work. One of the housemates said that the last time that she saw her was at midnight on Thursday before, and ‘it just isn’t like Lynda. She was just 15 minutes late once, and she felt terrible about it.’’
At around 4 PM Joann started calling around to Healy’s friends and acquaintances to see if anyone could provide an explanation as to where she may have been. No one had heard from her, and she hadn’t been seen around campus all day. When Jim and Robert arrived for dinner at 6 PM on the evening of February 1st (Joyce was supposed to meet them shortly after) they were told that Lynda was missing, and right away the family knew that the situation was serious. Mr. Healy called his wife and told her their daughter was gone, and where Jim wanted to wait a little longer to see if she would eventually show up, Mrs. Healy immediately called the police.
Two members of the Seattle PD showed up shortly after 6 PM and spoke with the roommates and Mr. Healy, and took down some general information about Lynda and took a brief look inside of her bedroom. When the officers and the Healy’s left Monica said they received a strange telephone call with nobody on the other end, clarifying the ‘line was open but the caller ‘refused to speak’ and she could hear only the faint sound of breathing.’ After that incident the roommates received two more phone calls of a similar nature, and despite telling police nothing ever came of it.
A few hours later around midnight a Seattle homicide detective stopped by the house and did a walk through of the residence, and when he pulled back Lynda’s bed sheets to the girls horror they found a blood soaked pillow and blood soaked sheets; missing from the scene was her pink satin pillowcase, house keys, and red backpack (that possibly contained a yellow ski cap and some random books). When they looked in her closet, they discovered the nightgown she had been wearing earlier, which had dried blood on the neckline. They also noticed that the clothes she had worn the day prior were missing, which included a pair of jeans, a blue-trimmed white smock, waffle stomper boots, a belt, several turquoise rings; this suggests her abductor took off her pj’s and dressed her before he stole her away into the night. One of Healy’s roommates also commented that her bed was made up in an unusual manner, and that she never ‘tucked the blanket with the pillow underneath,’ and always placed it on top. According to Joann Testa, she ‘a policeman pulled back the spread for the first time. I saw that the pillowcase was gone and that there were blood stains on the pillow as well as one fairly large blood stain on the sheet near the pillow. As far as I know, Lynda always kept a pillowcase on her pillow.’
In the early stages of the investigation it was briefly suspected that maybe Lynda had gotten a nosebleed, and had taken off her nightgown, changed back into her clothes then ran to seek medical attention. According to Lieutenant Pat Murphy with the Seattle Police Department: ‘the room was very neat. There was no signs of foul play in the rooms except some blood on the pillow and head area of the sheets of Lynda’s bed;’ he also noted that her bed had been ‘made up neatly.’
According to Kevin Sullivan’s book, ‘Ted Bundy’s Murderous Mysteries: The Many Victims of America’s Most Infamous Serial Killer,’ in the weeks prior to her disappearance, Healy had talked to her roommates about some acute stomach pain she was having that were so bothersome that she scheduled a Doctors appointment for… but that night they said she was ‘lively, talkative and feeling good. Their conversation was light, from psychology to music, not focusing on any specific subject.’
The police searched every inch of Lynda’s room, but came up with no explanation as to where she could have gone. Several days after Lynda was last seen alive on February 4, 1974 a call was received by 911 from an unknown male caller that told the operator, ‘listen, and listen carefully: the person who attacked that girl on 8th last month and the person who took Lynda Healy are one and the same. He was outside both houses. He was seen.’ When the 911 operator asked who was calling, the man said, ‘no way are you going to get my name,’ and immediately hung up; nothing further came from the incident.
In the days that immediately followed, Healy’s disappearance barely made the news: the very first story about her was buried on the 35th page of the February 4, 1974 edition of The Seattle Times. Almost immediately after their daughter disappeared Jim and Joyce Healy hired a private investigator to look into the case, and the family initially wondered if maybe she ran off to live with family in Oregon. After some time, the PI came back to the Healy’s and told them that all the leads he received hit ‘dead ends.’ A reward was offered for information leading to her safe return, and it didn’t take long for Seattle investigators to strongly suspect foul play.
‘The Seattle Eight’ (or nine, officially):’ Before Lynda Ann Healy vanished Bundy’s first confirmed, ‘on-the-record’ victim was Karen Sparks, who had been asleep in her basement bedroom when he attacked her in the residence that she shared with three male friends located near the University of Washington campus. According to Sparks, who was a dance major that miraculously survived the attack and went on to get married and have a family: ‘he took some metal thing and he rammed it up my vagina and it split my bladder.’ In the days prior to the assault, she told detectives that she remembered seeing an older man staring at her in a nearby laundromat, and ‘I’d look at him, he’d look away. I didn’t really think too much about it.’
Sparks lived on 8th Avenue Northwest, which was only eleven blocks away from 12th Avenue NE where Lynda lived. After Karen fell asleep, Bundy attacked her and relentlessly beat her in the head with a metal rod from her bed frame, which he also used to penetrate her vagina so brutally that she experienced severe internal damage: ‘he took some metal thing and he rammed it up my vagina and it split my bladder.’ I’ve also seen it reported that her assailant used a speculum and it is worth mentioning that Ted did at one time work as a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company (which is a family-owned medical supply company), however one was not found left behind at the scene of the crime.
Sparks lived on 8th Northwest, just eleven blocks away from Lynda Ann Healy. After Karen fell asleep, Bundy attacked her and relentlessly beat her in the head with a metal rod from her bed frame, which he used to penetrate her vagina so brutally that she experienced severe internal damage: ‘he took some metal thing and he rammed it up my vagina and it split my bladder.’ I’ve also seen it reported that the assailant used a speculum, and Bundy did at one time work as a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company, a family-owned medical supply company, however one was not found behind the scene of the crime.
Thankfully, before Bundy could take the attack to the point of no return he got spooked and fled Karen’s bedroom. Sparks was left beaten, unconscious, and bleeding until around 7:00 PM the following evening when one of her roommates checked on her: ‘Bob came down and he saw blood on my pillow, and he called 911 right away and then called my mother.’ The attack had been so severe that she was unconscious for ten days, and when she came to, she had no memory of what happened and was not able to give detectives any details about her assailant. When Lynda disappeared less than a month later Karen’s father immediately connected the dots between her and the attack on his daughter, although LE was much slower to make the connection.
A little over five weeks after Healy vanished into thin air nineteen-year-old Donna Gail Manson was last seen waving goodbye to her roommates early in the evening on March 12, 1974. The Evergreen State College student had plans to attend a jazz concert on campus, and had changed her outfit a few times before eventually settling on a red/orange/green striped top, blue or green slacks, and a black fuzzy maxi-coat.Manson was a highly intelligent young woman, but not great at school and only a ‘better-than-average’ student, however she was incredibly creative and was an accomplished flautist, that always had her camera with her (just like Lynda Healy did). Donna never made it to the concert, and as the months passed by more and more young college aged women around Washington state began to go missing.
After Donna, on April 17, 1974 eighteen-year-old student Susan Elaine Rancourt was the next to disappear. Rancourt was a straight-A student at Central Washington University in Ellensburg where she studied biology, and in order to afford school she worked full time hours over two different jobs. From the get-go, the Rancourt’s knew that something terrible had happened to their daughter, and according to her father, Dale: ‘she always knew what she wanted, and was a very logical person, very predictable.’
After Sue Rancourt the next to vanish was Brenda Carol Ball, a recent college drop-out that was last seen leaving The Flame Tavern in Burien after seeing band play late on May 31, 1974. The 22-year-old seemed to be at a crossroads in her life, and roughly two weeks before had stopped attending class at Highline Community College. Her sister told reporters that her family hadn’t given up hope after she went missing, and when her remains were eventually recovered they: ‘thought we were prepared for it, but we weren’t.’
Less than two weeks later on June 11, 1974 eighteen-year-old Georgann Hawkins disappeared from an alleyway outside of her Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority house on the University of Washington campus. She had left a party early (and by herself) but before returning home had stopped by her boyfriend’s frat house to pick up some Spanish notes for her final that was the next day. In the days that followed, Warren and Edith waited by the phone waiting for word that their daughter was safe, which never came, and according to her father: ‘it doesn’t look very good.’
After George was the two infamous Lake Sammamish murders that took place on July 14, 1974 in Issaquah, WA: Twenty-three-year-old newlywed Janice Ann Blackburn-Ott lived in Issaquah and worked as a caseworker for King County’s Youth Services Center, while her husband Jim was away attending graduate school in California. In the early afternoon before she left her shared house on her yellow Tiger bicycle, Jan scribbled a note for her roommate letting them know that she was going sunbathing at Lake Sam, and at the bottom had drawn a sun. Two eyewitnesses that were at Lake Sam that afternoon reported seeing her at roughly 12:30 PM leaving with an attractive young man whose arm was in a cast.
Only four hours later that same young man returned to Lake Sammamish, and abducted eighteen year old computer programming student Denise Marie Naslund, who was enjoying an afternoon at the beach with her boyfriend and another couple. She had had a few beers and taken a few valiums, and disappeared after she went off to the restroom by herself at roughly 4:30 PM; her mother Eleanore Rose said Denise had the kind of ‘helpful nature’ that would directly place her in the line of danger. Just as with Ott, witnesses that were at Lake Sam that afternoon reported that they saw a young man with his arm in a cast at roughly the time that Naslund went missing.
(Now deceased) Seattle Police Captain Herb Swindler was assigned to work the Healy investigation and eventually the other missing Seattle women. In July 1974 he publicly stated that there was no evidence that pinpointed any of the disappearances with the others, however he did admit that there were some similarities: ‘but, the real connection between the cases is not in the hard evidence, but in the lack of evidence. Usually in a series like this, bodies start to show up. There have been no bodies, none at all, and that is very unusual.’ About the disappearances, Captain Swindler said there were many theories about what may have happened to the young women, and that they ‘get people calling in to tell us ‘the flying saucers took them’ and ‘they’re being spirited away to white slavery’. Everybody’s got a theory, but no evidence.’
Well over a year after Healy was last seen alive, on March 1, 1975 two Green River College students found human remains in a thick wooded area on Taylor Mountain, located just outside of Seattle. A skull uncovered by detectives would later be identified as belonging to Brenda Ball, which is a tad ironic because police initially were hesitant on linking her to the other missing women because she was a bit older than them, was not (technically) a college student, and was abducted from a bar and not an academic type setting. A further search of the area uncovered more bones, and just two days later on March 3, 1975 they came across Lynda Healy’s lower mandible as well as parts of Susan Rancourt and Roberta Parks.
Upon further examination by the Medical Examiner, it was noted that Healy’s skull bore marks that hinted that she had suffered a brutal beating in her final moments of life; Sue Rancourts decapitated skull was also found to be severely fractured.
Third-Person Confession: While Ted was on death row in Florida on April 4, 1980 he had his first sit down with journalists Hugh Aynesworth and Stephen G. Michaud, and during their time together they discussed the abduction and murder of Lynda Ann Healy: Bundy said that earlier in the afternoon on January 31, 1974 the killer had stalked the young coed and followed her to a Safeway store, and even claims that he broke ‘into her home whilst she was out running errands.’ He also told them that the killer had plans of returning later that evening, unsure if she would be home and what situation he would walk into. During this pseudo-confession, Ted clarified that Healy was ‘battered unconscious’ in her bed then carried out of her bedroom and placed her in his waiting Volkswagen; he also volunteered that he had already taken out the front passenger seat of his car so he could better transport his ‘cargo.’
From 12th Avenue NE, Bundy took the unconscious Lynda to Taylor Mountain, located roughly twenty miles east of Seattle, where he forced her to remove her pajama’s (not clothes?) and raped her. When he was finished, he bludgeoned her to death and left her body only partially buried, where scavengers quickly dispersed it throughout Taylor Mountain. Both journalists said Ted briefly appeared to show some remorse over killing Healy, but it didn’t last very long. He then tried to justify the murder by telling himself. ‘well, listen you, you fucked up this time, but you’re never going to do that again. So let’s just stay together, and it won’t ever happen again.’
Ted told the journalists that he was stuck in a position where he couldn’t just let the young woman go out of fear of getting caught, and told them that he had to kill her; both men later said that although he was ‘mostly confident,’ he did stutter a few times when he got nervous, which was something they noticed happened when he talked about aspects of the murders which made him feel uncomfortable.
However, Ted said that he eventually HAD to do it again, and after a brief period of inactivity his urge to possess, to control and kill another young woman would soon come back to him and he would begin to think about killing another victim. He also explained that with each murder, he would feel less confusion, fear, and apprehension and the dormancy period in between victims would become shorter and shorter as he got over the feeling of remorse and self-loathing over what he had done at a faster rate as time went by.
Dr. Bob Keppel, who at that time was a fresh faced detective with the King County Sheriff’s Department, said that the crime scene related to the disappearance of Lynda Healy was ‘unique,’ and stood out in his memory for a long time: ‘I had never seen a crime committed before and that’s where I got my start.’ … ‘We couldn’t do anything except sit and man a telephone. It was pretty bad.’ He elaborated that it almost seemed that someone had broken into Lynda’s residence, brutally bludgeoned her, took her pj’s off then put her street clothes back on her, neatly made the bed, then carried her off into the night without leaving behind a trace. In the days after she vanished, detectives spoke with over sixty-five of her friends, acquaintances, family members, schoolmates, and former boyfriends, but didn’t come up with anything helpful.
In January 1974 Bundy had been living in a second story room at the Rogers Boarding house located on 12th Avenue NE, which was only three blocks away from where Lynda Healy lived. At the time of her disappearance, Ted had been attending night law school at the University of Puget Sound, and according to his schedule he had class late on Monday’s, Wednesday’s, and Friday’s, however on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s things wrapped up for him early. Lynda went missing after midnight on a Thursday night, so Bundy wouldn’t have been tied up with school. Also, according to his long-term girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer, he often went to the bar that Healy went to with her friends the evening she was last seen alive. Additionally, Ted was in between jobs at the time: his previous position as the Assistant to the Washington State Republican Chairman ended in September 1973, and he remained unemployed until May 3, 1974 when he got a job at the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia (he was there until August 28, 1974).
A Frightening Incident: According to Lynda’s roommate Monica Sutherland, roughly two months before she disappeared she was alone in the laundromat on the avenue close to their home when she noticed a man in an orange pickup truck stop and begin to stare at her. He then parked the truck and came in without any clothing and briefly fooled around with a washing machine before proceeding to check the back door of the building as he was leaving. He never said a word to Lynda, but the incident was unusual and she said that it frightened her.
Sutherland also told detectives about another incident that took place only a month before Lynda vanished: she had come home and was by herself inside the residence when suddenly she heard the neighbor’s dog start barking, and when she looked outside the front door she saw a young man standing on the bottom step. He had been holding a little dog firmly around the neck, and had been roughly shaking it. Sutherland remembered that she ran outside and heard neighbors yelling at the man, who had claimed that the dog had attacked him, put it down, then fled from the scene.
A coincidence that is not widely discussed (and only recently made public with the release of the book, ‘Dark Tide’) is that Ted’s cousin, Edna Cowell had once lived with two previous roommates of Lynda Healy while she was attending the University of Washington; it is unknown if he ever had been introduced to Healy through these channels. Also strange: in 1972, both Ted and Lynda were both Psychology majors at the University of Washington, however no evidence exists proving that they had any sort of class or seminar together.
Jim Healy passed away at the age of 72 on June 22, 1998 in Bellevue WA, and Joyce Ann Healy died from complications of COVID at the age of ninety-three on December 27, 2020 in Redmond, WA. According to her obituary, Joyce loved the beach, and the family would often vacation in Ocean Shores, WA where they spent their time beachcombing, riding dune buggies, and roasting hotdogs. After her children flew the nest she went back to school and got a BS in Computer Science from Bellevue College; she learned Cobol (or Common Business Oriented Language) and Fortran (Formula Translation) and went on to have an incredibly successful second career as a computer programmer.
Joyce enjoyed ballroom dancing, and when her husband was alive the two often took cruises together and went just about everywhere; they even became ‘Gold Members’ on several Cruise Lines. In 2012, Mrs. Healy moved into the Emerald Heights Retirement Community in Redmond, where she made lots of new friends and continued to have many adventures while living there.
Lynda’s siblings Robert and Laura Healy-Friedman both still reside in Washington, along with their spouses and children. In the days prior to his execution in January 1989, Ted told Seattle detectives about quite a few unsolved murders across Washington, Utah, Oregon, Colorado, California, and Idaho, and he finally claimed responsibility for killing Lynda Ann Healy, who he said was his ‘first victim.’
Works Cited:
Pasqualini, Kym L. ‘Ted Bundy’s First Victims: Lynda Ann Healy’ (December 16, 2020). Taken June 12, 2025 from https://kympasqualini.medium.com/ted-bundys-first-victims-lynda-ann-healy-9bdb3177c3c4
Sullivan, Kevin M. ‘The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History.’ (2009).
Winn, Stephen. ‘Ted Bundy: The killer next Door.’ (1979).
