Carol Louise was born on December 30, 1955 to William and Barbara (nee Johnson) Platt in Bemidji, Minnesota. The couple had five children: Carol, David, Gary, Robert, and Gail. After high school Bill Platt attended Bemidji State University and worked in general construction before entering the US Navy during World War II. He returned to the Turtle River area of Minnesota after he was discharged and married Barbara on April 10, 1950. After the couple got hitched, Mr. Platt worked in the local mines, on the iron range, and was self-employed in his later years; Mrs. Platt was a trained cook and worked various jobs including at the Lake Julia Nursing Home, Markham Hotel, Viking Supper Club, and the Turtle Club. Carol eventually relocated to Camas, Washington. Like so many of the other unconfirmed victims I wasn’t able to find much about her background.
Seventeen-year-old Carol married Robert Valenzuela on August 17, 1973 and shortly after the couple became the parents of twins (they were ten months old when she was murdered). The couple were only married for about a year when on August 2, 1974 Carol disappeared after hitchhiking from Camas to Vancouver: she apparently made it to her intended destination and was last seen at a welfare office in Vancouver. At 11:00 AM a case worker told her to come back later that same afternoon at 1 PM to receive food stamps, however she never returned to the office and was never seen from again. Robert reported her missing two days later on August 4; she was eighteen years old. Ms. Valenzuela was not known to be involved in prostitution and had no criminal record. The case quickly went dry.
On the morning of October 12, 1974 a deer hunter stumbled upon a mass of hair in a heavily wooded area roughly fourteen miles northeast of Vancouver not far from the Oregon border. He thought it was an unusual place to find a wig and after investigating the mass with the shank of his gun quickly realized it was attached to a skull and that it wasn’t a wig at all. After law enforcement arrived they quickly realized there wasa second victim and their skeletal remains were scattered throughout the area. According to lab reports, the bones had not completely oxidized and it was determined that their deaths most likely did not occur suddenly, and possibly took place as a result of suffocation. Thebodies were discovered within a mile or so of where 16-year-old Jamie Grissim’s ID was found (she vanished on December 7, 1971 and to this day her remains have never been recovered). It was determined that the second woman’s death took place roughly six weeks before Valenzuela’s. Former Clark County Sheriff Gene Cotton reported that Robert Valenzuela was initially held as a ‘material witness’ although no charges were ever filed against him.
Eventually it was determined that the physical characteristics of the first skeleton matched those of Valenzuela. Former Curator of the Physical Anthropology department at the Smithsonian J. Lawrence Angel said that the second victim was ‘white, between 17 and 23 years old, and was of slender build, weighing about 125 or 130 pounds.’ … he also said that ‘the woman probably had a small face and long, dark brown hair which was coarse, thick and probably with a natural curl.’ He also commented that her upper teeth were ‘noticeably decayed’ and she had a ‘splayed back, protruding buttocks and had apparently given birth.’ When the two bodies were initially found their dental charts were sent to Bemidji, Minnesota as part of a routine check of missing persons in the area, which resulted in the identification of Mrs. Valenzuela. The remains of the second victim were sent to the FBI laboratory in Washington, DC but went unidentified for many years.
Martha Morrison resided in Portland, Oregon and vanished without a trace on September 1, 1974. She grew up in foster care while living in Lane County, Oregon and had a history of substance abuse and running away from home (both her biological and foster families). Morrison was last seen leaving the apartment she rented with a boyfriend; they had reportedly gotten into an argument. DNA was obtained from Morrison’s sister and half-brother, which helped develop a genetic profile to compare to potential matches. After the testing was complete, it was compared to the currently unidentified remains, whose DNA profile was developed in 2012. Similarities in the genetic material were noted, however a definite match was not immediately established. It didn’t help that Morrison’s skull and some other bones were mislabeled as Valenzuela’s while they were sitting in storage (which was one of the reasons why the remains were unidentified for so long). The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children paid to have Morrison’s Fathers body exhumed so they could obtain his DNA to compare it to the unidentified remains, which resulted in a positive identification that the remains were those of Martha Morrison on July 17, 2015. After her body was successfully ID’d, police went to the public, encouraging them to submit tips to help solve the case. In August 2017, law enforcement matched her blood with remnants on a pistol owned by Warren Leslie Forrest, who was a longtime suspect. Before Forrest was named as their killer both Ted Bundy and Randall Woodfield (the I-5 Killer) were both considered as ‘people of interest’ in both women’s murders. Forrest was officially charged with Morrison’s homicide in 2020.
At the time Valenzuela disappeared in the summer of 1974 Bundy was still in a long term relationship with Liz Kloepfer and was residing in the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Avenue in Seattle. He was getting ready to move to Salt Lake City to begin his second attempt at law school and was employed with The Department of Emergency Services in Olympia (he worked there just for a few months from May 3, 1974 until August 28). Bundy told law enforcement that he wasn’t responsible for the death of Valenzuela, which is one of the only murders from the Pacific Northwest that he was suspected of that he denied. Most likely because Ted was a habitual liar he remained a suspect of Valenzuela’s murder for quite a few years, as he told investigators before he was executed he may or may not be responsible for additional murders other than the ones he was convicted of.
Enter Warren Leslie Forrest. Forrest apparently liked to pose as a Seattle University photography student and liked to approach women asking if they’d like to pose for pictures for a fee of thirty to forty dollars. The victims would leave with him in his blue murder van where he quickly subdued them and bound them with rope at the ankles and wrists. Forrest was a government employee with the Parks Department which gave him access to a lot of restricted areas in local recreation areas. One of his victims managed to escape after he kidnapped and brutally raped her, and thankfully she was able to get away and flag down a passing motorist who took her to the police. Forrest was eventually tracked down and although law enforcement couldn’t place him in the area at the time of Valenzuela’s disappearance detectives were intrigued by the recurring pattern of victims that were dumped in the woods. They were also struck by the testimony of Forrest’s friends, who were shocked at his actions and claimed he was just a normal, regular guy (which is similar to the way psychologists predicted Bundy acted with his friends).
Warren Leslie Forrest has been in prison on a single murder count since 1974, when he was charged with the murder of nineteen year old Krista Kay Blake. In 2014, detectives began taking another look at physical evidence related to Forrest’s criminal history to help link him to any possible unsolved crimes, but it wasn’t until 2019 that DNA evidence helped link him to the murder of Morrison. Forensic experts from the Washington State Police Crime Lab isolated a partial DNA profile from bloodstains found on Forrest’s dart gun and cross-referenced it with Morrison’s DNA, which led to the positive identification of her remains. As a result, Forrest was identified as her killer. In January 2020 Forrest was extradited to Clark County to await charges in Martha Morrison’s murder. For the first time in 40 years he appeared in court on February 7, 2020, pleading not guilty. The trial was originally scheduled to begin on April 6 2020, but was delayed several times due to the COVID pandemic. The trial finally resumed in early 2023 and on February 1, 2023 a jury found him guilty of the murder of Martha Morrison. Sixteen days later, Forrest was given another life sentence. During the proceedings, he was still apprehensive about admitting his guilt, but freely gave his opinion that ‘girls from socially disadvantaged environments should not hitchhike or get into cars with strangers due to their vulnerable disposition.’
Sadly, Carols father Bill and her brother David died on January 2, 1986 in a car accident north of Bemidji; Bill was 58 and David was 28. Barbara Platt passed away on February 9, 1993 at the age of 61 in Fargo, ND. It does seem that Robert Valenzuela did eventually remarry. I’m respecting Carols family and will not disclose anything about her twins.
* In October 2024 one of Carol’s grandchildren reached out to me to not only point out some things that were incorrect in my piece but to also voice concern that her grandmothers article didn’t belong on a website about Ted Bundy. After a bit of back and forth I told her I would not remove the article but would add a disclaimer that Carol was not a victim of the serial murderer and more likely was killed by the hands of Warren Leslie Forrest. This blog may have Ted Bundy in the title but it’s turned into so much more than that. And I also want to add that I didn’t pay someone to go find me secret files about Ms. Valenzuela: everything I found was in the public domain and was literally at my fingertips. Where I do understand that it must be incredibly invasive to do a Google search and find an entire article written about your grandmother that was murdered in an incredibly brutal way, but everything I found was either in a newspaper article or from some sort of historical website, like Ancestry/MyHeritage. Also, if something is misspelled (like a name), that is information I pulled from another source, so if it’s not correct in my article it’s also incorrect in the original. I didn’t pull it out of thin air, it came from somewhere. Instead of Googling someone and having to go through 7-8 websites to get everything you need, I’m trying my hardest to be a complete resource. All of this information was easily found, and was free.
Rita Patricia Curran was born on June 21, 1947 to Thomas Sr. and Mary (nee Donahue) Curran in Woodhaven, NY; Rita had a younger brother (Thomas Jr.) and sister Mary (Campbell); Mr. Curran worked for IBM. The strict Roman Catholic family eventually settled down in Burlington, Vermont. Described as ‘quiet, sweet, and almost painfully shy,’ Rita was a small girl with a petite frame, dark eyes, and long brown hair she wore parted down the middle. After graduating from Mount Saint Mary’s Academy, Ms. Curran attended Trinity College in Vermont, an all girls Catholic school that was close to home; in 1969 she earned a Bachelor’s degree in education. Described as ‘a person truly dedicated to her profession’, Rita was in her second year of teaching second-grade at Milton Elementary School in Milton, Vermont. After her untimely passing Milton Elementary Principal Merritt Clark Jr. said of his young teacher: ‘the boys and girls seemed to like her being in class. She did a lot of work with the deprived and handicapped children’ … ‘she had a knack about her working with these kids.’ In her spare time Rita participated in ‘The Champlain Echoes,’ an all-female acapella group and taught a religion class at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Milton (which was about 20 miles away from where she was staying the summer she was murdered).
Rita’s permanent residence was in Milton, VT however in the summer of 1971 she was renting an apartment with two roommates in Burlington while participating in a reading and language arts workshop at the nearby University of Vermont graduate school. Ms. Curran found an ad for a ‘roommate wanted’ in a local newspaper and had moved into a first story apartment in a converted three-story Victorian house just about two weeks before her death (it was also the first time in her life she lived away from home). She originally planned on staying the entire summer but Mary Curran said her daughter was planning on coming home just a few days after she was murdered. She went on to say that Rita’s two roommates were friends before she moved in and she felt like she didn’t quite fit in with them. Plus she got into an argument with one of them over a boy spending the night. Mary Curran-Campbell said of her sister: ‘she had actually lived at home all her life until June of 1971, and she found an ad in the Burlington Free Press looking for a roommate part-time for the summer. It seemed to be a good fit and so she moved out about one month before she was murdered.’ While living there Curran was employed at the Colonial Motor Inn as a chambermaid (which is strangely only half a mile away from the ‘Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers’ where Bundy was born in November 1946). The day of her disappearance, Ms. Curran worked at the Inn from 8:15 AM until 2:40 PM then attended choir practice at The Sara M. Holbrook Community Center located at 66 North Avenue in Burlington, Vermont; she may have been there as late as 10 PM. A representative from the Motor Inn said that Curran was extremely well liked there, was very popular among staff, and had been employed there on and off for about 3-4 years, usually during summer breaks. She often complained to her co-workers that she felt like an ‘ugly duckling’ but held onto hope that she would someday find a man, settle down, and get married. Rita also shared with friends that she already went to three weddings at that point in mid-1971 and moved to Burlington with hopes to find a boyfriend because she felt all the good men in Milton were already taken.
One of Curran’s roommate, twenty four year-old Beverly Lamphere, said she last saw Rita alive at around 11:20 PM when she left the apartment to meet up with her boyfriend Paul Robinson (23) at a Shelburne Road restaurant; their third roommate Kerry Duame met up with the couple at some point. Robinson said that ‘we were gone maybe two or three hours. We had asked Rita to join us that night, but she said no.’ Ms. Lamphere took the only set of keys with her when she left but made sure to leave both the front and back doors unlocked; it was their usual practice as they lived in a safe, residential neighborhood. At around 1:00 AM on July 19, 1971 the friends returned to the apartment with no signs of forced entry; they assumed Curran was sleeping as she was nowhere to be found. After arriving the friends sat in the living room chatting for a while, completely unaware that anything was wrong. It wasn’t until around 1:20 AM that Beverly discovered the gruesome scene straight out of a horror movie: the 24 year-old schoolteacher was lying dead on her bedroom floor, naked and on her back, her torn underwear discarded underneath her; Rita’s face and head were badly beaten. Beverly’s boyfriend attempted to perform life saving measures but it was too late. Curran’s hair was styled up in curlers (just like Seattle flight attendant Lisa Wick), and it was as if she’d been attacked while getting ready for bed. There had been signs of a struggle and it appeared Curran fought for her life. When the roommates were questioned, they weren’t able to give very much helpful information, as they were nowhere near the scene at the time of the murder. Burlington Detective Wayne Liberty said they were eventually ruled out as suspects in 1972. Paul Robinson said he can still remember the screams of horror when his friend discovered Rita’s body: ‘I was the one that called the police. I told them there had been a murder. I have always had a question about whether Rita was still alive when we got back into the apartment that night.’…’This kind of horror was unheard of in Burlington, Vermont. It was a very innocent time. I can’t tell you how fast deadbolts flew off the shelves after Rita’s murder.’
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lawrence Harris determined Currans cause of death to be ‘asphyxia caused by manual strangulation’ and that she had been beaten in the head and face (most likely with a closed fist); there were no drugs found in her system. The ME pinpointed her time of death to be sometime between 11:30 PM and 12:30 AM and that she had been sexually assaulted with a crowbar (but she was not raped). Detectives also found blood on her throat. Law enforcement said it was evident by the scene that there were ‘signs of an intense struggle.’ Shortly after Rita’s murder Former Chittenden County States Attorney and now US Senator Patrick Leahy (he was elected to the position in 1974) wanted no information on it released to the public and put a ‘blackout’ on the case, meaning no information at all was released to the public about the murder. This devastated the Curran family, who felt Rita’s death should have immediately been a front page story.
At the time law enforcement called Rita’s murder ‘the most intensive investigation in the city’s history’ and that ‘in their memory there had been no crime of such violence in the history of this city of 38,000 persons.’ Police determined that the murderer entered the apartment through an unlocked door and attacked Curran while she was most likely in bed but not yet asleep. Neighbors said they heard nothing out of the ordinary: no screams or anything during the time the murder took place. Police quickly ruled out robbery as a motive, as Currans purse sat untouched on the floor directly behind the door with about $20 inside (as well as her personal items and driver’s license); her car was also found unbothered in its normal spot in front of the apartment building. In the kitchen police found Currans blood smeared on the inside of the door, which most likely had rubbed off from the suspects hand as he was fleeing through the back door. Police found no fingerprints at the scene.
The murder of Rita Curran terrified the residents of Burlington, as it took place during a time of innocence, and when violent sexual murders were infrequent and rare. An unclaimed $3,000 reward was offered at the time for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer of Curran. Her sister Mary said that ‘Burlington was considered a very safe place. It was an unbelievable shock to the city when this happened.’ … ‘The phrase ‘it can’t happen here’ just can’t be used because it will happen here, it has happened here. In any hometown that you hear people say that on the news, they’re not being realistic.’ The ‘Burlington Free Press’ reported that Rita told her friends that on multiple occasions she received strange, almost threatening telephone calls late at night with nothing on the other end but heavy breathing. Several other women in the area reported receiving similar types of calls. Additionally reports of a tall, mysterious peeping Tom looking into windows were made as well as others that reported attempted break-ins, where the intruder ran away after they screamed. There was never an official connection made between Rita’s murder, the peeping Tom, and the obscene phone calls, but they supposedly all stopped in September of that year. Detective Richard Beaulieu of the Burlington Police Department had officers look into a possible connection between several assaults on other local women and Rita’s murder in the area. A week before Curran was murdered, a 20 year old Burlington woman was raped in her bed at 4 AM by an assailant she felt was around 16-17 years old. In October 1970, a woman sleeping in her bed suffered a vicious knife attack only three blocks away from Rita’s apartment. Thankfully, the unnamed suspect got spooked when his victim started screaming; it’s unknown if he was ever caught. In September 1971, police claimed they got their first big break in the case and that evidence would soon be handed over to a grand jury. But, weeks passed by then months, and nothing ever came to fruition from that big announcement. Years later it was determined this ‘major break’ most likely stemmed from the fact that police had polygraphed one of Rita’s neighbors after a prior unrelated rape accusation came to light. However, nothing ever came of it and there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest the unnamed male. In addition to the neighbor there were three other suspects that were looked into but all were eventually cleared. Additionally, Burlington Police looked into all males in the area with any known history of sexual offenses. By 1979, two of the four viable suspects in the Curran case died and another two were in prison for homicides that ‘bore no resemblance to the Curran murder.’ Despite the intense public interest in the young school teacher’s murder the case quickly went cold.
Curran’s case got renewed attention in 1980 after she was named a possible Bundy victim in Ann Rule’s, ‘The Stranger Beside Me.’ In the novel, a retired FBI agent commented that there was a ‘remarkable resemblance between Rita Curran’ and his first girlfriend, Diane Edwards.
One thing I am EXTREMELY thankful for is all the leg work and research other ‘Bundy scholars’ do, largely because I’m just an insurance agent blogging as a hobby. The creator of the ‘hi: I’m Ted’ site said the following about Currans murder: ‘In researching this case, I spoke to a woman who was a teenager in Burlington at the time of the attack and claimed that her parents were close friends with the Currans. The woman (who wished to remain anonymous) said that Rita was found bound with piano wire, which she had apparently struggled against, as her skin was torn and bloodied. She also said that the police suspected the ‘son of a prominent judge’ but did not have enough evidence to charge a high profile member of the community’s son with the crime, and instead his family put him in a mental institution.’ … ‘The piano wire claim is an oddly specific detail that has never been mentioned in any of the news reports from that era or more recently. Binding victims with piano wire while they were still alive was certainly not a known part of Bundy’s modus operandi. The woman I spoke to claimed this detail came directly from the Curran family, but without the case file or the family speaking out, these details cannot be substantiated and may just be rumors. However it is interesting to note that at least some of this information is corroborated by Rita’s mother, who publicly accused the police of a ‘cover up’ in 1979.’
Elizabeth Kloepfer was in a serious, long term relationship with Ted Bundy from fall 1969 to 1975 and she made no mentions of him visiting Vermont in the early 1970’s in her 1980 memoir, ‘The Phantom Prince.’ During that period in July 1971 Liz took Molly and moved into an apartment closer to the Rogers Rooming House even though her and Ted weren’t as strong as they once were. She said their lives were ‘out of sync’ and that they didn’t spend as much time together as they did when they had first started dating. Just as a side note, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to refer to my handy-dandy ‘Ted Bundy Job Chart’ over the last 8 months since I started writing this blog. Anyways, in the summer of 1971 when Rita Curran was murdered Bundy worked as a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company, a family-owned medical supply company. While there he was once caught stealing a picture from a Physician’s office (he was let off with just a verbal warning). Ted began his employment there on June 5, 1970 and was there until December 31, 1971 when they moved their office across town and he quit. Also at that time in 1971 Bundy was still in his undergraduate days at the University of Washington. So as far as any concrete proof putting Bundy in Burlington in July 1971… there just isn’t any (just a lot of rumors and speculative stories). In ‘The Stranger Beside Me,’ Rule hypothesizes that Ted had some sort of ‘defining moment’ in his 20’s where he went to the Elizabeth Lund home in hopes to track down the truth about his parentage. She further speculates that after Bundy realized he was ‘illegitimate’ and that his birth was the result of a pre-marital tryst he went blind with rage and killed Rita Curran during that brief period he was in Vermont. But this doesn’t seem to make much sense: we know Ted told Liz he already knew about his illegitimacy when they first started dating in late 1969. Rule spoke with retired FBI agent John Bassett who was supposedly ‘intrigued by the remarkable resemblance between Rita Curran and Diane Edwards, the fact that Rita had died of strangulation and bludgeoning to the head, and the proximity of the Colonial Motor Inn where Rita worked to an institution that had wrought so much emotional trauma in Ted Bundy’s life: The Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers.’ Another interesting factoid: there’s supposedly a report from animal control that said someone going by the name of ‘Bundy’ was bit by a dog the same week that Curran died (this is all the information I could find on this event). Does that place him at the scene or is it just another coincidence?
Mary Campbell even wrote Bundy a letter before he was executed asking if he murdered her sister: ‘we asked the FBI when they were interrogating him whether if she was one of his case, and we got a letter back from the FBI that said he did not deny it or acknowledge it.’ Bundy was questioned about Curran’s death for the final time shortly before he was executed the morning of January 24, 1989. Thomas Barton, the warden at Florida State Prison in Raiford, asked him about his involvement at around 6:15 that morning. He said: ‘I can say without any question that there is no, uh, nothing for instance, that I was involved in Illinois or New Jersey,’ then when asked specifically about Burlington, Ted said a simple ‘no’ and that was that. Bundy denied any involvement with her murder right up to the very end.
Because it was so widely speculated that Bundy was in the Burlington area at the time of Rita’s murder, Deputy Police Chief Shawn Burke said Vermont law enforcement felt he may have been their guy for quite some time. However, Patrick Leahy said after Vermont investigators spoke with him in Raiford before he was executed they were finally able to ‘discard him as a suspect.’ Additionally, former Burlington Police Chief Kevin Scully said, ‘we have looked into the possibility of Ted Bundy’s involvement, we’re satisfied that at the time of the Rita Curran murder, Ted Bundy was somewhere else in the country.’
Bundy’s DNA was submitted to the CODIS database in 2011; no hits came back on the murder of Rita Curran. In 2016, Vermont detectives said they were taking another look at her case with‘’fresh eyes’ and more modern investigative resources. Leahy told Vermont’s ‘Burlington Free Press’ that Rita’s murder was ‘an extremely brutal homicide. Certainly, one of the most brutal I’ve ever seen in my years as state’s attorney’ and that it was ‘a horrible scene. I can still picture what I saw. A lot of evidence was gathered there. We didn’t have techniques like DNA and thinks like that back at the time. Hopefully, the evidence that was gathered was enough.’ Shawn Burke further commented that, ‘uniquely, there are still witnesses and people of interest who remain alive. It is a case where we have been running down some active leads.’ Since the murder took place in 1971, Vermont law enforcement ruled out dozens of suspects, polygraphed over 100 people and went over hundreds and hundreds of tips related to the case. They also spoke with all of the registered sex offenders that resided in the area close to where she was murdered and still came up with nothing.
Mrs. Curran felt there was some sort of police cover-up regarding her daughters case, saying ‘we felt a lot more could have been done but wasn’t for political reasons.’ Roughly a week before Bundy was executed she sent a telegraph to Bundy begging him to finally tell the truth about his involvement with Rita’s death; it was the FBI who sent her a response, saying Bundy refused to say anything about it, either way. On the 45th anniversary of Rita’s death in 2016, Thomas Jr. and Mary put a notice in the local paper in memory of their beloved sister. It read: ‘we will never forget you. We will never give up hope that we will someday know why you were taken from us.’ The siblings hoped their parents would have answers about their daughters death before they died but sadly that didn’t happen: Mr. Curran died in 1991 and Mrs. Curran passed in 2002. In a July 2021 interview with the ‘Burlington Free Press’, Mary Curran-Campbell said: ‘We’ve lived with this day-in and day-out for 50 years. I can’t say I’m going to give up, but I have to surrender to the powers that be.’ …’fifty years is a long time to grieve, a long time to hope. The fifty-year mark confirms that a resolution in our lifetime to Rita’s murder is not going to happen… We know Rita’s death did not happen in a vacuum. Somebody somewhere knows what happened that night on July 19, 1971 and they will take that information to their grave. May God have mercy on their soul.’
The brutal murder of Ms. Curran remains open to this day and is the oldest cold case that is still under investigation by the Burlington police department. In July 2021, Vermont Detective Tom Chenette said that despite over half of a century going by, that law enforcement could still find justice for Curran. Regarding Rita’s murder, Leahy said: ‘I can only imagine how relieved her family would be if it’s solved.’ Beverly Lamphere was 95 years old when she passed away in late May 2021. Anyone with information regarding the murder of Rita Curran is encouraged to contact the Burlington Police Department Major Crime Unit at 802.244.8781.
Update:
On Tuesday, February 22, 2023 acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad made the announcement the Curran family waited almost 52 years to hear: they finally know who killed their beloved Rita. It was a neighbor that lived in the apartment two floors above hers, a man named William Richard DeRoos. DNA collected at the crime scene from a discarded, ‘un-crushed’ cigarette butt ‘laying on the floor’ below Curran’s elbow in 1971 helped law enforcement link DeRoos to the murder. According to the newly released case file, ‘the Lark cigarette butt that was found next to the right arm of Rita’s murdered body had a male DNA profile that was linked to William DeRoos (b. 12.14.1939). This cigarette butt was unique in the sense that it was not crushed, smooshed or butted out. It had burned out there at the scene, as there was ash located on the floor between her body and her right arm. The end of the cigarette butt had jagged paper that was consistent with a cigarette that had burned out on its own.’
An investigative report from February 2023 states that a ‘big break in the case occurred in 2014’ when law enforcement was able to retrieve DNA from the cigarette butt. It is worth mentioning that Bundy’s DNA was among the 13 samples compared to the sample, and he was ruled out. In August 2022, the DNA from the butt was tested against DeRoos’ and investigators finally found a genetic match. Lieutenant Detective James Trieb said ‘that cigarette butt sat in evidence for over 40 years’ until Detective Jeffrey Beerworth sent it to the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for analysis. It was then that forensic experts found a single strand of male DNA on it, but they ran into another dead end when it didn’t match any results in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). It wasn’t until early 2023 that Burlington law enforcement contacted Parabon Nanolabs Chief Genetic Genealogist CeCe Moore for assistance identifying the unmatched strand, which finally resulted in a positive ID earlier this year. Moore commented that ‘this case is over 50 years old, and it only took a few hours to narrow it down to William DeRoos.’
According to a recently unearthed marriage certificate, William and Michelle (nee Roach) DeRoos (who now goes by the name Kylas Nagaarjuna) were wed on July 21, 1971 in Burlington, which helps place him near the scene of the crime around the time of Rita’s death. Additionally, his official mailing address proves he lived in the same house as Curran at the time of her murder. DeRoos was 31 years-old when he took Rita’s life and at the time was married for only two weeks; Michelle was only twenty-four and was several years younger than her new husband. The night of the homicide DeRoos and his wife had an argument and he ‘left for a cool-down walk.’ Almost immediately after the murder William’s wife gave law enforcement an alibi, telling them he was with her the entire night and never left. Chief Murad said during a Tuesday press conference that: ‘five decades later, she gave our detectives a different story: the truth.’ Kylas later admitted to investigators that DeRoos had convinced her to lie so they would not connect him to Curran’s murder. Nagaarjuna elaborated that she didn’t recall exactly how long William was gone but the next day he ‘told her not to mention that he was not at home’ when the murders took place due to his sordid criminal past and because of it law enforcement ‘would try to accuse him of it.’ She told The Daily Beast that she is still ‘overwhelmed’ by the news and that she doesn’t ‘wish to speak to the public about this;’ she further elaborated that she ‘has conveyed a message’ to Curran’s family. In September 2022 law enforcement met with Nagaarjuna who said that her ex had been in prison twice prior to their marriage and that he definitely had a violent streak. On one occasion he went after his second wife’s throat, briefly strangling her and even stabbing one of her friends unprovoked. Law enforcement feels she had no previous knowledge that her husband was involved in the murder.
Chief Murad said that Curran ‘put up a vicious struggle’ with DeRoos and that she ‘fought for her life.’ The morning after the murder, law enforcement asked the newlyweds if they had heard anything suspicious the night before, and they both denied seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary: ‘they heard nothing and Mrs. DeRoos stated that she had been up around 1:00 AM but had heard no unusual noises or anything else.’ Paul Robinson found this strange because the walls in the two-bedroom apartment were extremely thin: ‘I have to believe that someone heard something that night.’ Shortly after taking Rita’s life, DeRoos left his new wife and ‘moved to Thailand and became a Buddhist monk.’ She eventually followed him there to become a nun, however their relationship fizzled out largely because it was ‘against the rules’ and the couple divorced. DeRoos reappeared in the San Francisco area sometime during 1974 and he married for a second time. He died in 1986 at the age of 46 from ‘acute morphine poisoning’ in a seedy hotel room in San Francisco.
Former Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo was on the case from 2015 to 2019 and shared with The Daily Beast that ‘Rita’s killer may be dead but if this is all the justice Burlington police can offer her spirit and her loved ones, then so be it. Unless the police keep their memory alive and continue the investigation, the victims of unsolved murders are often lost to time. I’m so proud of the Burlington detectives who kept Rita’s case open while I served as chief, traveling in (and around) the country to collect comparison DNA and re-interview witnesses, and who never stopped until today. The Burlington Police Department never forgot about Rita.’
In September 2022, law enforcement met with Nagaarjuna who said that despite her ex-husband being in prison twice prior to their marriage he had never been violent with her. Things changed with his second wife Sarah Hepting, who told police that DeRoos had an extreme propensity for violence. She shared with them an incident where William stabbed a friend of theirs for no apparent reason, which she thinks he was arrested for (police are still trying to confirm this as she is unsure of the time it happened). Hepting also reported that on a separate occasion he strangled her to the point she nearly lost consciousness (again this was unprovoked).
As I said earlier, both of Rita’s parents passed away waiting for their daughter’s killer to be caught. Her siblings thanked the Burlington Police for the compassion they showed their family over the five decades long investigation. Tom Curran said: ‘my mother came here from Ireland and my father from Newfoundland. We were an old-fashioned, strong, Catholic family. I don’t think so much about the guy who did this as I do about Rita and my parents and what they went through. I pray to my parents, and I pray to Rita.’
Chief Murad told The Daily Beast: ‘when people doing an ancestry or genealogy test check the box saying it’s okay for law enforcement to use the results, they are helping solve murders. They are bringing evil-doers to justice. They are delivering closure to families. I am tremendously proud of the detectives who did this for Rita and her family.’
What’s incredibly helpful is Burlington PD finally released the file for Rita’s case; I attached it in a separate piece: https://jjeannejurewicz.wordpress.com/2023/02/22/rita-patricia-curran-case-file/
He lives alone. Never married and failed in relationships with women.” – Theodore Robert Bundy regarding the identity of the Green River Killer, 1984.
Gary Leon Ridgway was born February 18, 1949 to Thomas and Mary (nee Steinman)ma Ridgway of Salt Lake City, Utah. The family eventually relocated to Washington state where Thomas got a job as a bus driver and would frequently complain about the presence of sex workers on his driving route. His mother was employed as a sales clerk at JCPenney’s and was frequently called domineering by the people around her. Gary was the middle child and had two brothers (Gregory Leon born in November 1947 and Thomas Edward) and it’s widely known that his older sibling Gregory was the family favorite. It’s often theorized that he felt inferior to him, who ran for student office while in high school and went on to major in physics at Studied Physics Major at the University of Washington. In comparison, Gary was diagnosed with dyslexia, was held back twice in school, and had an IQ in the low 80’s. An attorney for the prosecution, Patty Eakes was able to shed some insight into Ridgway’s state of mind, claiming the only time she ever saw him express any sort of real emotions was when talking about his own intelligence: ‘he was so obviously limited, intellectually. The one time he genuinely cried was when he talked about how afraid he was of being put on the ‘short bus.’ I suspect that having a brilliant brother was a big thing that shaped him. Gary’s the troubled one, not the smart one. I suspect that was a big issue for him throughout his life. Perhaps being a killer of women was something he could succeed at.’ … ‘He came from a very middle-class family. There was nothing really that remarkable about him.’
Aside from feeling inferior to his older brother, Ridgway’s home life was considered incredibly dysfunctional: he was a chronic bed-wetter until the age of 13, and after each episode Mrs. Ridgway would wash her sons’ genitals. He would later tell psychologists that he had both feelings of extreme rage and sexual attraction toward her, and often fantasized about killing her. Some behavioral scientists feel that his crimes may have been a case of ‘displaced matricide’ and he was unconsciously ‘killing his mother over and over again’ even though he didn’t actually take her life.
Gary graduated from Tyee High School in 1969 at twenty years old and the following year married Claudia Kraig, his longtime sweetheart. He then joined the Navy and served onboard a supply ship after being sent to Vietnam. During his time in the service Ridgway was frequently unfaithful to his new wife, often engaging in activities with sex workers. Despite becoming angry after contracting gonorrhea, he continued his risky behavior without using any sort of barrier protection; the couple divorced in 1972. Ridgway wasn’t single for long and married Martha Wilson in 1973. This relationship also ended in divorce because of his frequent infidelity. He encouraged Wilson to participate in risqué activities like sex in locations where he dumped some of his victims and she even accused him of putting her in a chokehold at some point during their marriage. Ridgway shared a son with her they named Matthew (b. 1975), and reportedly had him in his truck during some of the murders that took place on the weekends. He later admitted to detectives that if his son would have developed any sort of inkling as to what was going on he would have killed him immediately to silence him.
After returning from Vietnam, Ridgway got a job painting semis at the Kenworth Trucking Company, and in 1982 bought his house on 32nd Place South. The same year, teenage runaways and prostitutes began disappearing from major roadways throughout King County, Washington. Throughout the 1980’s and 90’s, Ridgway confessed to murdering at least 71 teenage girls and women in the Seattle/Tacoma area (although that number is speculated to be about 90 or more). In order to gain their trust and lower their defenses, on occasion Ridgway would show the women a picture of his son. After a few minutes of sexual intercourse from ‘behind,’ he would often strangle his victims by wrapping his forearm tightly around their necks, then use his other arm to pull back as tightly as he could. Ridgway killed the majority of his victims in his home then dumped their remains in wooded areas. Multiple bodies wound up making their way to the river and eventually washed up to shore, giving him the nickname ‘The Green River Killer.’ Ridgway would frequently contaminate the crime scenes with gum and cigarette butts (even though he wasn’t a smoker or a gum chewer) just to throw law enforcement off his trail. He would also dump his victims body in one place, leave it for a while, then return and transport it to a second location in order to create a false trail; at least two of his victims were transported as far away as Portland, Oregon.
In the early 1980’s, the King County Sheriff’s Office formed the ‘Green River Task Force.’ In November 1984, Ted Bundy contacted the department after seeing an article in a local newspaper about the Green River case. The doomed serial killer was on death row when the murders began in 1982, and a part of me thinks he was jealous of the attention that ‘the Riverman’ was receiving, as he was no longer in the spotlight. So, six years into his death sentence Bundy sent a 22-page letter to King County chief criminal investigators Robert Keppel and Dave Reichert asking if they’d like his assistance to help solve the Green River case. In the letter, Bundy said: ‘don’t ask me why I believe I’m an expert in this area, just accept that I am and we’ll start from there.’ Regarding being contacted by Bundy, Dr. Keppel said: ‘it was a letter from a ‘wanna-be’ consultant and the most unlikely person I ever expected to be of assistance in the Green River murders. The letter came from a cell on death row in Florida; the sender was Theodore Robert Bundy. I was stunned.’ Turns out I was right about my jealousy theory: Keppel and Reichert both stated that they sensed a bit of jealousy from Ted regarding the GRK stealing his thunder. At the time Bundy sent the letter to detectives he was still the primary suspect in many unsolved homicides across multiple states. Because of this, the two detectives accepted the serial killer’s ‘help’ when in actuality they were only interested in seeing if they could get any sort of information regarding their unsolved cases.
In 1972, Bundy graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, and around 1974 young girls and women in the general Seattle area started disappearing. There were rumblings of an attractive young man wearing an arm sling or using crutches as a ruse to help lure pretty young coeds into his car by asking for assistance. After he made a mistake at Lake Sammamish on July 14, 1974 by not only taking two victims on the same day (from the same place) AND using his real name, he quickly left the area and enrolled in law school at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. We all know he was eventually pulled over and arrested there on August 16, 1975. After Bundy escaped not once but twice, he fled to Florida where he was eventually caught after killing Chi Omega sisters Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman as well as sweet little 12-year-old Kimberly Leach.
Two years before Bundy ‘created’ his criminal profile of the GRK, in 1982 FBI Special Agent John E. Douglas had already come up with his own profile that was fairly accurate and mentioned a few key points: the unsub was a divorced, white male who drove an older model vehicle. He often visited with sex workers and was very familiar with the area where he disposed of the bodies. Douglas also felt the killer was somewhere between the ages of 25-35, and it just so happens that at the beginning of his rampage Gary Ridgway was 33-years-old. However, a profile is not considered to be evidence, simply a tool used to help narrow down a list of suspects. Despite Bundy’s impact on the Ridgway case being completely overblown, numerous movies, documentaries, and books have been made over the years simply for the sake of shock value. This is a great example as to how Ted’s capabilities and ‘intelligence’ is frequently exaggerated for the sake of a good story. For some, the idea of a serial killer helping track down another serial killer is straight out of a movie, and the fact that it may have sort-of happened is far too fascinating to be thwarted by facts.
Ted also theorized to Keppel and Reichert that the GRK was returning to his dump sites to have ‘intimate relations’ with his victims: ‘I think he might be … intending to return to the scene to either view his victim, or in fact, interact with the body in some way.’ He went on to tell the detectives that if they ever stumbled upon a ‘fresh grave’ they should stake it out and wait for him to come back. During his allocution, Ridgway admitted that he did indeed return to his victims’ remains and violated their corpses. Bundy also told the detectives that they could possibly catch the killer if they staked out his old dump sites, and Keppel admitted they did that but the media would often show up and blow their cover.
Reichert: ‘Do you think that he parks his vehicle?’
Bundy: ‘Oh sure and just watches. My feelings about the guy is he’s very low key and inoffensive.’ He went on to say: ‘I think there’s an excellent chance that he picked up a number of prostitutes that he has later released for any number of reasons. He knows what these girls are like and what they need. Employment, money, or drugs.’
Once again, Bundy got it right: after he was in custody, Ridgway did share with detectives that he not only would park his pickup truck and watch the prostitutes walk by, but he also promised some of them extra cash or a chance of ‘honest’ employment, even going so far as to staying in touch with few of them by the phone. They were all empty promises, and not a single one was fulfilled.
Bundy also advised Keppel and Reichert that the police department most likely already had contact with the perpetrator of these heinous crimes at some point in the past, saying: ‘there’s a chance this guy has already been reported. Field card here, arrested there, reported over here, license plate shows up over here.’ Again, Bundy got another trait correct: in the 1980’s, Ridgway came into contact with the police at least ten times. Some matters were routine but others involved some of his victims.
One victim did stand out to Ted as not being a victim of the GRK: Amina Agisheff, saying, ‘it seems to me those circumstances, but not necessarily, eliminates Agisheff as a victim of the Riverman. This is most likely because at 36 she was older than many of the other victims, and the minute amount of time between Agisheff’s disappearance and that of Wendy Coffield.’ When Ridgway was in custody, detectives inquired about an unsolved murder just to see if he would confess; he denied it saying, ‘why if it isn’t mine? Because I have pride ….. in what I do, I don’t wanna take it from anybody else.’
About the convicted serial killer, Keppel said ‘Bundy was right on the money all the way around. He knew what to expect out of this guy. That’s the experience of a real killer.’ Reichert commented that Bundy had several traits in common with Ridgway, especially regarding his mindset: ‘first off, there’s no remorse. He doesn’t have any feelings toward anybody, his family included. And that’s what I saw in Bundy and what I saw in Ridgway.’ In an interview with the New York Times, Reichert said: ‘like Mr. Bundy… Mr. Ridgway craved attention and control and was prideful when discussing his killings.’
In 1985, Ridgway started seeing Judith Mawson after they met at the White Shutters Tavern; he eventually made her his third wife in 1988. Mawson claimed in a 2010 TV interview that when she moved into his house the floors were bare and there was no carpet. Detectives told her that Ridgway most likely wrapped a body in the carpet and never bothered to replace it. He did in fact bring most of his victims back to his house before murdering them. In that same interview, Mawson mentioned that her husband would frequently leave for work very early in the morning on some days, telling her it was for ‘overtime.’ She theorized that Gary must have committed some of his atrocities while allegedly working this early morning OT. Judith went on to say that she had no knowledge of his activities until she was contacted by detectives in 1987, even claiming to have had no knowledge of the Green River Killer at all due to the fact that she did not watch the news or read the paper.
During an interview with writer Pennie Morehead in prison, Ridgway pointed out that while he was married to Mawson his kill rate greatly decreased due to the fact that he was happy and genuinely loved her. In fact, of the 49 women he slaughtered he only killed three while he was involved with Judith. In an interview with the same reporter, Mawson said: ‘I feel I have saved lives … by being his wife and making him happy.’ She at one time called Ridgway the ‘perfect husband’ and that despite being together for 17 years he always treated their relationship as if they were newlyweds. Ridgway did confess he was tempted to kill Mawson on multiple occasions, and the feeling only passed when he realized it would have increased the odds of him getting caught. Despite his psychopathic tendencies, Ridgway did admit that he loved his wife.
Gary Ridgway’s first attempt at murder wasn’t a very successful one: he was sixteen and went after a six-year-old boy in his neighborhood. The children weren’t fighting or disagreeing about anything in any capacity: they were just two kids from the same neighborhood that had just met moments earlier. The young boy was close to home when Ridgway asked if he wanted to go build a fort in the wooded area nearby. Moments later, he stabbed the child in his midsection, puncturing his liver. ‘Why did you kill me?’ the young child implored to Ridgway, who simply laughed and answered, ‘I always wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone.’ He served no jail time for this crime. About this, Ridgway told Bob Keppel, ‘a boy was playing and I stabbed him inside. Didn’t kill him…. I just took the knife outta my pocket and stabbed him in the ah, side…I wanted to see how to stab somebody.’
Many of Ridgway’s victims were known to be sex workers, teenage runaways, and women in other vulnerable circumstances. After the first five bodies were pulled out of the river the press granted him the nickname ‘The Green River Killer.’ Ridgway typically strangled his victims by hand but on occasion would use ligatures. After taking their lives, he would leave their bodies in overgrown, wooded areas in King County, often returning to the bodies to have sexual intercourse with them. As a side note, this sounds almost exactly like behavior Bundy participated in. Ridgway was originally convicted of 48 murders, however in 2011 one more conviction was added to the count, bringing the total number up to 49. This helped establish him as the second most prolific serial killer in United States history. The first is Samuel Little, who confessed to the murders of 93 women across multiple states between 1970 and 2005. He died in prison in 2020.
Ridgway was arrested in 1982 and 2001 on charges related to soliciting prostitution. He officially became a suspect in the Green River killings in April 1983 when 18-year-old Marie Malvar disappeared after being seen getting into a truck that looked exactly like Ridgways. Her pimp and boyfriend Robert Woods remembered the vehicle because of the way it ‘sped up:’ from his experience, Johns usually drove away much slower. The following day, Woods and Malvar’s father went looking for the mystery pickup and found it parked outside of Ridgway’s house in his SeaTac neighborhood. Unfortunately, there was not enough evidence for police to arrest him, and of course he denied any contact with the missing teenager. Even though police had no evidence to prove he was lying it did help put Ridgway on their radar.
It wasn’t until June 1983 when Keli Kay McGinness was last seen getting in a pickup truck that looked exactly like Ridgways that he was officially bumped up to a ‘top priority’ suspect. After the 18-year-old vanished without a trace, law enforcement immediately zeroed in on Ridgway and got a search warrant for his house, and despite searching the property with a fine-toothed comb there was not enough evidence found to incriminate him in any crimes. In 1984 Ridgway was administered a polygraph test and passed. On April 7, 1987, law enforcement obtained warrants for samples of his hair and saliva, which was used to successfully match him to semen left behind at the crime scenes.
Roughly 20 years after being identified as a potential suspect in the Green River murder case, on November 30, 2001 Gary Leon Ridgway was arrested as he was leaving his place of employment. He was officially charged for the brutal slayings of four women thanks to DNA evidence as well as paint flecks found at the crime scenes and at his job. A forensic scientist found microscopic particles that matched a specific brand and composition of spray paint he used at his job during the specific time period when these victims were killed.The four victims were Marcia Chapman, Opal Mills, Cynthia Hinds, and Carol Ann Christensen. This means it was actually science that led to Ridgway’s arrest, NOT Ted Bundy’s criminal profile. In March 2003 three more victims were added to the indictment: Wendy Coffield, Debra Bonner, and Debra Estes.
As part of his plea bargain arrangement, Ridgway was given a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He was spared the death penalty on the condition that he tell law enforcement where he left the bodies of his victims. He took law enforcement to the locations of where he dumped several of his victims, even sharing with them intimate details on how he killed each one. On December 18, 2003, Ridgway was sentenced to 48 consecutive life sentences at the Washington State Penitentiary; ten additional years were added to each sentence for the crime of tampering with evidence which increased his prison term by 480 years. In 2011, a 49th body was discovered and linked to the Green River killer, adding another life sentence to his already absurdly long term. Gary Ridgway took the lives of more people than Jeffrey Dahmer, Son of Sam, and BTK combined.
Keppel stated, “Our man Ridgway is as clever or maybe even cleverer than Bundy ever thought he was. Because this guy has a methodology to him that is unprecedented anywhere. Try and find a killer that’s gone on as long as he had, as intense as he did, with the apparent ability to turn the faucet on and off any length of time that he wants.”
Ted Bundy was put to death in Florida’s electric chair in January 1989 and wasn’t alive to see the capture of the Green River Killer; he’ll never know how accurate his profile of the serial killer was. Dr. Robert Keppel wrote the book “The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer” about his time spent with the serial killer, and where Bundy didn’t really aide law enforcement in solving the case of “the Riverman,” he was pretty spot on regarding his profile. Unlike Bundy, Gary Ridgway is alive today and is currently 72 years old. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. In Thomas Harris’s 1988 best selling novel “Silence of Lambs,” Bundy was used as inspiration for the villainous Buffalo Bill, who feigned injury when approaching women asking for help before knocking them out then abducting them. Like Buffalo Bill, one of Bundy’s primary methods of killing was strangling his victims. Although Harris has not publicly spoken about the similarities between his fictional killer and Ted Bundy, he did attended parts of Bundy’s Florida trial and even sent him a copy of Red Dragon, which introduced the character of Hannibal Lecter.
Ted Bundy was put to death in Florida’s electric chair in January 1989 and wasn’t alive to see the capture of the Green River Killer. Gary Ridgway is alive as of September 2023 and is currently 74 years old. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington. Truthfully, before I started this article I didn’t know much about him; I knew he was married three times but I was shocked to learn he fathered a child. I dug a little deeper into Matthew Ridgway and was a little surprised to learn he wasn’t like Bundy’s daughter Rose/a, and has done some interviews with the media. I want to mention an article I found about Matthew, who remembers a very different version of his father than the one depicted on TV… To him, Gary Leon Ridgway was just ‘Dad’: a frugal, chill man who rarely yelled or raised his voice. That helped teach him how to play sports and never missed one of his baseball or soccer games. The day after his dad was arrested, Matthew told investigators: ‘even when I was in fourth grade, when I was with soccer, he’d always, you know, be there for me… I don’t think I ever remember him not being there.’ He told detectives that he had no idea who his father really was until he was 24 years old, after he was arrested. Gary Ridgway had given him a normal and happy childhood, something that he would always be thankful for. After high school Matthew joined the Marines, got married, and now works as a trained chef. Gary’s father Thomas passed away in 1998 at the age of 71 and his mother died on August 15, 2001.
When I went to Seattle in April 2022 I really tried to focus on going to locations related to the confirmed victims (largely because I was new at writing and was just sort of getting my bearings about me). However, I did find a few cases that were particularly intriguing to me and that didn’t seem to have any other real suspects worth looking into other than Bundy. I already wrote about the United Airlines flight attendants Lisa Wick and Lonnie Trumbull that were attacked in their Queen Anne Hill neighborhood in Seattle (Trumbull didn’t survive), but there’s another much younger victim I now want to focus on: Brenda Joy Baker. I can’t seem to find much on her background or tragic death AT ALL, not just information related to TB’s involvement.
Bespectacled Brenda Joy Baker was born on July 13, 1959, to Benjamin and Margaret (nee Stephens) Baker in Enumclaw, WA. The couple had seven children: three boys (Larry, Victor, and Randall) and four girls (Brenda, Margaret, Leslie, and Tina). Mr. Baker was born on March 1, 1924 in Bay County, Florida and Mrs. Baker was born on January 29, 1920 in Sedalia, Missouri. Margaret (who went by Maggie) was previously married to a man named John Beard Jr. (who passed on October 11, 1969). Brenda seems to come from a tragic roots, having two brothers that also passed away extremely young: Benjamin was born in 1956 and died at the age of 25 in 1982 and Victor (who was born in 1960) sadly died in 1981 at the age of 21. Her sister Tina passed away at the age of 51 on June 27, 2009.
Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Baker raised their family at 21907 237th Ave SE in Maple Valley, Washington. At the time she was murdered, fourteen-year-old Brenda was attending Tahoma Junior High School and despite her young age, she was a frequent hitchhiker and liked to run away from home. She was last seen roughly four blocks away from her home near Puyallup, WA on May 25, 1974 trying to thumb a ride ‘south’ to Fort Lewis. Before she disappeared, Brenda shared with her friends that she was ‘planning to meet a soldier.’ Baker had a history of running away from home and even lived in a foster home for an unknown period of time. However, this time her absence was immediately noticed by her family and a missing person’s report was filed the same day. This was the second runaway report submitted by the Bakers: she was apprehended by Olympia police in one prior incident. The body of Brenda Joy Baker was found 31 days later on the outskirts of Millersylvania State Park not far from the Restover Truck Stop.**
When her body was first found, Tacoma based pathologist Dr. Charles P. Larson thought the individual was between 28-32 years old, approximately 5’2″ and was ‘slightly overweight.’ She also had a surgical scar located somewhere on her body. Dr. Larson was summoned from Tacoma after two local Pathologists were unavailable. He said the victim appeared as if she had been dead for about four weeks and there were no clues found on or around the body. They were found dressed in brown leather alligator shoes, white socks, bright red stretch knit bell-bottom pants and a large tan corduroy mid-waist jacket.
On June 17, 1974 the body of Brenda Joy Baker was found on a small road in an inaccessible area located on the outskirts of Millersylvania State Park just outside of Seattle. Her remains were covered by two logs as well as some brush and it appeared that some attempts were made to try to conceal her body. She was almost completely decomposed from the waist up. Her body was found slightly after noon by Tom Albert Ismay and his two friends, Mary Etta Rinehart and May Harnit. According to Sergeant Mike Celund, Ismay owned 195 acres west of Millersylvania State Park and told officers he came across the young girl’s remains about five feet off the roadway as he was walking down a dirt pathway off McCorkle Road at the north end of the park. He immediately called the sheriff’s department, who in turn summoned Deputy Coroner WW Frazier and Captain Harold Bade. Ismay told law enforcement that ten days before the discovery he placed an old tree across the road to keep trespassers off his property and was checking the effectiveness of his roadblock when he stumbled upon the remains, which were about 25 feet away. Despite some discrepancies in the possible age of the victim by medical experts in the beginning, the body was quickly identified as Brenda Joy Baker by Thurston County Sheriff’s investigators; this most likely happened so quickly because of a missing persons report her parents filed with King County Sheriff’s Department. Law enforcement also compared the body to Bakers dental records, the clothes she was last seen wearing, and the jewelry found with the body (specifically two bracelets, an earring, and a ring); everything came back a match. Her father also said that the body belonged to his daughter as well. Despite the body’s advanced decomposition it was determined tat the victim’s throat had been cut. Anything beyond that is unknown, as detectives admitted they couldn’t find any additional physical evidence or foreign DNA on (or near) her remains because it had been in a state of decomp for far too long.
Following a preliminary autopsy, Dr. Larson and his two assistants, Dr. Harvey Snyder and Dr. Jack Bohanan felt the victim’s age was somewhere between 28 and 34 years. In a separate, unrelated study using X-ray waves and other ‘extensive examinations,’ radiologist Dr. William Veach determined the body to be between 14 to 19 years old. Even though age is not the most important factor when attempting to identify an unknown victim, Undersheriff Jack Crawford did point out that the discrepancy helped to create a wider search field and it’s not abnormal to have extensive variances in age assumptions: ‘it’s not abnormal to have such a discrepancy in age. Right now we are working on the theory this woman is anywhere between the ages of 12 and 50. We are working on names not ages. We will try to identify her by her clothing and the like. Besides that, one man says one age, another is sure it’s another age. It’s only an opinion on their part. What we are doing is working as fast as we can, as accurately as we can to get this person identified, then worry about the age. … ‘Both are experts, but that’s only their opinion. We will continue to work on the 12 to 50 age bracket.’ … ‘There are many people who are worried sick now that it might be their relatives we might have. If we lower the age to 14 or so we open the door for a whole bunch more people.’ Crawford also cited King County missing persons and runaway statistics as 10,000 people in the age category of 14 to 19: ‘we have 40 of 50 here in Thurston county alone.’ … ‘ We are working around the clock because the sooner we come up with a name, the sooner we will see the case through. It’s critical to identify the dead person as soon as possible.’ Obviously they did something right because it was eventually determined the body was Bakers.
In a joint announcement between County Fultz and the Thurston County Sheriff‘s Department, there was no doubt that the body belonged to Brenda Joy Baker. Fultz listed her death as a homicide and that she most likely died either by strangulation or knife wounds. Regarding the 48 hour identification process, Crawford said it was ‘like the spokes on a wheel. All the clues we had seemed to lead back to one hub and that hub was Brenda Joy Baker.’ He also said that the King County runaway report helped lead deputies to the final conclusion and that the clothing found with the body was sent to an FBI laboratory for analysis. Fultz released the body to the Baker family to bury. After the ID was made, Crawford said that they had no material witnesses in Brenda’s death but they ‘had a lot of people to talk to.’ On Thursday June 20, 1974, the Thurston County sheriff’s department traveled to Seattle in an attempt to retrace the last steps of the child. Because both girls were last seen hitchhiking, there was a brief period of speculation that Baker’s disappearance was somehow linked to the murder of 14 year-old Kathy Devine (also from the Seattle area): about six months before Baker disappeared on November 25, 1973 Devine was last seen hitchhiking near Olympia. Her body was found in the Capitol State Forest on December 6, 1973 after a young couple stumbled upon her remains. It was eventually determined that Bundy had nothing to do with the young girls murder: on March 7, 2002 Thurston County authorities revealed that recently discovered DNA evidence cleared him and pointed to a different man as her killer: William E. Cosden Jr. (who coincidentally was already in prison for rape).
In an article about the Baker case published in the Olympian on June 23, 1974, an anonymous male called the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department and told them he had been grouse hunting in late November 1973 when he came across a shack in the woods, where he saw a male with two girls, around 12 to 14 years old at a time that roughly corresponded with the murders of Kathy Devine and Brenda Baker. He returned to the secluded shack on the Black River in January 1974 and found it abandoned, but scattered around the structure were the carcasses of six dogs and one cat, all of which had been skinned with the bones removed. The shack apparently remained vacant until the beginning of June 1974, when the caller said he returned and saw the same man. The mystery caller returned for a final time on June 20th with a friend, but on this occasion he said they were ‘fired upon.’ He told law enforcement that the time he saw the man at the shack was very close to the time of the two homicides. Additionally, the same article reported that a Seattle man and his wife told police they saw a girl matching Bakers description hitchhiking near the Scott Lake interchange on the I-5 in May. Additionally, a man named Bill Sullivan (also from Seattle) reported that he stopped with his wife at a truck stop at the Scott Lake interchange and saw a young girl matching Bakers description. She was hitchhiking and had gotten into an older model, light colored panel truck driven by a bearded man that came from the direction of Scott Lake.
According to the ‘TB Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992,’ Bundy was in Seattle the day Brenda disappeared, which wasn’t that far away from Puyallup and Millersylvania State Park (it was about an hour and a half one way, I made the drive with no problems). In May 1974, he was living at the Rogers Rooming House in Seattle on 12th Avenue and was employed at the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia (he was there from May 3, 1974 to August 28, 1974). Ted was in between schooling at the time and didn’t start at the University of Utah School of Law until September 1974; he was also dating Liz Kloepfer at the time.
There has been an effort to tie Bakers murder to Ted Bundy, however during his death row confessions he told Dr. Robert Keppel that he had no knowledge of the girl or her murder. I mean, who knows if he was telling the truth or not (Lord knows he didn’t do it often). Since he went to the electric chair in Florida on January 24, 1989 we’ll probably never know what really happened to young Brenda Baker (unless some unearthed, long lost evidence comes to light). Her murder is still treated as a cold case. I wish I had more time to hike through Millersylvania State Park when I was in Seattle, because the little of it I did see was beautiful. Ted committed SO MANY atrocities in Washington state alone that I barely had enough time to cram everything into my eight-day trip (I literally finished at 8 PM the night before I went home). When I told my husband about all the states I need to go to for my ‘little writing project, he was absolutely shocked. His exact words: ‘what a monster.’ I married a smart man.
Sadly both of Brenda’s parents passed away before her murder was solved: Mr. Baker died on January 18, 1979 at only 54 years old in King County, WA; he was cremated and per his last request his ashes were scattered in the Gulf of Mexico. Margaret Baker passed away on January 18, 1989 (just a few days before Bundy was executed) at the age of 68.
* Edit, July 2024: I had someone in Washington state that was in touch with the Baker family reach out and tell me that a good amount of information out there on Brenda’s case was wrong, including the most commonly used picture of her. However she didn’t elaborate beyond that and I’m unsure what I needed to fix.
**Edit, October 23, 2023. The Restover Truck Stop is oddly enough where William Cosden Jr. worked (it was owned by his father. I was chatting with Kathy Devine’s sister Charlene the other day and we talked about the idea that Cosden killed Brenda, and it was like a light bulb went off in my head. The more I think about the more it makes sense.
Another Bundy Blog. 