This is the initial police report regarding Nancy’s disappearance completed by Officer D.R. Anderson on July 4, 1975. I already wrote about her but I’m going to go back and edit my piece; I am constantly updating my articles when I stumble across new information and boy did I find a great new source.
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.
I am constantly updating my articles when I stumble across new information and boy did I find a great new source. Needless to say, I’m reading through this now and will be updating Sandra’s article shortly.
Suzanne “Sue” Rae Justis was born to John and Doris (Smeed) Seay on January 5, 1950 in Vancouver, Washington. The couple were wed on December 25, 1954 and eventually relocated to Eugene, Oregon; they had three daughters (Suzanne, Chris, and Joan) and a son (Gary). Sue attended North Eugene High School and about halfway through her senior year on February 3, 1968 she married Mike Justis (who I’m deducing was her high school sweetheart as they went to school together and were so young); the couple had a son together however they divorced in November 1971. Sue was 5’3,” weighed 110 pounds and had blue eyes; she also had a mole on the left side of her face underneath her bottom lip. Like so many of the other unconfirmed victims I write about, there isn’t a lot of information out there on her (the majority of the pictures I found were from high school).
At the time she disappeared in 1973 Justis was 23 years old and wore her brown hair long and parted down the middle. Most of what we know about the last hours of Suzanne Justis’ life is because of a conversation she had with her mother: at some point on November 5, 1973 Mrs. Seay spoke with her daughter on the phone. Sue told her that she was in the general area of what was (at the time) The Memorial Coliseum in Portland, OR and was planning on returning home the next day so she could pick her son up from school (which makes me think she didn’t have to be back until around 2 or 3 PM). Mrs. Seay (who for obvious reasons was concerned about her daughter) got her a hotel room although there are no details about what one she set it up with. Despite owning a car Suzanne was known to hitchhike frequently: according to one article, law enforcement found her vehicle in her hometown of Eugene so it’s believed that she got to Portland through ulterior means (most likely hitchhiking). Sue never used the room her Mom got for her and she never returned home, making law enforcement speculate that she tried to thumb a ride home and most likely was abducted by the individual that picked her up. As we all know, Bundy often targeted hitchhikers and would quickly subdue then incapacitate them once they were securely in his vehicle. For reasons that have never been made known, a missing persons report was never filed for Justis until 1989.
One frequent route Bundy liked to take when hunting for prey was the I-5, which is the main north-to-south Interstate Highway located on the West Coast of the US. It extends throughout California, Oregon, and goes right through Seattle, WA (where Bundy was living at the time Justis disappeared in 1973). The Memorial Coliseum is located right off the I-5, which is where Sue told her Mom she was close to on the night they last spoke. Additionally, when Vicki Lynn Hollar was abducted from the nearby college town of Eugene (the University of Oregon is located there as well, which is where Kathy Parks was abducted form) she was taken right off the I-5 as well.n As we all know, Bundy’s ‘official’ reign of terror began on January 4, 1974 when he brutally assaulted and left Karen Sparks for dead in Seattle. According to the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992,’ when Justis vanished on November 5, 1973 he purchased gas in Seattle. At the time Ted was in between jobs: in September 1973 he was briefly employed as the Assistant to the Washington State Republican Chairman 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). In September 1973 he started law school at the University of Puget Sound but quickly grew disenchanted with the schools ‘lack of prestige’ and stopped attending classes. At the time he was still in a fairly committed relationship with Elizabeth Kloepfer, his longtime girlfriend in Seattle.
Is it really that far-fetched that Bundy would have gone out driving around aimlessly on a random Monday night, maybe after studying or seeing Liz? The trip would have been roughly three hours and nineteen minutes away (one way) from the Rogers Rooming House where he was living at the time. Did he just happen to drive past the Memorial Coliseum and stumble across Justis, thumbing a ride around Portland? We know he abducted Kathy Parks while living at the same place and she was roughly the same distance away (even though she was found in Washington state’s Taylor Mountain). I know the TB Investigative Report places him in Seattle (it doesn’t specify at what time), but the round trip would have been an easy one for Ted. I don’t know, if I can be honest, I don’t think he killed a lot of the girls I write about (maybe 70% of them)… but, I’m leaning towards him killing Suzanne Justis. I personally think that all these girls are going to be found in a burial site together: Rita Jolly. Vicki Hollar. Suzanne Justis. I speculate that when they find one, they’ll find them all. ‘Steve the Amateur Historian’ points out in his YouTube video about Justis that the week she disappeared Ted wasn’t going to class: he attended on Friday, November 2, 1973 then there’s a break until the following Friday, November 9. What was he doing in this time? Skipping class because he was hunting for a victim (who happened to be Suzanne)? I was able to track down his school schedule and on Monday nights he had night class from 6:15-10:45 PM (with a few ten-minute breaks in between). I would think if this happened more recently, I could search for the school’s Academic Calendar and check if maybe there was a weird mid-semester break for those dates, but considering the University of Puget Sounds Law School doesn’t even exist anymore I’m not wasting my time.
As far as I know, Bundy never discussed Justis in any capacity. When being questioned by Dr. Bob Keppel about the murder of WSU student Joyce LePage, the following exchange occurred between the two men:
Ted Bundy: ‘Yeah, I can tell you– I can tell you — yeah, we can do it that way if you’d like, too. And maybe in some ways that’s easier. I can tell you what, that’s, you know, what I’m not involved in. You know; if you have a list of that type in your head.’
Robert Keppel: ‘There’s a gal in 1971, Thurston County.’
TB: ‘No.’
RK: ‘Not that far back. Nothing that far back?’
TB: ‘1972.’
(…)
In this interview Bundy claims he started killing in 1972, meaning it isn’t that much of a reach that he would have abducted more girls from Oregon than he admitted to. Before he was executed Ted admitted to killing three women there in that state (including Parks). Who knows if he was being truthful with this number, but most Bundy scholars feel Rita Jolly and Vicki Hollar were these victims… but at this point we’ll probably never know. Ted was often under the influence while he was committing his atrocities (whether it was booze, weed, or a combination of the two)…. what’s to say there weren’t additional girls he either lied about killing or straight up didn’t remember?
Another possible suspect that was investigated but eventually ruled out was Warren Leslie Forrest, a serial killer who operated mostly in the Washington state area from 1972 to 1974. Forrest was 5’9,” 155 pounds, had light brown shoulder length hair, blue eyes, and a bushy mustache. He was employed with the Clark County Parks and Recreation Department in Washington from January 1, 1971 to October 2, 1974, when he was arrested; he could have anywhere from one to six victims. At the time of his arrest Warren was 25 years old and living with his wife and two kids on 18th Avenue in Battleground, WA. I’m not sure if he is a candidate for Suzanne Justis’ murder as he seemed to gravitate towards younger, more adolescent girls (in their mid to late teenage years). There was an obvious difference between a teenage girl and 23 year old Justis (in my opinion). Also, he seemed to ‘hunt’ more around the Vancouver area, as his only confirmed victim from Portland was Martha Morrison.
Around the same time in 1973 multiple other girls went missing from the same general area in Oregon: Fifteen year old Alison Lynn Caufman was found strangled to death in June 1973. Rita Jolly disappeared from West Linn while out on a nightly walk on June 29, 1973 and Susan Wickersham was abducted while waiting for a ride home from friends in Bend, OR on July 11, 1973. Her body was found on January 20, 1976 with a gunshot wound in the head (it’s strongly speculated Bundy didn’t have anything to do with her death as it didn’t fit his MO). Vicki Lynn Hollar disappeared after leaving her new job as a seamstress at Bon Marche in Eugene on August 20, 1973 (her black 1965 VW Beetle has also never been recovered). In 1973 Laurie Lee Canady died from massive head injuries after being shoved out of a moving vehicle at a high rate of speed in Portland (I wasn’t able to find ANYTHING else about her).
I don’t mean to immediately jump to Bundy (or any other serial killer) when I hear about any woman in the Pacific Northwest that was abducted and/or murdered in the early to mid-1970’s, but I guess I just can’t help myself. Who knows, maybe Justis met her demise at the hands of a random killer who only targeted her. Look at the recently solved case of Rita Curran, who was brutally butchered by William DeRoos. Whenever I hear about deaths like this in the 1970’s my mind automatically jumps to Bundy, but what if it was just some random nut?
If Suzanne were alive in May 2023 she would be 73 years old. Because she had a son to care for I highly doubt she would just up and leave on her own (especially since she spoke with her mother the night she vanished and mentioned her intentions of coming home the next day). Mr. Seay passed on January 11, 1994 and Suzanne’s mom Doris died at the age of 82 on March 12, 2012.
Shelley Kay Robertson was born on July 24, 1951 to Elmer and Roberta Robertson of Arvada, Colorado. The couple had four children: three boys (Mark, Gary, and Rick) and Shelley; they divorced at some point and Mr. Robertson remarried. Elmer was the owner of Silver State Printers and it seemed to be a bit of a family affair: per Steve Winn’s book, ‘Ted Bundy: The Killer Next Door,’ both Shelley and her brother Gary helped out with the business (she was a bookkeeper and binder). Shelley attended Arvada High School, and after graduating in 1969 she spent a year on a missionary trip in Biloxi, Mississippi run through the United Church of Christ. Her faith was important to her and she was an active member of the Church of Christ. Roberta encouraged her only daughter to travel and experience the world, often telling her that ‘you can always come back to your hometown.’ After returning from Biloxi, Shelley enrolled in Red Rocks Community College as a Spanish major; she even went to Barra de Navidad (a fishing village in Mexico) for a semester with her class (after the school trip she returned once to visit on her own). At one point in her short life she spent a year in Alaska with a friend (Susan), where they processed fish in Clam Gulch. Mrs. Robertson said that growing up, Shelley dreamed that one day a white horse would come into her life and she would name him Brownie. It was a story she knew well, and one day her daughters dream somehow came true (although it was a neighbor’s horse). This sweet encounter hinted at the future that she would eventually get her own horse: a sweet little gray mare named Bonnie she rode around bareback. Shelley was 5’8” tall, weighed 150 pounds, and had brown eyes with long brown hair she wore parted down the middle. At the time of her disappearance she was attending a Transactional Analysis group.
Shelley had an apartment in Denver and a boyfriend named Ron, who seemed to have been in the process of going to California right before she disappeared (I couldn’t find the reason or the length of his visit), which upset her (one of her brothers said she was crying and upset at one point right before she disappeared). It’s speculated that the day before she vanished Shelley had gotten into a fight with him where she got out of his red Karman Gia and thumbed a ride home. Robertson was a frequent hitchhiker and thought nothing of catching a ride states away ‘for fun.’ Shelley was last seen dressed in bell-bottom jeans, a T-shirt with the name of a rock band on the front (most likely either Yes or ‘Emerson, Lake & Palmer’) and hiking boots by friends near a local watering hole called ‘Tony’s Bar’ on June 29th. Per a document provided by the Pitkin County Sheriff’s, Shelley was last seen at 34th and Sheridan Streets in Denver hitchhiking to work. Additionally, according to her brother Gary, missing from her wardrobe were a pair of blue denim cutoffs, a blouse, a brown and white striped dress, and ‘Earth” sandals. On Tuesday, July 1, 1975 Robertson never showed up for work at Mr. Robertson’s printing press in Golden. The same day, she was seen by a policeman that noticed her at a service station with a bushy haired bearded man in a beat up old red Chevrolet pick up truck (from around 1952-57). It was the last time she was seen alive but it’s reported she made a phone call later that night.
Days then weeks passed with no word from Shelley. On August 21, 1975 two students conducting Amex testing for gas content from the ‘Colorado School of Mines’ came across the body of Shelley Robertson in a mine in Berthoud Pass, Colorado near the Winter Park Resort. About 500 feet in they smelled something unusual: human decomposition. Using their flashlights, they strained to see what was down the narrow tunnel, seeing something large and white. Upon further inspection they realized they were looking at a foot and “bare buttocks” and that “we’ve got body, lets get out of here.” They notified law enforcement and the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s returned on August 23 to find the naked, decomposing remains of Shelley Robertson discarded in the mine. Her body was ‘badly molded’ and bound with duct tape. Although it was determined she had been struck on the front side of the head, the top rear of the head, and the right side of her chest too much time had passed and because of the advanced levels of decomp forensic experts were unable to pinpoint the exact cause of death. Found at the scene were two torn pieces of furnace tape (one on the body and one discarded nearby) as well as discarded beer can and a plastic wrapper from a package of ham. Leads quickly ran dry.
Law enforcement looked into multiple suspects aside from Bundy, including Warren Leslie Forrest, Ottis Toole, “a chronic sex offender that lived nearby,” a man in Shelley’s Transactional Analysis group that claimed he was alive during the Civil War, a “quiet friend” of hers that oddly enough drove a VW Bug, and a mystery man named Jake Teppler. Forrest and Toole were both quickly ruled out as Forrest was already in jail at that point (he was incarcerated since 1974) and the latter was placed in Jacksonville, FL at the time (after drifting and hitchhiking throughout the Southern part of the US). According to Steve Winn, Teppler was a graduate of Tufts University and a resident of the nearby Snowmass Village in CO as well as a former employee of a “condominium complex.’ According to a former part time coworker (who worked a 9-5 job as a music therapist), Teppler was ‘very sick, the kind of person who would go in the corner and jack off.” He seemed to be a bit of a nomad, and wandered the area going through jobs quickly as he was unable to keep them (remind you of anyone?). Looking into Teppler I couldn’t find anything related to a criminal record.
At the time Shelley was murdered Bundy was attending law school at the ‘University of Utah’ and was living at 565 1st Avenue North in Salt Lake City. Per my ‘handy dandy TB job chart,’ in June and July 1975 Ted was employed as the night manager in charge of Bailiff Hall at the University (he was terminated after showing up for work drunk). It also said that Bundy worked as a PT security guard for the school in July and August but due to budget cuts he lost that position as well. When researching this piece I kept seeing in multiple sources that ‘crumpled up credit card receipts found in his VW’ placed Bundy in Golden either a few days before Shelley disappeared or the day of (sources have reported both), but the ‘TB Multiagency Report 1992’ puts him in Salt Lake City during that time frame. I scoured the internet for the receipts but couldn’t find them. I do want to point out that Bundy did own an old pickup truck until about November/December 1975 (he bought it to help transport his belongings to Utah when he started law school).
On June 27, 1975 (just a few days before Shelley was last seen), Bundy abducted and murdered Susan Curtis while she attended a youth conference at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City. Four days after Robertson was last seen on July 4, 1975, Nancy Perry-Baird was abducted from the gas station where she worked in East Layton, UT and was never seen or heard from again. We know Bundy was quickly approaching the end of his reign of terror: he was pulled over by Utah State Trooper Bob Haywood on August 21, 1975 and was arrested for the possession of burglary tools, which eventually resulted in his arrest for the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch.
At some point when Bundy was incarcerated in Utah (he was transferred to Aspen, Colorado on January 28, 1977 to face charges for the murder of Caryn Campbell), former Cold Creek County Undersheriff Bob Denning traveled to Salt Lake City to interview him about the murder of Shelley Robertson. When the law enforcement officer asked him about her Ted is reported to have answered, ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’ Denning has commented that he is ‘99% sure that Shelley’s killer is Ted Bundy.’ Additionally, I read in multiple sources that Bundy confessed to Shelley’s murder before he was put to death however I can’t find it anywhere in the transcripts of his death row interviews.
A really interesting source I came across was an article by Shelley’s brothers one-time girlfriend, Kristen Iversen. Kristen is a writer as well (at a much more professional level) and in a piece she wrote for ‘The American Scholar” titled ‘When Death Came to Golden,’ she talks about the disappearance of Shelley and shares an intimate account of how the Robertson family adapted to life after she was taken from them. In response to Mrs. Robertson pulling her close after they met and whispering in her ear, ‘you can save this family,’ Kristen commented that: ‘I couldn’t save Mark’s family. I know this now. I couldn’t save Shelley, whose brief life had already been forgotten and erased by the town, by the media, by the nation. I couldn’t save Mark’s father, a blue-collar man who worked hard all his life and had to bear sorrows no man should have to bear. I couldn’t save Mark’s mother, who for years left Shelley’s bedroom untouched.’ That’s why I write about these girls, because they’ve largely been forgotten about. There’s not much out there on these victims; I seem to find the same little pieces of information over and over.
When Bundy was executed in January 1989 Roberta Robertson traveled from Colorado (she lived in the same house she raised her family in) to Florida and stood in a crowd of candle-holders outside the prison, waiting for word that he was officially dead. She told a journalist, “killing Ted Bundy won’t make me feel better and it won’t bring back Shelley. A lot of people seem to want it out of a vengeance. But it gives people a false sense of security. And it’s terribly expensive.” Mrs. Robinson passed away on September 23, 2009 in Lakewood, CO. Almost as tragic as Shelley’s murder, her brother Mark passed away at the age of 24 in a rock-climbing accident in 1979.
Kristen Iversen’s essay about Shelley will be included in an anthology published later this year. Her website is http://www.kristeniversen.com. When it’s released I’ll post a link to my FB page.
Works Cited:
David Merrill & Steven Winn. “Ted Bundy: The Killer Next Door.” 1979.
Kristen Iversen. The American Scholar: “When Death Came to Golden.” March 5, 2018.
Aleca Renee Manning was born on March 13, 1952 in Fairbanks, Alaska and was adopted shortly after by James and Norma Manning. I wasn’t able to find out a lot about her background and childhood but apparently she ‘has a few half-siblings out there.’ Ms. Manning had green eyes, brown hair, was roughly 5’2” tall, weighed 125 pounds and was biracial (white and Native American). Aleca was described as ‘friendly, a happy flower child, and probably a bit naive… too trusting.’ Norma Manning worked as a receptionist and bookkeeper for a few different employers in Alaska, Arizona, and Texas. It was reported that she had an incredibly toxic relationship with her husband and after they divorced she took Aleca and moved to Arizona (James eventually moved there too and remarried). After finishing high school, Mr. Manning attended the University of Idaho and the Pacific Coast Banking School in Seattle and got a job in the banking industry; at one time he was the VP/Manager of Valley National Bank in Metha, AZ.
Also referred to as ‘Leca’ and ‘Lisa’ (pronounced ‘uh-Lisa’), in 1970 Aleca graduated from Westwood High School in Mesa, AZ (it’s incorrectly listed as 1971 in multiple sources). Leca was supposedly a bit of a wild child and reportedly struggled with some substance abuse issues. According to a family member, alcoholism ran in the Manning family: ‘her grandmother (who is Norma sister) died of alcoholism living homeless at a YMCA. And when Lisa was young Norma had a very volatile relationship with her husband. They left Alaska either to get away from him or because he died. Aunt Norma told me he was very abusive.’ (I realize this wouldn’t really apply to Aleca since she was adopted but maybe growing up in an environment with lots of alcohol around her trigger a budding problem).
Aleca was last seen on February 17, 1975 at roughly 10:30 PM at the Celebrity Theatre located at 440 North 32nd Street in Phoenix, Arizona. The twenty-two year old went to a Jerry Jeff Walker concert but at some point got separated from her friend group. She failed to come home that night and never showed up for work the following day. It’s hypothesized that she may have indulged in some form of drug use at the concert (no judgment, we were all young once) and I wonder if this made her more vulnerable and easier to abduct or lure away. Denise Naslund apparently took a few Valiums with alcohol before she was abducted from Lake Sammamish in July 1974 and I hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way (I say this as an addict with over 12 years sober) but I hope whatever she took dulled her senses enough that she wasn’t aware of the fact that her life was ending. Aleca was last seen wearing a dark green floor-length coat, a light green blouse with moss green pants, and dark tan shoes.
As of April 2023 no one has been charged in the disappearance of Aleca Manning but foul play is suspected. Leca’s family feels that whoever she left that concert with is most likely who abducted her and that her killer most likely dumped her remains in a desert. What’s interesting is when I was doing research on this case I stumbled upon some comments from a relative of Aleca’s on the website ‘Websleuths’ (user name is Kristine55 and Norma was her great Aunt): ‘Norma Manning is sisters with my father’s mother. Leca (I will use Lisa so I can dictate). She would be very touched to know that people still care. Now that Norma is gone I look from time to time to see if there’s any updates and that’s how I found you all.’ … ‘One more thing I don’t think that Lisa would have run away and never contacted her mom again… There was no reason. The way Norma described the relationship it was these two against the world and that she was a precious wonderful little girl. Lisa was the center of Normas life.’ … ‘Her family thinks that a serial killer got her and that she probably left with him. And there is a possibility but she was taking drugs at night. We have always felt that her body is somewhere in the desert. The only good thing I can say is I know that they were united now I don’t believe this because of religion but because of physics and the fact that everything in life is waves of energy… Matter cannot be destroyed it can only be changed. I feel like they found each other again. I was born in January 1975 and I never met Lisa or if I did I was less than two months old. She still has an effect on my life because I’m still thinking about her. Her and I look eerily similar at the same age. I feel like I’m just checking up to see what’s going on because I’m carrying the torch for aunt Norma. Incidentally, I graduated high school in Tucson Arizona. I wanted to go see Morrissey in concert in Phoenix when I was 17… I was not allowed to go without my stepmother. I don’t think my dad’s forgotten what happened to Lisa either.’
At the time Manning disappeared Ted was living in Salt Lake City and was enrolled in law school for a second time. He was unemployed and still in a long-distance relationship with Liz Kloepfer (although its common knowledge he was routinely unfaithful to her). The drive from his apartment to the Celebrity Theater in Phoenix, Arizona would have been slightly over a twenty-two hour trip for Bundy (or about 1,421 miles one way). If you look at the ‘TB MultiAgency Investigative Team Report 1992,’ it was noted that he took a phone call in SLC the day Manning disappeared (also Caryn Campbell’s body was found 2.8 miles away from The Wildwood Inn in Aspen). In my opinion, it seems unlikely that Bundy killed Aleca (but apparently there are some sort of errors/inaccuracies in the report so who knows).
As we know, Ted didn’t have a problem driving hundreds of miles in one night while hunting for his prey. Another two abductions that fit in Bundy’s mid-1970’s time frame are Cynthia and Jackie Leslie, who vanished in Mesa, AZ on July 31, 1974 (Teri is covering the sisters’ background in Part One so I won’t be redundant here). They were last seen In Mesa walking to a friend’s house shortly after leaving their residence in the Desert Shores Mobile Home Park. We know at the time they disappeared in 1974 Bundy was living at the Rogers Rooming house in Seattle, so if he killed them he would have had to drive to Mesa, then back again to Seattle… one way is over 22 hours, that’s almost an entire days worth of driving just one way with no breaks. In my opinion, that’s a bit of a stretch. Additionally, I drove a newer VW for over three years and that’s a very long trip for a car like that. And Bundy drove a LOT… how long could an old Beetle last with him driving around the country like that?
There really isn’t much out there on whether or not Bundy was active in Arizona (when you search ‘Ted Bundy’ and ‘Arizona’ together you mostly get a lot of news articles on Ted from AZ based newspapers). I’ve never seen it discussed in any TB related literature, and even searching websites like Reddit/YouTube (where people LOVE weird conspiracy type shit like this) relevant information is slim pickings. Oddly enough, one of the only things I found was a really popular BuzzFeed video (with a whopping 4.5 million views) titled ‘Was my Mom Followed by Ted Bundy?,’ where a young man simply going by the name of ‘Chris’ discusses an alleged encounter his Mom had with Ted Bundy in the middle-1970’s in Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona. Unfortunately, Chris doesn’t give much of a time frame beyond it was ‘summer in the mid-70’s’ (I asked for a better idea of when this event took place with no response and searched through the YouTube comments for clarification with no success), which obviously leaves us wide open as far as where Bundy was living at the time and how long his drive to the Canyon would have been. The story goes (I’m only going to briefly summarize this because you can find the transcript in Teri’s article): Chris’s Mother, Aunt, and their friend went to Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona, and while sitting at a pond just hanging out, enjoying the day they noticed a well-dressed man staring at them from across the water. Eventually he got up and started walking over to them ‘with intent,’ so the three friends got in their car and got out of there to not escalate the situation. Surprisingly, the mystery man got in his vehicle and followed them in a ‘yellowish, cream colored VW Beetle.’ Panicked, they finally pulled into a gas station and thankfully the man drove right by them. Fast forward about 15 years: Chris’ Mom (I’m not exactly sure what else to call her) is watching the news and sees that Bundy is about to be put to death in Florida. She sees his face and immediately realizes it was the man that followed her that day in the 1970’s. Oddly enough, her sister was watching the same news broadcast and immediately called to say that she felt it was him that followed them as well.
If this encounter happened on the earlier end of the mid-70’s when he was living in Seattle it would have been over a twenty-one hour drive just one-way (or roughly 1,375 miles). Ted moved into a room at Ernst and Freda Rogers boarding house in September 1969 lived there until September 2, 1974 when he moved from Salt Lake City to attend law school at the University of Utah. Now, if he would have driven to Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona while living in Utah it would have been about a little over an eight and a half hour drive, one way. But let’s not forget, he did abduct Roberta Kathleen Parks from the University of Oregon in Corvallis while living in Seattle, which was almost a five hour drive away (I know that’s still over 3.5 hours closer than Oak Creek Canyon but it helps prove my point that Bundy had no problem driving long distances).
What doesn’t make sense to me about this is I’ve never heard of Bundy going after three victims at once. Shit, it isn’t even confirmed he abducted more than one girl at the same time, even though it’s speculated he may have been involved in the 1969 Jersey Parkway murders where two girlfriends on vacation Memorial Day weekend were killed as well as the brutal assault of two stewardesses from the Capitol Hill area of Seattle in 1966. I mean, I’m not saying it wasn’t Ted, but I’m also not saying it was. About this story my friend Erin Banks points out in her book ‘Ted Bundy: Examining the Unconfirmed Survivor Stories‘ that he ‘had coveralls in the trunk at all times. I have some trouble imagining that Bundy, dressed in a suit and tie, would chase after a group of women.’ Good point Erin.
We know Ted has never officially been linked to Arizona (no unconfirmed victims are from there either) but in my mind it really isn’t that far-fetched that he would have driven states away to commit more crimes against humanity. In fact, the more jurisdictions to help trip up the police the better (law enforcement in the 70’s were notorious for not sharing information with one another). In the only other semi-useful piece of information I could find about this topic, (a Reddit thread titled ‘Ted Bundy was active in Arizona’), user ‘Gothkatt’ begins by breaking down Chris’ BuzzFeed video, pointing out that the incident took place in the mid-70’s, which as we all know aligns up with Bundy’s murder spree (which officially went from 1974 to 1978 even though he was incarcerated for a good chunk of 1976 and almost all of 1977). What’s interesting about this time frame is that there are five unsolved missing female cases in Arizona from 1974-1975. The first case from this period took place on September 20, 1973: law enforcement deemed the disappearance of 14 year old Dorothy Mildred Clitheroe to be ‘fairly unremarkable’ and they strongly speculated that she ran away from home to a different state. I discussed the disappearance of Aleca Manning and Teri covered the two Leslie sisters. The fifth and final individual from that time period vanished on September 10, 1975, which was after Ted was arrested (a 21 year-old named Kristina Ann Perkins). After Perkins disappeared in Fall 1975 there was a two year gap and the next missing woman’s case didn’t occur until 1977.
Oddly enough as I was proofreading this (and almost ready to release it) I stumbled upon a third source of information in the form of a TikTok video: a user by the name of ‘mattyicerants‘ said that in 1969 his Mother drove her VW Beetle from New York to Arizona and took a pit stop at the Grand Canyon. While there she ran into a gentleman (driving a tan colored Bug) and asked if he ‘wouldn’t mind taking her picture;’ ‘Bundy’ agreed (the user couldn’t find the print but claims to have seen it). ‘Mattyicerants’ went on to elaborate that the same year Bundy went through a break up (with Diane Edwards) and because of that heartache he drove ‘all around the country.’ This is easily debunk-able as the ‘TB Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992’ pinpoints that Ted bought his tan/gold/bronze/tan/cream/off-white/yellow Beetle in spring 1973. Also, in 1969 Ted was in Pennsylvania for roughly the first half of the year and when he went home to Tacoma he was driving a professors car (dropping it off in California then going to Tacoma). I was unable to find what kind of car it was.
Exactly seven years to the day she disappeared, in 1982 Norma Manning had her daughter officially declared dead in the state of Texas. She moved to Myra, TX to be close to her Father and died on July 12, 2008 at the age of 86; she never fully recovered from her daughter’s disappearance. James Manning passed away in August 1971. As of April 2023 the disappearance of Aleca Manning remains unsolved.
Was it ever confirmed? No. Could he have killed in Arizona? Absolutely. I am here to convince you it could have happened. Keep your mind open, we are dealing with Bundy, after all. Anything is possible. I don’t have concrete proof, but no one will ever know how many more states he committed murder in. The times do line up and he killed girls in Colorado, Utah, Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Florida. Utah is right above Arizona and Colorado is very close too, so why wouldn’t he also travel to Arizona?
The second map is the US in the 1970s. Both maps show how easy it would
have been to come into Arizona from the other states he was active in. Arizona has
miles of desert, and he could have buried girls never to be found again.
Looking at the chart, in 1974, he was in four states: Utah, Washington, Oregon,
and Idaho. Arizona is right there.
Here is a video I found: This person is wondering the same thing: If Bundy
ever was in AZ. Here again, no real proof, only the suggestion of him being in
Arizona.
This video has the author raising the same questions as I had. It really could
have happened. As a reminder, it was hard to track someone in the 70s. He could
have easily paid cash for gas as a lot of us did at that time. I believe this was why
he got away with murdering so many girls because it was so hard to track
someone. The 70s was also a time when we were raised to help others, which was
the downfall of the victims.
Next is a video and I provided the transcript to read. Three women claimed to have been chased by a well-dressed man in a cream-colored VW bug. Listen and see.
My mom was followed by a murderer, and this is that story.
All right so this story goes all the way back to the mid-1970s.
So, this is my mom’s junior year of high school.
Well it was the end of her junior year of high school, I guess I should say.
Actually, it was the start of her summer vacation.
It was a beautiful day so my mom, her sister, and her friend, decided to take a little day trip.
So, the three of them hop in the car and they’re off.
So, it takes them about two and a half hours to get there.
They’re listening to the radio, talking about things they wanna do for the summer, and eventually
they arrive at their destination, Oak Creek Canyon Park.
So, for context this trip and this entire story is all taking place in Northern Arizona.
The park they’re at sits in the middle of Coconino National Forest.
So, one of the main reasons they wanted to go to this park is because it’s absolutely gorgeous over there. There’s trees, mountains…
One of the things they notice when they get there is that it is very open.
Almost too open. So, they park their car in a small parking lot and they start scoping out an area for them to hang out. They end up plopping down at a small pond
by the park with plans to just hang out for a few hours. They had bought some food, they were maybe gonna do a picnic. They didn’t really know, other than the fact
that they were just enjoying, that summer had just begun.
I feel like it’s important to mention that my mom has been to this park before.
She’s been there a few times with some friends and what not. But it was very empty that day.
Which was strange for such a nice day. Anyway, so there they are just hanging out,
when suddenly my mom notices a man across the pond. A couple minutes go by and my mom is sitting there trying to stay engaged in the conversation with her sister, when she stares back across the pond. The man is still standing there.
He’s staring at them, rubbing his chin thoughtfully like, I see you.
Obviously, my mom’s first thought is, “what they hell is this guy doing out here by himself?”
and “why is he staring at us like that?” Trying her best not to stare back she does a few quick glances at best and she notices his clothes. He’s really well dressed.
Which is just another weird detail that didn’t seem to add up to my mom.
“We should just move to another area. “I’m getting really creeped out”, she thought to herself.
After deciding that the situation isn’t normal, she gets the attention
of her sister and her friend, pointing at the man staring
at them across the pond. They tell her she’s overthinking it
and she’s just being crazy. He’s probably there just enjoying
the park like anyone else would. It is a public park after all.
And you know they were probably right. People are allowed to be outside.
People are allowed to go to public parks. Whatever. Still feeling uneasy, my mom tries her best
to go back to just enjoying her day. Out of the corner of her eye,
she notices a slight movement. Instantly her eyes dart back across the pond.
The man isn’t there anymore. Suddenly she catches sight of the man.
He’s walking along the edge of the pond, headed their direction.
The scariest part, he was walking with intention. He was walking toward them.
And to my mom, that was it. So as to not escalate the situation
any further, because my mom had no idea what was going to happen, my mom
softly but sternly pointed out the man walking across the pond.
Finally, they all agree that something wasn’t right about this situation,
and that they should move, now. As quickly and quietly as they could,
they gathered their things and headed back to the car.
All the while, my mom is sneaking glances at him. He was still there, walking with an even
quicker pace than he was before. Closing in on where they had just been seconds before.
My mom will say to this day, she had the worst feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She was practically hyperventilating. Out of fear, instinct, caution,
whatever you wanna call it, my mom picks up a rock on the way to the car.
They reach the car; they throw their stuff in the trunk and they pile in.
My mom is hunched over in the back seat clutching the rock for dear life.
She peaks out the back window as the car starts.
She doesn’t see him. Wherever he was, they needed to get outta there.
With the tires practically squealing out of the parking lot, they race
down the same road they drove in on. At this point, everyone’s eyes
are glued to the rearview mirror. “So that was weird,” my mom thought to herself.
Rock in hand, my mom was definitely shaken up.
My mom’s sister, the one who was driving the car, quickly looks in the rearview mirror,
and she says, “oh my god look.” The energy in the air, they felt cold.
They just felt wrong. Slowly my mom peers out the back window one more time.
To her horror, she sees a car emerging from the same parking lot, following them.
She’ll never forget the feeling of watching a yellowish, cream-colored, Volkswagen Beetle
slowly gaining ground on them.
Now, everyone was truly terrified. What did this person want?
Why was he following them? All my mom knew was this person is evil.
She could feel it. Her sister floors the gas peddle,
and luckily, they were able to maintain a distance between themselves and this man.
Eventually they get to a gas station, and they pull over to what they hope is safety.
To their surprise, and ultimately their relief, the man drives right by them.
My mom, my mom’s sister and her friend, they were all really unsettled by the whole thing.
Now, you’re probably wondering why I just told you that story, please don’t go anywhere.
I’m about to explain the craziest part. So about 15 years go by.
My mom’s just at home, minding her own business watching the news, when she sees
that convicted serial killer Ted Bundy is about to be sentenced to death.
She’s watching the news learning more about this man, and she learns that he was well dressed,
he drove a yellow, cream-colored Volkswagen Beetle, and he committed several murders in Colorado. Which is right about Arizona.
And as she’s watching the news, the phone rings. My mom’s sister, my aunt who was with her
when this happened all those years ago, is watching the same broadcast when she calls my mom.
And without even saying hello, the very first thing my aunt says is,
“Do you think it was him?” And without missing a beat, my mom slowly says,
“I know it was him.”
Now, I know you might be thinking that Ted didn’t chase his victims, but he
did chase Carol DaRonch after she got away so he could have done that. So, he
was not above chasing his victims.
There are many missing girls from Ted Bundy’s timeline, and we may never
know if he killed them or not. There are several missing girls from this timeline in
Arizona. The ones that stick out for me are 2 sisters that went missing in 1974. If
you check the timeline, you can see he was active in all states in 1974. He could
have easily come down to Arizona and tricked those girls in his car. He could have
had another car he was using too.
The first two are sisters who both went missing on July 31st, 1974. They
were 13 and 15 years old. Bundy was very active during 1974 and is confirmed to
have murdered two young women near Seattle. Two weeks later the two Arizona
girls go missing. Could he be responsible? And why would he have traveled that
far? Well, Bundy had moved to Utah for law school during this time, which is a
state above Arizona, why wouldn’t he also travel to Arizona?
The third unsolved Arizona missing female went missing on February 17, 1975. She was a beautiful 22-year-old woman, Bundy’s type. Bundy has a known murder in January of that year, and March, but February is missing. Again, the times line up. (I will find info on this third girl and hand it over to Jessica to cover.)
Here is the story of the missing sisters:
On July 31st, 1974, Cindy Leslie, 15 and Jackie Leslie, 13 disappeared from
Mesa, Arizona. They were both born to parents, Jack, and Erma Leslie. Cindy
Leslie was born on February 1st, 1959, and Jackie Leslie on February 15th, 1961.
Cindy was 5’6 and 109 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. Jackie had brown
hair and blue eyes and was 110 pounds at 5’4.
Their parents, Jack, and Erma Leslie had been at church and their
grandmother was home at the time the girls left. She later told police, Cynthia had
received a phone call just before leaving, wrote a note to her parents, and left with
Jackie. That warm July evening, the two girls were seen walking down Baseline
Road away from their home at the Desert Sands Mobile Home Park, near the
intersection at Sossaman Road. They had left a note for their parents saying they
were going to babysit at the “same place,” referencing a family’s home where they
had babysat before.
Erma later learned that the girls had planned on going to a party about three
blocks from their residence on Power Road. Cynthia wanted to see a boy that her
parents had forbidden her to see. It is not clear if they ever arrived at the party.
Some who attended said they never arrived; others who went said they did attend.
That evening when the girls didn’t arrive home. Erma worriedly slept on the
couch waiting for them.
Remember this was a time before cell phones, GPS, and the Internet. The
only means they had was to either leave a note or call on a landline. They lived at a
time when Phoenix and the surrounding areas were still quite rural. You could
smell the sweet orange blossoms drifting from the acres of orchards; families still
sat outside their homes chatting and backyard barbecues brought families together.
At that time Phoenix was still safe and no one worried about their daughters being
out.
The girls left a note that they were going to go babysit. The girls were seen
walking down Baseline Road away from their house. This was the last time they
would be seen. Back in 1974, it was a remote desert surrounded by cotton fields
and orange groves. Police searched the area, but no evidence of the girls was ever
found.
It was a time when kids could run around outside, and parents weren’t
concerned about murderers wandering the streets preying upon their children.
Or at least that was the perception.
At the time of the girl’s disappearance, the Leslie family was new to the
desert mobile home community. They had moved from Page, Arizona, about four
hours north. Jack Leslie, their father, had terminal lung cancer so they moved to be
closer to his doctors but sadly, Jack passed away seven months after his daughters
disappeared.
Erma says the girls would have never left during their father’s illness as they were
very close. Forty-four years later, the girls’ mother Erma Leslie, and their sister
continue the search despite the lack of evidence and the amount of time passed. “I
was sure that they would call me and tell me to come and get them,” Erma said.
“But it didn’t happen. It still hasn’t happened.”
As deputies ran out of theories and leads, Erma took charge. She brought fliers to
sheriff’s departments in Arizona and southern California.
Desperate for answers, she visited a psychic in the Los Angeles area who told her
at the time the girls were alive and near water, so she drove up the California coast
looking for them.
She received an anonymous phone call from Casa Grande from someone who said
Cindy and Jackie were on a train that was going to go through Douglas, Arizona.
Erma and Linda drove there and searched the train, but didn’t find anything.
One neat thing about this project is I’m constantly finding new information and pictures of victims I already wrote about. I always update my pieces too (by the way) with the new things I learn and recently I discovered that there was an auditorium dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth Perry located at the Humane Society in Golden Valley, Minnesota (she is one of the girls killed by the Jersey Shore in NJ during Memorial Day weekend in 1969).
Instead of another in-depth deep dive here’s a brief summarization of each girls case along with a few pictures of Bundy’s more frequently discussed unconfirmed victims. I’ve written about multiple other “suspected” victims (like Kathy Kolodziej or Rita Curran) but those I didn’t include in this list as they are “easily debunked” (obviously Bundy didn’t kill Kolodziej as he was in Seattle at the time and she was in school in Cobleskill, NY and William DeRoos killed Rita Curran in Vermont).
Ann Marie Burr, 8, August 31, 1961 (disappeared). Tacoma, WA
Ann Marie Burr was born on December 14, 1952, in Del Morte County, California, to Donald and Beverly Ann (nee Leach) Burr. Eight year old Ann Marie Burr vanished from her bed without a trace on a stormy night in late August 1961. She lived a little over 3 miles away from Ted and contrary to popular belief, he was not her paperboy and his Uncle Jack did not give Ann Marie piano lessons.
Lisa Wick (20) (survived) & Lonnie Trumbull (20), June 23, 1966. Seattle, WA.
Early in the morning on June 23, 1966, roommates Lonnie Trumbull and Lisa Wick were brutally attacked as they slept in their basement apartment in the Queen Anne Hill region of Seattle. Both victims were originally from Portland, Oregon and were employed with United Airlines as flight attendants; they had only been living in the apartment for a month and (for some reason) had intentions to move into another unit in the complex later that week. Trumbull and Wick had a third roommate (Joyce Bowe), who came home around 9:30 AM to find her roommates brutally beaten. Thankfully Wick was wearing large hair curlers which helped cushion the blows of the assailant that probably saved her life. Sadly Trumbull wasn’t so lucky and she succumbed to her injuries.
Susan Perry (19) & Elizabeth Davis (19), May 39, 1969. Ocean City, New Jersey.
On May 30, 1969, 19 year-old co-eds Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry were stabbed to death near mile marker 31.9 of the New Jersey Parkway in Somers Point, NJ. The young women visited the Jersey Shore on vacation for Memorial Day since the Tuesday before. Susan had just completed her degree at an all-girls school in Godfrey, Illinois called Monticello Junior College and was set to graduate on May 25 with an associates of arts degree; Elizabeth started after her friend so she still had a ways to go in her studies before she graduated. Around 4:30 AM they left their boarding house to head back to Camp Hill, Pennsylvania in hopes of beating the holiday traffic, and before they hit the road stopped to grab a bite to eat at The Somers Point Diner. No one is really certain what happened after the girls left the restaurant roughly an hour later: A NJ trooper found their light blue 1966 Chevrolet convertible abandoned on the side of the Turnpike around noon that day and had it towed. On June 2 at about 1:30 PM, the bodies of the friends were discovered by a Garden State Parkway maintenance worker named Elwood “Woody” Faunce Jr. who searched the area of the parkway where the convertible was found. Their remains were found hidden under piles of leaves in dense woods roughly 200 yards away from the Parkway and about 150 yards from the abandoned Chevy. Davis was found completely naked and her clothes were found neatly folded in a pile nearby; Perry was fully clothed except her underwear was missing. There’s varying reports on whether or not the girls were sexually assaulted: some sources say that Perry was not raped but no determination could be made for Davis. Others claim that both girls remains were too decomposed to be able to tell, and still others that said there was “some evidence of sexual assault” but didn’t go any further in their explanation. Later news reports claim that neither girl had been sexually assaulted.
Kerry May-Hardy, 22, June 24, 1972. Seattle, Washington.
Kerry May-Hardy was born on April 3, 1950 in Seattle, Washington to John and Sheila (most recently Olson) Hardy. She grew up in the Capitol Hill district of Seattle, and attended Lincoln High School in Seattle before she dropped out her senior year. Kerry married James Garvey May on May 15, 1971 at Central Lutheran Church in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle but by the time she disappeared the couple were reportedly separated. The evening before Kerry disappeared in June of 1972 she spent the night at a girlfriends house in the Woodland Park area of Washington and from there (per a note she left behind) was going to a second girlfriends house roughly ten miles away on Beacon Hill. Years into the investigation Seattle cold case detective Mike Clestnski said that at some point it was reported she was last seen alive hitchhiking around the Woodland Park area on June 13, 1972 (a day after what was initially reported). Her remains were discovered at a golf course in September 2010 after her burial site was disturbed. May-Hardy physically fit Bundy’s victim profile, however he was executed in 1989 and never mentioning her name or claimed responsibility for her murder. Additionally Gary Ridgway has reportedly not commented on her case either.
Vicki Lynn Hollar, 23, August 20, 1973 (disappeared). Eugene, OR.
Vicki Lynn Hollar was born in Illinois on March 8, 1949, and after graduating from Southern Illinois University she moved to Eugene, OR in June 1973. At 5:00 PM on August 20, 1973 Hollar was last seen getting into her 1965 black Volkswagen Beetle with the running boards removed; she was leaving her job at Bon Marche (she was a seamstress) at 8th Avenue and Washington Street in Eugene, Oregon. Vicki and her supervisor walked out to their vehicles together after work and it’s suspected she may have been on her way to her apartment located in the 6600 block of West 27th Avenue. She had plans to attend a neighborhood party with a friend at 8:00 PM but she never came home. Vicki was never seen or heard from again. Her friends reported that she did have a habit of picking up hitchhikers and all of her possessions and clothes were found at her residence; she also never picked up her last paycheck. Vicki’s parents said that their daughter was a happy girl that was content with her life: she liked her new job and had no reason to just up and leave.
Rita Lorraine Jolly, 17, June 29, 1973(disappeared). West Linn, OR.
Rita Lorraine Jolly was born on December 6th, 1955 to Donald and Mary Elizabeth (nee Horner) Jolly of West Linn, Oregon. Jolly left her residence on Horton Road in West Linn, Oregon at 7:15 PM on June 29, 1973 to go for a nightly walk and vanished without a trace. The 17 year-old was last seen between 8:30 and 9:00 PM walking uphill on Sunset Avenue. Like so many other Bundy victims she was slender and had long, dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Jolly walked with a slight limp after a horse she was riding fell over and crushed her leg. Rita’s front teeth may have overlapped slightly and she had a small scar above her right eye just below the eyebrow.
Joyce LePage, 21, July 22, 1974 (disappeared). Pullman, WA.
Joyce Margaret LePage was born to Walter and Florence Ethelyn (nee Ham) LePage on December 4, 1949 in Pullman, Washington. Described by her family as an athletic and intelligent student, after graduating from high school she decided to attend Washington State University, which wasn’t a surprise to the LePage’s as they had a history at the school and her grandfather taught there. Despite having an off campus apartment, Joyce enjoyed sneaking into Stevens Hall, a vacant dormitory on WSU’s campus (which was also under construction at the time in the summer): she hung out on the first floor and enjoyed the quiet atmosphere and would study, write letters to her long distance boyfriend, and play the baby grand piano when the stress from the vigorous, quick-paced semester became too much. At 21 years-old, she was last seen on the schools campus on July 22, 1971. Her remains were discovered nine months later in a deep ravine south of Pullman, Washington wrapped in military blankets and a piece of missing (stolen??) carpet from Stevens Hall bound with rope. Multiple suspects have never been cleared.
Brenda Joy Baker, 14, May 25, 1974 (disappeared). Puyallup, WA.
Bespectacled Brenda Joy Baker was born on July 13, 1959, to Benjamin and Margaret (Stephens) Baker in Enumclaw, WA. Fourteen-year-old Baker was attending Tahoma Junior High School when she ran away from home on May 25, 1974; despite her young age, Baker was a frequent hitchhiker. She was last seen near Puyallup, WA on May 2, 1974 trying to thumb a ride “south” to Fort Lewis; her remains were found 31 days later on the outskirts of Millersylvania State Park not far from the Restover Truck Stop. Before she vanished, the young lady told her friends she was “planning to meet a soldier.” Baker had a long history of running away from home, even living in a foster home for an unknown period of time. However, this time the young child’s absence was immediately noticed by her family, and a missing person’s report was filed the same day. On June 17, 1974, Bakers body was found on a small road located on the outskirts of Millersylvania State Park by hikers. The young girl was positively identified as Brenda Joy Baker by Thurston County sheriff’s investigators in part due to a police report filed by her parents with King County Police as well as dental records, clothing, and jewelry (two bracelets, an earring, and a ring) found with the body. Brenda seems to come from a tragic roots, having two brothers who also passed away extremely young: Benjamin was born in 1956 and passed away at the age of 25 in 1982 and Victor who was born in 1960 but sadly died in 1981 at the age of 21.
Sandra Jean Weaver, 19, July 1, 1974 (disappeared). Salt Lake City, UT.
Sandra Jean Weaver (who went by Sandy) was born on August 5, 1955 to Bruno and Marlene of Arcadia, Wisconsin. An investigator for Mesa County Colorado Sheriff’s office said that Sandra left Wisconsin in the summer of 1974 and moved to Salt Lake City; she hitchhiked the whole way there with a girlfriend and a male friend. After the friends arrived they went to Toole and either stayed with ‘a girlfriend and a couple boys in a trailer’ or in an apartment (I read conflicting reports). She got a job roughly forty miles away in Salt Lake and hitchhiked everyday back and forth to work. Sandra was last seen leaving the “Wycoff Building” from the Salt Lake area on her lunch hour around 10/11 AM on Monday, July 1, 1974 after two individuals picked her up at her residence around 8 AM and dropped her off at her place of employment. The body of Sandra Weaver was discovered the next day on July 2, 1974 around 4:00 PM by tourists hiking in the area near DeBeque, CO by the Colorado River about sixteen to eighteen miles east of Grand Junction. Her naked body was found beaten and strangled off a service road in the Palisades Canyon (some sources say it was DeBeque Canyon) in Colorado. She had been sexually assaulted and died by suffocation due to strangulation; her fingernails were freshly manicured shortly before her death. Unfortunately her body wasn’t identified until January 1975: according to an article titled “Services Pending for Murder Victim,” she was identified through a nationwide check of persons reported missing. Law enforcement also found a very particular type of contact lens on the victims remains, and using optemetric tests forensic experts were able to determine that lens belonged to Weaver; dental records were also used.
Laurie Partridge, 17, December 4, 1974 (disappeared). Spokane WA.
Laura ‘Laurie’ Lynn Partridge was born on May 31, 1957 to Ken and Mary Partridge of Santa Monica, California. The family relocated to Spokane from Fountain Valley, CA when Mr. Partridge was transferred by the outdoor advertising firm that he worked for in August of 1974. At first Laurie was incredibly upset about the move to Washington state and had hopes of going back to California as soon as possible but she quickly settled into her new life. She even broke up with her old boyfriend in CA and started dating a new guy in Spokane. At roughly 12:30 PM on December 4, 1974 Laurie went to the administrative offices at her school after telling friends she was starting to experience menstrual cramps; she wanted to go home and lay down before her shift at work later. She didn’t have a car of her own so she called both of her parents for a ride, but they were working and told her to just hang out and wait for the bus (I read in a news article that it was rainy that day). Not willing to sit around and hoping the walk and some fresh air might help soothe her cramps, Laurie decided to trek the two miles home. She was never seen or heard from again.
Debbie Diane Smith, 17, birth date unknown. February 1975 (disappeared), SLC International Airport.
Not much is known about Deborah Diane Smith. Her stats on ‘bci.utah.gov’ website list her as 6’7” tall and 180 pounds but I wonder if this is a typo. Additionally the website says “the victim was located deceased in an open pasture located North/West of the Salt Lake International Airport. The victim was located by a Utah Power and Light worker checking on poles.”
Melanie ‘Suzi’ Cooley, 18, April 15, 1975 (disappeared). Nederland, CO.
Melanie Suzanne Cooley (also called Suzi by family and friends) was born on October 27, 1956 to Bob and Nina Cooley in Boulder, Colorado. The middle child in a family of six, Ms. Cooley was 18 years old when she disappeared close to the high school she attended in Nederland (which is about 50 miles away from Denver) on April 15, 1975. After classes were over on Tuesday, April 15, 1975, Melanie left the high school she attended in Nederland, Colorado where she was a senior and was never seen or heard from again. She was last seen by friends hitchhiking nearby campus, and it’s unclear where or when exactly she got picked up; no one saw the vehicle the young girl climbed into that day. On Friday, May 2, 1975 the body of Melanie Suzanne Cooley was discovered fully clothed and frozen by a maintenance worker on Twin Spruce Road near Coal Creek Canyon about 20 miles away from where she was last seen. Of the discovery, Jefferson County Sheriff Brad Leach said: “she had been bludgeoned, perhaps with a stone. Her hands were tied in front with a yellow nylon cord; many, many feet of it, wrapped around and around. She died from a blow to the head and strangulation. Her face had been beaten repeatedly with a rock … One contact lens was missing. The body was in pretty bad shape. What with freezing and thawing, and the wild things, two weeks lying there.”
Shelley Kay Robertson, 23, July 1, 1975 (disappeared). Golden, CO.
Shelley Kay Robertson was born on July 24, 1951 to Roberta and Elmer Robertson of Arvada, Colorado. She graduated from Arvada High School in Colorado in 1969 then spent a year doing missionary work for the United Church of Christ in Biloxi, Mississippi. After returning she attended Red Rocks Community College where she majored in Spanish. I’ve read varying reports that say she disappeared on either June 29 or July 1, 1975… what I’m deducing is she was last seen on June 29 and failed to show up to work on July 1, 1975 (I could be wrong). Seven weeks later her body was discovered in a mine shaft near Georgetown by mining students. Clear Creek County investigator Bob Denning went to Salt Lake City to discuss Robertson’s disappearance with Bundy and when asked about Robertson he said “I don’t want to talk about that.” Denning said he is 99% sure that it was Bundy who murdered Shelley.
Nancy Perry-Baird, 23, July 4, 1975 (disappeared). East Layton, UT.
Nancy Perry-Baird was born on January 14, 1952 to Kenneth and Elna (nee Dee) Perry of Provo, Utah. Nancy was divorced and had a young son when she disappeared on July 4, 1975. She was working a 3-11 PM shift (some sources say it was until midnight) as an attendant at the Fina self-service gas station in East Layton, Utah. A little after five o’clock Officer David Anderson stopped and chatted with Nancy for a bit during her shift; he bought a soda water before leaving a few minutes later to investigate a potential alcohol violation at the Shamrock gas station on the other side of the highway. When Nancy’s manager Bonnie Peck popped in to get some soda water at around 5:30 she came into a line of customers and no cashier. What happened between Officer Anderson leaving and Bonnie Peck arriving? Somehow in that 15-20 minute time frame Nancy had vanished off the face of the earth. All of her personal belongings including her car, purse, and cashed paycheck were left behind. The only thing out of the ordinary was that $10 worth of gas on a pump that hadn’t been paid for. Nancy has never been recovered.
Susan Ann Wickersham was born on November 21, 1955 to Roy and Sharon Wickersham of 905 SE Roosevelt Ave in Bend, Oregon. ‘Susie’ (as she was called by family and friends) was 5’3” tall, weighed 110 pounds, and had medium length blonde hair. One of three children, at the time she disappeared Susan was 17 years old and had just completed her junior year at Bend High School. Family and friends described her as ‘a likable young lady with a bubbly, outgoing personality.’
In 1973, Bend, Oregon had a population of approximately 37,000* people and contained only one high school, and (for the most part) its residents were trusting and everyone residing there felt safe. At that time in the 1970’s hitchhiking was common (and legal), as people believed in the goodness of others. At roughly 11:30 PM on Wednesday July 11th, 1973, Susan dropped the family car off at the Sage Room Restaurant where her mother was employed after joyriding around town with a girlfriend (some conflicting reports say she was at a party with friends). Sharon let Susan borrow the vehicle on the condition that she return it before her shift ended. The restaurant has since closed but was located at 855 NW Wall Street in Bend, OR. Mrs. Wickersham asked her daughter if she wanted to sit and wait with her until the restaurant closed and they could drive home together, but Susan said she was going to hitch a ride with friends across the street in front of the Owl Pharmacy. When they didn’t show up she decided to trek the two miles home. Susan was last seen walking away from the drug store toward the intersection of Wall and Franklin streets wearing a ‘brown car coat,’ white slacks, white shoes and a blue and white checkered shirt; she was carrying a brown handbag.
After Susan never came home that summer night, the Wickersham family became frantic with worry and traveled all over Bend in hopes to locate their daughter. They showed anyone willing to look her picture, begging for any information they may know about what may have happened the night she disappeared. Police said that disappearances among young people at the time were a ‘dime a dozen’ and theorized that she took off but would ‘turn up soon.’ Mr. and Mrs. Wickersham immediately suspected foul play and told law enforcement that Susan didn’t runaway and would never leave voluntarily: she had a steady job and no problems in her personal or family life. Unfortunately they didn’t agree and suspected the teen ran away from home. In the months following Wickersham’s disappearance, police received multiple reports of possible sightings of her: former Bend Police Chief Emil Moen said they received calls that she was seen in Vancouver, Klamath Falls, Portland, and Bend. Most of these reports were from people who had seen girls that they felt looked like Susan. Two of them said she was in Klamath Falls a few days after Wickersham disappeared; another report was given by a salesman who said he recognized her as a girl he saw eating breakfast at a restaurant in Klamath Falls after he saw a story about Susan on the news. A Bend woman said that she spoke with a girl fitting Wickersham’s description at a bus stop in Klamath Falls. All reports lead to nothing. Wickersham’s little sister Rhonda McMurran said that ‘the police tried to tell them she had run away. I just don’t think they took it real seriously at the time. We knew better.’ … ‘I just knew she was gone, but you still have to hold hope.’ The family knew deep down that something bad had happened to their Susan. Because at first they weren’t taken seriously, the Wickersham family feels that law enforcement lost valuable time and evidence in the first few years after she disappeared. The police however claim that’s not true at all, and they did follow up on multiple leads and claim they made a real effort to locate her.
Denice Blake was at the Sage Room Restaurant waitressing the night Susan disappeared in 1973 and told police she remembers seeing her childhood friend briefly when she stopped in to return her mothers car. In 2015, Denice told KTVZ: ‘It was just a sunny ordinary day. This was Bend, Oregon in 1973, stuff like that didn’t happen here. I worked at the Sage Room Restaurant with (Susan’s) mom. She came in that day and we said ‘hi’ and exchanged greetings. A couple minutes later, I was waiting on a table and I saw her standing across the street in front of what was then the Owl Pharmacy, and the next time I happened to look out the window, she was gone.’ A different eyewitness claimed to have seen Wickersham near the Tower Theater a little later on in the night.
On January 20, 1976, Susans remains were discovered about three to five miles south of Bend in the Deschutes River Woods; I read conflicting reports that said a man scouring the area for firewood stumbled upon them and others that said, ‘a logger near a truck weigh station close to Highway 97 found her remains near a cinder pit.’ With the body were some ‘personal items’ and scraps of clothing that helped identify her. Like most other cases involving a burial site in a remote location, forest creatures had scattered Wickersham’s bones all over the area. Her skull had a bullet hole behind the right ear with no exit wound, and because of this police feel that she most likely met her demise from a small caliber weapon (possibly a .22 pistol). Portland Deputy State Medical Examiner Larry Lewman determined that the bones were there for probably two years or more’ and were those of an individual in their late teens/early 20’s (but had no idea if the skeleton belonged to a male or female). Because Susan’s dental records couldn’t be located (for unknown reasons), Bend law enforcement had to mail the skull to her former dentist, Dr. David Mason (who moved to Stewart, British Columbia to treat Eskimos) in hopes he could ID his former patients’ teeth from memory. Dr. Lewman said that ‘we’re depending on memory. There are some distinctive dental characteristics (residual baby teeth, impacted wisdom teeth) which he (Mason) might remember.’ Thankfully Dr. Davis did remember because he was able to confirm that the skull belonged to Wickersham as he ‘recognized the dental work as his own.’ Former Deschutes County District Attorney Mike Dugan said that ‘there was no doubt that she was dead, there’s no question she met death by a homicidal act, so it became a whodunit.’
Unfortunately the amount of evidence found with Susans remains was next to nothing and the case once again went cold. To this day law enforcement has an unnamed person of interest in mind but unfortunately not enough evidence to prosecute them. In 2004 (one source said it was 2005), the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office assembled their ‘Cold Case Team,’ which consists of veteran law enforcement whose mission is to investigate cases that have long gone nowhere and still remain unsolved. According to a 2011 article published in the Bend Bulletin, ‘the squad consists of four retired law enforcement officials who volunteer about 20 hours each week poring over binders filled with information on unsolved crimes. And it’s Wickersham’s long-unsolved case that sparked the start of the cold case squad.’ They are hoping for members of the public to come forward and help provide new information to help link the suspect to Susan’s murder. On September 12, 2006, the Cold Case Squad joined forces with a FBI crime scene processing team from Portland that included 15 volunteers from the sheriff’s office search and rescue unit. Together they searched an area near Knott and Scalehouse Roads in hopes to collect new evidence related to Wickersham’s case (however they didn’t come up with much).
In July 1973, Ted Bundy was in between jobs: from November 1972 to April 1973 he worked for the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory Commission helping draft the state’s new hitchhiking laws (ironically, he also wrote a rape-prevention pamphlet). He remained unemployed until September 1973 when he was the assistant to the Washington State Republican chairman. The ‘FBI Multi-Agency Team Report 1992‘ has no record of Teds whereabouts on 7.11.1973 (although he was in Olympia the day before and after). Bundy was in between schooling at the time as well: later on in the year he enrolled in the of University of Puget Sound’s Law School in Tacoma (that endeavor didn’t last long). He was also in a long-term relationship with Liz Kloepfer at the time as well. The drive from the Rogers Rooming House in Seattle where Ted was residing at the time to the Sage Room Restaurant in Bend was a bit over six hours, one way (or roughly 330ish miles). Receipts put him in Seattle the day before and after but in my opinion, Ted definitely could have made that trip easily with no issues. and what if he bought gas in cash (so there was no real paper trail)? Now, I know I’m not a cop or criminologist. I know that none of Bundy’s victims suffered from gunshot wounds BUT (and I’m just throwing this out there): in a 2022 interview with People magazine, Carol DaRonch said Ted ‘brandished a gun’ when he attempted to kidnap her in 1975 in Utah. Did Bundy experiment with alternative methods aside from a crowbar and strangulation? In my article about the homicides of Susan Davis and Elizabeth Perry (also known as the New Jersey Parkway Murders), I wrote about how the two girls were vacationing at the Jersey Shore Memorial Day weekend in 1969 and were stabbed to death shortly after they departed for home. Were these early murders ones Bundy committed before he honed and ‘perfected’ his technique? The human body contains a shockingly large amount of blood; was stabbing and shooting too ‘messy’ for Ted, which is why he never returned to these methods again (that we know of anyways)? We do know he carried an extra set of clothes in his car with him at all times in case of emergencies. Personally, I do think this case is a bit of a stretch and poor Miss. Wickersham was most likely murdered by someone else. I don’t think she is a victim of Ted Bundy.
On April 19, 2022 a Reddit user suggested that Wickersham may be the victim of John Arthur Ackroyd. Born on October 3, 1949, Ackroyd was raised in the small logging town of Sweet Home, Oregon (a little over 2 hours away from where Susan was last seen); in 1977 he started working for the Oregon state highway department along US Route 20. That same year, he sexually assaulted Marlene Gabrielson and in 1978 he abducted and murdered Kaye Turner (with the ‘help’ of an accomplice, Roger Dale Beck). Ackroyd’s stepdaughter Rachanda Pickle went missing in 1990 and he was officially charged with her murder in 2013 (he pleaded no contest). He is also suspected of killing Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders in 1992 in Lincoln County, Oregon. ‘The Oregonian’ newspaper further alleges he was involved in the murders of several additional women. Despite Ackroyd’s shady history, it was determined that he was stationed oversees in the Army between 1969 and 1976 so he couldn’t have been responsible for Susan’s death. He died on December 30, 2016.
For former Deschutes County Sheriff’s Captain Marc Mills, Susan’s case was personal. The two were classmates at Bend High School, and said that ‘Susan was happy, free-spirited. We would occasionally be at the same lunch table. It was sad when Susan went missing, and a shock when the town learned how she died. It was disturbing for our Class of 1974.’ … ‘It was one of the first things I wanted to do, was pick this file up as a young detective, the youngest detective at the time. This is one of the cases I really, truly wanted to have closure.’ Mills said it was upsetting for everyone in the community when Wickersham went missing, and a horrible shock when everyone learned how she died: ‘it was disturbing for our Class of 1974. It’s disheartening. Of course, a lot of my classmates had hope, had hope in me.’ He said that detectives are ‘only a clue or two away from cracking the case, but the clock is ticking.’ The cold case team uses the 1974 Bend High School yearbook in their interviews to help ‘jog memories and spark conversation’ when trying to obtain new information about Susan. In 2022 former Deschutes County District Attorney Mike Dugan told KTVZ news that ‘it’s more of a case of a lack of concrete proof than a lack of a theory,’ and that ‘they absolutely believed they knew who did it. The cold case unit came and tried to get us to do a prosecution. My chief deputy district attorney and I reviewed what they had and said, ‘we still don’t have enough’.’
It’s speculated that Susan’s disappearance could be linked to Rita Jolly from West Linn, OR and Vicki Lynn Hollar from Eugene, OR. Jolly vanished on June 29, 1973 while out on a nightly walk and Hollar disappeared while leaving her job at Bon Marche (she was employed there as a seamstress) on August 20, 1973. Unlike Susan, both girls haven’t been recovered. As I said earlier, I don’t think Bundy killed Wickersham but I do think he murdered Jolly and Hollar.
Rhonda said that Susan is never far from her thoughts, ‘probably because we never had closure. I couldn’t even imagine then that it would take this long to solve.’ She hopes that one day she will learn why Susan was taken from them, saying ‘someday, I’d like to look the guy in the eye and say, ‘Why’d you do this?’ She was just a nice person. You think of all those things that could have been, and all the people who loved her.’
Despite her case being cold for many years, Bend police as well as Susans loved ones still think they have a pretty good idea who is responsible for her murder; they hope one day they’ll come up with enough evidence to be able to make an arrest. Rhonda thinks that she has a good idea who the killer is, saying: ‘it’s probably going to surprise many of us, and it’s probably going to surprise how close in proximity they were to a number of us in Bend community.’ In 2015, Captain Mills said he still holds onto hope that Wickersham’s killer will be caught, and has a message for anyone that knows something but is holding back: ‘you’re 42 years older. You’re probably near the end of your life. Put some things in motion… at least in the event of your death, so investigators at the sheriff’s office can put this case to rest and give what family is left closure.’ Sadly, both of Susan’s parents died before police were able to solve their daughters murder: Mr. Wickersham passed away in 1993 and Mrs. Wickersham in 2006.
* I’ve had numerous residents of Bend reach out to tell me they feel this number is wrong. I would know nothing about that, I pulled that figure off the website ‘oregon.reaproject.org.’
An article on Susan Wickersham published by The Bulletin on September 19, 1973.
