Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, documents related to their investigation into William Earl Cosden Jr., Part Four.
Washington.
Hallie Ann Seaman.
Introduction: Hallie Ann Seaman was born on July 2, 1949 in Michigan to Francis ‘Frank’ and Mary (nee Jefferson) Seaman. Frank was born on June 3, 1919 in Chicago, and after his mother died when he was young, he was adopted by Anna R. Seaman and moved to Pontiac, MI; he changed his surname to Seaman in 1937. Mary Alice Jefferson was born on September 27, 1923 in Ypsilanti, Michigan and was married to a man named Neil Wood Hathaway before she got married to Hallie’s father: the two were married on October 4, 1941 (she was only eighteen!) and divorced not even two years later on July 30, 1943 on the grounds of ‘extreme cruelty.’ Mary Alice graduated from Eastern Michigan University and joined the ‘US Cadet Nurse Corps’ during WWII in October 1944; she got married to Francis Seaman on January 11, 1947 and the couple had three children together: Hallie, Thomas, and Jill (b. 1952).
Francis earned his seaman’s papers and worked on ships in the New York City harbor, and was later employed on the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company. He earned a BS in chemistry, a master’s degree in Sociology, and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Michigan, and in 1949 got a winter teaching position at the University of Idaho; he worked as a lookout on Bald Mountain and pulled lumber on the green chain for Potlatch Forest Inc. (now Potlatch Corporation) during summers. He eventually became the head of UI’s philosophy department, and helped create the school’s general studies program.
Background: Hallie Ann Seaman attended Moscow High School in Idaho, where she was very active in extra-circular activities: she was inducted into National Honor Society and participated in Orchestra, the Future Scientists of America Club, Drama Club, and Debate Club. After graduating in 1966 she earned her undergraduate degree from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and after graduating went on to attend the University of Washington. At the time of her death in the spring of 1975 Seaman was twenty-five years old and an honor student, and was only two terms away from earning a master’s degree in architecture; specifically, she was interested in learning how to design high-quality, low-income housing for people in need. Both of the Seaman sisters had relocated to Seattle from Moscow, and were both brilliant students with great scientific minds. Described by those that knew her as an ‘intelligent, strong-willed and athletic,’ Hallie was studying how to design quality low-income housing, and according to her missing person’s report, she had green eyes, stood at 5’9″, and weighed around 148 pounds.
April 29, 1975: According to Hallie’s father, she had recently broken up with her boyfriend (who was a dentist from Pioneer Square), but according to the bf, she was upset with him for working so much and the fact that they didn’t spend a lot of time together. Per the missing person’s report that was filed on May 2, 1975 by Mr. Seaman with the King County Sheriff’s, Hallie left the apartment she shared with a friend located at 2946 Eastlake Avenue East and headed for work, where she was employed as a researcher at a real estate firm. After the murder a fellow architecture student named David Keyes-Nations came forward and told investigators that he saw her on April 29, 1975 sometime between 9:30 and 9:45 PM* talking on the phone while sitting at her drafting table in her studio in the basement of the architecture building; he said that Seaman had been wearing her raincoat and when he walked by again ten minutes later she was gone; her studio showed no sign of a struggle. *A newspaper article lists the time as 8 PM.
To get to her car after leaving her studio, Hallie had to walk down a dimly lit path that was lined by overgrown evergreen shrubs, and all her killer would have had to do was sit and wait. Despite this, Sergeant Mike Mudgett with the University of Washington Campus Police Department doubted that the man that killed her would have done that, because as they exited the parking lot they would have had to pass by a security guard booth.
Hallie’s apartment was only 1.7 miles north of the University of Washington campus, and after leaving school that evening she had plans to stop by her boyfriend’s then was supposed to go see her sister, but they both said she never showed up. After she never showed up, Jill went over to her apartment to check it out, and she told investigators that she didn’t think her sister had ever come home that night: ‘she told her boyfriend she was coming over to see me that night. He talked to her at 7:30 and she said she had a class that evening, and then she was coming by my place, but I never heard from her.’ They also went looking for her vehicle in its usual spots (school, work, her apartment) and never found it. Seaman’s boyfriend told investigators that ‘she picked up hitchhikers, but only a certain type: one that was clean cut and looked like an average student. She was independent and confident and not likely to be talked into any type of potentially dangerous situations. There weren’t many situations Hallie couldn’t handle.’ Because of this, police strongly suspected that she may have picked up the wrong person (or people).
On May 1, 1975 at 2 PM investigators received a call from an anonymous woman that was too afraid to give her real name: she told them that roughly forty minutes after Seaman was last seen at approximately 10:30 PM she was driving with a friend in the Lake Union area close to the U of W when they saw two males (the driver had long curly blonde hair and the passenger had shorter dark hair) placing a young woman in the back of a white Chevrolet (that very well could have been Hallie’s car) that appeared to be unconscious (or even dead). The caller said that she didn’t get a good look at the woman’s face, but she did ‘see her underpants,’ and she had on ‘red panties and a light-colored olive coat,’ and she would have been able to ID those. She told police that she was disturbed by what she saw and fear made her flee, but immediately after she had second thoughts and went back, but by the time she had gotten back they were gone.
According to Detective Wayne Dorman, who took the woman’s report, she said: ‘I was driving home when I saw something very, very disturbing. It was near the University at the corner of NE 40th and 8th NE. I saw an older white station wagon. It might have been a Ford—I don’t know cars that well. There were two men in it. The passenger had dark hair and the driver had long, curly blond hair. But before they drove away. I saw the driver outside the car. He was loading this girl into the back seat, and, ah . . . she looked like she was unconscious or maybe even dead.’
When Detective Dorman asked her ‘what makes you think that?’ she replied, ‘well, her legs were spread wide, so wide I could see her panties. They were multicolored and she had on black sandals with two- or three-inch stacked heels. I wanted to stop and try to help her, but the people with me said we could be in danger if we tried to get involved. At least, I talked them into driving around the block to get another look, but by the time we circled back, the white wagon was gone.’ Dorman asked, ‘could you identify the men you saw?,’ to which she replied, ‘I don’t know. Maybe the blond one. They were under the streetlight.’ However, when the detective tried to persuade her to at the very least give him her phone number, the caller hung up.
Investigators were never able to confirm if the woman’s story was true, but they thought the chances were pretty good; according to Detective Norton, ‘whether or not that was Hallie, I don’t know to this day.’
Fire: Around 2:40 AM on May 2, 1975 detectives received a phone call from the Seattle Fire Department in regards to a white 1965 Ford Fairlane 500 station wagon that was on fire in the Sodo neighborhood; it was found in a shipping container storage lot owned by the Sea-Land Corporation that was located only three miles south of where Seaman’s body was recovered, and local investigators didn’t connect the dots between the burnt car and the deceased young woman until after she had been identified; they strongly suspect that Seaman was killed in her vehicle. Even though the Burlington Northern Railroad Line kept a switch engine with a 24-hour crew in the area where Seaman’s car had been recovered, no one had seen who had left there.
Jack Hickam was the responding firefighter from the ‘Marshal 5’ fire district that processed Hallie’s car, and he determined that the fire didn’t start in the engine but rather in one of the seat cushions; he also got a ‘probable’ reading for flammable liquid when he used a hydrocarbon indicator. Despite criminalist Ann Beaman from the Western Washington State Crime Lab literally sifting through the vehicle’s ashes, no helpful evidence was recovered from Hallie’s car, but she was able to find her missing shoe, which had part of a nylon melted into it along with a charred coin purse and part of a key chain. The driver’s side door handle (which was thrown clear from the scene when the gas tank exploded) was also tested for fingerprints but nothing useful was found.
Keys: In a Seattle Police memo dated May 8, 1975, a patrolman in Burlington named Floyd L. Lane was walking along some railroad tracks two days prior checking out boxcars when he came across ‘a set of keys on a brass hook.’ He was west of where Seaman’s car was found and after he examined them he realized they were partially scorched and decided to reach out to the detectives investigating the burnt Ford.
Discovery: Only fourteen hours after she was last seen alive at roughly 12:15 PM on April 30, 1975 Seaman’s remains were found in South Lake Union only a couple of miles south of her apartment by a man named Raymond Bobbie Tillery. Tillery was on his lunch break exercising in a parking lot near his POE when he discovered her body: it had been hidden by an overgrown thicket of blackberry bushes beneath the I-5 freeway in front of 1303 Roy Street. He immediately called 911.
Mr. Tillery told police that he first noticed the victims legs from about thirty feet away, and when he got closer, he realized what he was looking at and ran back to his office to call 911. Detectives strongly speculated that Seaman’s body was transported to the scene from another unknown location and was left in the bushes. Dr. Besant Mathews, from the KCME’s office examined the body at the scene, and it was in his professional opinion that the victim was brought there sometime during the early morning hours of April 30, 1975.
In the days immediately following Seaman’s disappearance, a University of Washington professor from the School of Architecture called the King County Sheriff’s and shared with them some concerns about his missing graduate student: ‘she hasn’t been to class for two days, and her description would be pretty close to the ‘Jane Doe’ in the papers and on television. Her name is Hallie Ann Seaman. She’s 25 years old.’ As it turned out, his hint was legit, and on May 2, 1975 Hallie’s sister and her boyfriend went to the King County Morgue and identified her body.
Seaman had been dressed in a grey, yellow, a pink striped dress and a light-colored olive coat (some reports said it was tan), and was not wearing any panties. She had been found lying face up and the nylon on her left leg was found down by her ankle and her left shoe was off of her foot and was tangled up in the stocking; there was no nylon or shoe on her right foot. Responding officers found three cuts in her coat as well as a small amount of blood on the upper part of her left foot. Also found on the scene were pieces of green glass, an empty Rainer beer bottle, a Michelob can, two broken beer bottles (that were all tested for prints), and a blue towel.
The young woman had no purse or ID on her and she wore no jewelry, and investigators presume she had been dead for roughly ‘a dozen hours’ when her remains were found and by then rigor mortis had frozen her body completely. Based on the way she was discovered, the victim most likely had been laying face down somewhere for a few hours after her death before she was eventually repositioned and left on her back, as she was found. It was clear to the detectives that she had been left in the parking lot but had been killed someplace else, and she had been found immaculately clean, right down to her unpolished fingernails and had worn little to no makeup.
Autopsy: She had obviously put up quite a fight, as her arms bore a great number of defense wounds. The King County medical examiner, Dr. Patrick Besant-Matthews said that she had been stabbed eleven times (one report said it was twelve) and had wounds in her liver, stomach, lungs, and aorta. The knife that the killer had used was between two and a half to three inches long and detectives said he must have been in a frenzy because it was the kind of violence only seen after an attack by a sexual sadist, or someone that deeply hated his victim.
During her autopsy the ME located two stab wounds located on the left side of her abdomen, and determined she was somewhere between five to six months pregnant. Detectives found no blood underneath or around her body aside than a few droplets on some leaves that were found below her; she had two cuts approximately 1.5 inches long on the lower part of her right leg and had numerous bruises on both of her legs.
Hallie’s fatal wounds were located on her right side, when the killer’s blade pierced her kidney and severed her aorta. Even though the documents released to me from King County said that it was determined by the ME she had not been sexually assaulted, other sources say she was (I’m more likely to go with the Sheriff’s Department over a podcaster, no shade to them). King County Detective Wayne Dorman said that this fact surprised him and it made investigators wonder if Seaman’s assailant ‘may have panicked before he had a chance to rape her.’ He also said they wondered if perhaps she was killed by a hitchhiker she picked up that perhaps she ‘was a college student. In all probability she would do so.’
The ME working the case took twelve polaroid photos, six of which were left behind at the King County Medical Examiners office; the victims fingerprints were taken to the FBI, but she didn’t come up in any police databases (as she had no criminal record). Clothing and articles that were found with the body were examined and put in the property room at the King County Sheriff’s department: her green coat and dress had no labels and appeared to have been handmade and the nylons that was found with her shoe appeared to have been part of some panty hose that were cut at the top by something incredibly sharp, possibly a knife or a razor; the other leg that had the attached ‘panty section’ of the hosiery had been pulled down over her left leg and was found inside out so that her stacked-heel black sandal was caught inside.
On 5:50 PM on April 30, 1975 King County 911 Operator #75 received a call from an anonymous caller that stated a man (whose name was completely blacked out in the police file) had killed the victim, and it was then that a second operator came on the line and said that the call came from a redacted address, that was actually Farwest Service Corporation, or Farwest Taxi (they blacked out the address but not the name of the business?). Investigators checked into the suspect in the ‘R/B information’ (which may or may not stand for ‘running book’), and discovered he worked as a cook, had blond hair, and weighed 210 pounds; he also had a history of assault, robbery, and auto theft along with multiple arrests and convictions on his record. He was eventually cleared.
On May 6, 1975 Hallie’s boyfriend reached out to investigators (he was also from Idaho and was home visiting) and told them he was upset over the story that was printed about her in the newspapers, to which they said they have ‘no control over the press.’ From there, the detective told him that the polygraph exam he agreed to was scheduled for Friday, May 9, 1975 at 1:30 PM and that he should arrive fifteen minutes beforehand. During the interview with detectives, he said that his girlfriend typically wore white underwear and at the time she was killed the wallet that she was using was a man’s, and there was no metal on it except the snap on the leather band to help keep it closed. Seaman’s boyfriend said that the last time he had intercourse with her on Saturday, April 26th and she did wear nylons most of the time but didn’t cut them at the top in the way that the victims was found.
Ted Bundy: At the time of Hallie’s murder in the spring of 1975 Ted Bundy was still out and about living the good life, and wasn’t arrested until later that August. He was still living in his first Utah apartment on First Avenue in SLC and was attending law school at the University of Utah; he was also towards the end of his multi-year, long-distance romance with Elizabeth Kloepfer (who he was not even remotely faithful to, as he was dating multiple other women). However, one thing jumped out at me about Hallie possibly being a Bundy victim: the last time he was active in Washington was July 1974: although not completely unheard of, that’s quite a bit of time in between victims.
I can see why Hallie would initially be thought to possibly be a Bundy victim, as she (very obviously) fit very neatly into his typical victim type: she was an academic, and was slim, young, and beautiful, with thick, beautiful chestnut hair that she wore (VERY) long and braided down her back. She was also by herself and in a public place, and just the year prior he had abducted two other students on the University of Washington’s campus: Lynda Ann Healy and Georgann Hawkins (and attacked Karen Sparks).
Hallie’s Killer: In 2002 detectives submitted forensic evidence that had been collected and preserved from Seaman’s autopsy in 1975 to the Washington state crime lab, who in turn generated a DNA profile of the suspected killer; sadly there were no hits in CODIS (the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System that was created in 1998 to share genetic profiles of certain felons in all fifty states). The case was reopened in 2017 and in an attempt to find new leads, Seattle police Detective Rolf Norton tried to utilize the field of genetic genealogy, which tested unknown DNA samples taken from crime scenes and tested it against publicly available genetic profiles in an attempt to identify possible suspects (like Ancestry or 23andme.com). Unfortunately for the detective, the lab had utilized the entire genetic sample when generating the suspected killer’s genetic profile in 2002 (which sometimes happens), so that wasn’t possible. In 2019, lawmakers in Washington passed new legislation as a continuation of their 2015 Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which made all state policing agencies to submit all untested rape kits to the crime lab for testing, thus expanding the criteria for whose DNA could be included in CODIS.
In 2023, DNA tests posthumously linked a Washington killer named Charles Rodman Campbell to the murder of Hallie Ann Seaman. In a 2023 article with The Seattle Times, Detective Norton said: ‘really, the craziness about this story is who ended up being the suspect:’ In August of 2023, he received an email from William Stubbs, a forensic scientist at the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab about the case, who told him a lab report would soon be on its way: ‘he’s like, ‘well, I think it’s going to surprise you, what the result is,’ and I’m like, ‘Pfft. OK, surprise me. And so he sent me a copy of the reports … and I was blown away.’ In the initial stages of the investigation, detectives painstakingly logged over 120 names of possible suspects that came up during the investigation, and Campbell wasn’t one of them.
Shortly after his birth in Hawaii on October 21, 1954 Campbell’s family relocated to Washington, and according to his parents he was an angry child that loved to bully other children and when he was twelve his behavioral problems began to escalate: he began drinking and smoking, and at thirteen began using amphetamines. The following year used heroin for the first time and when he was fifteen he had several run-ins with police: he stole a car, and he along with a friend were caught pushing over headstones in a cemetery. In October 1969 at the age of sixteen he was caught breaking into an elementary school, and in 1971 after his father had him arrested for stealing the family car he called a friend on three separate occasions and asked him to shoot his dad; later that July, he was sentenced to a year in jail for burglarizing a house.
On December 11, 1974 Campbell forced 23-year-old Renae Wicklund to perform oral sex on while he held a knife to her eight-month-old daughter Shanana** then threatened her life and her baby. The young mother was outside washing the windows of her home while Shanana was playing on the lawn when suddenly she noticed a young man running towards her: instincts kicked in and she immediately grabbed her daughter and ran into the house, but the intruder still managed to force his way inside. After the assault Wicklund’s neighbor and friend Barbara Hendrickson came over, and upon realizing what happened called the police. ** I’ve seen her name spelled Shannah and Shannon.
After the violent assault Campbell remained a fugitive for thirteen months until he was arrested on a burglary charge in Okanogan County; he was then brought back to Snohomish County, and after Wicklund picked him out of a police line-up he was charged with first-degree assault and sodomy. The young mother, along with Hendrickson, testified against Campbell at his trial and he was given a maximum sentence of thirty years in prison; unfortunately, he was granted ‘work release’ only six years into his bid on May 1, 1981 (one report said it was seven), which allowed him to leave prison grounds and go out into the community and get a job. Renae tried her best to move on with life after the assault but struggled: she ended up divorcing her husband in 1978, and shortly after he died in a car accident.
While incarcerated, Campbell had a hard time conforming to prison life and staying in line: while there he got into several physical altercations with other inmates, and earned the nickname ‘one punch’ because that’s all it took him to win a fight. He also raped at least two of his cellmates, one of which was a childhood friend and according to the CO’s he was also dealing drugs.
While on work release, Campbell was allowed to leave the facility during the day but had to return in the evening, and Wicklund lived about fifty miles away from the facility (she never moved out of the home she was assaulted in). In the spring of 1982 the 31-year old was working for a local Beauty School, and after staying home sick on April 14th Campbell returned to Renae’s residence and cut her throat: she was found naked on the floor of her bedroom and had been strangled and severely beaten with a blunt object.
When her (then) eight-year-old daughter arrived home from school later that same afternoon he ambushed her and brought her into the room where her mother’s dead body was; he then strangled her and slid her throat nearly to the point of decapitation. Almost immediately after he killed Renae and Shanana, 51-year-old Barbara stopped over to make her sick friend some Jell-O as a snack; he took her life as well. It’s strongly speculated that Campbell’s motive for returning to Wicklund’s home to further victimize her was revenge due to her and Hendrickson having testified against him during his trial for Wicklund’s rape.
While Campbell was out on work release he got his girlfriend pregnant and his son Jacob was born on October 18th, 1982. During his November 1982 trial the prosecution presented a great deal of evidence against him, including the fact that one of Shanana’s earrings were found in his car, his fingerprints were found on a glass at the crime scene, and another neighbor saw him leaving Wicklund’s home the day of the murders. The trial lasted fifteen days and the jury only needed four hours to find him guilty of all three murder counts and recommended he be sentenced to death; the judge agreed with this decision and on December 17, 1982 he sentenced Campbell to death.
Campbell fought his death sentence to the very end and filed appeal after appeal with no success, and after twelve years of sitting on death row at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla he was put to death on May 27, 1994. The day before his execution he was due to be moved to a different cell that was closer to the gallows, but he refused to cooperate with correction officers and laid down on the floor; in turn, they used pepper spray to get him to comply. Campbell’s last meal consisted of fish sticks, a tossed green salad, scalloped potatoes, and a cherry tart; he didn’t eat a single bite.
When it came time for his execution to be carried out Campbell also refused to walk to the gallows, and he needed to be strapped to a board and carried to the trap door; while on it, he kept moving his head which prevented prison staff from putting the hood and noose on him. He didn’t have any final words, and at 12:12 AM he dropped through the trap door and was pronounced dead two minutes later. He was the last death row inmate to be executed by hanging.
Noting Campbells’ notoriety, a (now retired) Tacoma Detective that was working for the state Attorney General’s Office named Lindsey Wade decided to submit Campbell’s DNA profile into CODIS (despite his crimes in Snohomish County predating the creation of the database). Then came the news that DNA had connected him to the murder of Hallie Seaman, and according to Detective Norton: ‘serendipity came together with some great investigative work from ’75 and Lindsey Wade thinking out of the box and making some really, really great decisions.’
Upon the realization that Campbell was out of jail for a little over a year between his attack on Wicklund in 1974 and his capture in early 1976, Detective Norton encouraged other Washington police jurisdictions to look at their own unsolved cases from that time frame to see if it’s possible he committed additional homicides. Additionally, after his conviction laws in the state were changed so that victims of violent crimes and people that testify against offenders need to be notified upon their release.
After Hallie’s murder was solved Detective Norton said that he had been in touch with her sister and brother but declined to discuss their conversation as they requested privacy. When asked if solving an almost fifty-year-old homicide can bring closure to a family, he said it’s tough to say: ‘is it harder now, that the bandage gets ripped open again after all these years? I don’t know. You’re cognizant of that when you’re reaching out to families and having these discussions. My guess is that most would like to know, rather than not knowing. However, you’re bringing up the worst thing that ever happened to a family and laying it on the table again.’
Dr. Jill Seaman MD: Hallie’s sister has led quite an impressive life: after graduating from Moscow High School in 1970 she relocated to Vermont where she attended Middleburg College and got a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974; from there she returned to the Pacific Northwest and in 1979 earned her MD from the University of Washington Medical School. She is a board-certified family practice Doctor and in 1988 advanced her education even further and attended the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
After graduating from medical school, Dr. Seaman moved to Alaska, where she worked as the Chief Medical Officer at a 50-bed hospital in Bethel treating Yupik Native American Indians. In 1984, she went to Sudan, where she served as a physician for the International Refugee Committee in a makeshift hospital and the following year she worked at a therapeutic feeding center catering to Ethiopian refugees.
While in the South Sudan between 1989 and 1997, Dr. Seaman battled an epidemic of kala-azar (or visceral leishmaniasis), and in 2000 her and a colleague developed a successful program in Lanken (a village east of the Nile River) against tuberculosis. In 2009 she was named a MacArthur Fellow (or a ‘genius grant’) winner and has written and co-authored numerous articles that were published in various medical journals. In 1997 she was featured in Time Magazine’s special on ‘Heroes of Medicine’ and has won numerous awards for medical and humanitarian services. In recent years Dr. Seaman splits her time between Africa and Alaska, where she provides public-health services to Yup’ik Eskimos. She also has her own Wikipedia page and is married to another MacArthur Fellow winner.
Jacob Campbell: According to his website, Charles Campbell’s son was raised knowing what he did and some of his earliest memories include sitting in a courtroom in Snohomish County with his father. Despite not knowing his dad outside of a prison environment, Jacob claimed the two had a good relationship, which he credits to weekly visits with his mother along with frequent letters. In 1994, when Jacob was in sixth grade he petitioned the Governor of Washington state in an attempt to save his father’s life, but was unsuccessful.
After the death of his father Jacobs’ life began to spiral out of control: when he started High School he got deeply involved with the party scene and began to drink heavily and abuse any substance he could get his hands on. While spending some time in the Benton County Correctional Facility as a juvenile he learned about a program called Jubilee that helped him turn his life around, and now he is a husband, father, and a Doctoral Student in Transformative Studies (PhD) at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
Conclusion: In the days that immediately followed her murder a friend of Hallie’s recalled what a great loss her death was to so many people: ‘she was a bright, dynamic girl. She was the most dynamic creature I’ve ever seen. Suggest something and it would be done. She had tremendous drive.’ One of her professors said that she ‘was one of the most brilliant students we’ve had. We’ll never know how much she could have done to help low-income families have decent housing.’
Mr. Seaman was born with a circulatory brain malformation, and after a run in 1991 it burst and left him unable to walk or talk. With his wife’s encouragement, he learned to walk again, and according to his obituary, he enjoyed running, gardening, and always maintained a positive attitude and sense of humor. In 1964 he was named the University of Idaho’s outstanding faculty member and worked with Moscow schools helping with the moral development of children, and even served on the school board during the 1980’s and 1990’s. He was also a charter member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse, a member Phi Beta Kappa, and was a founding member of the Outer Circle (a multidisciplinary university discussion group). He died at home at the age of seventy-nine on September 6, 1998. Hallie’s mother Mary died at the age of seventy-five on November 5, 1998 in Moscow, Idaho.
According to her obituary, Mrs. Seaman was the youngest of eight children and attended the State Normal School in Ypsilanti and later studied nursing at Cook County Hospital at Chicago. During World War II, she learned drafting for the Willow Run Bomber Plant in Michigan and when she was done serving her country continued her education at the University of Idaho in Moscow. During her working years she held several different jobs, with positions ranging from assembly work to dress designing until she became a mother and left the workforce so she could devote all of her time and energy into raising her three children. Mrs. Seaman was involved in Moscow city planning in an attempt to help save its downtown, however after Hallie’s murder she retreated from outside activities and concentrated on writing, architecture, and landscaping (especially her own home and garden). She was a member of the University Arboretum Associates and the League of Women Voters as well as multiple women’s rights groups and literary and environmental organizations. After her husband’s cerebral hemorrhage in 1990, she dedicated all her time and energy to his care. Tom Seaman still resides in Moscow, and according to his father’s obituary he was an ‘avid traveler.’ At the time of her father’s death Jill was practicing medicine in Nairobi.
Works Cited:
Banner, Patti (May 13, 2024). ‘DNA Links Killer to University of Washington Student’s Death.’
Green, Sara (Jean December 23. 2023). ‘A UW student was murdered in 1975. Her killer was never known, until now.
jacobrcampbell.com/testimony/
LA Times (no author listed). ‘Killer Struggles with Guards Before Hanging.’ (May 28, 1994).
Rule, Ann (December 2004). ‘Kiss Me, Kill Me: Ann Rule’s Crime Files Volume 9.’
lmtribune.com/northwest/frank-seaman-79-retired-ui-professor-75773
Seattle, WA 98102. The Ruby Condos were built in 2009.
on June 4, 1994.
Information Related to Ted’s Volkswagen, Courtesy of the King County Sheriff’s Department.
Cathy Carter-Gonzales.
A missing persons flier for a young woman named Cathy Carter was included in an article about the missing women in Seattle published by Evergreen State College’s newspaper (which is where Donna Gail Manson went to school). I inquired with the Thurston County Sheriff’s department about Cathy in November 2024, and they said they had no information on her. After some minor investigating I learned that she wasn’t gone for very long, and returned home, got married, and lives near Vancouver, WA.
Ted Bundy Interview with Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Detective Dennis Couch, January 22,1989.
An interview between Ted Bundy and Dennis Couch that took place only thirty-six hours before he was executed on January 22,1989.
FBI Files: MP3 File of Dr. Robert Keppel and Ted Bundy.
Twenty-one minutes of audio taken from four hours of recordings from a 1989 interview at Florida State Prison between Dr. Robert Keppel and Ted Bundy that is used in training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. During the interview Bundy brags about slaughtering eleven women across the state of Washington.
Ted Bundy, FBI Files: Court Documents, Confession-Interview Recordings, Research Documents.
Includes 339 pages of files that were copied directly from FBI headquarters, the 1992 FBI TB Multiagency Investigative Team Report, 71 pages of a FBI Report Serial Murder Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for investigators (from 2005), 79 pages of FBI Report Serial Murder Pathways for Investigations (from 2011), and over 1,000 pages of information over seven appellate court cases from Florida and Utah, as well as some Bundy-related Congressional Hearings, Reports, and Transcripts
Lynda Ann Healy.
Background: Lynda Ann Healy was born on July 3, 1952 to James and Joyce (nee Strickland) Healy in Portland, Oregon. James Russell Healy was born on August 1, 1926 in Logan, Utah, and after graduating from Grant High School he went on to attend Notre Dame University, where he earned a degree in military sciences. At some point he went to the University of Oregon, where he met his future wife. The daughter of a prominent physician, Joyce Ann Strickland was born on August 17, 1927 in Forest Grove, OR and after high school attended the University of Oregon, where she was a member of the Alpha Phi sorority and graduated with a business degree in 1949. James and Joyce were married at her parents’ house in Oregon City on August 14, 1949, and in their early years as husband and wife lived in a house on Siskiyou Street in the northwest part of Portland. Before her kids were born, Mrs. Healy was employed at ‘Meier & Frank’ (a prominent department store chain that operated primarily in Oregon, Washington, and Utah) for several years before she left the workforce and became a dedicated stay at home mother. The couple had three children together: Lynda, Robert (b. 1954), and Laura (b. 1957).
In 1962 the Healy’s moved to Washington state and bought a house in the Newport Hills area of Bellevue, located just five miles away from Seattle and Lynda grew up in a happy, middle-upper class home. According to those that were close with her, she was a talented musician, excellent singer, and was ‘full of life’ as well as self-confidence, and was looking forward for her future. Lynda stood at 5″7″ tall and wore her brown hair long and parted down the middle; she had blue eyes and had a 1/2 inch long scar on the bridge of her nose. An above-average student, she enjoyed school and had dreams of one day working with children with disabilities. After she graduated from Newport High School in Bellevue in 1970, Healy went on to attend the University of Washington in Seattle, and during her first few years lived in residence halls on campus (she even resided in McMahon Hall at one point, which is where Bundy lived years prior) before she eventually moved to a house off campus towards the end of her education.
University of Washington: In early 1974, the 21-year-old psychology major lived in a pale green house that wasn’t very far from the University of Washington campus on 12th Avenue Northeast in the northern end of the ‘U-District, with four other women: Joanne Testa, Ginger Heath, Karen Skaviem, and Monica Sutherland. Lynda shared the basement with one of her roommates, their designated spaces separated only by a thin piece of plywood, and she worked part-time for ‘Western Ski Promotions’ broadcasting the ski condition report that was played on twenty different radio stations across Washington and Oregon; she concluded each sixty-second spot with her catchphrase: ‘this has been Lynda with your Cascade ski report.’
January 31, 1974: The day started out like any other normal day for Lynda Ann Healy: in the morning she woke up to her alarm at 5:30 AM, got dressed, then hopped on her bike and rode over to the ski report office, located just a few blocks away. After work she went on to spend the day in class, and attended chorus practice on campus sometime in the afternoon.
At one point in the day Healy wrote a quick note to a good friend, describing how she was going to make what her mother called ‘company casserole’ for dinner for her parents and brother the following evening on February 1. It was an upbeat, happy letter, and in it she shared with her girlfriend how happy she was with life lately and how great things were going for her.
According to Ann Rule’s true crime classic, ‘The Stranger Beside Me,’ at 5 PM that evening her roommate ‘Jill Hodges’ (which is a pseudonym, and really Joann Testa) picked Lynda up on campus and and they went home and ate dinner with their other roommates; when Lynda was finished eating she borrowed one of the girls cars and ran to a nearby Safeway, returning home around 8:30 PM. From there, Lynda, along with Joanne, Ginger, and a young man named Pete Neil, went to Dante’s Tavern, which was only a five-minute walk away. Because Pete had to catch the 9:41 bus home, the friends shared some beers and called it an early night and left shortly after 9:30 PM. When the group of friends arrived back at Healy’s house, Neil grabbed some of his records and left to catch the bus.
At some point after Pete left Heath’s brother and one of his friends stopped by for a visit, and as everyone settled down in front of the TV Lynda left the room to call her boyfriend, and the two talked for about an hour. Even though everyone hadn’t returned home yet the atmosphere in the house was beginning to settle down, and the girls started to get ready for bed.
According to Kevin Sullivan’s 2009 book, ‘The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History,’ in an odd foreshadowing of events, it has been reported that one of the young women saw a ‘shadow’ that night which ‘moved’ just outside a window on the side of the house, but apparently thought little else about it. Karen Skaviem, who had been out studying at the library before she went out with her boyfriend for a few drinks, returned home around midnight, and noticed that ‘a single living room light was on,’ When she got inside Karen notices that Joann’s light was still on and stopped by her room for a chat, and around 12:45 PM the two women said goodnight and Skaviem went to the basement, where she had the room next to Healy’s. As she walks down the steps she didn’t check to make sure the door leading out of the basement was locked, and noticed that the only light that was on was in the storage area, and as Karen walked by, she noticed that Healy’s lights were off and she assumed she was asleep. She would later tell detectives that she had some problems settling down that night and didn’t fall asleep until around 1:30 AM; she heard nothing out of the ordinary the rest of the night.
In the time that the girls lived in the mint green house on 12th Avenue Northeast, they had lost a few sets of keys for their front door, and although they intended to get replacement sets made they usually just left it open ‘as a courtesy to those coming and going late at night. This would prove to be a fatal mistake, for the killer of young woman, long before anyone had gone to bed that evening, would place his hand on the doorknob and turn it ever so gently until the door gave way and he was free to enter the house, something he chose not to do. No, he reasoned, he could return later when everyone was in a deep sleep and explore the dwelling at that time (Sullivan, ‘The Bundy Murders, 17-18).’
At 5:30 AM on February 1, 1974 Skavien woke to her roommates alarm going off, but stayed in bed until her own clock went off at 6 AM. This was unusual. Karen got up and turned off both alarms and immediately noticed that Lynda’s room had been cleaned and was near spotless and that her bed was made, which was unusual as it was something that she usually waited to do when she got back from work. Even though the partition between the girls rooms was thin, Karen said that she hadn’t heard any disturbances during the night.
Skavien said ‘I got up, Lynda’s alarm was still going. I went past her room and heard the radio but thought she was lying in bed listening to it and didn’ have to go to work. At 6:30 the phone rang, it was Northwest Ski Promotions asking why Lynda wasn’t at work. I went to her room and called her. When she didn’t answer I turned on the light and went in. Her radio was still going and her bed was made, perfectly. I was concerned she hadn’t slept in it because there were no wrinkles and the spread was ticked neatly under the pillow.’ As Karen slowly began to assess the situation she realized that the back door was left open, which was out of character for Lynda: typically she would leave her bicycle parked inside of the house in the hallway just next to the side door ‘on the landing,’ and would make sure the door was locked behind her.
Skavien said she then called up the stairs to see if any of the other girls knew where Lynda may have been, but they told her that no one had seen her. Monica responded that perhaps she was out somewhere with her boyfriend, a suggestion that was immediately shot down by the others because it was atypical of their friend, as she wouldn’t blow off her responsibilities like that. Around 6:30 AM the Northwest Ski Promotions called and asked where Lynda was, as she never made it into work. They quickly realized that her bike was still in the basement, which caused fear and panic among the girls who were beginning to suspect the worst, as Lynda was very dependable and had never missed a day of work. One of the housemates said that the last time that she saw her was at midnight on Thursday before, and ‘it just isn’t like Lynda. She was just 15 minutes late once, and she felt terrible about it.’’
At around 4 PM Joann started calling around to Healy’s friends and acquaintances to see if anyone could provide an explanation as to where she may have been. No one had heard from her, and she hadn’t been seen around campus all day. When Jim and Robert arrived for dinner at 6 PM on the evening of February 1st (Joyce was supposed to meet them shortly after) they were told that Lynda was missing, and right away the family knew that the situation was serious. Mr. Healy called his wife and told her their daughter was gone, and where Jim wanted to wait a little longer to see if she would eventually show up, Mrs. Healy immediately called the police.
Two members of the Seattle PD showed up shortly after 6 PM and spoke with the roommates and Mr. Healy, and took down some general information about Lynda and took a brief look inside of her bedroom. When the officers and the Healy’s left Monica said they received a strange telephone call with nobody on the other end, clarifying the ‘line was open but the caller ‘refused to speak’ and she could hear only the faint sound of breathing.’ After that incident the roommates received two more phone calls of a similar nature, and despite telling police nothing ever came of it.
A few hours later around midnight a Seattle homicide detective stopped by the house and did a walk through of the residence, and when he pulled back Lynda’s bed sheets to the girls horror they found a blood soaked pillow and blood soaked sheets; missing from the scene was her pink satin pillowcase, house keys, and red backpack (that possibly contained a yellow ski cap and some random books). When they looked in her closet, they discovered the nightgown she had been wearing earlier, which had dried blood on the neckline. They also noticed that the clothes she had worn the day prior were missing, which included a pair of jeans, a blue-trimmed white smock, waffle stomper boots, a belt, several turquoise rings; this suggests her abductor took off her pj’s and dressed her before he stole her away into the night. One of Healy’s roommates also commented that her bed was made up in an unusual manner, and that she never ‘tucked the blanket with the pillow underneath,’ and always placed it on top. According to Joann Testa, she ‘a policeman pulled back the spread for the first time. I saw that the pillowcase was gone and that there were blood stains on the pillow as well as one fairly large blood stain on the sheet near the pillow. As far as I know, Lynda always kept a pillowcase on her pillow.’
In the early stages of the investigation it was briefly suspected that maybe Lynda had gotten a nosebleed, and had taken off her nightgown, changed back into her clothes then ran to seek medical attention. According to Lieutenant Pat Murphy with the Seattle Police Department: ‘the room was very neat. There was no signs of foul play in the rooms except some blood on the pillow and head area of the sheets of Lynda’s bed;’ he also noted that her bed had been ‘made up neatly.’
According to Kevin Sullivan’s book, ‘Ted Bundy’s Murderous Mysteries: The Many Victims of America’s Most Infamous Serial Killer,’ in the weeks prior to her disappearance, Healy had talked to her roommates about some acute stomach pain she was having that were so bothersome that she scheduled a Doctors appointment for… but that night they said she was ‘lively, talkative and feeling good. Their conversation was light, from psychology to music, not focusing on any specific subject.’
The police searched every inch of Lynda’s room, but came up with no explanation as to where she could have gone. Several days after Lynda was last seen alive on February 4, 1974 a call was received by 911 from an unknown male caller that told the operator, ‘listen, and listen carefully: the person who attacked that girl on 8th last month and the person who took Lynda Healy are one and the same. He was outside both houses. He was seen.’ When the 911 operator asked who was calling, the man said, ‘no way are you going to get my name,’ and immediately hung up; nothing further came from the incident.
In the days that immediately followed, Healy’s disappearance barely made the news: the very first story about her was buried on the 35th page of the February 4, 1974 edition of The Seattle Times. Almost immediately after their daughter disappeared Jim and Joyce Healy hired a private investigator to look into the case, and the family initially wondered if maybe she ran off to live with family in Oregon. After some time, the PI came back to the Healy’s and told them that all the leads he received hit ‘dead ends.’ A reward was offered for information leading to her safe return, and it didn’t take long for Seattle investigators to strongly suspect foul play.
‘The Seattle Eight’ (or nine, officially):’ Before Lynda Ann Healy vanished Bundy’s first confirmed, ‘on-the-record’ victim was Karen Sparks, who had been asleep in her basement bedroom when he attacked her in the residence that she shared with three male friends located near the University of Washington campus. According to Sparks, who was a dance major that miraculously survived the attack and went on to get married and have a family: ‘he took some metal thing and he rammed it up my vagina and it split my bladder.’ In the days prior to the assault, she told detectives that she remembered seeing an older man staring at her in a nearby laundromat, and ‘I’d look at him, he’d look away. I didn’t really think too much about it.’
Sparks lived on 8th Avenue Northwest, which was only eleven blocks away from 12th Avenue NE where Lynda lived. After Karen fell asleep, Bundy attacked her and relentlessly beat her in the head with a metal rod from her bed frame, which he also used to penetrate her vagina so brutally that she experienced severe internal damage: ‘he took some metal thing and he rammed it up my vagina and it split my bladder.’ I’ve also seen it reported that her assailant used a speculum and it is worth mentioning that Ted did at one time work as a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company (which is a family-owned medical supply company), however one was not found left behind at the scene of the crime.
Sparks lived on 8th Northwest, just eleven blocks away from Lynda Ann Healy. After Karen fell asleep, Bundy attacked her and relentlessly beat her in the head with a metal rod from her bed frame, which he used to penetrate her vagina so brutally that she experienced severe internal damage: ‘he took some metal thing and he rammed it up my vagina and it split my bladder.’ I’ve also seen it reported that the assailant used a speculum, and Bundy did at one time work as a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company, a family-owned medical supply company, however one was not found behind the scene of the crime.
Thankfully, before Bundy could take the attack to the point of no return he got spooked and fled Karen’s bedroom. Sparks was left beaten, unconscious, and bleeding until around 7:00 PM the following evening when one of her roommates checked on her: ‘Bob came down and he saw blood on my pillow, and he called 911 right away and then called my mother.’ The attack had been so severe that she was unconscious for ten days, and when she came to, she had no memory of what happened and was not able to give detectives any details about her assailant. When Lynda disappeared less than a month later Karen’s father immediately connected the dots between her and the attack on his daughter, although LE was much slower to make the connection.
A little over five weeks after Healy vanished into thin air nineteen-year-old Donna Gail Manson was last seen waving goodbye to her roommates early in the evening on March 12, 1974. The Evergreen State College student had plans to attend a jazz concert on campus, and had changed her outfit a few times before eventually settling on a red/orange/green striped top, blue or green slacks, and a black fuzzy maxi-coat.Manson was a highly intelligent young woman, but not great at school and only a ‘better-than-average’ student, however she was incredibly creative and was an accomplished flautist, that always had her camera with her (just like Lynda Healy did). Donna never made it to the concert, and as the months passed by more and more young college aged women around Washington state began to go missing.
After Donna, on April 17, 1974 eighteen-year-old student Susan Elaine Rancourt was the next to disappear. Rancourt was a straight-A student at Central Washington University in Ellensburg where she studied biology, and in order to afford school she worked full time hours over two different jobs. From the get-go, the Rancourt’s knew that something terrible had happened to their daughter, and according to her father, Dale: ‘she always knew what she wanted, and was a very logical person, very predictable.’
After Sue Rancourt the next to vanish was Brenda Carol Ball, a recent college drop-out that was last seen leaving The Flame Tavern in Burien after seeing band play late on May 31, 1974. The 22-year-old seemed to be at a crossroads in her life, and roughly two weeks before had stopped attending class at Highline Community College. Her sister told reporters that her family hadn’t given up hope after she went missing, and when her remains were eventually recovered they: ‘thought we were prepared for it, but we weren’t.’
Less than two weeks later on June 11, 1974 eighteen-year-old Georgann Hawkins disappeared from an alleyway outside of her Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority house on the University of Washington campus. She had left a party early (and by herself) but before returning home had stopped by her boyfriend’s frat house to pick up some Spanish notes for her final that was the next day. In the days that followed, Warren and Edith waited by the phone waiting for word that their daughter was safe, which never came, and according to her father: ‘it doesn’t look very good.’
After George was the two infamous Lake Sammamish murders that took place on July 14, 1974 in Issaquah, WA: Twenty-three-year-old newlywed Janice Ann Blackburn-Ott lived in Issaquah and worked as a caseworker for King County’s Youth Services Center, while her husband Jim was away attending graduate school in California. In the early afternoon before she left her shared house on her yellow Tiger bicycle, Jan scribbled a note for her roommate letting them know that she was going sunbathing at Lake Sam, and at the bottom had drawn a sun. Two eyewitnesses that were at Lake Sam that afternoon reported seeing her at roughly 12:30 PM leaving with an attractive young man whose arm was in a cast.
Only four hours later that same young man returned to Lake Sammamish, and abducted eighteen year old computer programming student Denise Marie Naslund, who was enjoying an afternoon at the beach with her boyfriend and another couple. She had had a few beers and taken a few valiums, and disappeared after she went off to the restroom by herself at roughly 4:30 PM; her mother Eleanore Rose said Denise had the kind of ‘helpful nature’ that would directly place her in the line of danger. Just as with Ott, witnesses that were at Lake Sam that afternoon reported that they saw a young man with his arm in a cast at roughly the time that Naslund went missing.
(Now deceased) Seattle Police Captain Herb Swindler was assigned to work the Healy investigation and eventually the other missing Seattle women. In July 1974 he publicly stated that there was no evidence that pinpointed any of the disappearances with the others, however he did admit that there were some similarities: ‘but, the real connection between the cases is not in the hard evidence, but in the lack of evidence. Usually in a series like this, bodies start to show up. There have been no bodies, none at all, and that is very unusual.’ About the disappearances, Captain Swindler said there were many theories about what may have happened to the young women, and that they ‘get people calling in to tell us ‘the flying saucers took them’ and ‘they’re being spirited away to white slavery’. Everybody’s got a theory, but no evidence.’
Well over a year after Healy was last seen alive, on March 1, 1975 two Green River College students found human remains in a thick wooded area on Taylor Mountain, located just outside of Seattle. A skull uncovered by detectives would later be identified as belonging to Brenda Ball, which is a tad ironic because police initially were hesitant on linking her to the other missing women because she was a bit older than them, was not (technically) a college student, and was abducted from a bar and not an academic type setting. A further search of the area uncovered more bones, and just two days later on March 3, 1975 they came across Lynda Healy’s lower mandible as well as parts of Susan Rancourt and Roberta Parks.
Upon further examination by the Medical Examiner, it was noted that Healy’s skull bore marks that hinted that she had suffered a brutal beating in her final moments of life; Sue Rancourts decapitated skull was also found to be severely fractured.
Third-Person Confession: While Ted was on death row in Florida on April 4, 1980 he had his first sit down with journalists Hugh Aynesworth and Stephen G. Michaud, and during their time together they discussed the abduction and murder of Lynda Ann Healy: Bundy said that earlier in the afternoon on January 31, 1974 the killer had stalked the young coed and followed her to a Safeway store, and even claims that he broke ‘into her home whilst she was out running errands.’ He also told them that the killer had plans of returning later that evening, unsure if she would be home and what situation he would walk into. During this pseudo-confession, Ted clarified that Healy was ‘battered unconscious’ in her bed then carried out of her bedroom and placed her in his waiting Volkswagen; he also volunteered that he had already taken out the front passenger seat of his car so he could better transport his ‘cargo.’
From 12th Avenue NE, Bundy took the unconscious Lynda to Taylor Mountain, located roughly twenty miles east of Seattle, where he forced her to remove her pajama’s (not clothes?) and raped her. When he was finished, he bludgeoned her to death and left her body only partially buried, where scavengers quickly dispersed it throughout Taylor Mountain. Both journalists said Ted briefly appeared to show some remorse over killing Healy, but it didn’t last very long. He then tried to justify the murder by telling himself. ‘well, listen you, you fucked up this time, but you’re never going to do that again. So let’s just stay together, and it won’t ever happen again.’
Ted told the journalists that he was stuck in a position where he couldn’t just let the young woman go out of fear of getting caught, and told them that he had to kill her; both men later said that although he was ‘mostly confident,’ he did stutter a few times when he got nervous, which was something they noticed happened when he talked about aspects of the murders which made him feel uncomfortable.
However, Ted said that he eventually HAD to do it again, and after a brief period of inactivity his urge to possess, to control and kill another young woman would soon come back to him and he would begin to think about killing another victim. He also explained that with each murder, he would feel less confusion, fear, and apprehension and the dormancy period in between victims would become shorter and shorter as he got over the feeling of remorse and self-loathing over what he had done at a faster rate as time went by.
Dr. Bob Keppel, who at that time was a fresh faced detective with the King County Sheriff’s Department, said that the crime scene related to the disappearance of Lynda Healy was ‘unique,’ and stood out in his memory for a long time: ‘I had never seen a crime committed before and that’s where I got my start.’ … ‘We couldn’t do anything except sit and man a telephone. It was pretty bad.’ He elaborated that it almost seemed that someone had broken into Lynda’s residence, brutally bludgeoned her, took her pj’s off then put her street clothes back on her, neatly made the bed, then carried her off into the night without leaving behind a trace. In the days after she vanished, detectives spoke with over sixty-five of her friends, acquaintances, family members, schoolmates, and former boyfriends, but didn’t come up with anything helpful.
In January 1974 Bundy had been living in a second story room at the Rogers Boarding house located on 12th Avenue NE, which was only three blocks away from where Lynda Healy lived. At the time of her disappearance, Ted had been attending night law school at the University of Puget Sound, and according to his schedule he had class late on Monday’s, Wednesday’s, and Friday’s, however on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s things wrapped up for him early. Lynda went missing after midnight on a Thursday night, so Bundy wouldn’t have been tied up with school. Also, according to his long-term girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer, he often went to the bar that Healy went to with her friends the evening she was last seen alive. Additionally, Ted was in between jobs at the time: his previous position as the Assistant to the Washington State Republican Chairman ended in September 1973, and he remained unemployed until May 3, 1974 when he got a job at the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia (he was there until August 28, 1974).
A Frightening Incident: According to Lynda’s roommate Monica Sutherland, roughly two months before she disappeared she was alone in the laundromat on the avenue close to their home when she noticed a man in an orange pickup truck stop and begin to stare at her. He then parked the truck and came in without any clothing and briefly fooled around with a washing machine before proceeding to check the back door of the building as he was leaving. He never said a word to Lynda, but the incident was unusual and she said that it frightened her.
Sutherland also told detectives about another incident that took place only a month before Lynda vanished: she had come home and was by herself inside the residence when suddenly she heard the neighbor’s dog start barking, and when she looked outside the front door she saw a young man standing on the bottom step. He had been holding a little dog firmly around the neck, and had been roughly shaking it. Sutherland remembered that she ran outside and heard neighbors yelling at the man, who had claimed that the dog had attacked him, put it down, then fled from the scene.
A coincidence that is not widely discussed (and only recently made public with the release of the book, ‘Dark Tide’) is that Ted’s cousin, Edna Cowell had once lived with two previous roommates of Lynda Healy while she was attending the University of Washington; it is unknown if he ever had been introduced to Healy through these channels. Also strange: in 1972, both Ted and Lynda were both Psychology majors at the University of Washington, however no evidence exists proving that they had any sort of class or seminar together.
Jim Healy passed away at the age of 72 on June 22, 1998 in Bellevue WA, and Joyce Ann Healy died from complications of COVID at the age of ninety-three on December 27, 2020 in Redmond, WA. According to her obituary, Joyce loved the beach, and the family would often vacation in Ocean Shores, WA where they spent their time beachcombing, riding dune buggies, and roasting hotdogs. After her children flew the nest she went back to school and got a BS in Computer Science from Bellevue College; she learned Cobol (or Common Business Oriented Language) and Fortran (Formula Translation) and went on to have an incredibly successful second career as a computer programmer.
Joyce enjoyed ballroom dancing, and when her husband was alive the two often took cruises together and went just about everywhere; they even became ‘Gold Members’ on several Cruise Lines. In 2012, Mrs. Healy moved into the Emerald Heights Retirement Community in Redmond, where she made lots of new friends and continued to have many adventures while living there.
Lynda’s siblings Robert and Laura Healy-Friedman both still reside in Washington, along with their spouses and children. In the days prior to his execution in January 1989, Ted told Seattle detectives about quite a few unsolved murders across Washington, Utah, Oregon, Colorado, California, and Idaho, and he finally claimed responsibility for killing Lynda Ann Healy, who he said was his ‘first victim.’
Works Cited:
Pasqualini, Kym L. ‘Ted Bundy’s First Victims: Lynda Ann Healy’ (December 16, 2020). Taken June 12, 2025 from https://kympasqualini.medium.com/ted-bundys-first-victims-lynda-ann-healy-9bdb3177c3c4
Sullivan, Kevin M. ‘The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History.’ (2009).
Winn, Stephen. ‘Ted Bundy: The killer next Door.’ (1979).
Katherine Merry Devine, Case Files: Part Six.
State of Utah vs. Theodore Robert Bundy, Defendant and Appellant, September 4, 1975 .
Document courtesy of Brigham Young University School of Law.
Another Bundy Blog. 