Documents courtesy of the Seattle Police Department; according to them, they’re largely about Lynda Ann Healy.
Documents about Ted Bundy from the Seattle Police Department: Part One.
Lynda Ann Healy
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).
Lynda Ann Healy: Information & Pictures from the King County Archives.
In May 2025 I reached out to King County to see if there was a chance I could visit their archives to look at their information related to the Ted Bundy investigation. Where visiting didn’t work out they were kind enough to send me a link via Dropbox that contained tens of thousands of pages of information related to the investigation. Here is everything I could find related to Lynda Healy.
Ted Bundy Crime Scene Locations as they Appear Today, My Personal Pictures.
Up until about five years ago I lived paycheck to paycheck, and after getting two really good jobs I banked quite a bit of money and decided to start traveling. In April 2022 I went to Seattle and since then have been to Florida, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, Colorado, Cobleskill (in NY, for a suspected Bundy victim) and Portland (on that trip I also went back to Seattle). I’ve been retracing the steps of Ted Bundy and taking pictures along the way.
Bundy entered the dormatory armed only with a piece of firewood, and killed twenty-one-year-old Margaret Bowman and twenty-year-old Lisa Levy; he also brutally harmed Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner, but thankfully both women survived. Picture taken in May 2023.
Bundy’s Confirmed Victims: A List.
I’ve been spending a good chunk of my time writing about the unconfirmed victims so in this installment of ‘All Things Bundy,’ I’m going over his confirmed kills.
Karen Sparks-Epley (eighteen). January 4, 1974. Survived, Seattle, WA.
Also referred to as ‘Joni Lenz,’ Sparks was brutally assaulted by Ted Bundy while asleep in her basement apartment in the University District of Seattle. She was his first known victim. Thankfully Bundy didn’t kill her, however she was badly beaten with a metal rod, sexually assaulted, and left unconscious for hours before her roommates discovered her later that night. Ted left her with a number of serious long-term injuries she still struggles with to this day.
Lynda Ann Healy (twenty-one). February 1, 1974. Murdered, Seattle, WA.
On January 31st, 1974, Healy borrowed a friend’s car to go shopping for a family dinner she was preparing the next night and returned with her groceries at roughly 8:30 PM. Shortly after, Lynda and her roommates went drinking at a popular bar called Dante’s Tavern located at 5300 Roosevelt Way NE. The establishment was a five-minute walk from her apartment but the friends didn’t stay out long because Lynda needed to be up at 5:30 AM to be at her job giving the ski report for a local radio station. A number of sources report that Bundy used to go to Dante’s often and it is hypothesized that he first saw Lynda there then followed her home. In the early morning hours of February 1, 1974, he broke into Healy’s basement room, beat her, took off her bloody nightgown (making sure to neatly hang it up in her closet), dressed her then carried her off into the night. It is theorized that Ted only took clothes to make it appear as if Lynda left on her own but obviously, we’ll most likely never know the truth. Her body found in March 1975 on Taylor Mountain, near Issaquah outside of Seattle.
Donna Gail Manson (nineteen). March 12, 1974. Murdered, Olympia, WA.
On the day of her abduction, Donna planned on going to a folk dancing class at the College Activities Building at Evergreen State College (where she attended). Later that same night, she made plans to go to a jazz concert at the Daniel J. Evans Library (also on campus), which was scheduled to start at 8 PM. Donna departed her dormitory just after 7 PM and set out for the dance class, which was just a two-minute walk away. Despite how close the College Activities Building was to her dorm, no one recalls seeing her at either the dancing class or the jazz recital, making it highly unlikely that she ever made it that far. Manson was never seen alive again. After confessing to her murder, Bundy said he burned her skull in Liz Kendall’s fireplace.
Susan Elaine Rancourt (eighteen). April 17, 1974. Murdered, Ellensburg, WA.
Shortly before 8 PM the evening she disappeared from her college campus at Central Washington University, Susan Rancourt put some clothes in a washing machine in Barto Hall (her dorm building). She then went to a meeting about becoming a Residential Advisor at Munson Hall. When it ended at 10 PM Sue left to walk back to her dorm to switch out her laundry but was never seen alive again. She had plans later that night to watch a movie with a friend but never showed up. Rancourt’s skull was later found near Taylor Mountain, where Bundy placed several bodies during his reign of terror.
Roberta Kathleen Parks (twenty). April 17, 1974. Corvallis, OR.
A student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Parks was abducted from her college campus, which is over a four-and-a-half-hour drive for Bundy (who was living at the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Ave NE in Seattle at the time). Shortly before 11:00 PM the night she disappeared, Parks encountered Bundy in the Memorial Union Commons cafeteria at OSU. During Teds interviews with journalists Hugh Aynesworth and Stephen Michaud, he ‘confessed’ in the third person that Kathy may have encountered her killer while in the cafeteria. Bundy then said he was able to convince her to leave with him and as soon as the opportunity presented itself, he immediately overpowered her. He most likely bound and gagged Parks during the 250-mile trip back to Seattle, where then killed her and left her body on Taylor Mountain.
Brenda Carol Ball (twenty-two). June 1, 1974. Murdered, Burien, WA.
In the wee hours of June 1st, 1974, Brenda Ball seemingly vanished into thin air after seeing a band play at The Flame Tavern located at 12803 Ambaum Boulevard in Burien, WA. She arrived at the bar alone and stayed until closing. As the act was wrapping up their set at the end of the night Brenda asked one of the members she knew for a ride home back to her house, but he was heading in the opposite direction so he couldn’t help out. There are two conflicting reports about how she could have left the bar that night: one is that she left by herself and was planning on hitchhiking home, and the other claims that she left with an unidentified man wearing an arm sling. Despite law enforcement being hesitant to officially say her disappearance was related to the other missing girls in Seattle; her skull was the first discovered on Taylor Mountain in March of 1975.
Georgeann Hawkins (eighteen). June 11, 1974. Murdered, Seattle, WA.
A student at the University of Washington, Georgann Hawkins disappeared from an alley behind her sorority house in June 1974. The night before she vanished, Hawkins went to a party, where she had a few mixed cocktails. Because she had a Spanish final coming up that she needed to study she didn’t stay long; she did mention to a sorority sister that she was planning on swinging by the Beta Theta Pi House to pick up some Spanish notes from her boyfriend. Hawkins arrived at the frat at approximately 12:30 AM on June 11 and stayed for approximately thirty minutes. After getting the notes and saying goodnight to her beau, Georgann left the fraternity house for her sorority house, Kappa Alpha Theta. Before he was executed, Ted told law enforcement that he approached her in an alley on her way home, feigning injury with a hurt leg (using his crutches as a ruse) while dropping his briefcase. Bundy asked Hawkins for help carrying the prop to his VW Bug, which was waiting in a parking lot roughly 160 yards north of the alley. She agreed and as she bent over to put the briefcase in his vehicle, Ted grabbed a conveniently placed crowbar and knocked her out with a single blow to the head. He then pushed George into his car and drove off into the night. Bundy claimed that while driving she regained consciousness and started to incoherently babble about her upcoming final, thinking he was her Spanish tutor. He again knocked her out with his crowbar. Once at his intended location, Ted took her unconscious body out of his car and strangled her with an old piece of rope. According to him, the parts of Georgann’s body he had not buried were recovered in Issaquah with the bodies of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. He confessed to murdering Hawkins shortly before his 1989 execution.
Janice Ann Blackburn-Ott (twenty-three). July 14, 1974. Murdered, Issaquah, WA.
At the time she was murdered, Janice Ott worked as a probation case worker at the King County Youth Service Center in Seattle, WA. In December of 1973, she married Jim Ott, who at the time of her death was in California for graduate school. After her car was broken into while living in Seattle, she moved in with a roommate to 75 Front Street in Issaquah (she felt the smaller community would be safer). The morning she disappeared, Janice spent a few hours at doing laundry and having a cup of coffee with a friend. After her errands and chores were completed, she rewarded herself with a trip to Lake Sammamish. Ott was abducted by Bundy at around 12.30 PM, and just a mere three and a half hours later he returned to the same park and abducted Denise Naslund.
Denise Marie Naslund (eighteen). July 14, 1974. Murdered, Issaquah, WA.
On a beautiful, picture-perfect sunny day, Naslund disappeared from a very busy Lake Sammamish State Park (that day was Rainier Beer’s annual picnic, there were over 40,000 people there). She was there with her boyfriend and another couple, and after telling them she was going to the restroom Denise was never seen alive again. Naslund lived with her mother in Seattle and was studying to become a computer programmer. Eleanor Rose said her daughter had the kind of helpful nature that would easily place her in danger. Denise’s remains were found on a hillside near Issaquah roughly two months later in September 1974, only two miles away from Lake Sammamish. Bundy confessed to her murder shortly before his execution.
Nancy Wilcox (sixteen). October 2, 1974. Murdered, Holladay, UT.
The first of Teds confirmed Utah victims, Wilcox went missing after she went on a walk to buy a pack of gum (it’s also speculated that from there she was on her way to her high school to visit her boyfriend). She left the house in a huff after getting into a fight with her dad about her bf’s pick-up truck leaking oil on the family’s driveway. Both Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox said that because of this law enforcement initially considered her to be a runaway even though they knew their daughter would never voluntarily leave home and had no troubles whatsoever in her personal life. Nancy left all of her personal belongings behind including some expensive jewelry that held deep sentimental value to her. Before he was executed Bundy confessed to sexually assaulting and strangling her, then burying her body about 200 miles away near Capitol Reef National Park. Sadly, her body has never been found.
Melissa Smith (seventeen). October 26, 1974. Murdered, Midvale, UT.
Bundy abducted Smith shortly after she left a pizza parlor on West Center Street in Midvale at around 9.30 PM on October 26, 1974. One unconfirmed report suggests that he may have been asking women in the area to help him with a car issue. Melissa was the daughter of Midvale Police Chief Louis Smith, and her murder took place just sixteen days after Nancy Wilcox vanished from the nearby city of Holladay (and five days before Laura Aime). On the night she disappeared, Smith was supposed to sleep over at a girlfriend’s house, but those plans fell through after she didn’t answer the phone. After realizing she had been stood up, she decided to leave the pizzeria and walk back to her house on Fern Drive. At some point during her walk, it’s speculated that Bundy grabbed Melissa off the street and killed her. She never made it home.
Laura Aime (seventeen). October 31, 1974. Murdered, Lehi, UT.
Shortly before she disappeared Aime dropped out of high school, left home (she frequently couch surfed at various friends’ homes), and worked a few menial part-time jobs. Surprisingly she still remained in contact with her family and according to her parents, they were just beginning to accept her ‘nomadic lifestyle.’ So, when she first disappeared no one really seemed overly concerned. Thanks to my newspapers.com subscription it didn’t take long for me to realize there were no news articles mentioning Laura Aime’s disappearance at first, and her name only began to appear in ink after two hikers discovered her remains in American Fork Canyon. Additionally, when her body was first discovered, law enforcement first speculated it belonged to Deborah Kent.
Carol DaRonch (eighteen). November 8, 1974. Survived, Murray, UT.
The evening she was abducted Carol DaRonch parked her maroon 1974 Camaro on the southern side of The Fashion Place Mall in Murray, UT. As she was window shopping outside Walden Books, DaRonch was approached by Bundy, who was posing as a police officer. He said that her car had been broken into and asked her to drive down ‘to the station’ with him to file a report with him. However as they were on their way he attempted to subdue and handcuff her but was unsuccessful: she was able to fend him off and escape. Of the encounter, DaRonch said that she ‘thought he was kind of creepy … I thought he was a lot older than he was.’ She also commented that she could smell alcohol on his breath.
Debra Jean Kent (seventeen). November 8, 1974. Murdered, Bountiful, UT.
After Bundy was unsuccessful in his attempts to kidnap Carol DaRonch he quickly realized he was going to need a new victim. So, he made the twenty-two minute drive away to Viewmont High School, where he successfully abducted Debbie Kent. Kent was watching a play with her family but left the school at approximately 10:30 PM to pick up her brother from the nearby Rustic Roller Rink. She never made it to the rink and was most likely abducted in the parking lot. According to an eyewitness, there was loud screaming coming from the area at roughly the time that Debra was last seen, and another person saw a light-colored VW Beetle speeding away from the school. After the Kent’s realized their daughter hadn’t even made it out of the parking lot, they found a handcuff key on the ground by their car. Bundy confessed to killing Deb and burying her body in the same area as Nancy Wilcox.
Caryn Campbell (twenty-three). January 12, 1975. Murdered, Estes Park, CO.
Bundy abducted the twenty-three-year-old nurse from the Wildwood Inn in Snowmass Village. While staying at the inn with her fiancé and his children, Campbell went missing after going upstairs to her room to retrieve a magazine. Although we will never know for certain how exactly Ted managed to abduct the attractive young woman, it is highly likely he feigned an injury and asked her to help him carry something back to his vehicle. After he lured her away from the hotel to a darkened parking lot, he hit her over the head then quickly snuck her into his Bug. Roughly five weeks after Campbell disappeared her body was found less than three miles away from the Wildwood Inn. Someone driving by her remains noticed a large number of birds flying over the area. Using dental records, police determined that the remains belonged to Caryn. The postmortem examination revealed that her skull had sustained three heavy blows. Before Ted’s run in with Ol’ Sparky, he confessed to Campbells murder.
Julie Cunningham (twenty-six). March 15, 1975. Murdered, Vail, CO.
Cunningham disappeared early in the evening on March 15, 1975 after leaving her Apollo Park apartment in Vail to go a nearby bar to meet up with a friend. Bundy told law enforcement that he pretended to be an injured skier on crutches that needed help carrying a pair of ski boots to his car. According to Ted, the pair walked over half a mile together before they finally reached his vehicle. Once there, Bundy knocked her unconscious, put her in his car then drove to a remote area roughly eighty miles west of Vail and sexually assaulted her. When finished, he strangled her to death and left her remains in a shallow grave near Rifle, CO. Julie’s body has never been recovered.
Denise Oliverson (twenty-four). April 6, 1975. Murdered, Grand Junction, CO.
On April 6, 1975, Denise Oliverson set out on a bike ride to her parents house but was never seen alive again. The next day, a search party found her bicycle and shoes under the Fifth Street Bridge by some railroad tracks. Just days before he was executed in January 1989, Bundy told law enforcement he abducted Oliverson then disposed of her body in a river about five miles West of Grand Junction. Her remains have never been found.
Lynette Dawn Culver (twelve). May 6, 1975. Murdered, Pocatello, ID.
Although the details surrounding Culvers murder seem to vary between sources, it’s strongly speculated she was last seen at Alameda Junior High School. It’s worth mentioning, this was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from where Bundy was living at the time in Salt Lake City to Pocatello, Idaho. Some places say that she left campus during her lunch period, where others claim, Lynette was last seen getting on a bus. When considering her healthy and happy relationship with family and friends as well as and her stellar academic performance, she most likely was taken against her will. In his death row interviews, Bundy confessed to killing Lynette then dumping her body in the Snake River. He also said he raped and drowned the twelve-year-old child in a hotel room after abducting her. Law enforcement didn’t fully accept his confession despite providing some convincing details.
Susan Curtis (fifteen). June 27, 1975. Murdered, Provo, UT.
At the time she was murdered, Susan was a freshman at Woods Cross High School. She had a history of running away from home for days at a time but never was gone for very long. Susan was originally from Bountiful, Utah but at the time of her disappearance was attending a youth conference at Brigham Young University in Provo. A natural athlete, Curtis had ridden her bicycle 50 miles from Bountiful to Provo to attend the conference. She vanished on the first evening of the conference after a formal banquet: she left her friends to make the quarter mile walk back to her dormitory to brush her teeth but was never seen or heard from again. As Bundy walked down to the hall to be executed Curtis was his last death row confession. Since her body has not been recovered, she is still regarded as a missing person.
Margaret Bowman (twenty-one). January 15, 1978. Murdered, Tallahassee, FL.
In the early morning hours of January 15, 1978, a group of young women residing at the Chi Omega house at Tallahassee’s Florida State University were asleep in their beds when evil crept in… Margaret Bowman was born in Honolulu and moved to Florida in 1973 after her father retired from the US Air Force. Bowman was one of four women Bundy attacked when he broke into the sorority house at around 3 AM on January 15, 1978. He beat her with a piece of firewood as well as a telescope and strangled her to death with her own tights. Despite the violent nature of the crime, the initial investigation failed to produce any evidence of sexual assault or struggle. The severity of the beating was so extreme that part of Bowman’s brain was visible.
Lisa Janet Levy (twenty). January 15, 1978. Murdered, Tallahassee, FL.
Lisa was born in St Petersburg, FL and attended Dixie Hollins High School, where she played flute in the band for two years. At FSU, she majored in fashion merchandising and worked at the Colony Shop near campus. When law enforcement got to the crime scene Levy’s was the first sister that officers found dead. Medical Pathologists discovered that she had been beaten on the head with a log, sexually assaulted with a hair spray bottle then strangled. Additionally, they found bite marks on her buttocks and one of her nipples had been so savagely bitten that it was almost completely severed from the rest of her breast.
Kathy Kleiner-Rubin (twenty). January 15, 1978. Survived, Tallahassee, FL.
Kathy Kleiner-Rubin and Karen Chandler shared a room at the Chi Omega sorority house. That night she was attacked Kathy went to bed first, with Chandler following shortly after. After Bundy attacked and murdered Lisa Levy, he went into the room next door and brutally assaulted Kleiner-Rubin and Chandler. In an interview, Kathy said that was awoken that morning by the sound of her bedroom door opening. The assailant then tripped over a chest that was in-between the girls twin beds. Ted then assaulted her with a piece of firewood, which left her with a broken jaw, concussion, skull fracture, broken arm and finger. Miraculously, she survived her injuries and testified against Bundy in his death penalty trial.
Karen Chandler (twenty-two). January 15, 1978. Survived, Tallahassee, FL.
As I said earlier, Karen Chandler was Kathy Kleiner-Rubin’s roommate in the Chi Omega house. After Bundy was done brutally assaulting Kathy he moved onto Chandler. Bundy knocked out four of her teeth and beat her so severely that he broke her jaw and right arm. Somehow Chandler survived. She took the rest of the academic quarter off but later returned to the Chi Omega house at FSU.
Cheryl Thomas (twenty-one). January 15, 1978. Survived, Tallahassee, FL.
After Bundy was finished with his atrocities at the Chi Omega sorority house, he wandered a few blocks over and climbed into an open kitchen window in Cheryl Thomas’ apartment. He attacked her and Thomas barely escaped with her life: her jaw was broken in two places, her shoulder dislocated, and she had five skull fractures, which left her permanently deaf in her left ear. In 1978 Thomas was a student at FSU and a member of the school’s dance team. The night she was attacked was alone in her apartment but thanks to some attentive neighbors who heard the assault her life was saved.
Kimberly Dianne Leach (twelve). February 9, 1978. Murdered, Lake City, FL.
In 1978, Kim Leach was a 12-year-old seventh grader at Lake City Junior High School, where she was a straight-A student and the runner-up Valentine Queen. Leach was one of Bundy’s youngest and his last victim. On the morning of February 9, 1978, Kimberly arrived at Lake City Junior high School on time. Just before 9 AM, she left her first period class to go and pick up her purse that she had accidentally left behind in her homeroom. After she recovered the purse, she headed back towards her classroom in the pouring rain but never arrived. That afternoon, Kimberly’s parents became concerned when their daughter didn’t come home after school. They called everybody they knew, but nobody could account for Kimberly. Their concern escalated to fear when they learned she had been at her first period class but then never returned. They immediately called law enforcement to report their daughter missing. A search party quickly formed and concentrated on Suwannee River State Park for weeks. Kims remains were eventually found on April 7, 1978, in an abandoned hog pen with a small metal lead-to. She was nude other than for a pullover jumper, her clothes were piled up beside her body. She was in an advanced state of decomposition, but she was identified thanks to dental records. Leach had suffered homicidal violence about the neck region.
Miscellaneous: there is no consensus as to when or where Bundy began killing. He told different people varying stories to and refused to give the specifics of his earlier crimes, even as he shared in graphic detail to dozens of later murders in the days before he was his executed. He told one of his attorneys Polly Nelson that he attempted his first kidnapping in 1969 in Ocean City, NJ, however, did not kill anyone until sometime in 1971 in Seattle. He told Portland forensic psychologist Dr. Art Norman that he murdered two women in Atlantic City while visiting family in Philadelphia in 1969. Bundy hinted to former homicide detective Dr. Robert Keppel that he committed a murder in Seattle in 1972 and another murder in 1973 that involved a hitchhiker near Tumwater, but he refused to elaborate. Rule and Keppel both believed that he might have started killing as a teenager. Bundy’s earliest documented homicides were committed in 1974, when he was 27 years old. By his own admission, he had by then mastered the necessary skills to leave minimal incriminating forensic evidence at crime scenes.
On September 2, 1974, Bundy drove through Boise while moving from Seattle to Salt Lake City and during that trip, he picked up a still unknown hitchhiker and killed her. Ted returned the next day to photograph and dismember the corpse then left her remains in the Snake River. Reports from Gonzaga University’s student newspaper ‘The Gonzaga Bulletin’ claim that Bundy stopped by a campus dorm for a party in the 1970’s and drove a female student to Pullman. She miraculously survived.
Bundy confessed to detectives from Idaho, Utah, and Colorado that he had committed numerous additional homicides, including several that were unknown to the police. He explained that when he was in Utah he could bring his victims back to his apartment, ‘where he could reenact scenarios depicted on the covers of detective magazines.’ A new ulterior strategy quickly became apparent: he withheld many details, hoping to parlay the incomplete information into yet another stay of execution. ‘There are other buried remains in Colorado,’ he admitted, but refused to elaborate. The new strategy (which was referred to as ‘Ted’s bones-for-time scheme’) served only to deepen the resolve of authorities to see Bundy executed on schedule and yielded little new detailed information. In cases where he did give details, nothing was found. Colorado detective Matt Lindvall interpreted this as a conflict between his desire to postpone his execution by divulging information and his need to remain in ‘total possession, and the only person who knew his victims true resting places.’
- in Oregon, 2 (both unidentified)
- in Idaho, 2 (1 unidentified)
- in California, 1 (unidentified)
After being sentenced to death, Bundy spent eleven years on death row at Florida State Prison in Starke, before he was executed by electric chair on January 24, 1989.
