Jane Marie Curtis was born in Washington state in 1953, and grew up in Edmonds; she graduated from Bellevue High School in 1971 and during her time there she participated in multiple clubs and organizations, including ‘Girls Club,’ the Big Sister Picnic, Mother-Daughter Tea, Homecoming Committee, the Chowder Bowl, Spades, and Ski Club. After Curtis graduated from high school she enrolled at Central Washington University, and while there she was a sorority sister and in April 1974 she lived in the dormitories on campus, specifically at ‘Walnut North #46.’

At the time of her encounter with Bundy, Jane was a twenty-one-year-old student at CWU and stood at 5’6″ tall (one report listed her height as 5’8”) and weighed 140 pounds; she had hazel eyes (although one source said they were green), and had ‘washed out blonde hair’ that she wore at her shoulders.

Most websites and articles about Jane’s run-in with Ted claim that she encountered him earlier in the evening on April 17, 1974 (which is earlier in the evening before Sue Rancourt was abducted), but after reading her interview with Detective Robert Keppel of the King County Sheriff’s Department, I learned that it actually took place on a Sunday, (either on April 14, 1974 or April 21,1974) after she left her job at the Curriculum Lab at the James E. Brooks Library at campus, sometime between 8:30 and 9 PM. She worked ten hours a week on the second floor, and upon leaving her POE she walked out of the front door, and shortly after was approached by a young man that was ‘carrying a huge stack of books, like about eight or nine books, and he had a cast* on his left arm as I recalled earlier. But he was carrying these books and all of a sudden he just kinda drops them, right in the direction I was walking in, so I just more or less… offered assistance. I said, ‘gee, well it looks like you have quite a load, would you like some help?’ so I helped him pick up the book, no big deal, cause he didn’t act like, uh, he acted like a very nice person. So I said, ‘do you need any help?’ He said that he could, so I…’  Curtis clarified that he did carry a few of his books, but she carried the majority of them and they were all hardcover. Jane also said that she remembered the man was a bit ‘shorter than she was,’ because she happened to have on platform shoes that day that placed her at around 5’9″. *One sources says that Bundy was using crutches when he approached Curtis, but she never mentioned it in her interviews with LE.

Curtis said the man was wearing a dark colored stocking hat that ‘went up’ on his head and that his ‘hippie clothes’ were on the blackish side and he also had on a long, ‘grubby’ coat. She also stated that he had dark hair and that ‘everything about him was lacking color:’ ‘no outstanding colors like red or yellow.’ She said where she was certain he had no beard or mustache she wasn’t completely certain if he wore glasses or not, as he looked at her ‘strangely,’ and his eyes looked: ‘weird. That’s one thing I remembered, but I can’t remember whether he had glasses on or not.’ In regard to what hand the cast was on, she said it would have been his left hand because when they were walking it was on (…) side, so it would have been his left hand because his fingers were in my direction because I noticed that there was on one of his fingers some metal, kind of a metal type cast on his fingers, silver, splint-like.‘ When Curtis asked the stranger how the injury happened, he said it was from a skiing injury but was reluctant to say much else on it, and after she suggested ‘Crystal Mountain’ as where the accident took place he immediately responded, ‘yes, that’s where it happened, and he elaborated that he ‘ran into a tree up there.’ She commented that he didn’t strike her as the skiing type, and that he didn’t appear to her to be much of an athlete; she also said she thought the scenario could have possibly happened, but she felt it was highly unlikely.

When Detective Keppel asked Jane if the man was skinny, she said no but that his ‘coat was big, kinda bulky looking, slouched over.’ She also said he didn’t appear to be in any pain from his injury and his arm only seemed to hurt when she started to allude that she didn’t want to further help him, or get in his car: ‘the only thing, only the times when he needed help, like when I said I was leaving, when I approached the car, then he wanted me to get in, then all of a sudden he started, like, ‘ohhhh my arm,’ he went on about his arm hurting him, and he said don’t forget I have a broken arm, you feel sorry for me… get in…’

When Keppel asked Curtis what the man’s sling looked like, she said that ‘it looked like, when I was at Western I was in a cast for several months, and it looked like, it wasn’t hard… not the plaster. It looked like the wrapping of gauze-type.‘ … ‘It was white, with white wrapping. It was completely around his fingers, across here, around this thumb and up his arm, but he had his coat up. The coat was over it, but only part way up so you could see it. Then he had that metal thing on his finger, it looks like maybe it was something you could do yourself.’ Curtis told the detective that it was unusual to her that he would have a broken arm and not have a real cast on it: ‘because I had the gauze on before the swelling went down, then they put a hard cast on me. It looked like something that anybody could do if they wanted to. I just sorta glanced at it, but it didn’t look like a professional job. That little metal thing over his finger looked like it was just taped on.’

As they approached the car, Bundy told her to open it up, and after she replied ‘what?’ he handed her his car keys, to which she refused and told him no. When they arrived at the VW, the car was locked, and after he unlocked and opened the door, she peered inside of it and immediately noticed that there was no passenger seat: ‘it was simply gone, with nothing in its place.’ She said the man ‘wasn’t saying anything, and after he opened the door he said, ‘get in,’ to which she said ‘what,’ then he quickly said, ‘ohhhh, could you get in and start the car for me?’ I said, I can’t.’ So he was wincing at the time about his arm.’ When pressed about what was inside of the car, Curtis said there was a ‘square box in the back, way in the back in a cubby hole behind the back seat. There was something back there, but there was nothing unusual that struck me except the whole passengers seat was gone.’ Jane said that the car was for the most part non-descript and had no CWU stickers on it.

Curtis told Detective Keppel that the man never touched her and he ‘probably more or less just wanted me to feel sorry, and get in, and I just dropped his books after he told me that and I took off.’ When she turned around and left him she didn’t run, and only briskly walked away and he didn’t chase or come after her and she just went back to her on-campus apartment; she also said that as she was running away from him she never heard him start his car.

Curtis said the car was yellow in color and didn’t seem to have any particular smell, like he had been smoking in it, andthat it had been parked in a ‘no parking area,’ because it was in an spot that ‘went around a curve, and right in there there’s a road and it has the block-wooden blocks, and there’s a parking lot area for the tickers for the lower dorm, then right around the corner there’s kind of a high grass and ditch.’

At the end of the interview with Detective Keppel, Curtis said that the man told her to: ‘start the car for me, I remembered that. First of all, he told me to get in, I said what, then he went through his little pain bit, and said get in and start the car for me because I can’t. He said because of his arm he couldn’t start it. He wanted me to start it for him.’ She also clarified that the ignition on the VW was on the left hand side.

At around 8 PM on April 17, 1974 (which was about two hours before Sue Rancourt went missing) CWU student named Kathleen D’Olovio reported to police that she was approached by a man using the same ruse as Jane Curtis: he had his arm in a sling and was looking for some help carrying some books to his car. D’Oloviosaidwhen they reached his Volkswagen, the man dropped his keys and asked her for some help finding them, but her suspicions were raised after she noticed the cast on his arm didn’t look as if a medical professional put it on. Wisely, instead of bending over to look for the keys she suggested they look for them using the reflection from a car’s lights: once she found them she immediately snatched them up, tossed them at Bundy then quickly got out of there, an act that most likely saved her life. This most likely threw Ted off, as he was most likely hoping she would lean over so he would have had a good angle to bash her over the head from behind with a crowbar (or tire iron), and she was able to get away unharmed.

As we all know, after the failed abduction of both Jane Curtis and Kathleen D ‘Olivo Ted went on to find a victim in Sue Rancourt, who was last seen around 10 PM on April 17, 1974 leaving a meeting of ‘The Living Group Advisors’ at 9:30 PM in Munson Hall about possibly being an RA the following year (which would have helped her save in tuition costs).

* In November 2025 I received an email from Jane asking me to take the post down, and where I did spend a lot of time thinking about what to do I ultimately decided to take all of the personal details out, but leave the Bundy related information.