Reports of the extensive searches made in the Issaquah and Taylor Mountain areas.
Transcripts of Robert Keppel’s 1989 interviews with Ted Bundy, courtesy of King County Archives.
ted bundy
A Report by Ted Bundy to King County, January 26, 1973.
A Preliminary Research Proposal written by Theodore R. Bundy (consultant to Department of Budget & Program Planning) for King County, ‘Misdemeanants who Recidivate,’ dated January 26, 1973. Document courtesy of the Internet Archives, user ‘Marionumber1.’ From February to the end of April in 1973 Bundy worked for King County Program Planning.
Ted Bundy Related Documents from Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office.
Ted Bundy related documentation released by the Pitkin County Sheriff’s, mostly related to the Caryn Campbell case.
Bundy’s Final Days.
Here’s some documentation surrounding Ted’s last few days alive as well as his execution.
Sharon Harrington
A written police statement of Sharon Harrington regarding an experience she had with a man in an arm cast on July 26, 1974 at around 11:30 AM.
David Lee.
“I noticed a VW Bug coming out of the alleyway behind Oscar Woerners Restaurant (no headlights). I came up behind it and I activated my blue lights at the same time I was running the tag, and the tag came back as a stolen vehicle. I didn’t have a backup anywhere close by, there was only three of us working in the entire city of Pensacola that night. I got him out of the car, and had him lay on the pavement. He kept saying, ‘officer, what’s wrong? officer, what’s wrong?'” … “Initially when I was placing the handcuffs on him he kicked my feet out from under me and struck me with a handcuff that had been placed on one wrist. And it of course knocked me off my feet and that’s when it started.” … “I was chasing him hollering ‘halt’ and so forth, well he turned and all I’d seen was a nickle and thought it was a gun. So I leveled down and fired… so I said wow, my God. I killed him.” … “well I went and seen if he was shot. And I bent down and he grabbed my wrist and we had a struggle for my revolver. And it’s a heavy pistol and when I broke it away I swung and slapped him on the cheek. And if you see pictures right after the suspect was arrested there’s a big bruise on the side of his cheek, and thay was from my pistol barrel. There’s no doubt in my mind he would have killed me if he would have gotten my gun away from me.”
– David Lee.
Bundy Vehicles.
- Like I usually do, I’m relying on the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992‘ for my information on this article but I’m also heavily depending on a piece my friend Erin Banks wrote to help fill in the gaps and fix the inaccuracies (I posted the link to her article below).
- The first time I remember Bundy commenting on a vehicle was when he was talking about his stepfather’s car: he said that he often felt humiliated being seen in Johnnie’s run-down old Rambler. Fun fact: Ted apparently learned how to drive at 15 (before he legally had his license).
- Despite consistently owning cars Ted was known to borrow vehicles from loved ones and acquaintances:
- Around 1969 he borrowed his cousins car for an entire summer after Diane Edwards ended their romance (I don’t know any other details).
- He not only had Mrs. Ferris’ (from his days at the Seattle Yacht Club) drive him places he also borrowed her car on occasion. Despite scouring the internet I couldn’t find what the make and model of her vehicle was.
- Bundy often “borrowed” his gf’s Liz Kloepfer’s 1973 light blue Beetle (on two occasions she thinks he took it without asking).
- Ted was an accomplished car thief long before his jail breaks began in 1977: he had a lengthy juvenile record that Louise Bundy helped pay to have sealed when he turned eighteen (as to not potentially damper his “bright future”).
- In September 1965, Bundy bought his first car: a 1933 Plymouth Coupe with money he earned working as a forklift operator working at ‘City Lights Tacoma’ (he was also a student at the time at the University of Puget Sound).
- In April 1966 he sold the Coupe to put money towards a pale blue 1958 VW Bug. It was smaller, more reliable and got better gas mileage than his clunky old car.
- Bundy owned a white pickup truck at some point in time (I couldn’t find much information about that particular vehicle). I could have sworn I read somewhere that it was his brothers truck but when I looked into it I couldn’t find any information on it. According to the TB Multiagency Report he owned it until late 1975 (November/December).
- A blurb from the website ‘the outline’ mentions that Ted’s friend Marlin Vortman owned a VW Bug similar to the one he drove; I wonder if this is the ‘Washington TAG OYU-19 (7-18-1973) Owned by friend of Bundy, King County Washington, Make/Model Unknown’ mentioned in the TB Multiagency Report.
- At some time in the spring of 1973 Ted purchased his infamous tan 1968 VW Bug from a woman named Martha Helms. Countless murder victims (many of them unknown) across multiple states were inside of this car. On August 15, 1975, Bundy fled the scene in this vehicle when Utah Highway Patrol officer Bob Hayward tried to pull him over in Granger. When Officer Haywood eventually caught up to him and searched it he found: “a crowbar behind the driver’s seat, a box of large green plastic garbage bags, an ice pick, a flashlight, a pair of gloves, torn strips of sheeting, a knit ski mask, a pair of handcuffs, and a strange mask made from pantyhose.” Law enforcement also observed that the passengers seat had been removed and placed in the back seat. Bundy was arrested for evading an officer and was released the next day on bail (there was nothing found in the car at the time linking him to any additional crimes). When the Bug was impounded after Ted was arrested forensic experts found DNA in it that helped link him to the murders. In 1978, SLC Sheriff’s Deputy Lonnie Anderson bought the death wagon for $925 (US) and it sat for in storage for almost twenty years. Deputy Anderson put it up for sale for $25,000 in 1997 and it was purchased by a well-known Murderabilia collector named Arthur Nash. In 2010 Nash leased it to the ‘National Crime And Punishment Museum’ in Washington DC and when that museum closed in 2015 it was moved to the ‘East Alcatraz Crime Museum.’ At one point Nash said he had plans to have the vehicle swabbed for DNA however as of April 2023 this has not happened. Who even knows if there would be any usable genetic information remaining after so much time has passed? I think one of my favorite Bundy back-and-forth’s is whether or not he removed the VW’s door handle (I don’t think he did). Looking into the particular make and model of Beetle it doesn’t seem that it was as easy as just taking a few screws out of the mechanism and popping out the handle: you most likely needed to take the entire door panel off and it was a process. I know unconfirmed (and living) Bundy victims Sotria Kritsonis and Rhonda Stapley both claim that the man that lured them into his VW Bug removed the inside door handle, however no one else reported ever seeing this. Liz never commented that she was ever in his car without a passenger’s side handle on occasion, nor did any of his other friends.
- Thanks to a lot of time spent digging I was finally able to come across a small snippet of information I’ve only seen in one source: On the afternoon of Saturday. February 10, 1978 Ted made his first attempt to depart Tallahassee, FL (he had killed Kim Leach the day before): sometime between 4 and 6 PM he started looking inside parked cars for keys left in the ignition. Within minutes he found a 1975 Toyota in the parking lot of an auto repair shop and was off. He took the car back to The Oak (where he watched TV with a friend for awhile, Frances Messier) then went out for the night. That same time Tallahassee Police Officer Roy Dickey was sitting in an unmarked patrol car trying to find information related to the Chi Omega case. He saw Bundy walking near his vehicle and said Bundy noticed him immediately. and made a quick getaway. When he arrived back at The Oak he immediately started packing the stolen Toyota. dickey he had parked it about a block away. Around 1 AM Deputy Keith Dawes was doing patrol and came across Bundy “locking or unlocking a car door.” The officer said that where the individual didn’t do anything in particular to warrant his attention he was still drawn to him for an unknown reason. Deputy Dawes got out of his patrol car and approached Bundy, immediately asking him for ID. Ted quickly said he didn’t have any on him but mentioned he’d just come out to grab something quick from his car. When the officer asked “where do you live” he answered almost without thinking, “College Avenue.” As they continued to chat a bit the officer started looking around the vehicle with his flashlight and spotted a single license plate in the backseat. When questioned about it Bundy said that he had found it laying around somewhere and wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it. It was then that he got spooked and quickly (and successfully) sprinted away. The car and property inside of it was immediately impounded (Sullivan, The Bundy Murders).
- On February 12, 1978 at around 11 AM Bundy attempted to steal a white 1972 Mazda but didn’t make it very far: there was a sort of “shimmy” in the front end and it wasn’t safe to operate. He quickly ditched it for something else.
- Immediately after Ted ditched the Mazda he found a VW Bug but realized almost right away it was somebody’s baby (just by the way it was souped up and decorated). He quickly got rid of it (he has a conscience about a car but not for human life?).
- Bundy eventually came across an orangish-red 1972 Volkswagen Beetle owned by Rick Garzaniti, who had purchased the car in April 1974. The evening of February 12, 1978 Garzaniti went to a buddy’s house and left the keys in the car (he didn’t plan on staying long) but got distracted by a Burt Reynolds movie (haven’t we all?). He left it parked behind the friends residence in an alleyway. When Rick eventually went to leave he discovered his car had vanished; he immediately reported it as stolen. Three days later he got a call from law enforcement letting him know that his vehicle had been found however it was being held as evidence; it wasn’t released to him until almost two months later. When he finally got it back it was covered in dark black fingerprint powder, a sizable chunk was missing from the upholstery, and the backseat was gone. Additionally Garzaniti found some items in it that didn’t belong to him, including several license plates and some random bicycle parts.
Lake Sammamish Files.
The Lake Sammamish files (police reports) merged into one single PDF document, courtesy of Rob Dielenberg/Maria Serban.
Bundy Residences, in full.
I listed the addresses in order of how they were on the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992’; for obvious reasons I left the Palo Alto address out, as there wasn’t anything to it (despite how much I looked into it).
- McMahon Hall, University of Washington. During his first year at the University of Washington in 1966 he lived on the 4th floor in the South Tower in McMahon Hall. He reportedly kept a key for the building after officially moving out and would return there on occasions to take naps.
- 658 North Skyline, Tacoma, Washington. In 1953 the growing Bundy family left their first home on South Sheridan Ave and moved into this house.
- Unknown Address, Palo Alto, California. Dates unknown.
- 5015 16th Street, Seattle, Washington. All the information in the ‘TB Multiagency Report 1992’ says Bundy lived here at some point in 1967. This was the same year he attended Stanford University in Palo Alto from June to August.
- 873 North 16th Street, Seattle, Washington, 1968. I couldn’t find much information about Bundy’s time at this address although according to the Multiagency Report he was traveling all over the Pacific Northwest at the time so maybe he lived here just briefly at one point. There doesn’t see to be a building at this address anymore (on Google Maps its a vacant lot).
- 3214 North 20th Street, Tacoma, Washington. This is the Bundy family’s third and final home. After selling their second house on North Skyline Drive in 1968, they moved to this house in the North End of Tacoma.
- 4039 South Warner, Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania. Ted lived here with his Aunt Julia (Cowell) while he attended Temple University (the general consensus is that he moved to Philadelphia at some point in December 1968). His time in the ‘City of Brotherly Love’ didn’t last long: in May of 1969 he dropped out of school after finishing a single semester and moved back to Tacoma.
- 1252 15th Ave, Marin County, California, 1970. I found no information about Ted at this address anywhere (although I’m fairly positive it’s in San Francisco). According to the Multiagency Report he was in Seattle for the entirety of 1970 when he was supposedly there (I posted the screen shot below). Strangely enough the same address only in Seattle, Washington is listed as the residence provided when Ted was given a ticket by Highway Patrolman for hitchhiking on August 8, 1970 in Marin County, WA.
- 4143 12th Northeast, Seattle, Washington. Ted lived at the Rogers Rooming House from September 1969 to September 2, 1975 (when he moved to Salt Lake City for law school). His room was on the second floor.
- 5015 16th Northeast, Seattle,WA. Dates unknown. A similar address is listed above just with Northeast added to it (both addresses are real). I couldn’t find any other details about Bundy residing here.
- 5208 18th Northeast, Seattle, Washington. This was one of Liz Kloepfer’s apartments. She lived on the first floor on the right side of the house. It was built in 1912 and contains eight bedrooms.
- 1252 15th Ave, Seattle, Washington. On August 8, 1970 Bundy was given a ticket by a Highway Patrolman for hitchhiking southbound on Highway 101 in Marin County, Washington. He told the officer that his address was 1252 15th Ave in Seattle, WA despite never living there (he resided at the Rogers Rooming House at the time).
- 3510 West Elmore, Seattle, Washington, sometime in late 1973. Per the ‘Ted Bundy and File 1004 documents from Seattle PD’ document, this is Ted’s friend Marlin S. Vortman’s residence.
- 565 1st Ave #2, Salt Lake City, Utah. Bundy lived here from September 2, 1974 to September of 1975 (he moved from Seattle for law school). At the time it was a boarding house and Ted rented room two. His former living space is on the second floor directly above the porch. To the right of the house is a fire escape which he used to come and go in the middle of the night as he pleased. On the left side there is an entrance to a basement, and according to one resident Bundy would occasionally go down into this basement late at night (however at the time they didn’t think it was weird because he was the property manager).
- 413 ‘B’ Street, Salt Lake City, Utah. According to the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992’ Ted lived in this house on B Street for a brief period in 1976 but he didn’t reside there very long: on March 1st, 1976 he was found guilty of kidnapping Carol DaRonch and was immediately remanded in custody.
- 364 Douglas Street, Salt Lake City, Utah. Bundy moved into an apartment on the top floor on September 26th, 1975. He claims he made the choice to move into this house because it was within walking distance to where he was attending law school (at the University of Utah). At the time he also worked on campus as a security guard.
- 409 West College Avenue, Tallahassee, Florida. Bundy rented a room on the second floor beginning on January 7th, 1978 after he escaped prison for the second time. He signed the lease under the name Chris Hagen. Ted left Tallahassee on February 12th, and was arrested for the final time three days later. At some point after 2016 the building was demolished and turned into a parking lot for the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house.*
* Some places where Bundy lived in his earlier days were left out of the report. I added the following:
- 1514 South Alder Street, Tacoma, WA. When Louise took three year old Ted and left Philadelphia for Tacoma in 1950 they lived at this address with her Uncle Jack Cowell, a professor of music at a private college that Ted greatly respected and admired. Cowell was well-educated, financially secure, and very well-respected in the community: all traits that Bundy wanted to possess.
- 1620 South Sheridan Avenue, Tacoma, WA. In May of 1951, Johnnie and Louise Bundy moved into this four bedroom house after they got married; it was the family’s first home. It was at this point that little ‘Teddy Nelson’ officially became known as ‘Ted Bundy.’ While they were living here Louise gave birth to Ted’s little sister, Linda.
- 7202 Ridge Avenue/499 Domino Lane, Philadelphia, PA, The Cowell family’s first home. Ted and Louise lived here with his Mother, Aunt, and Grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell until he was three. Its in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia. At the time the address was 7202 Ridge Avenue (it’s now 499 Domino Lane). The house was torn down at some point during the late 1960’s and the strip mall that is there today was built in 1970.
- 4617 Pulaski Avenue, Philadelphia PA. Samuel and Eleanor Cowell moved here after they sold their house in Roxborough, PA. It’s strongly speculated that Ted often visited this house on a number of occasions while he was staying at his Aunt Julia’s house in Lafayette Hill in 1969 while attending Temple University. Eleanor Cowell died at the age of 76 in April of 1971; she was a diabetic and suffered a stroke in the mid-1950’s. Additionally throughout her life she underwent electroconvulsive therapy for depression. She rarely left her house thanks to a bad case of agoraphobia, especially during her final years of life. Samuel passed away in December of 1983 at the age of 85.
FBI Records, The Vault: Ted Bundy Files.
A treasure trove of Bundy related information including documents related to his escape in Colorado then again in Florida as well as the strange case of Janla Carr.
Documents thanks to https://vault.fbi.gov/Ted%20Bundy%20/Ted%20Bundy%20Part%2001%20of%2003/view
Another Bundy Blog. 