Here’s some pictures of Diane Edwards, former GF of Ted Bundy:
Diane Edwards.
Theodore Robert Bundy
Margaret Bowman.
Some pictures of Margaret Bowman I don’t frequently see:
Sara A. Survivor: Part One (Susan Lorrayne Roller).
I’m going to preface this by saying I decided to split this article into two parts: the first will be about Sara A. Survivors background (whose real, legal name is Susan Lorrayne Roller) and her supposed relationship with Ted Bundy. The second piece will be a breakdown and review of her second book, ‘Reflections on Green River: The Letters of, and Conversations with Ted Bundy.‘
The tl;dr version of Ms. Survivors story is (whose real name is easily found in police documents so the need to publish under a pseudonym doesn’t make any sense): she is a surviving victim of Ted Bundy and over a four year period while in high school and college he repeatedly stalked, kidnapped, and sexually assaulted her. Survivor further claims that Seattle based law enforcement purposefully left out evidence in Bundy related reports (specifically related to the Taylor Mountain dump site), and even goes so far as to suggest there were additional victims that law enforcement refuses to investigate or even acknowledge. In a letter written to former Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole dated July 18, 2017, Survivor said that ‘there has been a cover up of the Ted Bundy cases in general and in particular relative to the findings at Taylor Mountain. Victims were left behind and never investigated and evidence at the crime scene of both Issaquah and Taylor Mountain are not protected. People were allowed to profit from the case and too much information was released and other evidence was simply lost, destroyed and discounted.’
Susan Lorrayne Roller was born on September 13, 1954 to Gilbert and Lois (nee Moore) in Portsmouth, Virginia; the family eventually relocated to Lakewood, Washington. She graduated from Clover Park High School in 1972, the same year she was elected to represent her high school as Daffodil Princess in the Pierce County Daffodil Festival (an event to help support the flower bulb business). She went on to attend the University of Washington in Seattle, where she was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority; Roller graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Medical Sciences in 1976. At first, I wasn’t able to find a great deal of information on her background (not having access to her memoir put me at a huge disadvantage), however once I discovered her real name I was able to find quite a bit more information. Well, let me clarify: I only found a handful of websites with useful information BUT this is one of those instances where quality is more important than quantity because the few sources I found were VERY helpful (I will include all links in the works cited section at the bottom)… Personally, I’d rather have 3-4 informative, high-quality resources than twenty crappy ones rehashing the same information over and over.
Beginning in 2016, a woman going by the name of ‘Sara A. Survivor’ published a trilogy of books about the Ted Bundy case. Her first release, ‘Reconstructing Sara: The Lost Victim of Ted Bundy,‘ is (for the most part) a memoir that is currently out of circulation waiting to be rewritten by a professional writer (as of May 2023). I tried my hardest to get my hands on a copy (I searched many websites, used bookstores, and even asked my sister the bookworm to check her local library but sadly she was unsuccessful). For that reason, I heavily relied on information from a variety of different sources including Erin Banks’ extremely well written book ‘Ted Bundy: Examining the Unconfirmed Survivor Stories.’ On the ‘Google Books’ page for Survivors first novel is the blurb: ‘what happened to Sara, both with Ted Bundy and with law enforcement, needs to be publicly reviewed. Bullying, cover up of materials (moving them into sealed areas during the time Sara was coming forward), and deciding who gets access to the justice system and who doesn’t are not elements of a democracy. They do not represent what the justice system of the United States was intended to be.’ Ms. Survivors second book is the one I’m reading, ‘Reflections on Green River: The Letters of, and Conversations with Ted Bundy.‘ The is composed of never before released interviews, transcripts, and information that took place between 1984 and 1988 related to Ted’s Washington state murders while he was on death row in Florida.
Last is the transcript of Bundy’s Final Prison Interview with Bob Keppel in January 1989: ‘In Defense of Denial: Ted Bundy’s Florida Confession Interview.’ Right before Ted was strapped into ‘Ol’ Sparky’ he met with Dr. Keppel in what would be his final interview with law enforcement regarding his atrocities in Washington. Nearly all of his confessions have been published in full through a variety of different mediums, however ‘Ms. Survivors’ final book is the transcript of it in full (as provided by her FOIA request originally made in June of 2015). In 2014 and 2015, she requested (and was granted) over 1,000 pages of original documents related to the Bundy case never before released to the public in their entirety as well as over 12 hours of original audio files. Upon reviewing the newly obtained files, she came to the conclusion that the case out of Washington state was ‘peppered with problems,’ and there was evidence that was purposefully misplaced. She elaborated that ‘documents couldn’t be found in some instances, and witness statements were not factored into the entire spectrum of the case in a consistent cohesive manner.’ The FOIA, or the ‘Freedom of Information Act’ was created in 1966 and states that any person has the right to request access to federal agency records. Survivor claims that the transcript is proof that information was purposefully withheld by law enforcement in relation to crimes Bundy committed before 1974 (when his ‘official’ reign of terror began with the brutal assault of Karen Sparks). On her website, ‘Sara discusses her concern that law enforcement withheld information about the Bundy case to the public (she specifically called it ‘incomplete information), elaborating that: ‘questions need to be raised as to why Bundy cases were released publicly with so much information put out when girls were still missing and not all was known. The case was never protected in the event future witnesses and victims came forward.’ The book (or more specifically, the transcribed original document) was not changed or altered in any way from how it was released to her (aside from taking out some names not directly related to the case). Perhaps I’ll read it after ‘Reflections on GRK.’
One of Sara’s more shocking revelations (for what I think are obvious reasons) is that detectives deliberately left important information out of case files, including the fact that they found ‘additional heads were found on Taylor Mountain.’ She claims the information released to her is proof that ‘158 items of evidence were found that included: skeletal remains, women’s clothing, evidence the killer spent time there; jewelry; signs of bondage and weapons (shotgun casings, gun shells, snug tie, etc) animal trails indicating animals had scattered the remains and human remains (female) who were not identified as being with the known victims there. There was also an abandoned home nearby and the ME statement states that the girls known and found there were not decapitated as has been claimed publicly. At Issaquah, there were also findings of women’s clothing, jewelry and a bicycle shift cable (labeled with a question mark). Much of this evidence was significant enough that at the time it was forwarded on to the Superior Court so why was it publicly denied? Evidence supports Sara and her contentions: her memories time and date stamped contained details which at the time the memories emerged as far back as 2001 had never been publicly released. They also contain details that are still not publicly released.’ I included the document in full below, and for this particular portion please refer to pages 12-15 of the Susan L. Roller document from cavdef.org.
In her first book, Ms. Survivor admits that she isn’t 100% certain when exactly she became acquainted with Bundy, however feels it most likely happened sometime in her junior year of high school in the winter months of 1970/71. One way that Survivor speculated she could have met him was on a ski trip to the Washington Cascade Mountains with her friend ‘Robert.‘ While there, she attracted the attention of Ted, who just happened to be there at the same time; she alleges to remember the two men fighting over her at some point. Sadly, Robert died about a year and a half after the incident in a waterskiing accident. Regarding the circumstances surrounding her friends death, Sara can’t help but wonder if somehow Ted was involved (whether it was from screwing around with his jet skis or boat), and despite having absolutely no tangible proof of this her inner voice ‘felt something was wrong back then…’ I’m sorry, but why would Bundy give one single crap about some guy he randomly met a year and a half earlier, one time? Was he so obsessed with Survivor that he jealously killed any other man that showed any sort of interest in her? Keep in mind at this time Ted was in a committed, long-term relationship with Liz (in fact this was towards the beginning of their romance, where Kloepfer reported they spent a lot of time together). He was also a student at the University of Washington as well and from June 5, 1970 to December 31, 1971 was employed as a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company (a small, family-owned medical supply company). This is obviously a busy, vigorous schedule and his life was pretty busy at this time… so, let me get this straight: Survivor is saying Ted had all this extra time to follow her around AND was still able to go about his normal, everyday routine? Although I don’t believe Bundy had anything to do with Roberts death, in her book Ms. Banks does point out that one’s of his Seattle based attorneys John Henry Browne wrote in his book ‘The Devils Defender‘ that Ted allegedly confessed to him (and conveniently only him) that his first murder victim was a male (although it’s widely speculated Browne often embellished and wasn’t always truthful in his storytelling).
A second scenario Sara said she could have possibly become acquainted with Bundy was through her modeling job, and that he was stalking her while at shoots across various states. In her book, Ms. Banks points out that Survivor ‘repeatedly points out in her memoir how beautiful and petite she was at the time. This seems to hold particular meaning to her, as though it validated her claim that Bundy had targeted her. Bundy, she writes, came to stalk her at her tearoom, runway, and photography modeling jobs, yet she neither recognized him as the person who’d previously dated a friends sister in California nor as the man who had approached her during a prior ski trip (Banks, 81).’ Survivor claims their relationship started off innocently enough (like most do): movies, late night walks, skiing trips (you know… normal, nonthreatening dates). It didn’t take long before the date part of their meet-ups disappeared, only to turn into walks in the dark alone, which eventually led to the first time Ted sexually assaulted her. He apologized after, saying he had been drinking before their date and she forgave him. In an email to true crime writer and Bundy bff (kidding) Ann Rule, Susan said that ‘the relationship was not about fear. There were many times on many walks and nights on the phone, where we just talked in the beginning of 1974, he was asking me out skiing, to movies, to do things. I canceled a skiing date due to weather, but shortly after that he stopped asking for the traditional dating things and we wound up basically just on walks and talks. But, he had overpowered me in Tacoma when I knew him (when I was in high school) and he had raped me there, this was the violent time that hurt me physically and I never said anything because I blamed myself and he had been drinking and he was apologetic about it afterwards, to at least claimed to be that I forgave him.’ Survivor then claims that she began dating Bundy again in 1974 but couldn’t get past the sexual assault as well as his increasing possessiveness of her, to the point she suspected he was following her late at night and was slowly isolating her from her friends. Further on in the same email to Rule, Survivor said her ‘injuries were done in Tacoma and they were bad: I never went to a hospital but probably should have. I developed severe endometriosis (normally only seen in seat belt injury or violent rape) on nearly ever organ and space in the abdomen as well as on my lungs. Doctors said it was the worst case they had ever seen.’
Ms. Survivor said she remembers Bundy coming to her house at some time in late 1970/early 71 (despite the fact she didn’t know or recognize him in any capacity) to play with her pet raccoon (I want one). She further alleges he pulled up to her house driving a cream-colored VW Beetle BUT… a damning piece of evidence against her story is that Bundy drove a light blue VW Beetle at that time in the early 70’s: he didn’t purchase his yellow (or cream/tan/gold/bronze/ beige) roving death machine until sometime in the spring of 1973. Sara also claims that in 1971 Bundy started calling her family home despite not knowing her name, phone number, or where she lived. She further claims that one of the reasons he contacted her was to offer up his counseling services to her, and I mean… Why would he do that when he didn’t have his Psychology degree until 1973? Obviously Survivor took him up on the offer (I mean, who wouldn’t accept help from some stranger on the phone?) and began freely sharing all of her deepest, most personal secrets with this mystery man, such as her feelings about her parents splitting up, the fact that she was frequently left home alone, and that she was suffering from extreme loneliness as a result of the whole situation. It’s worth mentioning that Sara freely admits she was drinking quite a bit at this time, which would most likely affect her memory in some capacity.
In ‘Reconstructing Sara,’ Survivor claims she was so terribly victimized by the serial killer that a Stockholm Syndrome type relationship began taking place. Stockholm Syndrome is defined as a condition where hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors and occurs when a specific set of circumstances or criteria occur. In most situations, it’s directly related to the power imbalances that take place in hostage-taking/kidnapping/abusive relationships. Survivor often referred to herself as Teds ‘secret friend’ and even made a promise to him that she wouldn’t tell anyone about their ‘relationship.’ In an email to ‘BlueZinnia9@aol.com,’ Sara said that a friend named ‘Anne’ can confirm the time frames of Survivors ‘secret friend,’ and that ‘it started slowly after we moved into the annex which she believes was in October and which I think was more than likely November, but sometime in here. She also told me that she remembered it gradually escalating from the point until becoming more intense right before we left for California.’ Ms. Survivor also claims that sometime in 1971 Bundy began aggressively stalking her, even claiming he broke into her childhood bedroom (while her entire family was home). On page 16 of the cavdev.org document, Survivor said that ‘Ted lived in Tacoma; I lived in a nearby suburb Lakewood. Ted’s parents lived less than one mile from my fathers home in Tacoma in 1974 and prior to that even closer to my fathers apartment at the time (he was separated from my mother in summer of 1971 when Ted was actively stalking me). Phone records would prove contact with him if they still exist. There are other facts as well that would prove what I am saying. I think he was using me as a blueprint for his killing, he stated to FBI he was abducting a woman and releasing her to test his skill as a ‘dry run.’ A dry run is against a target by definition.’ Additionally, Survivor is fairly certain that he followed her and some friends while they were on a walk one night into a secluded, wooded area. She said that the violence Bundy inflicted on her was so extreme that it left her with permanent psychological and structural brain damage: psychological because of the incredible amount of stress, trauma, and grief he inflicted on her and structurally because of repeated violent head injuries she sustained by him. Ms. Survivor further alleges the memory loss she experienced before Bundy came into her life was the result of being sexually abused by multiple other men during her childhood and adolescence.
Now, I could be totally off base so forgive me if I get too far off track but I’ve been studying Bundy for quite a few years now, and it wasn’t until I was in Seattle in April 2022 that I stumbled upon Ms. Survivors story (I’ve spent MANY nights in the past few years going down the Ted Bundy rabbit hole at 3 AM)… on a side note, has anyone ever really looked into ‘Bundy is innocent‘ theories or that he was somehow involved with the ‘MK Ultra’ project? I’m not saying I believe he’s innocent (he obviously wasn’t) or that I think the government had a hand in Bundy killing innocent young girls (I don’t)… I’m just saying, there is some really weeeeeeeeeeeeird shit out there. Anyways, I digress… back to Sara. There was a night I literally didn’t sleep a single wink while in Washington and while surfing the interwebs I stumbled upon Sara’s story (I didn’t do very well being away from my new husband and leaving my Wellbutrin at home really messed with my mental health). I did buy Erin’s book back when it was first published in 2021 and read it right away but to be truthful, at the time I was more interested in the confirmed victims just because I was still learning the basics (I felt like I was reading a masterclass level text while at a beginners skill level, to be truthful). When I picked it up again while researching this story (I can’t even call it a case because technically it isn’t) it was like, 11:30 at night and as I was flipping through it I sat up in bed and said ‘OH MY GOD!’ really loudly, to which my husband said ‘you’re not staying up all night reading, we’re going to bed.’ Just… I know I made a post about it already on my FB page but wow! What a wealth of information. If you haven’t read it yet you’re missing out. Anyways, I had zero knowledge of Survivors story before my trip in April 2022 and I’ve read many (many many) books on Bundy (I’ll post a picture of my collection below), but for the life of me I don’t recall ever seeing anything about this victim before (even under her ‘real name’). Maybe I’m wrong but if there is anything written about her it must be very short and concise because I can’t for the life of me remember anything. Anyways, her first book is said to be written in ‘fragmented, confused and repetitive order in which most of these events and the emotions that are associated to them still exist in her mind.’ Sara claims she blocked out all of her traumatic memories until ‘recently’ (for reference, her first book was published on September 13, 2016) and she regained only partial ones from the damaged regions of her brain: all of the memories she experienced with Bundy during that four-year period in her youth came back to her in pieces between 2001 and 2009. The book/website said that ‘her memory fragments documented in emails back and forth between Sara and law enforcement over a fourteen-year period dating back to 2001 containing specific details of the Bundy case that were never publicly released. Her physical features, locations, travels and proximity to Bundy in high school and in college also line up to the case overall.’
In a letter to Kathleen O’Toole, Survivor started out by apologizing for being so ’emotional and disorganized,’ and that she can’t help it: ‘I am a professional writer and I work from home due to the trauma of what happened to me decades ago and I am organized in most aspects of my life but I struggle still to this day in trying to communicate all that happened and why it’s relevant. There has been a cover up of the Ted Bundy cases in general and in particular relative to the findings at Taylor Mountain. Victims were left behind and never investigated and evidence at the crime scene of both Issaquah ad Taylor Mountain was not protected. People were allowed to profit from the case and too much information was released and other evidence was simply lost, destroyed and discounted.’ Common sense should tell you (plus it’s still widely discussed in the true crime community) that law enforcement is still looking to solve all unsolved Ted-related cases and put them to bed. Despite this, Survivor claims that for over 14 years they refused to investigate any of her claims (that they admitted to her anyways, remember how police were still investigating Bundy despite telling Liz they cleared him?), acknowledge her as a victim (or even talk to her), or even assign her a case number. It is worth noting that people in general have trouble remembering events that happened a long time ago (I think I’ve said that in my last few articles when discussing Bundy’s family attempting to answer questions about Teds activities as a youth). Ms. Survivor heavily implies that Ann Rule helped plant false memories into her head and that was why she gave contradictory statements and false memories (which could be why she pulled her book from publication and is rewriting parts of it); I am including some screen shots of these emails below (Banks, 80).
Something really interesting Erin touched on in her book was that Ms. Survivor claimed that after spending time in Modesto, California she realized she looked strikingly similar to many of the Santa Rosa Hitchhiking victims (which were at one time also thought to be committed by Bundy)… now, why she felt this way we’ll probably never know, as the girls had a broad range of hair colors (light/dark… black, blonde, and brunettes) and were ‘Caucasian, Polynesians, South-East Asians, Hispanic Americans, and those of mixed ethnicity (Banks, 82).’ Why did she feel she somehow looked like this very broad range of women? The SRH murders took place in 1972 and 1973 throughout both Sonoma and Santa Rosa counties in the North Bay region of California. There are seven unsolved homicides related to the case and involve female hitchhikers, all of which were discovered completely naked in rural areas close to steep embankments or creek beds close to roadways. The case remains unsolved to this day; Bundy was strongly suspected in relation to these cases after he was taken into custody for the final time in 1978 (it’s proven he had spent some time in nearby Marin County in California). Ted was eventually ruled out a suspect by Sonoma County detectives twice: once in the 1970’s then again in 1989 thanks to credit card receipts and Bundy being placed in Washington state at the times of some of the disappearances. However, in 2011 ‘The San Francisco Chronicle’ published an article looking into the logistics of Ted’s potential trips from Seattle to California and after comparing the dates and times of his credit card receipts to the where the murders took place it was determined he would have been enough time to drive to California, commit the murders, then hightail it back to Seattle in time for his alibi (it would have taken slightly over 12 hours to drive from the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Ave in Seattle to Santa Rosa County, one-way). Some law enforcement officials feel Ted was a poor suspect in the SRH murders because they strongly felt the killer was native to the Santa Rosa area… perhaps someone who worked as a rural letter carrier or utility worker that would have been familiar with the remote areas where the bodies were dumped. However, about his relation to the case, Bob Keppel said that ‘Bundy is definitely a good suspect.The killings in Santa Rosa would fit his methods, he spent time in the area, and I’m sure he started killing well before 1974. It was an open market for Bundy.’
From page 28 of ‘Citizens Complaint: SLR June 2017’: ‘also, I know Georgann and Ted started with her in his confessions. She was important to him because she was important to me: she was my friend. He was dropping one of his hints to police at the time and being superior to them as was typical of him because he knew what they didn’t: that he had been catching and releasing a victim over and over (me) and that I had been the target all along.’ I mean, this just sounds like the ramblings of a person suffering from delusions: why wouldn’t he just talk about Roller? Why would he be so insistent on keeping his relationship with her a secret? If I can be completely honest, I was almost ready to completely write off Ms. Survivors claims that she knew Georgann Hawkins in any sort of capacity. And where I couldn’t find actual proof of their friendship I did discover that Sara was a Daffodil Princess in 1972… It’s fairly common knowledge in the Bundy community that Georgann was Pierce County’s Daffodil Princess the following year in 1973… now, I scoured the internet to find any pictures/videos of them together and came up with absolutely nothing. Perhaps this isn’t the groundbreaking proof I originally thought it was, however it does make me wonder if they were at the very least acquaintances through events with the flower bulb business. It definitely makes me wonder…
The severe PTSD and ‘fragmented memory’ Ms. Survivor claims to suffer from is due to the severe head trauma she experienced from multiple head fractures inflicted on her by Bundy and previous assailants. In her memoir she claims the only reason Bundy even abducted Georgann was because she was trying to stop him from pursuing his frequent attacks, assaults, and abductions on her. Survivor claimed that Hawkins walked through the pathway by the Theta house when she was talking to Ted: he was mad at her for avoiding him (she said it had been going on for a few weeks). During her freshman year, Hawkins joined the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta and lived in their house on campus, where Sara was a sister and resident at the Kappa Kappa Gamma house. Ted told Survivor that he ‘wanted her to carry the briefcase and go out for a drive with him to talk but Manfred (who I’m assuming is a dog) was pacing at the door to go in and I was not supposed to have him in the annex and he could get in trouble so I told him that I would go later to talk. George volunteered to help Ted, she was my friend, we were close and had been in Daffodil and she was like another little sister to me (similar to Anne) and I think she could tell that there was tension between us and she was trying to help me. They walked me to the annex door, which was only a short distance with George having to stop and wait for Ted several times as he kept trying to get me to go with him. I went in and left the light off to go to bed and put my pajamas on and shortly thereafter I heart the noise outside my window. It sounded like a body falling. I kept telling myself I was imagining things. I was also alarmed because the lot was big and rarely did anyone park outside of my window at night unless it was Ted. I was alarmed as I had not seen the lights of his car and if he was indeed parked outside of my window then he had broken his routine and not put his lights on and that frightened me. I snuck to the window and peeked out the side, lower edge of it. He did not see me. All I saw was him, standing by his VW, with the door open staring into my window. I never saw George, but just the actions and the sound terrified me. I tried to call the police as I stated, but I had nothing to go on but a noise.’ Additionally, per the ‘Citizens Complaint: SLR June 2017,’ on the evening that Georgann Hawkins was abducted Survivor said that she: ‘heard Bundy but I did not see him, knock Georgann out and I peeked out the window to see what the sound was as I was terrified of him (related to what happened with me, I did not realize at the time all else he was doing).’ … ‘I saw him drive away that night but did not know he had George. I also wasn’t processing anything very well at that time. Repeated captivity with rape, head trauma, and unrecognized and untreated rape syndrome from high school was taking a serious toll on me.’
One of the biggest parts of Survivors story that I don’t understand is why Bundy would keep her alive. I mean, this is the first time I ever heard about him leaving a victim alive like this, and a part of me feels like an asshole picking apart a possible sexual assault victims story but immediately after looking into her background Sotria Kritsonis and Rhonda Stapley came to my mind, and I’m sorry, I don’t believe either one of them. Rhonda because she’s… Rhonda and Ms. Kritsonis because of her claim that Bundy LET HER GO BECAUSE OF HER HAIR/the missing door handle lie. Just off the top of my head, Kim Leach had shorter hair at the time she was killed and I’m sorry, the long brown hair parted down the middle was simply NOT an absolute requirement when Bundy picked his victims. Quite a few of them had light hair even on the medium length side. Anyways, I digress…
Ms. Banks points out that in Sara’s ‘memoir,’ roughly 1/3 of the text is simply a list of discovered items not properly cataloged in relation to the Bundy dump sites. Survivor claims that King County law enforcement purposefully kept this information from the community and that ‘what was put before the public for decades by Keppel and others especially early on has been incomplete, misrepresented, fabricated and blatant lies.’ This part I pulled directly from ‘Reflections on Green River’ (from the ‘table of contents’): ‘There were additional audio tapes noted in the files beyond the ones given here but they were designed ‘unplayable.’ Where are the transcripts of those tapes? What did those tapes contain in information? Why were records allowed to be held privately?’ … ‘Keppel set the tone of the case from the beginning and made sure he was the face of it but his positioning of the case was inaccurate at best and self-serving. He made every effort he could for years even after he ‘retired’ to use his connections to the justice system and to media to silence me and continue to control the case as the ‘expert’ but from what I see in the records some of his maneuverings in the case files were illegal. His statements to press were false and misleading about the case in general in WA.’ She further claims that there were many additional, never before released to the public items found at both dump sites that law enforcement never even bothered cataloging. I’m again citing Erin Banks, who very eloquently commented: ‘anyone who read Bob Keppel’s ‘The Riverman,’ knowing how meticulously the young Detective and his team combed Taylor Mountain and its surrounding area for skeletal remains and any evidence that could have been relevant to solving the case. Thousands of items were collected, thousands of items were collected thousands of callers reported their boyfriends, co-workers, family members and suspicious neighbors to the police tip line.’ Despite a massive amount of data collected from law enforcement in relation to the Bundy case that translated into a massive amount of physical documentation… Sara still claimed they (for whatever reason) purposefully left out items found at crime scenes (like skeletal human remains) in official reports. Not willing to take into account that perhaps if anything were to be missing it was more likely due to human error instead of being done purposefully. Banks also points out that ‘The Ted Task Force consisted of relatively few members. And, untoward as it may be, even investigators make mistakes, including misspelling names and losing evidence. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it most likely is a duck.’ I’m going to have to agree with her, 100%. Sara seemed to have a particular disdain for Dr. Keppel, even going so far as to suggest or hint that he had some sort of collaborative type-relationship with Bundy, which was why certain things were left off the record.
Survivor further claims that investigators in Seattle were in communication with other states where Bundy was active (even though they said to have had no awareness of his general activities during that period in the 1970’s)… in fact, there are quite a few documents that prove law enforcement was keeping tabs on him at the time (for example, they were aware he worked for the Seattle Crime Commission studying rape, the WA state Republican Party, the Olympic Hotel, The Seattle Yacht Club, and Pedline Medical Company). In her blog, Survivor said: ‘his sites in WA had multiple bodies each (skeletal remains) and over 100 pieces of evidence at both locations including clothing that matched the description of what at least some missing girls were wearing. This evidence found on site appears per record sheets at the time to have been earmarked for Superior Court of WA. Why was it denied as existing by Keppel? Missing girls found at WA state sites of Bundy were even from out of King County jurisdiction (Rancourt and Parks) and out of WA State (Parks). Yet the public claim for decades was that this never existed. That evidence from one site was lost and per Keppel nothing existed at the other site. Interstate abduction of a young girl (Parks) and FBI was never called in when her remains were found? Multiple bodies at two major crime sites? Private ownership and profit off a multiple serial case by one cop who works the media while still under color of law to the detriment of the cases and families and victims?? There needs to be some answers and accountability. I firmly believe having seen so many of these records that Keppel attacked me publicly and behind the scenes as a ‘consensual’ survivor knowing full well that I was a victim because he didn’t want anyone in law enforcement to review the case and realize all that he had done that was not only unethical but also in my opinion appears to be illegal.’ Personally, I think that Keppel didn’t buy Survivors stories and didn’t attempt to hide it, which is why she most likely writes about him in a very negative light.
As I said earlier, I didn’t read ‘Reconstructing Sara’ (although I did notice the Amazon site said it’s available for ‘professional use only,’ but I feel I don’t quite apply) so I can’t give it any sort of review. I read through her write up in Erin Banks book multiple times when preparing for this piece, who said a good portion of what was in it could be found on her WordPress page (I included that in the works cited portion). When I first stumbled upon Sara’s story in April 2022 her website was fully operational and all of her blog posts and articles were still available (the page is also titled ‘Reconstructing Sara: The Lost Victim of Ted Bundy’). However, now (or as of May 2023) it appears that most articles have been pulled and are no longer available. When I clicked on numerous articles it took me to a page that said ‘Oops! That page can’t be found. It looks like nothing was found at this location.’ The pieces had names such as: ‘Ted Bundy Evidence Taylor Mountain: 158 items: Denied, Destroyed, Discounted for Decades,’ ‘Ted Bundy & The Public Image The Authorities Initially Created Of Him To Create Their Own ‘Super Cop’ Scenarios,’ ‘Ted Bundy & Pornography: He talked of it years before the execution,’ ‘Refuting Riverman: Doesn’t Match Original Case Files In Multiple Places,’ and ‘1989 Ted Bundy Final Confession: Was it Planned and Rehearsed?’ I wonder if this is possibly because Survivor is working on a rewrite of the book (per her Amazon page). Oddly enough, only one remains; it’s titled ‘Ted Bundy: WA Crime Sites Itemized’ and discusses how she thinks Bob Keppel purposefully tainted the Bundy investigation in Seattle and goes over the 158 items related to the Taylor Mountain evidence list. She starts it with the intro: ‘this website isn’t as much about me anymore as about justice process in the Bundy case. Keppel’s original efforts to become the face of the case suppressed important case information that should have been worked – his suppression of Bundy’s comments about Rule’s book sending it to psychiatrists instead of into evidence and suppression of Bundy’s comments about Michaud’s interview being possibly not all fact [Bundy claimed some was done by Bundy for effect] shows his willingness to protect his buddies behind the scenes and also to lessen any evidentiary probe into possible facts that were included in Bundy’s complaints [its not always just psychology – Bundy claimed Hawkins was found at Taylor Mountain with Ott and Naslund and the records appear to support that]; even the attack on me over the years as to my character was an effort to redirect any investigation away from the facts of my experiences versus what actually happened: a psychological behind the scenes gas lighting of me – no one was evaluating the correlations and facts of my experiences objectively. Keppel walked the line between ‘author’ and ‘expert’ for decades, ‘updating’ as ‘new’ what was already in evidence years earlier, using the inherent protections of both roles to cover up his original transgressions. This type of loophole in current justice system standards needs new laws.’
I had a fairly tough time getting through parts of Sara’s writing. I found it to be very wordy and almost made a point of being elegant on purpose (I hope this makes sense, in my opinion Bundy oddly wrote the same way). I found my eyes glazing over whenever I attempted to read it (on multiple occasions) and I quickly grew bored with what I was trying to process.
As I said earlier, Ms. Survivor claims that Bundy stalked and followed her while in school (both at Clover Park High School in Tacoma and the University of Washington), even going so far as to follow her when she traveled for modeling jobs throughout the western part of Washington state and beyond… she said that wherever she went, Bundy was there, waiting… but WHY? And how? I hopefully don’t need to say this took place way before the days of social media. Yes, I definitely think Bundy stalked his prey before he went in for the kill but how did he track her from states away? Logically, it makes absolutely no sense and timewise… how would he have been able to pull something that time consuming off and not have anyone notice this incredibly erratic behavior? Survivor claimed that what Bundy did to her back in the 1970’s is still being looked into by law enforcement. On page 28 of ‘Citizens Complaint: SLR June 2017, ‘if I am ever given an honest chance at having what I am saying evaluated it will not only make sense to the cases as a while but it will help solve a few also that I know he did such as Georgann’s, possibly one in Oregon and CA as well.’
Per her website, ‘what happened to me back then is being investigated and so too I hope is the behind the scenes maneuvering that favored the killer instead of the victims and for now I am going to defer to, and trust in, those who have committed their time and expense to giving what happened back then the comprehensive, objective investigation it warrants. I am grateful the investigation is being done for my own sense of closure, but in addition to that for a lot of reasons, including reviewing the maneuverings back then that allowed critical evidence to be denied, moved about without chain of custody and destroyed. The Bundy cases were never an example of good police work though some did do their jobs faithfully. In my opinion, having healed enough to process some of this it was about politics. And those politics continued into the present day and the stalking, threats, and intimidation tactics used against me to prevent any of this from coming into public awareness. It makes me sad and upset that politics back then over-rode common decency and that politics continued to influence the silencing that occurred decades later. The Bundy cases deserved a new investigation. It needed to be done.’
Roller currently resides in Oneida, WI. Per her ‘classmates’ page, she said: ‘I am living in the midwest now after many years in Washington. I am very happy here. I am still actively working and enjoying life. The older I become the more I appreciate the journey and the intangibles in life. The updated photo is from Christmas 2019. I have a collie now that is my constant companion at home and at work, always by my side. She is a blessing as keeps me active walking her at least 2 miles a day even when I wish I didn’t have to such as in the snow or rain. I love the Midwest storms, the approaching thunderstorms, and the hard wood forests. I grew up in the Midwest. For me, this region is like coming home.’ After completing her degree at the University of Washington, Roller got a job as the Director Medical Programming for the Omnia Corporation from 1980 to 1982. After leaving them she got a position with Golle & Holmes in Minneapolis as a program developer; she left the following year. In 1983 Susan was briefly employed as the Director of Marketing for The Santal Corporation in St. Louis. In 1984 she started a company called ‘Fine Line, Ltd.’ based out of Reno, Nevada; her position is the President. Additionally under the ‘career’ section of her website ‘independent film producer and writer’ is listed as well. Under the ‘achievements’ portion is: ‘screenwriting, cowboy poetry, skiing, art FC.’ Roller is also a member of the Reno Chamber of Commerce, is a practicing Episcopalian, and sides with the Republican party.
Works Cited:
Banks, Erin. ‘Ted Bundy: Examining The Unconfirmed Survivor Stories.’ Published March 7, 2021.
Survivor, Sara A. ‘Reflections on Green River: The Letters of, and Conversations with, Ted Bundy.’ Published on April 5, 2016.
archive.org/details/953-32-10-bundy-notes-keppel-redacted/page/n44/mode/2up (Opinion at the end of document is that of Maria Serban).
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Ted-Bundy-a-suspect-in-Sonoma-County-cold-cases-2355670.php
books.google.com/books/about/Reconstructing_Sara.html?id=TGhYvgAACAAJ
reconstructingsara.com
On October 15, 1984, Bundy sent the Green River Task Force a second letter, this time via his former attorney John Henry Brown, again offering his help in solving the Green River serial murders. He signed this second letter, ‘Sincerely, Ted Bundy.’ Photo courtesy of Maria Serban.
Nancy Wilcox.
Nancy Wilcox was born on July 4, 1958 to Herbert and Constance (nee Mouritsen) Wilcox of Holladay, Utah; she was one of six kids and had four brothers and a sister (David Michael, Richard Stephen, Thomas Brent, James Patrick and Susie Wilcox-Nelson). The Wilcox family were devout Latter-day Saint’s and Nancy was very active in the LDS community; she was described as being incredibly kind, very pretty, funny, and it seemed that everyone who knew her liked her. She was said to have a small, close-knit group of friends, was a straight shooter, and didn’t drink, do drugs, or party. The young girl had medium length strawberry-blondish hair, brown eyes, stood roughly 5’6” and weighed around 120 pounds; she used minimal make-up, had a small scar on the side of her face, wore a size 6.5 shoe and a size 9 dress. At the time of her disappearance in early October 1974, Nancy was sixteen years old and a junior at Olympus High School. It’s commonly reported that she was a cheerleader however according to her best friend Louisa Paulson-Graves, it was her that participated in that extracurricular activity, not Nancy. In September and October 1974, Wilcox worked part time at a small coffee shop called the Arctic Circle Drive-In near her home but was fired prior to her murder. When she disappeared she was in a healthy, committed relationship with a guy from her high school named John Hood.
Wilcox was last seen by some classmates near her high school in the passengers seat of a tan VW Beetle close to her home on Arnette Drive in Holladay, Utah on October 2, 1974. The young lady was on her way to the store to purchase a pack of gum, and it’s speculated that from there she was on her way to her high school to see her boyfriend, who was a football player and may have been somewhere on campus. Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Detective Jerry Thompson said she was last seen wearing a blouse of unknown color, blue corduroy pants, a silver chain necklace with beads and a turquoise ring; she wasn’t wearing a coat. In an interview with YouTuber ‘Captain Borax,’ Susie Nelson said that on the day she went missing her sister left the house in a huff after getting into a fight with her Dad about John’s pick-up truck leaking oil on the families driveway (oh my gosh my Dad would be the same way!). Both Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox said because of this initially law enforcement deemed her to be a runaway, however it was glaringly obvious to her loved ones that she had no intention of leaving 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.
From January to July 1974, young women in Washington state were disappearing at an alarming rate, and even though most residents of Utah were somewhat aware of what was happening it still seemed too far away to really affect them. After all, it was Seattle’s problem, not theirs. At the time in the mid-70’s, law enforcement felt so strongly that the killer was going after young coeds in the general Seattle area that they were even hesitant to link ‘Ted’ to the disappearance of Kathy Parks out of Corvallis, Oregon. I probably don’t need to say that Nancy was the first of many young women to vanish without a trace from the Salt Lake City area in 1974. The juvenile division of the sheriff’s department did not release a public appeal for information related to her disappearance until December of 1974, three months after she vanished (and even then they stressed that she ‘might still be a runaway’). On the day after Ms. WIlcox’s case first made the news a waitress from Lake Point contacted the Sheriff’s Department and told them she had seen a girl matching Wilcox’s description at the restaurant where she worked. She further claimed that the young girl was with a ‘tall young man who had a mustache’ and when they were done with their meal drove off in a ‘light-colored Volkswagen.’
I hope I don’t need to point out that we live in different times now and back in 1974 there was no internet scroll with news constantly updating itself. Additionally, at that time police jurisdictions didn’t like to share information with one another, and Utah wasn’t on high alert like Washington state was about missing young females: Nancy was the first (known) of Bundy’s Utah victims to go missing. After Wilcox vanished, Utah law enforcement were unable to find very many helpful clues that would help them locate her (they had few leads and not much to go on). During the course of the investigation they spoke with at least 45 of her family, friends, school mates and acquaintances, however none of them knew anything about her disappearance. Several of her loved ones were also given polygraph tests but passed. On November 30, 1974, Utah police began a two day search of the canyons around Salt Lake City but were unable to find any trace of Nancy.
It’s speculated that Bundy may have been grooming Nancy Wilcox: family members said she mentioned an older man who would come into the drive-in that she briefly worked at and flirt with her. As I said earlier, she was employed at an Arctic Circle located on 3300 South and shared with her cousin Jamie Hayden that while there she had met an ‘older guy in law school.’ Susie told a similar story: one time Nancy became visibly excited when she saw this same older gentleman drive by their family home, and said something like, ‘oh my gosh, that’s the guy who has been coming into my work!’ During his final interviews with law enforcement, Ted didn’t share that he knew Wilcox beforehand nor did he elaborate or give any intimate details about her murder. Ted did admit he remembered Nancy’s case vividly because it took a fair amount of time for her name to appear in the news after she disappeared: ‘because nothing came out in the paper about it for some time, as I recall, in this particular case. Which I later would associate with Wilcox.’ This shows he was paying close attention to the media coverage surrounding his atrocities.
On September 2nd, 1974 Bundy left Washington and moved to Salt Lake City to attend the University of Utah School of Law. After Nancy’s mysterious disappearance on October 18, 1974, he abducted 17-year-old Melissa Smith from Midvale, Utah; her naked body was discovered nine days later by two deer hunters on a hillside in Summit Park, UT. A stocking was found tied around her neck and she had sustained multiple blows to the head. Less than two weeks later on the evening of October 31, 1974, 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime vanished after leaving a cafe in Lehi, Utah. Almost a month later on November 27th two hikers stumbled upon her remains in American Fork Canyon. A little over a week later on November 8, 1974, Bundy attempted to kidnap 18-year-old Carol DaRonch from the Fashion Place Mall on South State Street in Murray but was unsuccessful. After DaRonch escaped, Bundy quickly realized he’d need a new victim and drove roughly 25 miles away to Bountiful to abduct 17 year-old Debra Kent. Kent and her parents were at a play at Viewmont High School when it went later than expected. She volunteered to take the family car and pick up her two younger brothers at a nearby roller skating rink. On her way out to the parking lot, Bundy abducted then killed her and dumped her body roughly 50 miles away in American Fork Canyon. Upon realizing that a worrying pattern was emerging, the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office began a review of all their cases involving missing girls. Subsequently, they determined that Nancy Wilcox and Debra Kent were the only girls who were still unaccounted for.
Before Bundy was put to death in Florida, he confessed to killing Nancy on January 22, 1989 in a 90-minute confession with Salt Lake City Detective Dennis Couch. It’s not surprising: she fits the physical profile of one of his victims and it was established he was in the Holliday, Utah area at the time of her disappearance. During his confession, Ted said that he was driving on a ‘main roadway’ south of the University of Utah when he saw Wilcox walking along the side of the road, forcibly abducted her at knife point then ‘ushered’ her into a nearby orchard; he elaborated that it was dark at the time, the lighting in the area wasn’t the greatest, and that the area was ‘small’ and ‘residential’). Bundy then ‘restrained’ her, put her in his waiting VW then drove her back to his apartment (at 565 1st Avenue), where he sexually assaulted her; he kept her alive for a day. He then killed her and dumped her body in Capitol Reef National Park, located roughly 216 miles away; he specifically told law enforcement that he remembered disposing of Nancy’s body after driving south on I-15 then onto U-89. He had trouble giving them an exact location, claiming ‘we need better maps. That would help. We need just a clearer picture of what it looks like. I do not remember this Capitol Reef National Park. But I don’t imagine that it looks any different from the rest of it, except its name.’ Now, there’s two schools of thought here: either he couldn’t recall exactly where he dumped her body or he purposefully withheld information using the excuse about the map as an excuse. It is worth noting that Bundy claimed Nancy was never in his car which to me is just bizarre. Now, let me get this straight: he abducted her, killed her, then took her body over 200 miles away to dispose of it but she never was in his vehicle? That just doesn’t make any sense. And at first I thought maybe he had Liz’s car or a family members, then I quickly remembered she was a Utah victim not a Washington one and that Bundy is a notorious fucking liar.
During one of Bundy’s third-person ‘pseudo-confessions’ with Stephen Michaud, he suggested that ‘the killer’ parked his car further down the road then ran up behind Nancy and forced her to go into the orchard. He elaborated that they right then and there that he planned on raping her but didn’t intend on killing her. In his mind, avoiding murder might help bring less attention to the crime; obviously, this plan didn’t work when she began to struggle against him. At that point he started to get paranoid that someone nearby might hear Nancy’s cries of distress and decide to investigate so out of pure fear he wrapped his hands around her throat and strangled her until she passed out (or so he thought). Once she was unconscious, he then took off her clothes and sexually assaulted her. After he was finished he realized that she had stopped moving, which panicked him so much that he dragged her body into a corner and then left. However, once ‘the killer’ had returned to his apartment he began to worry that he had left behind physical evidence so he decided to return to the orchard and see if her remains were still there.
According to Ted, ‘the killer’ was so inebriated when he killed Nancy that it took him some time afterwards to piece together exactly what happened so he could locate the orchard again. Once he finally found it, he realized that her body was still there, completely undisturbed. He then swiftly loaded her into his Bug along with her discarded clothing and took her body back to his apartment. He waited ‘a day or two’ before finally dumping her body somewhere near Capitol Reef National Park, but was not able to provide an exact location. I don’t know, I don’t buy Bundy bringing her back to his apartment in any capacity, it just doesn’t sound plausible (unless she was dead but even that’s incredibly risky). Getting caught carrying an unconscious or dead girl in and out of your rooming house in the middle of the night is a bit of a red flag, in my opinion. Also, if she wasn’t dead and regained consciousness she could have screamed or made noise and getting caught was the last thing Bundy wanted. Obviously there are giant discrepancies between his third person ‘confession’ and what he shared with law enforcement before he was executed in 1989. Who knows what to believe.
After Bundy confessed to Nancy’s murder and the Wilcox family was informed their daughter was gone, Herbert Wilcox commented: ‘the sheriff’s office has advised us that the case is closed. The whereabouts of Nancy’s earthly remains are known only to her Heavenly Father.’ Sadly her older brother, David Michael passed away from a kidney disease four months after she vanished. In a 1984 letter to Belva Kent, Mrs, Wilcox wrote of their daughters deaths: ‘I compare my feelings in the loss of both of the children. Knowing that we buried (David’s) body is sad but peaceful and I have had some wonderful dreams wherein I have talked to him, and I know he is happy. I have never had a pleasant or comforting feeling about Nancy. It is a constant pain. Even now when the phone rings on Mother’s Day, Christmas or her birthday, for a split second I think she might be calling (I cannot imagine losing two children so young, so tragically).’ At Nancy’s memorial service on June 30, 1990, Robert Carlyle Stephens of the West Valley Utah Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints said she ‘has been at peace for 16 years, but there has been turmoil in our minds because we did not know what happened to her until recently. Now all those who knew and loved Nancy can be at peace and know that she left home happy and died quickly.’ … ‘When Nancy died, so white, so splendid, so fine, so beautiful and so innocent, she was received immediately into the Savior’s arms.’ He further said that the memorial service was ‘a final act to settle our minds and thoughts and remember her for who she was and how she was rather than what happened to her.’
On March 19, 1989, the Deseret News reported that after Ted confessed his crimes to law enforcement they searched Capitol Reef National Park and found bones along with the tattered remnants of an old, tan blouse with lace: ‘it was deteriorated to the point that it could have been 14.5 years ago, that they say may have belonged to Nancy.’ They found bones in three different areas during a 2.5 square mile search located one mile east of the park: it was from the location Bundy confessed to dumping her body roughly two months earlier. Forensic experts felt that most of the bones belonged to animals and at the time of the discovery former Wayne County Sheriff Kerry Ekker claimed that the bones found in one area could possibly have been human and that: ‘they were of the size that alarmed us to the point that it could have been human.’ … ‘he (Bundy) claimed that he buried her, but in past victims he didn’t bury them. The information that we got on this is very vague.’…’We didn’t extricate any of the bones.’ … ‘He thought the word `Notom’ meant something to him when he left the highway.’ Sheriffs found a ‘shoulder blade that would have to be off of a small animal or a human of approximately Nancy’s size.’ Shortly after they were found the bones were sent off to be tested and unfortunately none were a match to Wilcox. The only human bone found after Ted gave his death row confessions was a patella (knee cap) in Fairview Canyon a little over 130 miles away from Capitol Reef National Park; it was assumed to have been Debra Kent’s and was given to her family. However, because investigators were unable to get DNA from the remains they were unable to 100% confirm the identification until 2015. After going through the missing persons report, it was noted that Kent’s mother had the kneecap, which authorities at the time didn’t know about. Bountiful Police Sergeant Shane Alexander said: ‘Belva Kent was very hesitant at first, but eventually she agreed, believing that it would be a good thing to know and have that confirmation. I sent the patella to the University of North Texas as well as the samples that were collected, and then they were able to determine that the patella matched the family DNA that was collected.’
Steven Kuick has a different theory about Nancy’s death: ‘Just found a new one, so he said he remembers driving Nancy Wilcox through Scipio, Fillmore, and Beaver Utah, which is about 2.5 hours west from Capitol Reef National Park, and the road through the mountains would have been way too much at the time. Bundy spoke of being worried about driving the speed limit because a cop may be trying to reach his quota, and said (he drove through Beaver, which is 2.5 hours south of his apartment, and Capitol Reef National Park is another 2.5 hours east through a mountainous road at night, I just do not believe he did all of that, I do not. If he feels he went east out of Beaver towards the National Park, he very well could have, that would have been HWY 153 East towards Junction, Utah. Drive east off Highway 153 east heading towards Junction, it’s a 40.5 mile journey, and about 10 miles down 153 east there is a road that heads north, and it goes nowhere, it is not a named road on the map that I have, and it looks like it would be a perfect spot for Bundy, and it looks like a spot he could confuse with Capitol Reef National Park. I do not think he went down the road very far either once he went North on that road off of 153. He wanted to hurry up at that point and just get rid of her. Jim Reed Creek follows the road I am talking about, and there looks to be a gravel road that breaks off of there as well, which could truly be where Nancy Wilcox is located.’
Both Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox have both passed away as well as two of Nancy’s brothers. As of 1987, the orchard where Bundy took Wilcox no longer exists; it is now occupied by Summerspring Court, a housing development.
Works Cited:
deseret.com/1989/3/19/18799046/bones-blouse-may-belong-to-bundy-victim
thisinterestsme.com/nancy-wilcox/
int-missing.fandom.com/wiki/Nancy_Wilcox
bci.utah.gov/coldcases/nancy-wilcox
https://www.deseret.com/1990/7/1/18869477/victim-s-family-lays-hope-and-grief-to-rest-in-empty-grave
Ted Bundy, College Information and Transcripts.
Some photos related to Ted’s execution:
Ted’s (first) Utah Apartment.
My friend Kyrie Allyson asked me to share the pictures of Ted’s apartment in SLC at 565 1st Ave. I didn’t get any sort of weird vibe from it, but I wasn’t in Utah for very long… I had limited time and needed to get through things FAST. Maybe if I had been able to walk around and linger a bit I would have been able to get a better feel for what may have happened here.
Ted Bundy lived at this house while attending law school in Salt Lake City between September 1974 and September 1975. Almost immediately after he moved in women started mysteriously disappearing from both Utah and Colorado. At the time, the residence was a boarding house meaning multiple tenants rented rooms and shared basic common areas. While living here Ted occupied room two, which (when looking at it from the street) is on the second floor right above the porch.
Located on the right side of the residence is a fire escape that was added some time in the 1960’s; Ted supposedly used it frequently to come and go as he pleased in the middle of the night. There is an entrance to a cellar in the back of the house on the left side, and according to one of his house mates (who didn’t find it suspicious at the time), Bundy would sometimes go down there late at night.
Before he was put to death, Bundy confessed to bringing two of his victims back to his room: Debra Kent and Nancy Wilcox. He claimed that he left Kent in his room ‘for a period of time’ before he killed her, and eventually dumped her body in a canyon around 100 miles away; he also claimed to have left Wilcox in his room as well before he took her life. Obviously there’s a lot of doubts with these claims: how could he keep girls there for days at a time against their will completely undetected? After leaving this residence in September 1975 he moved about a mile away to 364 Douglas Street.
Letter By Louise Bundy to Judge Stewart Hanson, March 10, 1976.
On March 10, 1976, Louise Bundy penned an emotional plea to Judge Stewart Hanson on Ted’s behalf.
Robin Ann Graham.
Robin Ann Graham was born on June 22, 1952 to Marvin and Beverly Graham. The family of eleven grew up at 2227 Lemoyne Street in the Silverlake-Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, California; Mr. Graham was employed with the Department of Water and Power. Described as having a big personality and an even bigger heart, at the time of her disappearance Robin stood 5’6” tall, weighed 125 pounds, and had dark brown eyes and long brown hair she wore parted down the middle. A naturally gifted student, Robin graduated from John Marshall High School in June 1970 and was attending Pierce College (a public community college in Woodland Hills, LA) as an art major; the ambitious young lady also worked PT at Pier 1 Imports in Hollywood. At the time of her disappearance Ms. Graham was in a healthy, long-term relationship and had a very busy social life.
The night before she disappeared on November 14th, 1970 (after dropping off a friend at home), Robin left her vehicle (a former black and white highway patrol car bought at auction) in the Pier 1 Imports parking lot (located at 5711 Hollywood Boulevard) and got a ride with her boyfriend for a night out partying and dancing with college friends. Robin was last seen carrying a leather handbag wearing a dark blue corduroy jacket (with gold buttons), a red jersey blouse, blue jeans and red clogs; she had a birthmark on her lower back and one of her front teeth was just a hair darker than the others. After dropping a friend off at home, I’m reading that Robin was either dropped off at her car by either her boyfriend or by a friend named Tom Palst (sp?), who very well may be her boyfriend, it’s unclear). I’m also coming across varying reports saying she was possibly driving her boyfriends car. Robin immediately set off down the Hollywood Freeway for home. Mere minutes into her journey (somewhere between 1:55-2 AM, accounts vary) the car stalled: she ran out of gas and was stranded on the Santa Monica Boulevard off ramp. Almost immediately after pulling over, California Highway Patrol pulled up beside her and asked if they could offer any assistance, or at the very least call her a tow-truck. At one point during the early morning, they helped push her car further onto the shoulder, as it was slightly sticking out in the Number four lane. Robin politely declined the tow but asked to be directed to the nearest ‘call box,’ which she used to let her parents know she was experiencing car problems; records say the call was placed to the Graham home at 2:04 AM. The officers pulled up a second time when she informed them she did indeed call home and help was on the way: her little sister accepted the call and passed the information along to her parents (who were out at a party). Satisfied with the answer but still wanting to make sure the young lady was OK, they drove away but decided to loop around once again just to check on her and make sure help really was on the way. After they passed her the last time no one knows exactly what happened to Robin: they saw her talking with a Caucasian man roughly around 25/26 years old with medium length brown hair standing at around 5’8.” I do want to point out there is a discrepancy in the hair color of the unidentified male: in one news report it’s said he had “blonde hair” instead of brown. He was wearing bell-bottom pants, a white turtleneck and was driving a 1957 – 1960 blue Corvette. The ‘Doe Network’ claims the car was a ‘hardtop’ which couldn’t be true, as apparently all Corvettes from that time period were convertibles. I found various reports stating that the man was either ‘leaning in her car window’ or was tinkering underneath the hood, inspecting something. CHP assumed it was the relative the young girl called for help so they just kept driving.
Unfortunately the CHP officers didn’t get close enough to the mystery man to get a good look at his face as they drove past him, and because of this there was never a composite sketch of the suspect done. They reported they saw the blue sports car initially pass Robin’s car, pull off the freeway at the next exit then circle around and come back, eventually parking behind her. The initial report stated that Robin left willingly with the young man, however when that officer was questioned for a second time he clarified he did not see the pair leave together. The last time Graham was seen by law enforcement officers was at roughly 2:00 AM. The call box operated called the Graham home but both parents were out: sixteen year old Bonnie Jean took the message that her sister was stranded and relayed it to her parents when they arrived home at 2:30. They both immediately went to their daughters aide, however when they arrived only her car was there and Robin was nowhere in sight. Additionally, there was no note left behind anywhere in or around her locked vehicle. Law enforcement even fingerprinted the car but were unable to get any viable prints off it and Sergeant Terry Pierce said they interviewed about 150 friends, family members, and acquaintances of Robins in an attempt to gain intel on the cause. Of her disappearance CHP Lieutenant Page said “we are seriously concerned for the girls safety. We fear she may have met with foul play.”
Handling of the incident by law enforcement prompted immediate criticism from LA County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, and because of the officers failing to stay with Robin and keep her safe the CHP faced immediate backlash: an investigation was launched looking into the conduct of the officers surrounding the night Robin disappeared. People were absolutely livid at the thought of trained police officers leaving a young, vulnerable teenage girl alone in the presence of a male stranger in the wee hours of the morning (which resulted in her abduction). Despite the public outcry, it was eventually determined that the patrolmen in question were acting in accordance with policy. Despite that ruling, California Highway Patrol policy was changed to ensure the safety of all stranded female motorists, stating that CHP officers were to remain with any female motorists that were left stranded on the side of the roads at night until their help arrived. Even though police took these extra precautions, women still continued to go missing under similar circumstances involving vehicles over the following years.
Ms. Grahams mysterious disappearance was first handled by the same detectives at the Rampart Division of the LAPD, who theorized it was linked to other eerily similar cases involving missing young women: in November 1967, law enforcement warned the public of an attacker who flagged down three women pretending to have car problems before he assaulted them; they felt the incidents seem to be linked. Eight months before Robin disappeared, Kathleen Johns was on her way to San Francisco with her infant when the car behind her started flashing its headlights at her. When she pulled over a man got out of the vehicle and said her back wheel was ‘wobbling furiously;’ he offered to fix it however instead of helping he loosened it so it completely fell off as she attempted to drive away. The man then backed up and offered to take her and the baby to a nearby service station, which she accepted. As he wordlessly passed the gas station Johns got nervous and asked where they were going. He kept quiet for a few minutes then said, “before I kill you, I’m going to throw your baby out the window.” They drove around like that for about 90 minutes; he taunted the young mother with similar comments like, “you know you’re going to die.” Johns eventually managed to escape the vehicle, hiding in a field with her baby as he frantically looked for her with a flashlight; he eventually left when a truck approached. She eventually was able to wave down another vehicle, which took her to a nearby police station. While she waited at the police station to make an official report, Johns saw a sketch on the wall of the same man that had spent the past hour terrorizing her: it was a wanted poster for the Zodiac Killer.
Ms. Graham was the fourth young woman to disappear under mysterious circumstances in the general Hollywood, CA area within a two year period, however, in most of those cases the victims’ remains were eventually found, unlike Graham (whose body has never been found). Most of Bundy’s victims were never discovered so we know he had a way of making bodies disappear (which also might explain why Grahams body was never found). On the evening of October 30,1966 Riverside College student Cheri Jo Bates went to her schools library to study for a few hours, and when she tried to leave for home her VW Bug wouldn’t start. Conveniently right at that very moment, an unidentified man offered her up his assistance, even going so far as to look under the hood of her VW Bug in an attempt to diagnose why it wouldn’t start. The man claimed he was unable to start it but offered her a ride, which she accepted. Her body was found the next day by a groundskeeper at the college: the young co-ed was brutally killed with a knife and was cut and slashed so aggressively that her head nearly came off. Elizabeth Habe was the daughter of author Hans Habe and b-actress Eloise Hardt. She was a student at the University of Hawaii and was home in LA on Christmas vacation when she was murdered on December 29, 1968 after returning home from a double date with John Hornburg (a family friend). She left Johns house at 3:15 AM in her sports car and was abducted when she got home to her Moms house on Cynthia Avenue in West Hollywood. Her body was discovered on New Years Day in 1969 in dense underbrush off Mulholland Drive; she was found fully clothed and her body was burned, with contusions in her eyes and slashes to her throat and heart; the medical examiner determined no sexual assault took place. There were a few rapes in the neighborhood in the weeks before Habe’s brutal death and it’s further speculated that the young student may have been killed by the Manson Family. A former Family associate said that “members of the Family knew her.” Robin’s case also shows some parallels with the May 1969 murder of Rose Tashman, a young woman who was found murdered just hours after her 1965 beige Mustang was discovered abandoned with a flat tire on the side of the Hollywood Freeway. At around 2 AM, the Valley Junior College student was driving home from a friend’s house in Van Nuys, CA after studying for an exam when she got a flat tire. She was stranded on the side of the Hollywood Freeway just a few miles away from where Graham’s car was found in late 1970. The next day, Tashmans Mustang was found abandoned near the Highway Avenue off-ramp on the Hollywood Freeway; road flares had been set up around the vehicle and her left tire was flat. There was also evidence that someone had stopped to “help” assist her with the flat tire. Only nine hours later, the young girls naked body was found in a brushy ravine off Mullholland Drive about a half mile away from where Habe’s body was found; she was strangled and raped. On January 20, 1970, Cindy Lee Mellin got a flat tire in the same general area as Tashman and Graham, and just like the others she vanished without a trace under mysterious conditions. Mellin was a student and employed at the Broadway Department Store in Ventura, California; she was 5’6″ tall, weighed 105 pounds and had brown hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a navy blue dress with red buttons matched with blue shoes with gold buckles (she had her brown corduroy coat with her as well); The Press Courier described the 19 years old as a “pretty Ventura coed.” After work that evening in January, Cindy walked to her car only to discover she had a flat tire. Two of Cindy’s coworkers (who had been picked up by their spouses after work) reported they saw the young girl talking to an unidentified man at about 10:30 PM but assumed it was her Dad so they left. They described te male as tall and slim, between 35 and 40 years old; he drove a light-colored car. Leonard Mellin said that his daughter most likely would not have been able to change the tire herself so the theory that an unidentified man approached Cindy under the guise of helping makes sense. That following morning, after realizing his daughter never came home from work the night before, Mr. Mellin drove to the shopping center where Cindy worked and found her car in the same spot as she’d left it but the spare tire was on the ground nearby; her doors, trunk, and glove box were open, and it appeared that one of the car tires had been purposefully slashed with a knife. Her body has never been recovered. On April 20, 1972 Ernestine Terello got a flat tire near the Ventura freeway in Agoura, CA and surprise surprise… her car was later found abandoned; a month later her body was found on the ‘Circle X Boy Scout Ranch’ in the Santa Monica mountains. Police theorized that a good Samaritan had offered her help fix her tire then abducted her. Strangely her body was found fully clothed, so its possible that sexual assault may not have been a motive. Additionally, she still had on valuable jewelry robbery was most likely also not a motive. This case did not get much press attention and no suspects have ever been mentioned nor have any arrests been made. Similarly, on June 19, 1975 nineteen year old Mona Jean Gallegos was driving home from a friend’s house in Alhambra, CA and at roughly 1 AM ran out of gas near Santa Anita Avenue on the San Bernardino Freeway in El Monte. Her skeletal remains were discovered about six months later in a Riverside ravine.
The media was incredibly inconsistent when reporting on Robins case, and law enforcement felt that the “free-spirited nature of the 70’s” made these young girls fairly easy, very trusting targets. Regarding her daughters disappearance, Beverly Graham said: “it’s strange, it happened right in the middle of the city, but there never really were any clues. Maybe it will turn something up. We still live with that hope.” For years after his daughter disappeared, Mr. Graham called LA homicide Sargent Donald Ham every few weeks to get a status update on the case; the two men eventually became friends and would on occasion grab lunch and catch up. In 1975 Sargent Ham thought that Robin “had been found in Pennsylvania [over a year ago], they came across a skeleton there. A bunch of pathologists put in together and even had a drawing made of what the woman would look like. It kind of looked like Robin.” However after a forensics expert investigated dental records it was obvious that the skeleton did not belong to Robin. Ham took over the case in 1976, and in his time investigating it checked out “millions of blue Corvettes.” … ” I was checking Corvettes until I was going nuts.” … “one traffic control officer used to come in every morning with a list of Corvettes he had spotted. It didn’t matter what color they were. He said it could have been painted.” As for Robins parents, he said “they won’t ever five up. They still feel she’s alive somewhere. They always want to have that feeling that she’s going to walk through that door someday… she was a beautiful girl.” After the LA Times ran a story on Robins disappearance a woman wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Graham claiming that she too, had stalled out on the Freeway earlier that same night and that a man driving a similar Corvette claiming to be an off-duty officer offered her a ride. She refused his offer; and it’s unknown if it was the same man who was last seen with Robin. There’s been no proof this is the same man last seen with Robin, but police felt this was a “solid theory. One thing that further confused law enforcement was why Robin left no note on her car for her family; was it for the simple reason she had no pen and/or paper with her? Sadly I never have pens in my car. They were also confused as to why she refused help from uniformed police officers in marked police cruisers just minutes earlier but accepted help from a non-uniformed man in a Corvette? Was she trying to avoid a tow fee from the police? Unfortunately this lead to nothing. The next month the woman identified this unknown man as Bruce Davis, who is one of the numerous people suspected of being the Zodiac Killer. Davis was a serial killer who operated in the California area in the late 1970’s. He is still suspected in many unsolved disappearances and murders in the area, including a couple found in an alley close to the Silver Lake area close to Los Angeles. They had each been stabbed over 40 times. Davis had been a high-profile member of the Charles Mansons ‘Family’ and, although he didn’t participate in the August 1969 murder of actress Sharon Tate he had turned himself into police just weeks after Graham disappeared. He was eventually convicted of two separate murder counts, including that of ranch hand Donald “Shorty” Shea, which is the only murder Manson technically had a direct hand in. After he was taken into custody on December 2, 1970, no further murders took place that were definitively linked to the Zodiac Killer. Davis was sentenced to life in prison, and despite keeping a clean record since 1980 and it being previously recommended he be granted parole seven times (those decisions were rejected by three different CA governors), in 2022 a California panel denied his parole, telling him to try again in three years saying he “lacks empathy.” Bruce Davis has denied being the Zodiac Killer.
It is worth noting that Robin disappeared on the night of a full moon, which is when the Zodiac was known to operate. It was very challenging finding a lot of relevant information regarding the case, but one thing that surprised me was that it was speculated that she was possibly a victim of the Zodiac. I won’t lie, I don’t know a ton about that particular SK: I read Robert Graysmith’s famous book many years ago… But, when looking into it further I guess Graham did live in the right region of California during the right time frame to be a possible victim. He claimed to have killed 37 victims in northern California between 1968 and 1970 and sent letters with hand-drawn ciphers taunting San Francisco Bay Area press taking credit for these murders. It’s worth noting that of these 37 victims the Zodiac takes credit for, law enforcement can only agree on seven confirmed victims (two survived). The case remains unsolved despite a lot of recent activity in the past few years: Earl Van Best Jr. (he was the central figure on the FX show “The Most Dangerous Animal of All”), Arthur Leigh Allen (a former elementary school teacher as well as the only suspect authorities ever publicly named and convicted sex offender who died in 1992), and (this is almost brand new information) Garry F. Poste, a suspect named by a group called ‘The Case Breakers’ that said forensic experts now feel is “a very strong suspect” after a statewide examination recovered new Zodiac evidence. It’s pretty well known that any case from that time period with the weak ‘modus operandi’ involving victims in broken down vehicles was linked to the Zodiac, and unfortunately in recent years a slew of amateur sleuths invested in the case have helped spread much misinformation.
As I stated earlier, the man last seen with Robin that night in 1970 was described as being brunette, 5’8″ tall, and in his mid-20’s (specifically 25-26); at that time in November 1970 Bundy would have been 23, which is pretty consistent with that description. What’s really jumping out at me is the turtleneck part, as that piece of clothing seemed like a staple in Ted’s wardrobe (there’s numerous pictures with him wearing one). Now, Bundy was 5’10” where the man talking to Robin was described as being roughly 5’8” but keep in mind that’s just an estimation. Also at the time it’s thought that Bundy still owned his first VW Beetle, a light blue one he purchased in April 1966; he didn’t buy the infamous yellow one until spring of 1973… so if Bundy did abduct Robin, where did the blue Corvette come from… I probably don’t need to say that we know it didn’t belong to him. Did he borrow it? One thing we do know is that he is a competent car thief (but a bad driver) so is it really that off base for him to have stolen this car then ditched it when he was done with it? We know he was caught in Aspen and Florida after getting pulled over in stolen vehicles and he did it numerous times when he was an adolescent (his mother helped pay for him to have his record expunged when he became legal age so it wouldn’t affect his future career). Bundy did at one point tell law enforcement that he killed a victim somewhere unspecified in California during his reign of terror, and he’s further suspected of committing the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders that also took place in the 1970’s. Of the victims in the SRH case, three were raped and three others were too badly decomposed to tell. Detective Bob Keppel shared with ‘SeattlePI’ that “the killings in Santa Rosa would fit his methods, he spent time in the area, and I”m sure he started killing well before 1974. It was an open market for Bundy.” … “one of the last times I talked to Bundy I mentioned California, and he looked at me like, ‘I can’t talk about that right now.’” … “I think he believed his execution would be stayed so he could talk for years about his crimes, but the governor had other ideas.”
In mid-November 1970 when Robin disappeared it looks like Bundy was employed as a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company (a family owned medical supply company); he worked there from June 5, 1970 to December 31, 1971. In mid-1970, he also re-enrolled at the University of Washington and was living in the Rogers Rooming House on 12th Avenue in Seattle. Additionally he was in a committed relationship with Liz Kloepfer at this time as well, so he had a lot of established roots in the general area. It’s obvious in Robin Grahams description that she fit the profile of one of Teds typical victims: she was tall and slender, with long dark hair parted down the middle. She was even in the right age range and a college student (who we know Ted LOVED to target). When analyzing the logistics of Bundy killing Robin, the scene of the crime was almost 17 and a half hours away from where he lived in Seattle… but I mean, Bundy had a lot on his plate at the time Robin disappeared. Did he really have time to drive all the way to California to commit a murder? Playing devils advocate, we know he was an avid night person and had no problem prowling long distances when looking for prey. It was in early 1970 that Bundy rekindled his relationship with Stephanie Brooks, which helps place him in California; it also appears that he was in the Santa Rosa area of California at some point in that general time frame as well, which is just a hair over a 6 hour drive (with light traffic) to LA. This also helps put him much closer to the scene of the crime (as we know Bundy enjoyed traveling far distances to throw police off his trail). Was Robin Graham just another one of Teds ‘murders of opportunity?’ It’s worth noting that not only do we have confirmed kills from Washington, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Florida, and Idaho, I’ve also written about numerous other states he could have been active in (Pennsylvania, Vermont, and New Jersey).
Websleuths user ‘Howard’ commented that they “have researched the Graham case. I know her parents. They are still waiting for a break in the case and have kept their same address and phone number since 1970!” On June 28, 2005, Websleuths user ‘Graham‘ commented back saying: “when you say that you have researched the case I was wondering if you have found anything that is not in the police reports? I just recently spoke with the police regarding the case. I’m Robin’s sister. I would like to hear what info you have found. Thanks.” Seventeen years after Robins strange disappearance in 1986, a mysterious ad caught the attention of a member of the Graham family when it appeared in the LA Times classifieds. Beverly Graham said of the event: “one of our daughters saw it. The funny thing is, she never looks at the personal ads. But this one day…” The ad read: “DEAREST ROBIN You ran out of gas on the Hollywood Frwy. A man in a Corvette pulled over to help. You’ve not been since of since. It’s been 17 years, but it’s always just yesterday. Still looking for you (signed) THE ECHO PARK DUCKS.” The message sounded innocent enough and almost romantic in a way, which made some people speculate it was a clue about the young girls disappearance. The ad was really put under a microscope after KFI disc jockey Geoff Edwards read it on the air, and the phone calls and letters quickly started coming in, which helped establish the link to the missing persons case from 17 years before. Edwards said, “it sounded so romantic. I wondered if anyone knew what it was all about, and I got all kinds of calls and mail. Someone even wondered if the message was a clue to the killing.” It turned out the mystery sender was an old friend of Robins named Al Medrano (who was still living in the neighborhood) just wanted to let the world know that his friend was still missing and that she had not been forgotten about. The Graham family, who also still live in Echo Park, remember Al as a neighborhood friend of their Robins. Why he chose then to put something in the paper, he said: “well, it occurred to me that Nov. 15 (the day of her disappearance) fell on the same day (Sunday) this year as it did in 1970, and I just wanted to show she wasn’t forgotten.” He said the last part about the “Echo Park Ducks” was what they used to call their friend group and he wanted the message to be off all of them.
On October 5, 2012, the blog missingrobinanngraham.blogspot.com, creator Michael Haddan commented: “Please note that there is NO TRUTH to the ‘Find A Grave’ post by someone anonymous claiming that Robin Ann Graham ‘died’ in 1970. This was posted by someone who apparently wants Robin to be dead, to settle the mystery of her disappearance with a completely unfounded and irresponsible statement that hurts both Robin and all who love her. This person wants everyone who has hope for Robin’s safe return to GIVE UP, and for all continuing investigations into her disappearance to end. LAPD Detectives John St. John and Detective Hamm both told me never to assume that she is dead just because I ‘want resolution’ to her case, and that to do so would be not only to give up on Robin, but to show a lack of love and respect for her. I’ve notified this person and asked how Robin ‘died’ and how this person knows this. Of course there is no answer. I thought that he/she would have taken the post down by now, but it still shows up in Google’s priority postings. This is an utter travesty. We’ve had many hoaxes regarding Robin’s disappearance over the decades, and unless this ‘mystery person’ actually knows something–and should therefore contact the LAPD–this is unquestionably just another HOAX.”
Regarding Robins disappearance, Sargent Ham said: “all we’ve got is a missing persons report. We’ve never found remains. She could be alive somewhere.” At this time, the surviving Graham family is trying to enter pieces of her hair into DNA databases that didn’t exist when she went missing in the early 1970’s; Both Mr. and Mrs. Graham have passed away and Robin would be 70 years old as of February 2023. One thing that is nearly certain about Robins mysterious disappearance is that she fell victim to the good Samaritan ruse.
Robin Ann Graham.
Rita Patricia Curran.
Rita Patricia Curran was born on June 21, 1947 to Thomas Sr. and Mary (nee Donahue) Curran in Woodhaven, NY; Rita had a younger brother (Thomas Jr.) and sister Mary (Campbell); Mr. Curran worked for IBM. The strict Roman Catholic family eventually settled down in Burlington, Vermont. Described as ‘quiet, sweet, and almost painfully shy,’ Rita was a small girl with a petite frame, dark eyes, and long brown hair she wore parted down the middle. After graduating from Mount Saint Mary’s Academy, Ms. Curran attended Trinity College in Vermont, an all girls Catholic school that was close to home; in 1969 she earned a Bachelor’s degree in education. Described as ‘a person truly dedicated to her profession’, Rita was in her second year of teaching second-grade at Milton Elementary School in Milton, Vermont. After her untimely passing Milton Elementary Principal Merritt Clark Jr. said of his young teacher: ‘the boys and girls seemed to like her being in class. She did a lot of work with the deprived and handicapped children’ … ‘she had a knack about her working with these kids.’ In her spare time Rita participated in ‘The Champlain Echoes,’ an all-female acapella group and taught a religion class at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Milton (which was about 20 miles away from where she was staying the summer she was murdered).
Rita’s permanent residence was in Milton, VT however in the summer of 1971 she was renting an apartment with two roommates in Burlington while participating in a reading and language arts workshop at the nearby University of Vermont graduate school. Ms. Curran found an ad for a ‘roommate wanted’ in a local newspaper and had moved into a first story apartment in a converted three-story Victorian house just about two weeks before her death (it was also the first time in her life she lived away from home). She originally planned on staying the entire summer but Mary Curran said her daughter was planning on coming home just a few days after she was murdered. She went on to say that Rita’s two roommates were friends before she moved in and she felt like she didn’t quite fit in with them. Plus she got into an argument with one of them over a boy spending the night. Mary Curran-Campbell said of her sister: ‘she had actually lived at home all her life until June of 1971, and she found an ad in the Burlington Free Press looking for a roommate part-time for the summer. It seemed to be a good fit and so she moved out about one month before she was murdered.’ While living there Curran was employed at the Colonial Motor Inn as a chambermaid (which is strangely only half a mile away from the ‘Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers’ where Bundy was born in November 1946). The day of her disappearance, Ms. Curran worked at the Inn from 8:15 AM until 2:40 PM then attended choir practice at The Sara M. Holbrook Community Center located at 66 North Avenue in Burlington, Vermont; she may have been there as late as 10 PM. A representative from the Motor Inn said that Curran was extremely well liked there, was very popular among staff, and had been employed there on and off for about 3-4 years, usually during summer breaks. She often complained to her co-workers that she felt like an ‘ugly duckling’ but held onto hope that she would someday find a man, settle down, and get married. Rita also shared with friends that she already went to three weddings at that point in mid-1971 and moved to Burlington with hopes to find a boyfriend because she felt all the good men in Milton were already taken.
One of Curran’s roommate, twenty four year-old Beverly Lamphere, said she last saw Rita alive at around 11:20 PM when she left the apartment to meet up with her boyfriend Paul Robinson (23) at a Shelburne Road restaurant; their third roommate Kerry Duame met up with the couple at some point. Robinson said that ‘we were gone maybe two or three hours. We had asked Rita to join us that night, but she said no.’ Ms. Lamphere took the only set of keys with her when she left but made sure to leave both the front and back doors unlocked; it was their usual practice as they lived in a safe, residential neighborhood. At around 1:00 AM on July 19, 1971 the friends returned to the apartment with no signs of forced entry; they assumed Curran was sleeping as she was nowhere to be found. After arriving the friends sat in the living room chatting for a while, completely unaware that anything was wrong. It wasn’t until around 1:20 AM that Beverly discovered the gruesome scene straight out of a horror movie: the 24 year-old schoolteacher was lying dead on her bedroom floor, naked and on her back, her torn underwear discarded underneath her; Rita’s face and head were badly beaten. Beverly’s boyfriend attempted to perform life saving measures but it was too late. Curran’s hair was styled up in curlers (just like Seattle flight attendant Lisa Wick), and it was as if she’d been attacked while getting ready for bed. There had been signs of a struggle and it appeared Curran fought for her life. When the roommates were questioned, they weren’t able to give very much helpful information, as they were nowhere near the scene at the time of the murder. Burlington Detective Wayne Liberty said they were eventually ruled out as suspects in 1972. Paul Robinson said he can still remember the screams of horror when his friend discovered Rita’s body: ‘I was the one that called the police. I told them there had been a murder. I have always had a question about whether Rita was still alive when we got back into the apartment that night.’…’This kind of horror was unheard of in Burlington, Vermont. It was a very innocent time. I can’t tell you how fast deadbolts flew off the shelves after Rita’s murder.’
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Lawrence Harris determined Currans cause of death to be ‘asphyxia caused by manual strangulation’ and that she had been beaten in the head and face (most likely with a closed fist); there were no drugs found in her system. The ME pinpointed her time of death to be sometime between 11:30 PM and 12:30 AM and that she had been sexually assaulted with a crowbar (but she was not raped). Detectives also found blood on her throat. Law enforcement said it was evident by the scene that there were ‘signs of an intense struggle.’ Shortly after Rita’s murder Former Chittenden County States Attorney and now US Senator Patrick Leahy (he was elected to the position in 1974) wanted no information on it released to the public and put a ‘blackout’ on the case, meaning no information at all was released to the public about the murder. This devastated the Curran family, who felt Rita’s death should have immediately been a front page story.
At the time law enforcement called Rita’s murder ‘the most intensive investigation in the city’s history’ and that ‘in their memory there had been no crime of such violence in the history of this city of 38,000 persons.’ Police determined that the murderer entered the apartment through an unlocked door and attacked Curran while she was most likely in bed but not yet asleep. Neighbors said they heard nothing out of the ordinary: no screams or anything during the time the murder took place. Police quickly ruled out robbery as a motive, as Currans purse sat untouched on the floor directly behind the door with about $20 inside (as well as her personal items and driver’s license); her car was also found unbothered in its normal spot in front of the apartment building. In the kitchen police found Currans blood smeared on the inside of the door, which most likely had rubbed off from the suspects hand as he was fleeing through the back door. Police found no fingerprints at the scene.
The murder of Rita Curran terrified the residents of Burlington, as it took place during a time of innocence, and when violent sexual murders were infrequent and rare. An unclaimed $3,000 reward was offered at the time for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer of Curran. Her sister Mary said that ‘Burlington was considered a very safe place. It was an unbelievable shock to the city when this happened.’ … ‘The phrase ‘it can’t happen here’ just can’t be used because it will happen here, it has happened here. In any hometown that you hear people say that on the news, they’re not being realistic.’ The ‘Burlington Free Press’ reported that Rita told her friends that on multiple occasions she received strange, almost threatening telephone calls late at night with nothing on the other end but heavy breathing. Several other women in the area reported receiving similar types of calls. Additionally reports of a tall, mysterious peeping Tom looking into windows were made as well as others that reported attempted break-ins, where the intruder ran away after they screamed. There was never an official connection made between Rita’s murder, the peeping Tom, and the obscene phone calls, but they supposedly all stopped in September of that year. Detective Richard Beaulieu of the Burlington Police Department had officers look into a possible connection between several assaults on other local women and Rita’s murder in the area. A week before Curran was murdered, a 20 year old Burlington woman was raped in her bed at 4 AM by an assailant she felt was around 16-17 years old. In October 1970, a woman sleeping in her bed suffered a vicious knife attack only three blocks away from Rita’s apartment. Thankfully, the unnamed suspect got spooked when his victim started screaming; it’s unknown if he was ever caught. In September 1971, police claimed they got their first big break in the case and that evidence would soon be handed over to a grand jury. But, weeks passed by then months, and nothing ever came to fruition from that big announcement. Years later it was determined this ‘major break’ most likely stemmed from the fact that police had polygraphed one of Rita’s neighbors after a prior unrelated rape accusation came to light. However, nothing ever came of it and there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest the unnamed male. In addition to the neighbor there were three other suspects that were looked into but all were eventually cleared. Additionally, Burlington Police looked into all males in the area with any known history of sexual offenses. By 1979, two of the four viable suspects in the Curran case died and another two were in prison for homicides that ‘bore no resemblance to the Curran murder.’ Despite the intense public interest in the young school teacher’s murder the case quickly went cold.
Curran’s case got renewed attention in 1980 after she was named a possible Bundy victim in Ann Rule’s, ‘The Stranger Beside Me.’ In the novel, a retired FBI agent commented that there was a ‘remarkable resemblance between Rita Curran’ and his first girlfriend, Diane Edwards.
One thing I am EXTREMELY thankful for is all the leg work and research other ‘Bundy scholars’ do, largely because I’m just an insurance agent blogging as a hobby. The creator of the ‘hi: I’m Ted’ site said the following about Currans murder: ‘In researching this case, I spoke to a woman who was a teenager in Burlington at the time of the attack and claimed that her parents were close friends with the Currans. The woman (who wished to remain anonymous) said that Rita was found bound with piano wire, which she had apparently struggled against, as her skin was torn and bloodied. She also said that the police suspected the ‘son of a prominent judge’ but did not have enough evidence to charge a high profile member of the community’s son with the crime, and instead his family put him in a mental institution.’ … ‘The piano wire claim is an oddly specific detail that has never been mentioned in any of the news reports from that era or more recently. Binding victims with piano wire while they were still alive was certainly not a known part of Bundy’s modus operandi. The woman I spoke to claimed this detail came directly from the Curran family, but without the case file or the family speaking out, these details cannot be substantiated and may just be rumors. However it is interesting to note that at least some of this information is corroborated by Rita’s mother, who publicly accused the police of a ‘cover up’ in 1979.’
Elizabeth Kloepfer was in a serious, long term relationship with Ted Bundy from fall 1969 to 1975 and she made no mentions of him visiting Vermont in the early 1970’s in her 1980 memoir, ‘The Phantom Prince.’ During that period in July 1971 Liz took Molly and moved into an apartment closer to the Rogers Rooming House even though her and Ted weren’t as strong as they once were. She said their lives were ‘out of sync’ and that they didn’t spend as much time together as they did when they had first started dating. Just as a side note, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to refer to my handy-dandy ‘Ted Bundy Job Chart’ over the last 8 months since I started writing this blog. Anyways, in the summer of 1971 when Rita Curran was murdered Bundy worked as a delivery driver for Pedline Supply Company, a family-owned medical supply company. While there he was once caught stealing a picture from a Physician’s office (he was let off with just a verbal warning). Ted began his employment there on June 5, 1970 and was there until December 31, 1971 when they moved their office across town and he quit. Also at that time in 1971 Bundy was still in his undergraduate days at the University of Washington. So as far as any concrete proof putting Bundy in Burlington in July 1971… there just isn’t any (just a lot of rumors and speculative stories). In ‘The Stranger Beside Me,’ Rule hypothesizes that Ted had some sort of ‘defining moment’ in his 20’s where he went to the Elizabeth Lund home in hopes to track down the truth about his parentage. She further speculates that after Bundy realized he was ‘illegitimate’ and that his birth was the result of a pre-marital tryst he went blind with rage and killed Rita Curran during that brief period he was in Vermont. But this doesn’t seem to make much sense: we know Ted told Liz he already knew about his illegitimacy when they first started dating in late 1969. Rule spoke with retired FBI agent John Bassett who was supposedly ‘intrigued by the remarkable resemblance between Rita Curran and Diane Edwards, the fact that Rita had died of strangulation and bludgeoning to the head, and the proximity of the Colonial Motor Inn where Rita worked to an institution that had wrought so much emotional trauma in Ted Bundy’s life: The Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers.’ Another interesting factoid: there’s supposedly a report from animal control that said someone going by the name of ‘Bundy’ was bit by a dog the same week that Curran died (this is all the information I could find on this event). Does that place him at the scene or is it just another coincidence?
Mary Campbell even wrote Bundy a letter before he was executed asking if he murdered her sister: ‘we asked the FBI when they were interrogating him whether if she was one of his case, and we got a letter back from the FBI that said he did not deny it or acknowledge it.’ Bundy was questioned about Curran’s death for the final time shortly before he was executed the morning of January 24, 1989. Thomas Barton, the warden at Florida State Prison in Raiford, asked him about his involvement at around 6:15 that morning. He said: ‘I can say without any question that there is no, uh, nothing for instance, that I was involved in Illinois or New Jersey,’ then when asked specifically about Burlington, Ted said a simple ‘no’ and that was that. Bundy denied any involvement with her murder right up to the very end.
Because it was so widely speculated that Bundy was in the Burlington area at the time of Rita’s murder, Deputy Police Chief Shawn Burke said Vermont law enforcement felt he may have been their guy for quite some time. However, Patrick Leahy said after Vermont investigators spoke with him in Raiford before he was executed they were finally able to ‘discard him as a suspect.’ Additionally, former Burlington Police Chief Kevin Scully said, ‘we have looked into the possibility of Ted Bundy’s involvement, we’re satisfied that at the time of the Rita Curran murder, Ted Bundy was somewhere else in the country.’
Bundy’s DNA was submitted to the CODIS database in 2011; no hits came back on the murder of Rita Curran. In 2016, Vermont detectives said they were taking another look at her case with‘’fresh eyes’ and more modern investigative resources. Leahy told Vermont’s ‘Burlington Free Press’ that Rita’s murder was ‘an extremely brutal homicide. Certainly, one of the most brutal I’ve ever seen in my years as state’s attorney’ and that it was ‘a horrible scene. I can still picture what I saw. A lot of evidence was gathered there. We didn’t have techniques like DNA and thinks like that back at the time. Hopefully, the evidence that was gathered was enough.’ Shawn Burke further commented that, ‘uniquely, there are still witnesses and people of interest who remain alive. It is a case where we have been running down some active leads.’ Since the murder took place in 1971, Vermont law enforcement ruled out dozens of suspects, polygraphed over 100 people and went over hundreds and hundreds of tips related to the case. They also spoke with all of the registered sex offenders that resided in the area close to where she was murdered and still came up with nothing.
Mrs. Curran felt there was some sort of police cover-up regarding her daughters case, saying ‘we felt a lot more could have been done but wasn’t for political reasons.’ Roughly a week before Bundy was executed she sent a telegraph to Bundy begging him to finally tell the truth about his involvement with Rita’s death; it was the FBI who sent her a response, saying Bundy refused to say anything about it, either way. On the 45th anniversary of Rita’s death in 2016, Thomas Jr. and Mary put a notice in the local paper in memory of their beloved sister. It read: ‘we will never forget you. We will never give up hope that we will someday know why you were taken from us.’ The siblings hoped their parents would have answers about their daughters death before they died but sadly that didn’t happen: Mr. Curran died in 1991 and Mrs. Curran passed in 2002. In a July 2021 interview with the ‘Burlington Free Press’, Mary Curran-Campbell said: ‘We’ve lived with this day-in and day-out for 50 years. I can’t say I’m going to give up, but I have to surrender to the powers that be.’ …’fifty years is a long time to grieve, a long time to hope. The fifty-year mark confirms that a resolution in our lifetime to Rita’s murder is not going to happen… We know Rita’s death did not happen in a vacuum. Somebody somewhere knows what happened that night on July 19, 1971 and they will take that information to their grave. May God have mercy on their soul.’
The brutal murder of Ms. Curran remains open to this day and is the oldest cold case that is still under investigation by the Burlington police department. In July 2021, Vermont Detective Tom Chenette said that despite over half of a century going by, that law enforcement could still find justice for Curran. Regarding Rita’s murder, Leahy said: ‘I can only imagine how relieved her family would be if it’s solved.’ Beverly Lamphere was 95 years old when she passed away in late May 2021. Anyone with information regarding the murder of Rita Curran is encouraged to contact the Burlington Police Department Major Crime Unit at 802.244.8781.
Update:
On Tuesday, February 22, 2023 acting Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad made the announcement the Curran family waited almost 52 years to hear: they finally know who killed their beloved Rita. It was a neighbor that lived in the apartment two floors above hers, a man named William Richard DeRoos. DNA collected at the crime scene from a discarded, ‘un-crushed’ cigarette butt ‘laying on the floor’ below Curran’s elbow in 1971 helped law enforcement link DeRoos to the murder. According to the newly released case file, ‘the Lark cigarette butt that was found next to the right arm of Rita’s murdered body had a male DNA profile that was linked to William DeRoos (b. 12.14.1939). This cigarette butt was unique in the sense that it was not crushed, smooshed or butted out. It had burned out there at the scene, as there was ash located on the floor between her body and her right arm. The end of the cigarette butt had jagged paper that was consistent with a cigarette that had burned out on its own.’
An investigative report from February 2023 states that a ‘big break in the case occurred in 2014’ when law enforcement was able to retrieve DNA from the cigarette butt. It is worth mentioning that Bundy’s DNA was among the 13 samples compared to the sample, and he was ruled out. In August 2022, the DNA from the butt was tested against DeRoos’ and investigators finally found a genetic match. Lieutenant Detective James Trieb said ‘that cigarette butt sat in evidence for over 40 years’ until Detective Jeffrey Beerworth sent it to the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for analysis. It was then that forensic experts found a single strand of male DNA on it, but they ran into another dead end when it didn’t match any results in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). It wasn’t until early 2023 that Burlington law enforcement contacted Parabon Nanolabs Chief Genetic Genealogist CeCe Moore for assistance identifying the unmatched strand, which finally resulted in a positive ID earlier this year. Moore commented that ‘this case is over 50 years old, and it only took a few hours to narrow it down to William DeRoos.’
According to a recently unearthed marriage certificate, William and Michelle (nee Roach) DeRoos (who now goes by the name Kylas Nagaarjuna) were wed on July 21, 1971 in Burlington, which helps place him near the scene of the crime around the time of Rita’s death. Additionally, his official mailing address proves he lived in the same house as Curran at the time of her murder. DeRoos was 31 years-old when he took Rita’s life and at the time was married for only two weeks; Michelle was only twenty-four and was several years younger than her new husband. The night of the homicide DeRoos and his wife had an argument and he ‘left for a cool-down walk.’ Almost immediately after the murder William’s wife gave law enforcement an alibi, telling them he was with her the entire night and never left. Chief Murad said during a Tuesday press conference that: ‘five decades later, she gave our detectives a different story: the truth.’ Kylas later admitted to investigators that DeRoos had convinced her to lie so they would not connect him to Curran’s murder. Nagaarjuna elaborated that she didn’t recall exactly how long William was gone but the next day he ‘told her not to mention that he was not at home’ when the murders took place due to his sordid criminal past and because of it law enforcement ‘would try to accuse him of it.’ She told The Daily Beast that she is still ‘overwhelmed’ by the news and that she doesn’t ‘wish to speak to the public about this;’ she further elaborated that she ‘has conveyed a message’ to Curran’s family. In September 2022 law enforcement met with Nagaarjuna who said that her ex had been in prison twice prior to their marriage and that he definitely had a violent streak. On one occasion he went after his second wife’s throat, briefly strangling her and even stabbing one of her friends unprovoked. Law enforcement feels she had no previous knowledge that her husband was involved in the murder.
Chief Murad said that Curran ‘put up a vicious struggle’ with DeRoos and that she ‘fought for her life.’ The morning after the murder, law enforcement asked the newlyweds if they had heard anything suspicious the night before, and they both denied seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary: ‘they heard nothing and Mrs. DeRoos stated that she had been up around 1:00 AM but had heard no unusual noises or anything else.’ Paul Robinson found this strange because the walls in the two-bedroom apartment were extremely thin: ‘I have to believe that someone heard something that night.’ Shortly after taking Rita’s life, DeRoos left his new wife and ‘moved to Thailand and became a Buddhist monk.’ She eventually followed him there to become a nun, however their relationship fizzled out largely because it was ‘against the rules’ and the couple divorced. DeRoos reappeared in the San Francisco area sometime during 1974 and he married for a second time. He died in 1986 at the age of 46 from ‘acute morphine poisoning’ in a seedy hotel room in San Francisco.
Former Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo was on the case from 2015 to 2019 and shared with The Daily Beast that ‘Rita’s killer may be dead but if this is all the justice Burlington police can offer her spirit and her loved ones, then so be it. Unless the police keep their memory alive and continue the investigation, the victims of unsolved murders are often lost to time. I’m so proud of the Burlington detectives who kept Rita’s case open while I served as chief, traveling in (and around) the country to collect comparison DNA and re-interview witnesses, and who never stopped until today. The Burlington Police Department never forgot about Rita.’
In September 2022, law enforcement met with Nagaarjuna who said that despite her ex-husband being in prison twice prior to their marriage he had never been violent with her. Things changed with his second wife Sarah Hepting, who told police that DeRoos had an extreme propensity for violence. She shared with them an incident where William stabbed a friend of theirs for no apparent reason, which she thinks he was arrested for (police are still trying to confirm this as she is unsure of the time it happened). Hepting also reported that on a separate occasion he strangled her to the point she nearly lost consciousness (again this was unprovoked).
As I said earlier, both of Rita’s parents passed away waiting for their daughter’s killer to be caught. Her siblings thanked the Burlington Police for the compassion they showed their family over the five decades long investigation. Tom Curran said: ‘my mother came here from Ireland and my father from Newfoundland. We were an old-fashioned, strong, Catholic family. I don’t think so much about the guy who did this as I do about Rita and my parents and what they went through. I pray to my parents, and I pray to Rita.’
Chief Murad told The Daily Beast: ‘when people doing an ancestry or genealogy test check the box saying it’s okay for law enforcement to use the results, they are helping solve murders. They are bringing evil-doers to justice. They are delivering closure to families. I am tremendously proud of the detectives who did this for Rita and her family.’
What’s incredibly helpful is Burlington PD finally released the file for Rita’s case; I attached it in a separate piece: https://jjeannejurewicz.wordpress.com/2023/02/22/rita-patricia-curran-case-file/
Rita in the 1964 Mt. St. Mary’s Academy yearbook.
Rita in the 1964 Mt. St. Mary’s Academy yearbook.
Rita in the 1964 Mt. St. Mary’s Academy yearbook.
Another Bundy Blog: My Adventures around the Pacific Northwest (and everywhere else). 