On June 7, 1977, while attending pretrial hearings for the murder of Caryn Campbell in Aspen, Colorado, Ted Bundy leapt from a second floor window of the Pitkin County Courthouse to freedom. After six days of wandering in the mountains, he was recaptured. This is the story of that first escape.
Continue reading “The First Escape, 1977”Case File: Donna Gail Manson, 1974
Nineteen-year-old Donna Gail Manson disappeared from the Evergreen State College campus on March 12, 1974. Ted Bundy confessed to Donna’s murder two days before his execution, but her remains have never been found. This is her case file.
Continue reading “Case File: Donna Gail Manson, 1974”Taylor Mountain, 1975
Over the years, detectives and authors alike theorized that the skulls found on Taylor Mountain in 1975 meant Bundy had decapitated Washington victims Lynda Healy, Susan Rancourt, Kathy Parks, and Brenda Ball. This is because at the time of the discovery of the crime scene, apart from the skulls all of the bones taken into evidence were deemed to be of animal origin. In 2005, the King County Medical Examiner’s office rediscovered a misplaced box of miscellaneous remains and identified several to be human leg bones. The results of DNA testing on those bones disproved the long held belief that only skulls were found on Taylor Mountain.
Continue reading “Taylor Mountain, 1975”Case File: The Search for Georgann Hawkins, 1989
On January 20 and 22, 1989, Ted Bundy sat down with King County Detective Robert Keppel to give his final confessions. As a gesture of good faith, and with the hope of receiving a stay in exchange for more information on the final resting place of his unrecovered victims, Bundy described the final hours and resting place of one Seattle victim, Georgann Hawkins. Hawkins was a freshman at the University of Washington in Seattle who was abducted only steps away from her sorority house. His “Bones for Time” strategy was a desperate last attempt to ward off execution, as Bundy intended for her remains to be found so he would be seen as too valuable to be put to death. After Bundy’s execution, investigators unsuccessfully attempted to locate her remains in Issaquah.
Continue reading “Case File: The Search for Georgann Hawkins, 1989”The Unconfirmed Cases: Joyce Margaret LePage, 1971
This is an installment of my ongoing “unconfirmed” case study series. All of these cases have been connected to Ted Bundy in some way, whether by active investigation or later speculation, but never officially linked to him. As they are all still unsolved, generally police will not release the case files. However, using newspaper archives and other works for reference, I have written the most exhaustive summary of each case as I can. I also include my own analysis based on my research and personal knowledge of Bundy’s timeline and modus operandi.
All suspects are innocent until proven guilty and all opinions are my own and not that of law enforcement unless otherwise indicated.
Continue reading “The Unconfirmed Cases: Joyce Margaret LePage, 1971”Case File: Debra Jean Kent, 1974
The following are excerpts from the Bountiful Police Department’s file on the missing person case of seventeen year old Debra Jean Kent. Ted Bundy confessed to Debra’s murder two days before his execution in 1989. Only her right patella has ever been found.
Continue reading “Case File: Debra Jean Kent, 1974”The Utah Confession, 1989
This is my transcription of Ted Bundy’s confession to Salt Lake City Sheriff’s Detective Dennis Couch, dated January 22, 1989. Utah victim names mentioned in this confession include Nancy Wilcox, Debra Kent, Melissa Smith, Carol DaRonch, Laura Aime, and Nancy Baird. I attempted to transcribe this as accurately as possible, but I may have misspelled some names, and some of it was inaudible. The unknown female voice is probably that of Diana Weiner, Bundy’s civil attorney. At the end I include the maps of the areas Bundy described and aerial images of Fairview Canyon, where Debra Kent’s patella was found.
Continue reading “The Utah Confession, 1989”