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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Case File: Melissa Smith, 1974
Seventeen-year-old Melissa Smith disappeared the night of October 18, 1974 while walking home from a pizza restaurant in Midvale, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Her nude, beaten, and strangled body was discovered by hunters nine days later in a wooded area. While Ted Bundy never admitted to her murder, when directly asked during his final confessions he did not deny it either. This is her case file.
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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.
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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.
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The Idaho Confession, 1989
INTERROGATION OF TED BUNDY: PREFACE
On January 18, 1989, I was contacted by Bob Keppel, Chief Investigator for the Washington Attorney General’s Office, and informed that Ted Bundy was possibly going to provide information regarding murders committed in Idaho. On January 19 and 20, 1989, I had several telephone conversations with Diana Weiner, an attorney purportedly representing Mr. Bundy in civil matters. As a result of these conversations, an interview with Ted Bundy was scheduled for Sunday, January 22, 1989, at 11:00 am to take place at the Florida State Prison.
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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.
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Case File: Denise Lynn Oliverson, 1975
Excerpts from the Grand Junction, Colorado Police Department’s missing persons case file on Denise Lynn (Nicholson) Oliverson. Ted Bundy confessed to Denise’s murder on the day of his execution in 1989. Her body has never been found.
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