At about 3 in the morning on Saturday, August 16, 1975, Utah Highway Patrol Sergeant Bob Hayward pulled over a young man in a tan VW after a short but high speed car chase...
Continue reading “The First Arrest, 1975”Salt Lake City Police Surveillance Logs, 1975
After Ted’s arrest on August 16, 1975, Salt Lake area police quickly put two and two together, tying him to the kidnapping of Carol DaRonch from nearly a year earlier. By early September, police from multiple jurisdictions were working together to follow the young law student and watch his campus-area home on the Avenues.
Continue reading “Salt Lake City Police Surveillance Logs, 1975”The Police Interviews: Liz Kloepfer, 1975
Elizabeth Kloepfer had been Ted Bundy’s girlfriend for nearly six years by the time he was arrested in Salt Lake City. After he became a suspect in the DaRonch kidnapping and Kent disappearance, police became especially interested in talking to her. Liz had struggled with her suspicions about Ted since the double murders at Lake Sammamish in Seattle nearly a year earlier. Here a distraught Liz dicusses Ted’s strange behaviors, personality, and background, as well as intimate details of their sex life and relationship.
Continue reading “The Police Interviews: Liz Kloepfer, 1975”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”Trial Transcript: Jerry Thompson, 1976
This is the witness testimony of Jerry Thompson, a Salt Lake County Deputy Sheriff. He personally searched Bundy’s Salt Lake City apartments and his VW, and showed Carol DaRonch his mugshot for identification. He testified in the DaRonch kidnapping trial on Tuesday February 24, 1976.
Continue reading “Trial Transcript: Jerry Thompson, 1976”Much Ado About Replevin: The ‘Murder Kit’ Fiasco from an Archivist’s Perspective
Recently TMZ broke the news that Zak Bagans, host of the of premium cable “reality” show Ghost Adventures, is in a “tug of war” over the Ted Bundy “murder kit,” as well as a large archive of Bundy related material, including case files, trial papers, audiotape interrogations, photographs, and even physical evidence, such as samples of victim Melissa Smith’s pubic hair taken from her autopsy. Bagans publicly stated that his plan was to put them in his “Haunted Museum,” a tourist attraction in Las Vegas full of “murderbilia” and other “haunted” artifacts.
Continue reading “Much Ado About Replevin: The ‘Murder Kit’ Fiasco from an Archivist’s Perspective”