Terrible Secrets

by Robert D Keppel

  Once again, that wasn’t much. Like Issaquah, he left no trace of himself or any of the victims’ clothes or belongings. Nothing. Also troubling — we kept this out of the press — the only remains we found after six days of searching were three skulls, three jaws, a couple of small pieces of skull, a tooth, and a little bit of blond hair. If the killer had dumped his four victims near the road as we initially theorized, then we should have more bones littering the animal trails.

  The idea circulated that the females had been decapitated. Our supervisors, possibly concerned over what a story like that might do to an already deeply shaken public, observed that upper vertebrae were customarily found with decapitated skulls. Since that was not the case at Taylor Mountain, the animals’ activity must explain the apparent anomaly. They added that the missing bones probably were scattered outside our immediate search area.

  Few of my fellow cops bought into my theory, developed over time that the reason we found only crania and mandibles is that they were the only bones that he dumped there. I believed the evidence suggested he’d kept the heads somewhere else for a period of time, and then brought them to Taylor Mountain as a group for disposal. That would explain, among other things, why they all seemed to be in roughly the same state of decay, even though the victims’ dates of disappearance varied from January to June of the preceding year.

  There also remained several important questions for which I had no answers. Where was Donna Gail Manson? Where was Georgann Hawkins? Who was the third victim at Issaquah? And where the hell was “Ted”?

  Chapter Four

  We regroup

  With discovery of the Taylor Mountain dump site, what had been known as the “Missing and Murdered Women Cases” became “The Ted Murders.” While we were processing the site, the sheriff’s office and the Seattle police made a cosmetic gesture toward consolidating the investigative response to what even the police-department moss-backs now conceded was a common problem. The Ted Task Force — a sergeant and two detectives from the Seattle police, plus eight of us from my department — was established with great fanfare in a windowless, 10-foot by 25-foot room on Floor 1A of the King County Courthouse.

  It was a fiasco.

  We were never organized, no one was ever clearly in charge, and we could never agree on the order of business. The Ted Task Force consequently endured for less than a month, in which about all we did was answer an average of 500 telephones calls each day from private citizens offering information. Most of the callers seemed sincerely interested in helping, but naturally there were some jackasses and nut cases, as well. We later figured out that one guy alone telephoned us 600 times over the course of the investigation. We also later discovered that the last of the Ted Bundy tips was received back in October, 1974. We could have shut off the hotline phones altogether from that point forward.

  On April 1, appropriately enough, the Seattle police withdrew their personnel, leaving the Healy case for us to work. They kept Georgann Hawkins, who was still a missing person at this point. Our bosses added two more detectives to the group, giving us a ten-person team, known around the department as the Grisly Business Unit (chasing the “Angel of Decay,” one of “Ted’s” nicknames), that would stay together until June 1, when budget considerations shrank the investigation back down to its original components, Roger and me, plus two deputies to answer the telephones.

  At least it was now agreed throughout the sheriff’s office that we were chasing a new kind of killer — new to us, for sure — and to catch him would require a new kind of police outlook. We were ready to try anything.

  Roger, for example, canvassed Northwest homicides dating back to January of 1969, searching for patterns or similarities. Nothing popped out, except for the distressing level of everyday mayhem he documented. Dunn found 94 reports of unsolved female murders in the 5 ½-year period.

  We discussed, again, how likely it was that “Ted” was neither dead nor incarcerated nor somewhere on the high seas but instead had simply left the area, perhaps driven by the intense publicity following the Lake Sam abduction-murders to seek new hunting grounds where the potential prey were less wary and the police less vigilant.

  In May, Roger attended the so-called Northwest Missing and Murdered Women Conference in Boise, Idaho, where detectives from seven western states and British Columbia gathered to discuss and compare their cases.

  Roger presented our cases at the conference and learned for the first time the details of the Melissa Smith and Laura Aime abduction-murders of October, 1974, as well as Caryn Campbell’s murder near Snowmass in January of 1975. The fact that all three were found nude in the wilderness with horribly fractured skulls got our attention.

  The Boise meeting also was our first contact with Detective Mike Fisher from Aspen, who strongly sensed that our “Ted” might also have been responsible for the Campbell slaying. We began sharing information with Fisher, frustrated that our contacts had to remain informal, since no official multistate investigative effort had been organized. None ever would be.

  ***

  Our evolving investigative strategy finally resolved itself into a three-pronged approach. We decided that since Lynda Healy’s murder evidently was “Ted’s” first that we would intensively reinvestigate it, believing that since “Ted” was then new to murder, he may have made mistakes we could exploit.

  Two, we looked at the 3,500 or so “Ted” suspects developed in the course of the investigation and decided to winnow them down to a top 100 whom we’d take a second or third look at. The aim was to eliminate possible “Teds” until we came to the real Ted, our killer, whom we were certain lurked somewhere in our enormous stacks of files. Sooner or later, we were going to ferret him out.

  Three, building on a data-analysis model developed by Sergeant Bob Schmitz, we began making up lists: guys named Ted, guys who owned VWs, Lynda Healy’s classmates, mental patients released over the past 10 years, and so on. In the course of a month we created 30 such lists with more than 300,000 names on them.

  Next, we went to King County Systems Services, whose programmers believed they could write an application for the county’s big mainframe computer to analyze the lists for multiple hits. When the machine wasn’t processing payroll checks or performing other such routine duties, it could help us search for “Ted.”

  The “Ted” lists that I and other investigatorscategorized and entered into the computer. The higher the number of times a suspect appeared, the more viable the suspect.

  ———

  How Bundy’s name appeared on the print out. Bundy was among those who appeared most. (From the files of Robert D. Keppel and King County, WA. archives)

  ———

  At this time, computers played next to no role in law enforcement, and certainly no one had yet announced a program for catching killers. This was a technical and conceptual milestone for my profession, and of course we encountered plenty of skepticism. In retrospect, it is one of my proudest achievements.

  When Roger and I laid out our three-part plan of action to Captain Mackie, he saw at once that there was a consistent logic to our approach and that we could actually measure our progress, or lack of same, rather than carry on in the haphazard way we had for nearly a year. He even authorized a third detective to join us. Not surprisingly, picking through the mountain of details we had amassed on our way to identifying “Ted” did not appeal to most other detectives. In fact, the only one who came forward, eager to join us, was Kathleen McChesney, who in a male-dominated police agency had moved from one unappealing assignment to another, including the monumentally boring hot check unit. Kathy saw us as her ticket out of purgatory. We welcomed her as a very smart and hard-working partner with the detective skills and determination our team needed if we were going to ever bring “Ted” to bay.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Now is not the time’

  On Tuesday morning, August 19, 1975, our world was turned upside down. Lieutenant Ben Forbes, a detective wit
h the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s office, called to inform us that Theodore Robert Bundy had been arrested in the early hours of Saturday, the 16th, in the town of Granger and charged with evading arrest. A charge of burglary tools possession was pending.

  Deputy Kevin O’Shaughnessy, who took Forbes’s call, asked the detective why he’d thought to share this information with us. “Because,” Forbes replied, “you asked for it.” He then explained his telephone conversation of the previous October with Hergy Hergesheimer, who had relayed Elizabeth Kendall’s information and photos of Bundy. Forbes told Kevin how he’d retrieved the Bundy file from his desktop spindle, promised to send us a mug shot, and rang off.

  The story of Bundy’s arrest, as we later learned, began with Sergeant Robert A. Hayward of the Utah State Highway Patrol seated in his patrol car in front of his house in suburban Granger at approximately 2:30 that Saturday morning. Down the street and right past Hayward crawled a VW Bug, its headlights off, with Ted at the wheel. From the license number, Hayward knew the car was not local. He also guessed this stranger might not have a credible explanation for his presence in the patrolman’s neighborhood at such an hour, driving slowly with his lights out.

  About 10 minutes later, Hayward again encountered Bundy in the subdivision and this time turned on his red light. Ted bolted, with the cop in pursuit, through a series of red lights and onto a main thoroughfare before he finally pulled into a darkened gas station. Along the way, Hayward noticed bits of debris flying out the windows of the VW. It looked a lot like weed.

  Marijuana, however, was the least of Ted’s problems just then.

  Patrolman Hayward asked Ted what he was doing in Granger at that hour. Bundy replied that he’d been to see the movie Towering Inferno and then had gotten lost on his drive back to Salt Lake City. Hayward quickly ascertained that Towering Inferno was not playing in the area that night.

  Hayward radioed for backup from the Salt Lake County sheriff. Soon a deputy and a sergeant arrived on the scene. As Ted stood by, they searched the interior of the VW and its trunk, discovering a set of handcuffs, an ice pick, a panty-hose mask, a ski mask, some lengths of rope, and pieces of white sheet. The officers also found a 14-inch tire iron.

  Bundy was booked and released and his car impounded. Investigator Daryle Ondrak, who had taken custody of the suspicious items in the Volkswagen, told Ted to expect an added charge of possessing burglary tools.

  Bundy’s mug shot after his August 1975 arrest. He appears radically different in a lineup two months later.

  Bundy’s fingerprint sheet. (Courtesy Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office and King County, WA. archives)

  ———

  The following Tuesday, the 19th, at a weekly meeting of area police detectives, Ondrak told the group how he’d arrested a polite and pleasant law student in his late 20s who drove a Volkswagen. It seemed incongruous, Ondrak explained, that such a person would be carrying around tools of the criminal trade, including a pair of handcuffs.

  Sheriff’s Detective Jerry Thompson, Ben Forbes’s partner, who’d investigated the Melissa Smith murder of the previous October and also officer “Roseland’s” December assault of Carol DaRonch, snapped to attention. A well-spoken law student driving a VW who also owned handcuffs? Thompson, who had made zero progress on either the Smith or the DaRonch investigation, was very eager to learn more about Theodore Robert Bundy.

  ***

  In Seattle, the moment he hung up with Lieutenant Forbes, Kevin O’Shaughnessy went in search of our Ted Bundy file, which he couldn’t find. As it happened, Kathy McChesney had taken it to her desk. It was legal-length folder Number 7 from the Top 100 suspect cases that we were then putting through intensive reviews.

  O’Shaughnessy told McChesney of Ben Forbes’s telephone call, then the two of them and the rest of the office excitedly awaited my return. I could tell something was up the moment I entered the room. Everyone was in a sunny mood, smiling. Kevin told me about the call from Utah, and Kathy stepped forward to hand me Bundy’s file. I felt a buzz running through the room. After 12 months of horror, anger and worry – the longest year of my life – “Ted” at last had a name.

  Letter from Utah’s Ben Forbes to me regarding Bundy’s arrest in 1975 (From the files of Robert D. Keppel and King County, WA. archives)

  ———

  On Thursday, August 21, Ondrak drove out to Bundy’s rooming house and presented Ted with the promised arrest warrant for possession of burglary tools. The investigator then escorted Bundy to the sheriff’s office to be photographed, fingerprinted, booked, and led to a holding cage. After a while, Ted was taken to a small room, where Detective Forbes questioned him about the tools, beginning with the handcuffs.

  The suspect said he’d found them at the city dump. He explained that once in Seattle he had grappled with a bicycle thief until the police came and thought the cuffs would be handy if such a situation arose again. It was an absurd story, guaranteed to sharpen the detective’s suspicions.

  Ted said the panty-hose mask was an idea he’d learned about in a film about mountain climbers. As added protection against the bitter cold at altitude, he explained to Forbes, climbers tuck panty-hose masks under their regular nylon ones. Bundy said he was a skier, so he thought he’d try the same thing on the slopes.

  The ropes and lengths of sheet were for tying the oars of his rubber raft. The ice pick, he asserted, required no explanation. It was a common household utensil with many uses.

  As the interview concluded, Forbes told Ted he was a suspect in a kidnap and attempted murder case but did not mention Carol DaRonch. Bundy signed a form consenting to have his apartment searched, then was accompanied in handcuffs to a squad car for the ride back to his rooming house. There, as Ted looked on, Thompson spied a couple of pairs of patent leather shoes in the closet. He also found and seized – with Ted’s consent — a brochure from a recreation center in Bountiful, where Debra Kent had vanished; a Colorado Ski Country Guide with an X inked next to the listing for the Wildwood Inn; a Colorado road map; a telephone bill; and a Chevron credit card bill.

  Thompson asked Bundy if he’d ever been to Colorado. Ted said no.

  “Jerry,” Ted taunted him, “you do a pretty good job.”

  “I think I do a damn good job,” the detective replied.

  “Now you’ve got a straw,” Bundy continued. “You’re trying to fill up a broom. Keep going and one of these days you might make it.”

  You are grasping at straws

  Bundy would later tell his appeals lawyer, Polly Nelson, that he’d stashed a shoebox full of his victims’ photos in the building’s utility area. It was a “small miracle,” as Nelson puts it in her book, Defending the Devil: My Story as Ted Bundy’s Last Lawyer, that Thompson didn’t find the pictures. “He [Bundy] retrieved the shoebox of photos he’d hidden there,” she reports, “and destroyed the most graphic and conclusive evidence.”

  ***

  Thompson showed Carol DaRonch a picture of Ted’s car. She said it certainly could be “Roseland’s” vehicle, but she couldn’t say for certain. DaRonch also looked at a 28-picture photo lineup that included Bundy’s arrest photo. She hesitated over it, saying it looked “something like” her attacker, but again she was not certain.

  Then the investigators turned up a Utah driver’s license photo of Ted taken in December, 1975, very near the time of DaRonch’s encounter with “Roseland.” This time, though not certain, she said that Ted looked “a lot like” her abductor.

  October 1, Jerry Thompson visited Bundy at his rooming house with a subpoena to appear in a lineup the next day. Once the officer was out the door, Ted immediately had his bushy, medium-length hair cut. Next morning it would be neatly combed and parted on the opposite side.

  Bundy’s rooming house in Salt Lake City. He lived in the room in the back with the fire escape. (Courtesy MT7 Productions)

  ———

  Thompson was stunned at Bundy’s new look and immediately dubious about th
e lineup.

  Yet twenty minutes later, as Ted waited nervously in the booking area, his lawyer, John O’Connell, walked up looking grave. “Well, Ted,” he said, “this looks like the way it is. You’ve been identified.”The charge was aggravated kidnap. Bail was set at $100,000.

  Bundy’s October mug shot.

  ———

  The Utah police line-up in which Carol DaRonch identified Bundy (second from right) as her abductor and assailant, despite Jerry Thompson’s concerns that she wouldn’t recognize Bundy’s different appearance. (From the Salt Lake City Police Department and King County, WA. archives)