The Stranger Beside Me

by Ann Rule

  “What did you tell him?” I asked Keppel.

  “I told him that I’d be glad to trade information. If he wanted to talk with us, to ask questions, well, we had a couple of questions we’d been wanting to ask him for a long time. He didn’t want to discuss our questions though. He was just calling us up as if he were a defense lawyer gathering facts. I can’t believe his gall.”

  Ted called me often too. I was awakened many mornings around eight to hear the sound of Ted’s voice, calling from Colorado.

  There were not many letters, but I did get one mailed on February 24. It was a happy letter. He was enjoying the vacationlike atmosphere of Aspen, even though he was in a jail cell. “I feel super. … Feel no pressure from the case. I mean pressure. … They are beaten.”

  Ted deemed Pitkin County a “Mickey Mouse operation,” and he was particularly scornful of Pitkin County District Attorney Frank Tucker. Tucker was attempting, he wrote, to find areas of commonality between the Colorado killing and the Utah cases, and trying to gain insight into Ted’s personality. Ted felt he could see completely through Tucker’s case, and that he, the defendant, was a threat to the D.A. because of his self-confidence. “This man should never play poker. And from what I saw of him the other day, this man should never enter a courtroom.”

  Ted quoted from an interview D.A. Tucker had given about him.

  “He [Ted] is the most cocky person I have ever faced. He tells his lawyer what to do. He arrives carrying armloads of books, as if he were an attorney himself. He sends notes to the judge and calls him at night. He refuses to talk to me or any other prosecutor.”

  It was, of course, exactly the image Ted wished to promulgate. “Flattery will get him nowhere. His story touches my heart but someone should tell him I didn’t ask to come to Colorado. Imagine, the nerve of me telling my attorneys what to do! Never called a judge at night in my life.”

  Ted expected that he would get a fair trial in Aspen, and that it would not be difficult to pick an impartial jury in Pitkin County. He encouraged me to come for that trial if I could, and thought that the trial date would be set for some time in early summer.

  As I read this letter, this letter where Ted seemed so in control, I remembered the young man who had cried, “I want my freedom!” from that first jail cell in Salt Lake County. He was no longer afraid. He had acclimated to his incarceration and he was reveling in the prospect of the fight ahead. The letter closed with, “We are looking at a trial date in late June or early July—God willing and the D.A. doesn’t shit in his expensive trousers.”

  Yes, Ted had changed radically from the outraged, desperate man who wrote to me from jail in Salt Lake City eighteen months before. There was an asperity, a caustic bitterness now. I detected it in his phone calls to me. He hated policemen, prosecutors and the press. It was, perhaps, a natural progression for a man so long behind bars, for a man still proclaiming his innocence. He no longer talked or wrote to me about writing anything himself.

  Although he hated the food in the Pitkin County Jail, he rather liked his cellmates and fellow prisoners, mostly drunks and small-time crooks brought in for short stays. He was working hard on his case, and by March he had plans to serve as his own defense lawyer. He was unhappy with the public defender, Chuck Leidner. Having been used to the skill of John O’Connell, he expected more, and public defenders are generally young lawyers, untried, without the experience of the big-time pros, the criminal defense attorneys who charge huge fees.

  In March, the Colorado Health Department declared that the Pitkin County Jail was a short-term facility, and that no prisoner should be held there for more than thirty days. That produced a problem. Ted would have to be moved.

  He told me he was reading a good deal, the only respite he had from television soap operas and game shows. His favorite book was Papillon, the story of an impossible prison escape from Devil’s Island. “I’ve read it four times.” Again there was a subtle hint, but it seemed incredible to think that Ted could escape from the Pitkin County Jail, deep in the bowels of the old courthouse. And if the case against him was so full of holes—as he proclaimed— why should he escape? The Utah sentence had not been that severe, and it was doubtful that any charges would be forthcoming from Washington State. He could well be free before his thirty-fifth birthday.

  Chuck Leidner was still representing Ted as they went into the preliminary hearing on the Caryn Campbell case on April 4. Aspenites, who’d cut their courtroom gallery teeth on the Longet-Sabich case, jammed the courtroom. Rumor was that the Ted Bundy case might even transcend the histrionics seen earlier in the year.

  Ted and his attorneys wanted the trial, if there was to be one, held in Aspen. They liked the laid-back atmosphere and, as Ted had told me in his letter, they felt that Aspenites had not yet made up their minds about his guilt or innocence.

  Furthermore, D.A. Frank Tucker was under the gun. He had lost Claudine Longet’s diary, a diary said to be of utmost importance to the prosecution in her murder case, an intimate journal that had somehow made its way to his home only to be strangely misplaced. Potential jurors in Aspen would remember that. Aware perhaps of his diminishing credibility, Tucker had brought in some manpower from Colorado Springs, two pros: District Attorneys Milton Blakely and Bob Russell.

  In a preliminary hearing the prosecution lays out its case before the judge to establish cause to go to trial. Pitkin County’s case was hinged—as were Salt Lake County’s before it and the Florida cases after it—on an eyewitness identification. This time, the eyewitness was the woman touristwho had seen the stranger in the corridor of the Wildwood Inn on the night of January 12, 1975. (Continued on page 256)

  In 1972, I was a volunteer at the Crisis Clinic in Seattle two overnights a week. My partner was Ted Bundy, twenty-five, who was a work-study student, paid two dollars an hour, for giving advice to depressed people. Together we saved lives.

  Ted Bundy at seventeen in a signed photograph from his high school yearbook.

  Ted Bundy with Stephanie, the woman to whom he was secretly engaged, September 2, 1973.

  Lynda Ann Healy, the first known victim. She disappeared one month after Ted’s final breakup with Stephanie.

  Police crime-scene photographs of Lynda Ann Healy’s basement room in the house she shared with several other female students.

  Most of the streets in the University District in Seattle had alleys bisecting them. Ted Bundy prowled these alleys, looking for his prey: young females. He probably watched an unsuspecting Lynda Ann Healy wheel her bike out into the dark before dawn.

  King County detective Bob Keppel took this photograph as he stood next to Brenda Ball’s skull on Taylor Mountain near Seattle. In this dense underbrush on the lonely mountain, searchers also found the skulls of Roberta Kathleen Parks, Lynda Ann Healy, and Susan Rancourt.

  Captain Herb Swindler of the Seattle Police Department, with photographs of some of the missing women: Lynda Ann Healy (top and bottom left), Donna Manson (top middle), Susan Rancourt (top right), Roberta Kathleen Parks (bottom middle), and Georgeann Hawkins (bottom right)

  On July 14, 1974, Denise Naslund (pictured above) vanished from Lake Sammamish State Park.

  Janice Ott, who disappeared from Lake Sammamish State Park four hours earlier than Denise Naslund.

  Georgeann Hawkins vanished from an alley behind Greek Row at the University of Washington on a hot June night.

  This photograph was taken at Lake Sammamish State Park on Sunday, July 14, 1974. It shows a small group of people, one section of the park where there were 40,000 people picnicking, sunning, and swimming on the day Janice Ott and Denise Naslund vanished. Although the King County Police scrutinized scores of photographs like this, they never spotted a handsome, tanned man in a white tennis outfit.

  This aerial photograph of Lake Sammamish State Park, taken the Sunday after the abductions, shows how empty the park became because women were afraid. The park, close to I-90, was virtually deserted. Janice Ott’s and Den
ise Naslund’s remains were located weeks later, less than two miles away.

  (Above) Nick Mackie, head of the task force in the King County Sheriff’s Office.

  Roger Dunn was the only member of the King County Police task force who actually met and talked to Bundy.

  Bob Keppel, of the King County Police, bore the brunt of the Bundy

  investigation for six grueling years

  Police artist sketch of “Ted,” described by witnesses who had seen Janice Ott leave with him in Lake Sammamish State Park on July 14, 1974.

  Available on November 27, 2012

  Overview

  It’s a chilling reality that homicide investigators know all too well: the last face most murder victims see is not that of a stranger, but of someone familiar. Whether only an acquaintance or a trusted intimate, such killers share a common trait that triggers the downward spiral toward death for someone close to them: they are masters at hiding who they really are. Their clever masks let them appear safe, kind, and truthful. They are anything but—and almost no one can detect the murderous impulses buried deep in their psyches.

  These doomed relationships are the focus of Ann Rule’s sixteenth all-new Crime Files collection. In these shattering inside views of both headlined and little-known homicides, Rule speaks for vulnerable victims who relied on the wrong people. She begins with two startling novella-length investigations.

  In July 2011, a billionaire’s Coronado, California, mansion was the setting for two horrifying deaths only days apart—his young son’s plunge from a balcony and his girlfriend’s ghastly hanging. What really happened? Baffling questions remain unanswered, as these cases were closed far too soon for hundreds of people; Rule looks at them now through the eyes of a relentless crime reporter. The second probe began in Utah when Susan Powell vanished in a 2009 blizzard. Her controlling husband, Josh, proved capable of a blind rage that was heartbreakingly fatal to his innocent small sons almost three years later in a tragedy that shocked America as the details unfolded. If anyone had detected the depth of depravity within Josh Powell, perhaps the family that loved and trusted him would have been saved. In these and seven other riveting cases, Ann Rule exposes the twisted truth behind the facades of Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors. Originally published in the mid 1990s, two young adult suspense novels by Leslie Rule, now available as ebooks:

  Sergeant Bob Hayward of the Utah State Parol saw a VW “Bug” in his neighborhood in Granger and knew it didn’t belong there. He gave chase and caught up with Ted Bundywho made lame excuses. Hayward saw the passenger seat was missing, and found burglary tools and pantyhose mask in Ted’s care.

  From late 1974 through most of 1975, Ted lived in this rooming house at 565 First Avenue in Salt Lake City while he attended law school. He entertained Carole Ann Boone here when she and other friends visited from Olympia, Washington. He also had new female friends in Utah.

  Ted Bundy after his arrest in Utah in August 1975. He is dressed in his cat burglar outfit.

  Booking mug shot of Ted Bundy in Salt Lake County on October 3, 1975, after his arrest for the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch.

  Ted Bundy in the Salt Lake County lineup where Carol DaRonch picked him as her kidnapper in October 1975. He is second from the right.

  The many faces of Ted Bundy. He was a chameleon who rarely looked the same way twice.

  A police surveillance shot, Utah, 1975.

  Ted Bundy

  Ted Bundy in 1977 after his first escape from jail in Colorado.

  Police surveillance photograph of Ted Bundy in the autumn of 1975. He was out on bail after being charged with attempted kidnapping in Utah.

  Ted Bundy posing as Florida State University graduate student Ken Misner in the Pensacola Police Department after his arrest there on February 15, 1978. He has a scrape on his left cheek from a scuffle with Officer David Lee.

  The last victim. Kimberly Leach disappeared from Lake City, Florida, on February 9, 1978. She was twelve years old. (AP/Wide World Photos)

  Ted lived in “The Oaks,” a rooming house close to the Chi Omega Sorority House in Tallahassee. Using the names of “Ken Misner” and “Chris Hagen,” he stayed underground. With stolen credit cards, he ate at expensive French restaurants. He lasted only a week before he killed again.

  Ted Bundy sneaked into the Chi Omega sorority on January 14-15, 1978. He left two girls dead, and two more gravely injured. Then he ran to another address and struck down another young woman.

  Part of Ted’s booking pages, created at the Pensacola Police Department on February 15, 1978. He gave the name Ken Misner, but must have realized his fingerprints would show who he really was.

  Ted Bundy, recaptured for the second time in Pensacola, Florida, seemed remarkably cheerful. He enjoyed telling Florida detectives about his clever escape from a Colorado jail. The blue jacket he’s wearing was linked to a fiber profile and Kimberly Leach.

  Ted Bundy, in jail coveralls, at a press conference in Tallahassee, Florida. Sheriff Ken Katsaris of Leon County, Florida, is reading the charges against him.

  (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Because so many people have written to me for a sample of Bundy’s handwriting, I am including a sample from a letter he sent me from Florida in March 1978 (although he misdated it February). This is the letter where he blamed his capture on his “compulsion and stupidity.”

  Judge Edward Cowart at Ted Bundy’s trial for the murders of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, and the attacks on Kathy Kleiner, Karen Chandler, and Cheryl Thomas in the summer of 1979. He is holding up a pantyhose “mask” found in Cheryl’s apartment. There were two curly brown hairs inside, similar to Bundy’s in class and characteristic.

  Carole Ann Boone worked with Ted at the Department of Emergency Services in Olympia, Washington. She married Ted as she sat on the witness stand during his Orlando trial for the murders of twelve-year-old Kimberly Leach, and later bore his only child—a daughter. They divorced before his execution.

  Nita Neary came home to the Chi Omega House at 3 A.M. on January 15, 1978 and found the backdoor ajar. She stood quietly in the dining room and watched a strange man at the front door. He wore a black watch cap pulled over his face, and held an oak log in one hand.

  Carol DaRonch testifying in Florida as Judge Cowart listens. (AP/Wide World Photos)

  Ted Bundy smiles for the camera during his days with Governor Dan Evans’s re-election campaign. The telltale gap between his front teeth would link him to the death of Lisa Levy.

  During a break at his Miami trial, Ted looks at X-rays of his teeth after forensic dentist Dr. Richard Souviron testified that they match the bite marks on Lisa Levy’s buttocks exactly. Ted insisted the evidence was flawed.

  Ted Bundy at the Miami trial for the murders of Margaret Bowman and Lisa Levy and the attempted murders of Kathy Kleiner, Karen Chandler, and Cheryl Thomas. (AP/Wide World Photos)

  Ted Bundy waving to the camera while the charges against him are being read. He told reporters, “I will be heard!” (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Ted Bundy with his lawyers at the first trial in Florida. June 25, 1979. (©Bettmann/Corbis)

  The Ted Bundy who hid behind a charming mask suddenly revealed himself in the Orlando trial for the murder of Kimberly Leach. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Aspen Investigator Mike Fisher had shown her a lay-down of mug shots a year after that night and she’d picked Ted Bundy’s. Now, during the preliminary hearing in April of 1977, she was asked to look around the courtroom and point out anyone who resembled the man she’d seen.

  Ted suppressed a smile as she pointed, not to him, but to Pitkin County Undersheriff Ben Meyers.

  The steam had gone out of the state’s case. Judge Lohr listened as Tucker pointed out other evidence: Bundy’s credit card slips, the brochure on Colorado ski areas found in Ted’s Salt Lake City apartment with the Wildwood Inn marked, two hairs taken from the old Volkswagen which microscopically matched Caryn Campbell’s, the match between Bundy’s crowbar
and the wounds on the victim’s skull.

  It was a chancy gamble for the prosecution, unless they could tie in some of the Utah cases. Judge Lohr ruled that Ted Bundy would stand trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell, adding that it was not his job to consider the probability of conviction, or the credibility of the evidence, only its existence.

  After the preliminary hearing, Ted summarily “fired” his public defenders, Chuck Leidner and Jim Dumas. He wanted to get involved in his own defense. He was beginning a pattern that he would repeat again and again, a kind of arrogance toward those designated by the state to defend him. If he could not have what he considered the best, then he would go it alone. Judge Lohr was forced to acquiesce to his decision to defend himself, although he assigned Leidner and Dumas to remain on the defense team as legal advisors.