I could see the headlines:
Bundy Girlfriend Found Strangled
Bundy Charged with 1st Degree Murder
I started to run, feeling imaginary hands grabbing at my ankles and reaching for my neck. When I got into the house, unharmed, I knew it was only my mind tormenting me again, but still I couldn’t stop shaking.
One night when Ted was in Salt Lake City, I got a phone call from a man who identified himself as a Seattle police officer. He told me he was calling because he was a Mormon. I checked him out in my church directory and called him back. He told me he hadn’t been involved directly in the surveillance, but that he had heard it was getting pretty rough. He said there was a chance I might get hurt if I continued to be involved in the chases with Ted. He asked me to do what was right: to live by Church principles and be a good girl. The only thing I could say to him was that he didn’t understand. After his phone call I felt tremendously guilty. Guilty of not living up to Church standards. Guilty of what I had done to Ted. Guilty of not being a good mother. Guilty of being alive.
As the trial approached, Ted spent more time in Salt Lake City. After having put him on a plane thinking that I wouldn’t see him again until I flew there for the trial, I was surprised to get a call from him one Saturday morning saying he was in Seattle. He had been instructed by his attorney not to contact anyone, but he told me that his free life might be too short to skip the chance of being with me. I picked him up and we spent the rest of the day together. He told me that he had slipped into Seattle to take a lie-detector test that could be used in his defense. I thought that was wonderful. When he passed with flying colors, perhaps I would be able to let go of my doubts. When the results came back, they were inconclusive.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Monday, February 23, 1976, Ted’s trial began in Salt Lake City. The charge of attempted murder had been dropped. He would be tried for attempted kidnapping. He had waived his right to a jury trial, believing that a judge, being more intelligent and better educated than a jury, would be better able to grasp what the hysteria in the press had done to Ted’s chances for a fair trial.
I made arrangements for Molly to stay in Seattle with the family of one of her friends and arranged to take a week off from my job so I could go to Salt Lake City. At the last minute, Ted called and asked me not to come. My name had appeared on the list of possible prosecution witnesses when it was issued a month before the trial, but no one contacted me about testifying. According to Ted’s attorney, the prosecutors called me “a real squirrel.” His attorneys were afraid they might try to put me on the stand if they knew I was in Salt Lake City. I was skeptical. Salt Lake City was Kim Andrews territory, and I knew Ted would have a hard time balancing the two of us. She was to testify at the trial, and Ted had gone on and on about what a great friend she was to do this and what a sacrifice it was for her to be publicly identified with him. The day she testified, she was identified in the press as a “girlfriend” of Ted’s. She testified that she had spent a great deal of time in Ted’s apartment and that she had never seen a pair of patent leather shoes there, nor had she ever seen him wear patent leather shoes.
In early January, I had bought two cans of paint with the idea of painting my apartment on weekends. Six weeks later, I still hadn’t finished, so I spent the week of Ted’s trial painting. It was the kind of work suited to six-packs of beer and gave me the reason I needed to drink all day.
Ted’s trial was big news. I kept the radio on all day, and Ted called me every night and gave me a play-by-play account. Carol DaRonch testified at length about the man she said had approached her at the shopping mall posing as a police officer. He told her someone had looted her car and asked her to go back with him to the car and check to see what was missing. After she found nothing gone, the “police officer” asked her to go with him to fill out a report. She had been suspicious of the man, but after he showed her a badge in his wallet, she got into his beige Volkswagen. Half a mile from the shopping center, he stopped the car and snapped handcuffs on one wrist. She resisted, and he was unable to cuff the other wrist. She said she tried to get out of the car.
“I was screaming, asking him what he was doing,” she testified. “Then he pulled a gun, a small black one, and said he would blow my brains out. I got out the door and he slid across the seat after me. I was screaming as loud as I could and scratching him.” Outside the car, she said, the man raised a pry bar in his right hand and tried to strike her, but she grabbed his arm. She managed to break free and ran out into the street, where she was picked up by a couple in a car. She testified that she was hysterical at the time.
When Ted’s attorney, John O’Connell, cross-examined her, she admitted that she couldn’t make a positive identification of Ted from the photos shown her by the police. She also gave testimony that conflicted with her earlier identification of Ted’s car and admitted that she wasn’t sure whether her assailant had a mustache. Ted told me that night that Carol DaRonch was indeed a very frightened young woman who had gone through a terrifying experience, but she was just plain wrong when she identified him as the man posing as a police officer.
Next, the older couple who had picked up DaRonch testified. The woman said that when DaRonch appeared in their headlights with the handcuffs dangling from her wrist, she turned to lock her car door. That chilled me. It was like dreams I’ve had where I try to dial the police and the phone won’t work, or I try to run away but the ground has turned into a treadmill. Fortunately, DaRonch had got the car door open before the woman was able to lock it.
On Thursday, Ted took the witness stand. He admitted that he had lied to the police and to his own attorney about what he had been doing the night he was arrested. He said that his “paranoia” about getting caught smoking marijuana had made him say that he had been at a nearby drive-in movie and had caused him to take off in his VW when the patrolman tried to stop him. He had driven for several blocks, throwing out a bag of pot and cigarette papers, and leaving the window open to air out the car. He was afraid that getting caught smoking pot would affect his law studies at the University of Utah. This was the first time I had heard this version. I wasn’t anxious to analyze his story, but it didn’t sound right to me. Of course, I also picked up on his statement that he had driven by a girlfriend’s house earlier in the evening, but since the lights were out, he hadn’t stopped.
Ted was the last witness. I flew to Salt Lake City that Thursday night.
Ted met me at the airport with his lawyer friend Aaron. His defense attorney, John O’Connell, had advised him not to go anywhere alone. Ted looked handsome and his spirits were high. He thought the case was going well, and he and Aaron discussed it endlessly over dinner in a Mexican restaurant. After dinner we went back to the airport to rent a car for me.
Ted and I drove to the university student housing where I was to stay with my former sister-in-law, Julie, and her husband and two kids. Molly and I had always stayed close to her dad’s family. They were warm and happy people, and they meant a lot to me.
Ted went back to his place. We had agreed that I wouldn’t go to court the next day. We were both worried that I would be identified, and I was afraid that my role in Ted’s arrest would come out.
The next morning, he called before he left for court to tell me that he loved me. Julie and I sat around drinking coffee and making plans to go shopping. I had just stepped out of the shower when the phone rang. It was Aaron telling me that Ted wanted me in court right away.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I don’t know. He just wants you there.”
I threw on my wrinkled suit and with my long, wet hair dripping down my back, got a ride downtown with Julie’s husband. Aaron met me in the hall, and we slipped into the courtroom and sat down with Mr. and Mrs. Bundy. The prosecutor, David Yocom, was delivering his closing argument. Ted turned around and gave me a half-smile. As Aaron had said, Ted just wanted me there.
I had felt as if all eyes
were on me when I entered the courtroom, and it was a long time before I dared to look around. Judge Hanson was younger than I had expected.
Yocom was going through the evidence, saying it fit Ted Bundy to a T. He pulled out a chair and sat down on it, pretending to be Ted on the night of the attack, showing the judge how Ted had supposedly put the handcuffs on DaRonch.
Then it was O’Connell’s turn. Sounding nervous, he told the packed courtroom that the evidence could fit a lot of people, not just Ted Bundy. The publicity surrounding Ted had created a monster, O’Connell said, a monster like things that go bump in the night or mutilate livestock. He hit hard at Carol DaRonch’s suggestibility. She had picked Ted out of a lineup only because she had already been shown his picture several times. She identified Ted because she thought that was what the police wanted her to do.
When O’Connell was done, Judge Hanson read the instructions to the jury—even though there wasn’t one—and recessed the court until his decision was made. As the courtroom was clearing, Ted leaned over to me and said, “That’s Louis Smith.” He said Melissa Smith’s father came to court every day and stared at him. The guards frisked Smith every day, afraid that he would try to shoot the man he believed had killed his daughter. I looked at Smith and looked away, sensing the grief beneath his anger.
Ted and his attorneys left first; the press was waiting for them. I left with the Bundys by way of a back elevator, and we walked the short distance to O’Connell’s office. There the Bundys were greeted warmly by Kim Andrews, a pretty blond about twenty-four. All I got from her was a piercing glare. When Ted arrived, he didn’t introduce me to anyone, just let me sit by myself feeling left out and ugly in my wrinkled suit and uncurled hair.
We waited in the lawyer’s office because it was thought that the judge might render a quick decision and Ted had to be available when he did. I spent a lot of time walking around the block or sitting outside on the steps of the building. Occasionally, when I would come back in, Ted would be sitting on the edge of Kim’s desk and they would be laughing about something.
Finally, it was decided that there was no point in waiting around. Aaron left for the airport to fly back to Seattle and Ted and I dropped the Bundys off at the home of one of his church leaders where they were staying. Ted and I went over to the law school and ran into a couple of his friends. They discussed how the case was going. He didn’t introduce me to them, either, and I wandered around the halls reading bulletin boards. When I came back, he told me we were going out to drink beer with his friends.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” I said. He told me he was sorry he was so distracted and that he loved me and never wanted to be apart from me ever again. He kissed me and held me there in the law school hallway.
We went off to a tavern, and while Ted was playing pool, one of his fellow law school students asked me how long I’d known him. When I told her that we’d been going together since 1969, she said, “Now isn’t it odd that he’s never mentioned you?”
Later, alone with Ted in the car, I told him what she’d said and tried to make a joke of it. He grabbed my hand and said he was sorry, and that if he could only have another chance, he would shout his love for me from the rooftops. His voice was cracking.
“I love you,” I said. “I’m sorry I brought it up. I know you love me.” When we made our next stop at another friend’s apartment, he introduced me as his fiancée.
His friend told me that he had been interviewed by the police. “They told me you talked to them, too,” he said. “In fact, they told me some of the stuff you told them. Is it true?”
I didn’t dare ask him what “stuff” he was talking about. Ted looked embarrassed. There were questions we didn’t ask each other, by unspoken agreement. He didn’t ask me why or what I told the police, and I didn’t ask him about his connection to the crimes. After an awkward silence, Ted said he was sick of talking about police, witnesses, and trials. We left as soon as we could.
We went by Ted’s place so that he could change clothes, then went back to Julie’s. It was late and everybody else had gone to bed. Ted and I lay side by side in my bed and held each other.
There was no sexual energy in us. I fell into a deep but troubled sleep.
Early the next morning Ted nudged me awake. “Hold me, I’m scared. Hold me . . . please.” His voice was urgent and childlike. I held his head against my chest and stroked his hair. I felt his tears on my body. I couldn’t speak. I wanted to be strong and not cry, but the tears slid down my face. We held tight to each other and cried until Ted finally lifted his head and looked at me.
“Ugh! We need some Kleenex,” he said. We were soggy messes with runny noses.
We got dressed and went for a walk. It was a cold, gray day. We held hands and walked along in silence; I couldn’t catch my breath. We stopped and Ted ate breakfast at a place across from the campus. We would have spurts of conversation and abrupt silences.
Afterward, we walked back to student housing, then up towards the foothills. When we got to the zoo, Ted wanted to jump over the exit gate and go in, but I insisted on walking around to the entrance and paying the fee. It took one minute of watching the animals behind bars to freak Ted out. “What a stupid idea. . . . I should have known better,” he said.
We wasted the day. At Ted’s place there were telephone messages for him. He ripped them off the pad and took the phone in the other room to return the calls, leaving me out in the living room with one of his roommates. The guy was friendly and chatty, and I wished he’d shut up so I could tell if Ted was talking to Kim Andrews. Ted got done on the phone and decided to take a shower. The roommate went off to the store. I searched the pockets of Ted’s pants, the garbage can, and the closet for the phone messages. I was afraid Ted would catch me, but I couldn’t stand not knowing who he had called. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I didn’t dare ask.
We went to a tavern where Ted ran into a couple of people he knew. Julie’s husband was there and we talked for a long time. I called Julie and told her we’d bring home lots of beer and stuff to make tacos.
We parked in the grocery store lot, and as we walked towards the store, I could feel Ted’s hand shaking in mine. As we pushed the cart around the store and debated what kind of beer we wanted—he wanted his favorite, Mickey’s, and I wanted Coors, which you couldn’t get in Seattle at that time—I noticed beads of perspiration on his forehead.
“Oh, God,” he said. “Every time I do something I wonder if it’s the last time I’ll ever do it. Like the shirts that we dropped off at the cleaners—what if I can’t get them on Wednesday?” His voice was low and pleading. “I used to take everything for granted, but everything is so important. I love life. If I can’t be free, I want to be dead.”
I took his hand and led him out of the stuffy store into the cold air. We sat close together on a brick planter, not saying anything. I was thinking that maybe he should take the car and go to Mexico. Then I saw that wouldn’t help; life on the run isn’t freedom, either.
“I want to get drunk,” he finally said. “Absolutely roasted. Go finish the shopping. I’m staying out here.” That sounded like the best idea I’d ever heard, so I threw in some extra beer and we stopped at the liquor store and got some wine, too.
Back at Julie’s, we started drinking and cooking with a vengeance. I excused myself briefly—I had to get into my suitcase to find my Valium. Lately, I hadn’t been able to “take the edge off” with just alcohol. I’d tried switching and combining wine, beer, Scotch, and bourbon, but nothing worked. A couple of Valiums helped immensely.
All of us pigged out on the tacos. After the kids were in bed, we smoked some dope. We watched Monty Python and I didn’t understand most of it. I couldn’t remember when I had taken the Valium, so I took a couple more. When the beer was gone, we started on the wine. By the time Saturday Night Live came on, I could hardly see. I lay across Ted’s lap and he tickled my back for a long, long time.
Sunday m
orning, we got up very slowly. I drove up to my folks’ house for midday dinner. Conversation was strained. My folks were horrified that I was still standing by Ted. I loved my parents very much that day for not trying to discuss it. I didn’t stay long. I wanted to get back to Ted. I swung by his place and picked him up, and we went back to Julie’s. There was nobody home. We lay down on the couch and kissed. Slowly we began making love, and for a few moments, the breathless excitement blocked everything else out and made things seem the way they used to be.
As Sunday wound down and Monday approached, the tension grew. We knew the verdict would probably come on Monday. We drank and watched TV and went to bed early. Monday morning, I popped out of a drug-induced steep to find Ted looking at me intently.
“I love you so much,” he told me. I started to cry. I didn’t want it to be Monday morning already. “Don’t cry,” he said. “Just know that I love you.” He took me in his arms, and we tried to make love, knowing that it really was the last time, but it was pointless; neither of us could feel anything. It was like being paralyzed.
About nine o’clock, John O’Connell called and told Ted to get to his office immediately. A verdict had been reached. Panic-stricken, I threw on my clothes while Ted phoned his parents.
It was starting to snow, and the streets were slick. We stopped at Ted’s place and he ran in to change his slacks. He came running out carrying his jacket, shirt, and tie. He changed in the car, throwing his yellow turtleneck sweater over the back seat. I dropped him off, found a parking place, and dashed up to the judge’s chambers where Ted’s parents were waiting. Judge Hanson was there, talking with Mrs. Bundy. I wondered how he must feel. Ted and his attorneys came in. He gave me a wink and a forced smile as he came through the door.
The Phantom Prince Page 13