The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History (10 page)

Around 4:00 P.M. he purchased hot dogs and hamburgers for the group, and Denise, who had fallen asleep only a short time earlier, had some difficulty waking up. According to Nancy, Denise had told her she was still pretty high before drifting off to sleep. "The four of us then ate the food at our picnic area after Denise awoke from a nap," Sargent said. "We sat and talked and drank beer. Around 4:15, Ken dozed off. About 4:40, Denise got up from where we were sitting and walked away without saying anything to me; that was not unusual, because I assumed she was going to the restroom or to find her dog that we had taken to the picnic. She never returned and we began searching for her. We looked all afternoon and evening without finding her."44

It is unknown the exact words the stranger used to convince Denise Naslund to follow him, first out to the parking lot and then into his VW, but it must be assumed it was similar to what he told Ott and the others. Despite her use of alcohol and drugs, Denise was a friendly young woman and considered a nice person by those she called friends. It would very much be in her nature, just as it was in Hawkins's and the others who went willingly with the killer, to help someone who was in need. But there just wasn't any way of detecting the monster behind the smile; it was simply these young women's misfortune to believe him.

It was close to 9:00 P.M. when Ken Little drove up the driveway of Eleanore Rose's home, telling her Denise was missing. Struck with fear, she immediately called the police. She knew something terrible must have happened to her daughter, as Denise would never have left her car and gone anywhere. Her mother had purchased the vehicle for Denise and knew what it meant to her. Besides, Denise hadn't wanted to be burdened by having to watch out for her purse while at the park and had placed it in the trunk of her car, and her mother knew she wouldn't have left the park without that either. In the very difficult days and weeks ahead, Eleanore would try to maintain a positive attitude about Denise, but it would be almost impossible. When she gave a statement to King County Detective Roger Dunn at 5:45 P.M. on Wednesday, July 17, she spoke of her daughter in the present tense: "Denise is very loving, and would often pick me up a gift for no special occasion, and I have always felt very close to her. When she walks into my house, it's just like sunshine coming through the door."45

An odd bit of information, totally inconsequential to what happened at Lake Sammamish, came to light during her statement. She happened to be telling the detective how Denise and Robin Woods enjoyed going to the various taverns in the area, and how Denise specifically mentioned visiting the Flame Tavern. This, of course, was the last known location of Brenda Ball before she fell into the abyss.

When it became clear that Janice Ott and Denise Naslund were not coming back, metaphorical hell broke loose in the ranks of law enforcement and among the public alike. The obligatory searches began both in the air and on the ground, but they turned up nothing, and police scuba divers combed the bottom of the lake for bodies that weren't there. As shocking as it was, police were left with the mystery of not one, but two young women who seemed to vanish into thin air. And this time, they weren't in an alleyway behind a row of frat and sorority houses at 1:00 A.M., or on a darkened campus in Ellensburg or Olympia. This time, it happened in broad daylight, in front of tens of thousands of people. It was a jaw-dropping act and he'd gotten away with it, and in the eyes of the investigators, it didn't get any worse than this. Once again, with no physical evidence for investigators to latch onto, they were forced to watch as spectators as this new breed of killer flaunted his expertise as an abductor of females.

Even so, Lake Sammamish would be the turning point in the investigation of the missing women of Washington state. It was the place where this abductor would extend his reach a little too far. Until now, law enforcement across the region was doing everything possible to locate the missing coeds. In June (the same month Brenda Ball and Georgann Hawkins vanished), a conference among some thirty different police departments in the state came together seeking the answers that would ultimately come later, as events continued to unfold. But now, in the midst of the horror which occurred at Lake Sammamish, a much-needed light at the end of the tunnel began to appear. It would be just a glimmer of light, barely discernable, yet it would be the one bit of evidence that finally gave this case its first real clue as to the killer's identity.

There were just too many witnesses to this apparently nice man with a sling on his left arm needing help with his sailboat. Although Sammamish did not yield any physical evidence for authorities to use, it did give them a name, maybe. He had identified himself as "Ted," and he drove a light brown (or tan) Volkswagen Beetle. There was always the chance he hadn't used his real name, but it was all they had to go on. Yet their assumption was correct. His full name was Theodore Robert Bundy, most recently a law student at the University of Puget Sound, and very much a rising star in the Washington State Republican Party. An unlikely candidate at first glance for serial murder, to be sure. But his uncovering would come later. It would be another fifteen months before his unmasking, so he still had a good deal of time left in that shadow world, a world in which he was able to move about quite freely and kill at will.

So why did he so foolishly use his name at Lake Sam? Well, it is possible he did this to cover his actions, should he be seen by someone he knew. He had come to the lake a week earlier when a much smaller crowd was there, yet he ran into some friends, and out of politeness stopped awhile and had a beer with them. Why was he even at the lake that day? In my opinion, he was either doing a dry-run in preparation for the double abduction the next week, or he may have been seeking a victim. So he understood the possibility of discovery was very real, and he would need to take measures to camouflage his actions. How would it look if he were leading a young woman to the parking lot, only to be stopped by someone he knew who was calling him by his real name? He could break off the abduction at that point, but if the girl said something like "I thought your name was [whatever]" it would raise suspicions with his friends. This is why Bundy would occasionally allow himself to be seen by those who knew him with a cast or sling on his arm. He understood there was a real possibility of someone seeing him, maybe not in Olympia, or Ellensburg, but in Seattle, the hub of his life. And so, if a friend or coworker were to mention seeing him fumbling with a briefcase while on crutches (as someone did in the U District in June), or having a hard time carrying books with one arm in a sling, that person might think, "Oh yeah, Bundy injured his arm recently," and quickly forget about it.

It is also important to realize that the press, before the attack at Lake Sam, was giving the public sporadic doses of information about the odd happenings around the state, based on what it was getting from the authorities. There were no conclusive answers as to where the young women had gone, so it was still a matter of speculation. However, even without the recovery of the body of even one victim, the authorities knew what they were facing. They couldn't admit what they really believed to an anxious, hand-wringing public, whose fears were already on the upswing: "As you know, we have a killer on the loose. No college-age females are safe, we can't protect you, and oh, by the way, he hasn't left a single clue behind, so it's unlikely we'll ever catch him until he does." To say such things would sound ridiculous, yet it wasn't far from the truth. The investigators were working very hard, but thus far, to no avail.

Now however, with the arrival of "Ted," the police had something to go on, even if he did drive one of the most popular cars of the time. Enlisting the help of the public, the police asked for anyone with information concerning this person to please come forward. The public was also encouraged to mail or drop off at the station any photographs taken at the lake that day. With any luck, police believed, they just might locate a picture of the killer in action.

Although this double abduction fell under the authority of the Issaquah Police Department, it was quickly turned over to the King County authori ties. While they pledged their assistance, Issaquah made clear it had neither the resources nor the manpower to handle such a large investigation. It is worth mentioning too that while Seattle PD initially ran the Healy missing persons investigation exclusively, it did for a time work on a joint task force with King County detectives. But this did not prove to be the panacea either one was looking for. Seattle eventually turned the case over entirely to King County.

There were thousands of man-hours ahead for Washington investigators in their hunt for this elusive killer. They would be both diligent and methodical, and would stick with it for as long as it took. At the forefront of this manhunt would be a young cop newly assigned to the homicide division of the King County Police Department by the name of Robert D. Keppel. Whatever he lacked in experience to handle such a high-profile murder case, he made up for in determination, and his contribution to the investigation would not go unnoticed by the killer.

The hunt for the fiend was heating up and he knew it. He never missed an article about the case, he knew everything police knew, and he was not one step ahead, but miles ahead of his pursuers. Bundy believed (quite rightly), that while they searched for him in one place, he could kill in another. Except for the error of using his first name at the lake, he had captured and killed all of his victims undetected. He couldn't have known how that slip of the lip would follow him later, even as he chose a new killing ground, hundreds of miles away. He was too arrogant to understand that sometimes, it's the little, unexpected things we do that can create the most havoc. He had now planted a seed in the minds of police, and it was he who started the wheels turning in that vast investigative machine that would ultimately lead to his capture.

How many women did Bundy kill in the state of Washington? It has been estimated at eleven, but the exact number will never be known. It appears he did kill Carol Valenzuela in the summer of 1974. She was last seen hitchhiking in the Camus, Washington, area on August 2, and like the others, simply disappeared. Luckily, her family would have a type of closure after her body was discovered on October 12 of that year in a rural part of Clark County, in the southern portion of the state. Lying only one hundred feet away was another female, unidentified, who had met the same fate as Carol. She too had long hair parted in the middle. Authorities said both bodies had been placed in shallow graves beside large logs, and from their initial investigation it was believed the unidentified remains had been in the ground about a month longer than Carol's.

2

BIRTH, BOYHOOD, AND BEYOND

Theodore Robert Cowell was born on November 24, 1946, in Burlington, Vermont. His creation was the result of an act of passion only, between his mother, Louise Cowell, and a sailor rumored to be a man by the name of Jack Worthington who had blown in from the Second World War. The father, having no intention of fathering anything, soon took his love elsewhere, leaving Louise to deal with things herself. Given the precarious situation she was now facing (according to the acceptable norms of that day), Louise chose to have the child at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers, entering the institution in her seventh month of pregnancy. The official tally of days Louise would spend there was sixty-three.

There was nothing unusual about the child's birth. There were no abnormalities or any outward manifestations that would give Louise or anyone else pause concerning him. He was, from all outward appearances, a normal, healthy baby. With the right amount of nurturing and love (something that came natural to Louise) not just with her firstborn, but with all of her children), there was no reason not to expect wonderful things for him. This was her hope, and she had every right to assume the best would happen for her son.

She could not have imagined what he would become.

Soon after giving birth, the young mother decided to return to Philadelphia with the child, where she settled into what appeared to be a comfortable life among members of her family (father) mother, and sisters), who openly welcomed her and her young son into their lives. Later in life, when the rest of society was scrambling for answers as to why Theodore Robert Bundy evolved into the insatiable killer he became, they would hear of the odd events surrounding his childhood. These events, certain experts believe, helped create what they refer to as a fractured personality, which I will discuss in detail later. In any event, for a time, he was led to believe that his grandparents were his parents, and his mother was his sister; which, taken all by itself, could later be problematic. But there were other, much darker things to contend with. It was rumored that his grandfather was a very violent man, whose fits of anger might quickly result in a physical beating for the offending party. It was also alleged that he was abusive to animals, had a collection of pornography (which) it was said, his grandson had located and would peruse at will), and was observed on occasion to be engaged in conversations with imaginary subjects. Bundy, however, only remembered Samuel Cowell as a highly educated and loving grandfather; indeed, someone he could pattern his life after.