The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History (5 page)

As Lynda was not in the basement, Karen called up the steps to see if anyone knew her whereabouts. Monica Sutherland yelled back that she might be with her boyfriend, but this was immediately shouted down by the others; Lynda wouldn't do that, they insisted, she would have gone to work. Karen shrugged and told the caller Lynda was not home. Her employers' concern now heightened, they made a second call several minutes later asking if her bike was gone too. A quick check revealed it to be in the same place as when Karen went to bed, and she noticed the door leading to the outside was unlocked.

No one had any idea where Lynda had gone. It was uncharacteristic for her simply to leave and not tell anyone where she was going, but she was in fact no longer there, and while everybody had an opinion about what she might have done or where she might have gone, it was pure speculation and everyone knew it. Naturally, this gave birth to an unsettled and, for the most part, unspoken apprehension among them, but the transition from worry to outright fear would come later, as each began arriving home later that afternoon and there was still no sign of Lynda.

Just after 4:00 P.M., Joanne began making calls to those who should have had contact with their missing housemate, but no one had seen her all day. She didn't show up for work, nor was she seen at school. In the midst of this, Lynda's mother called and Joanne had to tell her that her daughter hadn't come home yet. Apparently, this was not the first attempt Mrs. Healy made to reach Lynda that afternoon of February 1.

At about 6:00 P.M., Lynda's father James and brother Robert arrived at the house and were told by her clearly fearful housemates that Lynda had been missing since early that morning, and how they were trying to call anyone who might have seen her or who might know her whereabouts. To be confronted with such a thing must be horrible beyond description. There is no preparation for it; no manual that explains how to cope. People may enter a state of surreal automation, with almost mechanical responses, and in so doing, they are able to handle the nightmare without imploding mentally. In any event, James Healy called his wife and told her not to come over. After listening to her husband, Mrs. Healy said he should call the authorities. According to one of the residents, he thought they should wait awhile. But Joyce Healy would not wait. After saying goodbye she immediately phoned the police.

When the first officers rolled up to 5517 12th Street N.E., they couldn't have known the gravity of the situation. All of that would come later. The department had been on runs like this before. This was, after all, a college community where students, for whatever reason, were prone to spontaneous changes in routines. Because of this, it wasn't at all uncommon for kids sometimes to skip classes, leave the city, or merely hang out at somebody else's pad for a time, especially if there was a new love-interest involved. College kids could be quite unpredictable. That being said, it is of the utmost importance in any missing person investigation to assume, unless evidence indicates otherwise, that foul play may be involved in the disappearance and proceed from there. Yet sometimes, even when the evidence is dear, the situation can be misinterpreted.

As the officers entered the house they were greeted by the somber faces of the residents and Lynda's family, who nervously began recounting the events of the previous night and their efforts to locate her. If fear and worry could have been measured as one would measure an electrical current, the charge coursing through that house would have been astounding, for the realization that something dreadful had happened to Lynda was beginning to descend upon them all. All, that is, except for the two patrolmen, who listened patiently but believed this was a replay of other runs they'd made before. Their initial report contained mostly routine information: name of the missing person, race, sex, height, parents' names and addresses, and a brief description of what they'd been told about their subject. It was also noted that some of her clothes were missing, along with a pair of boots, and a red backpack with gray straps. After completing his report, Officer Marshall and his partner got back into their patrol car and drove off into the night.

Around 8:00 P.M. the phone rang and Monica answered it. But when she said hello she was met with dead air. The line was open, she recalled, but the caller was refusing to speak. Only the faint sound of breathing was detectable. Two additional such calls would be made to the house that evening and both times the caller would remain silent.

Just before midnight a homicide detective arrived at the house. He went directly to Lynda's room and was followed closely by Joanne Testa. According to Joanne, "I was there when the policeman pulled back the spread for the first time. I saw that the pillowcase was gone and that there were blood stains on the pillow as well as one fairly large blood stain on the sheet near the pillow." Lynda had two pink satin pillowcases, Joanne told police, adding, "As far as I know, Lynda always kept a pillowcase on her pillow."' Checking the closet, the detective noted that her nightgown, which was hanging up, had a bloodstain on the upper portion at the back of the neck.

Apparently, because a change of clothes was missing as well as her backpack and her nightgown had been neatly placed on a hanger and hung in the closet, it was initially believed that the missing Lynda had experienced an unexpected nosebleed and had left to seek assistance. Yet she didn't wake anyone to let them know what had happened, nor did she take her bike. Her boyfriend hadn't seen her, she had made zero contact with anyone in the past twenty-three hours, and she failed to return home to prepare dinner for her parents and boyfriend.

The truth was indeed far more horrible. Lynda had been attacked and taken from her bed in the middle of the night to a location where others would later unwillingly join her. And while the police would compare the similarities between the attack on Terri Caldwell and the disappearance of Lynda Ann Healy, it was almost beyond comprehension to them that anyone would be so bold as to enter a house where others were sleeping, attack and render unconscious a woman, hang up her nightgown, gather up clothes, grab a backpack, meticulously make the bed and then carry the victim up a flight of stairs and out into the night. This was unthinkable. But in the weeks and months to come, the unthinkable would become a reality for those in Washington State.

As the horror of what actually happened took hold, the remaining housemates found it impossible to stay there any longer. The fear that whoever snatched Lynda might return again and spirit one of them away was just too much to bear. But the inhabitants of the U District were safe, at least for the present. The fiend had been satiated, and when the need to strike again began rising to the point where action would be taken, he'd head south, to a small but progressive school just outside of Olympia, Washington.

When nineteen-year-old Donna Manson enrolled at Evergreen State College in the fall of 1973, she was, in the vernacular of the times, still trying to find herself. Having graduated from Auburn High School in Auburn, Washington, in 1972, she would spend part of that summer crisscrossing Western Europe with her boyfriend. The Vietnam War was still grinding out American lives, so her passport forbade travel to that country (unless you were in the armed forces), as well as to North Korea and Cuba. Except for problems between England and Northern Ireland, where in either location a bomb or two might go off among some unsuspecting passersby, Europe was fairly peaceful that summer, until the slaughter of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in September. All in all, however, she must have enjoyed her time abroad. Donna would attend Green River Community College before enrolling at Evergreen.

Carved out of a beautiful forest of fir trees, the concrete complex known as Evergreen State College blends well into its natural surroundings. There is a definite harmony visible there between the ruggedness (and sometimes ruthlessness) of the forest, and the warmth and safety of civilization, something the school has managed to maintain to this very day.

Young Donna Manson was, like many of her peers at the time, in a category detectives would classify as "high risk." She was a hitchhiker, both locally as well as out of state. She preferred to stay out all night. She would sometimes leave the area without telling anyone, but, like a migrating goose, always managed to return safely home. She was also somewhat of a doper; at least a user of marijuana. Indeed, her association with people involved in both the using and selling of illicit drugs brought her into close contact with some very unsavory characters. In one of the journals later obtained by the Thurston County Sheriff's Department, Donna had written: "Paranoid speed freak hanging around waiting, just waiting alone he thinks security is after him, can't roll a joint. Asked a lot of questions. Lived out on Cooper Point Road. Says he's got a lot of hot shit. No doubt."9

Unfortunately, leading this type of lifestyle left little time for studying and classes. A statement taken from Andrea Michelle Horn, who was Donna's roommate from October through December 1973, said, "Donna liked to party and visit, and did so most every night until the early morning hours. She would frequently then sleep in, and not attend her classes, asking [me] to tell her what happened when I got back."" Although Andrea found this irritating, it was Donna's habit of turning on the lights and stereo whenever she returned home in the wee hours of the morning which caused Andrea to seek out another place to live for the remainder of that year.

A player of the flute and a writer of poetry, Donna also had an interest in the occult and was considering a course on magic and witchcraft that was going to be offered at the University of Washington. Apparently, it wouldn't be at the university proper, but at an off-campus site nearby. When asked about this, Andrea, with perhaps a bit of sarcasm, said Donna's interest was "casual only [as] it would require too much reading for Donna, who was basically lazy.""

On the evening of March 12, 1974, Donna had every intention of attending a jazz concert being held on campus. Unable to make up her mind, she would change outfits several times before deciding on a red, orange, and green top; green slacks; and a beloved fuzzy top coat that once belonged to her grandmother. She walked out the door for the last time around 7:00 P.M. It was drizzling that evening, and as Donna stepped out into the darkness, the coat felt especially good in the chilly night air. Her walk would be a relatively short one, over the man-made pathways which stretch out like veins in each direction as they wind their way through the maze of fir trees so prominent to the campus of Evergreen State.

There is little chance she had heard about the disappearance of Lynda Healy or the brutal attack on Terri Caldwell. The papers ran several stories on the Healy mystery, and a brief mention about the January 4 attack, but those things were in Seattle and had little to do with Olympia, much less her small school. She could not have known as she walked that pathway so familiar to her, thinking about the concert and who might be there, that a malignant being was very close to her now, and was also familiar with the walkways and fir trees of Evergreen State. But for him, Evergreen was not a place of learning, but a place to hunt, and he was confident that on such a night and in such a place he would find what he was looking for. And once again, he would be right. Donna Manson would vanish either along the pathway or from the parking lot adjacent to the building where the concert was being held. Was she enticed to enter a car willingly, or was she placed unconscious in a vehicle and driven away, only to later awaken to a nightmare? The mechanics of her abduction remain a mystery to this day.

Megan Ellis, considered to be Donna's best friend, did not find her absence surprising. Donna had done this before, leaving and telling no one of her intentions. She would return, Megan believed, as she always had. This was just the way Donna had chosen to live her life. But as one day stretched into seven, Megan's apprehension began rising and she decided to file a missing persons report. On that same day, March 19, college security contacted Donna's parents, Lyle and Marie Manson. Mr. Manson, a music instructor for the Seattle public school system, mentioned certain people in the area by the name of Wingfield that Donna was supposedly friends with and said perhaps she had gone to see them. He then hurried to his car and left for Olympia.

Soon after arriving, Lyle Manson, accompanied by Garry Russell of college security and another individual, was allowed to enter his daughter's room. Here they found suitcases and a closet with "very few empty hangers (indicating few, if any clothes were missing), toilet articles were in the bathroom.... Her camera, sleeping bag, backpack, flute, and five to six dollars in bills and change were found in the room."" While they were there, a friend of Donna's, Tony Ross, stopped by and asked if he could pick up a large oil painting belonging to him, and Mr. Manson gave him permission to do so. Before leaving, Tony mentioned that he and Donna had gone to Selleck, Washington, in February and perhaps she had returned there. But Donna hadn't gone to Selleck, or anywhere else in Washington where she had friends. She, like Lynda Ann Healy, had vanished in the night, somewhat differently but without a trace of physical evidence left behind. This lack of evidence would become a frustrating hallmark detectives would recognize as this grew into a statewide investigation and far beyond, and it would be years before the world would learn anything about the disappearance of Donna Manson. For now, however, all the police could say about her was that she had vanished under very strange circumstances.

On Wednesday, April 17, 1974, Kathleen Clara D'Olivo dropped her roommate off close to downtown Ellensburg and drove out to the campus of Central Washington State College, where she was a student. Arriving just after 8:00 P.M., Kathleen parked her car in the designated parking lot and entered Bouillon Library, using the main entrance. "It was a clear night," she remembered. "I don't remember it being extremely cold or extremely warm."" And, like the missing women of western Washington (women who disappeared over one hundred miles to the west over the Cascade Mountains), her hair was long, dark, and parted in the middle.