The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer (9 page)

There was, in the beginning, an aura of imminent success in the air simply because of Issaquah’s handing the cases over to us, the big boys from the “county.” It was very much like the feeling we got when we called in the FBI for assistance in a major case. You believe, at first, that you’ve called in the experts, the “closers,” but then you discover that the promises, the handshakes, the transfer of files to a department with lots of detectives signing on and off watch, or intently poring through cases in the squad room, don’t catch serial killers at all. The detectives from Issaquah City held on to a lingering hope that Ott and Naslund would be found happily frolicking in some nearby playground with a good-looking guy with his arm in a sling. If this investigation was to be handled without undue confusion and blundering, a more organized and experienced force of investigators was required.

Unfortunately, there was a very faulty notion held by the local police that the King County authorities could put its force of 400 officers behind the search and quickly resolve the two disappearances. There was a basic mistake in all of our thinking. We all reacted as though the investigation was to cover the missing and murdered women cases that began on July 14, 1974. It didn’t. In reality, the killer was already at least seven months ahead of us, having snatched coeds from major area universities and colleges as far back as January. Investigations into those disappearances had begun at the police departments in their respective jurisdictions, and case files were already being assembled. Our case files on our missing women would soon begin to duplicate some of the information already being collected in other locations. Together, our material and that from the other missing-women cases were a detailed composite portrait of a serial killer at work, the ruses he used to entrap victims, the profile both of his victims and situations in which they were abducted, a road map of his travels and the ways he disposed of his victims. All of this constituted a valuable resource, but we couldn’t use it because we didn’t know how many missing and murdered women cases existed in other jurisdictions. The Ted cases had actually begun seven months earlier, but because we were only looking at our own jurisdiction, we had no idea that a specific pattern of abductions of young women with strikingly similar
descriptions was under way. This is the problem of 90 percent of all serial killer cases.

The typical assumption among homicide investigators that the first body discovered within the jurisdictional boundaries of one agency is truly the first homicide in a particular series is an incorrect one in 9 out of 10 instances. However, police departments continue to make that assumption, so it remains a constant obstacle in solving most serial murder investigations. When we realized the wide web that Ted had cast, as we expanded our Ott and Naslund investigations, it became important for us to look for similar missing-persons cases in other jurisdictions. In 1974, this was a difficult task because prior to that time, neighboring police agencies rarely exchanged this type of information. Prior to the Ott and Naslund cases, we never spoke to the Seattle police about their missing-persons investigations of Hawkins and Healy. No one made any direct connections to those cases until after multiple body recovery sites were discovered.

A few days after we’d uncovered the second dump site and circulated the suspect’s description and his apparent modus operandi, hundreds of police officers in Washington State were hunting for a man who matched the Ted suspect’s description. In the beginning, our strategy for investigation was prescribed by how investigations had been handled previously. Cases were traditionally assigned with a parochial outlook and the entire investigation was the responsibility of a single detective. The investigation of Janice Ott was assigned to Roger Dunn, and Naslund to me. As far as the department supervisors were concerned, as goes Naslund, so goes Keppel. Theoretically, anything that came in regarding each victim was given to their respective detectives to pursue and information was not automatically shared.

While we sorted out different methods of investigation, the mystery of an invisible kidnapper of young women caught the imagination of Washington State’s population. All of Seattle was stirred and horrified at the thought of what had happened to Ott and Naslund. With media coverage intensifying from July 15 and continuing for the next two months, our investigation collapsed under the volume of unsolicited tips and Ted sightings because we had no way to manage the information that was suddenly pouring in. We were receiving as many as 200 calls a day about men matching the description of the Lake Sam Ted, far too many for one detective to handle, especially the rookie who had been in the unit for only a
week. Each day the stack on my desk would get higher. The back-log of calls was so huge that Denise Naslund herself could have called in and told us she was fine and we wouldn’t have found the message for a week. We didn’t know where to begin chasing leads. Moreover, because of the volume, we couldn’t separate the truly valuable phone tips from phantom leads that were impossible to verify. One message would say that Naslund was seen on a train in Sacramento, California, and at the very same time, another would report she was waiting for a bus in downtown Seattle. Which one should we have chosen to investigate? Knowing what we knew by the September discovery of their remains, probably neither one, because all of the reported sightings were nothing more than the work of vivid imaginations of the media’s overenthusiastic audience.

Even while feeling overwhelmed, Roger and I came up with some innovative follow-up activities. For example, we knew that several television stations had recorded the picnic activities at Lake Sam that Sunday. We asked to view their film footage. Of course, it wasn’t easy. When station managers found out about our request, they had to make it into a major production. We could only review their tapes if they were permitted to videotape our looking at it. Naturally, they had reviewed the footage before we arrived and told us that they didn’t see anything of value. Well, their view of an investigation was different from ours. When we saw the footage we realized that the park really was a draw for young women with long hair parted in the middle. We didn’t see Ted Bundy, the victims, or women who were approached, but we did pick up an extremely valuable lead in the news footage: other people taking photographs.

Bingo—we had just uncovered multiple possibilities of evidence that was gathered firsthand on July 14—private citizens who took photographs that day at the park. We opened Roger and Bob’s Photomat. The news media had kindly asked parkgoers to send us their negatives or film that they had taken at the park that day. We agreed to process and return any film sent in. After sifting through several hundred photos the strategy paid off. One person had photographed a potentially volatile incident in which police were called in to throw some rowdy bikers out of the park. One particular black-and-white photo was taken of the area around the very tree under which Mary Osmer saw the metallic brown VW bug parked. The picture was of several parked police cars with officers in the background
confronting a group of outlaw bikers from the motorcycle gang called the Jackals. By parking in the only open lane, the police vehicles prevented any parked cars from leaving. Wedged in by the police vehicles was a light-colored VW bug with its driver behind the wheel. The license plate was obscured from view by a police car, but the ski rack on the rear of the car was clearly visible. Had we ever attempted to introduce it as evidence, a court would probably have thrown the photo right out because we couldn’t make out who was behind the wheel. But in our minds there wasn’t much doubt. It was Ted. We tried every process known to science in order to enhance that photographic treasure, but were unsuccessful at making it any clearer.

However, widening the circle of the investigation continued to pay off. The most significant breakthrough, thanks to our connection of the Naslund, Ott, and Rancourt missing-person cases, occurred on July 25, 1974. Carol Maher, a recent graduate of Central Washington State College, called me to report a confrontation that she had had with a Ted look-alike in front of the same library from which Susan Rancourt disappeared and on the very same day of her disappearance. Maher, who now lived south of Seattle, had received her copy of
The Crier,
the college newspaper. A composite drawing of the Ted suspect was featured on the front page, supplemented by a story of the stranger’s approaches to females and a description of the Ted suspect last seen walking toward the Lake Sammamish parking lot with Janice Ott. The article asked anyone with information to call the local police. So she called our office directly and I happened to pick up the telephone.

This is what she told me. At about ten
P.M.,
Maher was walking from Boullion Library when she heard the sound of packages hitting the ground behind her. She turned around to see a man dropping a few boxes and a backpack full of books. She asked if she could assist him. She thought for a minute that the guy was going to the library, but he continued to walk right on by. She asked where he was going and he said he was returning to his car, which he had parked a little ways away. She said okay, she’d walk there. Cautious, Maher never let the man walk behind her. For some reason, which she could not explain, her guard was up. She noticed that his right arm was in a cloth sling and a metal brace was on one of the fingers of the man’s right hand. Also, on his left hand he
wore a metal plate that braced his fingers on the palm side, with bandages holding the brace on. He claimed that the injuries were the result of a ski accident. The man had dark brown hair that hung below his ears. She estimated the man’s height between 5 foot 8 inches and 5 foot 11 inches, with a medium build.

The man led her across the Grupe Conference Bridge, under a trestle, and right into a dark alley where his VW bug—she couldn’t recall the color, but thought it was a newer model and shiny—was parked near a log. He walked to the passenger side and started to unlock the car, when, almost as if he’d rehearsed it, she thought, he dropped his key in the dirt. Maher had already set down the books. Making motions as if to feel for the key with his metal brace, the man asked if she would find it for him. Sensing danger, Maher did not bend over in front of him, but suggested that they stand back to see if the key’s reflection in the light would reveal it. Luckily, the key did shine through the dirt, and Maher quickly scooped it up, handed it to him, and left in one fluid movement before he could react. What was it about the eerie disabled stranger that signaled Maher to stay back? And if he did have intentions of assaulting her, what made him resist the urge to attack? Maher’s extreme caution saved her life, for that very same evening Susan Rancourt was not so lucky and caught the crash of a tire iron that caused the fracture I observed on the back of her skull. The details of Maher’s statement were kept extremely confidential to enable us to use them when we questioned potential suspects and, of course, to protect her lest the Ted suspect return to silence a potential witness against him.

Maher’s report was shocking and very revealing to us. We quite possibly had a killer whose method of approach to his victims had any number of variations depending on the environment in which he was operating. It was almost as if he were a shapeshifter who cloaked his intentions according to his victims’ situations, the setting of his attack, and the time of day or night. If this was so, King County had never been faced with the threat of such an insightful, premeditated killer who understood not only his victims’ habits but the movements and strategies of the police investigators as well. This was a true predator; police departments are not set up to catch these types of killers. As a consequence, most police departments don’t want to believe they have a serial killer in their jurisdiction even when the evidence points to it. In the Ted cases, this type of
skepticism is what Roger Dunn and I encountered from the moment it became apparent to us that the killer was not only tracking series of victims in different jurisdictions, but tracking the movements of police in those areas as well.

In spite of Maher’s report, many of our colleagues—from other jurisdictions and our own—were still very dubious and continued to believe that the Maher/Rancourt and the Ott/Naslund incidents were not connected. The rigid thinking among some career detectives forced every bit of new evidence of the connection among cases to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Since we had no bodies and little tangible evidence, they wouldn’t even consider that we had a series of murders committed by the same person. Free thought that included consideration of all the possibilities was not part of their crime-solving methodology. Their work was slow and unproductive. Their lack of motivation to do anything on these cases and their reluctance to believe that we even had a murderer on our hands stymied Roger’s and my progress. Nothing we could say or do would change their minds, not even the discovery of the women’s remains.

By July 28, 1974, the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
offered a $5,000 reward for information on the disappearances of the missing women in the Pacific Northwest, but to no avail. No helpful information regarding their whereabouts was reported. Their list included every one of the coeds whose disappearances we were investigating except Brenda Ball. She just didn’t fit their profile. For Roger and me, this further solidified our view that these women were never to be found.

While we had a number of leads, our follow-up was producing few results. Until September we were chasing every broken tail-light on any VW Beetle we saw, groping for any reason to pull it over to see who was driving. It was not a great time to be a VW owner in Seattle. We pulled vehicles over more than once, prompting owners to carry the business card of the officer who had previously interrupted their day. We also checked out every Ted suspect by showing a photograph of each one to a select few of the Lake Sam witnesses. This turned out to be unproductive. Because we wanted to create a control group to test the reliability of other people
and witnesses we questioned, we intentionally saved three witnesses until we positively knew who the killer was. On the other hand, just to test the reliability of one witness, we planted a photograph of her brother among those of the suspects. She treated it like one of the 200 photos she had viewed to that point, not even mentioning it was her brother. In addition, in October of 1974, several witnesses were shown the four different photos of Ted Bundy that we had, and no one identified him. Our questioning of various suspects didn’t help us out either. Our inability to question every one of the vast number of suspects would be something we would grow to regret.