True crimes solved and unsolved

ted bundy part 3

Ted Bundy's First Murders Across Seattle

Ted Bundy's next victim and his first confirmed murder was Lynda Ann Healy, another UW student.

A month after his assault on Karen Sparks, Bundy broke into Healy's apartment in the early morning, knocked her unconscious, then clothed her body and carried her out to his car. She was never seen again, but part of her skull was discovered years later at one of the locations where Bundy dumped his bodies.

Afterward, Bundy continued targeting female students in the area. He developed a technique: approaching women while wearing a cast or appearing otherwise disabled and asking them to help him put something in his car.

He would then bludgeon them unconscious before binding, raping, and killing them, dumping their bodies in a remote location in the woods. Bundy would often revisit these sites to have sex with their decaying corpses. In some cases, Bundy would decapitate his victims and keep their skulls in his apartment, sleeping beside his trophies.

"The ultimate possession was, in fact, the taking of the life," Bundy once . "And then . . . the physical possession of the remains."

"Murder is not just a crime of lust or violence," he explained. "It becomes possession. They are part of you . . . [the victim] becomes a part of you, and you [two] are forever one . . . and the grounds where you kill them or leave them become sacred to you, and you will always be drawn back to them."

Over the next five months, Bundy abducted and murdered five female college students in the Pacific Northwest: Donna Gail Manson, Susan Elaine Rancourt, Roberta Kathleen Parks, Brenda Carol Ball, and Georgann Hawkins.

Responding to this rash of disappearances, police called for a major investigation and enlisted a number of different government agencies to help look for the missing girls.

One of these agencies was the Washington State Department of Emergency Services, where Bundy worked. There, Bundy met , a twice-divorced mother of two whom he would date on and off for years as the murders continued.

Relocation To Utah And Arrest For Kidnapping

As the manhunt for the abductor continued, more witnesses produced descriptions that matched Ted Bundy and his car. Just as some of his victims' bodies were being discovered in the woods, Bundy was accepted to law school in Utah and moved to Salt Lake City.

While living there, he continued to rape and murder young women, including a hitchhiker in Idaho and four teenage girls in Utah.

Kloepfer was aware that Bundy had relocated to the area, and on learning of the Utah murders, she called the police a second time to reaffirm her suspicion that Bundy was behind the killings.

There was now a mounting pile of evidence pointing toward Ted Bundy, and when Washington investigators compiled their data, Bundy's name appeared at the top of the suspect list.

Unaware of law enforcement's growing interest in him, Bundy continued killing, journeying to Colorado from his home in Utah to murder more young women there.

Finally, in August 1975, Bundy was pulled over while driving through a Salt Lake City suburb, and police discovered masks, handcuffs, and blunt objects in the car. While this was not enough to arrest him, a police officer, realising that Bundy was also a suspect in the earlier killings, put him under surveillance.

The officers then found his Beetle, which he had since sold, where they discovered hair matching three of his victims. With this evidence, they put him in a lineup, where he was identified by one of the women whom he had attempted to abduct.

He was convicted of kidnapping and assault and sent to prison while police attempted to build a murder case against him.