Ted and Ann - The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy (18 page)
Read Ted and Ann - The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy Online
Authors: Rebecca Morris
Some of Ted’s victims. Top row, left to right: Lynda Healy, Donna Manson, Susan Rancourt, Roberta Kathleen Parks,
Brenda Ball, Georgeann Hawkins.
World Wide Photos
Other victims. Top row, left to right: Denise Naslund, Janice Ott, Caryn Campbell, Laura Aime, Debra Kent, Melissa Smith,
World Wide Photos
Johnnie and Louise Bundy and Carol Ann Boone, in a Florida courtroom in 1979 as Ted is found guilty of the Chi Omega killings.
World Wide Photos
1987 newspaper coverage of Ted’s hypothetical confession that he killed Ann.
Standing alone in her dining room in Tacoma, Louise Bundy, mother of convicted murderer Ted Bundy, wipes away a tear as she tells her son, ‘You will always be my precious son.’ He was
Bev, on a trip, looking unusually content.
Bev and Don Burr with two of their grandchildren, 1993.
Beverly Burr, 46 years after the disappearance of her daughter. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times). Published October 21, 2007.
My Teacher Says Its Like Colege
Dear Mom and dad
I hope you can come Sunday
you have to sign in
they look through your bags
the place hasnt changed much they keep me fairly busy
food is good
got cigarrets and ten dollars today I bought a plant
we have a deck
I want my own apt. when I get out I started self acertive class
my teacher says its like colege we have essays and home work Ive been reading my day to day book tomorrow is clean up campus day no classes
I got my medication
but I need more
I still cant sleep
write back
love
Mary
My Daughter, Thirty-Three Years Old
You go for a walk.
I can’t finish the baking.
Will you return? When? How? You come back in a few hours, Sad smile, vacant eyes,
Hand me a white shell.
I tell you it’s nice.
Part of it is broken,
Like you and my heart.
Clothes too small,
different from those
we stored last time you were evicted,
especially the red dress
with gold spangles.
You smile slyly, what scene did you imagine
when you discovered
the soft chiffon
in a thrift store?
Clerks counted coins
into your hand,
shrugged shoulders,
“a weirdo here!”
We fold jeans, blouses, try to overlook
brown-edged eyelets
from cigarette burns.
Like vile garbage vapors, tobacco fumes saturate.
You’ll get a job,
find new friends.
No hospitals, you say. Daughter,
hospitals don’t want you. No one wants you.
We can only give love, keep sad storage.
The night is black.
Rolls of thunder muddle air.
Rain beats against the panes,
Stronger squalls smash bush and flower. Forceful gusts tear through trees Breaking limbs, uprooting others. Soon, rampaging winds must weary And hatred leave an evil sky.
I’m alone now, afraid.
The night is black, winds blow strong, Air is filled with thunder’s groaning. Rain beats out unbroken song
Joined by sounds of distant moaning. Forceful squalls strike furiously And smash each bush and flower. Savage winds tear through each tree Breaking limbs with monstrous power.
Night of frenzy, dismal, dreary,
Gusts rage on with ghastly cry.
When will wretched winds grow weary? When will hatred leave the sky?
Her Son, Her Son
up the stairs to get
it wasn’t a sweater
back down
dishes need washing
no, they’re put away
she strains like a caged fox
sinks heavily, rests
tries not to cry
how could he possibly be arrested an ice heart freezes
beneath her flesh
The moon is such a pretty ball And if it weren’t so high, I’d like to pull it from the sky And bounce it down the hall. But I would like the best of all To reach my arm up far
And catch a shiny falling star To pin on Barbie Doll.
Life On Death Row
TED LIKED TO appear busy, and he was never busier than he was on death row. For the nine years and six months that he was incarcerated at the Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida (also referred to by its mailing address, Raiford), he was busy corresponding with dozens of people; he was busy marrying and becoming a father; he was busy “consulting” with police about other serial killers; he was busy telling the prison he was now a Hindu (the only way he could get the prison to give feed him a vegetarian cuisine); he was busy cooperating with authors as the subject of their books; he was busy writing his memoirs; he was busy planning to escape (that time it didn’t happen); he was busy socializing with his neighbors on death row, including Ottis Elwood Toole, the killer of sixyear-old Adam Walsh; and he was busy—until it was too late—shrugging off the possibility that he would be executed. He was even busy thinking how he might serve out his prison time in his home state of Washington.
There will always be questions about exactly when Ted Bundy began killing girls and young women, and about how many murders he committed. We do know when the killings finally ended.
Since childhood, Ted could not stay away from college campuses. It began when he lived at his great-uncle’s house near the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, the campus where he, or someone, most likely disposed of Ann Marie Burr’s body. Then, living near the University of Washington in Seattle, his victims included young women he abducted from colleges in several western states. His killings continued as he attended law school in Utah. When he was near a campus he could be inconspicuous, pretend to be the successful, handsome young man others saw, aspire to the life he wanted, and of course, find women who fit his ideal image: young, pretty, with long hair parted in the middle, women of a “certain class,” as he described them.
When Ted escaped from a Colorado jail on New Year’s Eve, 1977 (his second escape from a jail in six months), his days of facing charges for burglary, aggravated kidnapping, and evading police were over. He had finally been charged with murder, for the death of 24-year-old Caryn Campbell at a Colorado inn where she was skiing with her fiancé and his children. With several hours head start on the police, Ted first went to Chicago, but soon headed to a warmer climate, Florida, and to one of its college towns, Tallahassee. The U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the death penalty, but did Ted know that Florida was the first state to reintroduce it? Some who knew Ted believe he chose Florida for more than the climate; maybe he was ready to be caught. He had to have known the state’s reputation for executions. After all, Florida’s nickname was “The Buckle of the Death Belt.”
Ted moved into a rooming house near the Florida State University. He sat in on classes and ate at the school’s cafeteria. All the while he was drinking heavily and stealing wallets, credit cards, keys, cars, license plates, and IDs. In the early morning hours of January 15, 1978, he left a bar and entered the Chi Omega sorority house on the Florida State campus. With a club, he killed two young women, Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, and wounded two others, Karen Chandler and Kathy Kleiner; then he walked down the street, entered an apartment, and attacked Cheryl Thomas, also a student. She survived. Three weeks later, he bought a knife and abducted 12-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach from outside her junior high school in Lake City, Florida. Her body wouldn’t be found for two months, but five days after Ted killed her, he was stopped by a patrol car in Pensacola. Ted was driving a stolen VW, and after a brief skirmish, he was handcuffed and jailed. The police had no idea they had just arrested one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted criminals. They wondered why the man, who seemed “strangely depressed,” kept repeating, “I wish you had killed me…I wish you had killed me.”
