The Stranger Beside Me (25 page)

Melissa Smith vanished on October 18th. On November I 8th, Carol DaRonch was abducted at 7:30, and Debby Kent I vanished forever at 10:3 0. I

Recalling July, 1974, Meg remembered that Ted had gone I to Lake Sammamish State Park on July 7th-the week before I Denise and Janice disappeared. "He told me he was invited I \o a viator skïmg party. When he came over later, he said he | hadn't had a very good time. " j In fact, there had been no party, although the King County detectives learned later that two couples who knew Ted from Republican Party functions had been at Lake Sammamish water-skiing, and they'd seen Ted walking along the beach alone. "We were surprised to see him there because he was supposed to be at a political meeting in Tacoma that weekend." Asked what he was doing, Ted had responded "Just walking around." They had invited him to join them skiing, but he'd demurred because he had no shorts with him. Ted had had a windbreaker slung around his shoulders. They had seen no cast.

On the next Sunday, the 14th, Meg, of course, had seen Ted only early in the morning and then again sometime after six when he came to her home to exchange the ski rack and to take her out for hamburgers.

"My mother always keeps a diary," Meg said. "My folks came up to visit me on May 23, 1974. On Memorial Day, the 27th, Ted went with us for a picnic on Dungeness Spit."

"What about May 31st?" Kathy McChesney asked. That was the night Brenda Ball had vanished from the Flame Tavern.

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'That was the night before my daughter was to be baptized. My parents were still in Seattle and Ted took us all out for pizza, and then dropped us off before nine." (Brenda had disappeared some time after 2 A.M., twelve miles south of Meg's apartment five hours later.) Liane had been baptized at 5 P.M. the next day and Ted had arrived to attend the ceremony. Afterward, he stayed at Meg's place until 11 P.M. "He was very tired, and he fell asleep on the rug that night too," she told McChesney. Meg furnished the name of a woman that Ted had dated during the summer of 1972, a woman who had caused her to break up with her lover briefly. This woman, Claire Forest, was slender, brunette, with her long straight hair parted in the middle. When she was contacted by detectives, Claire Forest remembered Ted well. Although she had never been seriously interested in him, she said, they had dated often in 1972.

"He didn't feel that he fit in with my ... my 'class.' I guess that's the only way to describe it. He wouldn't come to my parents' home because he said he just didn't fit in."

Claire recalled that she had once taken a drive with Ted, & drive over country roads in the Lake SnrnmamÎBV> rirr-^. iVV\c told me that someone, an older woman-I think he said his grandmother-lived around there, but he couldn't find the house. I finally got fed up with it and asked him what the address was, but he didn't know."

Ted, of course, had no grandmother near Lake Samma-mish. Claire Forest said that she had had intercourse with Bundy on only one occasion, and although he had always been tender and affectionate with her before, that sex act ifseff h'ad been harsh.

"We went on a picnic in April on the Humptulips River, and I had quite a lot of wine. I was dizzy, and he kept dunking my head undes. He was trying to untie the top of my bikini. He couldn't manage it, and he suddenly pulled my bikini bottom off dmd had intercourse with me. He didn't say anything, and he had his forearm pressed under my chin so hard that I couldn't breathe. I kept telling him I couldn't breathe but he didn't let up the pressure until he was finished. There was no affection at all.

"Afterward, it was like it had never happened. We drove 168

home and he talked about his family . . . everyone but his father.

"I broke up with him because of his other girlfriend. She was almost hysterical when she found me with him once."

Claire Forest was not the only woman who would recall that Ted Bundy's manner could change suddenly from one of warmth and affection to cold fury. On June 23, 1974, Ted had shown up at the home of a young woman, a woman who had known him on a platonic basis since 1973. She introduced him to a friend of hers, Lisa Temple. Ted didn't seem particularly interested in Lisa, but, later, he invited the two women and another male friend to go on a raft trip with him on June 29th. The two couples had dinner with friends in Bellevue on June 28th, spent the night, and set out the next morning for Thorpe, Washington. The man who accompanied them was later to recall that, while searching for matches, he had found a pair of panty hose in the glove box of Ted's Volkswagen. He had grinned and thought nothing of it.

The raft trip had started out with great hilarity, but, halfway down river, Ted's attitude had changed suddenly and he seemed to delight in tormenting Lisa. He insisted that she ride through the white water on an innertube tied behind the raft. Lisa had been terrified, but Ted had only stared at her coldly. The other couple were ill at ease too. Ted had put the raft into the water at Diversion Dam, a dangerous stretch where rafts were rarely launched.

They had made it, finally, through the rough water with both girls thoroughly frightened. Ted had had no money so Lisa bought dinner in North Bend for the quartet.

"He drove me home," she remembers, "and he was nice again. He said he would be back about midnight. He did come back, and we made love. That's the last time I ever saw him. I just couldn't understand the way he kept changing. One minute, he was nice, and the next he acted like he hated me."

Kathy McChesney located Beatrice Sloane, the elderly woman who'd befriended Ted when he worked at a Seattle yacht club.

"Oh, he was a schemer," the old woman recalled. "He could talk me out of anything."

Mrs. Sloane's recollections of Ted and Stephanie corresponded with what Kathy had already learned about that

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early romance. There was no question that the woman had known Ted, and known him quite well. Kathy drove her around the University District and she pointed out addresses where Ted had lived when she knew him. She recounted the things she'd loaned him: the china, silver, money. She recalled rides she'd given him when he had no car. He seemed to have been like a grandson to her, a highly manipulative grandson.

"When was the last time you saw him" McChesney asked.

"Well, I saw him twice, actually, in 1974. I saw him in the Albertson's store at Green Lake in July, and he had a broken arm then. Then I saw him on the 'Ave' about a month later and he told me he was leaving soon to go to law school in Salt Lake City."

The King County detectives contacted Stephanie Brooks, happily married now, and living in California. She recalled her two romances with Ted Bundy-their college days, and their "engagement" in 1973. She had never known about Meg Anders; she had simply come to the conclusion that Ted had courted her a second time solely to get revenge. She felt lucky to be free of him.

There seemed to be two Ted Bundys emerging. One, the perfect son, the University of Washington student who had graduated "with distinction," the fledgling lawyer and politician, and, the other, a charming schemer, a man who could manipulate women with ease, whether it be sex or money he desired, and it made no difference if the women were eighteen or sixty-five. And there was, perhaps, a third Ted Bundy, a man who turned cold and hostile toward women with very little provocation. He had juggled his concurrent engagements with Meg and Stephanie so skillfully that neither of them knew of the other's existence. Now, it seemed that he had lost them both. Stephanie was married, and Meg declared that she no longer wanted to marry Ted. She was deathly afraid of him. Yet, within a matter» of weeks, she would take him back and blame herself foi ever doubting him.

As far as women went, Ted always had a back-up. Even as he sat in the Salt Lake County Jail, unaware that Meg had talked volubly about him to detectives, he had the emotional support of Sharon Auer. Sharon seemed to have fallen in love with him. I would soon realize that it was not prudent to

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mention Sharon's name to Meg, or to speak of Meg to mention Sharon's name to Meg, or to speak of Meg to Sharon. It is interesting to note that through all the trials, through all the years of black headlines that would label Ted a monster, and worse, he would always have at least one woman entranced with him, living for the few moments she could visit him in jail, running errands, proclaiming his innocence. The women would change as time passed; apparently, the emotions he provoked in them would not.

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Ted had his detractors as he languished in jail in Salt Lake City during the fall of 1975, but he had his staunch supporters, too; one of them was Alan Scott, the cousin he'd grown up with since he'd moved to Tacoma when he was four years old, Scott, himself a teacher of disturbed youngsters, insisted that he had never detected the slightest signs of deviant behavior in Ted. He, his sister Jane, and Ted had always been close, closer than Ted had ever been with his half-brothers and

-sisters. His cousins were not Bundys, and Ted had never really felt part of the Bundy clan.

It is ironic then that Jane and Alan Scott would prove to be further links in the chain of circumstantial evidence tying Ted with the missing Washington girls. They did not do so willingly. Indeed, they believed in his innocence completely. They worked to solicit funds for Ted's defense, and many of his old friends contributed.

Dr. Patricia Lunneborg of the psychology department at the University of Washington stated flatly that Ted Bundy could not possibly be a killer, and said that there was absolutely no reason to believe that he had ever known Lynda Ann Healy, despite the fact that they had both taken abnormal psychology (Psych. 499) in the winter and spring quarters of 1972. "There are hundreds of students, in many different sections of 499," she said scornfully. "There's no way to prove they were in the same sections."

Lunneborg said she intended to do everything she could to support Bundy against the ridiculous charges and innuendos

about him.

But there was another link between Bundy and Lynda Ann Healy, and that link was through his cousin Jane. When Lynda had lived in McMahon Hall, her roommate was the woman who would later be Jane Scott's roommate. Detective

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Bob Keppel located Jane on a fishing boat in Alaska and interviewed her in a phone call to Dutch Harbor.

Jane was not a willing witness; she too said her cousin had been normal, kind, not the kind of boy or man who would kill. She had seen him, she said, three or four times during the first half of 1974. Jane had met Lynda Healy; she could never recall that Ted had. Yes, there had been some parties over the years but she didn't know for sure Ted had ever attended the same parties that Lynda had.

"Did you ever speak of Lynda's disappearance to Ted?" Keppel asked.

"Yes," she said reluctantly. "But I can't remember anything specific. We just talked about what a terrible thing it was." Alan Scott was even less cooperative, an understandable position. Alan had lived at Freda Rogers's home from September 1971 to February 1972. He and Ted had remained in close contact, and Alan had talked to Ted within days of the disappearances of Roberta Parks, Brenda Ball, Georgeann Hawkins, Denise Naslund, and Janice Ott. "He was relaxed, happy, excited about going to law school in Utah, and looking forward to marrying Meg."

Scott didn't add that a man who had abducted and killed young women couldn't have acted so calm, but that was his implication. Scott had gone sailing with his cousin on Lake Washington, and they often hiked together.

"Where?" Keppel asked.

"In the Carbonado area. And off Highway 18 near North Bend." Taylor Mountain, the resting place of four of the Washington victims'

skulls, was off Highway 18 near North Bend.

Keppel said quietly, "When did you hike up there?"

"July, 1972, through the summer of 1973." Scott did not want to show the King County detectives just where they had hiked. He was reluctant to incriminate his cousin and, in the end, it would take the threat of a subpoena to make him lead them over the trails that had become familiar to Bundy.

On November 26, 1975, a subpoena was served on Alan Scott and he accompanied Bob Keppel to the area where he had hiked with Ted. They drove toward Taylor Mountain, and Scott pointed out rough fields and woods along the Fall City-Duvall Road, the Issaquah-Hobart Road. "Ted knew

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the roads around here, and we drove around in my car, looking at old farms and barns. There was one place with a great footbridge^ along the Fall City-Preston Road. That's the only tiine we really got out and hiked." He pointed out the road, three-quarters of a mile north of Preston. "We hiked about two hours up the hillside." The area was only a few miles from Taylor Mountain. Apparently, the region between Issaquah and North Bend had been a favorite haunt of Ted's. He had driven Meg there, and Claire Forest, mentioned it to his elderly woman friend, and taken his cousin there. He had gone to Lake Sammamish State Park, alone, only a week before July 14th. Was it merely coincidence or was it meaningful to the investigation?

Contrary to published reports, there were some eye-witness identifications of Ted Bundy. One witness was "contaminated," however, by the zeal of a newswoman. When Ted was arrested in the DaRonch kidnapping case, the television reporter rushed to the home of one of the women who had been approached by the stranger at Lake Sammamish on July

14th. The anchorwoman held out a photo of Ted Bundy, and asked, "Is this the man who asked you to help him?" The woman could not identify him; the man in the picture shown to her looked older than the handsome, tanned man she had seen. When King County detectives later showed her a mug lay-down of eight pictures-including one of Ted Bundyshe admitted that it was too late; she'd already been shown a picture and, now, she was confused. It was a major blow to the investigation. The tearing hurry of the news media to show Ted to the public continued to get in the way of the probe. Two other women who had seen the "Ted" at the park recognized him at once-but they recognized him from the pictures they saw in the paper and on television. They were convinced that Ted Bundy and the other Ted were one and the same-but any defense lawyer would contend that they had been subconsciously swayed by glimpsing Ted's picture in the media.