313 P1The Suspect. P1------------ P5It was unbelievable that Bundy,the All-American boy could be a sadistic sex killer. Either a series of incredible co- incidences had occurred, as his friends believed, or he had an amazing ability to live a lie.P5 P7Three days after Bundy's arrest in Salt Lake City on 16 August 1975, a group of detectives sat down to their usual Tuesday morning meeting in the temple of Justice. The de- tectives investigating the murder of police chief's daughter Melissa Smith reported no progress, as did those investigat- ing the disappearance of Debbie Kent from the school play. Detective Daryl Ondrak then described the arrest of Bundy the previous Saturday, and displayed the stocking mask and the iron bar. Bundy had now been freed on his own recogniz- ances, but all agreed that it looked like the suspect had been on his way to a burglary. Homicide Detective Jerry Thompson frowned when he heard the name Bundy - it seemed familiar. Back in his office, he opened the suspects drawer, and there found what he was looking for - a thin file marked Bundy. A Seattle detective, Bob Keppel, had given him the information contained in the file. Bundy was a suspect in the "Ted Murders" of the previous year, and now he had moved to Salt Lake City. But Keppel has decided that he was clean- a hard working law student with a degree in psychology from the University of Washington simply did not seem the sex maniac type. The iron bar, the handcuffs and the stocking mask seemed to cast a doubt on this diagnosis. At the same time, Thompson remembered something else - the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch. She had also been handcuffed and threatened with an iron bar, and her abductor, like Bundy, drove a VW. When Bundy was re-arrested five days later, he showed no sign of concern. He knew enough about the law to realize that the burgling-tool charge was only a misdemeanour that could not be made to stick. Under questioning, he showed the coolness and casual self- confidence that would become familiar to the detectives try- ing to prove him guilty of murder. The stocking mask he wore when skiing to keep his face warm; he had found the hand- cuffs in a garbage can; the ice pick and the iron bar were part of his car tool-kit. As to searching his apartment, he gave his permission freely. Naturally, the police found nothing suspicious-Bundy had had almost a week to clear up. But when Thompson noticed a bunch of holiday brochures about Colorado,he recalled that several girls had vanished there during the past year. Asked if he had ever been in Colorado, Bundy flatly denied it.The broch- ures and a map had been left in his flat by a friend. In a drawer, Thompson noticed a bunch of credit card receipts, and slipped one into his pocket. Back in his office, Thomp- son talked to the Colorado police about the disappearances there. The map, he told them, looked new and unused. But one of the ski brochures had a cross next to a hotel called The Wildwood inn In Snowmass. There was an exclamation at the other end of the line. " A girl called Caryn Campbell disappeared from there in January and her body was found a month later. She had been raped and battered to death. Suddenly, it was all looking far more promising. And if Carol DaRonch identified Bundy as her ab- ductor, they would have a case. But Thompson met an unexpec- ted set-back. Carol had been so shattered by her experience that her memory was poor. Looking through a pile of mug shots, she agreed that the one of Bundy looked a little like her abductor, but that was as far as she would go. When they took her to see Bundy's VW, it was to discover that it had been recently resprayed. On 1 October, Thompson's luck began to improve. Bundy was taken to The Hall of Justice for a line-up. The woman who were there to identify the abductor were Carol DaRonch, Jean Graham and a student from Viewmont high school. Although Bundy had shaved off his moustache,had his hair cut short, and changed the parting to the other side, all three identified him. Later that day, Judge Cowans signed a complaint charging Bundy with kidnap and attempted homicide. Within 24 hours, the name of Ted Bundy was known to headline writers across the United States. By now, the bones of four more Seattle victims-Lynda Healy, Susan Rancourt,Kathy Parks and Brenda Ball- had been discovered on the Taylor mountain, 20 miles from Seattle. The implications were horrible, their abductor could only have had one purpose in taking them there - to be able to take as much time as he liked with the sexual assaults, before strangling or battering them to death.The implications of the double-disappearance from Lake Sammamish Park were just as bad. A man who abducts and rapes a girl would hardly be expected to abduct another girl a few hours later. Ted Bundy wanted to experience the pleasure of violating two girls at the sme time, posibly in front of one another. Clearly, he was more than an ordinary sex killer, he was an almost inhuman monster. This is why the news that Bundy had been charged was worthy of nationwide headlines. But within eight weeks, he was out on bail-his mother had borrowed the money. She, of course, had no doubt of his innocence. Nor had hisstudent friends in Salt Lake City - they were convin- ced that the police were out to frame him.Two ex-girlfriends were less certain. For the past five years, he had been more or less engaged to a girl in Seattle, but she started to ex- perience boubts when she saw the artist's impressions of "Ted" in the newspapers. When she found plaster of Paris in his drawer, she finally telephoned the police to relay her suspicions. A more recent girlfriend described how Ted liked to tie her up with nylon stockings before having sex. Such behaviour would not prove that Ted was a killer. What did look more promising was the fact that Bundy's blood group was the same as that of the blood found on Carol Da- Ronch after her struggle with her abductor. Also strands of hair found in his car were virtually identical with those of Carol DaRonch and Melissa Smith. A decade later, after the discovery of genetic fingerprinting, the blood alone would have established Bundy's guilt or innocence. but in 1975, neither the blood or hair evidence was conclusive, Neither was the fact that the credit card receipts proved that Bundy had been in Colorado around the dates when the girls had disappeared. When Bundy finally walked into the court in Salt Lake City on 23 Febuary 1976, another thing became immediatly evident - most of the spectators assumed the police had made a mistake. This decent-looking, clean- cut, obviously articulate man could not possibly be the ser- ial killer, he looked more like a young executive. In spite of Carol DaRonch's identification, the case against Bundy looked thin and circumstantial. This was his main line of defence -he had been the victim of a series of incredible coincidences.Bundy's case continued to look convincing until he stepped into the witness box on the fourth day. It was not that there was anything wrong with the way he presented himself - it was just that he seemed too plausible,too clev- er. Explaining why he had driven away from the police car,he told the court that he had been smoking marijuana, and had thrown it out of the car as he drove. He seemed a little to smart and confident to be innocent. In his closing arguments, the prosecutor admitted that the evi- dence was circumstantial, but went he went on to point out the odds against such a body of evidence leading to the wrong person, everyone in court recognized the power of his argument. Even so, the prosecutor felt that the verdict was likely to go against him.It was not until the following Mon- day, when Judge Stewart Hanson declared, "I find Theodore Robert Bundy guilty of aggravated kidnapping," that he knew he had won.Bundy sobbed and pleaded not to be sent to prison but the judge was unmoved, and sentenced him to between one and 15 years in prison. One thing had become obvious, if Bundy was the man who ha abducted Carol DaRonch, then he was also the man who had kidnapped Debbie Kent from Viewmont high school. This in turn meant that he was a leading suspect in the other Salt Lake City abductions. And since his credit card receipts re- vealed that he had been in Colorado several times in 1975 - when five young woman had vanished - it began to seem highly likely that Ted Bundy was a mass sex-murderer. In January 1977, Bundy was moved to prison in Aspen, Colorado. The Col- orado authorities were beginning to build up a convincing case that he had been responsible for the abduction of Caryn Campbell. A man answering Bundy's description had been seen in the hotel on the evening of her disappearance. Also a third lot of hair found in Bundy's VW matched Caryn Campbell's , and the crowbar found in his car matched the depression found in Caryn's skull. A credit card receipt showed that he had been in the area when a girl named Julie Cunningham had vanished, and a petrol station attendant had identified him. Altoget- her, the new case against Bundy looked rather more convin- cing than the previous one in Salt Lake City. In the Colorado jail,Bundy was a popular prisoner. His charm and intelligence and sence of humour convinced many of his fellow prisoners of his innocence. He had decided to act as his own defence counsel, and this led to the decision to al- low him in court without manacles, District Attorney Frank Tucker described him as "the most cocky person i have ever faced." But Bundy was certainly becoming increasingly bit- ter, aggressive and dispirited as the time of his trial app- roached. Bundy appeared in court in Aspen on 7 June 1977. He listened to the public defender arguing against the death penalty. During the lunch hour, he strolled into the library on the second floor. Minutes later, a woman saw a man land on the grss verge below the window and limp off down the street. She asked a policeman, "is it normal for people to jump out of windows around here?" Cursing, the officer rush- ed up to the library, Bundy was no longer there. He was, in fact, already in a nearby river gorge, stripping down to his shirt and shorts to make himself look like a hiker. Then with his cloths stuffed into his sweater, he strolled off along the road to Aspen Mountain. Futher up the Mountain, he found refuge in an unoccupied cabin, where he hid for two days. But when he set out again, Bundy somehow managed to retrace his steps and wander in a circle. After stealing a Cadillac, he was spotted by police, and arrested only blocks from where he escaped eight days earlier. For the next six months, legal arguments dragged on. The prose- cution wanted to produce evidence about other girls who had vanished in Utah. şundy fought back, using endless delaying tactics. At 7 a.m., on 31 December 1977, a guard in Garfield County Jail left the breakfast tray outside Bundy's cell and saw a figure asleep in the bunk. At lunch time the tray was still there. The figure had been a pile of books and pillows. A hole in the ceiling showed how, with the aid of a hacksaw blade, Bundy had made his second escape. By the time the alarm was raised, Bundy was in Chicago.P7 P1Misdemeanour American.P1 P7A crime which amounts to a felony has always been more ser- ious than one classed as a misdemeanour. Such offences as murder and rape fall into the class of felonies. Misdemean- ours are lesser offences, such as small thefts and minor assaults. In England, prior to the Criminal Law Act of 1967, conviction for felony carried a very severe sentence - often the death penalty.However,this Act abolished the distinction between felony and misdemeanour in England. In America, though, the distinction remains, and conviction for a felony carries a sentence of imprisonment in a State prison, a not- oriously harsh and unpleasant experience. Conviction for misdemeanour, though, gives a smaller sentence, in an open prison. Bundy's lack of concern about being stopped was well founded. To be caught in possession of tools for a potential burglary is simply a very minor misdemeanour, carrying a normal punishment. It is also a crime which could not be linked to Bundy's felonies of murder.P7 P1Key Dates Aug 75 - Dec 77. P716.8.75 Bundy released. 21.8.75 Bundy arrested. 1.10.75 Identification line-up. 20.11.75 Bundy released on bail. 23.11.76 Trial begins in Salt Lake City. 27.12.76 Bundy found guilty of aggravated kidnapping. 7.6.77 Bundy escapes from court library, Aspen. 13.6.77 Bundy recaptured. 31.12.77 Bundy escapes from Garfield County Jail, Colorado.P7 P1Bundy's girlfriend.P1 P7After Bundy's arrest in Salt Lake City, detectives went to see his girlfriend Meg Anders. She had contacted the ploice afer the Lake Sammamish killings to report her suspicion that Bundy might be Ted. Now she gave her reasons. She had found crutches in his room and plaster of paris in his drawer. Also, Meg had noticed several articles of woman's clothing stored in his bedroom. And he often went out in the middle of the night,he was never with her on the nights when woman disappered. In addition, Bundy had bought a book called The Joy of sex, and insisted on trying sodomy and bondage. She refused to permit any more bondage after an accasion when Bundy half- stangled her while she was tied up. She sometimes woke up at night to find him looking at her body under the bedclothes. But what worried her most was that after Bundy had moved to Utah, a friend from salt Lake City had told her that a sim- ilar series of cases had started there. In the spring of 1973, Ted was appointed Assistant Chairman of the washington State Republican Central Committee. It upset Meg that with such a great job, Ted still continued to steal. One day in a hardware store, he began gathering up tools and putting them in a tool chest. She said, "You're not going to steal those, are you?" "of course not,"he said. But several days later Meg saw the tool chest in his car.P7 P1Credit Card Clue. P7The evidence that first pinned down Ted Bundy as a multiple sex killer was a series of credit card receipts. Bundy had told Salt Lake City detectives that he had never in Colorado But the credit card receipt Jerry Thompson took from Bundy's room was for petrol bought in Glenwood springs, Colorado, on 12 January 1975 - only a few miles from Snowmass village, where Caryn Campbell had disappeared on the same day. On 15 March, Bundy had bought petrol in Golden, Colorado, close to Vail, where 26-year-old Julie Cunningham vanished the same day. The attendant remembered the battered VW. On 16 April, Bundy bought petrol in Grand Junction, Colorado, the same day that 25 year-old Denise Oliverson disappeared in Grand Junction. The station manager identified a photograph of Bundy. With such damming evidence, the Colorado police con- fident of a conviction. But Bundy cheated them of this sat- isfaction by escaping.P7 P1Following a Hunch.P1 P7Bob Keppel, the Seattle detective spent five years on the Bundt case. He started investigating the Lake Sammamish dis- appearances in July 1974, it was Keppel who first began to piece together a picture of the unknown Ted. When Bundy was arrested in Salt Lake City in August 1975, he had a strong "hunch" that htis was the "ted" he was looking for. One of the people he interviewed was Bundy's cousin Alan Scott, who told him that he and bundy had hiked in the Colorado area, near North Bend. that was Taylor mountain, where four skele- tons had been found. Scott was unwilling to show Keppel where they had hiked, but a subpoena finally left him no choice. Scott's information revealed that Bundy was thoroug- hly familar with the area. It was to Bob keppel that Bundy finally broke silence before his execution and admitted that he was the killer. Bundy told Keppel where to look for the undiscovered bodies of some of his victims.He also said that there were three other unknown victims. The detective had waited 14 years for Bundy's admission. "He is totally consumed with murder all the time," Keppel said.P7 P1"Ted is the most cocky person i have ever faced. He tells his Lawyer what to do" (Frank Tucker on Bundy).P1 P1BP1y P3BP3uP3lP3lP3yP3BP3eP3eP3fP1/P3NP3FP3AP1.