Ted and Ann: The Mystery of A Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy

by Rebecca Morris

  Zatkovich and Strand's white, 1958 Chevy four-door had an Oregon license plate, so they wouldn’t look quite so much like cops. They didn’t fool many people. Zatkovich's son, Dick, called them “Dick Tracy One and Dick Tracy Two.” They didn’t need to work at the “good cop, bad cop” routine. It came to them naturally. When questioning a suspect, Zatkovich would be the tough guy, and then leave the room in disgust; Strand would stay and befriend the suspect. But by the 1960s, the men missed the old days, when, as Zatkovich lamented, they “could kick a juvenile in the ass and send him home” with no parental or legal intervention.

  Bev shared with the detectives the story that she would tell hundreds of times—how Ann brought Mary to their room, how Bev had told Ann to “take her back up, dear.” The detectives noted that Bev sometimes deviated about what time she had last seen the girls.

  What Beverly didn’t say—to the police, Don, or anyone—was that she had little hope. “When I first saw that window open, I knew I would never see her again. I knew I would never know what happened,” she remembered years later. “It came to me, just like that. It was a strong feeling. When they were searching, I thought, ‘What's the point?’ I knew she was gone, and we would never see her again.” Frightened and not daring to admit her feelings, Bev mostly sat and listened. Every time the phone rang she jumped, certain that Ann's body had been found.

  The police tried speaking with Mary, who was the last to see Ann, but the three-year-old didn’t remember if she had seen someone come upstairs during the night and take Ann away. They may have tried hypnosis, but Mary was too young to articulate if she had seen anything.

  Then the police sat down with the other children. Julie, who was seven, told them of a person who had talked to her the day before. She didn’t know if it was a man or woman because the person was dressed oddly, in a dark heavy coat, much too hot for a warm summer day. Bev remembered her children describing someone “dressed strangely in woman's [sic] clothes with a veil, someone Julie said looked just like a boy.”

  “Ann and I were playing on the porch with our Barbies,” Julie said. “Mom was there, but when the phone rang, she went inside to answer it. The person in the coat came over and said, ‘What house do you live in?’ I said, ‘This one.’ They ran down the street, got in a waiting car, and drove off. I always felt a little guilty. I always thought I was the one who was supposed to be kidnapped.”

  The police took photographs inside and outside. They photographed Ann's unmade bed, with its bedspread of pink and turquoise flowers; Julie's was an exact twin. A stuffed monkey leaned against the wall, and a reading lamp balanced on Ann's headboard. Books were scattered on the floor. Ann excelled in all subjects at school, but especially art and reading. The police asked to borrow Tammy, the doll that eerily looked like Ann, with a matching nightgown. They needed Ann's fingerprints, and they wanted a good look at the fabric. Eventually police returned the doll to Bev. The powder used to lift fingerprints never disappeared.

  Bev told the police that she and Don had heard Barney, their cocker spaniel, bark during the night, but they assumed he was alarmed by the sound of the wind and rain. The parents also told the police they thought they had heard someone in their yard a few nights before. Three neighbors, in fact, told police they had seen a Peeping Tom at their windows, but they couldn’t describe the person.

  There was little evidence. Police found a red thread snagged on the brick under the window. The bench that the intruder had moved under the window was taken to police headquarters for examination; police thought it had a footprint on it, maybe from a tennis shoe, about the size of a teenager's or a small man's foot. A thorough search of the yard also turned up a shoe print in the flower bed by the basement door, according to the police report, “as though someone had peered or tried to gain access to the basement.” They made a mold of it. There were a few blades of grass on the living room floor. But what was a clue, and what was everyday life, tracked into the house by four rambunctious children, two adults, and a dog?

  The police were disappointed. There was no sign of a struggle, nothing left behind. Did that mean that Ann knew whoever had entered the house? Had she encountered the man—from the beginning, the kidnapper was always assumed to have been a man—in the living room, before or after she had taken Mary to her parents’ room? Was it someone who knew the layout of the house, and went directly to Ann's room? Or did she see someone she knew lean through the window and ask her to open the front door, and when she did, she was grabbed by him? Did she surprise a burglar? Why didn’t she make any noise? Or did she? The police asked for a recent photograph of Ann, and Bev gave them the one of Ann wearing her lei.

  At first, Bev and Don tried to shield their children from the news that Ann was missing. But Julie knew. “We either were told, or we knew it. I remember my mom pulling open all the kitchen drawers and looking under the sink. I thought she was looking for Ann. Of course, she was hysterical.”

  The two detectives tried to get a feeling about the parents. Don admitted he was sometimes firm with the children (he was firm with Bev, too) but said he hadn’t spanked Ann in two years. He said he could not believe that Ann would be outside in the storm in a nightgown unless it was against her wishes. He described how Ann confided in Bev, how close mother and daughter were. Bev told the detectives that their lives centered on the children, that “they do not spend time gadding about.”

  It would have been hard for Bev to gad about. Because of Don, she didn’t drive, didn’t work, didn’t have a barbecue in the backyard or Christmas lights on the front of the house, and had to quit volunteering at the League of Women Voters. She would find an interest, and Don would say “enough.” She had thought of leaving him, but with Ann missing, that opportunity passed; she would need to focus on the other children to help them through the disappearance of their sister and to have the childhood they deserved. Until, or if, Ann came home, Bev still had three other young children.

  Don was antsy and joined a group of searchers made up of police and volunteers. Within hours there would be hundreds of National Guardsmen scouring fields, abandoned buildings, gulches, sewers, garbage cans, and Tacoma's many waterways. At the same time, police were going one square block at a time, searching every house where someone was home to let them in. They combed every garage, shed, yard, garden, shrub, and hedge, including the area known as Buckley Gulch, an area close to the railroad tracks, and Commencement Bay. And then there were the roads that led to dead ends, to sites of trysts—both wanted and unwanted—that the police called “rape stations” and “petting grounds.”

  Just after noon on Thursday, detectives Zatkovich and Strand went to see Bev's mother, Marie Leach. She lived on the top floor of 31 Broadway, one of Tacoma's grand apartment buildings dating back to 1928. Marie had spent her married life living above or behind small grocery stores, so she enjoyed life at 31 Broadway. Although it was in the Stadium district, two miles from the Burr house, Marie's apartment was a straight shot east. Ann had said on several occasions that she thought she could find her own way to her grandmother's.

  Marie and Bev weren’t close. Marie's first child, Roy Leach Jr., called Buddy, had died of scarlet fever at age 10. The couple was devastated. Roy Sr. wore a black tie every day for the rest of his life in memory of his young son. They tried for another boy, but they had Bev. They tried again, and a few years later they finally had Jerry. But neither child would fill the void created by Buddy's death. Bev thought her mother was vain and that she underestimated Bev's mind and creative talents. Bev had defied her parents in the only ways she knew. As a child, her mother wanted Bev to study tap dancing; Bev refused to be Tacoma's answer to Shirley Temple and abruptly walked out of the class one day. As a teenager, Bev smoked because she thought Ingrid Bergman looked sophisticated in her movies with a cigarette in one hand. Bev's father wanted her to work in his grocery stores; instead, by age 15 she was selling floor lamps at Sears. Management was so impressed with the teenager that they sug
gested a career at the department store. “I thought about staying, but I was going to be a famous writer,” Bev explained.

  Then there was Don. Marie didn’t think he was handsome. He hadn’t finished college like Bev, who had even taught school briefly. Marie thought Don was too blue collar; he was a civilian employee at Camp Murray, the Washington State National Guard base. In acknowledgement of his status, Don called himself “just a lunch bucket.”

  It's not that Bev celebrated when her mother died at age 95, but she enjoyed telling the story of how Marie slipped on ice cream on her kitchen floor, and lay there alone for a day until a neighbor found her. Marie never really recovered and died a short while later.

  The police noted that Ann's grandmother “did not seem excited, and seemed to think that Ann was somewhere in the neighborhood, sleeping. She says they are a very close family, go to church every Sunday together, but did say that of the four children, Ann is known to be a little irrational.” The detectives asked Marie about any bad blood in the family. She told them about the rift that had formed between Don's family and hers. Bev and Don had been married by a justice of the peace on August 6, 1951. But Bev was Catholic, and she thought if the family was more involved in parish life at St. Patrick's, it might help smooth out some rough spots in her marriage. In the spring of 1961, about the time Ann was confirmed, Don agreed to take instruction. The couple remarried, this time in the Catholic Church. Although he never formally joined the church, Don's parents were furious and talked of disowning him.

  Don and his father had also argued bitterly over the sale of the logging operation they ran in California in the early 1950s. Don's father sold the business without telling him. The men had heated arguments about it. His father gave him $26,000 as his part of the sale, and another $8,000 to buy a house. Don didn’t think the payment reflected his fair share of the business.

  By 2 p.m., nine hours after Ann went missing, the police had assembled a list of what the department called “known sex perverts, child molesters, exhibitionists, sex odd balls, and weirdos,” a list that would grow into the hundreds in just days. The detectives systematically began interviewing each one. There were dozens of reports during the day that raised the hopes of police. Some were about old incidents. A salesman had attempted to force his way into the home of Mrs. F__ about a year before, but left when she said her husband was home. There were dozens of stories about Peeping Toms, unknown cars in the neighborhood, and a teenage boy opening and closing a large, long-bladed knife as he paced the sidewalk. People called to report the odor of decaying flesh and mounds of dirt that seemed to have appeared overnight. When they dug, police found a decomposed cat or a calf that had died at birth.

  Officers R. Baldassin and J. Vejvoda were assigned to interview Ann's friends, Christine K__ and Susan E__. Both had played with Ann the day before. Susie had been at the Burrs’ for dinner, and then the girls went to Susie's home. She told police that Ann didn’t seem any different than usual. The officers wrote, “Ann didn’t say anything about running away, or any trouble she was having.” Ann was invited to stay with Susie at the girl's grandmother's house, but called later to say that “something came up,” and she couldn’t go. The police asked Susie's mother to talk to her daughter in private to determine if 15-year-old Robert Bruzas, the boy who flirted with Ann, had ever been inappropriate with the girls. Mrs. E__ spoke alone with her daughter and reported back that Robert had never taken advantage of the girls in any way.

  Christine told them about the neighborhood nudist. Christine said that Mr. D__ was very friendly with the small children in the neighborhood. They went to his yard to pick plums from his tree, and he gave them candy. She said that on occasion Mr. D__ kissed their hands and put his arm around them. He patted their buttocks, too. Christine's mother said she often had seen Mr. D__ walking in the neighborhood at about five o’clock in the morning. And she said he visited her when she was pregnant, bringing her a rose each day. On these visits Mr. D__ made comments such as “I like to see women pregnant,” and, “I think pregnant women are beautiful.” Other neighbors talked of seeing Mr. D__ nude in his yard.

  Detectives Zatkovich and Strand were frank with Bev and Don: maybe Ann hadn’t cried because she willingly left her home with someone she knew. Could it have been a neighbor? A relative? A family friend? The Burrs began to make a list of names the police should check out.

  The conversation kept coming back to Robert. They learned from Bev that Robert didn’t seem to have any friends of his own age. Bev told the detectives, “He spends time playing with kids out on his front lawn, but they are all younger. He is such a nice boy. He spent a lot of time watching Don build a patio floor in the back. And he told me that he thinks Ann is quite a girl, or his girl, or words to that effect.” Zatkovich and Strand made a note to talk to the teenager.

  Bev admitted to the police that Ann may have known children or even teenagers in the neighborhood that she wasn’t aware of. If Robert flirted with her, maybe other boys did too as they passed by on their bicycles, on their way to paper routes or Boy Scout meetings.

  Bev also mentioned Leonard A__, the piano teacher Ann had studied with for two years. Ann had a lesson every Tuesday, at 3:30 p.m. Just two days before she vanished, she had completed Book 1 of the Eric Steiner Piano Course. She was allowed to walk by herself the four blocks to Mr. A's__ house on North Puget Sound Avenue. This was just one example of how relatives thought Ann was given far too much independence. She had been walking several blocks alone since the second day of kindergarten.

  The police had no record of Mr. A__ ever being in trouble. When they went to his house he showed detectives his studio in his basement. He did admit to “disciplining” Ann a time or two. This would have puzzled Bev if she had heard his remark because Ann loved to play the piano, loved to practice, and was always prepared for her lesson. What could she have done that warranted “disciplining”?

  As afternoon became evening, the police installed a phone recording system in the Burrs’ basement. It would record all calls, including the ransom demands police assumed would come. The most famous kidnappings in Tacoma history had not been random—they had been for ransom. There was just one problem. Unlike the families of the Weyerhaeuser and Mattson boys, Bev and Don Burr didn’t have any money.

  3

  Evening, August 31

  STRANGERS—AND DON'S SIDE OF THE FAMILY— thought Bev and Don had money. They didn’t, but Bev's mother, Marie Leach, did. Nearly 50 years later, Bev would share a secret that not even her own children knew. Her father, born Roy Gleitz, had come west from St. Louis at a young age, changing his name to Leach. He first worked in a haberdashery in Seattle, but wanted to be his own boss. He moved to Tacoma and opened a small grocery store, building loyalty with his customers by keeping the store open seven days a week until 11 p.m. every night, even after he had crippling rheumatism. Bev's father pretended to look the other way when the monsignor for the Seattle archdiocese, which included Tacoma, walked out the door without paying for boxes of donuts. Every day Roy Leach wore slippers with holes, but when he died in 1956, he was worth a million dollars.

  So there was some truth to the rumor that Bev and Don had access to money. If they needed to, they could offer a ransom, but only with Marie's help.

  There was a Donald Burr in Tacoma who presumably had more money than Bev and Don, and he also had a nine-year-old daughter. Could she have been the intended kidnap victim? Donald F. Burr was an architect and lived in nearby Lakewood. Detectives Smith and Seymour contacted him just hours after Ann disappeared and met him at his office on Mt. Tacoma Drive SW. This Don Burr told the police the complicated story of the previous 10 years of his life. Originally from South Dakota, he had served in the Army in Europe during the war. In Austria he met a girl, Lepoldianna, nicknamed Poldi. They married, and he brought Poldi to America in 1947. Two years later, the Army recalled him and sent him to Korea. He was injured and spent a year at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, the
same hospital where Johnnie Bundy, stepfather to a young boy named Teddy, was working as a cook. In May 1952, less than seven months before Ann Burr was born, Donald and Poldi's daughter, Debra Sue, was born. When the girl was only six weeks old, Poldi insisted on returning alone to Austria for a vacation.

  Young Debra Sue was taken to South Dakota to stay with her paternal grandparents. Poldi returned after three months. Her husband learned that she had met an older man on her way to Europe. Poldi lasted a week back in Tacoma, then fled to Chicago where her new lover, Emile Holliner, worked at the Blackstone Hotel, which was a fixture in local and national politics, best-known as the source of the phrase “smoke-filled room.”

  Donald and Poldi sued each other for divorce, and he won custody of Debra Sue. Poldi never again tried for custody, and she had visited her daughter only two or three times since her birth. Donald F. Burr eventually married a widow, adopted her two children, retrieved Debra from South Dakota, and fathered two more children. There was lingering animosity because Poldi would not give the new Mrs. Burr permission to adopt Debra.

  Debra did not know that the woman with the odd accent who sent her a $25 savings bond every year on her birthday was her mother. Donald told the detectives he planned to wait until Debra was older to tell her how her mother had deserted them.

  The detectives were, of course, curious: would Poldi attempt to get Debra back by staging a kidnapping? Had she hired someone who had bungled things and taken the wrong girl, the daughter of the other Don Burr? A mother who had walked away from her daughter and taken the trouble to see her only a couple of times in nine years didn’t sound like a woman desperate enough to plot a kidnapping. Even her old friends in Tacoma laughed at the idea. They said Poldi didn’t care enough about her daughter to try to kidnap her. Donald told police he lived in an expensive home in the Tacoma suburb of Lakewood, and it could give the impression to a kidnapper that he had money. He was very concerned that his daughter might have been the intended victim. FBI agents in Chicago agreed to check out Poldi and Emile Holliner, who were now suspects in the disappearance of Ann Burr.