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

by Rebecca Morris

  “Frank said she was defying me again, acting like a real smartie. He thought I knew how to handle an eighteen-year-old. After all, he said, I had been a schoolteacher, spent lots of money to learn those things. He claimed he didn’t have nearly the trouble with her I did.

  Mary and I walked toward the car. Maple trees were budding in the front yard, [the] warm sunshine was comforting. If Mary had a vitamin deficiency affecting her nerves, Dr. Kenney could remedy the situation quickly.”

  In the story, the psychiatrist admits Mary to a hospital and orders the family not to have any contact with her. “My God, she's got him fooled, too,” Frank says of the compassion the doctor shows to Mary.

  But it wasn’t until after Mary—the real Mary—started a fire that burned a part of the house on North 20th Street and told Bev that the devil had told her to stop going to school, that Bev looked for help. She found it in Dr. William Conte, a psychiatrist in Tacoma who had once been director of the Department of Institutions for the state of Washington, including its maximum security prison at Walla Walla. Considered a “liberal social psychiatrist,” Conte instituted prison reforms, culminating in what the New York Times called “perhaps the strangest” prison social structure in the U.S. It was the first time guards and convicts were called “corrections officers” and “residents.” Inmates could grow beards, there were no uniforms, and guards were encouraged to “take a lifer home for dinner.” Conte resigned in June, 1971, as the experiment began to go bad. The residents had wrested too much control; gang activity increased and inmates threatened to stage sit-downs or even take hostages if they didn’t get their way. Gary Ridgway (Ted's “Riverman”) is incarcerated at Walla Walla, but the lifers don’t get to go out for dinner anymore.

  By the time Bev sought him out, Conte had returned to private practice in Tacoma. Conte diagnosed Mary as paranoid schizophrenic. Oddly, Conte didn’t tell Bev and Don directly of his diagnosis; he wrote it on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope, then handed it to Bev. In that pre-computer age, she was to take it to the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services herself, where the staff would help the family navigate Mary's care, including institutionalization. Naturally, Bev opened the envelope. In the short story, Eva does the same thing. Later, she asks the psychiatrist why he didn’t share his diagnosis with the parents. The doctor tells her, “Because none of us at the hospital knew enough about it to be encouraging or discouraging.” Dr. Conte told Bev he didn’t want Mary to have to carry a “label” of schizophrenia.

  Bev described Mary's diagnosis as the culmination of several years of “nightmare happenings.” But what followed was worse. Many times Mary was homeless. She prostituted herself, used drugs, and showed up for Julie's wedding drunk, her bridesmaid dress soiled and smelly. Bev and Don would leave family events, even Christmas with the other children and grandchildren, to bail Mary out of jail. Laura remembered feeling both relieved and guilty that Mary wasn’t at her wedding. But then Don and Bev left it early to run to Mary's rescue. Mary lost her teeth and part of an intestine, and was beaten up more than once by a boyfriend. She gave birth to a baby with severe congenital defects. She had a second child and gave both up for adoption. She married, and divorced, two fellow schizophrenics.

  Bev loved her daughter, but saw her for what she was, too. She called her a “zombie,” but in the next breath would soften and refer to her as “the poor little thing.” Mary finally found some stability when she married a man many years her senior.

  Julie resented the time and attention her parents gave to Mary's illness. Like the family members in Bev's short story, Julie wondered if her parents were enabling Mary. At the same time, Julie admired her mother's determination. “She never gave up on Mary—not for a day,” Julie said. And Julie often quoted something Bev said: “I’ve already lost one daughter; I’m not going to lose another.”

  As young children, Julie, Greg, and Mary had worried that they might be kidnapped, like their sister was. Now, they worried if they, too, might become ill.

  Bev, Julie, and Laura considered writing a book about schizophrenia. Julie discovered her mother was a superb researcher. The three each made notes of their memories, in order to tell the story of a family with a schizophrenic daughter and sister from different points of view.

  Bev wrote of difficulties surrounding Mary's birth.

  “Neighbors called to find out why I’m still without a baby. What happened? Just late, I said. She was due on Thanksgiving, her cousin near Christmas, but Mary came Dec. 19 and the cousin at Thanksgiving. Everybody at home was ready for Christmas, and when are we going to be home? Mary wouldn’t eat; finally released us Dec. 24 when her weight reached 5 pounds again. No preschools existed then but you had fun hiking with your family from the time you were about 3. But then your sister, who held you on her lap and looked at picture books with you, being the oldest and wisest in your opinion, was kidnapped from our home. You were the last person to see beloved Ann. How afraid were you from then on? How afraid were all of us with police in the basement every day, recording all messages, hoping... ”

  Julie and Laura's memories were about Mary setting the house on fire, running away from home, stealing from her sisters, and her hallucinations. Julie had never forgotten how the children were taken along to help search for their sister Ann. They apparently were taken to visit Mary in the psychiatric ward, too. Laura wrote:

  “I don’t think I should have gone there. I don’t think it was appropriate.

  I feel I was too young to comprehend... or maybe just not informed enough from my parents. Mary was absolutely psycho hitting the door to get out of her room, screaming that there was poison or something coming out of her lights. She cut off all her hair. It was totally out of control and I should not have witnessed this.”

  It was confusing for Julie. She admired her parents for not giving up on Mary, but resented some of their choices.

  “One time mom and dad stayed with my three kids while Marco and I went on vacation. Mary and her abusive husband were in jail. Mom and dad took my three young children to the jail somewhere down south to bail them out. I was scared for my kids and felt it very inappropriate to expose little children to that scene. Another time when mom and dad were babysitting... they allowed Mary and another of her bizarre husbands to come over, again a decision I resented. I did not want them at my house as they were drug addicts, dealers, thiefs [sic], etc. Somehow they broke my plastic yard furniture. Oh well. Worse, mom told me Mary had slept in my bed and that she had crabs. Disgusting.”

  Dr. Conte advised Bev and Don to not let Mary live at home, and dozens of times Bev and Don and the other kids would help Mary get settled in a new apartment. Then she would be evicted, her things stolen, and the process would start again. Julie tried to help Mary by visiting her, buying her clothes and taking her to lunch, trying desperately to understand the way Mary thought.

  “One time she couldn’t wait until her latest boyfriend was released from jail. About two days after he was released, he overdosed and died. I told her I was sorry and she said something like, ‘oh well.’ ”

  It reminded Julie of Mary's “blasé attitude” when she almost burned the house down.

  It was only at her sickest that Mary may have started to have memories or dreams of Ann. Hospitalized at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Mary wrote a little each day in a running letter that she eventually sent to her parents. It was 1976 and Ted Bundy had gotten into Mary's mind; it's unclear if Mary is writing about the on-going search in the Pacific Northwest for the handsome, mysterious, still-at-large serial killer only known as “Ted,” or if she knows Ted Bundy, a local boy, has been convicted of kidnapping in Utah. It would be years before he would be connected to the disappearance of Ann Marie Burr. Mary wrote:

  “Memories of Anne [sic] and my room flashed, slicing through my mind a dark creature with black hair, a flash light in hand, a girl, an indian beautiful standing—I remember, quick quiet motions. Ann's h
ands moving, screamed covered, mine cut off by a glance and a nod, the girl safely backing out of the picture. I fainted-shock. I was made a gifted child for life under the kidnapers fight against the devil. He must have been somekind a smart man or hypnotist, pshychologist, he knew how not to wake anyone up. I must have heard him come in because through all those flash cameras I remember one in particular talking to someone behind him glancing back, me neeling calling him a [illegible] then a blank stare at the window in which they come in, the [illegible] glanced back she must have been a wake, which at that time, I must have had that feeling by Gods love for mankind, that something would happen in that night. A truck was used for they needed to rip off a few things from our home.

  The front door was left unlocked wide open, as if in later years [illegible] kidnapping Anne would reappear, and supposingly be the create crime of the century. I want that Ted locked up—death penalty. He's insane, with so much hate inside he must have the mentality of a 3 year old. What a fool, by making me the fool, you’re crazy Ted. That's all I have to say—Everyone's becoming afraid by you—lay off for awhile, if you want me to kill you—Or do you want to live? Either way your dead! So get out of my Life Ted.”

  Mary ended the letter to her parents by mentioning the novel she was reading while locked away and receiving treatment. It was Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

  In the mid-1990s, Bev received a telephone call from a psychiatrist (not her friend Dr. William Conte). He had a patient, he said, who believed she was Ann Marie. “It was like opening up a wound,” according to Julie. Bev baked an apple pie and invited the woman over. “I took one look at her and knew it wasn’t her,” Bev said, “but she was so determined that she was Ann.” The woman remembered having a canary and a few other details. Bev and Don visited with the woman five or six times. Finally, Julie encouraged her parents to do a DNA test. “I said, ‘Mom, you’ve got to find out if it's her.’”

  It took two years, but Bev and Don eventually had themselves and the woman tested. The woman was not Ann, but Bev kept a couple of photographs of her in an album.

  In 1999, 38 years after their daughter vanished, Bev and Don Burr held a memorial mass for Ann. There were numerous articles in the Tacoma and Seattle newspapers revisiting the case and the possible Ted Bundy connection. By then, Bev was glad that she didn’t know what had happened to Ann. “I still think it was someone she knew,” she concluded. But she was glad she didn’t know the details of how Ann died. “You know, he tortured women,” she said of Ted Bundy.

  In one of the newspaper articles Don was asked why they were finally having a service. “Life's cycle is coming around,” he said, “and we think we may want to finish this and face the reality of one of our children who has left us.” Don was not well, and he and Bev thought the memorial mass was the last chance for someone to come forward with information about what happened to Ann.

  More than 200 friends and family attended. The current priest at St. Patrick's—Bev thought he looked like actor Richard Gere—led the prayers and someone played a piano piece Ann had been practicing when she disappeared. Tony Zatkovich spoke about getting to know the Burr family and trying to solve the case. As he always did, he spoke his mind. When the retired detective started to go into a little too much detail about the person he suspected of taking Ann, someone gently interrupted him and escorted him from the lectern.

  Bev and Don didn’t speak at the service, but Julie did. “You probably wanted to crawl into bed and bury your head as each day and year passed with no answer. But instead you gathered strength and provided us with a wonderful childhood,” she said.

  The Burrs planted a tree in front of St. Patrick's in Ann's memory. Ann Rule sent the family an azalea that lived for years thanks to Bev's green thumb. Bev kept a photograph of it in an album.

  13

  The Blue House

  ON AUGUST 31, 2008, 47 YEARS TO THE DAY AFTER her daughter disappeared, Beverly Burr dragged the hose connecting her to her oxygen from her living room, through the kitchen, out the backdoor, and down the steps to her patio, nearly tripping as the tubing got tangled under her feet. Her determination—which had seen her through a lonely childhood, a lonely marriage, the abduction of her first born, and the heartbreak of a schizophrenic daughter—was still evident.

  Bev was 80 years old, dying of congestive heart failure, and too ill to garden.

  But she loved being outdoors and would sit in her canopy patio swing, usually with a magazine and her huge cat, Thomas, nicknamed “Stinky Poo,” nearby. Thomas was devoted to her but had recently scratched her and drawn blood from her gaunt arms. It didn’t bother Bev. She didn’t even apply a bandage. She still went to the trouble of putting bobby pins in her hair, and she still forgot to take them out.

  Bev had not lost her acerbic sense of humor. Against her wishes, her children paid a neighbor to check on her twice a day, “in order to see if I’m dead,” she deadpanned. She left the back door unlocked for the woman, and joked that she was “taking the risk of being stabbed to death” in her home. And everywhere—on a kitchen counter, held by a magnet to the refrigerator, and on a coffee table—were notes imploring the person who found her ill or dead to not call an ambulance or rush her to a hospital. There were also notes reminding them not to forget Thomas. Earlier that summer, a visitor was present when a hospice doctor stopped by. The doctor examined her, talked with her a bit and told Bev that she had about two months to live. While his back was turned, she looked at the visitor and rolled her eyes as she often did to indicate just how seriously (or not) she took things.

  During that visit, she told the hospice doctor—who she hadn’t met before, and who had no idea who she was or what sorrows she had faced—that her heart had been through a lot. She told him that one of her daughters had been abducted and never found, and another had schizophrenia. It was a rare admission of heartache. And she repeated, as she so often had over the years, “I never cry because I’ll never quit.”

  Bev hated the blue-violet color of the house on North Proctor. In fact, she felt her children had rushed the decision to leave her home on North 28th, the house with the huge yard and the view of Commencement Bay. That house represented life after Ann. It was where she gardened for neighbors who paid her without Don knowing. Among her neighbors were Ted Strand's son and Robert Bruzas, Tony Zatkovich's favorite suspect in the disappearance of Ann. The homes of Strand and Bruzas overlooked the Burr home. Strand remembers his father visiting with Bruzas in his driveway.

  Bev's children prevailed on her to move after she broke an ankle and had “a heart episode” at Thanksgiving. Julie, Greg, and Laura found the blue house and packed her up and moved her. Among the items Bev finally gave away were the jumper and blouse she had bought Ann to wear the first day of third grade, and the doll with the blue and white nightgown that matched Ann's. Bev threw away the many lists she had kept of people who had telephoned or written the family about Ann's disappearance, including the famous and not-so-famous psychics, the dowsers, the mentally ill, and the well-intentioned. Bev made sure she would still have the same phone number at the blue house, the one she’d always had, the one Ann would know.

  The plan was that since Bev had never learned to drive, the move to the blue house would give her a neighborhood to walk to. It was close to shops in the Proctor District, including grocery stores, the used book store, and the movie theater. “She was finally free, free to live her life the way she wanted to live,” said Bonnie Taschler. But she almost immediately become ill and life at the blue house went downhill from there.

  By 2008, Bev Burr was ready to die. She didn’t want to create a fuss for her children. To the end of her life, she enjoyed reading, watching movies on DVDs (but not the foreign films one friend brought her), and Judge Judy every afternoon. She followed the news of the world's latest missing child, four-year-old Madeleine McCann, who vanished on a trip to Portugal. Bev suspected the parents of foul play.

  Life hadn’t been eas
y at times for her children and grandchildren. There had been depression, alcoholism, arrests. Julie Burr described the family she grew up in as “dysfunctional, which probably began with Ann's disappearance.” She is still fearful of the dark and of being home alone. A relative says that not only was Julie's life changed by her sister's abduction, but having another sister who is schizophrenic was “a huge burden.” A mother of three, the usual parental worries—such as a child who disappears for an instant in a store—are more acute for Julie. But if the last 50 years have left her with a fear of the dark, they have also instilled in her an empathy for others who suffer tragedies. And the baby Bev and Don adopted two years after Ann disappeared—Laura—is Julie's salvation. Bev was happy about the closeness between Julie and Laura.

  Some of Ted Bundy's boyhood friends did not fare well. There was alcoholism and drug addiction. One close childhood friend reportedly tried to kill his wife and children. Families became estranged. Some have changed their name and left Tacoma behind. Others have lived normal lives, except that Ted Bundy has remained a looming presence in their lives. A relative of Ted's says he “ruined” his mother's life. As for Louise's other children and grandchildren, Ted's sister, Linda Bussey, said: “Can you imagine what it is like for people with the name Bundy? ”