By August 1973, Bundy had truly surpassed some formidable setbacks and obstacles. He had achieved much: From a disappointed and failed college-boy reject, Bundy built himself into a psychological counselor, a respected political hand, an often-invited dinner guest, a rescuer of lives, a student of law; somebody who, some said, might very well be a future state governor. And now he reconquered his first and true love, the woman he had lost five years ago. True, there were a few rough spots along the way, such as his burglaries and window peeping; and true, there was a cloud on the horizon—he was now deeply involved with two women and he would have to deal with that. Otherwise, though, Bundy appeared to be healed. Who would have thought that six months from now he would begin brutally raping and murdering women.
At the last minute Bundy switched law schools. Over the summer his friends from the Republican Party argued that it was not wise for Bundy to go to a law school in Utah if he had plans for a political career in Washington State. Bundy applied and was admitted to the school of law at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. He wrote the University of Utah, telling them that he had been in a serious car accident and could not attend classes that year. Why he told that lie is unclear, but perhaps he was embarrassed, after lobbying the university so hard for admission, to switch schools at the last minute.
Some biographies of Bundy link this change of schools with his subsequent outbreak of killing. The story goes that when Bundy arrived at the law school in Tacoma, he discovered that it was located in an anonymous office building. It was not an “Ivy League” institution as he had imagined, but a drab, third-class school, and it is theorized that the snob in Bundy revolted—he immediately began to fail in all his classes, in a collapse very similar to the one six years earlier in San Francisco. Bundy’s biographers maintain that this new intolerable failure triggered his homicidal crimes. But it is highly improbable that Bundy went through an application process to the school in Tacoma without visiting its facilities. Moreover, if he was applying late to the school, he probably would have had to go there in person to deliver his application materials, and since his family lived in Tacoma, it would have been a convenient trip. (Seattle is about a thirty-minute drive from Tacoma.) It is improbable that Bundy was surprised by anything he saw at the school when he started classes. Something else must have happened.
We know that in the last seven years Bundy had been window-peeping and trolling aimlessly at night in the residential neighborhoods near the university, seeking some sort of satisfaction out of his fantasies. Nobody knows for how long the fantasies themselves had existed; probably since childhood or early adolescence. At points, it appears that Bundy took his fantasies on “test runs,” as when he disabled women’s cars. These points probably marked cycles that came and went, but intensified with every reappearance. Bundy described them as cyclical depressions: “Not mood swings, just changes,” he said. He said he had no difficulty projecting a false cheerfulness for short periods of time while at the same time hiding a huge part of his life that nobody knew about.
Many biographers of Bundy associate his failure at Stanford in the summer of 1967 with his breakup with the girl of his dreams, Stephanie. We are not sure, however, at what point in the sequence of events Stephanie actually began to withdraw from Bundy. In fact, events might have happened the other way around—his collapse at Stanford might be associated more with his success, rather than with some failure with Stephanie. Prior to meeting Stephanie, Bundy already had notions and fantasies of what his ideal woman would be like; Stephanie seemed to fulfill those criteria. But as we all know, real-life lovers rarely match the ones in our fantasies. It is precisely after Bundy began dating Stephanie that he said he “inadvertently” began his nocturnal trolling. It was when he successfully realized his fantasy of acquiring a beautiful girlfriend that he might have realized that it was not enough. It was not what he really wanted. That was exactly when he began to prowl in the night.
Bundy claimed that violent pornography began to slowly solidify his vague fantasies and compulsions into concrete ideas and actions. Perhaps, but most likely Bundy was in a state of denial when he said that. Bundy’s violent fantasies were probably formulated much earlier, but he had the intelligence and education to be embarrassed about them—perhaps he even suppressed the early memory of them.
The pressure on Bundy was coming from three sides: the violent fantasies that he really wanted to fulfill; the attempts to realize ambitions that he felt he should have realized; and the anxiety, perhaps guilt, at the contents of his violent fantasies. A less intelligent, less thinking, or less ambitious person than Bundy might not have thought or worried much about the inappropriateness of his violent desires. Perhaps Bundy was even worried that his fantasies, if they ever took control of him, would be socially embarrassing and ruinous to his career plans—which is exactly what happened.
It was no doubt a fantasy of Bundy’s that he could get his girlfriend from six years ago to fall in love with him again, and remarkably, she did, fulfilling that fantasy. It was truly an extraordinary achievement no matter how you look at it. It is very possible that everything that Bundy had done in the last six years, he did with the purpose of regaining the love of Stephanie. The evidence is there: His failed studies in urban planning in the fall of 1967 resulted only because he was too late in applying to architectural school—Stephanie had expressed to him her admiration of architects.
Now in the fall of 1973, Bundy had reconquered his lost love. Stephanie flew to Seattle to spend time with Ted. To make sure that Liz would not stumble upon them, Ted checked Stephanie into a hotel in Seattle.
Without Liz ever finding out, Ted and Stephanie became engaged to be married, and he brought her to the Davis house for dinner and introduced her as his fiancée. Bundy borrowed their car and took Stephanie on a romantic trip into the mountains where they used to go skiing in their college days. At the end of the trip, Lisa Davis took some photographs of Ted and Stephanie with their arms around each other in front of the Davis house, and then drove Stephanie to the airport.
Almost immediately, as soon as Bundy reunited with Stephanie, his life began to fall apart, beginning with a dismal performance at law school. It is probable that when Stephanie agreed to marry him, Bundy must have realized that his fantasy in reality was meaningless—it was false. Bundy once said, “I always felt somehow lost in my life.”
Bundy must have felt that there was something else that he truly wanted to be doing other than becoming a lawyer to win the heart of a beautiful dark-haired woman. All he really wanted, deep down, was just to possess her body; he did not need her love and companionship, he realized. When he was on death row, Bundy explained that he received no pleasure from harming or causing pain to his victims. He did not torture them. What really fascinated him was the hunt for his victims and their capture and, as he said, “possessing them physically as one would possess a potted plant, a painting, or a Porsche.”
Bundy’s cyclical disappointment upon realizing his goals is typical of the cyclical psychology of serial murder. When serial killers “realize” their murderous goals by killing, they frequently find the experience of murder disappointing and need to commit another in some improved way, hoping for a better payoff to the fantasy.
Ann Rule writes that in December 1973, she saw Bundy at a Christmas party. This time he was there with his girlfriend, Liz, and he introduced her to Rule. She assumed that Bundy had gotten over Stephanie and that Liz and Ted were living together. Liz told her she was returning home to Salt Lake City for the Christmas holidays, while Ted was going to stay in Seattle to study.
As soon as Liz left to visit her parents in Utah, Stephanie arrived in Seattle to spend time with her fiancée and discuss their marriage plans. Later, Stephanie testified that Bundy had changed radically since their last time together in September. He did not buy her any Christmas presents, but showed her a very expensive chess set he bought for a friend. He was very unenthusiastic about the ex
pensive presents she had bought him. His lovemaking was very cool and mechanical. Once he left her alone for an entire day to work on a “school project.”
He told Stephanie that there was another woman and that although it was over with her, she called often and that he needed to “get loose” of her before he could devote himself to Stephanie. When Stephanie attempted to discuss their marriage plans, he dodged the issue and went into a tirade about his illegitimate birth history. On the last evening before she returned to San Francisco, they did not make love, Stephanie said. Stunned and confused, she flew home on January 2, 1974.
On January 4, an eighteen-year-old woman went to bed in her basement apartment in a big old house near the University of Washington. When she failed to appear for breakfast the next morning, her housemates assumed she was sleeping late. By midafternoon they began to worry and went downstairs to investigate. They found her door unlocked and saw her sleeping in her bed, but not responding to their calls. As they approached closer they discovered to their horror that her face and hair were matted with blood. Somebody had detached a heavy metal rod from her bed frame and fractured her skull with it. Then the intruder inserted into her a vaginal probe, a speculum, the kind that is carried by medical supply houses, and brutally wrenched her genitals apart, seriously injuring them. She remained in a coma for ten days, and when she awoke she remembered nothing of the attack. It must have occurred while she slept. She remained brain-damaged for the rest of her life.
Bundy, the former medical supply house delivery driver, is today believed to have committed this crime.
On the night of January 31, 1974, Lynda Healy, a psychology student at the University of Washington, went to bed in her basement apartment in a big house shared by several college girls. Lynda worked part-time announcing ski reports at a local radio station and needed to get up very early in the morning. One of her housemates, Barbara Little, who also had a basement apartment right next to Lynda, heard Lynda’s electric alarm clock go off as usual at 5:30 A.M. Barbara rolled over and went back to sleep.
About half an hour later, Barbara’s own alarm went off. As she got up, Barbara was surprised to hear Lynda’s alarm still buzzing incessantly next door. She went into Lynda’s room and turned on the light. Everything seemed to be in order, although Barbara was surprised to note that Lynda had made her bed before she left—usually she made it only after she got home from classes. Barbara turned Lynda’s alarm clock off. The radio station phoned, saying that Lynda had not arrived. Barbara assured the station that Lynda had left already and would be there shortly.
As her roommates woke up that morning, each noticed something strange. Lynda’s bike, which she used for transportation to the university, was still in the basement. They also found, to their surprise, that the side door leading to the basement was unlocked—this was unusual. They then hurried off to the university and spent the day going to their different classes, each assuming that one of the others saw Lynda during the day. When that evening they got home and found that Lynda’s family had arrived for a supper that she had planned, and that Lynda still had not appeared, they called the police.
The police began to carefully search Lynda’s room. When they pulled the bedspread back they discovered Lynda’s pillow soaked in blood and missing its case. Her horrified roommates told the police that the bed had been made differently from the way Lynda did it—she pulled the sheet over the pillow, whereas now the sheet was tucked under. In the back of her closet they found Lynda’s nightgown, the neck and shoulder area caked with blood. The clothing she had worn the night before—a pair of jeans, a blouse, and boots—were missing, as was her knapsack. The police surmised that somebody had entered the house, knocked Lynda unconscious, dressed her, made her bed, and carried her away. Not a single clue was left behind by her abductor—not one fingerprint, strand of hair, or witness sighting. Nothing.
Bundy was connected to Healy. Bundy’s cousin was a friend of Healy’s and Bundy was in three of Healy’s psychology classes at the University of Washington—but so were four hundred other students.
Back in San Francisco, Stephanie was beside herself with confusion and anger. It was now mid-February, nearly six weeks since she had last seen Ted, and he hadn’t phoned or written once. Finally she telephoned Ted in Seattle and when he answered the phone she berated him for not calling her. Bundy sounded drunk and dazed, she said. He didn’t say anything except, “Well, far out, you know.” And then he hung up on Stephanie. They would never speak to each other again.
On March 12, 1974, in Olympia, near the same place where Kathy Devine had vanished back in November, nineteen-year-old Donna Gail Manson disappeared. She lived on the campus of Evergreen State College, and around 7:00 P.M. she left her dormitory to attend a jazz concert being held on the campus. She never arrived. There were no witnesses, and no clues, and her body was never found.
On April 17, Susan Rancourt, who lived in a dormitory on the campus of Central Washington State College at Ellesburg, was planning to see a German film with some friends. She had a meeting with her instructors first, and told her friends she would meet them at the movie. Before leaving for the meeting, she loaded up a washing machine in one of the dorm’s laundry rooms. She planned to put the clothes in the dryer upon her return from the movie. After the meeting was over, she left in the direction toward the building where the film was being screened, carrying a binder full of papers. She never arrived at the movie, and her washing was found the next day in the laundry room, still wet. Police attempted to retrace her movements. Rancourt was a student of karate and would have fought back at any attempt to kidnap her. Police surmised that her papers would have been found scattered somewhere. The police found no traces of her movements.
For the next few days, police took reports of every strange or suspicious incident that students at the college could remember. There were many such reports, and among them were two reports of a young, handsome, neatly dressed man, with his left arm set in a cast and driving a bronze-colored Volkswagen bug. Twice he approached different female students in front of the college library, asking them to help him carry his books to his car. The first woman reported that as she approached his Volkswagen, she noticed that the front passenger seat was missing. For some reason that she could not explain, she felt suddenly afraid, and she placed the books on the hood of the car and hurried off feeling embarrassed by her “irrational” anxiety. It saved her life.
The other woman said that after she carried the books to the car, the man told her he had problems starting the vehicle. Would she mind getting behind the wheel and turning the ignition while he fiddled with the engine in the back of the Volkswagen? Again, something caused her to feel uneasy about getting into the man’s car, and she left, saying she was in a hurry and could not help him more.
These reports were among many, none of which really at the time offered any significant clue or meaning to Rancourt’s disappearance. They were filed away.
Ted made no mention to Liz of his engagement to Stephanie. Nor did he tell Liz that he was failing miserably in his classes and that he had already reapplied to the law school at the University of Utah, without informing them that he was attending school in Tacoma. Liz, however, could not help but notice how his lovemaking had changed. Ted now wanted to tie her up spread-eagled to the bed with her pantyhose. When she consented to this kinky sex play, she noticed that he went directly to the drawer where she kept her hose without asking her where to find it. The third time she agreed to be tied up, Bundy began choking her and she refused to be tied again. Then Ted started to demand anal sex; after trying it several times and not liking it, she refused that as well. Bundy sulked. Liz, meanwhile, was puzzled by this sudden shift in his sexuality—it was so much unlike him.
The next attack happened in Corvallis, Oregon, on May 6, about two hundred miles south of Seattle, at Oregon State University. Kathy Parks, age twenty-two, agreed to meet some friends for a late-night coffee at the Student Union Building, but sh
e never arrived. Kathy stepped out of her campus dormitory at about 11:00 P.M. and vanished along the way. Nobody saw anything.
On June 1, Brenda Ball, twenty-two years old, who had graduated from Highline Community College two weeks earlier, vanished. She was an independent young woman who could take care of herself. That night she was drinking at the Flame Tavern, a seedy and rough bar just outside Seattle. At 2:00 A.M. when the bar closed, Brenda was in the parking lot trying to get a ride home. One of the musicians from the band talked to her briefly but was going in a different direction. That was the last time she was seen. Because Brenda was such a free spirit, nobody became worried when she was missing. It took seventeen days before her roommate was concerned enough to report her absence to the police. There were no clues or witnesses—just like the other women, Brenda vanished as into thin air.
Liz, meanwhile, was seeing Ted’s behavior get stranger and stranger. One night she woke up to find Ted secretly inspecting her body under the sheets with a flashlight—hauntingly similar to the recollections of Ted’s aunt when he was a small boy and she awoke to discover him placing knives under her sheets as she slept.
Although they kept separate apartments, Liz and Ted almost lived together. His things were often at her house, and they often drove each other’s cars. One day when looking for something in the closet, Liz stumbled upon a box of powder used to make medical casts, which Bundy had obviously stolen years ago when he was a driver for the medical equipment house. She also found a pair of crutches. On another day at Ted’s apartment, she accidentally came across a bag of women’s underwear. She was embarrassed by her find, and did not say anything to Ted. On yet another occasion, she discovered a heavy wrench carefully taped under the seat of Bundy’s Volkswagen.
Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters Page 5
