The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History (17 page)

Unbeknownst to Liz, he would call in sick the next day (Thursday) and also miss work on Friday, and again, the following Monday and Tuesday. Perhaps he didn't know it at the time, but the double abduction set for Sunday was going to be a physically taxing endeavor, but one he would take a special pride in for the rest of his life. It would also be the beginning of the end of secrecy for him. The process was slow, but by degrees, the shadow which so effectively shielded him from the outside world would surely give way under the strain of a mammoth investigation. Like fog which is dispelled by the coming of day, so too, Bundy's true nature would take center stage after the gods of chance and circumstance had had their say. And it would be at that time when so many things would finally make sense to Elizabeth Kendall. But that was a nightmare so horrible, and so currently beyond her imagination, that full acceptance of the truth could only come to her in stages.

Early on Sunday morning, Bundy, never leaving anything to chance where murder was concerned, stopped by Liz's apartment to see what her plans were for the day. Liz, who was busy getting Tina and herself ready for church, said she would probably sunbathe at one of the beaches in the area. He then inquired as to which beach she planned go. This naturally caused her to believe that such interest might mean he wanted to join them later (and this is all she wanted, anyway), so she picked Carkeek Park. But later, as the park filled up with young people throwing Frisbees, drinking beer, and cuddling with their partners while stretched out on beach towels, Liz kept looking for someone who had no intention of cuddling her that sunny and hot day in July.

Late in the afternoon, as clouds formed in the sky partially obscuring the sun, Liz left Carkeek Park, disappointed that he hadn't shown up as she anticipated. Once home she took a quick shower to rid herself of the perspiration and suntan oil caking her body, and perhaps, at the same time, feeling she had washed away some of her disappointment as well. As she stepped from the shower (and before she even had a chance to dry off), her telephone began ringing. It was her no-show, hungry, and wanting to take them out to dinner. Liz jumped at the offer, and before she could completely dress herself, he was coming through the door. He clearly looked exhausted, and, as Liz Kendall would later write: "Ted flopped in a chair while I got ready to go.""

Bundy was nursing a cold, and Liz could see how much worse it had gotten since that morning. Asked what he had done with his day, he tossed out two lies. First, he cleaned the interior of his car (quite plausible, he was doing that all the time now) and he said he helped his landlords, Ernst and Frieda Rogers, with yard work. Both seemed reasonable to Liz, and both would be accepted as truth. After hamburgers (Bundy would have two large ones), he insisted they get some ice cream. He was famished, and for good reason; breakfast on that day may have been his only meal, and by the time he sat down with Liz and Tina he was ravenous. Once the ice cream was consumed, it was time for him to compartmentalize this entire day. He was tired beyond reason, and sick from the cold. The adrenalin rush of what he'd been doing all day, the multiple sexual encounters he'd had with his captives, their eventual killing, and the disposing of their remains had all taken their toll on Bundy, and it was showing. All he wanted to do now was sleep. Sleep was always beckoning to him at the end of each murder, for it was in sleep that he would refresh and awaken to a world new again, where he could, at least for a few hours, or days, or weeks, be normal Bundy again, the supreme master of compartmentalization. Once morning came, he could consider the events without guilt; after all, what's done is done, and what had occurred was now in the past. Why should it matter if the past was only a few hours ago. Once the last struggling breath had been squeezed out of his victims, they were worthy, he reasoned, to be forgotten by their communities and the world at large. Those dedicated to hunting him down, however, thought now of little else. The images of the dead coeds had been burned not just into the minds of the detectives working their respective cases, but the citizenry as a whole. From children barely old enough to reason, to the elderly who believed they'd seen everything but were shocked nevertheless at what had been visited upon them, an indelible mark had been made on each and every individual. Despite the myriads of homicides before the murders, nothing has gripped the minds of western Washington like the months of horror its residents experienced at the hands of Theodore Robert Bundy. Regrettably, it is something that will be a part of them for the rest of their lives.

As Bundy awoke on Monday, however, not everything was new. He was still feeling the effects of the previous day's exhaustion, and that stubborn cold still sapping his strength was no better either. He would again telephone work and miss two more days. Even Bundy knew this wasn't good, as his duties at the DES included working on the biannual budget, and people were depending on him. This wasn't like missing a day stocking shelves at the Safeway. By Wednesday, he'd be back at his desk, hard at work.

Bundy would also learn that the events at Lake Sammamish weren't going away either, unlike the previous investigations of the missing women of the area, cases which, heretofore, could be categorized as strange disappearances only, with no evidence of an abductor. This time the case would grow legs; small legs, to be sure, but legs nevertheless. Two women had vanished from the same park on the same day, and both were seen leaving the area with a man of the same description. Not only that, but he had identified himself as "Ted," not just to those who were now missing, but also to several others who refused to accompany him. Indeed, within days, investigators would have a solid description of the suspect's car, a beige, tan, or light brown Volkswagen Bug, and what they believed were their first genuine leads of the case.

Although Bundy enjoyed following each aspect of the investigation as it unfolded in the papers, he must have been somewhat perturbed by this one. He had always believed that the occasional snatching and killing of women would have few long-term consequences among the general public. After all, he reasoned, they were just people, and since there were so many humans in the world anyway, one or two disappearances here or there shouldn't make any difference at all." The public's outcry and the unusual scale of its cooperation with the police were a bit odd in his mind.

The fact that he had used his real name, and that they now knew what kind of car he was driving were also not good. He didn't like it, and he may have inwardly chastised himself over what he considered minor blunders. But Bundy was not one to worry about such things for very long. He believed he was smarter than the police and could wiggle out of anything, especially any traps the law enforcement community might have in store for him. He'd done his homework when it came to police investigations, and dealt with the really important issues- disposing of victims in one location and their clothes, purses and jewelry, et cetera in another; and never leaving so much as a trace of evidence which could point to him at any of the crime scenes. In his mind, he had nothing to worry about. He reasoned, there were lots of Teds in Washington State and the surrounding areas, and lot of Volkswagens too. Not for a second did Bundy really believe that authorities could ever connect him with a crime. The cops were just not smart enough.

As to their investigations, he had been right on target that they would be more than a little uncooperative when releasing pertinent information even to fellow officers in neighboring districts who were having their own problems with missing and murdered women. The cohesion that Bundy assumed would never happen did happen, but more at a snail's pace; at least until the discovery of the first set of bodies, or, more appropriately, the first set of body parts. At that time, the true nature of what police were facing descended upon them like a terrible storm, a storm whose main ingredients were fear, dread, and perhaps the most frustrating of all, the unknown. Like a creeping plague spreading across the land which must be addressed quickly, so too, the revelation that a malignant being was walking about destroying the young women of Washington State gave birth to the necessity of a combined effort among the different agencies to apprehend this killer. By then, the effort would also include investigators from the surrounding states, who now had their own unusual cases of missing and murdered females. The cohe sion so very needed in these cases would be late in coming, but as the old adage says, better late than never.

All of that was still in the future. In less than six weeks Bundy would be moving to Salt Lake City to attend law school. Flying effortlessly under the radar of law enforcement, Bundy was glad he'd soon be far away from Bob Keppel and his "Ted" task force, in a new environment with new opportunities. Liz, after much searching and hours of legwork during trips home to see her parents, had even secured a place for him to live at 565 First Avenue, in a rooming house in the University of Utah's version of the U District. Close to school, her man would feel right at home, and Bundy couldn't have picked a better place himself.

Liz had considered going with him (he apparently left the decision up to her), yet she ultimately would stay firmly planted in Seattle, among her friends, and in the place she now called home. Although he was a constant worry to her in regards to his fidelity, she still believed the connection between them would last. After graduating from law school, she believed, he would return to Seattle, and whether the future held politics or the practice of law, they would be together. They had been through a lot in the past five-plus years, and perhaps their relationship could survive any future storms beyond the horizon. For her part, she would do everything possible to keep their love alive.

She still had close to six weeks with Bundy, and Liz didn't want to spend that time worrying about the future. But over the next few days, her mind would begin debating the most horrible of thoughts, thoughts more terrible than even the issue of his faithfulness. Why were the reports of the "Ted" at Lake Sammamish so eerily similar to her Ted? Both drove Volkswagens. Both had similar hairstyles and manners of dress. And the Lake Sam Ted spoke with something akin to a British accent, an accent she'd heard from the lips of her Ted too.

The more she tried to ignore or rationalize away these images, the more disquieted her mind became. And then, on July 22, a male coworker handed her a composite drawing of the Lake Sam abductor published in The Seattle Times, and, after pointing out to her where he'd underlined the name Ted, said, "Doesn't your Ted have a VW?"14 He played it off as a joke, Liz said, but his words only increased her fear and apprehension. Indeed, between now and when Bundy left for Utah, she would constantly wage a mental war, discussing these things with Angie, and would, at her friend's suggestion, make the first of a series of calls to authorities (at first) these were anonymous calls made to the Seattle PD, and would accomplish nothing). By October 1974, however, when the evidence was reaching an alarming, and perhaps irrefutable level, she would, as we shall see, again find the strength to contact the authorities, but this time she would call the King County Police Department, whose investigation into the "Ted" murders was being headed by Detective Robert Keppel; an act that would in turn lead her to serious, faceto-face encounters with detectives from Washington State and beyond. It would also eventually drag Liz down a difficult road from which she could find no return. And in the end, that terrible "knowing" she'd had from the beginning and tried so hard not to believe became a reality she never thought possible.

Liz Kendall wasn't the only person to call police that summer and fall pointing an accusatorial finger at Theodore Bundy. Shortly after the Lake Sam abductions, Detective Robert Keppel spoke with one of Bundy's psychology professors at the University of Puget Sound, a Dr. Sarazen, who said: "I have a weird guy in my class who drives a 1968 Volkswagen and who matches the composite drawing from your office."" This particular contact would do nothing to throw a net over Bundy (at least initially), as his was one of hundreds of names being turned in, and with no criminal record, as well as being a student of law, he was not seen as a probable killer.

Yet the importance of the professor's call would take on an entirely new significance once Elizabeth Kendall came into the picture, as would an anonymous call made to Keppel's people in July giving them the license number and make of Bundy's car. Because three different contacts had been made concerning Theodore Robert Bundy, he automatically was placed on a special list "as one of our top one hundred candidates for further investigation."" Still, he was an unlikely suspect, and had Bundy managed to not kill again after leaving Washington State, it is virtually certain he would never have been charged with any of the murders committed in the Northwest, no matter how inquisitive detectives became once his file finally reached the top of their stack in late 1975.

By late August, and in spite of a busy schedule (he would be scrambling just to finish his work on the state budget before leaving for law school), Bundy still had managed to kill Carol Valenzuela, dumping her body in Clark County, in the southern portion of the state. This act alone speaks volumes as to his overall feelings of arrogance and invincibility, even in the midst of the largest manhunt the state has ever witnessed. Indeed, Bundy may have murdered a third woman in July as well, as an additional body was discovered very close to Carol's remains when they were located in October of that year. Pinning this murder on Bundy, however, has never been conclusive, as another killer of young women, Warren Leslie Forrest, was operating in this area at the same time. Yet it seems inconceivable Bundy could have inadvertently stumbled into another killer's dumping ground to bury a body in a shallow grave in extremely close proximity to another shallow grave, each of which had been dug next to large logs. It is far more likely that both women were killed by Bundy, and were in fact the last victims in Washington State.