The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History (19 page)

A footnote of sorts to the lengthy and difficult, seven-day search of the Issaquah site is that it was almost unnecessary. On July 16, barely forty-eight hours after he had killed Ott and Naslund, a Washington State highway employee, driving slowly over the same logging road Hammons ultimately would tread two months in the future, slowed his truck to a stop, switched off the ignition, and began eating his lunch in the cab. Within seconds of stopping, however, he detected the unmistakable order of putrefaction. Something was obviously dead, and being at least slightly intrigued, he decided to take a look. After walking less than thirty feet, he spotted a carcass he believed to be a deer. The worker returned to his vehicle and left, never realizing what he'd actually seen was the fresh remains of one of the young women abducted from Lake Sammamish only four miles away. In an even odder twist, had the highway worker returned after dark for a second look, he not only would have discovered the truth, but might well have found the man responsible for her death having sex with the corpse, as her decay at this stage would have been perfectly acceptable to him.

Although the sickening discovery of September 7 brought authorities no closer to finding the homicidal madman responsible for these killings, it did force the police to finally admit what they already knew to be true. Calling a press conference for a public whose fear was clearly escalating, Captain Nick Mackie of the King County Police Department, in a moment of rare transparency, admitted: "The worst we feared is true."'

It was a pivotal moment, not just for police in every jurisdiction that had missing and murdered women, but for the citizens of the state as well. Gone were the days when speculation reigned that the disappearances were possibly something other than foul play. The thought that someone could, apparently at will, snatch a young woman from her bed and spirit her away into the night, as he did with pretty Lynda Ann Healy, or lead two away to their deaths from a park on a sunny day when thousands of people were enjoying themselves was almost too horrible to contemplate. This was the stuff of horror movies, yet it was all true, and now the authorities were admitting as much. Not only that, but little was offered in the way of encouragement which might have otherwise offset the terrible reality. At the present time, police simply didn't have any answers as to how to stop the killing. No one did.

Bundy returned to Seattle on the eighteenth of the month. Besides his furniture, there was much more to move than he was able to transport in his little VW, and so, with the help of Marlin Vortman and Bundy's brother Glenn, Bundy packed an older model truck he'd purchased and returned to Salt Lake on September 20. Because Glenn accompanied Bundy on the trip back to Utah to help with the heavy lifting, the female hitchhikers they passed along the way were never in any danger. It must have produced an unspoken regret in him as he drove by these pretty young girls by the side of the road; girls who often smiled at the handsome young man as they wiggled their delicate thumbs while watching for any sign he might be slowing down. For of all the girls he hunted, these were the easiest to kill, as they needed no special coaxing to enter his car. Once they closed the door and the pleasantries began, Bundy would consider them his, and the likelihood of their escape was practically zero.

This type of murder was also the least likely to ever be traced back to him, since killer and victim were strangers to one another and they most likely lived in different states. Such chance killings were, for Ted Bundy, icing on the cake of an already successful career as a serial killer. Traveling with his brother, he could only inwardly drool as they slowly faded out of the sight of his rear view mirror.

After helping Bundy move, Glenn flew back to Seattle. Bundy, who was once again starting to make an impression on those around him (in this case) his neighbors at 565 First Avenue) should have thrown himself completely into the study of law with regular class attendance, but this was not the case. Tim Bailess, who was Bundy's law professor, said he attended classes only two or three times during that first semester, but still managed to pull off Bs and Cs during exams. He would substantially increase his attendance the following two quarters, but according to the dean of the law school, Bruce Zimmer, Bundy would be "viewed as a student with a slightly below grade point aver- age."9

Bundy's reason for an almost perfect lack of attendance was actually quite simple. During the time between September 20 when he returned to Salt Lake City, and the eighth of November, he would abduct and murder at least four young women, all in under a six-week period. The planning, hunting, taking, and subsequent killing of his victims (not to mention his penchant for necrophilia) would prove to be a time-consuming process. During this season when the last bursts of summer finally give way to the cooling of fall, Ted Bundy's obsession with murder was heating up to an all-time-high. Never in Washington had he committed so many murders in so short a time. And now that he was far from the frenzy of an investigation back home, it seems Bundy wanted to take the greatest advantage of his new-found freedom. For him, this was a time of constant euphoria, for he was fulfilling the one true desire in his life, to commit murder. He was, like his counterpart the shark, which trolls the oceans and seas desiring only to feed, the perfect, emotionless, unfeeling predator.

The first to die was Nancy Wilcox. On the evening of October 2, sixteen-year-old Nancy Wilcox vanished from Holladay, Utah, a small city just outside of Salt Lake City. A cheerleader with pretty blond hair parted in the middle, she was last seen riding in a "yellow" Volkswagen Beetle, according to a witness. If this was a valid sighting, then Bundy must have convinced her to leave with him; not a difficult task for someone with the kind of charm and charisma he could unleash at the proper moment. However, she may never have seen the inside of his VW, and her death may have occurred in a different manner altogether.

Years later, Bundy would confess to a Salt Lake County sheriff's detective that he in fact did murder Nancy Wilcox, and apparently, it matches a scenario of events he described to a writer in the third person. This way, he could discuss the murders without implicating himself." It is Bundy's assertion that he spotted Wilcox walking one evening down a darkened street, and it was his intention to sexually assault her only; he believed he could satisfy his urgings this way, and that the taking of her life was unnecessary. After parking his car, he grabbed a knife and ran up behind her. After forcing Nancy off the sidewalk and into a darkened orchard, he attempted to remove her clothes, but she tried to stop him. According to Bundy, she didn't really believe he would harm her, and because she kept "arguing" with him, and kept getting louder with her pleadings for him to stop, he placed his hand over her mouth, but this didn't silence her either. At this point, he started choking her with the intention of causing her to pass out only. Once she was quiet, Bundy undressed her, removed his own clothing, and had sex with her. When he left the orchard, which was separated by houses fairly close by on either side, he wasn't sure he'd actually killed her. It was only some hours later, he said, when he returned to the scene and found the body in the same place in which he'd left it, the he knew for a certainty that she was dead.

Now, Bundy would like us to believe that he was truly unaware he'd committed yet another murder. Viewing the facts, however, one must believe otherwise. Since he did admit to killing Nancy Wilcox that night, and if it happened exactly as he said it did, then he strangled her before removing her clothes and having intercourse with her. Having undressed the young girl at this time, Bundy would have been met with the unmistakable smell of defecation (however small or large an amount) and urine, once the body ceased to function. There is little to no chance that he could have proceeded with the act of rape and been unaware of her condition.

Once the spasms subsided from Wilcox being suffocated, he would have been acutely aware of that sudden and total loss of movement which always accompanies the freshly dead. Bundy, who by now enjoyed dead women more than living ones, was fully cognizant of when this transformation occurred in each of his victims, and would not have missed such a moment for anything. In truth, he killed her just as he'd killed the others, even if his first intention was only to rape her. That he caused her demise in addition to sexually assaulting her only added to his twisted pleasure.

Authorities initially believed Nancy to be a runaway. Because she was the first of a string of similar missing and murdered women in Utah, very little was made of her absence, at least by the police. There was no evidence of foul play, and many believed she would turn up after a time, as most kids do who run away from home. But there would be no sudden appearance of a smiling and homesick teenager. Nancy Wilcox had simply vanished, that was all. And no one could have known that this was the beginning of something far more diabolical than the unexpected flight of a wayward sixteen-yearold.

The body of Nancy Wilcox has never been located.

Melissa Smith was a pretty seventeen-year-old with hazel eyes and dark brown hair parted in the middle. She was also the daughter of Midvale Chief of Police Louis Smith. And sometime after 10:00 P.M. on the evening of October 18,1974, she became Ted Bundy's second known Utah victim. I say known victim, because of the eight women Bundy would later admit to killing in the state, only five have been positively identified. The identities of the other three traveled with Bundy to his grave as did other vital information pertaining to additional homicides in other states.

It is of interest to note here that during the month of October 1974, when Bundy abducted at least three women, he purchased gas for his fuelefficient Volkswagen twelve times using his Chevron credit card. All purchases were at Chevron stations in Salt Lake City, except for a purchase in Murray, Utah, on October 14, and Bountiful, Utah, on October 28, both of which are in the greater Salt Lake City area. All of the places where Theodore Bundy would seek his prey - Holladay, Murray, Bountiful, Midvale - are one large metropolitan enclave anchored, as it were, by the city of Salt Lake. Indeed, most of the inhabitants of Utah live in this rather large sliver of land running parallel with the majestic Wasatch Mountain range. Only American Fork, where another young girl would succumb to his monstrous cravings, is far enough south to be considered on the outer edge of the greater Salt Lake City population. So it is quite clear that rather than attending law classes, Ted Bundy was driving hundreds of miles around the metropolitan area seeking victims and familiarizing himself with the many connecting smaller towns and suburbs, as well as the more rural environs of his new home. Although he had scanned some of this with a predatory eye with Liz prior to moving here, nothing compared to spending entire days and evenings alone, diligently roaming about in his attempt to memorize the land in much the same way he came to both fully know and use to such great effect those deserted, brush-covered places so seemingly void of habitability back in Washington State.

On the night of her disappearance, Melissa Smith should have spent the night safely at a slumber party at a friend's house, having pizza, watching television and talking about boys. Had this occurred, the world at large, and certainly those familiar with Bundy's crimes, would never have heard of Melissa Smith. But the slumber party had been canceled, and worse still, nobody had remembered to call Melissa and let her know. It was bad enough when her ride didn't show up, but then a quick call to the friend hosting the sleepover produced only an endless ringing on the other end of the line.

Although naturally upset that her plans for Friday night had come to a screeching halt, the night would not be a complete waste. A friend of Melissa's had called wanting her to come to the nearby Pepperoni Pizza Place. Melissa would do what she could to help her emotionally distraught friend who had recently lost a boyfriend. Within minutes, she set off on foot into the night and would arrive unharmed at Pepperoni a short time later. Sometime around 9:00 P.M., Melissa called home to tell her sister Jolene she'd "be home around ten."" This was the last contact Melissa would have with her family.

Her route home would be the same, although there is the possibility she intended to catch a ride part of the way, as at least one witness said he saw her hitchhiking about the time she should have been heading home (when her father learned of this he was quite upset, as he had warned her of the dangers). If this is true, Bundy may have been there to lean over and pop open the passenger door for the grateful and smiling young lady, and that would have been the easiest and the safest way for him to abduct her.

But if she walked home, she did have to cross by, or go over the grounds of a middle school, where there were gaps in the lighting, and it would be near here that a witness, standing out in her front yard at that unlikely hour raking leaves, would hear a scream pierce the night air around 10:15 P.M." If this was the terrified cry of Melissa Smith, then Bundy captured her much as he overpowered Nancy Wilcox, except there is little doubt that from the moment Bundy saw Melissa, he intended to murder her just as he murdered all the others. If he did abduct her during that walk home, it may well have started in the pizza restaurant, with Bundy eyeing her from another booth. Later, after Bundy had been identified in the press, a witness emerged who told police that a person he believed to be Bundy sat in the booth just behind Melissa and exited almost immediately after she left the restaurant. Although it's never been firmly established that Bundy was in the pizza eatery that night, it is very likely he was. Situated close to State Street, a main drag running north and south for miles and filled with hordes of young people cruising in their cars or walking past the shops and restaurants, it's just the kind of place Bundy liked to be.

He could have parked his VW at a spot farther down the street and simply waited behind a tree, car, or some other object, only to jump out at Melissa as she passed by. At that point, she would have had time to utter one terrified scream only. Having his weapon of choice gripped tightly in his hand, a Sears model 6577 crowbar," he quickly silenced Melissa by whacking her in the head with the heavy instrument and dropping her to the ground. It would then take perhaps ten or twelve seconds to place the unconscious girl in his VW and speed away. With a location already picked out, Bundy would have privacy for what he wanted to do. Outside of drawing the attention of one person who saw nothing and thought little of the scream, things had gone according to plan.