The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History (6 page)

But this was Ellensburg, clearly off the beaten path. Indeed, for those living in the high-population areas of western Washington, everything to the east of the Cascades is off the beaten path. But the Cascade Mountains are a divider not just of people but of weather as well. For those inhabiting Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia and all points north and south, the rains (at least for much of the year) seem to be an ever-present reality, while people living on the other side of the mountains have a drier, and to some, more pleasant existence.

For the next two hours Kathleen would remain on the second floor, studying in an area known as the curriculum laboratory. But when the twentyone-year-old saw the clock on the wall approaching 10, she started gathering up her books. It was time to phone her fiance, something she had done ritually every Wednesday at this same time. Descending the steps leading to the first floor, Kathleen left through the front entrance, immediately turned right, stepped off the concrete patio area at the front of the building and began walking across the grassy area. She stepped back onto the sidewalk and continued walking towards Black Hall and the parking lot where her vehicle was located. Within moments of this, however, she heard the sound of something like books hitting the pavement. "I turned around," she would later tell police, "and there was a man dropping books. He was squatting, trying to pick up the books and packages ... I noticed that he had a sling on one arm, and a metal hand brace on the other. I just noticed he was unable to pick up that many things and I assumed that he was going into the library." Kathleen, approaching the situation with caution, offered to help. "Yeah, could you?" he replied."

The ruse of a helpless student was a good one: an arm sling and a hand brace. A backpack filled with heavy books. Three small packages, all wrapped in brown, parcel post paper, tied with string no less. What could be less threatening? Kathleen picked up the book bag while the stranger with the light brown, shaggy hair fumbled with the rest. She couldn't remember if he wore glasses or if he had a mustache. "He was thin [but] his face is a blur to me, I don't recall his features at all." She does remember he was dressed "sloppily, not real grubby, but nothing outstanding."" She said he may have worn jeans with a wrinkled shirt, with the shirttail hanging out.

"I thought he was going to the library. He was headed that way, so I thought that's where he was going. But that same sidewalk actually leads up over a little bridge [and away from the library] .... It's just a short bridge that goes over a man-made pond and [the sidewalk] ... will angle off to go into the library.""

But instead of continuing on the pathway to Bouillon Library, the disabled man started across the bridge. This threw up a red flag for Kathleen, who instantly said: "Wait a minute ... where are we going?" "Oh, my car is just parked right over here," he said, as he motioned in the direction it would be located. Gauging the weight of the pack she was carrying, she quickly determined she could easily whack him with it should he try to do something to her. Believing this, however, could have cost her her life. It would have been highly unlikely that she could escape his clutches once an attack began, no matter how many times she struck him with the book-laden pack. "I was extremely cautious while with him," she would later tell detectives. "I never gave him the opportunity of walking behind me.""

The distance to his car, once they crossed the bridge, was about 150 feet. It was conveniently parked in a secluded, dimly lighted section, on the edge of the campus in a no parking area under a railroad trestle bounded by tall grass. It was the perfect spot to commit a murder, or at least begin one. The road leading to the trestle, Kathleen said, "was not well traveled." As they walked to his car, the bandaged man feigned having pain, while mentioning he'd been injured in a skiing accident. It all seemed quite believable to the pretty young coed, who continued to keep up her guard as they entered this deserted area. As they crossed under the trestle, she could make out the shape of a Volkswagen, which she believed to be brown and which was parked just to the right of the large trestle. "It was a dark road," she remembered. "There were no street lights on that road ... but it [wasn't] completely black."" Indeed, the only light available to them came from the library and an adjacent building, both of which were now a good distance away.

This lack of light made the VW appear shiny and new. But in fact the brown Bug was fairly old, with numerous dents. By now the stranger had led his helper to the passenger side of the vehicle. He had parked his car close to a log lying parallel to the VW, so there wasn't enough room for more than one person to stand there and open the passenger door. As he feigned an attempt to open the door with his key, Kathleen laid the backpack on the ground, leaned it against the log, and said goodbye. She had done her good deed, she reasoned, and now would be on her way. But he didn't want her to leave - he needed one more favor. Dropping his key, he took his right hand and pretended to be feeling for it. "Do you think you could find it for me," he asked, "because I can't feel with this thing on my hand?" Kathleen wasn't about to bend down and start looking for that key while he hovered over her. "Let's step back," she suggested, "and see if we can see the reflection in the light." "So we stepped back," she said later, "behind the car, kind of behind the car to the side, and I squatted down and luckily I did see the reflection of the key in the light." After quickly picking up the keys and dropping them into the palm of his hand, she wished him a speedy recovery from his injuries and hurried away. Kathleen believed he said "thank you" as she left. Why he didn't attack her as she squatted to look for the key is anyone's guess. The soon-to-be-married Kathleen Clara D'Olivo was very lucky to be alive.

Eighteen-year-old Susan Elaine Rancourt was a pretty girl with long, blond hair parted in the middle. A studious young woman, she had remained behind in Washington to attend the college in Ellensburg when her family moved to Anchorage, Alaska. As a freshman at Central Washington State College, she showed herself to be a serious student with an eye to the future; a future that might have included a career in medicine. Although it couldn't have been easy for Susan to maintain a 4.0 average while working full-time at a nursing home, she did it; but she had planned to leave her job at the nursing home and seek employment as a waitress at one of the local restaurants. It was also her desire (apparently against her family's wishes) to remain in Washington after graduation. But graduation was a long way off, so whatever heated discussions she might have had with her parents, it was probably not enough to cause a rift between them. Much could happen over the next threeplus years to change her mind. Everyone knew this. Susan, who had a fair complexion, spent the afternoon of April 17 sunbathing in the city park.

A little before 8:00 P.M., and only moments before Kathleen D'Olivo would be entering the Bouillion Library for two hours of uninterrupted study, Susan Rancourt placed some clothes into one of her dorm's washing machines and walked to Munson Hall, located at the southern end of the campus, where she attended a meeting for those wanting to be dorm counselors. The meeting was due to end about 10. The last people to see Susan said she was wearing a yellow, short-sleeve sweater, grey corduroy pants, a yellow coat, and a pair of brown Hush Puppies. At 10:15, as Barbara Blair was crossing Walnut Street at Eighth Street (the location of Munson Hall and close to the library, which is also on Walnut), she saw a man "in a green ski parka, who acted as though he were in a daze," as well as a young white female "wearing a yellow coat going north on the Walnut Mall." This was no doubt Susan on her way home, on a path which would take her past the library, where she would turn right, and keeping to the sidewalk between Black Hall and the Bouillon Library, take a left on Chestnut and continue north towards Barto Hall where she lived. She was, in fact, traveling almost the exact route Kathleen D'Olivo had taken a short time earlier. But Susan never made it to her residence. And like Lynda Ann Healy and Donna Gail Manson, Susan Elaine Rancourt appears to have vanished into thin air.

But unlike Donna Manson, the disappearance of Susan Rancourt was not taken lightly. That she did not retrieve her clothes from the dorm's laundry room, coupled with her failure to return home, was a clear signal to all who knew this girl that something was terribly wrong. By 5:00 P.M. the next day, Susan's roommate Diana Pitt filed a missing persons report with the campus police department. Upon hearing the news, the Rancourts took the first flight back to Washington. Another family had entered that terrible world of fear, panic, helplessness, and despair. When the family examined her room, everything Susan would have needed had she gone on an overnight visit was still in place: purse, identification, wallet, checkbook, cash, and dental floss (some thing the family knew, given her extensive dental work, would not have been left behind). She had even left her glasses and contact lenses behind before the meeting; perhaps a small but contributing factor to her disappearance. Walking back to her dorm at night meant traversing a portion of the campus where the lighting varied. Add this lack of light to her inability to see clearly, and you have a combination of circumstances that might make escape far less likely.

Although the investigation into her disappearance would begin immediately, two months would pass before anyone would hear of the Kathleen D'Olivo incident. But D'Olivo wasn't the only young woman to have a significant encounter with the odd man with a sling on his arm. Jane Curtis, also a student at CWSC, came upon him as she left the Bouillon Library on a Sunday evening. She isn't certain which Sunday exactly; it could have been the April 14 (three days prior to the Rancourt abduction) or perhaps the following Sunday. In any event, he was seeking a victim.

Jane Curtis was a twenty-one-year old student at the time of her brush with death. On this particular night she'd been working in the library stacking books for about two hours. She left Bouillon through the main front doors between 8:30 and 9:00 P.M. As she would later reveal to Detective Robert Keppel: "After I finished work, I walked out the main entrance of the library, and was just minding my own business ... and ... there was this guy coming along and he had this huge stack of books, like eight or nine books (all hardbound), and he had a cast on his left arm ... and all of a sudden he just kinda drops them, right in the direction I was walking ... so I just more or less offered assistance." The cast, she told detectives, wasn't hard plaster, but more like gauze wrapped around the arm. He also wore the metal splint, poorly applied, on his right hand. Unlike his appearance in the D'Olivo encounter, he wore a long, "grubby" coat and a woolen hat "with a brim that went up."19

Jane assumed he was going to the parking lot used by most students heading for the library, which would be just across the street, running directly behind the building and less than a block away. But he didn't stop at that lot. He continued on towards the railroad trestle and apparently a little further still. As they walked along the sidewalk he spoke of being injured skiing at Crystal Mountain where, he said, he ran into a tree. That was odd, she thought, for she too was a skier familiar with Crystal Mountain and wondered how he'd managed to do such a thing. It was clear she had her doubts about his story. "He didn't look like the skier-type to me," she added.19

The entire time they were walking he kept to her left. Once, she remembered, "He ... kind of turned his head and looked at me kind of funny like. He looked at me strangely. His eyes seemed weird. 1121 Indeed, she couldn't comprehend the depth of depravity and wickedness which lived just behind those eyes. Already in a high state of internal arousal, he must have been figuratively drooling at the thought of what he had in store for her. A true predatory monster savoring the meal to come!

As they approached his VW Beetle he began complaining of pain, something he had managed to avoid during their walk. Coming up to the passenger side of the car, Jane, carrying most of the books (he carried two), heard him say: "Open it up," and then attempted to hand her the keys. She refused. Believing now she was as good as captured, he then unlocked the door and blurted out: "Get in!" "What?" she said, surprised at the order. Realizing how it must have sounded, he quickly tried to smooth it over: "Oh ... could you get in and start the car for me?" But no, Jane wouldn't do it, so he opened it himself. And as he did, she became troubled by what she saw: "When I looked, what really got me was that the passenger's seat was gone. That's what really bothered me ... it was gone." Frightened now, Jane dropped the books at his feet. For a split second, the man with the weird eyes just stood there looking at her. Jane Curtis quickly made her escape.'

Susan Rancourt, however, did not escape. In the minds of the investigators charged with solving these strange cases of missing women (missing only, for now), Susan had been added to the list by her strange absence from Central Washington State College. Thus far, the abductor had done everything correctly and had taken possession of the objects of his desire; and in doing so he became the author of their fate. Now, in the twisted circuitry of his thinking, he had become one with them in a way no one else ever would.

He was also developing a real contempt for the authorities, who thus far were still stumbling around in investigative darkness. These were motiveless crimes, committed by a stranger against strangers. As any homicide detective will tell you, these are the most difficult murders to solve. Without any real evidence, chances of nabbing someone unless he's caught in the act are not very good. Other stumbling blocks included the separate police jurisdictions, meaning separate cases and the need for different levels of cooperation between departments, and a host of other problems, all of which could produce beneficial results for the perpetrator, something he was in fact counting on. It was time, he believed, to leave the confusion he'd created in Washington State and travel to Oregon.