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00:07we would just like to caution all the young women of our community to be overly cautious at this
00:14time you've got different areas that have missing women in utah colorado washington state
00:25in 1974 eight women vanished in the span of just six months then police start finding them
00:36the women whose bodies were found were all of a similar type the blood had been drained from the
00:42body dark hair young blood parted their hair in the middle almost kind of like a ritualistic killing
00:49there was too much coincidence for this not to be a serial killer they said that they had found a
00:56skull
00:57buried in a list of more than 200 suspects is the name theodore robert bundy
01:07you gotta remember those who really knew bundy thought it can't be him
01:10head was pretty slick very articulate and smooth we were dealing with something that was outside
01:17of the mold of what people consider a killer and a mass killer at that at the time and bundy
01:26knew
01:26this jurisdictions didn't always cooperate with each other they didn't share so the murders still
01:32continued police began investigating a young woman who disappeared jordan hawkins was last seen monday
01:39evening linda anne healy disappeared from her seattle apartment but because these investigators were so
01:44frustrated they began working together the aspen summit was a conclave of law enforcement from several
01:54states that met to talk about ted bundy all these detectives gathered and all of them basically said
02:03we know it's bundy we're just going to have to prove it so they went meticulously over all the case
02:10files these conversations along with crime scene photos and interviews have been lost to history until
02:17now a trove of case files and audio tapes found by the widow of lead detective jerry thompson is being
02:25shared with the public here for the first time i want a truthful answer to this did you kill that
02:32young
02:32lady up there near snowman's that's what we call i certainly didn't kill anyone anywhere wherever it
02:39was i didn't kill anyone it sounds like it's true it would say so would you remember if you've done
02:44something
03:00like that
03:01current condition right now in salt lake airport it's 48 fahrenheit we do have some cloudy skies
03:05five-day forecast looks great carol durange was 18 years old she had just graduated from high school
03:12she was working as a telephone operator and she was still living with her parents she had just bought
03:18herself a sweet new 1974 muscle car she was very proud of that car it's a fall evening in this
03:26suburb
03:26of salt lake city by this point 10 young women have been murdered or reported missing in washington
03:33oregon and utah carol durange has just finished work and her plan is to buy a gift for a cousin
03:42she went down to the fashion place mall in murray utah she drove her pride and joy camaro to the
03:50parking
03:51lot walked into the mall and was just walking around and she was approached by someone who was dressed
04:01like a police officer and he asked her are you driving this maroon camaro that's in the parking lot
04:11outside of sears and she said oh yeah how how'd you know that he's like well there was someone who
04:18was
04:18caught trying to break into your car she said oh no yeah i love that car and he said well
04:26if you follow me
04:26like i can show you the car and you can i need you to make sure that nothing was stolen
04:31out of it she
04:32said okay the man leads her to the car she looks inside she said it looks fine to me
04:42i don't see a problem here and he said well we really want to make sure that you know we
04:51can catch
04:51this guy and we'd like you to come down to the station and give a report come with me
04:57it's my car and i'll drive you there she gets in the car this ratty volkswagen he says put on
05:07your
05:07seat belt and she's thinking something's weird she said i i don't think i will sorry i'm not going to
05:14put on my seat belt he goes down this kind of dark street suddenly the man runs the car up
05:23the side of
05:24the curb slams on the brakes and whips out a gun the man says do what i say or i'm
05:31going to blow your head
05:32off she's like what are you doing what are you doing he tried to handcuff her she starts fighting for
05:40her life he pulls out a crowbar and he is trying to hit her trying to slam it down on
05:48top of her
05:48head and she breaks away and she just starts running into the street carol de ranch flagged down a
06:00passing car and an elderly couple drove de ranch to the murray police station the search for her
06:05objective began it will take more than a year but the carol de ranch case will eventually provide
06:13investigators with a critical clue in their desperate search for a serial killer
06:26up to this point investigators spread across multiple states have the murders of at least 15 women to solve
06:35they didn't have the internet they didn't have fax machines the fact that there was no sort of
06:41interstate database for crimes made it very difficult for departments to see if there might be other
06:49missing women or similar suspects so it was a brilliant idea to get all of these investigators together
06:58to compare notes
07:09all the blood was out of the park right there's no blood at the site no clothing has been found
07:20these tapes of the aspen summit along with dozens of crime scene photos hundreds of police reports and
07:28interview tapes with ted bundy's girlfriend and bundy himself were acquired by the producers
07:34directly from the widow of lead utah detective jerry thompson after he passed away in 2019 as she handed
07:42over the files mrs thompson said thank you for removing this evil out of my life now the contents of
07:50those files
07:51are revealed here for the first time they provide a new perspective on the story of ted bundy one of
07:59the most
07:59notorious serial killers in history
08:20in seattle in the 1970s everything is green and lush
08:26in seattle in america on those clear days the mountains are visible
08:29this was a time when starbucks was one store at pike place market amazon was still a river in in
08:36south america it just felt like a place that had been unspoiled this beautiful corner of the northwest
08:46the university district was swarming with college students
08:50who lived in apartments and fraternity and sorority houses the women's movement had really started to
08:57take hold there so women felt much more independent it just felt like a very innocent bucolic place
09:04and then these disappearances started to happen in and around seattle police began investigating a young
09:11woman who disappeared linda ann healy a 21 year old university of washington student disappeared from
09:17her seattle apartment linda lived here in this greenhouse in the university district along with
09:23five other university students she was last seen here thursday evening about 12 o'clock in the beginning
09:30police are reluctant to jump to conclusions about the disappearances the room was very neat there was no
09:38signs of foul play in the room except some blood in the pillow and head area on the sheets of
09:46linda's bed
09:49i used to listen to linda healy's cascade ski report driving into work in the mornings and so when
09:56she disappeared i was very aware that she was a missing person then women started disappearing all
10:03over the northwest at the rate of one a month in 1974 roger dunn is a homicide detective for the
10:11king
10:11county sheriff's office and will soon be drawn into the case it was something i never experienced
10:17before and i hope to never experience again george anne hawkins was last seen monday evening shortly after
10:29midnight she had been visiting at the beta house and was returning to her house just a half block away
10:35down this alley police believe she went along this route and then somewhere she disappeared
10:42all the girls were between the ages of 18 and 21 four of the girls attended were attending colleges
10:49same hairstyle all very similar in appearance it was a front page story every day all day long
10:57it was frightening i know that the campuses locked things down and that you were discouraged from
11:06walking at night it was horrifying when 20 year old kathy parks goes missing from corvallis oregon
11:15police seem slow to respond i remember clearly she went missing from the campus
11:22and initially uh the police thought she was just a runaway i mean a lot of families would say this
11:30is
11:30the response they get you know well she'll probably turn up tomorrow or you know maybe she's at a friend's
11:35house
11:40then in mid-july everything changes rainier brewery is throwing its big summer beer party at lake sammamish
11:50state park near seattle i think there was a beer garden and a lot of entertainment live bands
11:57so it was a big hoopty-doo
12:01there were about 40 000 people in attendance and about 12 o'clock jenna saw a counselor at king
12:10county youth center decided to go sunbathing before leaving home janice leaves a note for
12:16her roommate stating that she's heading to the lake took her yellow tiger brand bike and went over to the
12:23park which is not too far away from her residence in issaquon
12:30witnesses saw her ride up on her bike she laid out a blanket she put on some cocoa tanning butter
12:40and she decided to have a relaxing day to herself just hanging out at the festival
12:48several witnesses described what happened next
12:52a man had been wandering around kind of looking at different women
13:00and then he noticed janice sitting by herself and he went over to her and he said uh excuse me
13:10could you
13:12help me with something
13:15he was wearing a bandage like a sling claiming that he needed help loading his sailboat onto his car
13:25and he said well you know you see i have this broken arm and i have this sailboat that i
13:32would really like
13:33to take out on the lake today my parents live in issaquah and they have the sailboat and i was
13:41hoping
13:41that you could come help load it onto my car and she said oh okay well if i can get
13:52a ride in the sailboat sure
13:56and so she packed up her stuff and he led her out of the park
14:11that's the last anyone ever saw her
14:16at least seven people at the crowded beach saw and heard a man who was described as a smooth talking
14:20man with his arm in a cast who asked several women to help him load a boat onto a volkswagen
14:27but janice art isn't the only woman who vanishes later on that day
14:35denise nasland her boyfriend and another couple decided to go spend a nice day relaxing at the
14:45festival local kid she was from west seattle just a young woman of 19. she'd left her shoes and her
14:55purse
14:55in the trunk of her car she was just hanging out on a picnic blanket drinking beer having a good
15:04time
15:05her friends started dozing off one of her friends said that she had kind of just gotten up and hadn't
15:13said anything to anybody but it looked like she was heading to the restrooms when she came out this
15:20man approached her and asked her the same question about helping him with his boat and so she said well
15:27sure why not when denise fails to return to her friends and janice doesn't come home police descend on
15:35the park looking for answers as soon as this happened this double abduction in broad daylight
15:48thousands of witnesses it became a media firestorm
15:57we would just like to caution all young ladies that are going to partake in the beaches tomorrow
16:02and at the races that that they do not leave with a stranger that anybody that approaches them that is
16:08a stranger makes any overtures towards them that they notify one of our police officers immediately i think
16:15the girls could be protected that are walking around do you go out at night by yourself at all once
16:20in a while
16:20are you afraid you just got to be really careful the police and the searchers have to contend with
16:25the grim idea that there might have been foul play
16:31investigators finally concede the likelihood that there's a predator on the loose and he needs to be
16:37stopped at this point there were eight missing women in the span of six months they realized that
16:45there was someone stalking and preying on young women in the pacific northwest
16:50and that the clock was ticking before there would be another murder
16:54we were dealing with something that was outside of the mold of what people consider a killer and a mass
17:01killer at that i took it as a heavy responsibility i wanted to find the guy before he killed more
17:08people
17:09we're going to have a big job ahead of us we had no evidence i mean you got a guy
17:15out there that's
17:16making a sport out of this you never know where he's going to strike next one of the fortunate things
17:22that we had i don't know if it's ever become widely known was there was an undercover dea agent
17:30laying on a blanket right next to janice on so he witnessed the man's approach and his spiel
17:37so we had a good description of the guy that left the beach with janice on and the fact that
17:44he had a
17:44volkswagen there was a witness named sylvia valent sitting very close by and she was able to report what
17:53he had said and their conversation he said hi i'm ted i wondered all these years why would he do
18:07that
18:10that was a turning point it was a turning point for the king county police now they had a name
18:20and they had this volkswagen that appeared in photographs that they could attribute to this man ted
18:33we've gotten a few good leads uh particularly on janice ott the missing girl from issaquah
18:39as far as denise nasland we're still a little bit shaky on that yet we uh we're getting some leads
18:44we're developing some leads some more information is coming in but it isn't anything that we can
18:49really go on right now i don't think the term serial killer was commonly used it was a phenomenon that
18:58really wasn't widely happening i mean there was jack the ripper way back when but it was something that
19:03wasn't happening in seattle washington in an effort to try to locate the two missing girls
19:08in subsequent days the entire area around the lake samamish state park will be searched
19:13inch by inch outrage and the indignation people blamed the police said why can't you catch this
19:21guy because when the story about lake samamish came out it seemed like this guy is taunting you and you
19:27gum shoes can't catch up with it the girls might be in or around a foliage area such as a
19:36swamp or lake
19:37it out of all the witnesses that he he had contact with we were able to create a composite drawing
19:44of
19:45what this guy looked like not everybody agreed on the final composite drawing but it was the only thing
19:52we had to work with at the time so we did our best we also knew that he had a
19:58volkswagen which seemed to
20:00change color with each witness
20:04we were giving every kind of tip that you could imagine we got 140 phone calls in about two hours
20:13i don't remember how many tips we had 3 000 sticks in my head i think in hindsight
20:21the overwhelming number of photos witnesses saw i think was more confusing than helpful
20:30an employee at the university of washington named liz klepfer is in a long-term relationship with a man
20:37named ted when the police sketch of the lake sammamish ted is published her friends are suspicious
20:45one of her friends said that looks like ted where was he that day she couldn't account for his whereabouts
20:54liz was originally from ogden utah she had gotten married young and had a child she got divorced and
21:03decided that she needed a fresh start her good friend had moved to seattle in 1969
21:10and so she decided to pick up and move with her young daughter and start over a new life in
21:18seattle
21:21she had just moved there and she went out to a bar the sandpiper tavern
21:28and she met ted at that bar
21:32they hit it off and he ended up spending the night that night and they were inseparable going forward
21:42and he decided to integrate himself into her and her daughter's life
21:51i think she was looking looking for love and looking for a solid relationship
21:58he was suave and charismatic and he was you know pretty handsome and he knew how to just kind of
22:05turn
22:05on the airs ted bundy was raised in a working-class family but he aspired to bigger and better things
22:15we don't know who buddy's father was he was born illegitimately to his mother louise cowell
22:21she went to a home for unwed mothers in vermont and gave birth to him his first four or five
22:29years
22:29he lived with his mother with some teenage aunts and with his grandparents in pennsylvania
22:37we know that when he was three years old his teenage aunt woke up one morning and ted had gathered
22:45several sharp big long kitchen knives and put them around her when she was sleeping so she woke up
22:52and they were aimed at her head and she was very afraid and this was part of why he and
23:00his mother
23:00fled pennsylvania and went to her great uncles in tacoma bundy's mother met a man in tacoma washington
23:08named john bundy they married and had four children together johnny bundy was a working-class guy at the
23:18military base here and ted was embarrassed by the car they had and ted wanted to be just in a
23:27different
23:27class than he was born into by 1974 liz and ted have been dating for five years but they continue
23:35to live
23:35separately liz is from a mormon background and cohabitation outside of marriage is forbidden ted
23:42lived in a rooming house for many years with other people and she lived in a small apartment in the
23:48seattle area with her daughter he was pretty mysterious and he'd come and go i think that was
23:58a concern for her she never kind of knew where he was liz was a very trusting vulnerable frightened
24:08insecure person ted bundy could play on that and there have been signs throughout their five-year
24:16relationship that all is not right in ted's world liz talks about a few strange instances she found bags
24:27full of women's clothing in his apartment she found hundreds of random house keys that he'd collected
24:35in his apartment she thought those things were strange she found plaster of paris she found crutches
24:42he had a knife in his glove compartment that she found he had a hatchet under his car seat
24:50he had good explanations for these things when she would ask him about it
24:53what she thought were good explanations but it kind of added up understanding the psychology of
25:01women who are in relationships with perverse manipulative psychopathic people like ted bundy
25:08unless you're in that world it's kind of hard to understand but for people who understand these
25:14things it makes all too much sense you put some of the things out of your head as far as
25:20the negative
25:22aspects of this person in light of the fact that she loved the guy
25:32in september of 1974 just seven weeks after the lake sammamish abductions ted bundy moves to salt lake city
25:40alone to begin the fall semester of law school at the university of utah bundy applied for a lot of
25:47different law schools he had applied for university of washington law school oregon and a few other
25:54places throughout the pacific northwest he'd been rejected from all of them but the university of utah
26:03finally accepted him liz was from utah and he knew he would have connections there
26:12so ted never invited liz to come with him at one point he'd said well you know if you really
26:19want
26:19to come i guess you can which is not much of an invitation and so to her credit she didn't
26:26beg him to come live with him she was willing to let him be independent
26:35back in the 1970s utah was a lot more conservative socially than it is even now you had a hard
26:43time
26:44finding a drink in a restaurant the influence of the lds church at that time was overpowering for
26:51the people who were members of the church for most kids getting a shot is almost as exciting as a
26:59bowl
26:59of spinach you're going to bed early terry wood is the lead anchor on kutv channel 2 in salt lake
27:05city
27:06when ted comes to town the avenues area where ted bundy lived at a time was the area just north
27:15and
27:16east of downtown running from the state capitol over to the university of utah when i first came to town
27:2371 january of 71 i got an apartment right down at the base of the avenues area one night that
27:31was a
27:32saturday night i was over at a restaurant called the pub in trolley square and my wife and i and
27:40our documentary head at kutv we were sitting at a table together and this one guy was passing our
27:47table and our documentary producer stood up oh hi how you doing ted
27:55and he said oh yeah fine how you doing and mentioned her name and everything and then
28:00she said let me introduce you to our 10 o'clock anchor and i got up shook hands with a
28:07nice looking guy
28:08very pleasant he wore the same type of clothes i was wearing at that time a beige corduroy jacket
28:14and we chatted for a few minutes she said she knew him through the university of utah law school
28:21he seemed like such a nice guy
28:35back in washington state nearly two months after janice ott and denise naslin disappear from lake
28:42sammamish state park just three miles away in a wooded area bird hunters make a grisly discovery
28:50the bird hunter had smelled something strange in the area and began looking around and found what
29:00looked like a clump of hair in a rib cage
29:10it was really tragic when a body lays out in the open it gradually starts deteriorating and there's a
29:22what's called a grease spot where the body laid it's a combination of decaying matter decaying fat
29:32and things that don't decay
29:35her long blonde hair was tangled up in some of the vine maple
29:41right where this grease spot was that we assume was janice ott
29:48it was everything i could do to hold back whatever tears were coming out
29:53it was tough it was emotionally very very very difficult
30:03we secured the scene we started processing for other evidence no evidence of any trauma like a gun or a
30:12knife
30:15there was nothing there no weapons nothing i was feeling that we had a big problem
30:25i think i got onto the fact that our two women were just the next two in the chain that
30:32started with linda and healy
30:36and it was up to us to deliver because i knew he wouldn't stop with our women
30:43denise nasland's mother became the designated mourner for those women she was an incredibly powerful
30:50woman and she was not going to let the police off the hook i had a lot of communication with
30:55elena rose
30:56it took a little time and a deep breath to come back to normal after talking to her
31:02she was devastated absolutely devastated they said that uh the earth had crumbled i believe on a hill or something
31:12and uh they had found uh a skull
31:21we had skulls and we had bones but we had no evidence of trauma nothing
31:31king county detectives are working with a long list of suspects with more than 200 names
31:36including a number of men named ted ted bundy is on that list but nothing about his background
31:44indicates that he's a killer it's not as if the police were tripping over their own feet not seeing ted
31:51bundy was in plain sight there were plenty of other suspects who looked better than ted did in many ways
31:57people with sex crimes people who had been arrested for all sorts of you know terrible things
32:04but that's the nature of police work of this kind
32:10we needed evidence uh and we needed a lot of luck
32:23by october of 1974 there are eight missing and murdered women in the pacific northwest
32:30king county investigators in seattle are no closer to finding out the identity of this serial killer
32:36but for now the disappearances have stopped then hundreds of miles away in a suburb of salt lake
32:45city another young woman disappears melissa smith was a 17 year old high school student she was the
32:53daughter of the midvale police chief
32:58smith girl turned up missing in october the 18th in 74 in midvale small town south of salt lake
33:09she had home the pretence to go over to a pizza place to connect with her girlfriend
33:16when the midvale police chief's daughter disappears the first person he calls his lead detective jerry
33:23thompson at the salt lake county sheriff's office the same detective whose trove of case files are the
33:30foundation of this series the reason why jerry thompson got the melissa smith case is because he
33:36was good friends with lewis smith who was the chief of police in midvale utah he asked jerry could you
33:43do
33:44me a favor and handle this case and jerry said yes i'll go ahead and take it over
33:53the evening melissa smith disappeared she had planned to go to a slumber party with one of her
33:59friends who ended up ghosting her she was a little upset about that and then she got another call from
34:08a friend who was working at a pizza restaurant and that friend said can you come talk to me
34:17probably offered her some pizza on the house
34:30melissa walks over to the pizza restaurant she met with her friend
34:35her friend confirmed that she had been there for about 30 minutes and then she left
34:40we had a restaurant jv restaurant individual playing she walked into that restaurant walked over the
34:49cigarette machine bought some cigarettes walked out
34:52what
34:52he probably followed her
35:08passed her up and parked probably in a section that was dimly lit
35:17and then got out with this crowbar and she only had time to let out one scream before he hit
35:24her in
35:24the head with it knocked her out
35:28around 10 or 11 o'clock a woman out raking leaves hears a young girl's piercing scream come through the
35:35night air and that's no doubt her
35:48melissa smith's body was found in a semi-rural canyon in a lot of scrub and oak brush it was
35:57found by hunters
35:59she was found in the old brush she was completely nude she had a mile in stacking around her neck
36:09along with one strand of her beans the other strand is still missing
36:13she could beat around the head because of death of course was the on the beating on the head and
36:20strangulation
36:22the blood had been drained from the body there was no blood at the site no clothing has been found
36:27marks all over the body almost kind of like a ritualistic killing
36:33in some cases the blow to the head was not fatal and so it was incapacitating and once he had
36:40rendered them
36:42truly helpless then he owned them his ammo was to have sex with them from behind while he strangled
36:50them to death i don't want another parent to go through what my wife and i went through i don't
36:58i don't think that's right
37:06so this is melissa smith oh god these are of color
37:24i've never seen these
37:30this is how it was described in the police report
37:33the police report with one arm and her painted nails yeah there's the bead necklace her father was able
37:42to identify her from this necklace
37:55seeing these it really reminds you that these aren't just stories these are real people
38:02until you see it it's hard to put that smiling face with that that horrible fate
38:10so and she was so alone it's just really sad
38:18that's why their stories need to be told
38:22two days after melissa smith's body is found bundy's girlfriend liz hears about it through a close female
38:29friend liz's best friend is also from utah they had grown up together liz had told her all about
38:37her suspicions she told her i'm very worried that ted might be involved in this her best friend was
38:46visiting her family in utah when melissa smith was killed so when she came back to seattle she said
38:53liz i don't want to alarm you but this is happening now in utah
39:01liz is shaken is there a world in which her ted could be the monster the police are looking for
39:09liz loved him she was devoted to him even though he didn't always treat her very well i felt sorry
39:18for
39:18her it was a hard thing for her to accept a lot of the things she was hearing i think
39:26what she wanted
39:26to know was that he wasn't the one who had done it she wanted to have her conscience cleared and
39:33she
39:33wanted to be assured that it wasn't him but these coincidences just kept happening she felt like she had
39:40to do something on october 29th just two days after melissa smith's remains were found liz finally breaks
39:50down and phones the police when liz first called in she called seattle police and seattle police said
39:57well you have to come in and make a report well i kind of put her off she didn't want
40:02to go downtown
40:02thank god we had an investigator named hergie we call him hergie it was brandy herger scheimer
40:10herger scheimer attempted to contact her and it took him five attempts to convince her to meet with him
40:19which they did at a hamburger stand in the u district
40:25liz confesses her suspicions about ted to the detective hoping to dispel them
40:33because of that interview with liz hergie called up jerry thompson in salt lake and told him if you
40:39have missing women over there this is the guy you should be looking at that just moved into your area
40:47he said listen we don't think he's a good suspect but we're going to do further investigation
40:56but before utah detectives can respond to this tip and just four days after melissa smith's body was found
41:03they're hit with another disappearance laura amy was a tall girl she had long brown hair
41:11she was of italian descent and i think she was supermodel beautiful
41:18this girl was a big girl about 5 11 6 foot 140 145 pounds at midnight she made a buy
41:25of some thc
41:26on the american fork city park she had a little bit of a tumultuous home life
41:33she was a free spirit and she definitely felt like she could take care of herself
41:42it was halloween night 1974 laura amy was at a house party with some of her friends
41:50one of her friends described her getting a little tipsy and giving everyone halloween kisses she was
41:57affectionate and just having fun and then the stories differ a little bit but she told one of her
42:05friends that she wanted to go get a pack of cigarettes she was probably going to a cafe there called
42:16grounds
42:17she was heading toward lehigh was the statement that was made at nine o'clock last she's seen is midnight
42:25on the 31st
42:30we don't know exactly what happened after that
42:35it seems likely to me that she may have been hitchhiking somewhere to go get cigarettes and
42:41this may have been an opportunistic victim
42:45it will take weeks for laura amy's remains to be discovered
42:51just eight days after amy disappears the attempted kidnapping carol durange occurs and really if it
43:00had been for carol durange the killer could have gone on a killing spree it was much larger
43:15next on hunting bundy
43:19cause of death is either by strangulation or by massive blows to the head
43:28so hard to look at bundy freaked out and took off so the chase was on
43:41this is the punch the gloves the ski mask and that's the cobra have you ever seen what's in that
43:48gym
43:48day no she's an empty very highly unusual that any man would have these things other than for what
43:59reason
43:59um
44:05uh
44:06uh
44:08uh
44:11uh
44:14uh
44:19uh
44:49Transcription by CastingWords
44:54CastingWords
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