Part 2 | 50 Shades of Evil: Washington - Ted Bundy

0:08 Welcome back. I am your host, Jim Chapman, and today I am continuing the Fifty Shades of Evil Washington series on Ted Bundy. Now. The last time that I left you part one of last week, I left off with the killing of twenty two year old Brenda Ball. Bundy had picked her up when she was hitchhiking outside of a bar to get a ride home. And I told you that Bundy's evil was intensifying at this point, especially with the murder of Brenda Ball, which I would classify as a murder of opportunity for Bundy. He had not planned it. He just stumbled across this young woman and killed her, almost on instinct. So just ten days after Brenda Ball vanished into the night on Ginea eleventh of nineteen seventy four, he would strike again, this time targeting a bright, young University of Washington student. George Anne Hawkins was just eighteen years old. She was a freshman at the University of Washington, and she was living the kind of college life that so many young women dream of.

1:25 She was polite, beautiful, She had that long, flowing, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, beautiful smile. Georgie Anne. Everyone called her george was majoring in business in Spanish, and she was the kind of student who took her studies seriously, but she still made time for her friends, for sorority life and weekend adventures. George Ane came from a loving family in the Seattle suburbs, and she was the kind of daughter who would call home all the time. She would share her dreams with her parents, and she made her parents prie out every single day. She had close girlfriends that she would confide in. A study boyfriend, she cared about deeply and big plans for the future, graduate school, a career in international business, maybe traveling, using her language skills to build something meaningful in her life. She was very responsible, level headed, and she was full of optimism that made her believe the world was just full of possibility.

2:30 On the evening of June eleventh, she was simply just being a normal college student, heading back to her sorority house after studying late at the library. It was a warm Tuesday night on the University of Washington campus, the quad still alive with students. Georgia Anne had spent hours at the undergraduate library. She was pouring over textbooks and notes. Around ten thirty PM. She decided, I've had enough and it was time to have to the Beta Theta Pie sorority house. This was just a short walk across great growth. She was wearing light blouse, blue jeans, and comfortable shoes, practical for the quick campus of walk that she had made a million times before. It seemed like the right was very familiar. It was well lit in places, and appeared completely safe. She had no reason to suspect that evil was already waiting in the shadows and watching her every step. Ted Bundy had returned to the familiar hunting grounds.

3:35 He knew the university district intimately. He knew the routines of sorority girls, the shortcuts between buildings, the places where a loan student might feel just safe enough to lower her guard. This time he used his most polished weapon yet, the fake cast on his arm, combined with that flawless boy next door charm. He had parked that ten Volkswagen near the sorority house, positioned perfectly for a quick, quiet approach. When Georgian walked past, he stepped out, polite, slightly awkward, the injured arm making him look somewhat vulnerable and harmless.

4:15 Excuse me. My arm is broken and I dropped my bucks. Can you help me carry them to my car? He probably said something like that. The voice was calm, educated, reassuring. The smile was one that had worked so many times before. George Anne, she never hesitated. She walked with him toward the car, chatting briefly, and once they reached that vaults wagon, you know what happened. Bundy struck with ferocious speed, a crushing blood to the head with that heavy tire iron that he kept in the car. George Anne crumpled without a sound. He bundled her unconscious body into the car and drove her to a secluded wooded area miles away, and there, in the darkness, the full horror unfolded. He bludgeoned her again and again, the blows savage and unrelenting.

5:10 He then sexually assaulted her while she lay dying, and then, in an act that revealed the depths of his growing evil rage, he decapitated her with a hacksaw, the same grotesque ritual that he performed on Lindy Ealy. He took her head with him as a trophy, later dumping it in a separate location to further confuse investigators and satisfy his need for total domination. Her body left in a shallow grave on Taylor Mountain, joining the collection of remains he had already deposited there. The next morning, George Anne's sorority sisters noticed it. She hadn't come home. Her books and parse were missing, but there was no note, no sign of any struggle. On campus. Panics set in immediately.

5:59 Her family was called flyers, with her senior photo blanketed. The university district search parties, dogs, helicopters. Everything was mobilized. Her boyfriend and friends walked to campus in tears, retracing every possible step, but there was nothing, nobody, no witnesses who could connect this charming stranger and a young woman erased in the space of a few horrifying minutes. Now, Georgia am wasn't snatched from a dark alley or a lonely road. She was taken from the heart of her own campus, from a route that she walked every single day, by a monster who looked and sounded exactly like the kind of guy her parents may have invited for dinner.

6:47 Ted Bundy didn't just kill her, He destroyed a life full of promise, a future filled with travel, all to feed that ever growing hunger that was inside him, that decapitation, that trophy, taking the calculated use of her own kindness against her. These were not acts of a man out of control. They were deliberate choices of a sadist who was getting better at his craft with every victim, and enjoying the psychological game as much as the kill itself. Of course, the University of Washington it goes into lockdown mode, Sorority houses, instituted buddy system, the fear that had been burning across the Pacific Northwest now boiled over in the outright terror and Bundy. He simply drives home, cleans his car, and continues that double life. One month after George Ane Hawkins vanished from Sorority Row, on July fourteenth of nineteen seventy four, the monster would commit one of his most brazen crimes yet in broad daylight, in front of a dozen witnesses at a crowded public park. And this time he would take two young women in a single afternoon.

8:03 Their names were Janisott and Denise Nislan. Let's go to Lake Samamish State Park just east of Seattle. Now this place on that warm Sunday afternoon was packed. It was a kind of picture perfect summer day. People waiting for all year in the Pacific Northwest, blue skies, a light breeze off the water, family picnicking, kids splashing in the shallow water, couples, some bathing on the grass. Hundreds of people filled that beach and the parking lot. Music would drift from car radios, frisbees sailing through the air. It was the last place on earth anyone expected pure evil to stroll in wearing a smile and an arm in a sling. Janis Ott was twenty three years old. She was a probation officer from the Seattle area, and she had come to the lake that day to enjoy a rare day off. She was petite, long, straight, dark hair that reached the middle of her back, and she had a warm, friendly smile that made her instantly approachable. Janis had graduated from the University of Washington and was building a career helping trouble youth. The kind of person who believed second chances were important and saw the good in people even when they tried to prove her wrong. She was newly married. She was deeply in love and planning a future field with the quiet joys most of us take for granted, a home, maybe children, someday, quiet evenings with the man that she loved. That morning, she had

9:35 kissed her husband goodbye, packed a small bag with a book and a towel, and headed off to the lake alone. She trusted the world. She trusted people, and this Sunday, she trusted the handsome stranger who approached her on that beach. Ted Bundy had arrived at Lake Salamish in his tan Volkswagen Beetle dress casually, his arm dramatically wrapped in a sling. He had chosen the busiest part of the park intentionally, he would say later, The risk thrilled him. He moved through the crowd like he belonged there, charming, calm, and he believed completely invisible. Witnesses would later describe him perfectly tall, handsome, well spoken, cast on his arm, polite, almost shy demeanor.

10:29 He introduced himself simply as Ted, no last name and no need. He approached Janis while she was relaxing by her towel and asked her for help. My arm's broken. I can't manage my celboat by myself. Can you give me a hand getting it down into the water. The request was innocent, reasonable, so reasonable in fact that saying no may have felt rude. Janis the helper, the probation officer who spent her life helping others. She smiled and she said yes. She walked him toward the parking lot and they chatted completely at ease. Dozens of people saw them walking together, and no one really thought Twice. Once they reached that Volkswagen Beetle, Bundy struck her with massive force with that tire iron. He bundled her unconscious body inside, and he drove away. In a secluded wooded area several miles from that park, he bludgeoned her again and again, sexually assaulted her, and then disposed of that body with the efficiency of a man who had done this so many times before. Janis Ott was gone, erased in the middle of a sunny Sunday afternoon, while hundreds of people laughed and just played a short drive away. But Bundy wasn't finished that hunger. It was raging now, the arrogance at its peak with Bundy. Less than two hours later, he returned to that same Kredi beach. Denise Nasland was nineteen year years old, shy but warm hearted, and she

12:02 was a young woman who had come to the park with her boyfriend and a small group of friends. She was studying to become a computer programmer, a field few women entered in nineteen seventy four, and she was well known for her quiet intelligence, her gentle nature, and her dark brown hair. Denise had a soft, kind face and a laugh that her friend said could brighten any room. She was close to her mother and her boyfriend, and she was planning a future with that boyfriend, including marriage, a career in the growing tech world, and a kind of stable, happy life that she always dreamed about. That afternoon, she had been enjoying the sun, swimming and relaxing with the people that she loved. Around four point thirty pm, she walked toward that restroom area alone and she never came back. Bunny approached her with that same routine, the sling, the charming smile, asking her for help. Denise, like Janet, she was raised to be helpful. She walked with him.

13:04 Witnesses saw them together near that parking lot. Again, no one suspected a thing, and once inside that volkswagon, the horror repeated itself. The brutal bludgeoning, the sexual assault, the casual disposal of her body alongside Janie's on Taylor Mountain, two young women, two bright futures, snatched in broad daylight from one of the most crowded places in the state in less than three hours, simply unbelievable. When the sun set that evening, panic exploded. Janie's husband reported her missing when she didn't come home, Denise's boyfriend realized she had vanished from that same park, and by Monday morning, the disappearances of two women from the same crowded beach on the very same day. It dominated every news broadcast. Composite sketches of Ted with the sling flooded television screens and newspapers.

14:01 The public finally had a face, vague but terrifying. A description of the ten Volkswagen Beetle that would haunt that region for years also made the news. It's interesting that Bundy made many mistakes with these two murders. First, the area was so crowded it would have been impossible for him not to be seen and noticed. And second, he carried out these murders despite having been rejected by a potential victim. Earlier in the day, a twenty one year old woman whose identity had been kept secret to this day, reported to Belice that Bundy, wearing his infamous fake broken arm sling, approached her and asked her for help. She actually agreed initially and walked with him all the way to the parking lot, and when they reached the metallic brown Volkswagen bug, she noticed there was no sail boat anywhere in sight. Bundy tried to reassure her. He said that the boat was actually up on the hill at his parents' house, but she became highly suspicious. She then lied and told him she couldn't leave because she was waiting on her husband, then immediately fled back into the crowd.

15:10 She was able to provide the most accurate description of Bundy, and it would come out that three other young ladies had actually had similar encounters with Bundy prior to finding his first victim. That day, Bundy also made the mistake of killing two women who did not know each other from the same place just hours apart. Because this would set off a national frenzy, Lake Sammamish wasn't some isolated campus or dark alley. It was a public Park on a Sunday weekend. If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere, and everyone in the country was paying attention. Now, the Lake Sammamish killings they changed everything. Police investigations that had once been broken finally started to get connected. The terror that had been building since Cam Aaron Sparks was attacked in January now exploded into full blown panic. Hitchhiking once the casual way to get around became unthinkable. Parents would call their college aged daughters every night, begging them to come home or at least stay indoors after dark.

16:17 Campus security hotlines got overwhelmed. Gun stores reported as surgeon cells of Beppard spray and other related items. The University of Washington, Central Washington State College, and Evergreen State College all places that had once felt like safe havens for bright futures and now felt like hunting grounds. See this problem was still jurisdictional. Karen Sparks in Seattle, Linda Ann Healey in Seattle, Donna Manson in Olympia, Susan Raincourt in Ellensburg, ROBERTA. Parks in Oregon, Brenda Ball and George Anne Hawkins back in Seattle, and now Janisot and Denise Nasland, Lake Samamish.

17:01 Each case had been handled by a different police department, a different sheriff's office, sometimes even a different state, and it's important to mention no centralized database existed in nineteen seventy four. There was no CODIS. Detectives were trading handwritten notes and phone calls, slowly piecing together the horrifying pattern. Long dark hair, college students, all young women, charming, stranger, fake injury, tan Voltswagon Witnesses from Lake Sammamish flooded tip lines with over two hundred people claiming to have seen Ted that day. But that's all they knew his name was Ted because they ever heard it. Descriptions matched perfectly, but Bundy had left no fingerprints and no clear evidence that could tie these cases together. Now, while this entire region lived in fear the man responsible, he was sitting in playing sight, continuing to feel untouched. He was still Theodore Robert Bundy, law student at the University of Utah, Republican volunteers in a rising political star. By night, he attended classes, shook hands at campaign events, dated women who found him charming and attentive. No one not as professors, not as neighbors, not even the women that he would date.

18:22 Had the slightest clue. The polite, ambitious young man smiling at them was the Saint Ted, whose sketch was on every television set. His charm wasn't just a tool for alluring victims, It was his ultimate disguise. It allowed him to move through the world as if the growing manhunt had nothing to do with him. He even joked with friends about the Ted headlines, calling the killer a quote crazy guy, while secretly relishing every word. The psychological toll on the families of the missing and the murdered was devastating. Linda Heally parents kept her bedroom exactly how she had left it. They were unable to accept their daughter was gone forever. Donah Manson's mother flew back and forth from California, refusing to leave Washington until her child was found. Janis Ott's husband he sat by the phone for days, hoping against hope that she had simply gotten lost or was in a hospital somewhere. The parents of Susan Raincourt, Roberta Parks, Georgia, and Hawkins, they all lived in hell. The hell of not knowing, of imagining the worst, while still trying to hold on to the slimmest sliver of hope. Keep in mind, none of these precious young ladies had even been discovered yet.

19:45 Now each new disappearance, it would tear open wounds that it barely began to scab. The media frenzy only made it worse. Television crewise we camp outside homes, Reporters would knock on doors at all hours of the night. Eight and the victims smiling yearbook photos were splashed all over the nightly news, turning private grief into a public spectacle. Ted Bundy had become a shadowy nightmare, a boogeyman with a name and a face that somehow everyone knew but still refused to get caught. Now, while families were shattered, communities locked down in fear, police worked around the clock with limited tools and half information, Bundy was already planning his next move. His evil wasn't just in the killings.

20:34 It was in the way he did it, in plain sight, the way he turned the very decency and trust of society into his greatest weapon. He watched the news coverage with the same cold detachment that he shut his victims, learning what the police knew, adjusting his tactics and preparing to expand his hunting grounds beyond the Pacific Northwest, because Ted Bundy wasn't near finished. In October of nineteen seventy four, the year and month that I was born, Ted Bundy was busy moving to Utah to attend law school, and almost immediately those killings started again, this time a brand new state, and the first victim was a young sixteen year old girl named Nancy Wilcox. Nancy was the kind of girl every parent would hope for. Sixteen years old and a junior at Olympias High School in Salt Lake City, she was bright, popular, and full of the sparkling teenage energy that made her friends light up every time she walked into a room. Nancy loved music, especially soft rock that played on the radio in those days. She was active in school clubs, close with her family, and already dreaming about college, maybe even a career in education nursing so she could help people the way she saw her own parents helping others. She came from a loving, stable

22:07 home the time where Sunday dinners were non negotiable and her parents still tucked her in when she would let them. On the evening of October two of nineteen seventy four. Nancy was simply being a normal sixteen year old. She had plans to meet friends, maybe gribe a soda and hang out, and she told her parents, I'm not gonna be late. She then kissed her mother goodbye, stepped out into the cool Utah autumn evening, and walked toward what should have been just an ordinary night. Ted Bundy had arrived in Salt Lake City only weeks earlier. He enrolled at the University of Utah College of Law, and he was living in a small apartment, attending classes by day and maintaining that polished, ambitious facade that he had perfected in Washington. But that move west wasn't just about law school for Ted. It was also about new hunting grounds and new victims, a fresh start where no one knew the growing shadow he had left behind in the Pacific Northwest.

23:10 His confidence was soaring that Lake Samamish double murder had proved he could operate in broad daylight and still walk away untouched. Crossing state lines only made him feel more untouchable. Different jurisdictions, different police forces, no coordinated manhunt yet reaching into Utah. He was cruising the streets that night in that Volkswagen Beetle, the same car he had already carried out so many deaths in. When he spotted Nancy walking alone, he pulled over with that practice disarming smile, and witnesses later were called seeing a light colored Volkswagen stop behind a young lady matching her description. Bunny was charming, polite, maybe even using the fake injury routine again. Hey you need a ride, it's getting dark out here. For a trust I did, sixteen year old in a safe suburb.

24:03 That offer seemed kind of harmless. Nancy would climb in, the door would close, and ted. Bundy's trap was set. He drove her away from her familiar streets and headed toward the remote, rugged terrain outside Salt Lake City, vast stretches of desert and mountains where screams you just can't hear them. They're in isolation of the Utah wilderness. The monster emerged, fully bludgeoning her with the same tire iron he had used on so many others. The blows savage and overwhelming. He sexually assaulted her, the act driven by the same cold, sadistic need for total domination that he had done in every previous martyr, and when it was finished, he disposed of her body in a remote area, later claiming in death road confessions that he dumped or remains near the Weber River or in the mountains where they would never be found. Nancy Wilcox's body has never been recovered to this day. She just simply vanished a race from the world in a matter of hours. Her parents realized something was wrong when she didn't come home. They called her friends, They drove the street searching, and by morning the panic was real. Flyers went up search parties everywhere in the foothills, her mother and father living that nightmare of waiting by the phone, praying for any word, any sign their baby girl was alive. The community rallied, but there was nothing, nobody, no witnesses who could connect

25:34 the disappearance. Just another pretty brunette teenager gone without a trace. Nancy Wilcox. She wasn't even a college student like the others before her. She was a sixteen year old girl, still living under her parents' roof, still believing the world was basically safe. Bundy deliberately crossed state lines to hunt in Utah, expanding that territory. He wasn't running from the law in Washington, he was evolving, testing how far a charm and his vaulkswagon could take him. The fact that he could abduct a child from a quiet suburb murder her. If that don't show you how completely devoid of conscience this guy had become, I don't know what to tell you.

26:17 Her family's heartbreak was total, a wound that never healed, a daughter stolen before she even had the chance to become the woman she was meant to be, and Bundy His arrogance only grew. He was fully convinced he was smarter than every detective that hunted him, and just weeks later, in mid October of nineteen seventy four, he would strike again and again in Utah. Melissa Ann Smith was the kind of daughter who made her father, Lewis Smith, the respected police chief of the small Salt Lake City suburb of Midvelle, being with pride every single day. She was seventeen, a senior at Midvale High School, vibrant, outgoing, and full of the kind of teenage optimism that made everyone around her feel better. Melissa loved horses, music, and spending time with her friends, and she was close to her family, especially her father, the man who made it his business and his career to protect the very community that now harbored a monster. She was the girl who helped around the house without being asked, who dreamed of one day becoming a nurse, or perhaps following in some sort of public service herself. Friends would describe her as kind hearted, trusting, and full of life, the type of teenager who believed in the best in people, because that was the world her parents had raised her to see. On the evening

27:49 of October eighteenth, nineteen seventy four, Melissa was just simply doing what thousands of seventeen year olds do on a Friday night. She went out with friends to grab a pizza hang out at a local tavern called the High Spot. She told her parents she was not going to be late. She kissed her mother goodbye, stepped into the cool air, and walked toward what should have been just an ordinary evening in a safe suburban town. Now, Ted Bundy hadn't been in Utah for long, but his hunting instincts were already raisor sharp. He already knew the hangouts, He knew the routines of young women who felt safe in their own neighborhoods. That night, he was cruising in his tan Voltswagon Beetle, once again, probably pulling off the same routine that had always worked for him, Asking her if she needed a ride, Melissa climbed in and the door closed.

28:39 He drove her away from the familiar lights of Midvale, headed towards the remote, rugged foothills outside of the city, empty desert roads where no one would hear anything, And there, in the isolation of the Utah Wilderness, he did what he's always done. Bludgeoned her repeatedly with a heavy tron, sexually assaulted her, and then and an act of evil, he strangled her with his bare hands, making sure the life drained from her slowly and deliberately, and when he was finished, he dumped her body in a wooded area near Summit Park, which is several miles from Midvale. He took souvenirs, as always, small items that fed that need for control long after the kill. Melissa's body was discovered nine days later, on October twenty seventh, nineteen seventy four, and the scene was grotesque. Her face had been beaten beyond recognition, her clothing torn and scattered. The daughter of the local police chief had been violated in the most brutal way imaginable, right under her father's jurisdiction. The impact on the Smith family was obviously catastrophic. The Chief, Lewis Smith, the man whose job it was to protect others, now had to bury his own child while the entire community looked at him for answer. The griefless public and private at the same time, a police chief forced to investigate a monster who had struck at the very heart of his own family. There was no immediate arrest, no clear suspect,

30:13 just a pretty brunette teenager. Again a race from the world, and this time the child of the very law man sworn to stopman like Ted Bundy. And this murder revealed something especially vicious about the depths of Ted Bundy's evil. He didn't just kill a random girl. He targeted the daughter of a police chief, something he would later admit in interviews, which was a deliberate thumb in the eye of the very authorities who hunted him. He exploited the same trust and decency that Melissa had been raised with, the same trust her father spent his life, defending the grotesque details of the crime scene, the prolonged suffering, the casual disposal of her body. These weren't the act of a man out of control. They were choices of a predator who was growing bolder, more sadistic, and more convinced that he was untouchable. While Chief Smith and his family lived in unrelenting agony, Bundy simply returned to law school, smiled at his professors, and prepared for the next hunt.

31:19 Thirteen days after Melissa Smith's body was found on Halloween night, nineteen seventy four, Bundy would strike again. Laura Ann Amy was seventeen years old, a senior at temp View High School in Utah, and she was the kind of girl who lived life with quite intensity and general curiosity. Tall and slender with long, straight, dark brown hair, Laura love the outdoors, hiking in the Utah Mountains, camping with family, and simply being in nature where she felt most alive. She was artistic, dreamed of one day becoming a writer, and she came from a loving family who described her as kind, responsible, and full of quiet dreams. On Halloween night of nineteen seventy four, Laura wasn't out trick or treating like the younger kids. She was doing what many teenagers did, hanging out with friends, enjoying the festive atmosphere.

32:20 And then she was going to head home late. She told her parents she'd be back before midnight, but she never made it. Ted Bundy had spent the evening cruising the streets of Salt Lake City, his hunger unsatisfied after the murder of Melissa Smith, and Halloween night gave him a perfect cover. People in costumes, streets busy with activity, A young woman walking alone far less likely to raise immediate alarm. He spotted Laura walking near a park. He pulls up in the Vaults wagon and the charm was turned on full force. The polite request, the disarming smile, and Laura, trusting and unaware of the growing danger she got in. He of course, drives her to a secluded spot, and there, in the cold darkness, he unleashed that same savage ritual, and when he was finished, she left her body in a shallow grave, hidden so well it would not be discovered for more than a month. Laura Amy's remains were finally found on December first of nineteen seventy four in American Forked Canyon, and the scene was heartbreaking.

33:27 Her body had been exposed to the elements for weeks, her long hair matted with blood and dirt, and her once vibrant face unrecognizable from beating. The community that had already been reeling from Melissa Smith's murder now had to face a second horrific murder. Her parents waited in agony for weeks, clinging to hope, even as the search widened in the news grew more grim. When her body was finally recovered, the pain would be a wound that would never fully close. But the monster that is Ted Bundy he was about to run out of luck. It was a Friday evening on November eighth of nineteen seventy four, barely a week after lor Amy's murder, and right in the middle of the early Holidays shopping season fashion Place mall in Murray, Utah, just south of Salt Lake City.

34:18 It was alive with tons of people hunting for early Christmas deals. Carol Dranch was eighteen years old and went to the mall Elaine that night to look for a dress for an upcoming event. She was the kind of teenager who carried herself with a quiet poise. Carol was a recent high school graduate. She was working and planning her future with the same hopeful energy so many young women her age possessed. She had no reason to feel afraid in a crowded, well lit shopping mall, surrounded by families and security guards. This was supposed to be a safe, ordinary errand the kind of night that should have ended with her driving home, bags in the backseat. I need to tell her family about her fines. But Ted Bundy had other plans. He had been stalking the mall that evening, drussed in a neatly pressed suit, looking every bit the clean cut professional. This time, he didn't use the arm in a sling routine. Instead, he escalated his deception to something far more sinister. He approached Carol outside of a bookstore, flashing a gold badge and identifying himself as Officer Rosalind from the Murray Police Department. His voice was calm, authoritative, and completely convincing. He told her that someone had been seen breaking into cars in the parking lot, specifically her car, and that he needed to come get her so that she could come with him check it out and file a report. Carol, like so many others before her. She

35:49 trusted the uniform, trusted the badge, trusted the polite, professional demeanor. She followed him through the mall and out to the parking lot, where he led her to a tan vaults Wagon Beetle that was most definitely not a police car. Once they reached that Volkswagon, she knew something wasn't right. Bundy opened up the passenger door and told her to get in so they could drive to the police station to quote fill out some paperwork, but Carol hesitated. Something fell off, but before she could fully process her instincts, he shoves her inside. The second the door closed, that monster e merged. He pulled out a pair of handcuffs and tried to snap them onto her wrist, telling her she was under arrest. Carol fought back with every ounce of strength and courage she possessed. She screamed, she kicked, she clawed in him. Bundy pulled a gun and pressed it to her side, but in the chaos of the struggle, she managed to wrench the door open and fall out of the VW Bug and onto the pavement. She ran screaming through the parking lot, deal handcuffed on one wrist, waving her arms and begging for help from anyone who could help her. A young couple in a nearby car saw her and stopped. They drove her straight to the nearest police station, where the real Murray Police Department took a statement and removed the handcuffs. Carol de Ranch had just become the one and only known victim to escape Ted Bundy. She gave to detailed description the team Volkswagen,

37:21 the man's height, his hair, his voice, the fake badge, the handcuffs. She even described the strange metal object he tried to use on her, later defined as a crowbar. For the first time, investigators had a living witness, a composite sketch that matched the quote Ted from Lake Samamish, and physical evidence from the struggle. Carol's bravery cracked open the case in a way months of missing persons reports could never do. Her escape is one of the most powerful, most harroic moments in this entire dark story. She didn't freeze, she didn't submit. She fought a monster who had already murdered at lee least eight women and was planning to murder countless more. Her courage didn't just save her life, It gave law enforcement the first real break they ever had.

38:10 Everything from Bundy's evil methods, the fake authority, the polished charm, the calculated deception, they were all finally exposed. Yet even after this narrow escape, the monster wasn't finished. His arrogance was still sky high. He simply adjusted, waited a few hours, and struck again the very same night. Later that same evening, November eighth of nineteen seventy four, at Viewmont High School in Bantiful, Utah, Ted Bundy would abduct another young woman in front of dozens of witnesses. Her name was Debbie Kent, and unlike Carol Durranch, she would never make it home.

38:56 It was the night of the school play at Viumont High a typical for evening that drew family, students, and teachers to the auditorium for a packed evening of community theater and teenage performances. The parking lot was packed with cars. Parents waited outside for their kids. Groups of friends would laugh and talk under the street lights. The air was cool, but it wasn't freezing, and it was the kind of Utah night that felt perfectly normal and safe. Seventeen year old Debbie Kent was right in the middle of it all. Debbie was a senior at Viewmont, the kind of girl everyone instantly liked, and, as with every other victim, long straight, dark brown hair that reached the middle of her back, the exact look that had become Bundy's deadly signature. She was active in school activities, well liked by her classmates, and came from a loving family and bountiful Debbie was responsible, outgoing, and full of the kind of energy that made her parents proud and her friends feel lucky to know her.

39:54 That night, she had come to the play to support her friends who were performing. She wasn't performing herself. She was simply there to enjoy the evening, cheer on her classmates and head home afterward, like every other teenager on a Friday night. She told her family she'd be back soon, and she never even made it out of the parking lot. Ted Bundy had just failed with Carol Dranch only hours earlier in Murray. Most killers would have gone to ground, laid low, reassessed. But serial killers, y'all, they are a totally different breed. They have to feel that crave to kill, and if they miss a chance to do it, that craving only gets stronger, that escape only fuelled the rage in the hunger inside of Bundy. Still wearing that same neatly pressed suit he had used at the mall, he drove straight to Beaumont High School. He parked his tan beetle in a crowded parking lot and walked amongst the parents and in the teenagers with absolute confidence. He was no longer using the fake police officer routine. This time he simply blended in. Tall, handsome, well spoken, looking like he could have been a young teacher or an older brother waiting for someone. Witnesses would later describe seeing a man match in Bundy's exact description approach several young women that night, politely asking for help with his car or pretending to nit assistance. He was calm, charming, completely at ease in a public space filled with a ton of potential witnesses. Debbie Kent was walking through the parking lot

41:28 toward her car when he approached her. The conversation was brief, polite, almost mundane. Whatever he said, a request for help with his car, a question about directions, whatever it was, it was enough to make her pause. She was seen talking to him near that volkswagon and then she got in, or maybe she was forced in. Either way, it was in full view of dozens of people who were simply going about their evening. Bundy drove her away from the bright lights of the school to a remote wooded area in the mountains out outside of Bountiful. There, in the cold darkness, he unleashed the same savage ritual he had done to so many others, and when he was finished, he dumped her body in a shallow grave in a remote canyon, and it would remain hidden for months. Debbie Kent's remains were not discovered until the following year, when searchers finally located her skull and scattered bones in a remote area near Parley's Canyon. The evidence of blood forced trauma.

42:30 It was unmistakable she had suffered the same horrifying end as so many before her. The abduction sent shockwaves throughout the entire Salt Lake Valley. Parents who had dropped their kids off at the play that night now realized to killer had walked amongst them, bold enough to snatch a girl from a crowded school parking lot while people were laughing and clapping inside of that auditorium. Eyewitnesses who had seen a man with Debbie provided descriptions that perfectly matched teda like Samamish and the man Carol Durrance had just escaped from hours earlier. The tan Volkswagen, the height, the hair, the voice. For the first time, the same predator was clearly operating across multiple areas in the same night, which proved his escalating arrogance and insatiable hunger. And to me this crime it reveals the sheer arrogance of Ted Bundy's evil.

43:24 He didn't need the cover of darkness or an isolated basement. He didn't need to break in while someone slept. He walked into a brightly lit, crowded public space filled with families and teenagers and used his charm like a weapon and took a seventeen year old girl right in front of dozens of potential witnesses, all within hours of another woman who fought her way out of his car. Tebbie Kent wasn't chosen because she was in the wrong place. She was chosen because she was exactly his type, and because the risk itself excited him. While her family waited up all night growing terror, while the community locked its doors and prayed. Bundy simply drove back to his apartment, cleaned his car, and continued his life. Now, the terror that had already gripped Utah became suffocating. High schools would add extra security, parents would refuse to let their daughters out after dark, and the name Ted and Tan Volt's wagon Beetle became warnings across the state. But Bundy wasn't even done expanding his territory. By January of nineteen seventy five, he had begun hunting in Colorado, and the next victim would be a twenty three year old nurse on a ski trip with her fiance. Karen Campbell was exactly the kind of young woman that the world needed more of.

44:51 Twenty three years old in a registered nurse from Dearborn, Michigan, she was bright, compassionate, and utterly dedicated to her patients. Friends and family described her as warm hearted, level headed, full of joy, and the kind of person who remembered your birthday and who would stay up late to comfort a worried patient and dreamed one day of starting a family of her own. She was engaged to doctor Raymond Gadawski, a physician she deeply loved, and the two of them had brought his two young children on this special ski vacation to the wild Wood Inn and Snow Mass Village, which is just outside Aspen, Colorado. It was supposed to be the perfect winter getaway Chris mountain air, fresh powder on the slopes, cozy evenings by the fire, in time to build memories as a new family. Karen had packed her favorite sweaters, her favorite ski gear, and she was excited to trade in her hospital scrubs for a few days of pure Colorado fun. On January twelfth of nineteen seventy five, she was simply living the kind of ordinary, happy moment that most of us would take for granted.

45:56 The wild Wood m was alive that Sunday evening, as you would expecked with a popular ski resort. Guests lounged in the lobby in the bar. They were sipping hot tidy, swapping stories from the slopes, and watching the last light fade from the peaks of the Elk Mountains. Karen and her fiance had spent the day's skiing, and they were relaxing in the main lodge. At one point, she excused herself to go back to the room to grab a book she wanted to read by the fire. It was a simple errand a quick walk down a well led hallway inside of a hotel. She just never made it back. Ted Bundy had driven across state lines from Utah, drawn by the same insatiable hunger that had already claimed the lives of so many. He was still operating out of Salt Lake City, attending law school, still maintaining that perfect facade of the ambitious young student, but the mountains of Colorado offered fresh territory, new victims in the thrill of staying one step ahead of growing investigators. Back in Utah, he had checked into the wild went in himself, blending seamlessly among those skiers and tourists. Tall, handsome, well dressed, with that same smile and easy confidence that had worked in the malls, the campuses, and the parking lots. Before he spotted Karen in that lodge, he watched her in which she stepped away from her fiance and those children.

47:18 He made his move. Now, the exact details of how he lured her remained locked in the silence of her final moments, but the outcome it was brutally clear. Bundy overpowered her with savage efficiency, bludgeoned her repeatedly with a heavy object, most likely that same tire iron. He crushed her skull in a frenzy of violence, sexually assaulted her, and when he was finished, he carried or dragged her body out of the hotel and dumped it in a snowbank along Owl Creek Road, which is several miles from the wild Wood End. Her remains were not discovered for three agonizing weeks until February twelfth of nineteen seventy five, when sores finally located her frozen, battered body, half buried in the snow. The autopsy would reveal the full horror, massive head drama, signs of sexual assault, and the kind of savage beating that spoke of pure, uncontrollable rage mixed with cold calculation. Her fiance and his children waited and growing panic that first night, then in mounting dread as the hours would turn into day's, and when Karen's body was finally found, as you can imagine, the devastation was immense.

48:33 Doctor Raymond Gadowski had to identify what was left of the woman he loved and that he planned to marry. Her parents in Michigan received the call, no parents should get their daughter, their bright, caring nurse stolen in the middle of a dream vacation. The entire Aspen and Snow mass community was stunned. A popular ski resort, a place people came to escape the real world, had become the scene of one of the most brutal murders in Colorado history. Skiers who had been laughing in the lodge that night they now realized they had a monster walking among them, invisible and untouchable. And Bundy. By this point, he wasn't confined to Washington or Utah anymore. He was crossing state lines at will, hunting in resort towns where people let their guards down, using that same charm, that same vehicle to strike wherever the opportunity appeared. Karen Campbell wasn't a random target. She was a young woman building her life in service and love, taking in a place that she should have felt safe. The three week gap between her disappearance and the discovery of her body only deep in the agony for that family. While they searched in the snowy slopes and prayed for a miracle, Bundy had already driven back to Utah cleaned that car resumed law school arrogance growing with every state he added to his killing map.

49:58 He had walked into a warm, crowded ski lodge, chosen the victim with cold precision of a wolf among sheep, and in the space of minutes, have bludgeoned, violated, and discarded a twenty three year old nurse whose only crime was wanting to read a book by the fire. Karen Campbell's bright future, her wedding plans, her dreams of motherhood, her gentle hands that had comforted so many dying patients was now relegated to a frozen, broken body hidden in a snowbank along a lonely mountain road, and the monster inside of Bundy. It was only getting older. Next episode, I'll continue on with the third episode in this story.

50:41 Thank you so much for listening. As always, check out the Patreon for commercial, free early releases and more, Patreon dot com, slash, Bloody and Goola podcast, and until next time for Bloody and Gola, I'm Jim Chapman. Much love did the