On the first evening in October in 1974, Nancy Wilcox had the kind of typical teenage argument with her parents that countless families have experienced—this one about a boy. It was a…
Category: Victims
The Unconfirmed Cases: Kerry Hardy-May; 1972
When 22-year-old Kerry Hardy-May disappeared from Seattle in June of 1972, at first her family wasn’t too worried. After all, Kerry was young, a free spirit, and in a period of transition after recently separating from her husband. So when she didn’t show up to her family home to help them pack for a trip as planned, they assumed she was busy and would be in touch soon. But Kerry would never be seen again. That is, not until excavators digging a golf course unearthed her bones from a shallow grave nearly 40 years later.
Case File: Donna Gail Manson, 1974
Nineteen-year-old Donna Gail Manson disappeared from the Evergreen State College campus on March 12, 1974. Ted Bundy confessed to Donna’s murder two days before his execution, but her remains have never been…
Sherrod’s, 1978
In the late evening of January 14, 1978, several witnesses described a strange man at Sherrod’s Disco, a night club popular with students and located next door to the Chi Omega Sorority…
Taylor Mountain, 1975
Over the years, detectives and authors alike theorized that the skulls found on Taylor Mountain in 1975 meant Bundy had decapitated Washington victims Lynda Healy, Susan Rancourt, Kathy Parks, and Brenda Ball….
Case File: The Search for Georgann Hawkins, 1989
On January 20 and 22, 1989, Ted Bundy sat down with King County Detective Robert Keppel to give his final confessions. As a gesture of good faith, and with the hope of…
The Presentence Investigation Report, 1976
In March 1976 Salt Lake City district court Judge Stewart Hanson ordered a presentence investigation report for Ted Bundy after his conviction in the Carol DaRonch kidnapping case. The judge wanted more information about Bundy’s life, as his clean-cut, law student exterior clashed with the violent crime he had been found guilty of committing. Don Hull with the Utah Department of Probation and Parole was assigned to investigate his background and reported the results to Judge Hanson before final sentencing.
Case File: Melissa Smith, 1974
Seventeen-year-old Melissa Smith disappeared the night of October 18, 1974 while walking home from a pizza restaurant in Midvale, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Her nude, beaten, and strangled body was discovered by hunters nine days later in a wooded area. While Ted Bundy never admitted to her murder, when directly asked during his final confessions he did not deny it either. This is her case file.
The Unconfirmed Cases: Joyce Margaret LePage, 1971
This is an installment of my ongoing “unconfirmed” case study series. All of these cases have been connected to Ted Bundy in some way, whether by active investigation or later speculation, but…
Case File: Debra Jean Kent, 1974
The following are excerpts from the Bountiful Police Department’s file on the missing person case of seventeen year old Debra Jean Kent. Ted Bundy confessed to Debra’s murder two days before his…