The women who didn't fall for Ted's ruses
On April 14, 1974, a Sunday evening, between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m., a stranger with one arm in a sling encounters student Jane Curtis as she is leaving the Central Washington State College (now Central Washington University) library, and he asks her to help him carry some books to his car. The incident occurs on a Sunday evening, after she has worked a Curriculum Lab at Central Washington State College. She told Robert Keppel that the stranger told her that he had a skiing accident at Crystal Mountain: he ran into a tree up there and that's how he ended up with his arm in a cast, and also a metal type cast on a finger, silver, splint-like, but he didn't seem like a skier-type to her: she said he didn't look like the athlete out there skiing. She told Keppel she kind of stereo-typed skiers... “I would never say he was a good-looking guy.” And what was good-looking to her?... “Tall, good build, athletic type, just all-around good-looking, but he was the more freaky, hippie-type.”
And when Keppel asked her if she would have gone to the local drive-in for a coke with him, had he asked her, she answered no, explaining: “I had an experience, not quite like this, and I just had my guard up against anyone strange who comes along. So I just more or less protect myself. I was telling a guy, if I looked at him I would never say he was a good-looking guy.”
And about his broken arm, with a white wrapping around it, and the broken finger, she said, “I just sorta glanced at it, but it didn’t look like a professional job. That little metal thing over his finger looked like it was just taped on.”
She also told Keppel that the stranger "looked like the bum-type. Not the kind who works at a gas station, or the student-type. Just the kind of a do-your-own-thing person”. She said: "I look at a person like him as a kind of hippie-freaky type guy". She said “he had on what would now be called hippie clothes, he had on kind of a long coat, kind of grubby, a wool hat with a brim that went up”. And then she remembered that everything about him was lacking color... there were no outstanding colors like red or yellow on him.
And she also said he looked at her sideways as they were walking towards his car, and when they got there, the stranger brusquely ordered her into the car, and then, after registering her dismay at his brusqueness, he worded his request differently: "Could you get in and start the car?" With that, she turned and fled. She also remembered that the stranger was shorter than she was, because she was wearing high shoes which made her about 5'9''. Ted was 5'10'' tall.
Jane also told Keppel that she weighed 140 pounds (63.5 kg), and was 5'8'' (172 cm) tall.
From the transcript of her interview with Keppel, I understood that what was bothering Jane was that he looked at her “sideways... kind of turned his head and looked at me kind of funny like”, “strangely. His eyes seemed weird”. and it surprised her that he complained about the pain in his arm only when he needed help. The other unusual thing that struck her was that the whole passenger seat was gone...
Keppel: “On the way to wherever you were going, did he wince, or say anything about his arm hurting?”
Jane: “No. That was the surprising thing... the only thing... only the times when he needed help, like when I was leaving, when I approached the car, then he wanted me to get in, then all of a sudden he started, like, ohhh, my arm... he went on about his arm hurting him, and he said don’t forget I have a broken arm – you feel sorry for me... get in...”
Keppel: “Were those the words he used?”
Jane: “No. But more or less, that was the way he wanted you to think. Okay, when I approached his car, I remember it was parked on the side where you go under the railroad trestle there’s a right road that goes out to another road by Big John’s, kind of a drive-in, and it says no parking. His car was parked there on the side, and it’s kind of like tall grass, and we went around to the passenger’s side of the car.”
Keppel: “Did he go with you?”
Jane: “Yes, he was right at my side... my right-hand side, I was near the car door so he would have been behind the door if it had been open.”
Keppel: “Okay, what happened then?”
Jane: “When he approached the door, he said for me to open it up.”
Keppel: “Was he carrying any books?”
Jane: “Yes. He was carrying a couple of books, but I was carrying the majority of books. He said, ‘Open it up.’ I said, ‘What?’ Then he handed me the keys.”
Keppel: “He handed you the keys?”
Jane: “Yes. He got his keys for me.”
Keppel: “Was the car locked?”
Jane: “Yes, the car was locked. So I said, no. He then unlocked it. I looked inside of the car, and the first thing that struck me was that the passenger’s seat was gone.”
Keppel: “What did he do with the books?”
Jane: “I can’t remember if he gave them to me... I was holding a bunch of them... I can’t remember if he... I remember he unlocked the door, that it wasn’t me that unlocked it.”
Keppel: “What was he saying at the time?”
Jane: “He wasn’t saying anything. He unlocked it, then he told me after he opened it up, Get in. I said, ‘What?’ Then he said, ‘Ohhh, could you get in and start the car for me?’ I said, ‘I can’t.’”
Keppel: “So he was wincing at the time about his arm?”
Jane: “On his arm more or less to make me feel sorry for him... then when I looked, what really got me was that the passenger’s seat was gone. That’s what really bothered me was that it was gone.”
Keppel: “What was there in its place?”
Jane: “Nothing... it was just the flat surface of the regular car. It had a backseat, and it had those high back seats.”
Ted’s explanation about his skiing accident also seemed illogical to her:
“I’m the one who more or less edged him on, like how did it happen... he said he’d had a skiing accident, and I said, oh, I do a lot of skiing, where did it happen? He said Crystal Mountain, so he was aware it was a skiing area. When I said, how did it happen? He said he ran into a tree. I said, you ran into a tree... I didn’t question him anymore. It kind of struck me though, Crystal Mountain, and he ran into a tree??? It didn’t seem to fit in because I’ve seen Crystal and there aren’t that many trees around, especially in the main track. In the main track there aren’t any trees.”
And when it came to unlocking the door...
Keppel: “In what condition were the keys he gave you? Were they on a chain, on a ring?”
Jane: “I didn’t look at the keys.”
Keppel: “Did they jingle as you held them?”
Jane: “Oh, he held them.”
Keppel: “He held them... he never did give them to you?”
Jane: “He never gave them to me because I wouldn’t unlock the door.”
Keppel: “Oh, I see, you never did receive the keys.”
Jane: “He took the keys out, and kind of put his hand towards me with them in his hand, and he said to unlock it. I wouldn’t take it. I said, No.”
Ted wanted her to unlock the car’s door, and she didn’t and said no.
Keppel further inquired if she thought he was a student. Jane said: “He could have been at one time, but I couldn’t... now his type, I see a lot of his type. I went to Western and there are a lot of his type up there, but they’re all very intelligent individuals. He’s a person like that. He’s just kind of different. The way he looked at me bothered me... He put his head kind of sideways and stared at me. His eyes looked weird. He just stared funny.”
Yet despite the strange, weird vibe coming from the man, when Keppel asked her if she got the impression that there would be any foul play, she answered she never did.
And when it came to getting in the car and starting it up for him, because he said he couldn’t...
Keppel: “He physically opened the door for you, right?”
Jane: “Yes.”
Keppel: “What did you do with the books?”
Jane: “When he opened the door, I dropped them.”
Keppel: “You dropped them on the ground?”
Jane: “I dropped them right on the ground.”
Keppel: “What did he say at that time?”
Jane: “When I dropped them... we stood there... I had the books in my hands and he said, ‘Get in’. I said, ‘what???’ He said, ‘get in and start the car for me’. I said, ‘oh, I can’t’. And he wanted me to get in on the passenger’s side.
First of all, he told me to get in, I said ‘what’, then he went through his little pain bit, and said ‘get in and start the car for me because I can’t. He said because of his arm he couldn’t start it. He wanted me to start it for him.”
She was being led in the car! And Ted even feigned pain in his allegedly injured arm to convince her to start the car for him, and the fact that the whole passenger seat was gone seemed unusual to her.
Kathleen McChesney's 10-6-75 report indicates that McChesney had phone contact with Jane Curtis, who said she had seen the photograph of Ted Bundy in the newspaper and that the photograph looked similar to the man she saw in Ellensburg however the man in Ellensburg was wearing a hat so she could not be sure of his hairstyle and she felt that a man 5'11 was taller than the man she saw. Curtis told McChesney that she didn't hear the news clipping in which Bundy spoke, so she couldn't compare Bundy's voice to the voice of the man she met.
On April 17, 1974, at Central Washington State College, Kathleen Clara D’Olivo, a 21-year old senior encounters a young man with his left arm in a sling. He asks her to help him carry a backpack to his car, a brownish Volkswagen “bug,” but she refuses when she sees the car is parked in a dark place. She told Robert Keppel that she weighed 125 pounds (56.6 kg), and was 5'9½'' tall (175.3 cm) tall, and about the stranger, she said he was maybe a bit taller than her, but he could have also been no taller than her (maybe 6’), so he seemed to her around the same height as her. And she said he had “light brown, kind of shaggy hair, no real style, no real cut, cut kind of long and shaggy. He was thin and his face is a blur to me, I don’t remember his features at all”. So his facial features were unremarkable as far as she was concerned.
And she said he was dressed "kind of sloppily, not really grubby, but nothing outstanding", and he told her he had been in a ski accident. She said there was no plaster of Paris cast on his left arm, but it was in a sling. And his right arm had a hand brace, or finger brace, she added, and she thought it was metal. She said he had bandages wrapped around it. It was supporting his fingers. He told her he had hurt himself skiing. He’d run into a tree or something, she said, and bent his fingers back, and dislocated his shoulder (or did something to his shoulder).
She helped him by carrying his backpack (thinking it had books in it). She told Keppel: “He may have mentioned that he was in pain, maybe once, but he didn’t make a real big deal out of it; it was just so obvious that he was helpless that he’d have to be in pain, that’s the way it appeared to me. He told me he’d been in an accident (ski) and this is what had happened, and the way he was bandaged up it all made sense, the sling on his arm and shoulder. We walked across the bridge then to the edge of... I don’t recall the name of the street, but it runs up the campus, kind of an alley street. It’s not a real well travelled street. Then under the railroad trestle and then his car was parked in the first right under the trestle there, it was a dark road. There were no street lights on that road. But his car wasn’t parked so far down that it was completely black.”
And then, when they got to the car?...
He went to unlock the door on the passenger side, and she set down the package (the pack) that she had been carrying and leaned it against a log and she thinks she said goodbye. She intended to leave, and then he was supposedly unlocking the car when he dropped the key, then he felt for it with his right hand and couldn’t find it apparently and he asked her to help him by finding it for him, because he couldn’t feel with that brace on his right hand.
She was cautious at this point, and even while they were walking to the car, she was determined to not let him get behind her and to keep an eye on him. And she also thought she could always use the heavy books she was carrying to defend herself.
But then came his request to help him find the key... And she thought she’d better not bend over in front of him, so she asked him to step back and see if they can see the reflection in the light, so they stepped back behind the car, kind of to the side, and she squatted down and luckily saw the reflection of the key in the light, so she picked up the key and dropped it in his hand and said goodbye and good luck with his arm... He may have thanked her. He didn’t offer her a ride home, or ask her to come with him...
She further ended the story of her confrontation with the men by saying that when he dropped the key, her thought was to leave then.
She said she became a little leery about what she was doing when she realized that he wasn’t going into the library, when she asked him where are they going, and he said, “My car’s just parked over there”. She was however confident that she could handle him by the use of the weighty bookbag.
Keppel: “Did he appear to you to be the skier, or athletic-type of person?”
Kathleen: “No, not at all. He just didn’t fit the stereotype in my mind of an athlete, or even a skier.”
Keppel: “Did you get the impression that he knew just what he was doing?”
Kathleen: “Not at the time, no. I thought it was on the up and up, really.”
And as he went to open the VW’s door, he dropped his keys and then they found them and she handed them to him and she left before he opened the car - the key(s) are referred to in either the singular or plural form throughout the statement. She didn’t notice a seat missing or not inside the VW. She was right alongside of the car on the passenger’s side, so she thought she would have seen if there had been a seat missing, but she couldn’t be certain on that, but it seemed all intact to her and in good shape.
She said there was nothing unique about him at all. He seemed helpless and grateful that she was helping him.
Keppel then asked her: "Did he demonstrate that he was disappointed when you left, or were going to leave?" Kathleen answered: "No, not at all. That's why I wasn't suspicious, because it was just a small 'thank you for helping me', was the attitude that I picked up anyway, and uh... he didn't seem nervous that I was leaving. He didn't say, 'Hey, do you need a ride home, or how 'bout a ride, or get in the car' or anything like that. So I still felt it was on the up and up, and I was kind of made at myself for being suspicious."
Keppel also asked her: “Did he strike you as the type of person that would appeal to you?”
Kathleen answered: “No. He was shaggily, or sloppily, or however you want to say it, dressed and kind of scrawny looking. He didn’t appeal to me at all.”
And when it came to helping him with the books, he didn’t ask her to give him a hand, she thought she was the one who volunteered it.
As to what he was wearing, she thought he had a shirt on, like a sport shirt, “very sloppy or wrinkly looking. It seems to me he had a shirt-tail hanging out, wearing it on the outer side of his pants. I don’t remember what type of pants he had on. Just all-around kind of grubby, like jeans or something like that.”
So they gathered up the books, packages that he was dropping, and then started walking, and when they came to a little bridge, next to Group Conference, she asked where he was going. It was then that it became evident to her that he wasn’t headed to the library. Then she agreed to walk with him under the trestle and his car was barely down the dark stretch.
She also thought he volunteered the conversation about his ski accident. She didn’t remember asking him what he did.
And interestingly, there were other people coming out of the library, when she first confronted him, as that was a busy time of the night around the library, although there was no one walking the direction they were walking on the street or sidewalk that ran up and down behind the library, so once they left the side of the library, she never saw anyone after that.
So she was being very cautious to stay right alongside of him and not let him get behind her at all – and this may have been what saved her. But she did bend over, to get the keys that he had dropped, even if only for a short time. He could have attacked her while she was getting the keys for him... But maybe she kept him in her sight at all times, even when she bent over.
The same night, Susan Elaine Rancourt, 18, a slight, shy, Central Washington State College freshman, disappears from campus while returning to her dormitory from a campus meeting.
On June 1, 1974 (approx.), according to a Seattle Police Department report of August 9, 1974, Phyllis Armstrong, close friend of Georgann Hawkins, stated that approx. June 1, 1974, approx. 12:30 AM, she came out of the Beta house, and a white male 20 to 30, 6’ foot medium to heavy build, using crutches, carrying a gas can, asked her for some help. She carried the gas for this man approximately block north on 17th NE to a parking lot. At the parking lot he asked for more help to pour the gas into his car, a “Volkswagen”. He then stated that the car motor was not running right and asked her to help him, and she declined and left. [This version of events is different from the one in the Falling for a Killer documentary, where Armstrong states he asked her to push a button to help start the car and she refused and left, because something didn't seem right to her].
Phyllis Armstrong and Georgann Hawkins were peers at the University of Washington. Armstrong met Hawkins when they were Daffodil Princesses at the Washington Daffodil Festival in 1973.
Armstrong's account can be compared with Ted's account of how they met. In 1989 Ted began meeting with police detectives from several states, reportedly to confess to crimes, and on January 20, 1989, he met Robert Keppel and talked about the location of the remains of preselected missing women, and also about Georgann Hawkins, and Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. Ted also told Keppel that no more than two weeks before he lured Hawkins to his car, he encountered, using the same modus operandi in the same neighborhood in front of the same sorority house that Georgann Hawkins disappeared from, a girl going out the door, and asked her to help him. He walked her all the way to the parking lot, 11:00 on a Friday night. And he was drunk and told her he worked in Olympia, and that he lived in a rooming house. "I reached all the way to the car, and this happened, would happen sometimes, and just 'no, I don't want to do it'. I said, 'thank you. See you later.' And she walked away. But after the Hawkins thing I was, you know, just paranoid as hell that this girl would say 'you know, something weird happened to me a couple weeks ago. This guy came along with crutches and asked me to help him. He took me to a Wolkswagen and said he worked in Olympia and lived here in the University District'. How many people could that apply to?"
And at Lake Sammamish, the day Denise Naslund and Janice Ott disappeared from the lakeside park, at least five young women told police they were approached by a man who called himself “Ted”.
The full transcripts of Jane Curtis's and Kathleen Clara D’Olivo's interviews with Robert Keppel are King County Police reports from the King County Archives.
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