January 29, 1985 letter Bundy sent to Keppel

On January 29, 1985, Bundy sent Keppel a letter whose content was later published in the book "Reflections on Green River: The Letters of, and Conversations with, Ted Bundy" by "Sara: A Survivor". The letter was particularly interesting - I thought! – and here are some excerpts:

"I would caution you that just because a young woman murdered during the first six months of 1982 didn't disappear from PHS or downtown Seattle, and just because the victim wasn't a prostitute, doesn't mean the Riverman didn't kill her. He is not a robot. He is just as capable of a certain degree of inconsistency and change as anyone else.

"He may see a girl here and there who qualifies as a potential victim in his mind. He has a finely tuned sense of awareness when it comes to evaluating whether or not a girl is a prostitute. It may have become something of an art to him and art developed through the experience of much observation and many contacts. That doesn't mean he has used prostitutes often. In fact, he may avoid using prostitutes in the area from which he has abducted them to avoid identification.

"He will not necessarily approach the first or any girl he sees who fits as he cruises and lurks about. Many factors have to be right in addition to her appearance. Among other things, she must be in a location where he can approach her while she is alone and without other people nearby taking note. And since it's unlikely he would drive right up to his victim along the roadside he must also be able to park his car in an out-of-the-way location if at all possible because 1] if for some reason she rebuffs him she won't see his car and 2] if she goes with him, no one will see them getting in his car together.

"He sits in the lot for a while and when nothing suitable shows up, he moves on, not wanting to stay in one place too long. He begins to drive along PHS again and after a couple of blocks sees a girl in a phone booth on the other side of the highway. He scans her quickly as he passes. Her age, general appearance and presence in an area where prostitutes work tentatively qualify her as a potential victim but he's not sure. He turns left at the next stop light, turns around and heads back down PHS toward the phone booth. He parks off the road in a space not likely to draw much attention a short distance from the phone booth.

"He reaches a vantage point where he can get a closer look. Her clothing, makeup and hairstyle all indicate to him she's what he's looking for. This together with her age, the area she is in, and the fact that her use of the phone booth as he has observed prostitutes using booths in the area, further confirm his belief she's a prostitute.

"Because she's alone and there aren't other people in the vicinity except for the traffic rushing by on the highway, he decides to move in on her. When she leaves the phone booth he walks up behind her, excuses himself, and identifies himself as an undercover police officer. He judges her demeanor beforehand as best he could and decided that she would not resist this ruse. He flashes his badge and ID. He informs her he is a vice officer and that a girl fitting her description is being sought in the area for soliciting prostitution. He requests her name and ID, calmly and business like. No one driving by pays any attention.

"He informs her she's under arrest and warns her not to make matters worse by resisting arrest. They walk back to his car. He pulls a weapon to intimidate her, then binds and gags her.

"In my October 27 letter I said that I didn't think that the Riverman used the kind of ruse employed by Bianchi and Bono on the Hillside cases, i.e. posing as cops. During my meeting with Keppel and Reichert we discussed this ruse and I said that if the Riverman was posing as a cop I would expect that there would be some instance where he would try this ruse on an intended victim and for one reason or another, if something went wrong, she would not end up going away with him. (Someone may have come along who knew the girl while he was talking to her or maybe she violently refused to go.) In any event, I told them they should be able to find girls who could tell them about being approached by someone posing as a cop.

"It's my recollection that they said they hadn't run across any reports of prostitutes being approached by someone posing as a cop in the areas where the Green River victims disappeared from. What changed my thinking on this, and what makes me think that the cop ruse is a very possible ruse in the Green River cases, has to do with the facts and circumstances I referred to earlier, surround the three girls who may not have been prostitutes, and the four victims, who had a record of prostitution but may not have been working at the time they disappeared.”

The most striking example in this regard that Bundy had come across involved Constance Noan. She was reported to have called her mother around 3:00pm on June 8, 1983, and said she'd arrive at her mother's house in 20 minutes. She had her own car, and it was daylight, so Bundy thought it was unlikely that she was snatched off the street physically and violently. How did the Riverman approach her then? Ted thought a plausible explanation was that she was approached by someone passing as a cop... I tried to find information on Constance Noan, specifically on how Ridgway approached her, to see if Ted was right, but I couldn't find that detail.

I thought the above excerpts were interesting because Ted discussed the girls that qualified as a potential victim in the Green River Killer's mind, in Bundy's opinion. Bundy was speculating on how the Green River Killer evaluated whether or not a girl was a prostitute. And Ted thought that the cop ruse was a very possible ruse in the Green River cases, and he suspected that based on the facts and circumstances about which he discussed with Keppel.

The so-called Green River Killer - aka Gary Ridgway - was a truck painter who began his killing spree in the summer of 1982 and, within two years, had murdered more than 40 women. Most victims had a history of prostitution. Ridgway told police he usually lured them into his truck on a commercial strip near the Seattle-Tacoma airport. He strangled most of them at home in his bed.

The crimes terrorized the Pacific Northwest after police found the earliest victims in the Green River south of Seattle and more bodies near highways and in wooded ravines. Ridgway became a prime suspect in the investigation. Police searched his house and took a saliva sample in 1987. He was finally arrested in November 2001, when a new technology matched his DNA to three bodies he dumped in the river.