Louise Bundy’s March 10, 1976 Letter to Judge Stewart Hanson

On March 10, 1976, Louise Bundy, then a secretary at University of Puget Sound, sent a letter to Judge Stewart Hanson on behalf of her son, Ted Bundy. Judge Hanson was the one who would sentence Ted n the Carol DaRonch case. When Louise Bundy wrote this letter, Ted was accused of attempting to murder 17-year-old Carol DaRonch at a Salt Lake City area shopping center in November 1974.

In her letter, Louise invoked Ted’s “past history”, his relationships with his girlfriends and with the women in his extended family. Louise’s letter is a rather moving one.

Ted was later convicted by Judge Hanson for kidnapping Carol DaRonch. Judge Hanson died in 2008, and his grandson, Sean Papanikolas, digitized the letters in Judge Hanson's collection which were part of the DaRonch case, and kindly shared them with me in 2019 and I shared the Hanson letters publicly on Facebook soon afterwards.

Louise Bundy’s letter is part of the collection of letters pertaining to the DaRonch case which had been in Judge Hanson’s possession until his death in 2008, and I am now sharing it in digitized format on my Internet Archive site, along with the rest of the letters in the Judge Hanson collection:

https://archive.org/details/march-10-1976-letter-by-louise-bundy-to-judge-stewart-hanson

Bundy himself sent letters to Judge Hanson at the time of the DaRonch trial, and letters were sent to the judge also by other people close to Bundy, besides Louise Bundy.

The Utah newspapers were saying even in 1975 that John and Louise Bundy were steadfast in their belief that charges in Salt Lake City of kidnapping and attempted murder against their son Ted were a “terrible mistake”.

Louise Bundy was interviewed for The Ogden Standard-Examiner of October 12, 1975, and she said: “Unless he looked right at me and said he did it I would not believe it”. And she was quoted as describing Ted as the “best son in the world”.

By October 1975, Ted had become a suspect not only in Utah, but also in Seattle. Ted lived in Freda Rogers’ rooming house in Seattle’s University District during the months that several young women vanished. The remains of six of them were later found in remote, wooded areas east of Seattle. The mysterious deaths were linked to a man known only as “Ted”, the name given by a young man witnesses saw talking to Janice Ott, who vanished from the Lake Sammamish state park in July 1974 and later was among the six confirmed deaths. King County said Ted Bundy was among more than 2,800 young men investigated as a possible suspect in the mystery.

Louise Bundy said in 1975 that she recalled her son mentioning the murders of the women only once. “Our daughter (19) was going out that night and Ted said, ‘Mom, I hope you know where she’s going and who she’s with’,” Louise told The Ogden Standard-Examiner of October 12, 1975. And she added that Ted “was just always a very thoughtful person. At times I wondered if he would forget Mother’s Day because of the busy schedule in his life. But he always showed up with a gift.”

Louise Bundy was adamant even in 1975 that her son’s “vital interest in life” precluded his throwing his life away on the crime of attempted murder. And she also emphasized that a young woman Ted had dated “almost exclusively” for the past five years [she was referring to Elizabeth Kloepfer] was influential in his decision to study in Utah and to become a Mormon. Louise Bundy also said that Ted’s girlfriend was Mormon...

In the media at the time Ted was known as a former worker for the campaign committee for Gov. Dan Evans in 1972, and a former assistant to State Republican Chairman Ross Davis, who had left Seattle in August 1974 to enter the University of Utah School of Law. He previously had studied at the University of Washington and in the law school at the University of Puget Sound.

Links to the letters and files from Judge Stewart Hanson's collection which I found back in 2019 and are now on Internet Archive:

Evan Lewis's March 8, 1976 psychological evaluation of Ted Bundy

https://archive.org/details/evan-lewiss-psychological-evaluation-of-ted-bundy

Louise Bundy's March 10, 1976 letter to Judge Stewart Hanson

https://archive.org/details/march-10-1976-letter-by-louise-bundy-to-judge-stewart-hanson

Elizabeth Kloepfer's March 16, 1976 letter to Don Hull

https://archive.org/details/elizabeth-kloepfers-march-16-1976-letter-to-don-hull

Ted Bundy's May 12, 1976 letter to Judge Stewart Hanson

https://archive.org/details/ted-bundys-may-12-1976-letter-to-judge-stewart-hanson_202204

Ted Bundy's May 12, 1976 letters regarding the diagnostic evaluation issued by Judge Stewart Hanson

https://archive.org/details/ted-bundys-may-12-1976-letters-reg.-the-diagnostic-evaluation-issued-by-judge-stewart-hanson

Glenn Bundy's March 16, 1976 letter to Judge Stewart Hanson