Ted Bundy New Information: Sealed records show unidentified remains of victims found at Issaquah and Taylor Mountain and skeletal remains that officials were fully aware of at the time

Here is a summary of facts of the case: These records included internal memos, case files on victims including autopsy reports, surveillance records, detective notes and detective street notes, internal documents such as DNA requests and evidence lists generated on site at both Issaquah and Taylor Crime scenes. What they reveal is a contradiction to the story that has been put forth publicly.

1-Taylor Mountain was a major crime scene and Keppel’s comments that nothing were found there but heads and jawbones is false. His statements that only kids were on scene is false.  His own detective notes show him logging in skeletal remains for evidence tracking and sending many items of evidence forward to Superior Court. The skeletal remains found on site in March of 1975 per the paper trail of original documents included at least one skeleton that was not associated to the known missing victims per the notes.  The skeletal remains found on site at Taylor Mountain were eventually sent to the ME office in March of 1984 around the time he took over the Green River investigation.   In addition to the four girls known to have been found there, search and rescue documents and internal documents show that additional skeletal remains were found of a young girl.  A young girl who was never identified and her case never worked as the entire truth of Taylor Mountain was denied its existence and sealed away from public knowledge.  That’s one additional victim at Taylor Mountain.  Who was she?

2– Suppression of information.   In 1980 Keppel took into his custody a 33 page critique of Ann Rule’s book “Stranger Beside Me” that Bundy had written – it was single spaced and Bundy had turned it over to Aynesworth per his detective notes. What did that single spaced large document say about the book? Bundy states in the 1984 interview that he disputed her work. Why wasn’t it put into the public record? Keppel tells Bundy in the 1984 interview that he and Rule work together because they are “cooperating agencies”.  Rule is an author not an agency.  Keppel also took into custody a transcription from the interview done with Aynesworth and Michaud. Instead of noting that he put these into evidence he sent them per his notes to the department psychiatrist who had never met or interviewed Ted Bundy personally. The psychiatrist put together a profile that Keppel wrote to another jurisdiction was “surprisingly accurate”. Did the psychiatrist only have what Keppel gave him to work with?  What happened to these documents and what did they reveal about the case and what did they say? Rule and Michaud and Aynesworth are not police and Bundy lied a lot about everything but Keppel knew. of all the evidence and he was a police officer and responsible to the public not to friendships.  He had Ann Rule write his foreword, and she told me in an email to me that she had gotten him his first editor. Given the critical evidence of Issaquah and Taylor Mountain that was suppressed and sealed away, it causes concerns for manipulation of the case and trading favors.

3. Shortly after 1980, after Keppel asked to get in touch with Bundy [in his notes], Keppel began working for the AG Office. From 1980 to 1984, there is relatively little in the files related to the cases of Bundy in WA State. There is little if any documentation that evidence from the crime scenes including the skeletal remains were actively worked. A few pieces of physical evidence taken from Bundy such as an axe handle, knife and beaded corded leather necklace, were documented as being taken into evidence but the paper trail after that was not present. There never appears to be a comprehensive list of evidence taken from both sites that became a part of a thorough investigation – if there had been, the skeletal remains would not have been denied and the true pattern of the killings [not dumpings] that occurred at Issaquah and Taylor Mountain would have been analyzed.

4.  Investigators ran a DMV check on all persons named Ted of his age range who drove VWs shortly after Issaquah in 1974. His name should have been on that list.  A credible witness came forward in October of 1974 and identified Bundy to WA State authorities.  The reporting officer called the information over to Utah.  Bundy fit the pattern of crimes, he drove a VW which should have shown up on the DMV check, and he was present in both locations where girls were disappearing.  Yet Utah and WA State did nothing until summer of 1975.  WA State never charged him even though after his arrest for Da- Ronch’s kidnapping they had mountains of evidence against him – all the evidence of Issaquah and Taylor Mountain, witness statements, proximity and locations.  They had items that could have been finger printed and they had witnesses who had come forward.  Yet they didn’t try to charge him – Utah had less than WA State.  Instead, he was transferred to Colorado where there were less cases and less evidence.   Was it because Bundy had been embedded into Washington politics?   He was also embedded in Utah politics and had gone to a party at a prosecutor’s home there with a woman he’d been dating [in the records per a witness account].  Keppel and Canova had the cases…they knew the evidence they had and what the case implicated in terms of those sites being well developed with multiple missing and murdered girls.  It was many homicides…yet they did nothing.

5. There were many people on site at both crime scenes in WA State:  not kids as Keppel has stated in his book Riverman but adults, professionals such as law enforcement from several jurisdictions, search and rescue crews and civil air patrol.  But WA State doesn’t talk about this fact.  Instead, the AG Office to this day only shows one car at the Taylor Mountain site [or two cars in some photos] but in reality there were air patrols, and many cars from many people from several jurisdictions over several days.  Keppel claims nothing was found there but skulls and jaw fragments and a few bunches of hair – the case facts prove there were human remains, multiple bodies at both locations, abandoned homes nearby, articles of clothing, jewelry, and evidence of possible grave and animal activity. The FBI was sent multiple hair samples from Taylor Mountain. There were girls missing in two states, why didn’t they step in earlier?  What were the results of the hair testing?

6. Why the misdirection of public perception as to what happened at Taylor Mountain and Issaquah?  Keppel notes in his detective notes during the active investigation of Taylor Mountain in 1975 that he talked to the ME of that time and the ME told him that the heads “were with the bodies”. In other words there was no decapitation.  Then, later, on 8-1-1975 he logs in detective notes which he dates in March of 1975, months earlier but recorded later in August, about calling another ME to inquire as to what would be needed to state there was decapitation at the site.  He knew skeletal remains were found.  He personally logged them in with evidence numbers and those same bones were confirmed to be the missing girls by DNA in 2005.  So why did Keppel maintain over the years and in his book “Riverman” that nothing was found there but skulls and jaw fragments and suggest decapitation. What about the additional skeleton that didn’t match the girls known that is documented in the search and rescue notes of that day by professionals who were well versed in human remains and policies and procedures about search procedure.  There was also a criminologist on site who documented that evidence was sent forward to superior court. Why the silence over the years knowing the public story was false.  Why the scenario in the 1989 final interview that Bundy decapitated his victims and threw clothing out the window while he drove – Was it rehearsed with Bundy?  Keppel never challenged it in the final interview- he spent time instead on the bicycle of Janice Ott when a bicycle shift cable is noted as a find at Issaquah.  He let Bundy talk about gruesome details about Hawkins when no evidence of decapitation existed at the time to support that Bundy had done anything like that and in fact evidence found would contradict it and Hawkins remains were never located.

Where is the accountability to the ethics and standards of our justice system and responsibility to the public?  What happened in the communications with Bundy and Keppel between 1980 when he noted in his detective notes he was going to ask to get in contact with him and in 1984 when he started meeting with him as a consultant to the Green River Task Force?  Why was he allowed to take case files with him and this was confirmed to me by the AG Office.  Any communications are not privileged as they always belonged to the public and not to Keppel personally.  He was employed by the State of WA. It was then and still is, an open murder investigation as girls are still missing and unaccounted for.

Why did he spend so much time on Hawkins when there were no remains identified specific to her?  There was never any proof of decapitation as the other girls found were not decapitated and Hawkins has never been recovered.  So why has this scenario become “fact” in the public story?  Had they agreed upon some kind of scenario as to what would go down in that final interview?  In the actual police files Hawkins is never listed at Issaquah but instead always referred to as Taylor Mountain.  She had a deformity of her leg bones and investigators were requesting leg xrays of victims found there shortly after Taylor Mountain was discovered during the initial searches.  It is in their detective notes and a leg bone is noted in the initial finds at Taylor Mountain. Why would they do that if as Keppel claims publicly there were only skulls and jawbones and a few bunches of hair?

Why did Keppel publish the scenario that clothing was thrown out of the window by Bundy when clothing was found on site [some of it by description matching that of victims and also sent forward at the time to Superior Court as evidence] ? Keppel wasn’t able to publish this misinformation alone – no one who was there and knew ever challenged it – it was a deliberate effort to circumvent the truth. One oversight I can see, but not multiple and not to the extent that all of these occurred. Police also went out to the Taylor Mountain site about a month later and another human remain was turned over that by DNA in 2005 was verified as human.  What I cannot comprehend is the why.

Families were grieving all those years – I was struggling for decades with severe trauma because of what had happened.  I could have been helped.   The families and myself could have had closure.  Instead there was a race to the media and personal profit.  Multiple careers were built on a false scenario of events and a suppression of case facts.

7-The interviews of 1984 and 1988 differ from the public narrative. The interview of 1988 per the record in the sealed area of the Archives shows that Bundy was helping Keppel develop questionnaires. Were these questionnaires to be used in the HITS program?  Why weren’t Bundy’s attorneys advised at the time about these interfaces with Keppel and other authorities and why weren’t they discussed at Bundy’s appeals and trial?  What was going on back then? This isn’t a normal progression of justice at all – even back then – other older cases have not had so many discrepancies, inconsistencies and hidden facts and records.

8-The very act of sealing away evidence in a serial case where girls remain missing and a survivor [myself] is coming forward is highly suspect. It’s called spoilation of evidence.  I question whether there aren’t higher legal problems related to moving records of a serial crime case with unsolved homicides into sealed areas.

Records state the evidence was to be sealed for 75 years….that’s a generation and it is the length of a copyright.  Failure to disclose to the public all the evidence found at Taylor Mountain, noted by multiple people including those present that day of Search and Rescue, raises serious questions about violations of public trust. Otherwise, why hide it? This moving of evidence into a sealed area out of the jurisdiction of police, where they cannot access it per an internal memo, shows the activity started initially in 1999 and again in 2012. This latter incident was the year I had contacted the FBI a second time complaining of witness and victim intimidation. How much did the FBI know of all this?  Were they a partner in it or a victim of it unaware of all that was hidden?

9–It has been denied that Bundy wrote a rape paper. He did. It was in 1972 while he served as Assistant Director of the Crime Commission in Seattle. I have the paper. I also have the witness statement of a superior who states and confirms that Bundy wrote it for the Crime Commission. In that paper Bundy analyzes how rapists are able to get away with their crimes, how rarely the cases are prosecuted, how law enforcement never at the time believed the women, and how the most damaging of rapes to try and report is a rape where the victim knows the perpetrator.  This is what happened to me and I had been trying to express that to police for years…coming forward that I had known Bundy in high school, he had violently raped me at that time, and I had been telling police that since 2001. I couldn’t have known of the rape paper or the fact that he had been reported for rape during that time period to police. In the files, police back then knew Bundy had been reported for rape by a woman in 1972.  It is mentioned in several places and Keppel even talked about it at a meeting describing her as “imbibed” and “buxom”.  The police never looked at this report seriously not even when Taylor Mountain and Issaquah had been found and all the girls were missing.

10–It has been denied that Bundy finished the recidivism study – but he did. I have the final formal report and Bundy was paid several thousand dollars for it. The recidivism study was also known of by the FBI. This is stated in an internal memo. I also have the records of the original contract and the payments to Bundy made by WA State.  The recidivism study looked at the probability of repeat offenses by people being released from incarceration.  It studied the weaknesses in the current system at that time.  Bundy never learned of law enforcement weaknesses and policies by reading Detective magazines as Keppel has claimed – he learned by doing these studies and working among the various aspects of the justice system.  That is not the fault of the law enforcement community.  His killing was not the fault of political parties.  That rests solely with Bundy – so why take such drastic steps to cover up that time period in WA State? Why move evidence into a sealed area?  Why deny the crime site of Taylor Mountain for its significance and “lose” the evidence of Issaquah? What else was going on?

11–Why did Ted Bundy get so much access to officials once he was in Florida? In addition to WA State, the FBI was meeting with him and not just Bill Hagmaier.  They circumvented his attorneys – one even helped him get in touch with WA State AG Office….why? Why did Keppel sue the state of Florida to get Bundy’s notes? It was reported in the papers and is part of the public record. He could have had copies. Why sue for the originals?  That doesn’t even seem legal.  Where are those papers?  They are supposed to be public property.  Police do not have the right to have private files in cases – they are paid by the public and are not privately employed.  Keppel refers to “personal files” several times in his works but he is not an author who gained access to material via FOIA – he was a detective who worked a case on behalf of the public so why has this been accepted and not questioned by the public and not corrected over the years by the AG Office.  Even now, he is not an “author” but a representative of WA State law enforcement community – he may have retired but he still acts under “color of law”.  He needs to be held accountable for the misrepresentations of fact – these have been taught at universities, portrayed over and over in the media but at their core, much of this is simply not true and not factual to the case.

When I came forward as a survivor who was being silenced and shut out by law enforcement in WA State to the AG Office I was told Keppel had taken files with him but they did nothing to help me.  This to me, this whole situation with these Bundy cases and WA State, is a primary source of concern as it relates to the role of the justice system and its relationship with community.

12–How with little or no money, did Bundy afford law school when he had no source of financial aid noted, no scholarships, and worked only part time random jobs. How did he afford the University of WA? How could he have possibly afforded a summer at Stanford? At the University of Washington, he afforded a private room in a rooming house [no direct room mates] had a car in 1973, and had unusual access to high ranking officials. They never checked his background?  They ran checks on people Bundy knew including a politician at the time, but they never fully investigated his background – his sources of income – ? People leave a paper trail but to hear WA State tell it Bundy never did – yet he worked for high level officials several times.

13-Why did he retain a defense attorney in WA State when WA State never charged him with anything and how did he pay for those bills and why and how was he able to retain that attorney in the first place? In Utah and Florida he had attorneys assigned. He borrowed money from people to pay legal bills.  When Bundy was arrested initially in Florida, he told detectives there per the reports, that he knew important people. How much did that play into what happened and how he was treated?  He was a serial killer who embedded into politics and the justice system in order to learn about its weaknesses and cultivate friendships that served him later on if caught.  Did those friendships serve him?  Is that why evidence was denied its existence?

14. How does WA State, who never brought Bundy to trial and never prosecuted him for a single crime, and never caught him or tried to extradite him, seemingly able to continue to control the narrative about Bundy and provide “experts”? Keppel is always part of the narrative especially about Taylor Mountain and the evidence but Keppel per the evidence is not telling the truth and hasn’t been for a long time.  Ann Rule is perceived as telling the truth and she may have been per her own perspective as she may not have been privilege to all the evidence that was held behind the scenes but Keppel was.  The same is true of Michaud and Aynesworth -it is doubtful they knew of all the evidence suppressed or the fact that Bundy stated behind the scenes that what he gave to them was “a lot of fiction”.  He was a pathological liar but regardless of that the official police position should have been to weigh the facts and include the findings in their true extent relative to the sites of Issaquah and Taylor Mountain and not suppress it.

None of this makes any sense when you see the totality of the evidence …none of this in my opinion has been to serve justice or to help the victims and their families, myself included. None of this is what I think of when I think of what our justice system is supposed to be about. The WA State justice system and the Attorney General office needs to be held accountable for its failure to investigate and resolve what happened during those years. I have been told by authorities in the police jurisdictions that the AG Office did not plan to investigate even though this evidence clearly shows the public has been lied to about those years and I have that refusal in writing. Their response was “not at this time.” Meanwhile the false narrative continues…in the media…at universities….and to the public…while the families and myself and those young girls thrown away at Taylor Mountain wait…. And, it makes me very concerned about the tactics that have occurred over the years and whether efforts will be made to pad the remaining evidence.  It’s a fair question and a valid concern.  You already have proof of evidence moved into a sealed area and critical evidence to cases that are still open and a serial killer where not all is known. No matter what lens you shine on this situation it isn’t right.