Ted Bundy - Arrest and First Trial

Arrest and First Trial

Bundy was arrested in August 1975 by a Utah Highway Patrol officer in Granger, a Salt Lake City suburb near Murray, after he failed to pull over for a routine traffic stop. The officer, noting that the Volkswagen's front passenger seat was missing, searched his car; he found a ski mask, a second mask fashioned from pantyhose, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, a coil of rope, an ice pick, and other items initially assumed to be burglary tools. Bundy explained that the ski mask was for skiing, he had found the handcuffs in a dumpster, and the rest were common household items. However, Detective Jerry Thompson remembered a similar suspect and car description from the November 1974 DaRonch kidnapping, and Bundy's name from Kloepfer's December 1974 phone call. In a search of Bundy's apartment police found a guide to Colorado ski resorts with a checkmark by the Wildwood Inn, and a brochure advertising the Viewmont High School play in Bountiful (where Debra Kent had disappeared), but nothing sufficiently incriminating to hold him. He was released on his own recognizance. (Bundy later said that searchers missed a collection of Polaroid photographs of his victims hidden in the utility room, which he destroyed after he was released.)

Salt Lake City police placed Bundy on 24-hour surveillance, and Thompson flew to Seattle with two other detectives to interview Kloepfer. She told them that in the year prior to Bundy's move to Utah she had discovered objects she "couldn't understand" in her house and in Bundy's apartment: a set of crutches; a bag of plaster of Paris that he admitted stealing from a medical supply house; a meat cleaver, never used for cooking, that he packed when he moved to Utah; surgical gloves; an Oriental knife in a wooden case that he kept in his glove compartment; and a sack full of women's clothing. Bundy was perpetually in debt to everyone and Kloepfer suspected he had stolen almost everything of significant value that he owned. Once, when she confronted him over a new TV and stereo, he warned her, "If you tell anyone, I'll break your fucking neck." She said Bundy became "very upset" whenever she considered cutting her hair—which was long and parted in the middle. She would sometimes awaken in the middle of the night to find him under the bed covers with a flashlight, examining her body. He kept a lug wrench, taped halfway up the handle, in the trunk of her car (she too owned a Volkwagen Beetle, which Ted often borrowed) "for protection". The detectives confirmed that Bundy had not been with Kloepfer on any of the nights the Pacific Northwest victims had vanished, nor on the day Ott and Naslund were abducted. Shortly thereafter, Kloepfer was interviewed by Seattle homicide detective Kathy McChesney and learned of the existence of Stephanie Brooks and her brief engagement to Bundy around Christmas 1973.

In September Bundy sold his Volkswagen Beetle to a Midvale teenager. Utah police impounded it, and FBI technicians dismantled and searched it. They found hairs matching samples obtained from Caryn Campbell's body. Later, they also identified hair strands "microscopically indistinguishable" from those of Melissa Smith and Carol DaRonch. FBI lab specialist Robert Neill concluded that the presence of hair strands in one car matching three different victims who had never met one another would be "a coincidence of mind-boggling rarity."

On October 2, 1975, detectives put Bundy in a lineup before DaRonch, who immediately identified him as "Officer Roseland". The witnesses from Bountiful picked him from the same lineup as the stranger lurking about the high school auditorium. There was insufficient evidence linking him to Debra Kent (whose body was never found), but more than enough to charge him with aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault in the DaRonch case. He was freed on $15,000 bail, paid by his parents, and spent most of the time between indictment and trial in Seattle, living in Kloepfer's house. Seattle police had insufficient evidence to charge him in the Pacific Northwest murders, but kept him under close surveillance. "When Ted and I stepped out on the porch to go somewhere," Kloepfer wrote, "so many unmarked police cars started up that it sounded like the beginning of the Indy 500."

In November, the three principal Bundy investigators—Jerry Thompson from Utah, Robert Keppel from Washington, and Michael Fisher from Colorado—met and exchanged information with 30 detectives and prosecutors from five states in Aspen, Colorado. While officials left the meeting (later known as the Aspen Summit) convinced that Bundy was the murderer they sought, they agreed that more hard evidence would be needed before he could be charged with any of the murders.

In February 1976 Bundy stood trial for the DaRonch kidnapping, forfeiting his right to a jury on the advice of his attorney, John O'Connell, due to the publicity surrounding the case. After a four-day trial and a weekend of deliberation, Judge Stewart Hanson found him guilty of kidnapping and assault. He was sentenced to one to 15 years in the Utah State Prison on June 30. In October he was found hiding in bushes in the prison yard carrying an "escape kit"—road maps, airline schedules, and a social security card—and spent several weeks in solitary confinement. Later that month, Colorado authorities charged him with Caryn Campbell's murder. After a period of resistance, he waived extradition proceedings and was transferred to Aspen in January 1977.