A leading academic on serial murderers acknowledges it is possible that Ted Bundy, the charismatic killer who confessed to murdering at least 30 girls and women during the 1970s, was already active by the time he was a teenager growing up in Washington.
On August 31, 1961, when 8-year-old Ann Marie Burr vanished without a trace from her Tacoma home, Bundy was but 14. However, the boy who was known among his peers for his voyeuristic tendencies and proclivity for cruelty lived in the very same North End neighborhood. The teenaged Bundy also had a newspaper delivery route that ran right past Ann Marie’s house.
There’s been no sign of the missing girl since, and Ann Marie is presumed by authorities to be dead, though she has not been declared so legally.
Investigators believe the girl was abducted from her bedroom sometime in the middle of the night. Police revealed at the time that the kidnapper had left both the Burrs’ front door ajar and the living room window open.
Discovered outside on the ground beneath the opened window was a size 6 or size 7 shoe print, which, to some of the investigators, suggested that the perpetrator could have been in his early teens.
How Was Ted Bundy Caught?
Bundy was arrested in Florida on February 15, 1978—five days after being named to the FBI’s Most Wanted List, and approximately four years after the start of his murderous, multi-state rampage. Police in Pensacola had stopped Bundy for speeding while driving a stolen vehicle, and officers in Tacoma perked up. But the prolific serial killer denied having anything to do with the 8-year-old’s disappearance, and claimed in a letter to Beverly Burr, Ann Marie’s mother, his “desire to harm” people hadn’t yet developed at the time of the girl’s disappearance.
Before his execution in 1989, Bundy confessed to killing 30 victims, though he was only ever convicted in three murders in Florida, for which he was sentenced to death. However, investigators were unable to identify all of Bundy’s victims and suspected him of killing dozens more.
