by Cincinnati true crime author JT Townsend
She was an innocent blond child who got into the wind, snatched from her home in the dead of night, and carried off into oblivion. He was a handsome stranger spinning a web, hiding a wicked serial killer who raped and murdered more than 30 women.
Like the Elizabeth Smart saga, the kidnapping of 8-year-old Ann Marie Burr was a national fixation back in 1961. Below the radar of suspicion was 14-year-old paperboy Ted Bundy, the kid from the next block. Ever since Bundy died in Florida’s electric chair, detectives, writers, and armchair sleuths have debated his involvement in the Ann Marie Burr case. Was the proximity of the future monster to the missing angel an eerie coincidence become urban legend? Or a spicy twist to a cold case? And does the key lurk in Bundy’s childhood, a gothic tale of secrecy, denial, and possible incest…
Ann Marie Burr – Little Girl Lost
“I had a feeling right then that I’d never see her again,” sighed Beverly Burr, talking about the daughter who vanished over 40 years ago.
The disappearance of Ann Marie Burr from her Tacoma home would become a national news story. Her nightmare began on August 30, 1961, after the Burrs bedded down four children in their North Tacoma home. Around midnight Ann Marie brought baby sister Mary to her parent’s bedroom – Mary was crying about the cast on her broken arm. At 5 AM Beverly awoke to attend to her youngest child again but found Ann Marie gone.
The normally locked front door and the living room window were both wide open – no blood or signs of a struggle, just a lone sneaker print outside the window.
A thousand National Guardsmen and police officers combed the city. Choppers droned overhead as divers scoured sewers and creeks leading out to the bay. Yet despite the largest search and reward in Tacoma history, the little girl was lost.
Beverly and husband Donald requested and passed their polygraphs. As months unraveled into years, the Burr’s would endure unconfirmed sightings, bogus ransom demands, and an imposter claiming to be Ann Marie.
But the true outrage was the unknown fate of their firstborn daughter.
“We were always looking or always doing something. We never forgot.” says Beverly.
They stayed in their tainted home for six years in case Ann showed up, keeping their old phone number after they moved.
Four decades later closure is elusive. “I used to pray for an answer.” Beverly said at a recent memorial service for Ann Marie. “And then I wondered – do I want to know if she had a horrible death?”
Ted Bundy – The Charming Killer
In February 1989, Ted Bundy’s life was draining away. With Florida’s electric chair looming the next day, the killer was playing for time by giving up the bones of his ancient victims.
Who was Theodore Robert Bundy? After ten years of scrutiny on death row, he emerged as a chilling enigma, a charming and depraved killer who lured countless women to gruesome deaths.
Born in Philadelphia in 1946 to an unwed mother, Bundy’s father was a shadowy figure. Four years later Louise Cowell took her child to Tacoma, where she married Johnny Bundy.
Ted’s formative years revealed a shy yet crafty adolescent who attended church but resented his stepfather. He also began nocturnal jaunts of voyeurism and vandalism; a sliding spiral that lasted throughout high school.
In college he fashioned an urbane and polished persona, what Bundy would later call his “mask of sanity”. After graduation, he became a rising star in Republican state politics as the protégé of Governor Dan Evans.
In 1974, while Bundy attended law school in Seattle, young women began disappearing from the area. Some were taken from houses while others were plucked from the nearby university. Several co-eds recalled encounters with a handsome man on crutches; the stranger would solicit help carrying his books to his car.
Because the missing women were all “good girls” (not prostitutes or delinquents), local cops worked the cases hard. But with scant evidence and no bodies, the trail withered away.
When Ted Bundy transferred to a law school in Salt Lake City, co-eds and young women began vanishing from Utah and Colorado. Bundy’s all–American veneer cracked in 1975 when he was arrested while cruising a suburb at 4 AM. Within weeks a student fingered him as the “undercover cop” who abducted her from a mall – she had barely escaped with her life.
Thrust into the spotlight of a task force investigating missing women from 4 states, detectives poked into every aspect of Bundy’s existence. And as word of his legal problems drifted back to the Seattle area, friends and former co-workers expressed shock and disbelief – Ted had cloaked his dark side, even from his fiancée.
After Bundy was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to prison, skeletal remains of the Washington victims began to turn up at a remote dumpsite. Soon Colorado prosecutors extradited and charged him for the abduction/murder of a woman at a ski lodge. An eyewitness and Bundy’s gas card receipts placed him at the scene.
But before trial Bundy staged a spectacular escape from a county lockup; he was in Chicago by the time jailers realized he was missing. From there he fled south to Tallahassee, where he tried to blend in at Florida State University. Two weeks later he rampaged through a sorority in the middle of the night, killing two co-eds and bludgeoning three others while they slept. His final victim was 12 year old Kimberly Leach, grabbed from her elementary school in nearby Lake City.
Captured and convicted of the Florida killings in 1979, Bundy went to death row for the Leach murder. He maintained his innocence, and jousted with detectives from the West who came to question him about unsolved cases. Florida spun Bundy on the fast track to their electric chair. And ten years later Ted began to spill his guts as death closed in.
The Sinister Connection
Author Ann Rule first linked Bundy and Ann Marie Burr in her 1980 bestseller “The Stranger Beside Me.”
A casual remark during a jailhouse interview had resonated; while speaking “hypothetically” about a serial killer, Ted suggested that “when he’s 15 (describing the moment of murder) it’d be a much more mystical, exciting, intense, overwhelming experience…than when he’s 50.”
Just before his 1989 execution, Bundy met with Robert Keppel, a Seattle detective working the missing girl’s file. Ted had been confessing for days, hoping to postpone the inevitable. Pale, haggard, and stinking of fear, he lowered his guard and said something that glimmered of Ann Marie Burr.
Keppel pounced on it and got abrupt denials – “very un-Bundy like answers” that “showed a consciousness of guilt.” But why would a dead man walking disown one murder after copping out to 30 others?
Ted confided to Keppel there were crimes a serial killer would never admit to: murder committed at a young age – against a child victim – and close to his own home. The Burr case fit all three stipulations.
Ann Rule didn’t buy her ex-friend’s denial either: “Even for a serial killer there’s a stigma to killing a helpless young girl.”
Rule has collected hearsay tips and anecdotal evidence that tie Bundy to Ann Marie. A former Burr neighbor wrote that “Ted was the morning paper boy…That little girl used to follow him around like a puppy…She would have gone with him if he asked her to crawl out that window.”
Another woman emailed Rule remembering that her ninth-grade classmate Bundy had asked if she wanted to see “where he had hidden a body”.
And Donald Burr is convinced he saw young Ted Bundy in a construction ditch on a nearby street the morning his daughter disappeared. Bob Keppel today insists “the story gets better and better over the years with him and Ann Marie Burr.”
But to others the facts have blurred with time, leaving an impression the case against Bundy is stronger than it really is. Retired detective Tony Zatkovich, the original investigating officer in 1961, states that “Bundy absolutely had nothing to do with this.” He believes the killer knew the family and was familiar with the layout of the house. Tacoma detectives currently assigned to the case are divided between Bundy and another teenage suspect.
Louise Bundy can’t accept that her son started his killing spree while living under her roof. She was pregnant that summer and frequently up at night. “There’s no way he’d have gotten out of this house with us knowing it.”
Louise contends that at 14 Ted was too small to have abducted an 8-year-old girl. She says the Burr house “was in another part of town”, and denies her brother lived next door to Ann Marie’s piano teacher.
Bundy himself wrote to the Burr’s in 1986, telling them “you have been misled by rumors about me…I had nothing to do with her disappearance…At the time I was a normal 14 year old boy…I had absolutely no desire to harm anyone.”
Did He or Didn’t He?
To judge Ted Bundy as a suspect in the murder of Ann Marie Burr, there are three points to deliberate:
• How far away did he live from the Burr’s in 1961?
• When did he start killing?
• Was he really a “normal 14 year old boy”?
Bundy’s death house disclaimer argued that “the Burrs lived all the way across town from where I hung out as a kid and had my paper route…It was a different part of the world with different schools.”
A map quest today confirms it. Bundy’s house on Sky Line Drive was 3 miles away from the Burr home on 14th Street – yet legend wants him on the next block. This distance supports Ted’s denial; Bundy had chided Keppel for “not really taking a serious look at it.” Some investigators agree with Ted’s own contention that he began killing women in January 1974.
Yet others “like him” (as a suspect) in the 1966 murder and assault on two stewardesses in their Seattle apartment – Bundy was a 19-year-old college student working part-time at a nearby grocery store. It’s rare for a serial killer to get his first notch before age 15, even though his sexual and violent impulses fuse in early childhood. Bundy denied murdering before age 27, but his night raids as a young peeping tom (a classic early route for rapists) suggest the opportunity for an earlier kill.
So how does a “normal 14-year-old boy” morph into a psychopath? Is the answer buried in Bundy’s paternity?
The obscure “salesman” who stole into prudish Louise Cowell’s life just long enough to seduce, impregnate and abandon her was never identified. Some relatives doubt her vague and conflicting stories about Ted’s father.
Unwed mothers in 1946 were cloistered. 22-year-old Louise gave birth in seclusion, returning home to raise the child as her “adopted brother.” Yes – little Ted Bundy believed his mother was his sister, and his grandparents were his parents.
Louise’s mother was a reclusive semi-invalid, while her father was a vigorous man who relatives described as “an extremely violent and frightening individual”. Louise and her two younger sisters lived in fear of him.
Writers and Criminologists who have pored over Bundy’s history to explain his brutal acts wonder: perhaps his grandfather really was, as Ted once claimed, his father. When a journalist confronted her with that recently, Louise Bundy “demurred in a matter of fact voice, with none of the indignation that one might expect.”
Yet her younger sister (Ted’s Aunt) remembers waking up one morning as a teenager to find her grinning 3-year-old nephew lifting her covers and placing three butcher knives beside her. A psychiatrist who studied Bundy labeled this “extraordinarily bizarre behavior in a toddler”, indicative of “a traumatized child who was not only unwanted but was punished for having been born.”
In an email to this writer, Ann Rule declares “my personal opinion is that Ted Bundy killed Ann Marie Burr.” And though she’s written about hundreds of murder cases, “Every time I give a talk in the Northwest, someone asks about Ann Marie Burr.”
A recent TV adaptation of her book ends with an erroneous flashback of young Ted approaching Ann Marie on her front porch in broad daylight. The final shot shows them walking off hand in hand as neighbors bustled about.
Ted is a serious suspect until you do the logistics. How could a boy not yet 15 roam a neighborhood 3 miles away, casing a house so well that he could steal a child in the night and evaporate her? It doesn’t seem plausible – but with Bundy nothing ever does.
He haunts by slithering gracefully among us – he might have been a friend of your son or dated your daughter. He was our worst nightmare – perfect evil living just around the corner.
If he could be the bad seed of an incestuous grandfather, then perhaps his virgin venture into murder became his most perfect crime. The night before his execution, Ted Bundy’s last words to his mother were “a part of me was hidden all the time.”
And more than 54 years later, Ann Marie Burr is still in the wind…
***Author’s Note: Ted Bundy was the “godfather” of serial killers – a creature too complex to fully explore in this article. Contact this writer with questions about Bundy and for more information on the Ann Marie Burr Case.
Epilogue
Here’s some updated information I’ve gleaned from conversations with Beverly Burr (Ann Marie’s mother) since I wrote this article. On a sad note, Beverly died several years ago, never learning the truth about what happened to Ann Marie.
- She does not believe Ted Bundy kidnapped and murdered her daughter.
- Ann Marie did not take piano lessons next door to Ted’s Uncle.
- She does not recall seeing Ted Bundy delivering their paper.
- She likes the same suspect that investigating officer Tony Zatkovich liked in 1961: a 17-year-old neighbor boy who lived three doors away.
- She described the family as “very religious” and their teenage son as “strange” but with an “unusual interest” in Ann Marie.
- She admitted to me (with embarrassment) that 3 days after Ann went missing, she went to their house on some pretext. Finding them not home and the door open, she went through their first floor looking for any sign of Ann Marie, specifically her cross pendant received a month earlier at her first communion. She became frightened and left without searching the 2nd floor or finding any trace of her daughter.
- This suspect was eventually questioned and given a polygraph (results inconclusive) before the family’s lawyer pressured the cops to charge him or release him.
- She says the suspect is still alive (age 63) and still living in Tacoma.
- She keeps tabs on him – says he has been completely estranged from his family for more than 40 years.
- She told me she sees Louise Bundy in the grocery store from time to time. Ted’s mother knows who Beverly is but avoids her and does not speak.
Beverly Burr is an amazingly courageous woman who has never gotten the closure she deserves – I wish I could give it to her. I know if my child had disappeared I would never stop looking…
Ted Bundy is a suspect in the Burr case – nothing more. Like many Bundy mavens, I wanted to link him to Ann Marie Burr when I first read about it. My heart had him guilty, but my head isn’t buying it. Like Beverly Burr, I believe it’s just a macabre coincidence.
I’m much more willing to accept Ted’s involvement in the murder/assault of the two stewardesses in 1966 Seattle – but even that case had a better suspect (landlord’s son).
If you would like more information about the Bundy/Burr conundrum, there is a recent book out called “Ted and Ann – The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy” by Rebecca Morris that explores the connection between the serial killer and the missing child. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend this book…but it IS the only book-length treatment of this fascinating case… JT
About the Author: JT Townsend is a freelance writer, true crime author and lifelong resident of Cincinnati. Visit his website at www.jttownsend.com and his Facebook page: JT Townsend True Crime Detective. This article was previously published in Snitch Magazine in 2004 and on the Clews historic true crime website.
This is an interesting and well-written post!
As someone who worked with Bob Keppel in the Washington State Attorney General’s Office and who attended his press conference about Bundy’s confessions (yes, the reporters asked him about Ann Marie Burr), I’m well aware of the case. I’ve also heard that Bundy lived three miles away from her, and in my mind, that speaks against him as a suspect.
What do you think of the interview of John Henry Browne, Bundy’s lawyer? Bundy said, according to Browne, that his first victim was a man. If that’s true, Bundy was probably older when he first killed. I can’t imagine a boy not yet 15 taking down a man. It would also speak against Bundy as a suspect in the Burr case.
Hi Ann Marie, I think it is plausible that Ted Bundy could have been involved in the disappearance of Ann Marie Burr all those years ago, but it is difficult as there appears to be little evidence to link him to her other than he did live just three miles away at the time she went missing. Aged 15 is so young to be involved in such an act and you would expect an inexperienced child like this to have made mistakes which would have linked him to her disappearance at some point.
The John Henry Browne interview is interesting, it sounds like Bundy did very much reveal details of his crimes and quite possibily some unsolved crimes to him. It is hard to know with Ted Bundy when he was telling the truth and when he was lying, he was such a good manipulator. John Henry Browne is releasing a book in August this year on his cases over the years, including his work with Bundy, and I suspect that could be a very interesting read! Thanks for stopping by!
Is John Henry Browne’s book coming out in August? I’ll be sure to read it!
Apparently so, it’s called ‘The Devil’s Defender: My Odyssey Through American Criminal Justice from Ted Bundy to the Kandahar Massacre’ and is due out on 1 August 2016 in hardback. Definitely one for the reading list I think!
How could a boy too young to drive manage to hide the body? Since he certainly could not have driven it away to an isolated location, he would have had to have buried it nearby, and the police would easily have located the spot from the disturbed earth during their routine search after the disappearance.
Interesting article. I’m unimpressed with the idea that a fourteen year old can’t kill. Particularly one that went on to kill dozens of women. Bundy’s earliest established kills even resemble this one – the stealing into homes in the middle of the night and absconding with his victims. Was this the blueprint for his future murder spree? He even spoke about this type of abduction as that of a novice killer. Totally feasible in my mind. We also know Bundy was a thief. He could have stolen a car or “borrowed ” one and returned it. Fourteen year olds often know how to drive. There is ample evidence that Bundy’ childhood was anything but normal, so it’s fairly safe to say he wasn’t a normal teenager. So why can’t people think of him as a killer at the age of fourteen? Is it because he was the picture perfect image of the all American kid? We have detention facilities filled with young offenders and killers, most of whom who will never commit anywhere near the level of depravity as Bundy. Kids much younger than Bundy, particularly back in the 60’s and 70’s, ran away from home and made it across country. So why don’t you think an obsessed budding psychopath couldn’t make a six mile round trip in his same city? Bundy really did play off of people’s naïveté, exploiting the prejudices that exist in the seemingly all American boy next door facade that he used to exploit people’s vulnerability. We also know that Dahmer killed another child as a teen and Gary Ridgeway severely stabbed another younger boy as a teen to see if he’d die. Serial killer’s often kill animals as children, torturing them to death. So why the difficulty thinking Bundy could do the same?
Hi Greg, I agree Ted Bundy as a 14 year old was entirely capable of killing. Unfortunately we have seen many many cases of children that young and younger taking the lives of others. Just as adults, children are capable of some heinous acts. However, 14 years old remains young to kidnap and murder an 8 year old child with no witnesses and no evidence trail. Even in today’s age, some 56 years later this is very rare. The man Ted Bundy grew up to be was a very intelligent manipulator who knew how to disguise himself, hide his crimes and cover his tracks. At what age he began developing those skills is unknown. While I don’t think it is impossible that Ted Bundy was responsible for the disappearance of Ann Marie Burr, I think it is doubtful. He lived within the area at the time yes, but this alone, even when it comes to Ted Bundy, cannot be enough to attribute guilt.
Hi Fiona, I agree that we’ll most likely never have the answers to this mystery. And while you make a valid point regarding a child his age successfully abducting and killing without being detected is rare, alas, so is becoming a serial killer. And add to that becoming an organized sexual sadist even more uncommon still. And we know that Bundy was that rare creature. Also, as you point out, he was in the area when Burr disappeared. I might add that the Burr disappearance was extremely similar to many of his later abductions. The odds of all these coincidences occurring are probably in the realm of winning the lottery. And as I stated, there are ample documented cases of serial killers having murdered as teens, Ed Kemper being another example of this fraternity. Obviously I cannot make a case that Bundy killed Burr as the evidence doesn’t exist to link him. But it’s statistically improbable that a budding psychopath would live nearby and ultimately become an organized serial killer as well as an accomplished thief all while eventually commiting future murders that were eerily similar to the Burr case. I just find all of that makes it difficult for me to rule him out as a viable suspect. I might add that much of the evidence that later got him indicted for capital murder was circumstantial, such as cc receipts placing him in the vicinity of missing women.
Hi Greg, all very good points, thanks for sharing them and I think you are right, taking those all together does make it difficult to rule out Ted Bundy as a suspect. There are too many coincidences which in the case of a serial killer, maybe should be the red flag. I do wonder what happened to this little girl’s body and why she has never been found. I guess there are many locations in and around North Tacoma where someone who knew the area could hide a child’s body and in 1961 the resources and knowledge available for searching would not have been as extensive as it is today. If this was Ted Bundy and his first abduction and murder, the fact he got away with it would serve to fuel his future acts and build his confidence in his own skills of manipulation and deception.
Wasn’t there construction being done within half a kilometre of Anne’s house? I’m with Greg on this. It’s so similar to Linda Anne Healey’s murder that Ted is easily the most viable suspect. Even Anne’s father believes he saw Ted ‘kicking around mud’ the very morning of the search at that construction site. Her body was never found most likely because she is entombed in that construction site. Art Norman was also convinced Bundy did it. For a nocturnal wanderer like Bundy (even at 15 in 1961), with a mother as naive and as clueless as she was, to get on a bike in the middle of the night and ride three miles, lure a young girl out of her house, murder her and bury her in a nearby ditch, and ride home again, could all be done in a couple hours. 90% of Bundy’s adult victims also had absolutely nothing to link them to him.
The construction site is interesting. That would make a very accessible dump site and could be a possible explanation of where her body may be and why it has never been found. If Bundy did abduct and kill this little girl without anyone knowing or connecting him to the crime, it could have laid the foundations for his future killing behaviour and aided his growing confidence in doing so.
This is going to sound weird but could it be that Bundy may have inadvertently witnessed the abduction/murder.After all he was used to prowling late at night.Instead of doing the morally right of reporting the crime,perhaps he felt a strange thrill watching it.Anyone was capable of breaking-and-entering and abducting an 8-year-old,it didn’t have to be Bundy.That could explain Bundy’s third person account of Ann’s abduction to Art Norman.If he felt ashamed of being labelled a child killer,why did he confess to Lynette Culver’s murder(a 12-year-old victim from Idaho);he wasn’t even a suspect!
Now there is a thought I hadn’t considered. Maybe he did, never told anyone as you say because he got a kick out of it and this could have been the trigger for his own sinister behaviour against women in his later life. Interesting!
Hi, i’ve always believed that Bundy was telling the truth that he had nothing to do with Ann’s abduction.Even the detective who investigated the case,Tony Zatkovich,would hint in Ann’s memorial service held 38 years after her disappearence,that he believed her killer was still at large.It was people like Ann Rule and Bob Keppel who had done a lot to dent Bundy’s credibility.Bob Keppel would go on to CONCLUDE that Bundy killed Katherine Devine(a young runaway);and how wrong he was many years later when a DNA analysis ruled out Bundy’s involvement!And if one does the math,what are the odds that a 14-year-old-kid in his first foray into serial killing could pull off something so spectacular that dumbfounded investigators:UNHEARD OFF!Even Linda Healy’s abduction wasn’t the perfect crime;the crime investigators bungled the case(so had said the great Bob Keppel).P/S-I’m NOT a Bundy symphatizer,my opinions are based on what i’ve read in the leading books on Ted Bundy and print media and personal opinions of some detective friends.
One baffling thing about this crime is that we were told there was a partial footprint outside the window,so logically if someone accessed through it would have left footprints inside the hallway,all the way to Anne-Marie’s room,right?But none were found!
I believe Anne may have heard a ruckus and decided to investigate.She may have opened the front door and was then grabbed by whoever waiting outside,does it make any sense?It may have just been a burglar or it could have been Ted Bundy,we will never know that.But i am doubtful that she was snatched from her bed and spirited away ala Bundy.
Randy,Dr Robert Keppel is a detective worth his salt,if he strongly felt that Bundy was responsible,he obviously had his reasons for doing so.He had no reasons to “dent Bundy’s credibility”.What credibility did Bundy have anyway?He was a cold-blooded murderer who confessed to crimes he commited only to buy time.Dr.Keppel had studied extensively all the murder cases that occured in the Northwest between 1969-1974,and believed that Bundy may have been responsible for more murders than he confessed to.Besides Bundy only went into great details on murders in which no body parts were discovered(he provided their locations on maps),and ironically none were found!So,the golden questionj,did Bundy have anything to do with Ann’s disappearence?I would most certainly say:YES.He all but confessed to a certain Dr.Ronald Holmes,a psychiatrist.To paraphrase Ted Bundy”the killer started killing when he was 14 or 15 years old,and his first victim was a young girl aged 8 or 9 years old”.Now is that a confession or what?
Hi Franco, certainly sounds like a confession and it would fit the disappearance and presumed murder of Ann Marie Burr. The problem with Bundy is whether you can believe anything he said. He liked to lie and to manipulate so it’s difficult to be sure of the truth behind his words.
Hi Michelle, you would think that if someone broke in to snatch her they would have left more evidence of their presence inside the house. This is the horrible reality of people who simply vanish, we just don’t know what happened to them, how and who was involved. I can’t image the turmoil of her family all these years having these very same questions with no answers.
The likelihood that Bundy committed this crime seems very high. Serial killers are very rare in terms of absolute percentages. He was 3 miles away. Knew the girl. Had a bike. There was construction site to conceal body. Bike probably had big baskets. Fits his brazen MO ( especially the sorority attacks ).
Body most likely still under the construction that was happening at the time.
Most likely killed many many people that he hasn’t been linked to.
Lack of forensic evidence: due to less sophisticated investigation techniques at that time.
I can’t comprehend the lenght many people go to ‘exonerate’ Bundy of this crime.All the evidence no matter how circumstantial lean towards that man.Bundy refused to discuss/confess to any murder before 1974.He only chose to discuss murders which he felt displayed his prowess as a hunter/serial killer.I believe Ann-Marie was his first victim and the two flight stewardesses bludgeoned in 1966 his second.And god knows how many more before the authorities linked him to the murders in 1974.
I find this very interesting I just wish I was born back then and a detective of his case.
As someone who has studied this case, I am consistently confounded by those who are willing to write off Ted Bundy as a suspect simply because he lived three miles away! If he lived in a city even one hour away, I would completely dismiss the theory that he was involved. But, he was a paperboy for the Seattle Intelligencer at that time and would be plenty used to long bicycle rides and getting up at early hours to prepare for and execute his route. As a kid, everyone I knew rode bicycles for far more than three miles, so that doesn’t strike me as unusual at all. His mother claims he wouldn’t have sneaked out of the house without her knowing it – what a thing to say! Louise Bundy remained ignorant of all her son had been up to his entire life until he confessed on death row. Echoing his mother, Ted claimed to Anne’s grieving mom that he couldn’t have killed Anne Marie because, at 14, he wasn’t what he later became. Not so fast. The truth is, according to childhood friends and Ted’s own confessions, at that age he regularly sneaked out at night to peer in windows, dragged little girls into the woods to urinate on them, set fire to animals, and tried to steal a car (later expunged from his record); does that sound like a normal 14 year old boy? The most glaring information missing from this article is that Ted actually did confess to the murder of Ann Marie, in his usual roundabout way of confessing but not confessing, to a criminology Professor who interviewed him on Death Row. Bundy bragged that his first kill was an eight year old girl he lured out of her home, killed her in an orchard (there was an orchard next door to the Burr home), then threw her body in a drainage ditch, and watched hundreds of people search for the child the following day. So one minute he confesses, the next he doesn’t. Ted was a psychopath, prone to the same lies as all the others like him, and he may have been telling the truth or he may have studied the details of the Burr disappearance and may have been leading the interviewer down the garden path just for the fun of being manipulative. But like Ann Rule, there’s too much in favor for me to chalk it up as a macabre coincidence. One should keep in mind that the University of Puget Sound bisected the parts of town the Burrs lived in from the Bundys; this fits perfectly with Ted’s favorite modus of killing around or on a campus, be it a college or a junior high. And the fact that Ann vanished without a trace is another classic Ted Bundy modus. I believe she was his test bubble for his swarth of murder that continued with the two stewardesses just a few years later.
Jim Richardson is absolutely right. I live in Manhattan . A mile is twenty blocks. Three miles would be from 96th St. to 36th St. I can walk that at a leisurely pace in thirty minutes. On bike it’d take maybe ten minutes. A fourteen year old I’d assume could traverse it even quicker than my old bag of bones – particularly one headed out on a mission of abduction and murder. Kids get around, especially one with a bike and paper route. I grew up in the seventies, we didn’t have helicopter parenting and play dates. You left home in the morning and returned in the evening. Schools didn’t call if you weren’t there. No alarm bells were set by your absence. Kids ran the streets and parents didn’t care. Sneaking out was easy as parents weren’t constantly checking on you. Hell, at ten I would ride the trains alone to other boroughs. Tacoma was working class back then. Working class people, like we were, encouraged kids (especially boys) to be independent, hard working and industrious. A little mischief was to be expected and smiled upon. My friends and I snuck out and hung out all of the time.
And then, Bundy all but confessed to this crime while on death row. We know he was a sexual sadist and serial killer. He was a f’d up kid to put it mildly. He placed knives around a sleeping relative as a small child. Witnessed his grandfather torture neighborhood animals. Took young girls into isolated areas to urinate on them. Was arrested for stealing a car. Had an explosive temper according to childhood friends. Admits to peeping into women’s windows. Was tangentially linked to the Burr family. And to boot, he is the only identified serial killer that lived in the area at that time. My guess is that he never confessed to protect whatever twisted relationship he had with his mother. He also seems to have desperately wanted to believe he was not always sick, and was at one time a normal kid “from a nice Christian family”, as he stated in one of his final interviews before being executed. He could’ve simply not wanted it to have been viewed as bad parenting by his mother. Or maybe he needed to believe he was alright at one time and that evil external forces (like pornography and pulp novels) turned him into an ogre. Who knows. But he was a mess from all accounts at a very young age. The other incriminating factor for me that it was Bundy is that this type of crime is rarely isolated. There weren’t other cases it could be linked to in the area or cross the country. Not until we learn of Bundy years later that has a string of similar homicides. My money is on Bundy.
Using DNA available today, would it still be possible to determine if Grandpa was Ted’s biological father? As to the construction site, could it be determined if there are remains in the concrete with ground penetrating equipment?
I absolutely believe he did this. No evidence means nothing. Other than the minimal murders he admitted to, or the one’s where he was seen, there aren’t any evidence for those either. It’s SO circumstantial – like all his kills – that THAT is enough for me. No body, no evidence, no motive, no nothing… it’s classic Bundy. It’s almost an identical crime to LindA Ann-Healey 14 years later – too similar to not make him suspect #1. I think he knocked on the window (he may have even planned this night-time rendezvous with her at some point and it would be ‘their secret’), she saw him, and went on an exciting night-walk with him… to her it would’ve been that innocent. I can’t believe the foundations of that building have not been checked with ground-scanning equipment. Her body has probably been entombed there all this time. Not only that, but I think Ann’s father’s gut-feeling about who he saw that morning playing around on the construction site were spot-on. The public heat this caused most likely scared the crap out of Bundy until 1966, when he couldn’t resist the urge again.
Let’s not forget, the entire Bundy story is stranger than fiction. If it was a Hollywood movie people would laugh at how over the top it’d be. Yet it was all absolutely true. This case fits as the start of that story very appropriately.
Oh yeah, and to add – it’s in the record there was a window peeper in the area the same week as the disappearance. Same with Linda Ann Healey.
Interesting comment Randy made. Did Ted happen to witness the abduction?
2 interesting things I notice here. The 17 y/o 3 doors down could have been the attacker. He would be about 75 now. He could have been observing the work going on at the construction site close by & timed when pouring of the concrete was going to happen. Perfect place for her to be. Right under everyones noses all these years.
They said they didnt have enough dna to connect him to Ann well what about his daughter or half siblings why cant they use there’s for a match???
I believe he did it.Bundy told Keppel that there were certain crimes that a serial killer would never confess to:a crime commited at a young age;a murder involving a young victim;and,a crime commited close to home.Seems to fit the bill if you ask me.
This case is still open but i wonder how long more it is going to remain such? We have run out of suspects.The prime suspect was executed 30 years ago and he denied it to the very end.
Many believe Bundy was responsible because they draw an analogy to his future crime:the Lynda Ann Healy abduction.One must understand that there were far more clues left at the Lynda Healy crime scene than Ann-Marie Burr’s.And Bundy was 27 and by all accounts an ‘accomplished’ serial killer then.So its hard to imagine Bundy being much more thorough in his presumed maiden venture into serial killing at age 14.
I believe she was most likely kidnapped by a child trafficking ring.She may or may not be alive today,we’ll never know.
Just days before ann marie’s disappearence the burrs had frequently heard noises around their house at night.Their dog,barney barked more than usual.Neighbors spotted a prowler lurking around the house.
Its pretty obvious that the burrs were singled out by someone.Could it have been ted bundy?I strongly believe so.
Acccording to a retired police officer i knew, who had also worked on the case,he personally believed ted bundy was involved in ann’s disappearence.But the leads was so tenuous that they couldn’t tie anything to bundy.The neighborhood kids said that ted was a frequent visitor and knew ann marie.The Burrs apparently didnt know that ted was acquainted to their daughter.Many people disbelief how a 14 year old could pull off o perfect crime.Believe me ted bundy was no ordinary kid/serial killer.
He was a night owl from a very young age and had a record for car theft.
In conclusion i think ann Marie’s disappearence is no big mystery.The answers lie right in front of us.
It wasn’t Bundy,why doesn’t anybody get it? Sure he was a despicable human being but pinning every unsolved homicide on him seems like an easy way out for tired detectives and opportunistic wannabee book writers.
Ever since zac efron starred in yet another bundy flick,there seems to be a rejuvenated interest in the serial killer once more.
Ted bundy’s first documented kill was in 1974 and presumed earlier kills are nothing more than educated guesswork among investigators.
I remember when I was 12 to 14 years old, before I was able to drive at 15 (I grew up in Louisiana – and we were allowed to drive at that age back then). I would bike ride easily 5 to 10 miles from home. So 3 miles is not that far, especially if he had a bike.
This was such a gripping read! The possibility of Ann Marie Burr being connected to Ted Bundy is both haunting and thought-provoking. It really makes you wonder how many secrets might still be out there about unsolved cases like this one. Great job on shedding light on this story!