The Stranger Beside Me (27 page)

I toyed with the fresh red carnation in the vase between us, smoked too many cigarettes, as did he. I offered him some from my pack when his ran out. The tables around us were vacated, and we were finally the only people left in the room.

How could I phrase it? I had to ask something. I studied Ted's profile. He looked as young as he ever had, and, somehow, more vulnerable.

"Ted ..." I said at last. "Were you aware of all the girls up here who were missing last year? Had you read about it in the papers?" There was a long pause.

Finally, he said, "That's the kind of question that bothers me." Bothers how? I couldn't read his face; he still looked away from me. Did he think I was accusing him? Was I? Or did he find it all a deadly bore?

"No," he continued. "I was so busy going to law school at U.P.S. I didn't have time to read the papers. I wasn't even aware of it. I don't read that kind of news."

Why wouldn't he look at me?

"I don't know any of the details," he said. "Just things my lawyer is checking out."

Of course he was lying to me. He had been teased by a lot of people about his resemblance to the "Ted" in the park. His own cousin, Jane Scott, had talked to him about her friend, Lynda Ann Healy. Carole Ann Boone Anderson had kidded him incessantly in their offices at the Department of Emergency Services. Even if he had no personal knowledge or guilt in the cs^es, he did know about them.

He simply dian't want to talk about them at all. He wasn't angry with me for asking; he just didn't want to discuss it. We talked of other things, old friends, the Crisis Clinic days, and promised to meet again before he had to go back to Utah to stand trial. When we stood outside in the rain, Ted

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reached out impulsively and hugged me. Then he was dashing off down First Avenue, calling back, "I'll be in touch!" As I walked up the hill toward my car, I felt the same emotions that would tear me up so many times. Looking at the man, listening to the man, I could not believe he was guilty. Listening to the detectives whom I also liked and trusted, I could not believe he was not. I had the distinct advantage of not being physically attracted to Ted. Any tender feelings I had for him were those of a sister for a younger brother, perhaps more compelling because I had lost my younger brother. I didn't see Ted again until Saturday, January 17, 1976. My ex-husband died, suddenly but not unexpectedly, on December 5th, and, once again, family concern had blocked thoughts of Ted from my mind. I talked to him on the phone once or twice in December, and he was up, confident, anxious for the court battle that lay ahead.

When he called and asked me to meet him on January 17th, I was surprised to hear from him. He said he'd suddenly wanted to see me, that he was leaving soon to go back to Salt Lake City to stand trial, and asked if I minded driving out to the Magnolia District of Seattle to meet him in a tavern there.

As I drove the twenty-five miles, I realized that no one knew I was meeting Ted. I also knew somehow that he had lost his ever-present surveillance team. When he svalked up to meet me a little after noon at the tavern that was a popular watering hole for soldiers from nearby Fort Lawton, I looked up and down the street for the sneaker cars that I had long since learned to recognize. There were none. He grinned. "I lost 'em. They aren't as clever as they think they are." We found a table on the other side of the tavern from the shouting soldiers. I had a package under my arm, a dozen copies of magazines with my stories in them that I'd picked up from the post office. It wasn't until Ted had glanced at it several times that I realized he suspected I might have a tape recorder. I ripped open the package and handed him a magazine.

He seemed to relax.

We talked for five hours. My memory of that long conversation is just that; it is indicative of my belief at that time in his innocence that I didn't bother to jot down notes when I

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got home. In many ways, it was a much more relaxed meeting than the earlier lunch. Again, we drank white wine, so much white wine for Ted at least, that, by the end of the afternoon, he was unsteady on his feet.

Because of the wine, or perhaps because we'd gotten our first meeting since his arrest over with, Ted seemed less edgy than he had been before. Considering the turns that our conversation took, this was remarkable, and yet I felt able to bring things up that might well have angered him.

The din on the other side of the tavern seemed far away; no one could overhear us. A fake gas log blazed merrily in the fireplace next to our table. And, as always, rain droned steadily down outside. I asked Ted at one point, "Ted, do you like women?" He considered the question and said slowly, "Yes ... I think T do."

"You seem to care for your mother. I guess it all goes back to that. Remember, when you to'la me 'ntsw jffu feffivi

I didn't show it, but I was surprised. I hadn't heard about the crutches or the plaster of Paris, and I certainly didn't know before this that Meg had gone to the police.

Ted seemed to have no rancor at all toward Meg, who had plunged him into, about as much trouble as a man can be in. His mild, forgiving stance seemed inappropriate. I wondered what Meg had tojd detectives about him. I wondered how he could forgive her so easily. Here, he was telling me that he loved her more than he ever had, and yet, if it were not for Meg, he would not be on his way back to Utah in a few days to stand trial for kidnaping; the most he would have had to 184

worry about were the charges of evading an officer, and possession of burglary tools.

I would have thought most men would have despised a woman who had done that to them, but Ted talked of the wonderful times they had had together while he was home during Christmas, their closeness-even though they were constantly followed by police.

It was too mystifying for me to even question him about; it was something I would have to ponder on. I nodded agreement when he asked me to look after Meg, to see that she had someone to talk to. "She's shy. You call her, will you? Talk to her."

Ted was still confident. It seemed as though the trial in Salt Lake City'was more of a challenge than a threat; he was like an athlete about to enter the Olympics. He would show them.

At one point during that long afternoon, I got up to go to the ladies'

room, walked past tables full of half-drunk soldiers, past a couple of dozen people who hadn't seemed to recognize Ted as the infamous Ted Bundy. As I walked back to our table, suddenly someone was behind me, his hands lightly gripping my waist. I jumped, and then I heard a laugh. Ted had come up behind me, so quietly that I hadn't even realized he'd left the table. Later, I learned that Ted enjoyed sneaking up on women (according to Meg and Lynn Banks), that he delighted in leaping ou\at them from behind bushes and hearing them scream. And I remembered how he had startled me that day in the tavern.

As the afternoon lengthened and it grew dark outside, the impenetrable murkiness of a January night in Seattle, I decided to tell Ted where I stood. I chose my words as carefully as possible. I was probably more honest with him about my feelings than I would ever be again. I told him about my visit to the psychiatrist, about my dilemma in being fair to him, while I knew I had a book contract on the story of the missing girls.

He seemed to understand completely. His manner with me was the same as it had been five years before when I'd talked about my problems in the Crisis Clinic offices. He assured me he could relate to my ambivalence.

"And, you know ... I have to tell you this," I continued. "I cannot be completely convinced of your innocence." , He smiled. The same flat response I was to grow used to.

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"That's O.K. I can understand that. There are . . . things I'd like to tell you, but I can't."

"Why?"

"I just can't."

I asked him why he didn't just take a polygraph examination and get it over with.

"My lawyer, John Henry Browne, feels that it's best." It was a paradox in itself that Browne should be advising Ted. Ted hadn't been charged with anything in Washington, although he certainly was under continued surveillance, and he'd been accused by the press and most of the public. But Browne worked for the Public Defender's Office, an agency funded to defend suspects actually charged with crimes. It seemed to be a game with no rules. It wasn't usual either for a man to be convicted by the media. Ted had been asked not to use the University of Washington's Law School library any more; it frightened women students to see him there.

"Ted," I said suddenly. "What did you want when you called me from Salt Lake City that night in November in

1974?"

"What night?" He seemed puzzled.

"It was November 20th, when I was in the hospital. You talked to my mother."

"I never called you then."

"I saw the phone records from your apartment phone in Salt Lake City. You called just before midnight."

He didn't seem upset, just stubbornly resistant.

"The King County Police are lying to you."

"But I saw the records."

"I never called you."

I let it go. Maybe he didn't remember.

Ted bragged more about how clever he'd become at losing the men tailing him, of how he taunted them.

"I know. Billy Baughman says you walked back to his car and asked him if he was with the Mafia or the police, that you just wanted to*be sure."

"Who's he?" *

"He's a Seattle Jomicide detective. He's a nice guy."

"I'm sure they're all princes."

Ted had talked in any depth to only one of the detectives who dogged his tracks. John Henry Browne had told him not to talk with police, that he was under no obligation to do so,

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but Roger Dunn had come face to face with Ted as he parked his car near a friend's apartment on December 3rd.

The two men, hunter and hunted, had stared at each other, and Ted had asked Dunn if he had a warrant.

"No. I just want to talk to you."

"Come on in. I'll see what I can do."

If Dunn had expected any voluntary give and take, he was disappointed. Ted had immediately gone to the phone and called Browne's office, informing an aide that Dunn was with him.

Before Dunn had finished reading Ted the Miranda warning, Browne called, asked to speak to him, and told him to leave the apartment as soon as possible; he didn't want Ted talking to any Washington state officers. Ted had been more sympathetic. "I'd really like to help you out. I know the pressure on you from the press is heavy. I personally feel no pressure, but I won't talk to you now. Maybe later, John and I might get in touch with you."

"We'd like to eliminate you as a suspect if we could. So far, we haven't been able to."

"I know there are things I know that you don't know, but I'm not at liberty to discuss them."

Roger Dunn had heard much the same sentiment that Ted would repeat to me often, had also noted that Ted would not meet his eyes. And then the interview had quickly ended. Ted had held out his hand and they shook.

They had taken each other's measure; they were never to meet again. Sitting in the smoky tavern, I felt that there was more Ted wanted to say to me. It was nearing six, and I had promised my son I'd take him to a movie that night for his birthday. Ted didn't want the visit to end. He asked me if I would go with him someplace to smoke marijuana. I demurred. •! didn't use marijuana, and I had promised my son I'd be home early. And too, although I was not frightened, I may have been a little ill at ease.

Ted was quite intoxicated as he hugged me outside the tavern, and then disappeared into the misty rain. I would see him again, twice, after we said good-bye, but I would never see him again as a free man. 21

It is my belief that Ted's trial in Salt Lake City on the aggravated kidnapping charge involving Carol DaRonch was the only legal proceeding where he had everything going for him. He had chosen to leave his fate up to a judge alone and to dispense with a jury. On Monday, February 23, 1976, the trial opened in Judge Stewart Hanson's courtroom. Ted was enthusiastic about Hanson's reputation as a fair-minded jurist; he truly believed that he would walk away a free man. He had John O'Connell on his side, a veteran of twenty-nine murder trials, and considered to be one of the top attorneys in Utah. He had friends in the courtroom: Louise and Johnnie Bundy, Meg, others who had flown in from Seattle, those who still believed in him from Utah: Sharon Auer and the friends who had convinced him to join the Mormon Church shortly before his first arrest.

But Midvale Chief of Police Louis Smith, Melissa's father, was also there, and the parents and friends of Debby Kent and Laura Aime. There could be no charges involving their daughters, but they wanted to see what they felt to be only

token justice done.

In the end, the verdict would depend on the reliability of the eye witness, Carol DaRonch, and on Ted Bundy's own testimony. O'Connell had attempted to have Sergeant Bob Hay ward's testimony about Bundy's arrest on August 16th suppressed, but Hanson refused to do so.

There was, of course, no mention during that first trial of the other crimes in which Ted Bundy was a prime suspect, no mention of the fait that the Volkswagen he'd sold to a teenage boy (coincidectally an ex-classmate of Melissa Smith's) on September 17, t975 had been seized by the police and systematically ripped apart as criminalists looked for physical evidence that would tie in to other cases in which Ted was