On 31 January 1974, a student at the University of Washington, in Seattle, Lynda Ann Healy, vanished from her room; the bedsheets were bloodstained, suggesting that she had been struck violently on the head. During the following March, April and May, three more girl students vanished; in June two more. In July, two girls vanished on the same day. It happened at a popular picnic spot, Lake Sammanish; a number of people saw a good-looking young man, with his arm in a sling, accost a girl named Janice Ott and ask her to help him lift a boat on to the roof of his car; she walked away with him and did not return. Later, a girl named Denise Naslund was accosted by the same young man; she also vanished. He had been heard to introduce himself as ‘Ted’.

In October 1974 the killings shifted to Salt Lake City; three girls disappeared in one month. In November, the police had their first break in the case: a girl named Carol DaRonch was accosted by a young man who said he was a detective, he lead her back to his car and he snapped a handcuff on her wrist and pointed a gun at her head; she fought and screamed, and managed to jump from his car. That evening, a girl student vanished on her way to meet her brother. A handcuff key was found near the place from which she had been taken.

Meanwhile, the Seattle police had fixed on a young man named Ted Bundy as a main suspect. For the past six years, he had been involved in a close relationship with a divorcee named Meg Anders, but she had called the relationship off. After the Lake Sammanish disappearances, she had seen a photofit drawing of the wanted ‘Ted’ in the Seattle Times and thought it looked like Bundy. She telephoned the police. They told her that they had already checked on Bundy; but at the suggestion of the Seattle Police, Carol DaRonch was shown Bundy’s photograph. She tentatively identified it as resembling the man who had tried to abduct her, but was obviously far from sure. (Bundy had been wearing a beard at the time.)

In January, March, April, July and August 1975, more girls vanished in Colorado. (Their bodies-or skeletons-were found later in remote spots.) On 16 August 1975, Bundy was arrested for the first time. As a police car was driving along a dark street in Salt Lake City, a parked Volkswagen launched into motion; the policeman followed, and it accelerated. He caught up with the car at a service station, and found in the car a pantyhose mask, a crow-bar, an icepick and various other tools; there was also a pair of handcuffs.

Bundy, 29 years old, seemed an unlikely burglar. He was a graduate of the University of Washington, and was in Utah to study law; he had worked as a political campaigner, and for the Crime Commission in Seattle. In his room there was nothing suspicious - except maps of Colorado, from which five girls had vanished that year. Also strands of hair were found in his car that came from some of the missing girls. Carol DaRonch had meanwhile identified Bundy from a police line-up, and bloodspots on her clothes - where she had scratched her assailant - were of Bundy’s group. Credit card receipts showed that Bundy had been close to various places from which girls had vanished in Colorado.