The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History Read Online Free PDF Page A

her mom, dad, and boyfriend over for dinner the following evening and was looking forward to it. After their talk, Lynda said goodnight and walked downstairs to her room.

The steps leading down to Lynda Healy's apartment in the basement of the rooming house she shared with other University of Washington coeds (courtesy King County Archives).
    In an odd foreshadowing of events, it has been reported that one of the young women saw a "shadow" that night which "moved" just outside a window on the side of the house, but apparently thought little else about it.' Her almost immediate dismissal of this as a threat - a Peeping Tom or something more sinister - is understandable. As humans, we want to believe the threat is not real, that things are really okay, we want to believe there is no bogeyman or that our eyes are merely playing tricks on us. To her horror, how ever, the validity of her initial apprehension would be made all too real the following day.

    Karen Skaviem, who had spent that evening studying at the library before going out with her boyfriend for drinks, returned home about midnight and noticed "a single living room light was on."' Entering the house she saw light coming from Joanne Testa's room and she, too, decided to visit for awhile. Around 12:45 A.M., the two women ended their conversation and Karen walked downstairs to her room. As she descended the steps, she didn't stop to see if the door leading from the basement to the outside was locked. This door was key-unlocked from the inside only, and used primarily by Lynda and some of the others when they wanted to ride their bicycles. For Lynda this was an almost daily occurrence, as the bike was her main mode of transportation. Yet it was the front door they should have been concerned about. Unfortunately, the keys to this door had been lost by some of the current residents and replacement keys were due to be made, but until then, the door was left mostly unlocked as a courtesy to those coming in late at night. This would prove to be a fatal mistake, for a killer of young women, long before anyone had gone to bed that evening, would place his hand on the doorknob and turn it ever so gently until the door gave way and he was free to enter the house, something he chose not to do. No, he reasoned, he could return later when everyone was in a deep sleep and explore the dwelling at that time.'
    The only light left burning in the basement was in the storage area, and as Karen passed through it, she could see Lynda's room was dark and assumed (probably correctly) that she was sleeping. Karen would later tell police that she had trouble falling asleep, but believed it was somewhere around 1:30 in the morning when she finally drifted off. She would hear nothing unusual during the night.
    At 5:30 A.M., Karen was awakened by Lynda's alarm but remained in bed until her clock started buzzing at 6. "I got up," she remembered. "Lynda's alarm was still going. I went past her room and heard the radio but thought she was lying in bed listening to it [and] didn't have to work. At 6:30 the phone rang ... it was Northwest Ski Promotions asking why Lynda wasn't at work. I went to her room and called her. When she didn't answer I turned the light on and went in. Her radio was still going and her bed was made, perfectly. I was concerned she hadn't slept in it because there were no wrinkles and the spread was neatly tucked under the pillow."' Not only was her bed made differently than Lynda would make it (a fact that was later noticed with surprise by all her roommates), but it was not her custom to make the bed at all, not on those weekday mornings when she barely had enough time to get herself ready and be at the radio station by 6:30 A.M.
    As Lynda was not in the basement, Karen called up the steps to see if anyone knew her whereabouts. Monica Sutherland yelled back that she might be with her boyfriend, but this was immediately shouted down by the others; Lynda wouldn't do that, they