The Stranger Beside Me Read Online Free PDF

was somewhat odd then that he should tell Professor Scott Fraser that he had been a foster child, raised in one foster care home after another during his childhood. Fraser accepted this information as fact and was surprised later to find that it had not been true.
    Ted often frequented University District taverns, drinking beer and occasionally scotch. It was in the Sandpiper Tavern on September 26, 1969 that he met the woman who would be a central force in his life for the next seven years.
    Her name was Meg Anders. Like Stephanie, Meg was a few years older than Ted. She was a young divorcee with a three-year-old daughter named Liane. Meg was a diminutive woman with long brown hair-not pretty, but with a winsomeness that made her seem years younger than she was. The daughter of a prominent Utah doctor, she was on the rebound from a disastrous marriage which had foundered when she learned that her husband was a convicted felon. Meg had divorced him and taken her daughter to Seattle to make a new life. Working as a secretary at a Seattle college, she knew no one in Seattle except for Lynn Banks, a childhood friend from Utah, and the people she worked with.
    A little hesitant at first, she had finally allowed Ted to buy her a beer and had been fascinated with the good-looking young man who talked about psychology and his plans for the future. When she gave him her phone number, she really hadn't expected that he would call her. When he did, she was thrilled.
    They began a friendship, and then an affair. Although Ted continued to live at the Rogers home and Meg kept her apartment, they spent many nights together. She fell in love with him; given her situation, it would have been almost impossible not to. She believed totally in his ability to succeed-something Stephanie had never done-and Meg often loaned Ted money to help with his schooling. Almost from the start, she wanted to marry him but understood when he told her that would have to be a long time in the future; he had much to accomplish first. Ted continued to work at part-time jobs-selling shoes for a department store, working again for the surgical supply house. When he couldn't make ends meet, Meg helped out.
    Sometimes she worried that it was her family's money and

THE STRANGER BESIDE ME
    position that attracted Ted to her. She'd seen his appraising glance around their home in Utah when she took him home for Christmas in 1969. But it had to be more than that. He was good to her, and he was as devoted as a father to Liane. Liane always got flowers from him on her birthday, and Ted always sent Meg a single red rose on September 26th to cornmemorate their first meeting.
    She sensed that he sometimes saw other women, knew that he and a friend would occasionally drop into the Pipeline Tavern or Dante's or O'Bannion's and pick up girls. She tried not to think about it. Time would take care of that.
    What she did not know was that Stephanie existed, that Stephanie lived in Ted's mind as strongly as she always had. Although Stephanie had felt relieved when she said goodbye to Ted in the spring of 1969, she had not dropped him cornpletely. The California woman who had wrought such a cataclysmic change in Ted Bundy's life had relatives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and she had taken to calling Ted to say "Hi" when her travels brought her through Seattle from time to time. As 1969 and 1970 passed, Ted's path was straight upward, excelling in everything he put his hand to; he was becoming more urbane, superbly educated, socially adept. He was an ideal citizen. He even drew a commendation from the Seattle Police Department when he ran down a purse snatcher and returned the stolen bag to its owner. In the summer of 1970, it was Ted Bundy who saved a three-and-a-half-year-old toddler from drowning in Green Lake in Seattle's north end. No one had seen the child wander away from her parents-no one but Ted-and he had dashed into the water to save the youngster.
    Ted kept up his