TACOMA, Wash. -- In a rare interview, the mother of serial killer Ted Bundy defended her son against accusations he kidnapped and killed Ann Marie Burr in 1961.
"I resent the fact that everybody in Tacoma thinks just because he lived in Tacoma he did that one too, way back when he was 14," Louise Bundy said last week. "I'm sure he didn't."Since Ted Bundy became known as one of the world's most infamous serial murderers, armchair and professional detectives have debated his possible involvement in Burr's disappearance.
Some, including Tony Zatkovich, one of the original Tacoma police detectives on the case, believe Bundy could not be Burr's killer. Others have reached the opposite conclusion.
With a dearth of real clues, the mystery seems likely to live on.
Bundy was executed in Florida in 1989 after being convicted of killing two Florida State University sorority members and a 12-year-old girl.
Before the execution, he confessed to killing at least 35 women in Washington, Utah, Colorado, Idaho and Florida. Some experts believed he killed more than 100 women.
But he consistently denied any involvement with Burr's disappearance.
One who doesn't believe the denial is Bob Keppel, a retired investigator for the Washington state attorney general's office and a former King County sheriff's detective who interviewed Bundy.
He suggests Bundy wouldn't want to confess to killing a child and didn't want to confess to a crime that hit too close to his family.
Louise Bundy counters that her son did confess to killing 12-year-old Kimberly Leach in Florida, and thus had no reason not to confess to killing another child.
The confessions he did make have been a "terrible tragedy" for the family that loved and believed in him, Louise Bundy said.
But no matter how difficult it is to accept the confessions, Bundy's mother said she cannot accept that her son started his killing spree while he lived under her roof.
"We were such a close family," she said. "He was living at home. All these other things happened when he was away."
"I feel so sorry for the Burr family because they've sort of latched onto this (theory )," Louise Bundy said. "But he couldn't have done it.