Serial killer Ted Bundy said girl in Boise was a victim. Officials want to identify her

Fifty years ago, Ted Bundy was driving through the Treasure Valley while moving from Seattle to Salt Lake City when he noticed a girl hitchhiking on Interstate 84 near Boise.

He offered her a ride, killed her and disposed of her body, he told investigators in 1989. Now a cold case detective with the Ada County Sheriff’s Office hopes to identify her.

Bundy confessed to killing the girl, whose name he said he didn’t know, shortly before he was executed in Florida. Ada County Sheriff’s Office investigator Tim Cooper said the confession was part of a “marathon” of admissions Bundy made before he died in the electric chair.

In an ACSO Cold Case Files podcast the agency published Friday, Cooper detailed what he knows about the unidentified victim and how Idaho residents can help officials track her down.

Cooper, whose patrol includes I-84, said he heard about the Bundy confession while talking with truck drivers at local truck stops.

“Sometimes truck drivers will ask me about Ted Bundy and if I know anything about the abduction,” Cooper said in the podcast. “Once that started happening, and it happened a couple of times, I started researching it a little bit more. When I was first asked I didn’t know anything about it.”

Bundy had maintained his innocence despite being convicted of several murders and suspected of even more. But shortly before his scheduled execution, he agreed to talk with investigators from Washington, Utah, Colorado and Idaho about unresolved cases.

The podcast included parts of Bundy’s confession in his own words. He told the Idaho investigators in 1989 that he picked up a teenager “on the outskirts” of Boise in early September 1974. Bundy described the girl as 16-18 years old, about 5’6” with light brown hair. He said he believed she was a runaway from Boise headed to somewhere in Montana.

Bundy also said the girl had a large green backpack with her and was wearing “a simple little bead necklace” with black and light-colored pieces that were like “long little sections of spaghetti.”

Cooper said he initially noticed some discrepancies in Bundy’s description of the area and Interstate 84 before realizing the road was under construction at the time Bundy passed through. Based on Bundy’s memory of “ranch-style houses” on the outskirts of the city, Cooper believes he may have picked the girl up near the Eisenmann Road exit southeast of the airport.

Though Bundy’s confession gave investigators little to go on, Cooper said he has reason to believe the notorious killer was telling the truth. Other confessions that Bundy gave at the time have been tied to confirmed cases. Bundy even admitted to another Idaho killing — that of 12-year-old Lynette Culver, of Pocatello — at the same time he detailed the Boise Jane Doe case.

Bundy remains a prime suspect in Culver’s death, but her remains have never been found and the case is still open.

“Of all the confessions that Bundy gave that turned out to be accurate, I really don’t think he had cause to lie about this one (from Boise),” Cooper said in the ACSO podcast.

Cooper was able to corroborate Bundy’s presence in the Boise area around the time Bundy described killing the girl. Bundy’s former girlfriend told investigators that he called her from Nampa in early September 1974, and Cooper reviewed gas receipts from a station near the Boise Airport that put Bundy in the area on Sept. 2.

Cooper said he believes that’s the date Bundy picked up the hitchhiking teen.

The cold case investigator said there’s even a possibility that Bundy tried to pick up another victim in Boise around the same time. He is investigating an attempted abduction report from that time frame involving a man pretending to be a police officer — a common tactic of Bundy’s.

Cooper said he’s combing through hundreds of reels of microfilm and chasing other leads to try to identify the Boise hitchhiker. He said it’s possible the girl may not have been from Boise, which could complicate her identification. There are no unresolved missing persons reports from the Boise area at that time that match the description Bundy gave.

The Ada County Sheriff’s Office asked anyone with information on a missing person from that time period or knowledge of someone matching the description to contact the department at at (208) 577-3102 or lmontague@adacounty.id.gov.