This day in history: The suspect in a brazen shopping mall attack in Utah had a local tie and, eventually, an infamous reputation

From 1975: A law student at the University of Utah and “former assistant to the Washington State Republican Central Committee{span}”{/span} was charged with aggravated kidnap and attempted criminal homicide following an attack on a girl at a Salt Lake-area shopping mall.

The arrested man’s name: Theodore Robert “Ted” Bundy.

Seattle police acknowledged that they had been contacted about the suspect, but he was “not now considered a suspect in the so-called “Ted murders,” in which girls disappeared after being seen with someone who introduced himself as Ted. A King County officer said that “we’ve got 2,870 ‘Ted’ suspects.”

However, Utah officials indicated that they believed the shopping mall incident was connected to two other murders in the state. No other charges had yet been filed.

From 1925: Isador “Izzy” Edelstein, “one of the smartest safe riflers in the United States,” was now ensconced in the Spokane City Jail.

Edelstein had been arrested in San Francisco after a three-year manhunt. He was the chief suspect in the sensational 1922 burglary of dozens of safes and vaults in Spokane’s Paulsen Building.

Edelstein had been convicted in Spokane in 1918 on a safe-cracking charge, but he maintained his innocence in the later Paulsen caper.

“I cannot understand how I have been singled out and this crime laid at my door,” he said. “I have not been in Spokane since 1918 and I can prove that I was elsewhere at the time of the burglary.”

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1995: Former NFL running back, broadcaster and actor O.J. Simpson is found not guilty of the murder of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman in Los Angeles.