The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History

Read The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History for Free Online

Book: Read The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History for Free Online
Authors: Kevin M. Sullivan
natural surroundings. There is a definite harmony visible there between the ruggedness (and sometimes ruthlessness) of the forest, and the warmth and safety of civilization, something the school has managed to maintain to this very day.
    Young Donna Manson was, like many of her peers at the time, in a category detectives would classify as "high risk." She was a hitchhiker, both locally as well as out of state. She preferred to stay out all night. She would sometimes leave the area without telling anyone, but, like a migrating goose, always managed to return safely home. She was also somewhat of a doper; at least a user of marijuana. Indeed, her association with people involved in both the using and selling of illicit drugs brought her into close contact with some very unsavory characters. In one of the journals later obtained by the Thurston County Sheriff's Department, Donna had written: "Paranoid speed freak hanging around waiting, just waiting alone he thinks security is after him, can't roll a joint. Asked a lot of questions. Lived out on Cooper Point Road. Says he's got a lot of hot shit. No doubt."9

    Unfortunately, leading this type of lifestyle left little time for studying and classes. A statement taken from Andrea Michelle Horn, who was Donna's roommate from October through December 1973, said, "Donna liked to party and visit, and did so most every night until the early morning hours. She would frequently then sleep in, and not attend her classes, asking [me] to tell her what happened when I got back."" Although Andrea found this irritating, it was Donna's habit of turning on the lights and stereo whenever she returned home in the wee hours of the morning which caused Andrea to seek out another place to live for the remainder of that year.
    A player of the flute and a writer of poetry, Donna also had an interest in the occult and was considering a course on magic and witchcraft that was going to be offered at the University of Washington. Apparently, it wouldn't be at the university proper, but at an off-campus site nearby. When asked about this, Andrea, with perhaps a bit of sarcasm, said Donna's interest was "casual only [as] it would require too much reading for Donna, who was basically lazy.""
    On the evening of March 12, 1974, Donna had every intention of attending a jazz concert being held on campus. Unable to make up her mind, she would change outfits several times before deciding on a red, orange, and green top; green slacks; and a beloved fuzzy top coat that once belonged to her grandmother. She walked out the door for the last time around 7:00 P.M. It was drizzling that evening, and as Donna stepped out into the darkness, the coat felt especially good in the chilly night air. Her walk would be a relatively short one, over the man-made pathways which stretch out like veins in each direction as they wind their way through the maze of fir trees so prominent to the campus of Evergreen State.
    There is little chance she had heard about the disappearance of Lynda Healy or the brutal attack on Terri Caldwell. The papers ran several stories on the Healy mystery, and a brief mention about the January 4 attack, but those things were in Seattle and had little to do with Olympia, much less her small school. She could not have known as she walked that pathway so familiar to her, thinking about the concert and who might be there, that a malignant being was very close to her now, and was also familiar with the walkways and fir trees of Evergreen State. But for him, Evergreen was not a place of learning, but a place to hunt, and he was confident that on such a night and in such a place he would find what he was looking for. And once again, he would be right. Donna Manson would vanish either along the pathway or from the parking lot adjacent to the building where the concert was being held. Was she enticed to enter a car willingly, or was she placed unconscious in a vehicle and driven away, only to later awaken to a

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