Read Ted and Ann - The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy for Free Online

wife answered the phone and heard a man say, “Mrs. Burr, that husband of yours is going to get himself killed. He is a matinee lover, and he better stay away from my wife.” Then the caller hung up. Several other times women called and asked if Burr was going to “come down to the apartment.”
    Donald B. Burr (the one who referred to himself as “just a lunch bucket”) did own some apartments. Bev had never liked Don’s side business. Tenants were always coming and going, and he had to spend his weekends making endless repairs. Bev was always a little scared when Don would go to collect the rents.
    Detectives P.P. Schultz and J. Fitzpatrick got a list of Don’s former tenants, and decided to pay his current ones a visit. Those visited included Miss Ethel F___ , an elderly woman, and Mrs. Georgia N___ , who explained that her husband was in the county jail and on his way to the state penitentiary in Walla Walla to serve 20 years for “falsifying a report on food allotment program.” There were a couple of vacancies, and one couple was on an extended vacation to Idaho. There were also a Latvian couple with a young son, and a man separated from his wife. The officers picked up a trustee from the city jail, gave him a large lamp, and had him crawl through a trap door, a cellar, and the attic. There was no sign of Ann.
    All the tenants were concerned over the disappearance of Don’s daughter and spoke highly of him. They did recall one incident, though. Don Burr had evicted “a colored family” after their son struck the son of the Latvian couple. Maybe there were some lingering bad feelings toward the landlord? When the detectives asked the elderly woman in apartment A about the episode, she barked that the boy who was slugged had it coming.
    The police also wanted to check out people who had done odd jobs for Don, including a Negro (as African Americans were called in Tacoma in 1961, and sometimes even now) and his 21- or 22-year-old son who had done some painting at the apartment building shortly before Ann disappeared. Bev and Don found it odd that when the son came to their house to pick up his pay a few days later, he knew exactly which alley and driveway to turn into.
    In her quest to try to help the police by giving them names of people to talk to, Bev told them of her suspicions of a neighbor she described as overly polite and insincere. The detectives wrote down the information, smiled to themselves, and dismissed her tip. They had more likely suspects to follow up with.
    Bev, whose only dream was to be a novelist or a journalist, suddenly found her family on the front page of the newspaper. The early afternoon edition of the Tacoma News Tribune featured a small story. It said that eight-year-old Ann Marie Burr, daughter of Donald B. Burr and Beverly Burr, of 3009 North 14th Street, Tacoma, was found missing from her bed early that morning. “She is believed to be a possible victim of amnesia,” the story reported.
    By the second edition, later that same afternoon, a huge headline on the front page proclaimed: “Girl, 8, Vanishes From Home—Chief Hager Calls For Wide Hunt,” accompanied by the photo the family had given police. In the picture, Ann, not usually demure, is standing alone, looking solemn, her hands together in front of her. She is wearing the paper lei, a headband, a blouse with short, puffy sleeves, and pedal pushers.
    Det. Richardson talked to reporters about the parents. He said that Bev and Don had “held up well” until about noon from the strain of their worries. But as the hours passed without any word of Ann, there was increasing indication of apprehension. That may have been when sevenyear-old Julie saw her mother hysterical, endlessly searching through kitchen drawers, as if she had misplaced Ann like a serving spoon.
    Everyone in Tacoma wanted to hear from the parents. How was the mother coping after the disappearance of her child? Bev was almost always the parent quoted in