Author: Ted Bundy was capable of killing Tacoma child as teen

Ted Bundy confessed to more than 30 murders and was suspected of more. (AP Photo)

Investigators are hoping a vial of Ted Bundy’s blood found in Florida will be useful in solving cold cases including the case of a Tacoma 8-year-old who went missing in 1961.

Bundy was only 14-years-old at the time of 8-year-old Ann Marie Burr’s disappearance, but an author who has been investigating the case for four years says Bundy showed signs early on that might indicate he was capable of such a killing.

“He was very capable of this by age 14,” said Rebecca Morris, author of the upcoming book, “Ted and Ann: The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor, Ted Bundy,” in an appearance on 97.3 KIRO FM’s Ross and Burbank Show.

“By age eight he was killing animals, taking apart animals, setting animals on fire and taking little girls into the woods to urinate on them,” says Morris. “By 14, when Ann Burr disappeared, he was prowling neighborhoods, prowling on his bike, peeping through windows, stealing.”

Listen to interview: Author Rebecca Morris

Morris says Bundy’s family reports unusual behavior starting as early as age three.

“At age three, he was putting knives around a sleeping aunt and when she’d wake up scared, he really delighted in that.”

Morris says mutual friends of Ted Bundy and Ann Marie Burr report the two knew each other.

“In 1961, police didn’t know who Ted Bundy was. He was a 14-year-old boy living a couple of miles away from the Burr home in north Tacoma,” says Morris. “Once we knew Ted Bundy was Ted Bundy and that he was from Tacoma, police began looking at him as a possible suspect.”

Before he was executed in 1989, Bundy confessed to more than 30 murders and was suspected of many more.

Morris says that in 1987, Bundy offered a type of “hypothetical confession” in the Burr case.

“In 1986, he and Beverly Burr, Ann Burr’s mother, were corresponding. He denied it in letters in 1986, but in 1987 he did give a kind of hypothetical confession to killing her.”

While Bundy is typically known for his killings of college co-eds, Morris says there were also children among his victims.

“His very last victim was 12-years-old, and there’s some other children mixed in there.”

Morris says that the two original detectives in the Burr case believe Bundy is an unlikely suspect, but she’s very interested to see if they can establish a link to the notorious serial killer with the new DNA profile.

A bulletin will be sent to law enforcement agencies across the country when the DNA from the Florida blood sample is uploaded to the national DNA database. Tacoma police are among those waiting.

By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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