Janice OttOn a summer day in July 1974, when many people visited Lake Sammamish State Park in Washington, two young women went missing after talking to a man with his arm in a sling. One of those women, Janice Ott, was seen accompanying the young man who called himself Ted. She was never seen again. Many years later, it was discovered she had fallen prey to serial killer Ted Bundy.
On the morning of July 14, 1974, 23-year-old Janice Ott had spent a few hours washing her clothes at a laundromat, and enjoyed a cup of coffee with a friend she met there. After these chores were done, Ott went home to her apartment at 75 Front Street in Issaquah, and got ready to go enjoy the sunny weather at the beach.
She put on a black bikini, cut-off shorts, and a white blouse tied at her midriff, then made a scribbled a short note to let her roommate know where she was going. “I’ll be at Lake Sammamish sunin’ myself. See ya,” she wrote. Janice then hopped on her 10-speed yellow Tiger bike and made her way to the park.
Lake Sammamish, located in Issaquah, a suburb outside of Seattle, was a popular destination for residents and those out-of-town to enjoy. It has several beaches and can get very crowded during the hot summer months. On the day Janice Ott chose to go there, Lake Sammamish was visited by many people, who flocked there to enjoy the summer weather.
Most were either on the beach, walking their dogs, enjoying picnics or sailing boats. That same day, an annual summer picnic was being hosted by the Rainier Beer Company, and it was reported there were as many as 40,000 people at Lam Sam on that warm, summers day. One of those at the park that day was a young dark haired man with his arm in a sling, who was seen talking to many different women and girls.
After arriving at the park, around 12:25pm, Janice Ott was seen by several people who later recalled the pretty young newlywed as she removed a towel from her bag, removing her blouse and shorts, and then applied a layer of cocoa butter to her skin. She was only there for twenty minutes when the dark haired man with his left arm in a beige sling approached.
He was, according to witnesses, dressed in a white shirt, tennis shorts, and tennis shoes. They had a brief exchange, and those closest could hear the young man asking Ott for assistance with putting a sailboat on his car. “It was just down the road, at his parents house,” he explained. Janice invited the man to sit next to her, so they could “talk abut it.”
Witnesses later told police how they overheard Janice telling the handsome stranger how she always had an interest in sailing, but had never learnt. She then asked the man, in a flirtatious way, if she could “have a ride in the boat,” and appeared to agree in helping the man if he would take her out on the water afterwards.
Before they got up to go, Janice was heard telling the man that she had her bike with her, and she was worried about leaving it for fear it might get stolen. The man assured there was room for her bike in the trunk of his car, and Ott then told the man, “OK, I’ll help you.” As the two started to walk away from Tibbett’s Beach, one witness remembered Janice say, “Hi, I’m Jan,” to which the man responded, “hi, I’m Ted.” It was the last time Janice Ott was seen alive again.
Born on February 14, 1951, to Dr. Donald and Ferol Blackburn, Janice Ott had grown up in in McMinnville, Oregon, with her sister Illona Lynn. The Blackburn family were prosperous, with Donald Blackburn earning his Doctorate degree from the University of Idaho, before working as a high school teacher and coach in Idaho.
Janice’s father then went on to work as a counselor and administrator in Washington state, specifically at the Spokane School #81. Alongside his teaching work, Dr. Blackburn and his father owned and operated a Pepsi Cola Bottling Company in McMinnville, Oregon. Following in her father’s footsteps, Janice graduated from Shadle Park High School with high honors and went onto earn her Bachelors in social work from Eastern Washington State University.
Standing at only 5’1” and weighing less than 100 pounds, Janice was a petite girl, with long blonde hair and green eyes. She was known affectionately as “Jan” by family and friends, while her co-workers the well-liked Janice was called the “Sunshine Girl,” because of her bright and bubbly personality.
Working as a probation case worker with the King County Youth Service Center, she married Jim Ott in December 1973. With her husband in graduate school in California, Janice decided to move out of Seattle. This was, in part, because of an incident where her car was broken into, and she felt living in a smaller community might be safer.
By 1974, she was living at 75 Front Street in Issaquah, and from there she decided to go to Lake Sammamish State Park on the fateful summers day. After she was reported missing by her family, it was learned by police that Janice Ott was one of two women who vanished from Lake Sammamish that day. Two women who were seemingly taken by the same handsome stranger named Ted.
With two women believed kidnapped in broad daylight, with hundreds of potential witnesses, police expected to gather plenty of witness statements from those who saw and heard Janice Ott before she was taken. Three people close to where Ott was sunbathing saw the young man approach, and all described the same person.
He was a young white male, attractive and personable, wearing a white tennis outfit and with his left arm in a beige sling. He reportedly spoke with an accent, possibly Canadian or British, and asked for help in unloading his sailboat from his car. Those who overheard the conversation said the man called himself “Ted”.
From these witness statements, police put together a composite sketch of the suspected kidnapper, while detectives gathered as much information about Janice Ott’s last moments with the stranger. Theresa Marie Sharpe came forward to say how she was in close proximity to Ott, and recounted for investigators what she heard.
Sharpe went on to give a detailed description about the exchange she observed between the two strangers and what exactly was said. She said she suspected the man was feigning his injury, saying she, “didn’t feel his arm was really hurt. I do remember he took his arm out of the sling and moved it around.”
Sat closest to Ott was 15-year-old Sylvia Valint, who told police the man was roughly 5’6” to 5’7” in height, and gave a similar physical description to other witnesses. Valint was able to tell police, word-for-word, the conversation between Ott and the stranger, and gave details those no other witness did.
Although further away from where Janice Ott was sat, Jerry Snyder an off-duty DEA agent, saw the young man approach others on the beach that day. Snyder said he seemed only to ask women for help, never any men nearby, and that specifically he was “trying to find someone who met certain qualifications.”
Sitting roughly 30 feet away, Snyder overheard some of the exchange with Ott and “Ted”. He said, “I noticed a guy that was walking down the beach. A young man. Probably in his mid-to-late twenties. He was wearing white shorts and they had a red stripe, which immediately caught my eye. When he got close, I noticed he had really curly hair and his left arm was in a sling.”
“It piqued my interest because every time he approached a woman, or a group of two or three women, he was getting turned down. And I just kept watching him and he eventually ended up being right in front of me, where he approached a young girl. She was a young and attractive blonde girl. And he asked her… words to the effect of… ‘I need some help.’”
“She’s saying that she just got here… So obviously, going through her mind is ‘I’d like to help you out, but I’m here to relax.’ He kept on and on and on, and he talks her into whatever he talked her into. He said something about a catamaran. And ultimately, she gets up… reluctantly… because her head is down and she is like ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this.’”
“And then she started walking back past me. She had this frown on her face, like, ‘I’m helping this guy when I should be enjoying myself on the beach.’ And the end the result is she’s no longer with us because she was a nice person.’” Snyder and others watched as Janice Ott walked off with the stranger. These three witnesses observed Janice Ott from the moment she arrived on the beach and position herself between them, until she walked away.
Jerry Snyder was sat with his wife about 15 feet from where Valint was laying on the beach with her two friends. Theresa Sharp was with her family about 10 feet from Valint, and all were situated on the beach about 200 yards directly in front of the east restroom.
Four other young women came forward to report to police how they too had been approached by the man with his arm in a sling, who asked for their help. One of those, 22-year-old Janice Graham, said she was approached by the man at the bandstand area at around 12:15pm, and after he said hello and introduced himself as “Ted”, the man asked her help in loading a sailboat onto the top of his car.
Although she initially agreed, Graham quickly realized there was no sailboat one they reached his vehicle, a tan-colored Volkswagen Beetle. She told the man she would be unable to help as she was meant to meet her parents and husband shortly. The man replied, “Oh, that’s OK. I should have told you that it wasn’t in the parking lot.”
He then walked Janice Graham back to the bandstand area, apologizing one last time before walking away to his right. Graham told police the stranger who called himself “Ted” was wearing a beige sling, and during the journey to his car, rubbed his injured arm three times, claiming it was from a racquetball injury.
Other women reported encounters with the same man, hours later. Only Graham accompanied the man to his vehicle, the others declined. Immediately after he parted ways with her, the man came across Janice Ott, who accepted his request for help, and seemingly accepted his excuse that his sailboat was elsewhere, causing her to accompany him away from Issaquah.
Some four hours after Janice Ott went missing. Another young woman, 19-year-old Denise Naslund also disappeared. With the description of the suspect, police printed the composite sketch in regional newspapers and broadcast the incident on local television. Tips soon started to come in from the public.
One name cropped up on as many as four different reports, that of Ted Bundy. At the time, Bundy was a law student with no criminal record. Those who reported him, namely his own girlfriend at the time, Elizabeth Kloepfer, a former co-worker Ann Rule, a fellow co-worker at his current employment at the DES office, and a University of Washington psychology professor, all said Bundy looked like the sketch.
Similarly, Bundy owned a Volkswagen Beetle, the vehicle the suspect was reported to own, and which was observed by Janice Graham. However, as detectives were receiving as many as 200 tips per day, they decided to rule out Bundy, a clean-cut law student, as a possible kidnapping and murder suspect.
The disappearances of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund were among eight cases of missing women in Washington State, starting in January 1974. The other women, Lynda Ann Healy, Donna Manson, Susan Rancourt, Roberta Parks, Brenda Ball and Georgann Hawkins, were all college aged women, pretty, and with their hair parted in the middle. These similarities between the missing young women were not lost on some investigators.
Many detectives suspected the same perpetrator might be responsible for most, if not all of the disappearances. But with few leads, and hundreds, even thousands of tips to follow up on, detectives hoped some, if not all of the missing women would reappear alive and well.
These hopes were dashed on September 6, when a pair of grouse hunters stumbled across the skeletal remains scattered amongst a grassy patch in a wooded area near Issaquah, roughly seventeen miles east of Seattle and two miles from Lake Sammamish. The area was immediately sealed off and King County Police conducted a three day search of the area.
Searchers came across two skulls, as well as some other bones, teeth, and tufts of reddish blonde and dark brown hair. The remains, which were by that time, fully decomposed, had been dispersed throughout the forest by critters. There were no clothing or other personal affects with the remains to indicate the identity.
Samples were taken and tested against the missing women, which were soon identified as those of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund. Detectives believed that both women had been left naked at the site by their killer, which would account for the lack of clothing. Six months later, more remains found on Taylor Mountain.
These were believed to be those of Healy, Rancourt, Parks and Ball. Other bones found later at the same site as the discovery of Ott and Naslund’s remains, would eventually be identified as those of Hawkins. Under the most distressing of circumstances, the missing women had finally been found.
Almost a year after the remains of Janice Ott, Denise Naslund and Georgeann Hawkins were discovered in Issaquah, a young man was arrested driving his Volkswagen Beetle through a Utah suburb. Ted Bundy, the same man whose name had been given to police by four people, one being his own girlfriend, had been caught driving suspiciously.
During his arrest, Bundy’s car was searched by officers, who found a variety of items they thought were burglary tools. These included gloves, a screwdriver, a flashlight and a aski mask. However, they also found inside the black dufflebag, rope, strips of cloth, wire, large green plastic bags, and a pair of handcuffs.
After his arrest, Bundy was identified by Carol DaRonch as the man responsible for her attempted abduction in November 1974. While police built a case against Bundy, he was released on bail and then sold his Volkswagen Bug to a teenaged boy. It was soon seized by police who conducted a thorough forensic search of the vehicle.
Inside they found evidence that tied Ted Bundy to other cases of missing women in both Washington and Utah. Hair samples were collected that matched four different missing women, one of which was Caryn Campbell, who vanished from Snowmass in Colorado in January 1975, and was later found bludgeoned to death a month later.
In June 1976, Bundy was found guilty of the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch and sentenced to between one and fifteen years. Investigators now began to gather evidence that linked Ted Bundy to as many as eight disappearances in Washington, and another five in Utah. Through solid detective work, Bundy was placed in the area where the two women vanished.
Investigators were aware that Bundy had been in the area the weekend before the Lake Sammamish disappearances, that were eventually able to place him in Issaquah at the time of Janice Ott’s kidnapping, by matching up his credit card receipts to where he filled up at a local gas station located at the northwest corner of the intersection of Front Street and Sunset Way.
It was speculated that before the abductions Ted Bundy visited the Issaquah Press, where he purchased a newspaper. After his arrest and conviction, the bookkeeper insisted it was to Bundy she had sold a copy of the newspaper. The Issaquah Press was located only two doors down from where Janice Ott was living at the time.
On July 7, Ted Bundy told his girlfriend he had been invited to a water-skiing party at Lake Sammamish State Park. This was false however, as Bundy was seen at Lake Sammamish by several people who knew him from Republican Party functions. He was reportedly seen walking along the beach alone.
When these acquaintances saw him they asked what he was doing. Bundy replied that he was “just walking around”. When they invited him skiing, he declined, saying he had no shorts. Four days later, Bundy called in sick to work at the DES office, telling his supervisor Neil Miller that he had a cold.
On the morning of Sunday, July 14, 1974, Bundy unexpectedly arrived at his girlfriend Liz Kloepfer’s house, and asked what he plans were for that day. She recalled he seemed particularly interested in where she was going. She told him about a small park she intended on going, and hoped he would join her there, but he never did. This was the same day Janice Ott went missing from Lake Sammamish.
Instead, Ted Bundy made his way to Lake Sammamish, where thousands of other people were already arriving. He turned up wearing a white tennis outfit, and with his arm placed inside a beige sling. After parking his Volkswagen in the parking lot, he made his way to the crowded beach. It was then that he came upon Janice Ott, as she lay in her black bikini soaking up the sun on Lake Sammamish’s Tibbett’s Beach.
By the time he returned to work at the DES office on July 22nd, the composite sketch of the Lake Sammamish suspect who called himself “Ted” had been released by the Seattle Times. Bundy would take a great amount of banter from the other workers at the office, who all commented how much the composite of “Ted” resembled Bundy.
They joked “Gee Ted, you sure look a lot like that guy… and you own a Volkswagen…” One of those DES employees reported Bundy to police as a potential suspect in the Lake Sammamish disappearances, while his girlfriend Liz was growing increasingly worried about what her boyfriend might be capable of.
While police in Washington and Utah sought Bundy for questioning, other jurisdictions such as Oregon and Idaho also wanted to talk to him about missing person cases in their states. By the time of his conviction in Florida, Bundy was a suspect in the disappearance or deaths of as many as thirty-six women and young girls.
During his imprisonment, Bundy planned an escape that last several days. After his recapture, he made a further successful attempt that saw him make his way to Florida, where he committed more murders. During his attack on the Chi Omega sorority house, Bundy killed two woman and injured another two, while a third was attacked several houses away. In February 1978, he was captured after committing his last murder, that of 12-year-old Kimberly Leach.
For these crimes, Bundy would be sentenced to death twice during two separate trials. With Ted Bundy on death row, he became the focus of interviewers and behavioural experts who wished to understand the psychology and pathology behind his crimes. Not long after he was incarcerated, Bundy agreed to a series of interviews to discuss the murders for which he continued to deny involvement.
While on death row in March 1980, Ted Bundy, suspected by many law enforcement investigators of being a serial killer, agreed a series of interviews conducted by journalists Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth. As part of the interview process, Bundy agreed to talk about the crimes in the third-person perspective.
This gave him a chance to discuss his crimes, while not directly implicating himself in anything that might result in additional murder charges. During one of the interviews, that spanned several days over the space of a few months, he was asked directly about the Lake Sammamish abductions of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund.
He put forward the theory that “one of the women would probably have watched the other die.” This would have meant that after Bundy abducted Janice Ott, he kept her alive for the next four hours, until his later kidnapping of Denise Naslund. He then killed one, while making the other watched before her own death.
For Bundy, it was possibly the first he had orchestrated the kidnapping and murder of two women on the same day. It was a distinct and drastic divergence of his usual MO, as was his approaching potential victims during the day, when there were so many witnesses present that could identify him and his Volkswagen.
It is possible that by this stage in his murder spree, Bundy thought himself almost impervious to the police investigation, after all, he had committed, up to that point, as many as six murders without getting caught. The only other time he attempted to take two women during the same day was when his aborted attack on Carol DaRonch caused him to seek out another victim later the evening.
Bundy would later speculate further during his discussions with FBI special agent Bill Hagmaier, and seemed to confirm what he had told Michaud and Aynesworth, namely that either Janice Ott and Denise Naslund had watched the other die. He then went on to say how after he had killed Ott and Naslund, he dumped their bodies along the side of a service road near Issaquah.
What he never explained, however, was the exact location he held them, or where the murders occurred. Police theorized Bundy had likely bound Janice Ott after he abduction, and possibly raped her during the four hour period between her kidnapping and his return to Lake Sammamish where he lure away Denise Naslund.
If he did leave Ott alive somewhere, it would have likely been a secluded spot, where she was unlikely to be discovered. It is also entirely plausible that Bundy murdered Ott, then returned to abduct Naslund for some other reason. It is possible he had not gained sufficient sexual gratification from the act of killing Ott, which caused him to require another victim.
It could also be argued that Bundy had set out to murder two women that day, spending a sufficient amount of time with Janice Ott, before his urge to kill overcame him and he sought to carry out his second abduction. By 4:00pm, almost four hours after he kidnapped Janice Ott, Bundy returned to Lake Sammamish and was seen talking to Denise Naslund.
Less than 24 hours before his execution in January 1989, Bundy confessed to both Janice Ott and Denise Naslund’s murders. He then went on to share more details with FBI agent Hagmaier about Janice Ott’s death. He confessed that he drove Ott, who was unconscious, to a secluded cabin roughly 2-3 miles from Lake Sammamish. There, he said he raped her repeatedly before knocking her out again and tying her up.
He said when he returned with Naslund, Otto had at some point regained consciousness. He said he then raped and murdered Naslund in front of her, before eventually killing Ott. “He said that after a while, murder is not just a crime of lust or violence,” Hagmaier related. “It becomes possession. They are part of you… [the victim] becomes a part of you, and you [two] are forever one… and the grounds where you kill them or leave them become sacred to you, and you will always be drawn back to them.”
Bundy confessed to returning to the sites where he placed his victims, and carried out acts of necrophilia with the remains. It is possible he returned to the Issaquah dump site to engage in such action with Janice Ott’ remains. Despite these last minute confessions, Bundy’s scheduled execution was carried out and he went to Florida’s ‘Old Sparky’ electric chair on January 24, 1989.
The disappearances at Lake Sammamish shocked the community, which had already seen a number of young, pretty women, vanished without trace. The significance of Janice Ott’s abduction would prove critical in the ongoing investigation into the capture of Ted Bundy, and meant many more victims were likely saved from the prolific predator.
Because Bundy had approached a number of women before Ott agreed to go with him, meant that for the first time, law enforcement had credible and accurate descriptions of the abductor known as “Ted”. With that information, they were able to compile a composite sketch that resembled Ted Bundy, so much so, that people who knew him decided to report his likeness to investigators.
If had had remained in Washington, it is possible Bundy would have been caught sooner. His name was on several list of suspects, namely those who owned a Volkswagen Beetle, and police were closing in on him. However, his sudden relocation to Utah contributed to his continued freedom, and the rash of disappearances that followed in Utah.
In the years following their daughters murder, the Blackburn’s became involved in an ongoing legal fight against the Kings County Sheriff’s office over Janice’s remains. Police had told the families of Ott and Denise Naslund that the remains of their loved ones could not be turned over for burial because they were evidence in an ongoing investigation.
The truth, however, was much more sinister. The remains of both women had, in actuality, been misplaced. Both families filed a lawsuit against the county in 1984, but before a trial could begin in December, an out-of-court settlement was reached. The Blackburn’s had originally sought $4 million, alongside James Ott.
As part of the settlement, they received significantly less, around $112,500, the same that was offered to Denise Naslund’s parents. The settlement never brought closure for the family of Janice Ott, whose remains could never be buried properly. They could, however, take comfort in the knowledge that her killer had faced justice for his crimes.
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