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Lynette Culver
"disposed of her body in the Snake River"
During his death row confessions, serial killer Ted Bundy gave investigators details on many murder cases for which he was suspected of committing, but never charged. One of those was of missing high school student Lynette Culver, who disappeared in Pocatello, Idaho on May 6, 1975, and who was long thought to be a victim of another suspected serial killer.
Lynette Culver: The Missing Idaho Student
Originally born in Washington state on July 31, 1962, Lynette Dawn Culver grew up in Pocatello, Idaho, where she lived with her parents, Mr and Mrs Edward Culver at 237 Fairbanks. A 7th grader at Alameda Junior High, Lynette was described by her family as a typical preteen, while her teachers knew her as a good student who sometimes liked to skip class.
On the afternoon of May 6 1975, Lynette disappeared. The last time anyone saw her, she was last seen leaving her school during her lunch break, during which she reportedly boarded a bus Hawthorne Junior High, a journey that would take her to Fort Hall. Reported missing after she failed to return to school, investigators were unable to determine why Lynette would go to Fort Hall.
She was described as five feet two inches tall, with blue eyes and long brown hair and weighing about 105 pounds. Although only twelve, Lynette was by all accounts, older in appearance. On the day of her disappearance, she was known to be wearing blue jeans and a red checkered shirt with a maroon, fur-collared jacket.
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There were never any reports about Culver’s whereabouts, and investigators could take the case no further without proof that she had been either kidnapped and held against her will, or murdered. The body of Lynette Culver was never found, and police had no idea what happened to the young school girl.
Around this same time, serial killer Ted Bundy was kidnapping and killing young women throughout the states of Washington, Utah and Colorado. His victim of choice was almost always a young college-aged woman, pretty, with her hair parted in the middle. However, there were several factors what led detectives to believe that Bundy was not responsible for the disappearance of Culver.
Bundy’s victims were always much older than Culver, who at twelve, would have been his youngest victim up to that point in his murder spree. This, coupled with the fact that he had not, to the knowledge of law enforcement, ventured into Idaho in search of potential victims. He had started in Washington state, before moving to Utah, and then expanding into Colorado when police began to link his crimes to a single perpetrator.
Lynette Culver: Victim of an Idaho Serial Killer?
Several years after the disappearance of Lynette, there were a rash of other missing girls in Pocatello that police suspected might have been connected to Culver. Although these disappearances occurred many years after, it was believed that each of the young girls had met their end at the hands of the same killer.
15-year-old Patricia Campbell had last been seen at Alameda Park, in Pocatello, Idaho, on July 22, 1978. That day the park was the location of a Pioneer Day celebration, and coincidentally, another girl, 12 year-old Tina Anderson, disappeared in the park that same day. Although the girls did know each-other, it was reported they were not close friends.
After Tina failed to show up at a babysitting job that evening across the street from the park, family members reported the girls missing to the Pocatello Police Department. Three years later, another young girl went missing. 14-year-old Linda Smith was abducted from her Pocatello home at 239 N. 8th on June 14, 1981.
While babysitting her nine-year-old brother, an unknown man had rushed into the family home at around two in the morning, dragging Linda out of her bedroom, and into his vehicle. Her younger brother described the unknown man as white, and said he had his arm wrapped around Linda, who was kicking and screaming, trying to get away, before being shoved into a van with white flames painted on the sides.
Despite the description of the abductor, police had little to go on, and little progress was made in the case. May suspected Linda has merely run away from home. Even when Linda’s clothes were found in a ditch a week later by a city employee, police still did not believe she was the victim of a kidnapping.
The following May, eleven months after she was last seen, remains were found below Hospital Way on a hilly area near E. Center street in Pocatello. They were positively identified as those of the missing Linda Smith. The cause of death was never determined. The Smith family believed that the investigation had been botched from the start.
Later that same year on October 15, 1981, some partial remains were discovered when hunters stumbled upon bones about 60 miles away in rural Oneida County. Clothing found was identified as belonging to Patricia was also found at the scene. At the scene, the Sheriff’s Office also retrieved .22-caliber bullet casings.
Missing Tina Anderson would soon be identified through dental records, however the other remains thought to be Patricia’s could not be positively identified. With one girl missing, and the remains of two others found, police began looking into the theory that these cases were somehow connected and that an unidentified serial killer might be responsible.
On June 5, 1983, another young girl went missing. Sometime between the hours of 11:45pm and 1:45am, 14-year-old Cindy Bringhurst vanished while babysitting at an apartment in the 100 block of Highland Blvd, Pocatello. The following month in July, her body was found by a fisherman partially submerged in a stream in the Mink Creek area west of Pocatello.
Cindy had graduated from Alameda Junior High School, the same school which Lynette Culver was attending when she went missing. As in the case of the other missing girl, detectives were unable to determine what happened to Cindy. Three years later, on October 26, 1986, a partial skull lacking a mandible was discovered by hunters in the same area as the remains belonging to of Tina and the still unidentified young girl believed to be Patricia Campbell.
An examination of the skull indicated that the victim died due to being repeatedly struck with a blunt object. She was determined to have been white and aged between 12 and 16 years. After this, the skull was misplaced by law enforcement and was unable to be located for years, until it resurfaced in 2018.
In 2006, the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office began to search for the unidentified remains found in 1981. At some point during this search, the remains were rediscovered in the department’s evidence storage area. DNA testing was preformed on these remains, and they were confirmed to be Patricia’s in March 2007.
Efforts to help identify the skull found in 1986 began in 2021, with the assistance of Othram. DNA testing eventually confirmed the skull belonged to Patricia in October 2022. The murders of the four young Pocatello girls between 1978 and 1983 have never been solved, although in recent years police have come to suspect they might not have been committed by the same killer.
Lynette Culver: The Ted Bundy Confession
In the years since Lynette Culver’s disappearance, and the discovery of the remains of the missing Idaho girls, Ted Bundy went on to commit further murders in Florida. There, on February 9, 1978, he kidnapped and killed 12-year-old Kimberly Leach, who would be his youngest victim. Long suspected of targeting only adult victims, the revelation that Bundy raped and murdered Leach then opened up the possibility that he might be responsible for claiming younger victims.
However, with Ted Bundy on death row, he steadfastly refused to admit to his crimes, protesting only that he was innocent. Meanwhile, at the same time he gave detailed interviews to journalists on his suspected crimes, and talking about murder in the third-person so as to prevent him from prosecution, Bundy remained a suspect in Culver’s disappearance.
Finally, during his last days before his scheduled execution, Bundy decided to use his victims in a last ditch attempt to buy himself more time. He believed he could use details of his unsolved crimes as bargaining chips with detectives, in the hopes that it would prologue his life.
Although Bundy did confess to crimes he was never convicted, his execution date was not postponed. He went on to confess to as many as twenty murders of young women throughout Washington, Utah, Colorado, Oregon and Idaho. One of those Bundy talked about in Idaho was Lynette Culver, and he made a startling admission.
Ted Bundy went on to describe how on May 6, 1975, he was parked outside of the Alameda Junior High School in Pocatello, Idaho, 160 miles (255 km) north of Salt Lake City. He said he saw a young girl walking along by herself, and decided to try and lure her into his vehicle, a Volkswagen Beetle, that had been used in his previous crimes.
Once Culver accepted a ride, he drove her to his Holiday Inn hotel room. There, he said he raped Culver before drowning her in the bathtub. Bundy said he disposed of her body in the Snake River north of Pocatello. If detectives were still dubious about this admission, Bundy gave them more by reportedly provided intimate details about Lynette’s personal life in his confession.
Police would get no further time to question Bundy, as his time had run out. On January 24, 1989, he was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison for the murder of Kimberly Leach. With his confession, police believe that Lynette had fallen victim to Bundy, a coldblooded serial killer who claimed the lives of as many as thirty young women.
Written by Nucleus
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