Sotria KritsonisIn the winter of 1972, Sotria Kritsonis, a 22-year-old student was on her way to college when she was offered a ride by a young man driving a Volkswagen Beetle. Accepting the offer of a lift, Sotria soon felt unsettled as the driver became threatening. However, something happened that caused the man to let her go. Years later, she realized the young man she encountered all those years ago had been serial killer Ted Bundy, and that her hair was the reason she survived.
On a cold winter’s day in 1972, 22-year-old Sotria Kritsonis left her Seattle home and made her way to the nearby bus stop on Rainer Street. Wearing her woolly hat pulled down to keep her warm, she waited for over an hour in the cold. She was excited to get to school and show her friends her new haircut.
After waiting over an hour, the student was already late for collage, when a pale yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulled up alongside her and the driver signalled for her to get in. He told her, “I’ve come down Rainier Avenue and that’s a long way and there’s no bus in sight. Would you like a ride?”. Although she didn’t recognize the young driver, he appeared friendly and Sotria was thankful for his offer, and so she accepted.
As she sat back in the seat, Sotria could feel the warm air from the Volkswagen’s heater blasting from the vents, and she followed the familiar route the driver was taken. However, she soon grew alarmed when the driver started going a different way. When he signalled to take the next turn onto a busy freeway, she saw they were heading in the wrong direction.
Just as she was about to tell the driver, he turned to her and flashing a smile, said “You know it’s a terrible idea to take a ride from a stranger.” She then watched from the corner of her eye as he reached under and started rummaging beneath his seat, seemingly looking for something. Worrying that she was being kidnapped, Sotria began thinking about how she could escape.
She thought about throwing herself out of the moving vehicle, but when she turned, she saw to her horror, that the doorhandles had been removed from the inside of the passenger door. She was trapped. With the man still looking for something, Sotria believed her had found it as he raised up some heavy metal object that she couldn’t quite see properly.
However, something strange happened. Sotria remembered how his face changed from a cold, callous expression, to one of confusion. She saw his eyes look up at her hat, and he told her to take it off. Fearing for her life, and with her hands trembling, her did as he asked and removed her thick woolly hat, to reveal her new haircut.
The man looked up with a shocked expression on his face, and appeared to drop whatever it was that he was holding that had been found under his seat. Sotria recalled hearing it land with a loud and heavy metallic thud. A long, tense silence followed, and finally the young man spoke, asking “Why did you cut your hair?”.
Sotria wondered how the man knew she had recently cut her hair, suspecting the man might have been stalking her. Fearful, she remained silent and eventually the man dropped her off outside her school. In one account she was reportedly pushed to the ground by the man, who warned she had been ‘lucky’.
Although Sotria told her family, she dismissed the bizarre encounter, and decided against reporting it to police because the man had caused her no injury, despite his unsettling behaviour. She put the incident out of her thoughts, and almost forgot the encounter until a year-and-a-half when she saw the young man again.
It was 1975 when Sotria Kritsonis was watching television when she saw a familiar face on the screen. When she turned up the volume, she heard that the man she recognized, an attractive young man with curly hair, was being led into a courtroom by police. His name was Ted Bundy, a suspected multiple killer.
She soon learned why he was in custody and on trial. Bundy was accused of the attempted kidnapping of a young woman he lured into his pale Volkswagen Beetle, who managed to escape. As she heard more about Bundy and his crimes, Sotria learned he was suspected of enticing women into his vehicle, then brutally attacking them with a tire iron.
Remains discovered on Taylor Mountain were believed to belong to missing women from Washington. To her horror, Sotria soon found that Bundy was a suspect in the deaths of eight women from Seattle, as many as five from Utah and others from Colorado and Idaho, and was the prime suspect in other disappearances.
For Sotria Kritsonis, she came to the realization that on that cold winter morning in 1972, she had come face-to-face with a suspected kidnapper, rapist and serial killer. That she lived to tell the tale was her only comfort, given that so many other women who had been lured by Bundy into his car, met with a violent and appalling death.
It was noted by investigators that almost all of Ted Bundy’s victims were similar in appearance, young women, pretty and with their long hair parted in the middle. The hair style in particular was something Bundy actively looked for in a potential victim. This was a desire that was ingrained in his psyche.
The speculation surrounding these preferred attributes centred on his first girlfriend, Stephanie Brooks, who was a young, pretty woman with her hair parted in the middle. When she ended her relationship with Bundy, which left him devastated, was believed to be the impetus of his later crime spree.
In effect, Ted Bundy was murdering Stephanie Brooks over and over, with his victims as substitutes in her place. This psychological aspect is speculation, especially considering that many women during the 1970’s wore their hair part in the middle. When she crossed paths with Ted Bundy, the life of Sotria Kritsonis was saved by having her hair cut.
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