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Susan Rancourt
"We believe Susan was abducted"
In April 1974, student Susan Rancourt suddenly and inexplicably vanished without trace. Her disappearance was similar to that of three other young college-aged women who went missing under suspicious circumstances. Almost a year later, he skull was positively identified among others found on Taylor Mountain, one of serial killer Ted Bundy’s gravesites.
Susan Rancourt: Washington Disappearance
In Seattle, Washington during 1974, young women of college age started to go missing with startling frequency. Beginning in January, with the apparent kidnapping of Lynda Ann Healy and the disappearance of Donna Manson, who left her dormitory at Evergreen State College to attend a jazz concert in March, but never arrived.
There were few witnesses who saw these women during the hours before they vanished, and there was never any reason to suspect that the two cases were connected to a single perpetrator. That all changed in April 1974, when several women came forward to report how they were approached by a man wearing his arm in a sling who asking for help.
The first instance happened on April 12th, Good Friday, when a sorority girl was accosted outside the campus library at Central Washington State University in Ellensburg, Washington, by a man with his arm in a sling and a metal brace on his finger. She later told detectives that he appeared to be having trouble carrying his armload of books, dropping several of them.
The young woman offered her assistance and escorted the man to his Volkswagen Beetle, that was part 300 yards away. When they arrived at the vehicle, the woman noticed something bizarre… the front passenger seat was missing. The two chatted for several minutes about how the young man had injured his arm skiing at Crystal Mountain.
Although the man seemed friendly, the young woman couldn’t shake the sense of unease she felt about him, and the missing seat in his Volkswagen. The urge to get away suddenly overcame her and she placed the books on the roof of the vehicle and run as fast as she could. She didn’t know it, but her intuition saved her life.
Just five days later, another young woman would not be so lucky. Born on October 12, 1955, Susan Elaine Rancourt was also a student at Central Washington State University in Ellensburg, Washington, and she too had an encounter with a strange young man. On the evening of April 17, 1974, Susan Rancourt left dorm on the college campus to attend a meeting for Living Group Advisors on the lower campus.
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The meeting at 9:00pm was about a potential job, and afterwards Rancourt had made plans to watch a German film with a friend, but she never arrived. She was last seen around 10:30pm walking across Central Washington State College lawns. By 3:00am, her roommate Diana Pitt of Yakima called the dorm manager because she had not returned. “I got worried she wasn’t back,” said Pitt. After the report was turned over to the campus police, a massive search was undertaken.
The search involved around 150 volunteers who walked across Ellensburg, checking the college, abandoned buildings and sewers that covered a two mile radius of the city. But nothing was found. A missing person case was investigated by police, who thought Rancourt might have stayed with friends or had gone away for some unknown reason.
Susan Rancourt: Other Missing Person Cases
A reward was put up by her parents of $1,000 for any information that led to her whereabouts. Susan Rancourt was described as 18-years-old, white, 5’2″ and 118 pounds, with blue eyes, blond shoulder-length hair. On the night she went missing, she was wearing a bright yellow finger-tip length ski jacket without a hood, grey corduroy slacks, a yellow short sleeved sweater and brown hush puppy shoes.
A straight-A freshman biology student, Susan Rancourt was considered very smart and sensible by her friends and family. Her father Dale Rancourt said although police had no leads, they were certain she had been abducted. Taking time away from his job with the Anchorage telephone utility, Rancourt helped with the search for his daughter. Police received leads that led from Sitka, Alaska, to Boynton Beach, Florida, alongside one that pointed to Australia.
“We believe Susan was abducted because she was always a very logical person, very predictable,” her father said. “If it was one of my other children, I’d say just stand by, they’ll be back in two or three days, but not Susan, she was always very careful.” Dale Rancourt said Susan had put her laundry in the washing machine before heading to her campus meeting.
The month after Susan Rancourt’s disappearance, Kathleen Parks was reported missing from Oregon State University. In June, Brenda Ball was last seen after leaving the Flame Tavern in Burien after talking with a man with his arm in a sling. Later that same month, Georgeann Hawkins simply vanished from an alley behind her sorority house.
These women were all pretty, college-aged women who were similar in appearance, trusting and it soon became apparent that these cases might be connected. The Pacific Northwest police agencies attempted to find a common link, however it only became apparent when two women vanished on the same day.
On July 14, 1974, Janice Ott and Denise Naslund were abducted hours apart at the Lake Sammamish State Park, where hundreds of people had gathered during the hot summer day. Witnesses came forward to tell police that the two women were seen approached by a young man with his arm in sling, and who introduced himself as “Ted.”
That day, the stranger known as “Ted” approached several women at Lake Sammamish, in an attempt to get them to leave with him to help load a sailboat onto his car. Several women refused, but Ott and Naslund went with the man with his arm in a sling. They were never seen again. Shortly after this, two witnesses came forward with information.
On 17 April, the same night Susan Rancourt went missing, a young man was seen on crutches at Ellensburg by several witnesses at about 7:00pm. This man approached a sorority girl, Jane Curtis, asking for help carry his books, and she readily agreed to help because of his handicap. When they approached his car, she recounted for the police what happened next.
She noticed the front passenger seat was missing and sensed something wasn’t right. The young man asked Curtis if she could get inside his car, but she declined. When he pressed her a second time, she dropped the books and ran. She described the man to police as well-dressed and wearing glasses.
The son of a Oregon district attorney who was visiting the campus also came forward and reported seeing a man with his arm in a sling standing in front of the Barto Hall around 8:30pm on the same evening. Later, at about 10:00pm, another sorority girl, 21-year-old Katherine Clara D’Olivo, was approached by a man asking for help taking books to his car. When they arrived at his parked car, a tan-colored Volkswagen Beetle, the young man suddenly dropped the keys on the floor.
He then asked the girl to retrieve them, however, D’Olivo said she could see the light shining on the keys on the ground, and picked them up, placing them in his hand before she walked away. D’Olivo said the man as wearing shabby clothing and a woollen hat, a description that was at odds with Jane Curtis’ earlier description.
Barbara Blair also came forward and stated to police that she saw a young woman in a bright yellow raincoat exiting Munson Hall. This description matched what Rancourt was wearing that evening. Another witness claimed he saw a man loitering in the parking lot and smoking with his right hand. He later saw a vehicle on his drive back to Seattle.
These reports, although crucial to the investigation, did little to point detectives in the right direction. Shortly after the disappearance of Janice Ott and Denise Naslund, there were no further reports of missing women in Washington. It would be several months later, in October, that more women vanished in the state of Utah.
Susan Rancourt: Gruesome Discovery
In March 1975, two forestry students came across a disturbing find when they stumbled upon human remains while walking thought a swampy, wooded area on Taylor Mountain at Issequah. Police eventually unearth four skulls and other bones fragments at the site, located east of Seattle, and only 10 miles from a site where the skulls of Ott and Naslund were found in September 1974.
The remains were eventually identified as belonging to Lynda Ann Healy, Roberta Parks, Brenda Ball and Susan Rancourt. On the day Rancourt’s skull was identified, her father Dale was with his daughter’s dentist in Anchorage, when dental X-rays confirmed it was her. A mandible found at the site was also confirmed as belonging to Susan Rancourt.
The King County Medical Examiner had taken X-rays that were then mailed special delivery to Rancourt’s dentist in Alaska. “There were several points of identification that made us almost sure the skull was Rancourt’s,” said Police Chief Al Pickles. “This switches the case from a missing person to a homicide,” he added.
“Now we have to make an attempt to determine in which jurisdiction the homicide occurred.” Police were now convinced that a serial killer was responsible for the murders of young college students in Seattle, and the unknown man who called himself “Ted” was now the prime suspect in as many as eight abductions and murders.
Detectives started to search for anyone named “Ted” who lived or worked in the area, along with any owners of a Volkswagen Beetle. These were all common threads in some of the abductions, and witnesses came forward that each told a similar story of being approached by a man who feigned a handicap to gain their trust and help. With a list of possible suspects, investigators began to narrow the list down to find the killer.
Ted Bundy: The Lady Killer
In August 1975, a suspect was arrested in the attempted kidnapping of Carol DaRonch, who was abducted from the Fashion Place shopping mall in Murray, Utah. The man, Ted Bundy, was pulled over while driving his tan-colored Volkswagen Beetle, which was found to have what could best be described as a murder kit in the trunk, that consisted of rope, handcuffs, a pantyhose mask, balaclava and other assorted burglary items.
After he was implicated in the kidnapping of DaRonch, detectives in Colorado wanted to question Bundy over the kidnapping and murder of Caryn Campbell, who went missing from Snowmass Village, Colorado in January 1975. A forensic search of Bundy’s vehicle found hair strands that matched three different victims.
Charged and sentenced to one-to-fifteen years for the DaRonch kidnapping, Bundy was soon charged with the Caryn Campbell murder, and was transferred to Aspen to prepare for his trial. It was during this time that Bundy orchestrated two daring escapes, the last of which saw him flee to Florida, where he perpetrated more murders.
Finally captured one again on February 15, 1978, Ted Bundy was charged with the Chi Omega Murders and the murder of 15-year-old Kimberly Leach. Found guilty in both of these trials, Bundy was sentenced to death, and transferred to the Raiford Prison in Florida, where he would spent the next decade on death row.
Although Bundy protested his innocence throughout his incarceration, he did offer detectives some information on the murders, but never once did he offer any type of acknowledgement that he was responsible for the murder of Susan Rancourt. It was only in the final hours before his execution in January 1989, that he confessed.
Susan Rancourt: Ted Bundy’s Confession
Bundy admitted to the kidnapping and murder of Susan Rancourt. That evening, April 17, 1974, he had approached several students in an attempted to carry out an abduction, but none of his intended victims fell for his deception. Bundy had used this same method on several victims, a method that was intended to disarm them.
He would appear handicapped, having made and fitted a fake plaster cast, with materials he had taken from his previous employment with a medical supply company, and used the cast on either his arm or leg in order to appear helpless. Bundy would then carry a large amount of books, and appeared to struggle to carry them.
His intended victim would either offer to help, or he would request it himself. Once they accompanied him to his vehicle, Bundy would talk to them in an attempt to put them at ease. The victim would then place the books down on the seat of his Volkswagen, and as they knelt down, Bundy bludgeon them in the head with a crowbar he had hidden under the wheel-arch of his car.
With the unconscious Susan Rancourt in his Volkswagen, Bundy drove her towards his burial site at Taylor Mountain, where he skull was later found. It is possible that her body was buried elsewhere, as Bundy confessed that he decapitated some of his victims in Washington and Utah, taking the heads home with him.
It is likely he did this with Rancourt, and later buried her head with the others that were found there. The witness who saw a suspicious man smoking might have seen Bundy waiting to abduct a victim, and later saw his Volkswagen Bug, with the unconscious Susan on his way to the Issequah burial site, where her remains were found a year later.
Like his other victims, Rancourt was likely strangled, raped post-mortem, and her body then used by Bundy for several weeks after death. Rancourt’s skull was found intact, unlike other victims who had suffered fractures from his use of a crowbar to incapacitate. As she was only his third victim, it is possible that Bundy had yet to perfect his method of rendering them unconscious.
Like all of Ted Bundy’s victims, Susan Rancourt had a promising and bright future ahead of her, that was cruelly snatched away by a senseless act of murder. An eighteen, Rancourt was at the younger end of his victims, who were usually aged in the twenties. For his crimes, Ted Bundy would pay the ultimate price, in the electric chair Old Sparky.
Written by Nucleus
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