Ted Bundy’s Colorado Terror: 30 Years Later

It’s been 30 years since Ted Bundy was executed, but his trail of death led straight through the heart of Colorado.

When Ted Bundy was on trial for the murder of Caryn Campbell in Snowmass, Colorado, investigators were trying to link him to a Utah murder that was eerily similar. Investigators had no idea he killed two other women in Colorado after Campbell: Julie Cunningham in Vail and Denise Lynn Oliverson in Grand Junction.

But that’s when the one-time law student, who was serving as his own lawyer, escaped authorities the first time in Colorado.

The trial was in June of 1977, two years after Campbell disappeared while vacationing with her fiance in the ski resort community. The nurse had gone back inside to fetch a magazine while she was staying at the Wildwood Inn, but she would never be seen alive again. Campbell’s body would be found in the woods nearby a month later, with strangulation the possible cause of death.

(PHOTOS: Ted Bundy’s Reign of Terror in Colorado)

During a hearing for the Campbell case in Aspen, Bundy was unshackled and asked to be escorted to the law library. The request wasn’t unusual for a lawyer to do some fact-checking amid a trial; it was unusual, however, for the lawyer-suspect to escape the deputies’ watch.

(See Part 2, Bundy’s Confession)

Bundy’s charismatic persona had successfully won the trust of those around him, not unlike the dozens of women who he would bludgeon to death.

Behind the bookshelf, on the second floor of the law library, a window was cracked open. The late spring, cool mountain air, breezed through just as easily as Bundy did.

The opportunity was his. He jumped and ran.

His escape sent those in the Roaring Fork Valley into a panic. Law enforcement — armed with long guns — went from car to car, wanted posters in hand, asking anyone if they had seen the escapee.

Bundy’s plan was to hike to Crested Butte, 40 miles as the crow flies, and disappear. Thankfully, his sense of direction was amiss. After breaking into several mountain cabins for shelter, he would reappear in Aspen after only six days, to be recaptured.

It was determined Bundy would be housed at the nearby Garfield County Jail, in Glenwood Springs — itself, looking more like an office building than a jail.

Six months of skipping breakfast proved fruitful for Bundy. The already-lean man lost even more weight. Sufficiently small, he cut a hole through the ceiling tile in his cell and climbed through the air ducts over the new year holiday, when staffing was short.

He succeeded again.

By the time deputies at the Garfield County Jail realized he was gone, Bundy was already in Chicago, having boarded a flight from Denver.

It would be a little over one month later, Bundy’s killing spree resurfaced at Florida State University, where he killed two co-eds and a 12-year-old girl, who he kidnapped.

The full terror of Bundy’s murders wasn’t fully known until he started to confess prior to his execution. He told investigators of 35 murders, but some estimate he might have killed as many as 100 women due to similarities in their deaths and time period.

Ted Bundy was executed in the electric chair January 24, 1989, after spending 10 years on death row.