These Stolen Children

These Stolen Children

How many were stolen? Nobody knows. Nobody has ever known. Even the thief couldn't be sure. Police officials have variously estimated the toll to have been anywhere from just over thirty to well over one hundred. But, however uncertain the numbers are, one thing is clear. Whatever figure one takes, it approaches the magnitude of a major airplane crash.

These are the victims of serial killer Ted Bundy. The awful swath he cut across the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of relatives and friends of the beautiful young women and children that he murdered has never been mapped nor has the enormity of his crimes ever been fully comprehended. Surprisingly, even the number of his suspected victims is debated. Figures have ranged anywhere between 23 and 32. One victim, long associated with Bundy, was later attributed to someone else. According to Dr. Bob Keppel, one of the police officials who have pursued the case, such lists can be political, tailored to suit one's needs. So, no matter what number may be proffered, the plain truth is that we just don't know.

The sad truth is that we don't care to know. Had we treated the crash of TWA Flight 800 in the same manner with which we dealt with the Bundy case, we would have skimmed off the surface what bodies we could (losing a few in the process) and then we would have quickly gone on about our business, leaving the bulk of the victims and, with them the truth about what had happened, lying literally just beneath the surface; leaving their families at the water's edge, gazing out over the expansive sea, forever wondering, but never knowing.

Unlike the victims of an airplane crash, in this case there was no crash site, no point of focus, no rose on the beach. There were no armies of relatives and friends gathered around that rose, pressuring officials to do the right thing. There was no immediate media presence to provide an incentive for politicians to respond.

Spread out over thousands of miles from one coast to the other and, perhaps, over tens of years, the extent of the carnage could not be immediately grasped. There were no lists from which to identify potential names and little that would tie them together. Just a disappearance here and a body turning up there among so many thousands of others. For most, a mysterious disappearance was the only indication that anything was amiss. Without remains, there was no evidence of foul play, no way to connect all the pieces, no suspicion of the enormous tragedy that was unfolding. Only the "luckiest" among them had a body to bury, a child to mourn, and the satisfaction of seeing the killer brought to justice. The rest simply slipped into an oblivion of never knowing, an oblivion so complete that neither they nor anyone else even knows who they are.

Every Thanksgiving and Christmas they place an extra setting at the table. It is for their missing daughter in the hope that this holiday season will be the one that she finally returns to tell her family of her adventures and to renew ties. Upstairs, her room is just as she had left it waiting for her to once again breath life into it. For families and friends of the missing, life becomes an unending agony of searching, wondering, questioning, and waiting - always needing to know what happened.

And there is another need. It is the need to understand why. Why were they murdered? Is there nothing we can learn from the fact that they lived and died? Is there no cause for which they died, something by which they might be remembered? Or will they have just passed briefly, unnoticed, snuffed out before their prime by a random act of violence, never having made a difference.

With so many families wanting to know so much, wanting to recover remains, wanting to bring their children home, wanting to find closure, how did it come to pass that with the killer caught and in custody for nearly a decade we never learned even the number, much less the names, of these so many stolen children?

A reticent, recalcitrant, and remorseless Ted Bundy was the reason we heard. As much as we tried, we just couldn't make him talk. There was noting more we could do. Yet Bundy had been talking as much as he could for years. He talked in Pensacola the night of his arrest. He rambled on and on with Aynesworth and Michaud. He chatted with the New York Times and lectured to Bob Keppel. He even began his confessions when he knew the game was lost, bargaining for more time to complete his terrible litany. But it was time we wouldn't give.

In the early morning of January 24, 1989, a security light outside of Florida State Prison's Q-Wing dimmed out signifying that the life of the notorious serial killer had just been extinguished. But, within an instant, the light came back on, a reminder of the porch lights that remained burning on the houses of dozens of families beckoning home their wayward daughters. Who these young women were, who would never return home, was known only to Ted Bundy. And, with him, that knowledge went to the grave.