by Erin Banks
In recent years, there have been surprisingly many people who have questioned whether Bundy actually carried a gun with him on November 8, 1974 when he went to The Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Utah to lure Carol DaRonch with him, because he was known to be a knife man. Indeed, his fiancée Elizabeth Kloepfer even found several blades of his, among others in the glove compartment of his vehicle.
However, posing as police officer “Roseland,” Bundy did produce a badge, and Carol DaRonch saw handcuffs tucked in the inside pocket of his jacket. I always suggested that those were likely costume props from a Halloween store that he acquired before or shortly after the Aime abduction on October 31, 1974. Halloween (pop-up) stores usually sell Halloween-related articles extremely cheap after the holiday has passed, or Bundy could have stolen them, as he was known as a compulsive thief.
That he would then also get a toy gun isn’t exactly out of the question; it completed his “outfit.”
Moreover, author Richard Larsen writes in his book “The Deliberate Stranger” that when Bundy snapped the first handcuff on DaRonch, she screamed, “What are you doing!?” and he responded, “Shut up or I’ll blow your head off.” This further indicates that Bundy may have had a gun on him on that particular day.
Another aspect that people take offense to is with the police badge. People have been making fun of DaRonch for not correctly identifying it in court, though this issue is quite easily explicable. First of all, it was dark out when she asked Bundy to prove he was with the police; they were right in front of his VW and the lighting in the parking lot was sparse, meaning DaRonch could hardly see the badge.
Then when she was questioned at the Murray City Police Station by Sergeant Joel Reit, the latter showed her a badge, asking if that is what it looked like. While on the stand she conflated Reit and Bundy’s badges (color in particular). Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, an expert on memory who testified for the defense, blew DaRonch’s memory conflation out of proportion as this was her job, and, as much as I appreciate her work, in this instance it’s extremely fortunate that Loftus’ testimony wasn’t given enough weight that DaRonch was disbelieved. Bundy was sentenced for the DaRonch kidnapping, an event that started his years-long downward spiral leading to his execution.
Lastly, there appear, at first glance, to be some inconsistencies in relation to how Bundy cuffed DaRonch. We know Bundy took her, we know Bundy cuffed her. So give the woman a break that four decades after the fact, she stated on Joe Berlinger’s “Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” on Netflix that he cuffed her only once and left the handcuffs dangling, instead of remembering correctly that she was cuffed twice on the left wrist. When reading the trial transcript and police files, it becomes clear that there is a strong possibility the officer who wrote the report did not clearly state how exactly she was cuffed. It remains unclear whether DaRonch was actually cuffed twice on one wrist or was cuffed once while the other cuff was still dangling down loosely. But the Walshes, the couple who picked up DaRonch after she had escaped Bundy, equally stated that one cuff was dangling from her wrist, further cementing the suggestion that police reports aren’t always worded quite so clearly as we’d like them to be.
In Bundy, we like to nitpick. This can be a positive attribute, to be inquisitive, hesitant, always require multiple sources and yet more evidence. However, when it comes to such minor elements in regards to a confirmed survivor who was the integral part in identifying, stopping and taking down Ted Bundy, the suspicions, disbelief and pointing out what could or could not be inconsistencies is completely out of line.
Mrs. DaRonch was a mere eighteen years old, and by all accounts an extremely shy young lady; so shy, in fact, that she couldn’t even look Bundy in the eye, which is why she remembered his patent-leather shoes so vividly, as she kept awkwardly looking down on the ground.
And yet this incredibly brave woman not only dared ask to see Bundy’s badge when she grew wary of the man, additionally refused to put on the seat belt when Bundy ordered her to secure it around her torso, fought like hell, stopped Wilbur and Mary Walsh’s car, but when Mary and Wilbur initially refused to drive her to the police, insisting they take her home instead, she fought them on that as well. She had been beaten/in a physical and life-threatening altercation, scared to death, was shaking for hours after the encounter, and yet she desired nothing more than to make this right by alerting the authorities to what had happened. You know, unlike one other person in Utah who claims to have been abducted by Bundy a little less than a week afterwards. We all know who that is and why she made it into my book, “Ted Bundy: Experiencing The Unconfirmed Survivor Stories.”
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Photos: Falling for a Killer/Amazon Prime, Utah State Archives, Erin Banks
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