Ted Bundy: Did He Have Back Burner Victims?

by Erin Banks

Phyllis Armstrong remembers her encounter with Ted Bundy on the 2021 Amazon Prime documentary FALLING FOR A KILLER.
She stated that on the night of May 31, 1974 she went down the steps of her Kappa Alpha Theta sorority house and encountered a young man on crutches at the foot of the steps. His leg was in a cast, and he was holding a gas can, asking whether she could help him because he ran out of gas, and he was having trouble carrying back the gas can to his vehicle.
Armstrong agreed and Ted Bundy instructed her to enter the vehicle so he could fuel up the car. He further claimed, “When I tell you in a minute, there’s a button that’s underneath the steering wheel area, if you would push that because I’m having car trouble.”
But not long afterwards, Armstrong describes feeling a cold chill, thinking that something wasn’t right. She quickly exited the VW Beetle and took off running, merely calling, “Sorry, bye!” without waiting for a response. This saved her life.
Armstrong said that she didn’t even think about the encounter until after her close friend Georgann “George” Hawkins had vanished a mere eleven days later.

Photos of Phyllis Armstrong, #3 and #4 with George Hawkins

This incident is interesting because it made me think of several other, similar instances. As always, much of this could be coincidental, a mere curiosity, as there were several we wrote about on our blog. When Bundy couldn’t get Armstrong, did he settle on another pre-selected victim from a tavern he occasionally went to, The Flame tavern, and waited for Brenda Carol Ball to leave? Or was she just a chance victim?
After interrupting her college education, Ball appeared to have gone through a phase of free-spiritedness in terms of going out and partying. This is where Bundy could have repeatedly encountered her, similarly to how he may have kept an eye on other victims he – if not stalked – then at least occasionally kept tabs on at other bars, such as Karen Lee Sparks, Lynda Ann Healy, possibly even Denise Naslund, although the latter appears a tad far-fetched. She appears to have been a chance abduction, as there were approximately 40,000 people present at Lake Sammamish on July 14, 1974. So she was certainly not pre-selected in that sense, though one may wonder if Bundy recognized the young woman when stumbling across her as she was strolling towards the restrooms.
His methodology seems to have been all over the place though, because he remained on the Central Washington University campus after Kathleen Clara D’Olivo and Jane Curtis had evaded him, instead taking Susan Elaine Rancourt. Incidentally yet another victim he may have known (of) or met via his friend Terry Storwick, who regularly went jogging with her.
Kevin M. Sullivan writes that Lorraine Ann Pickard (neé Fargo), whom he spoke with after the publication of his first Bundy book, believes she saw the killer at the library and that he may have originally targeted her. It appears that Kathy Parks may not have been his intended victim, although here again we find the notion in literature that he visited Oregon State University in Corvallis with someone, prior to Parks’ disappearance. Perhaps it is as he himself admitted in third person to authors Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth, and he merely determined it would be an advantageous hunting ground, far removed from Washington, a murder that would not connect him to the other missing persons cases, with a convenient layout to lure someone away. What could speak against his statement is that he neither killed Parks in Oregon, nor did he leave her there, instead transporting her back to his “kill cluster” in the Washington wilderness, so he absolutely did not act in a way that suggests he was being completely truthful here.
All this is why I considered that he may have had a group of “back burner victims.” Was Greek Row slow that night? Or were all the young women not his Entity’s type? Did he not have anyone else pre-selected whose routine he knew due to previous stalking that lived on or near Greek Row? Then he may have remembered that lately there was this young lady (Brenda Ball) who would surely be at the Flame tavern that night.
And again, he returned to Lake Sammamish for a second victim, likely counting on the face blindness of people in large crowds and knowing the park was his personal “buffet.” Since these were his last Washington murders, perhaps he had run out of pre-selects, and that was another reason for him to remain at Lake Sam?
Then in Utah, after the botched Carol DaRonch abduction, he steered towards Bountiful, strolling into Utah’s Viewmont High School to very persistently target drama teacher Raelynne Shepherd, and ultimately settling on Debi Kent as a chance victim. The pre-selected victims theory will likely not hold up in the Viewmont High case, because I can’t determine whether Bundy ever stated he got that flyer at the play, when entering the high school, or whether he had gotten sometime before, and either knew he may get lucky there or stalked the high school beforehand. In which case he may have known (of) Shepherd.
Is the theory really so outlandish when one takes into account that Bundy also had side- and “back burner” girlfriends whom he occasionally returned to? As history has shown, there were either eerie parallels or deliberate differences between his dating and homicidal hunting behavior.
What is your take on this? Can you think of other instances in relation to these musings?