Did Bundy burn Donna Manson’s Skull in a Fireplace?

by Erin Banks

For decades the rumor has been circulating that Ted Bundy burned his third murder victim Donna Manson’s head in his fiancée Elizabeth Kloepfer’s fireplace. Wildly debated, yaysayers were quick to point out that it was Bundy himself who admitted to the fact. But are his words reliable? Let’s go through the scenario together.

First we must ask why he would have attempted an incineration of a body part at all.
Could it have been due to sexual gratification linked to his possession obsession? In the 20/20 Special on ABC, agent Bill Hagmaier who knew Bundy intimately stated that Bundy “inhaled their last breath,” that it was – and they were – his. This appears almost like a form of spiritual cannibalism. While there is no conclusive evidence that Bundy ever attempted cannibalism, we do know from the extreme bite mark on victim Lisa Levy’s buttocks that he could be a biter, also corroborated by at least one of his previous romantic interests.
Of course Bundy has always maintained that the decapitations served one purpose – to conceal the victims’ identities. A rather strange sentiment, considering that from heads or skulls dental impressions may be taken and matched against dental records, and that the decapitated bodies still had hands and fingers. Bundy could not have been entirely certain that fingerprints wouldn’t lead to a match. So either Bundy, someone smart enough to study his homicidal craft enough to kill in different districts and states to conceal his activities, was yet exceptionally careless in concealing the girls’ identities or he was – once more – not speaking the truth when presenting this excuse.
Something we must factor into the fireplace anecdote is that Bundy was still in his experimental phase. Karen Lee Sparks had been a botched home invasion in the sense that the victim survived. In order to ascertain her death, Bundy hence abducted Lynda Ann Healy from the home she shared with co-eds. With Donna Gail Manson, he had first attempted to coerce a victim to follow him out in the open. This escalation of M.O. appears to have carried over to the posthumous rituals carried out by Bundy, if we believe that he indeed decapitated her himself.

Here are some issues in regards to the fireplace theory, though:
Would Bundy have risked Molly returning from school early due to illness? Would he risk it, knowing Liz may stop by from work, having forgotten something at home? Would he risk it, although anyone could have come by to ring the doorbell and, without the shadow of a doubt, be exposed to the nauseating stench emanating from the home?
And this leads to a far greater issue at hand. Bundy was already well aware of the stench of decomposition, and how quickly it occurred, from Healy, whom he revisited as he did most of his victims.
Thus burning Manson’s head would have had to happen within hours. Yet, Bundy stated to Detective Robert Keppel that the cremation occurred between March 12 to 17, 1974.
For someone who remembered with great detail what he did to each victim, down to what they were wearing, it appears odd that Bundy wouldn’t recall whether he decapitated and burned Manson the same night he abducted and killed the young woman, or five days later. Of course, he couldn’t have burned her head on the 12th because that was the night of the abduction and his fiancée and her daughter were at home.
On the 13th, Bundy was at UPS, on the 15th, he attended evening classes and on the 17th he spent hours crying to Kloepfer about wanting to give up school entirely. We can only speculate if his breakdown had anything to do with a possibly botched cremation, although it seems unlikely, as I’ll lay out below.

The whole “heads issue” has been heatedly debated many a time over between researchers. The books, “The Only Living Witness” by Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth as well as “The Riverman” by Robert D. Keppel suggest that Bundy had 4-5 heads in his fridge at home at some point. Journalists Michaud and Aynesworth aside, the notion surprises from Keppel, who ought to have known better.
A fridge is not cool enough to halt the stench of decay. We’re not talking putting a nice pork fillet on a plate in the fridge here but specifically a “head,” meaning tissue, skin, flesh, blood, hair, eyes, brain. The intense smell would have first filled the fridge and permeated all its contents, and upon opening it, the stench would have flooded the apartment. Decay is nothing you can simply “air out” by opening a window for an hour.
We must also remember that in other cases, offenders who kept body parts in their homes were reported to the landlord and authorities due to the issue of smell, and in some cases an increase of insect infestation. This did not happen with Bundy.
Another good question to ask is did he add a head to the fridge one by one, as the murders occurred? Or did he add all 4-5 heads to the fridge at once, in which case they were likely not heads but skulls, thanks to Washington’s ever-busy wildlife. These skulls could only have belonged to Healy, Manson, Rancourt, Parks and Ball. Bundy claimed to have buried Hawkins’ head the same night he killed her. Despite the rise of temperature, the humidity (usually above 65% in that region) and wildlife, not all heads would have been fully decomposed, yet due to the advanced stages of decomposition, the stench would have been nauseating. This is what the above mentioned authors claim Bundy stored in his fridge.
A fridge in an apartment that Bundy’s fiancée had a key to and liked to snoop through by her own admission (“The Phantom Prince” by Elizabeth Kendall). Yes indeed, an apartment that the landlady Mrs. Freda Rogers regularly cleaned. So between a snooping lover and a landlady who may either clean the fridge or get curious enough to peak in it (possibly following the stench…) we are to believe that Bundy would have gladly taken that risk.

Now, to return to Bundy’s claim that he burned a days-old head in a fireplace, here, too, we find quite many challenges that would have led to an arrest at once. As though rot weren’t bad enough, burning human remains truly is an unforgettable experience: Singed hair smells sulphuric, and firefighters know well the pervasive reek of “long pork.” The fact that incinerated human remains have a distinctly strong pork odor about them is because while the muscles look, smell and taste like red meat, the fat looks, smells and taste like pork. This is precisely while cannibalistic tribes referred to humans as “long pork.”
This is not the pleasant smell of breakfast bacon, however. On top of the sulphuric smell, we can add a metallic, coppery note to the list, thanks to the blood left in the head. Bundy struck his victims with his crowbar so viciously many of their skulls fractured, causing excessive hemorrhaging, possibly also of the brain itself.
All of these smells would have combined and stunk up the apartment. There would have been excessive sizzling and smoke from the hair, the liquid left in the tissue, the eyeballs and brain. It’s simply unfathomable that Bundy could have achieved this task without anyone knowing.

It has been suggested that Bundy perhaps boiled off the flesh prior to the cremation of the skull. And yes, the hair, blood, muscle, tissue, flesh would very easily come off. Still, the odor would have raised the dead. Could he have boiled the head outdoors? As a former boy scout and an avid outdoorsman, he certainly possessed the know-how.
As well, what about the brain, then? He would have had to either extracted it with clever tools through the eyes sockets and nasal cavity, or he must have broken the entire skull apart. Something he could have only achieved with a hammer and likely ended up with several smaller bone fragments that he could have tried to set on fire.
And yet, just as hair has a sulphuric smell once set on fire, so do bones. The protein that gives bones strength is indeed made of a sulphuric compound.
There is no way that neither Kloepfer and Molly, who lived in this apartment and returned to it hours after the alleged deed, nor any neighbor would have been unaware of the smell.

Our most pressing concern, though, is the temperature. A fireplace burns between 700-1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and does not burn steadily as a crematorium does, meaning temperatures fluctuate.
The National Funeral Association suggests to “ideally cremate at 1,400-1,800 degree Fahrenheit for 2-2.5 hours.”
The heat in a fireplace, particularly considering the fluctuation of temperature, wouldn’t be enough to reliably burn the bones enough to be so brittle they could be placed in a bone blender to be pulverized. Because this is another element of cremation: Bones don’t burn to ash. The brittle remains are placed in a special blender so they will turn to ash. (No, you can not use your juicer, stop asking me weird questions!)
Of course, Mr. Bundy was eager to share with us that not only did he manage the impossible feat of burning bones to ash, no, he even vacuumed the ashes up with a regular vacuum cleaner. Well then.

Even if we are trying to entertain at least some of Bundy’s claims, only certain aspects of them could have occurred. Let’s say that after boiling off the flesh in the wilderness and breaking apart the skull to extract the brain, Bundy placed the skull fragments int he fireplace. He then may have realized the sulphuric bone stench and immediately aborted his mission. This may have been a possibility. Or a version of it. And that’s about it. The rest is relegated to fantasy, and as we know Bundy was an avid fantasizer.
Keppel wrote in his book, “Signature Killers,” that Bundy had once shared with him that he wished he’d owned a crematorium. Take that as you will.

Our analysis of the “heads issue” doesn’t quite stop just there yet. The removal of the heads by Bundy actually is a dubious claim in and of itself. That he would have been callous enough is out of the question. Merely, Richard Larsen notes in his book, “The Deliberate Stranger,” that Keppel’s initial theory of wildlife being responsible for the missing heads was indeed confirmed by zoologists and anthropologists.
Dr. Donald Raey stated with confidence that it would be near impossible to remove a head without leaving vertebrae attached. This would be easier to achieve with skeletal remains.
And Dr. Patrick Besant-Mathews echoed this sentiment in the Eugene Register Guard from September 11, 1974 regarding Denise Naslund and Janice Ott’s remains.
This means that Bundy’s claim to Keppel that he cremated the head between March 12-17 can absolutely not be true. Whatever Keppel, Hagmaier or anyone else states Bundy told them about the issue was merely fantasy.

Lastly, On August 29, 1978, two fishermen discovered a skull near Eatonville, at the foothills of Mount Rainier.
Searches found more bones and clothes; one shirt looked just like the one Manson had worn. Pierce County officials however did not see fit to test the findings and sat on the evidence instead.
Once King County detectives finally petitioned to have the skull as well as clothing items forensically examined, all evidence and paperwork had inexplicably vanished. Thus, another trace in the Bundy case went cold.
But even without a match on the skull, a cremation the way Bundy states it happened, did not occur.