Ex-Deputy Tries To Cash In Bundy's Car -- Victims' Parents Upset By Attempt To Sell Serial Killer's Volkswagen

SALT LAKE CITY - The 1968 beige Volkswagen Beetle, its interior gutted long ago in a search for the residue of murder, has sat for nearly 20 years in a storage yard.

The passenger seat removed to accommodate the corpses, serial killer Ted Bundy used the car to haul the bodies of no fewer than 11 of his victims in Washington, Utah and Colorado.

And now, says owner Lonnie Anderson, it's time to cash in.

Anderson placed a classified ad in The New York Times listing the car, complete with title and ownership papers bearing Bundy's signature. "Serious inquiries only," the ad insisted.

The asking price, Anderson said, is $25,000 and he claims he's had more than three dozen inquiries.

"This is a one-of-a-kind," said Anderson, a former Salt Lake County sheriff's deputy who paid $925 for the car at a sheriff's auction in the late 1970s.

"I bought it as an investment and I think the time is ripe to sell," he said.

"I know there are (victims') families out there right now. But I bought it for a purpose and I'll take all the heat that comes as long as that money goes in the bank."

His plan has upset the parents of at least two of Bundy's estimated 36 victims.

"I just can't imagine what kind of person would do this," said Belva Kent of Bountiful, Utah. Her 17-year-old daughter, Debi, vanished from a high-school play in November 1974. Bundy confessed to her murder - and those of seven other Utah girls and women - just hours before his execution in Florida in January 1989.

Don Blackburn of Spokane found out about the ad on Monday - 23 years to the day since his daughter, Janice Ott, 23, disappeared along with Denise Naslund, 19, from Lake Sammamish State Park.

Witnesses said a man named "Ted," driving a light-colored Volkswagen, had approached several girls at the park July 14, 1974. Bundy confessed to killing both women, one in front of the other.

"I looked for that Volkswagen hour-in and hour-out," Blackburn said. "On a personal basis, I think this is quite sadistic. It's not something I'd expect a law-enforcement man to do. It repulses me."

According to Jerry Thompson, former Salt Lake County sheriff's homicide detective, it was the car - and what police found in it - that brought Bundy down.

Bundy was arrested for the first time in the early morning hours of Aug. 16, 1975, driving the VW with its lights out in a west Salt Lake neighborhood. A search of the car, oddly missing its passenger seat, turned up handcuffs, a ski mask, an ice pick and tape.

Thompson made the connection between the car, the handcuffs and the attempted kidnapping 10 months earlier of 19-year-old Carol DaRonch at a south Salt Lake County mall. DaRonch was lured into a tan VW by a man who claimed to be a police officer. She jumped from the moving car after the man snapped a handcuff on her wrist.

That same night - Nov. 8, 1974 - Debi Kent disappeared from her high-school play. A handcuff key found in the school parking lot fit the manacle taken from DaRonch's arm.

Bundy was convicted of attempted aggravated kidnapping and sent to prison. An inch-by-inch search of the Volkswagen turned up three hairs. One apparently belonged to DaRonch; another was matched to 17-year-old Melissa Smith, whose body was found east of Salt Lake in October 1974, and a third matched the hair of Caryn Campbell, a 23-year-old nurse found murdered near Snowmass, Colo., in February 1975.

Bundy eventually was charged with Campbell's murder and extradited.

"There's no question (the car) was a key piece of evidence," Thompson said. "It tied it all together - what was happening here and what happened up Seattle way."

Bundy was never tried or convicted for any murders in Utah, Colorado or Washington. After being extradited to Colorado, he escaped - twice - and eventually made his way to Florida, where he killed two women on the Florida State University campus.

He also kidnapped and killed 12-year-old Kimberly Leach - the crime for which he was executed in 1989.