8-year-old Ann Marie Burr disappeared in 1961. At the time, a teenage Ted Bundy lived down the street.

It’s been 59 years since a shy little girl called Ann Marie Burr disappeared from her bedroom in Tacoma, Washington, never to be seen again. Was she the first victim of a teenage Ted Bundy, who would go on to become one of America’s most notorious serial killers?

In the summer of 1961, Ann was eight years old and about to begin third grade. She was a quiet, well-behaved child, the oldest of four. On August 30, Ann had been invited to spend the night at a friend’s house. But her mother Bev didn’t let her go, because school would soon be starting back. 

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In the early hours of the next morning, Ann brought her three-year-old sister Mary into her parents’ bedroom, saying Mary was crying because the cast on her broken arm was bothering her. Bev sent the girls back to bed. 

At 5am, Bev woke up, feeling uneasy, and went to check on the girls. Ann’s bed was empty. A window in the living room, which had been left open just a crack for the TV antenna wires, was now wide open. A garden seat had been placed under the window, outside the house. The front door, which had been locked from the inside with a chain the night before, was now unlocked. 

Bev knocked on a few neighbours’ doors, asking them if they’d seen Ann. Then she and her husband Don rang the police. 

“Ann was so trusting,” Bev told The Seattle Times many years later. “It was a big mistake. We taught her everyone was good. We didn’t teach them that people could be bad. I still think it was probably someone she knew.” 

The search for Ann began. Police set themselves up at the Burrs’ house, expecting to receive a ransom demand, but none ever arrived. There were very few clues – a red thread caught next to the window, and, on the garden seat, the print of a tennis shoe that belonged to either a teenager or a small man. Bev and Don had heard noises in their yard on previous nights, and neighbours had seen a peeping tom, but no one could give a description. 

Don walked the streets, and saw a teenage boy kicking dirt into a ditch near the University of Puget Sound, smirking at him. He became convinced that his daughter was buried there. But a later dig didn’t uncover anything. 

The police search was massive. Thousands of people were interviewed, hundreds of homes were searched, dozens of men were given polygraph tests. But days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, without any trace of Ann being found. 

Bev said from the moment she first saw the open window, she knew that she would never see Ann again, and she knew that she would never know what had happened. 

“It came to me, just like that,” she told The Seattle Times. “It was a strong feeling. When they were searching, I thought, ‘What's the point?’ I knew she was gone, and we would never see her again.”

Bev and Don kept going for the sake of their other three children – Mary, Julie and Greg. 

"They needed me very much, and I had to remember that," Bev said.

Two years after Ann’s disappearance, the couple adopted a baby girl, Laura. 

The investigation continued. Two detectives, Ted Strand and Tony Zatkovich, worked the case for five years – and even after they retired, they would still meet to talk it through. 

There were suspects. One was Robert Bruzas, a teenage boy who lived two doors down from the Burrs and had an unusually close relationship with Ann. The police gave him a polygraph test, which he failed. But he passed a second test. 

Another suspect was Ralph Larkee. The FBI were after him, on suspicion of kidnapping a 10-year-old girl and taking her for a long ride in his car. When they turned up to his house, he shot himself in the head. 

And then there was Ted Bundy, who wasn’t a suspect at the time. His mother had moved with him to Tacoma when he was four years old. In his teens, he was a peeping tom, and he also came to the police’s attention for burglary and car theft. 

In 1961, when Ann disappeared, Bundy was still only 14. His home was 5km away from the Burrs’ house. It’s been said that he was their paperboy, but the truth is that his paper route did not take in her house. It’s also been said that his great-uncle was her piano teacher, but his great-uncle simply lived nearby. Various friends and relatives have claimed Ann knew Bundy, but her parents don’t believe she did. 

In the 1970s, Bundy became notorious as one of America’s worst ever serial killers. A former law student, he was athletic and charming, as well as sadistic and sociopathic. His killing spree was spread over several states and went on for years, as he repeatedly eluded police and escaped from custody. His last victim was a 12-year-old girl called Kimberly Leach in Florida in 1978. He killed at least 30 women, but the real figure may have been more than 100. 

Ted Bundy. Image: Getty.

When police discovered he’d lived in Tacoma as a teenager, he became a suspect in Ann’s murder. Could he have killed her? What makes it difficult to know is that Bundy had a very loose relationship with the truth. 

In jail, he was interviewed by many people. Among them were journalists Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth. Bundy, speaking in the third person, told them a story about killing a young girl in an orchard. The journalists included the story in their book, The Only Living Witness. 

Bev and Don read the book. In 1986, Bev wrote to Bundy, a heart-wrenching letter, talking about that night when Ann had gone missing. 

“The bench from the back yard was used to climb in the living room; the orchard next door was a dark setting for a murder,” she wrote. “What did you do with the tiny body? God can forgive you.”

Bundy replied within a matter of days, telling Bev that he had nothing to do with her daughter’s disappearance. 

“You said she disappeared August 31, 1961. At the time I was a normal 14-year-old boy. I did not wander the streets late at night. I did not steal cars. I had absolutely no desire to harm anyone. I was just an average kid. For your sake you really must understand this.”

He finished the letter with, “God bless you and be with you, peace, Ted.”

But that wasn’t the end of it. According to the book The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive History, in 1987, The Tacoma News Tribune ran an article with the headline “Expert says Bundy killed girl, 8, when he was 14”. The expert was Dr Ronald Holmes, an associate professor of criminal justice, who had also interviewed Bundy. Dr Holmes said Bundy had made third-person statements suggesting his first victim was an eight- or nine-year-old girl, and had then had listed some of the facts of Ann’s case. 

Bundy later denied having said those things. 

In 1989, Bundy was put to death in the electric chair. Bev and Don sat by the radio, hoping to hear that Bundy had confessed to Ann’s murder in his final moments. But he hadn’t. 

Five years later, Bev was contacted by a psychiatrist. One of his patients was claiming that she was Ann Marie Burr. Bev invited the woman over and baked an apple pie for her. As soon as the woman turned up, Bev knew she wasn’t her daughter. A DNA test later proved that. Bev kept some photos of her anyway. 

In 1999, the Burrs held a memorial service for Ann. Julie spoke, thanking her parents.  

“You probably wanted to crawl into bed and bury your head as each day and year passed with no answer," she said. "But instead you gathered strength and provided us with a wonderful childhood."

Don died in 2003. Bev died in 2008.

In 2011, police sent evidence from the case to a crime laboratory, hoping there was enough DNA on it to compare it to Bundy’s DNA. Unfortunately, there wasn’t. 

“This avenue hit a dead end,” police spokesperson Mark Fulghum told the Bellingham Herald, “but the investigation itself is not over.” 

Feature image: Facebook.