Case File: Nancy Wilcox, 1974 » Killer in the Archives (2024)

On the first evening in October in 1974, Nancy Wilcox had the kind of typical teenage argument with her parents that countless families have experienced—this one about a boy. It was a Tuesday night after dinner, and her boyfriend had come by to visit, but her father sent him away before Nancy could see him.
Hurt and frustrated, the 16-year-old stormed out of her suburban Salt Lake City home, perhaps hoping to find her boyfriend, or maybe just seeking a moment alone to clear her head in the cool night air. What should have been a brief, calming walk through the quiet familiarity of her own neighborhood turned into a nightmare. Nancy never came home that night, or ever again— instead she tragically became Utah’s first known victim of the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.
Nancy’s disappearance was initially dismissed by police and downplayed in the media as just a “teenage runaway,” a label that kept her story from gaining the attention it deserved. I wanted to know more about her, who she was as a person, and what really happened.

A few years ago, I filed open records requests with the Unified Police Department (formerly the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office) for access to Nancy Wilcox’s case file. I was shocked when my request was denied.
After enduring multiple appeals, denials, and a failed mediation attempt, I took my case to the Utah State Records Committee. I stressed the significance of releasing these records for scholarly research and preserving the historical narrative—particularly for lesser-known victims like Nancy.
My arguments proved convincing, and the committee ruled in my favor, ordering the Unified Police Department to release the records with redactions made to the names of Nancy’s friends.

As the first researcher to ever gain access to Nancy Wilcox’s file, I uncovered a troubling array of myths and misinformation had built up around her story over the past fifty years—falsehoods that continue to circulate, even in official missing persons databases.
I firmly believe that open access to records is crucial for correcting inaccuracies about victims, allowing us to restore their humanity and share their true stories. By doing so, we ensure these young women are remembered and granted their rightful place in history.

I chose today, the 50^th anniversary of her disappearance, to tell her story. This is Nancy Wilcox’s case file.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
E. Sagendorf, Juvenile Division
Date: October 29, 1974
I contacted Mr. Haywood, Vice-Principal at Olympus High regarding talking to Nancy’s boyfriend John H. about Nancy Wilcox. While I was waiting, Mr. Haywood talked about the problems Nancy was having at school and that they were to the point of kicking Nancy out of school several times. Nancy also has a brother who goes to Olympus, and he has also had problems at school. Mr. Haywood feels that there are problems in the home, but they are unable to determine what that is. Mr. Haywood stated he could not see what John saw in Nancy as he was a star athlete, and other girls had more going for them who would like to go with John.

I contacted John’s mother Mrs. H. in the morning. Mrs. H. stated that she’d talked to her son last night about Nancy, and he was worried because Nancy had not contacted him yet. She suggested I call on Mr. Johnson, as perhaps John had confided in him things he would not tell his mother.
Mrs. H. stated she was concerned about the relationship between John and Nancy, and she’d called Mrs. Wilcox one day to see if they could work together to keep the kids from seeing so much of each other. Mrs. H. stated that John had taken out another girl recently but didn’t know if Nancy was aware of that or not. She was very cooperative and said her family would help in any way they could to locate Nancy.

I contacted Bob Johnson during his lunch hour. Mr. Johnson is John’s football and wrestling coach at Olympus High. Mr. Johnson stated John had talked to him several times regarding Nancy, and John could not understand why Nancy had not called him. Mr. Johnson said he doesn’t feel like he knows where Nancy is. John told Mr. Johnson that Nancy had some serious problems, and he would tell him about it sometimes. Mr. Johnson said he had Nancy as a student last year, and she was continually coming to class late, she was not motivated, and he had to kid her along to get her to complete her assignments.

Author’s note:
During a recent interview with KSL reporter Dave Cawley, Nancy’s sister, Susie Wilcox Nelson, recounted the events of that fateful night: “We were watching TV, and Nancy was waiting for her boyfriend to come over. I could hear her talking to my dad, and he said, ‘I just asked [John] to back up his truck. That’s all I asked.’ And she just goes, ‘Well, did you yell?’ She was hoping that she’d just find John because he just barely took off. That’s all I saw, was her going out of the house, down the driveway. And then we didn’t see her again.”
In another interview by Chris Mortensen in 2018, she recalled that the dispute seemed to revolve around the fact that John would often park in the family driveway, and his old pickup truck had the annoying habit of leaking oil. Nancy’s father had previously asked him not to park there, and after arriving home after a long day of work and finding his daughter’s boyfriend in his driveway yet again, the men exchanged words. John drove off in a huff without ever seeing Nancy. Like her family, he would never see Nancy again.

I questioned [redacted]. She was one of Nancy’s best friends. [redacted] expressed fear for Nancy and told us she knew Nancy would have contacted her if she was alright. [redacted] did feel that it was possible Nancy could have gone to stay with her cousin Jamie.I also questioned [redacted]. She expressed the same fears. She felt that Nancy surely would have contacted her if she was alright. She told of calling Mrs. Wilcox several times, trying to find out about Nancy. She also felt Nancy might have gone to Utah State University to stay with her cousin.

I contacted Mrs. Hayden, Jamie’s mother, at 11:45am to see if she could give me any information. Mrs. Hayden said she thought the world of Nancy’s mother, her sister, and said that Connie Wilcox was very talented.
Mrs. Hayden stated that Nancy did not have any emotional problems she was aware of, but then again, she’d had brain cancer for the last year and a half, and does not recall a lot of things that happened.
I asked her if her daughter Jamie would talk to me, and she said she thought she might, but I’d have to call her directly. Mrs. Hayden said she thought Jamie was rather cool about the whole thing, as the girls ran around quite a bit before Jamie left for school.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 12, 1974
I arrived at Olympus High School, where Mr. Haywood informed me that a student [redacted] had told him that she heard [redacted] say she had talked to a friend who had seen Nancy Wilcox in Salt Lake City, and that she was not in California like everyone thought. [redacted] was told this information from [redacted], and he in turn told it to John H., Nancy’s boyfriend.
I questioned the student [redacted], and asked if she or her friend had seen Nancy Wilcox somewhere in the City and I wanted to know everything she knew. She would not admit to having any knowledge of where Nancy was, or hearing any friend say Nancy was in the city. I explained to her the importance of truth in this case and told her I wanted her to take a polygraph with some of Nancy’s close friends. She said she would think about it. I told her I would meet with her parents and explain the importance of the test. Later that day Mr. Haywood called me and told me that the student [redacted] had gone to her counselor in tears saying she wouldn’t take any polygraph.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 14, 1974
While I was at Utah State University yesterday, I was told a girl [redacted] from Olympus High School had called for me. She said that around 1:30pm, when she was leaving the school and walking south on the right side of 2300 East, a male pulled alongside her in a green Chevy Capri and stopped. The man asked her if she wanted a ride, and she replied, “No, I don’t know you.” He then said, “Aren’t you a friend of Nancy Wilcox?” She turned away in fear and the car pulled off quickly. She mentioned it frightened her because just the day before I had been questioning her about Nancy being missing, and other bad incidents under investigation. She described the male as wearing sunglasses, light brown hair, thin but strong looking.
I spent the afternoon checking the parking lots of local high schools. Around 2pm I located a green Capri parked in front of Olympus High School. I ran a plate check, and it came back to a Mike P. I kept surveillance on the vehicle until about 5pm.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 15, 1974
I went to Olympus High School and asked Mr. Haywood if he had ever heard the name Mike P., or if there had ever been a student there by that name. He told me he thought a young man from the University of Utah by that name had been assisting with the wrestling team as a volunteer. This was of particular interest because Nancy’s boyfriend John was on the wrestling team.

I questioned John H. at Olympus High School, asking him about Mike P. John told me he had worked out with Mike. John also mentioned that he and Mike had both worked at the Willow Creek Country Club during the summer. I asked him if Mike knew Nancy Wilcox and he told me that Mike had probably seen them together.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 18, 1974
I had been told by several of Nancy’s friends that [redacted] always drove Nancy any place she wanted him to take her. When I questioned him, [redacted] told me he liked Nancy Wilcox and drove her quite a few places for that reason. [redacted] told me that in late August, Nancy asked him to drive her to the Willow Creek Country Club for a job interview. We went to the country club and he showed me where he’d dropped her off. Nancy told him that she knew an older man there that would take her home. I found no job application for Nancy. It was determined later from talking to Nancy’s boyfriend that the reason she had [redacted] take her to the club was to see John, and he’s the one who took her home.
Author’s note: John had worked as a lifeguard at the country club’s pool that summer.

We then went to John’s home, and he called [redacted] at my request, her being one of Nancy’s closest friends. John made up a story that Nancy had been trying to get in touch with him, and he was trying to find out as much as she knew about Nancy.
I later called Mrs. Wilcox and learned that [redacted] had called her and told her of the conversation with John. I feel this is suggestive that [redacted] is telling the truth and doesn’t know where Nancy is. I told Mrs. Wilcox that the call was just a setup.
I went to the home of [redacted], a close friend of Nancy’s. Nancy was also good friends with his wife. They were a newly married couple and had a small child. Mr. Wilcox had mentioned a hang up call, and had heard a child crying in the background. The couple were very concerned about Nancy and told me to search their home. I did, with negative results. They told me they hadn’t had any contact with Nancy for months.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 19, 1974
I went to [redacted]’s home at the request of her mother. [redacted] had received a threatening letter in the mail, telling her to stop talking to the cops about Nancy Wilcox. I picked up the letter, and took it to Olympus High School. Mr. Haywood put a copy in the faculty room, requesting any teacher who recognized the handwriting to contact him. [redacted] was questioned as to whether she knew who might have sent the letter, with negative results.
I met with [redacted]’s parents. They agreed [redacted] should take a polygraph test in regard to Nancy Wilcox. With the support of the parents and the coaching of this officer, [redacted] agreed to take the polygraph.

I then went to the home of Mike P. I told him of the incident on November 13 where a man driving a green Capri like his had tried to pick up a student, and the girl had stated that the man had mentioned the name of her missing friend. He admitted to arriving at the school that day to work out with the wrestling team, but he said he didn’t ask any girl if she needed a ride. He told me he knew Nancy only as John H.’s girlfriend, and from seeing her at wrestling matches.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 20, 1974
I contacted the [redacted] girl and she had a plate number from a green Capri she had seen around Holladay. She said the male in the car resembled the boy who asked her if she needed a ride. I ran the plate and it came back to a Carl D.
I went to Carl’s home and questioned him about the incident at Olympus High School where a man had tried to give a ride to a student there, and she claimed that this male individual had mentioned the name Nancy Wilcox. After about half an hour of being unable to remember, he told me he did remember trying to pick up a girl who fit the description of [redacted]. He told me the girl, when he stopped and asked her if she wanted a ride, asked him if he was a friend of some male (he couldn’t remember who), and Nancy Wilcox. When he told her he didn’t know either, she told him she wouldn’t get in because she didn’t ride with strangers. I asked him several questions about Nancy, and he told me he’d never heard of her before the girl mentioned her name when he offered her a ride. He told me he worked nights for the Salt Lake Tribune from about 11pm to 4am.
I went to his employer and checked his work schedule for the night Nancy Wilcox left home. I also got a copy of his handwriting, so it could be compared to the threatening letter [redacted] had received.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 21, 1974
I picked up [redacted] and transported her to the 9^th floor of the Metropolitan Hall of Justice where Sgt. Carr administered a polygraph test to her. [redacted] was questioned about having heard a friend had seen Nancy somewhere in the city, and the incident involving Carl D. where he attempted to pick her up- whether Nancy’s name was mentioned by Carl or herself. Sgt. Carr also questioned her about the threatening letter telling her to stop talking to the cops about Nancy Wilcox.
I was contacted by Sgt. Carr and notified that [redacted]’s arm was too thin for the pressure band, so the test couldn’t be given that day. I took her home and talked to [redacted]’s parents about setting up a new date for a new test. She told us she would not take another test. With pressure from her parents and this officer, I talked her into taking another test on November 29, a day that would fit with her schedule.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 25, 1974
I contacted Jamie Hayden at her parents’ home. I gave Jamie a list of Nancy’s friends that she was acquainted with and asked her to contact them for me and get in touch if she came up with any leads.

I questioned the girl at the Cottonwood Mall coffee shop where Nancy had previously worked, with negative results.
Author’s note: According to later interviews with Connie Wilcox, as well as Nancy’s friend and co-worker Louisa P., the Arctic Circle was Nancy’s first and only job. It is unclear where Deputy Farnsworth got the idea that Nancy had worked a previous job at a coffee shop.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 26, 1974
I picked up Carl D. and transported him to the Metropolitan Hall of Justice to where he took a polygraph test about any knowledge of the missing Nancy Wilcox and the incident where he attempted to pick up [redacted], a student at Olympus High School, and supposedly mentioned Nancy’s name to her. Sgt. Carr told me he had a good test, so I felt that the girl was the one who must have mentioned the name Nancy Wilcox, not the other way around.

I questioned John H. again at Olympus High School in the office of Vice Principal Haywood. He told me he thinks Nancy has met with foul play from the man she pointed out in the attempted rape case on July 17. John took me to a home Nancy had taken him to near Millcreek Canyon and pointed out the address. This is the place she claimed that she was taken to and raped.

I contacted T. C.,the individual who lived at that address who had been questioned about the incidents of rape and abduction in the July case. I notified him that the girl he’d been questioned about in July by the Detective Division has been missing since October 1. It was my hope to completely clear him from my investigation. I asked him if he would consider a polygraph test about the accusations made by Nancy Wilcox, and whether he had seen or heard of her since she was reported missing. Nancy had reported this man being between 25-30 years old and had been coming into the Arctic Circle and giving her a lot of attention. In her report, this individual offered her a ride home but took her to the address she pointed out near Milllcreek Canyon and raped her. Mr. C. was nervous but cooperative and agreed to take a polygraph test. I contacted Detective Miles who handled the rape report and got a picture of T. C.

I contacted Louisa P., who had worked with Nancy back at the time she’d worked at the Arctic Circle. I asked her if she’d ever noticed a male aged 25-30 paying special attention to Nancy Wilcox. She told me she’d never noticed one, but that Nancy had mentioned that a man she thought was married was flirting with her.

I contacted Kathy M., who had also worked with Nancy at the Arctic Circle. I questioned her about Nancy, and if she’d ever noticed a male in his 30s flirting with her. She told me Nancy had told her about a man and she had seen him a couple of times flirting with Nancy. I showed Kathy a photo lineup of five pictures from the Drivers License Division, and she picked out T. C. as a look alike to the man who had been flirting with Nancyat the Arctic Circle. I arranged for a polygraph test for Mr. C. for December 4.

^{The exact Arctic Circle Drive-In location where Nancy Wilcox worked at 33rd South and 20th East in Salt Lake City. 1978 black and white image courtesy of Salt Lake County Archives. 1954 colorized image courtesy of Rick Edwards. The building still stands today, but it is now a coffee shop (2017 photo by Brent Lyman).}

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: November 29, 1974
I picked up [redacted] at her home and transported her to the Metropolitan Hall of Justice, where she was given a polygraph about her knowledge of Nancy Wilcox. She was very nervous during the test, but Sgt. Carr believes that [redacted] does not know where Nancy is, nor has she ever had any contact with Nancy since she went missing.

I contacted John H. at Olympus and again questioned him about his conversations with Nancy Wilcox about her rape and abduction in July.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: December 4, 1974
I questioned [redacted] and [redacted] at Olympus High about the types of vehicles owned by Nancy’s friends. I learned [redacted]’s boyfriend had a yellow VW. His name was Dan L.
I questioned Dan’s mother at their residence about his whereabouts early Monday and also Friday. She couldn’t tell me for sure where he was, but gave me her son’s work address. I went to his work and questioned him about Lake Point and Nancy Wilcox. He was very cooperative and told me he would go with me to have a picture taken so it could be shown to the people at Lake Point. I also questioned him about his whereabouts on Friday and Monday morning. His story checked out, so I eliminated him as a possible suspect.

“Teen runaways cause anguish” by Nick Snow
Deseret News
December 28, 1974
If you’re the parent of a missing teenage girl, life is a special kind of nightmare. Doubts close in and you ask yourself where your daughter is, why she left and what she is doing. Along the Wasatch Front, another more frightening possibility has arisen.
In the past three months, the nude bodies of two teen-age girls have been found in mountainous areas—sexually assaulted, beaten, and strangled. Police believe they are the work of one man.
In Salt Lake City, members of the county sheriff’s Juvenile Division have expressed concerns for the safety of 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox, who left her parents’ Holladay home 10 weeks ago following an argument. She has not been heard from since.
Capt. George Q. Neilsen Jr, head of the Juvenile Division, said her case is not following a normal pattern. Lawmen consider a juvenile “missing” if mysterious circumstances or foul play emerge in the case. Otherwise, they’re listed as “runaway.”
“From our experience, Nancy Wilcox should have been one of those who was gone two or three days before she came home,” Neilsen told the Deseret News. “She had never run away before, and there wasn’t a history of her being delinquent. But we’ve talked to her friends, her relatives, anybody who might have some idea of where she is or who may have heard from her. And not one of them knows a thing. The fact that a nice, attractive, 16-year-old girl has been concealed, or concealed herself, all these weeks has us very concerned,” said Neilsen. “We are still making every effort and are following up every lead.”
Miss Wilcox’s case is only one of 45 runaway and missing juvenile cases currently under investigation by Salt Lake County. It is, at the present time, the only one that has not followed the traditional pattern where a missing youngster either returns in a few days or is a recurring case.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: December 30, 1974
A George K. was arrested for hitchhiking on the freeway to Provo. While in the jail, he identified Nancy’s missing poster on the bulletin board as being the girl he’d seen in the Flame Supper Club in Orem over the weekend. He told Provo PD that the girl he thought to be Nancy Wilcox was with another young blonde and two men, on December 28, between 9 and 11pm.
I contacted the manager of the Flame Supper Club and told him of the missing Nancy Wilcox and a possible sighting in his club. I asked him who the waitresses and bartenders were that evening. I told him I’d like to interview them. He told me to be at the Silver Dollar Lounge at 9:30pm and he would have all of them gathered there.
At 9:30 I went to the lounge in Springville, and interviewed the barmaids, bartender, and manager. I showed them all pictures of Nancy Wilcox and explained to them how she had been missing since October 1, 1974. They all felt it was Nancy that was in the Flame Saturday night, and they all agreed that the two girls had been in the Silver Dollar several times alone. The bartender said his son had dated the girl that was with “Nancy” and could get me the address. He thought the girls were both divorcees and lived together in Provo; one of them had a small baby.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: December 31, 1974
I called the bartender who provided me with the girl’s name and address. I went to Provo and contacted one of their officers to accompany me to the address, where we made contact. Both girls were sisters and living together. One of the sisters, Cindy W., was divorced and had a one-year-old baby. Cindy did resemble Nancy Wilcox. Both girls admitted to being in the Flame Club Saturday with their boyfriends. The clothing she described wearing was the same as what George K. described “Nancy Wilcox” to be wearing. This lead was eliminated– just a lookalike situation.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: January 2, 1975
I received a message from Mindon, Nevada (Douglas County Sheriff’s Office). It stated that Nancy Wilcox was possibly sighted by a reputable citizen in Antioch, California. I replied asking for a name and address.

Follow-Up Report: Runaway
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Ken Farnsworth, Juvenile Division
Date: January 14, 1975
The Sheriff’s Office replied with the name of William L., of Carson City, Nevada. I called him, and he told me that when they were in California for the holidays, on the way home, going south on the freeway from Sacramento, they stopped in Lodi to get something to eat. Just off the right side of the freeway, they stopped at Sambo’s Restaurant. He said a girl who looked like Nancy Wilcox was sitting alone at the counter. She had a brown coat on that looked like it was too big for her, and she looked nervous. The only reason he noticed her was because she reminded him of an old friend.

Follow-Up Report: Offense Changed to: Missing Person
Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Detective Glen Bailess, Missing Persons Division
Date: October 15, 1975
Subject Matter: Wilcox, Nancy. White female, 5’6”, 120 pounds, dark blonde hair and brown eyes. 34B bra size; 7.5 A-B shoe size, 32” waist, dress size 9, blouse size 9. Pierced ears, wore a turquoise ring on her right hand. This subject was entered into NCIC on October 7, 1975, with all of the pertinent information available.

On October 15, 1975, I received information from Gary W., who said that yesterday he observed a girl fitting the description of Nancy Wilcox sitting at the counter of the Hi-Way Café at 1800 West North Temple at approximately 10am. He said she left and crossed the street, then went over to the Casa Blanca Motel and started talking to one of the maids.
Mr. W. said he saw the same girl a little later at Dee’s on North Temple at about 12:45pm while he was eating lunch. He reports that she was at the cashier desk with two Arabs, but he did not know if she was actually with them, or if they were just standing near her.
With this information, I checked the Hi-Way Cafe and talked with the owner and the waitress who was on duty yesterday. Both remembered seeing a girl in the cafe eating a short stack of pancakes. However, the girl in question did not speak English very well. The waitress described her not as just having an accent but also being a foreigner. She looked similar to the picture of Nancy I brought with me, but they said she was not the same girl.
The owner recalled seeing Nancy’s picture on TV the morning of the 15^th, and said it was definitely not the girl in his business the day before. I left the photo with him.
I checked the Casa Blanca Motel and talked with the manager. He said there was a girl staying in his motel who resembled Nancy Wilcox, but this girl was older. She was staying with a man and a woman. The manager could not remember any names. The manager remembered that this girl could not speak English, and had only been in the country for three weeks.
As of this report, it appears to be another case of only a lookalike.
Case is ACTIVE. Report concluded at 3:40pm.

Police ‘routinely’ review Burr case,” by Kerry Webster
Tacoma News-Tribune
October 16, 1975
The disappearance of Ann Marie Burr is one of several unsolved cases being “routinely reviewed” here because of the Utah kidnapping arrest of former Tacoman Theodore R. Bundy, Tacoma police confirmed yesterday. But detective Capt. W. A. Seymour emphasized that there is no reason to believe Bundy had anything to do with the disappearance of the girl in 1961. “We have no evidence whatsoever to tie him with any of our cases,” Seymour said. “We are taking another look at some of them simply as a matter of routine procedure.”
Bundy, 28, a second-year law student, is accused of kidnapping and attempted murder in the abduction of a 17-year-old Utah girl. Utah authorities say they are investigating possible connections between that case and the disappearance of another girl and two unsolved sex slayings in that state. The arrest has also stirred renewed interest here in the mysterious “Ted” murders of six Northwest women and the disappearance of three others.
Tacoma Police Maj. Robert Johnson, assistant chief for investigations, confirmed Wednesday that the Burr file is being “re-examined” for possible links to Bundy, but he added: “We’re extremely reluctant to discuss it, out of fairness to this man. We don’t want to give the impression we’re trying to pin every unsolved crime in the last 20 years on this poor guy.” Maj. Johnson said he felt another look at the Burr cases here was proper, but warned against a “witch hunt” aimed at Bundy. “He’s got enough trouble in Utah,” he said…
Meanwhile, Salt Lake County deputies are investigating a report that yet another missing girl was seen entering a light-colored Volkswagen with a tall young man, according to the Associated Press. A waitress told police a girl she saw entering the car looked like Nancy Wilcox, 16, a high-school junior who vanished October 2, 1974– close to the time of the abduction attempt of Miss DaRonch, which also involved a light-colored Volkswagen.
A man who called himself “Ted” and drove a brownish Volkswagen has been sought in connection with murders and disappearances of young women here.

“First victim found 1 year ago” by Bruce Hills
Deseret News
October 28, 1975
A year ago, Utah was shocked by the murder of two girls and the disappearance of a third. The cases are still unsolved…
On Nov. 8, 1974, Debra Kent, 17, left a theater production at Viewmont High School to get the family car, parked in the school parking lot, and pick up her brother who was at a skating rink. She left the theater about 10pm and hasn’t been seen since… Witnesses who saw a man lurking in the halls outside the auditorium at Viewmont the night Miss Kent disappeared described him as 6 feet tall, 185 pounds, and with dark brown hair. They said he had a mustache, heavy eyebrows, wore a business suit, and looked handsome and well groomed. He was about 30 years old, witnesses said.
A fourth case did not receive the publicity of the other three, but officers believe it could be connected to them. Early last December, Nancy Wilcox, 16, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Wilcox, was reported missing by her parents. They said their daughter had been missing since October 2.
A few weeks ago, Miss Wilcox’s parents posted a $500 reward for information on her whereabouts. The Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Department believes she met with foul play.
“Nancy disappeared after two other girls were found slain and attempted abductions were made on others and another girl was reported missing,” said Deputy Sheriff Kenneth Farnsworth of the department’s Juvenile Division.
The day after Miss Wilcox’s picture appeared in a December 1974 issue of the Deseret News, a Lake Point waitress called the Sheriff’s Department.
“She reported a girl who looked like Miss Wilcox had entered the restaurant with a tall, mustached young man. The couple left in a light-colored Volkswagen,” Farnsworth said.

Author’s note:
Notice how these articles subtly connect the description of the suspect seen at Viewmont High School before the Kent disappearance and the VW associated with the Carol DaRonch attempted abduction to the man described in the Lake Point waitress sighting. Although he isn’t named in the Deseret News articles, Ted Bundy had been arrested in Salt Lake just weeks earlier for the DaRonch abduction, and the news was spreading quickly throughout the West.
By this time, Bundy’s light-colored Volkswagen was well known, as was the involvement of a similar vehicle in Carol DaRonch’s kidnapping. Speculation was already growing that Bundy might also be involved in the Kent abduction and Washington murders. Both the Deseret News and Tacoma News-Tribune articles leave readers with the impression that the suspects in all the cases could be the same person. While this theory would eventually prove to be correct– Ted Bundy was indeed responsible for those crimes– the sighting of a light-colored or yellow Volkswagen in connection with Nancy Wilcox’s disappearance was simply a coincidence, a red herring example of a very common car and conflation in the media and subsequent public consciousness.

“Kidnap Facts Matter of Linkage”
United Press International
April 5, 1978
In August 1974, Bundy left Washington to attend the University of Utah School of Law.
The Utah cases began with the Oct. 27, 1974, disappearance of Melissa Smith, 17-year-old daughter of a suburban Salt Lake police chief.
Miss DaRonch was kidnapped and Miss Kent disappeared Nov. 8. Laura Aime, 17, disappeared in mid November. Bundy is now considered a suspect in those cases.
He has been linked, although remotely, to the October 1974 disappearance of Nancy Wilcox, 16, and the July 1975 disappearance of Nancy Perry Baird, 23. The media, and eventually the police, linked the DaRonch, Aime, Smith and Kent cases…

“Examiners Search to Identify Woman”
United Press International
September 7, 1978
The state medical examiner is trying to get dental records of a 16-year-old Holladay girl to see if they match a body found near Yuba Lake.
Dr. Serge Moore said he wants to check the records and clothes sizes of Nancy Wilcox whose parents reported her missing two months after they last saw her October 2, 1974.
Miss Wilcox was believed to be a runaway but investigators said that because no one has heard from the girl in the four years since she was reported missing they believe foul play may be involved in her disappearance.
Tuesday, Moore ruled out that the victim might have been Debra Kent who disappeared in October 1974 from Bountiful. Police have questioned convicted Utah kidnapper Theodore Bundy, who is awaiting trial in three murders in Florida, in that case. Authorities have also said they want to question Bundy in the Wilcox disappearance.

“Ted Bundy: Madness or Coincidence?,” by Jim McGee
Fort Myers News-Press
June 25, 1979
It was during the crisp month of October 1974 that the same kind of sudden, violent and mysterious death which had haunted the state of Washington for 10 months began its tenacious work in the home of the Mormon Church– Salt Lake City, Utah.
Working at a steady, methodical pace, it first took Nancy Wilcox.
A pert, feisty high school junior, Nancy became embroiled in a family quarrel on the night of October 2. The sharp words ended when she marched out the front door, petulance clouding her pretty face.
At first lawmen pegged the 17-year-old as a runaway from her home in a relaxed suburb of Salt Lake. But that was before a photograph, showing her long hair parted in the middle, appeared in a local newspaper. When it did, a waitress called to say she had seen Nancy in her restaurant shortly after the reported disappearance. The girl had come in with a young man and then departed, leaving in a light-colored Volkswagen, the waitress said, adding that he had a mustache. Nancy was never seen again…

Author’s note: Note the subtle shift in how the Lake Point waitress’s tip is presented here. Now, the waitress is implied to have positively identified Nancy, rather than simply a girl resembling her. Additionally, the timeline has been condensed—the sighting from two months after her disappearance is now described as occurring shortly afterward, making it seem more plausible to the audience that the sighting was indeed of Nancy. The “long hair parted in the middle” reference seeks to establish a connection with Bundy’s supposedly preferred victim type.

Excerpt from Ted Bundy: The Killer Next Door, by Steven Winn
1979
The Utah detectives followed the proceedings with profound interest. Like Washington, Utah had experienced several evidence-free disappearances that fall. Nancy Wilcox, a pretty sixteen-year-old cheerleader, had vanished on October 2, and Debbie Kent, another high-school student, on November 8…
Louis Smith is a professional cop. He knew that without a crime scene, a murder weapon, or an eyewitness report the chances of developing a strong suspect were very slim. His daughter Melissa Smith’s death, like the unexplained disappearance of Salt Lake cheerleaderNancyWilcoxon October 2, might very well go unsolved, unpunished.

Author’s note:
This appears to be the first printed description of Nancy Wilcox being a cheerleader, but Nancy’s friends and family have confirmed that she never was. Nancy’s name doesn’t appear among the junior varsity cheerleaders in the 1974 or 1975 editions of the Olympus High School yearbook while Nancy attended the school. However, her younger sister did become a cheerleader while attending Evergreen Junior High, in approximately 1979. In an interview with KSL News, Susie Wilcox Nelson remarked, “I don’t know if my mom got mixed up, or if somebody heard that and then it just got reported that way.”

Excerpt from a taped conversation between with Ted Bundy and Journalist Stephen Michaud
April 30, 1980
TB: As we’ve discussed before, frequently after this kind of individual, uh, committed a murder, he would lapse into a period, following the crime, of self-recrimination, sorrow, remorse, et cetera. And for a period of time he would attempt do everything to overcome or otherwise repress this, uh, the aberrant behavior which he engaged in. Indeed, on one particular occasion he went to extraordinary lengths to do this following a crime, to do this, and he felt that he had succeeded, felt that he’d overcome the urge, or that this particular abnormal course of conduct had run its course, just sort of, uh, extinguished itself. Just the act of constantly being aware of not… slipping into behaviors that would arouse him, or arouse his fantasies, arouse his desire to seek out victims. He became somewhat satisfied and secure with the feeling that he had accomplished this.
But then in this instance, the cracks in the facade, as it were, began to appear. This individual then, you expect then would attempt to channel the desire within him to go out and do something into a different area, into something which was still, uh, improper, immoral and illegal, but something that was less serious, less severe.
Uh, and so he, in sort of a, uh, a compromise decided that rather than go out and inflict this mortal injury on a victim, that he would search out a victim, and simply, in such a way that there would be no possibility of detection anyway, he would not be forced into a position of having to kill. In essence he compromised into just going out and performing an act of rape, as a “compromise.”
So, he, uh, began to just go out driving around the suburbs in this city, uh, that he was living in, and one particular evening he’s driving down a fairly dark street and saw a girl walking along the street.

SM: Uh-huh.

TB: Ok. Because the area was dark and she was alone, he decided to select her as the victim for this intended act of sexual assault, as it were. He parked his car down the street, and then ran up behind the girl. And just as he came up upon her, say they were at a place where there was an orchard,or a number of trees or something. Let’s see, and as he came up behind her, she heard him. She turned around and he brandished a knife and grabbed her by the arm and told her to do what he wanted her to do. You know, to follow him. He pushed her off the sidewalk area into this darkened orchard, and um… told her to submit and do what he wanted her to do. She began to argue with him, and he kept telling her to be quiet. She said she didn’t believe he would do anything to her, anyway. He again began to try to remove her clothes and she would, uh, continue to struggle in a feeble manner and then also voice verbally her objections as to what was going on.
And then, uh, the significance, now, is that his intent with this victim was not to harm her. He believed that he’d overcome that particular, uh… and he thought this was going to be a significant departure; perhaps even a way of deconditioning himself, to climb down that ladder or, uh, I can’t think of a good word… de-escalate this level of violence to the point where there would be no violence at all. Even no necessity for that kind of encounter.
But uh, he found himself with this girl who was struggling and screaming. Uh, not screaming, but let’s say just basically arguing with him. There were houses in the vicinity and he was concerned that somebody might hear. And so, in an attempt to stop her from talking or arguing, he placed his hand over her mouth.
She stopped and he attempted to remove her clothes and she began to object again. At this point, he was in a state of not just agitation, but something on the order of panic. He was fearing that she would arouse someone in the vicinity. So, at this point, not thinking clearly but still intending not to harm her, let’s say, he placed his hands around her throat, just to throttle her into unconsciousness so that she wouldn’t scream anymore. Which he did. She stopped struggling, stopped screaming, to a point that it appeared that she was unconscious. But not, in his opinion, to a point where he had killed her.

SM: Right.

TB: Then let’s say he removed her clothes and raped her… uh, and put his own clothes back on. At about that point, he began to notice that the girl wasn’t moving. Uh… and at that point in an extreme state of panic, and disorientation, knowing that it appeared, although he wasn’t certain, that he’d done what he had promised himself he wouldn’t do. And he had done it, really, almost inadvertently.
Uh, and so he took the girl by one of her arms and pulled her over to a darkened corner of this little orchard and then, in a fit of panic, fled the scene. He got back in his car, still not knowing whether she was alive or dead, got back in his car and drove back to his house. But once he returned to the house, upon reflection he began to wonder, just, you know, whether she was alive or dead, and if she was dead of course, he fell back into the old panic. There was the body, there was the crime scene. He didn’t know if he’d left anything at the crime scene. He hadn’t thought about publicity and physical evidence. So upon some reflection he decided to return to the scene and if the body was there to recover it and take it somewhere else where it wouldn’t be found.

SM: This would be the same night?

TB: Yes. Um… but he faced two problems in returning to the scene. First, prior to the incident he was in a state of intoxication, and here he was in an area he didn’t know that well. So he couldn’t remember exactly where it was he had to return, couldn’t find his way back, as it were.
But let’s say, after a considerable period of time of driving about in the general vicinity, uh, he was able to locate the area. It was getting fairly late about this time. He was able to determine that nobody was in the vicinity, so apparently, one, she hadn’t gotten up and gone away and the police hadn’t returned to the scene. Or she was still there. So he parked his car at the curb in front of this small orchard and uh, walked into it and saw that the body was still in the same position he’d left it. So it was clear that the girl was dead.
So he, uh, carried the body to his car and put it the body in the car, and covered it. Then he returned to the general area with a flashlight and scoured it to pick up everything that he may have left there— her clothing, et cetera. He placed that in the car and then returned to his apartment.

SM: Did he find everything?

TB: I don’t know.

SM: Would he have worn a mask?

TB: No, I don’t think so. I mean, he didn’t… it was dark and he….

SM: Well, the reason I asked is that if the intent was not to kill the victim, you would think that there would have been some kind of measure taken to disguise his identity.

TB: In a way, it was planned, but in a way it was like a spur of the moment thing for this person. He figured the object was to do it in such a way that it would be done in a very dark scene. Eventually, he found that kind of opportunity.

SM: Why would he return to his apartment as opposed to just driving out in the middle of nowhere and dumping her there?

TB: Well, first of all, it was late at night. And as we know, he tries to secrete the body with some care. Rather than just driving off somewhere late at night and dumping it along the roadside, he needed time to think about what he should do—how he should do it.

SM: So he would take a couple days before he….

TB: Yeah, a day or two.

SM: How long might this person keep the bodies at his house?

TB: I mean that we could say that this individual would not keep the bodies any longer than necessary to determine the best way of disposing.

SM: So the idea really was that the residence was the safest place.

TB: Well, where else would he go? It would be the most logical place to go for him to take time to think. It was also a place where he had some privacy, too. Rather than go out and park in a drive-in restaurant or something. It’s clear that there are only so many places he could go where he could feel safe and relaxed and think about the, uh, the situation that was facing him.

SM: Overall, the impression I get of this person and his career is that maybe the front end of the incidents would be planned fairly well, but the back end of the operation was not always so well thought out.

TB: That’s not an unfair analysis. But on the other hand, let’s take the facts of the Washington cases and try to draw some inferences from that M.O. We assume that the bodies were disposed of in Washington the way they were to minimize publicity—to diminish the possibility that they would be located within a short period of time. Thereby diminishing the amount of investigative activity, as well as publicity. It’s clear some thought was given to it and, in fact, this individual’s approach to disposing of the bodies was fairly effective. I mean, a person finds himself (with) a corpse, and what is he going to do with it? Ideally, he’d have an incinerator in the basement—and there wouldn’t be any problem at all in that respect.

SM: Maybe the best way to put it is to ask the question this way: Would this individual have on his mind the disposal problem at the time he was in search of the victim?

TB: I doubt that there’d be a necessity to, because he had already thought about it—at least in general—prior to that time. The specifics of it would, of course, be dictated to a certain degree by the situation. Let’s say, then, the case we just talked about: He hadn’t said, “I’m going to take her just to Point A.” In fact, he went back to his apartment and looked at a map and said, “That looks good.” And (he) then drove to that area. The specifics of where he would dispose of the body would depend on access roads or whatever.

Excerpt from The Deliberate Stranger, by Richard Larsen
1980
Later, in Salt Lake City, detectives of Bountiful, Murray, and Salt Lake County, met to review their cases. Salt Lake County detectives Jerry Thompson and Ben Forbes, who were working on the October murder of Melissa Smith, had a hunch they might all be looking for the same man. “These cases are all different,” said Thompson. “We’ve got a murdered girl, a missing girl, and a girl who got away from a guy. But there sure are similarities.” The victims were all young, brunette, and pretty, noted Thompson, and each girl, wearing her long hair parted in the middle, resembled the others.
Another teenager of the same description was missing. Nancy Wilcox, a pretty high-school cheerleader, had disappeared from the Salt Lake City area in early October, too. But Salt Lake County juvenile authorities had jurisdiction over that case, and considered Nancy a runaway. Nancy had quarreled with her parents before her disappearance.

Excerpt from The Only Living Witness by Stephen Michaud & Hugh Aynesworth
1983
The terror began in Utah on October 2, 1974, when sixteen-year-old Nancy Wilcox, a pretty high school cheerleader, disappeared from suburban Holladay, just south of Salt Lake City. At first, Wilcox was listed by juvenile authorities as a probable runaway; Nancy recently had argued with her parents. She was last reported seen riding in a VW bug. No description was offered for the man driving the Volkswagen.

Author’s note:
When Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth published the book they’d written based on their 1980 interviews with Bundy, there wasn’t much out there to be known about Nancy Wilcox. The short blurb they wrote about her was based on the sparse facts reported in the newspapers, with the “pretty high school cheerleader” story likely drawn from the books previously written by Steven Winn and Richard Larsen. The “last seen riding in a VW bug” was already taking hold in the common narrative. Michaud and had no way to know that Bundy had, in fact, already described her abduction and murder to him in great detail in 1980– hypothetically, of course.

“Hayward Plans to Bring Serial Murderer to Utah”, by Mike Carter
Salt Lake Tribune
October 10, 1984
Salt Lake County Sheriff Pete Hayward said Tuesday he plans to bring convicted serial murderer Henry Lee Lucas to Utah this spring in hopes of clearing a number of unsolved homicides throughout the state. The sheriff said a recent interview of Lucas by Millard County Sheriff Ed Phillips has led him to believe that at least one of the county’s unsolved murders and as many as three were committed by Lucas in his wide-ranging slaughter of as many as 350 men, women and children throughout the United States.
The murders of two Utah women one in Utah County and the other in Millard County have been cleared up by Lucas, who told Sheriff Phillips he and his partner Ottis Toole traveled through Utah on numerous occasions… The sheriff also wants to question Lucas about the October 1974 disappearance of Nancy Wilcox.
The sheriff said his homicide detectives, led by Lt. Ben Forbes, will contact “every sheriff in Utah, who in turn will gather information on any unsolved murders in their jurisdictions to present to Lucas when he is brought to Utah, probably this spring.
“We have to wait in line,” Sheriff Hayward said, noting there are about 200 other jurisdictions waiting to question Lucas on his possible involvement in murders in their states.

Author’s note:
It’s notable that Sheriff Pete Hayward appeared particularly interested in linking Nancy Wilcox’s disappearance to Henry Lee Lucas. Lucas, a notorious drifter and convicted murderer, would later be exposed for falsely confessing to hundreds of murders, often under the influence of suggestive police interrogation tactics.

“Utah Lawmen Seek Last Interview,” by Mike Carter
Salt Lake Tribune
May 23, 1986
Salt Lake County Sheriff Pete Hayward said Thursday detectives from his office will attempt to interview serial killer Ted Bundy hoping the condemned man will reveal the whereabouts of the bodies of three Utah girls he is suspected of murdering.
Sheriff Hayward’s comments were made after learning Florida authorities have set an execution date of July 2 for Bundy. Bundy, a former University of Utah law student, is suspected in as many as five murders or disappearances of young women in Utah in 1974-1975. Investigators believe he has killed as many as 50 women nationwide.
Sheriff Hayward said he plans to contact Florida authorities in Tallahassee and have them ask Bundy for an interview. It ultimately will be up to the condemned man to decide whether he will talk with Utah investigators. If he agrees, homicide Lt. Ben Forbes and Detective Jerry Thompson, both of whom worked on the Bundy investigation in the mid-70’s, will travel to Florida’s death row to appeal to “any sense of decency Bundy may have.”
In particular, the sheriff said the investigators will ask Bundy about his suspected involvement in the disappearance of Debi Kent, who disappeared from her high school the night of Nov 8, 1974– the same night as the DaRonch kidnapping.
Investigators also will question him about Nancy Wilcox who disappeared around the same time, and Nancy Perry Baird, who disappeared on July 4, 1975, from an East Layton service station.
“There is no doubt in my mind that the Kent girl and the Wilcox girl were murdered by Ted Bundy,” the sheriff said. “The Baird case is very similar.”
“All we’d really like to do is attempt to find out the true story about what happened to them and recover any possible remains so the families can rest, he said.”

Ted Bundy:I want you to know, that uh… we’ll do what we can. And I think we can do something good. We can do something good.

DC: But I’ve got five cases that we know of, that we’re concerned about. Three of them are missing girls. Would you feel more comfortable just talking, or would you like me to refresh your memory?

TB: No, what I’d like to do, I mean, under the circumstances… [sigh] I think we need… I’d just like to, let’s just get a map out.

DC: Unfortunately, I don’t have a map of Utah.

TB: Alright I think… guess what… let’s just see what we have.

DC: The best I can do… Ok, here we got [a map?] of Salt Lake City.

TB: Shit. I knew it…

DC: Not a good enough map huh?

TB: No… it’s just… everything looks the same. It used to be a problem back when I lived there. Dammit.

[…]

TB: Well… alright first of all. You’ll have to forgive me, because I’m not thinking very clearly here, there’s a number of things we need to talk about, and we’re going to get down to business here. I understand, and it’s my preference, that you at least for the time being, more or less work in a statewide capacity you know, even though I’m sure you’re interested in everything that happened in Utah. But, I understand that you’ve sort of been associated with the Attorney General’s Office in some way for this.

DC: Well I’ve been informed, I talked to the AG today, and he’s informed me he’s empowered me to act on his behalf as a representative of the AG.

TB: Ok and I would like your findings here reported as soon as possible to him.

DC: You want me to report my findings to him?

TB: Well I can’t order you to do anything….

DC: No I’m saying you’d like me to do that… sure I’d grant that… in fact he asked me to.

TB: As soon as you can, let him know what’s going on.

DC: Absolutely.

[…]

TB: I think what we need is topographical stuff, for the high resolution, to give me a better feel for that.

[FBI Agent Bill Hagmaier]:–could not come up with one of those in Starke, they do not have them of Utah.

TB: I know, and that’s a problem. I want to be, for any number of reasons, I want to be as specific as I can be. What this is about is trying to locate the remains. We’re not talking about stuff thrown out of the windows, or stuff scattered across the ground. It’s things that should be there.

TB: No. Let’s try to do one at a time. If I can’t do this one…

[…]

DC: Nancy Wilcox lived in Salt Lake City, on the east side. She had left home. Do you recall where you picked her up?

TB: Uh…

DC: What others did you take down Highway 89?

TB: No one else.

DC: Was Nancy Wilcox on foot, or how did you run into her?

TB: Uh, she was on foot.

DC: Did she come peacefully with you, or did you have to take her by force at first, or how did that particular encounter occur?

TB: Oh, uh… [sigh].

DC: You haven’t slept for awhile have you?

TB: Well I just… You see, there’s just a lot of things going on besides what you want to talk to me about. And it creates a lot of pressure, and the lack of sleep and it all builds up. And it’s maybe hard to appreciate… and I’ve only talked to folks from Idaho today, and it’s hard to appreciate, I’m not using it as an excuse but it’s just the reality that when I talk about this kind of stuff it just drains me in a way that’s hard to describe. I mean haven’t thought about these kinda things… to attempt to relive them vividly enough to describe them especially to the point of locating remains, it just… my mind is tied in knots right now. Everything together… I’m having a hard time thinking. I’m having a hard time. Let’s see if we can’t run through it, at least this one.

DC: Do you remember where approximately where you encountered Nancy Wilcox? Do you remember what she was wearing, what she looked like?

TB: [Sigh] I don’t remember exactly what she was wearing. She was wearing like, casual clothes. She wasn’t wearing a dress, she wasn’t dressed up in slacks or a dress. Jeans. Walking along the side of a road. Poorly lit area. Suburban. Years ago I probably knew the street name, but on the outside chance I could show you, you don’t happen to have a street map of Salt Lake?

DC: No. Do you recall where from the university, say?

TB: Oh it would have been south. Considerably south.

DC: East or west or?

TB: Oh excuse me, south. I get my directions all screwed up with that place. Is there a Salt Lake map here…

DC: Of course, when you’re going south, the Wasatch Mountains are to the east. And there’s homes built up alongside of the valley—

TB: Oh, it would’ve been south of the university. Some distance south.

DC: And you remember State Street, the main drag, that goes all the way through, was it east or west of that?

TB: Oh, it was east, south and east.

DC: Considerably east?

TB: Well considerably east is up in the mountains, up in the benches. This wasn’t up in the benches. This is uh, south and east, by how much, is just a…. by suburban I mean, I don’t mean new suburban, it looked like older suburban. You know, houses been around for a while, wasn’t a new development. There were no sidewalks per se, I think it was just sort of a side area. There were no storm sewers, curbs, anything like this.

DC: Were you able to have any conversation with her?

TB: Not really. (pause) Not much. Nothing noteworthy.

DC: Was she carrying a purse, do you recall?

TB: Don’t recall. Well, let me think. Well yeah, you know, you asked me that question about Debra Kent—

DC: About the purse?

TB: About what she was wearing and everything you need?

DC: Well, you just indicated what you did with the clothing but you didn’t describe it though.

TB: Well, heh… ok. I would hope we get something that could be corroborated in a way that people are semi-convinced. I know people don’t think I’m making it up, but on the other hand, some people might say just for the sake of it that I was. [laughs] Do you follow me?

TB: Ok yeah well let’s get back to the one, the young lady we were talking about.

DC: Nancy Wilcox?

TB: Mmhm.

DC: So, she was walking along the side of the road, and you approached her and took her against her will?

DC: The park?

TB: The apartment.

DC: Oh, the apartment. And at what point would she have been killed? In the orchard, or at your apartment?

TB: The next day. The next day.

DC: Are we talking about the same apartment though?

TB: Yes.

DC: Do you recall anything unusual about her, anything that sticks out in your mind, as far as her… any scars, marks, or um… Obviously, did you know her name at that time?

TB: No, no I didn’t. Uh…

DC: Did she talk about, was she able to talk about anything prior to the assault? You say you didn’t have much of a conversation with her before.

TB: No… no.

DC: And where was she taken after the apartment?

TB: That’s what I’m trying to remember. That’s what I’m looking at, I need to look over this map. It’s unclear to me right now.

DC: Well, if I can help you, Parleys is the one that goes straight east out of Salt Lake, and that’s the main route to Park City, do you remember that one?

TB: Yes.

DC: And then of course, you go south to uh, you go to Point of the Mountain and you’ve got those small towns, Lehi, American Fork, and then Orem and then Provo.

TB: Mmhm.

DC: And north of course you’ve got Bountiful, Layton, and some other towns in that area as you go up to Ogden. Do you think it was, which direction do you think it was?

TB: Uh… south. My state of mind was not good then. I think I was… I know I was not very lucid, I was new to the area. I sort of got lost going to where I was going and got lost coming back.

DC: Did you follow 89 again or did you—?

TB: Well no, I went south, but how far south. Which, I don’t, you know… It’s not as clear as it was…

DC: With Debra?

TB: [sigh- long pause] Yeah, the odd thing is, I remember contours. I remember ups and downs. And some other stuff. Uh…

DC: Well, there’s a lot of ups and downs in that area.

TB: This is true. A lot of ‘em.

DC: You went south but you don’t think you followed 89 that time?

TB: I sort of remember staying on the main drag, whatever that was. Not diverting at Spanish Fork, but continuing on, the main line, down, which is labeled as 91 here.

DC: This is quite an old map, because there should be a freeway, Interstate 15, that goes—

TB: Well, this [map] was some time ago itself, I don’t know when this was published.

DC: You know, you’re confident it was a freeway though?

TB: Well yeah you know, in those times you’re right, it was a mixture, this is 1967 copyright. But at that time it was a blend of construction, of 2 lane, 4 lane, back and forth, [side and fro?] but a lot of it was two lane, then, and it appears on this map as well a lot of it was two lane.

DC: It was two lane when this map was published. Mmhm.

TB: Going south… time was not… I mean, you pass through all these towns. You know how these little towns are. What would it be, Scipio, and Fillmore, and Meadow, and Kanosh, and everyone has those blinking orange lights and all the stores are dark. It’s late at night, and you’re just making sure you’re obeying the speed limit because you know there’s probably some cop in that town gonna try to make his quota with you. But anyway, moving south… to Beaver… going, uh, west.

DC: Yeah, Beaver’s about a three-to-four-hour drive.

TB: That’s not out of the question. It could’ve been Cove Fork, which is also, it’s down far enough and has a western, uh, component to it.

DC: So you think they’re down in Beaver or Cove Fort?

TB: Somewhere down in that area. [sighs] Farther off the road than that.

DC: To the left or right?

TB: To the east, some distance.

DC: And there again, you just think it’s in that general, you couldn’t…

TB: No… I can’t… Sorry. You’re catching me when you are.

DC: I’m just getting quite anxious myself.

TB: I hear you, I hear you. We’re all up against some deadlines. My mind’s not as nimble as it needs to be right now. But uh… seems to me, it was something that went up and over something like a pass, a pretty steep climb.

DC: A dirt road, or a paved road?

TB: No, a paved road. Four lane. Could’ve been 4. Or 24. Goes up into the mountains. Does 70 cut through?

DC: Yeah 70’s at four lane. I mean, it is now.

TB: What was it back in 1974?

DC: Well, I’d assume, probably a little bit of both. Yeah, 70 comes over and meets 15 now, and then… In fact, that’s where they’re picking up all the cocaine traffickers, down on Interstate 70.

TB: Haha! Why, why there?

DC: I don’t know. The highway patrol for Utah is getting more cocaine than any other state, including Miami I heard, including Florida. On that interstate. But anyway, you think it was a four lane, going east, paved road.

TB: Yeah. Up into the mountains. Pass.

DC: Did you follow that paved road quite a ways before you…

TB: No.

DC: See that eventually, you come go back into Price and can go back that way, if you follow 70 far enough. Did you make the circle, or not?

TB: No. I think I came back the same way that I went down. Again, this was, late at night, 11, 12, 1 o’clock. New area, dark. Obviously. New area. So, anyway, more or less picking whatever was available, not looking for anything marked on a map as much as just looking for something that’s, uh…. a road suitably far off the beaten path. [pause] With some better maps, and knowing more about this 70, and description, a better description, or something, of this 24, might, I’m sure, would… as I remember…

DC: You’re speaking of this road here?

TB: Yeah, 24. And what you indicated was later 70. Was going to be 70.

DC: So, it could be one of those two possibilities is what you’re saying.

TB: Mmhm.

DC: How far would you have traveled these do you suppose, on those paved roads?

TB: Oh… well into them. “Trail, carry water” it says. Huh. Could’ve been something like that. [pause] I want to find this place. I know it’s there. I mean, I know you could… because… well let’s get there and I can tell you. On whatever side it’s a mile to two miles down a graded dirt road, on the right-hand side, about 50 feet in. All of these are estimates. I can’t be sure every time.

DC: But before you hit that dirt road, how far would you say you traveled east?

TB: I don’t know. I wasn’t looking at the mileage so much as I was trying to look for roads that appeared out of the dark alongside of this highway that looked like they went somewhere. And, uh… I remember one time, traveling, the reason I think it’s 25, I remember one time traveling– but well again it might be wrong, it could be this 4 thing, if 70 went through– traveling this road and going to Green River, that is the Colorado Green River, seeing– and now I remember, seeing this road, what looked like was going off to the right.

DC: You mean you traveled again, at a later time, and you recall that place?

TB: Right.

DC: And you were on your way to Green River?

TB: Right.

DC: Was that on your way up to Colorado you mean?

TB: Right.

DC: Miss Nancy, did you keep her approximately 24 hours at your place?

TB: Approximately. Yeah.

DC: Do you care to talk about cause of death there, how you caused her death?

TB: Well… it makes sense and it doesn’t.

[long pause]

DC: Was a weapon used?

TB: No. No… someday it might be important but I think that for the family it’s important that we find the body. That she died is unfortunate and real but uh, if we could find the body…

DC: Is there anything else then about where the body could be that you could tell me right now?

TB: Well… what did I tell you? I told you about the spot, more or less.

DC: Yeah you weren’t sure about 70 or– again, what was this highway number? But you thought you went over that road again on your way to Green River.

TB: Mmhm. We need better maps. That would help. We need just a clearer picture of what it looks like. I don’t remember this Canyon Reef National Park but I don’t imagine it looks any different from the rest of it except its name. I’m gonna take a break. Excuse me.

[Tape cuts out]

TB: Some of it, part of it. Not all of it, thanks. Ok. Try what I’d have to call on this map, the Notom Road, off Highway 24.

DC: You mean we’re following this road and we take the Notom Road? Is that it there?

TB: To the right.

DC: Is this it here?

TB: No, no. Right there. See how it comes out…goes back…

DC: Right here?

TB: If I could see the actual entranceway, from several of these roads, what happens is on this particular road, you sort of, you make a right-hand turn off 24, go south for 100 feet or so, and then turn around, first to the right, then a larger bend around to the left, which is a swooping kind of bend… it seems to be the way this Notom Road looks although it could be one of these others. But it’s far enough in, I’d say it’s far enough along Highway 24 to make some sense.

DC: But your recollection was, that you went over that road again on the way to Colorado though, is that right?

TB: Yeah. One time, during the daytime.

DC: How far off of 24 then?

TB: I would say, within two miles, between a mile and two miles. On the right-hand side, up an embankment, about 50 feet. Well, that’s… your scale here says, uh…

DC: Well, I’m just putting a general vicinity type thing, on the right side…

TB: Well, actually, if you want to pinpoint it… I don’t know about Notom, I never ran across Notom. I bet you there’s probably, a uh, mailbox–

DC: That’s a new one on me too there.

TB: You might want to look something on that X, more like a mile or two miles, and I think on the scale, 5, that’s about 5 miles.

DC: Ok. Well, the clothing, did you discard kind of the same way as Debi Kent then?

TB: Yeah… yes, I did.

DC: Well, you cut the clothing up on the way back to Salt Lake?

TB: I mean, well I wish we could do better. I think we could do better if we had better–

DC: Better maps.

TB: Better maps, and that’s important, for the purposes certainly that I’m trying to accomplish.

DC: Can we go back to Nancy Baird? You indicated–

TB: Nancy Baird… who’s that?

DC: She’s the girl between Bountiful and Ogden.

TB: Ok, talk about your… you know, I don’t even know why I was assuming (chuckles)… you said Nancy Wilcox, I’m not sure I even know who you’re talking about.

DC: Hm.

TB: Now wait a minute, I’m not trying to cop out on you here, I mean, I’m getting a little confused. When I’m– All these–uh…

DC: Well Nancy Baird, uh…

TB: Well I didn’t even desc– did I describe—how did I describe Nancy Wilcox?

DC: Well, you couldn’t describe her clothing…

TB: Right. Ok. I believe it was, you know, casual, like blue jeans.

[FBI Agent Bill Hagmaier]:Do you have a recollection of her physical appearance at all?

DC: There wasn’t that much publicity about it at the time.

TB: Uh…There’s more… I know there’s much more to these cases and more to the other ones. Let me try to finish this Wilcox thing. Maybe it’ll link it up a little bit better, because we want to make sure…that’s… there is, that particular girl I mentioned that is here somewhere. The name, you’ll find the name I’m sure if you find the remains. You should. I think it’s Wilcox because that’s just the name that attached to it some point later in time. That’s about all I can do right now…

Author’s note:
Amazingly, this article packs multiple inaccuracies into a single blurb: the date, the cheerleader, and her age, then even goes so far as to unequivocally state that Nancy Wilcox was “last seen in a yellow VW driven by Ted Bundy.” These “facts” were printed in several newspapers around the time of the execution, no doubt cementing the mythology in the public consciousness.

Reporter: How soon will you start the search for the bodies?

Reporter: Did you feel as if you had more time,was he being cooperative and if you had more time, would that have made any difference?

Hayward: I think Bundy was cooperative to a point.He was still using the system in my opinion to the point where he was hoping for a stay.He did give us enough information to know that he was certainly involved in a number of homicides, in which he cleared the two of them as we mentioned. But to have got into the details of all of the other cases that we wanted to talk to him about, we’d have to have at least a couple of days to do that and Detective Couch had about an hour and a half only.

Reporter: Did you ask for more time?

Hayward: We did ask for more time. We had a couple of times set for us which were cancelled.In fact, we felt very fortunate to get the hour and a half that we did have.

Reporter: Sheriff, how confident do you feel that you can close the book on some of these unsolved cases?Or is there a possibility we may never know?

Couch: No, he gave an indication as to why he was confessing.But first of all, I’ll touch on his demeanor.Ted was not the bold, defiant individual that we have observed on TV and in the courthouse there in Florida. He was he was a defeated person.He was extremely fatigued, very pensive at times, even to the point where he was like falling asleep.I sometimes wonder if he was faking that. He had not shaved or appeared for approximately 24 hours or so.And during the interview, there was like Sheriff Hayward indicated, it was an hour and a half interview.Approximately an hour into the interview, he began to break down and cry and stated that he was sorry. He was not sorry for himself, but sorry for the families.And he indicated that he was appalled by the senselessness of it all.And wished that he could have come forward some years ago and talked about it. But he did not elaborate on that.He just said that the circumstances were such… and I assume that’s probably a lot of it is his personality and his survival.

Reporter: Detective Couch, Belva Kent says she’s upset about not being contacted yet. Why did you wait to tell this mother?

Couch: Well, there’s a lot of details that Mr. Bundy related to us.And when I obtained the information from the prison, I was being inundated by news people.It was decided that I would give Sheriff Hayward just some of the basic information. And then I was going to leave town, get back as soon as I could, analyze the information.And then we would disseminate it and then attempt to try to locate the bodies.

Reporter: But the Wilcox family was contacted yesterday, and the Kent family as recently as this morning wasn’t.

Hayward: Let me answer that, Dennis.The Wilcox mother was notified by me yesterday because of the fact that the news media was already out there interviewing her. And I didn’t want her to get hit with the shock of having this brought to her without first having the information from us.That’s how Mrs. Wilcox was notified.

Reporter: Sheriff you’ve been doing this a long time, this has been a long case for you. What are your feelings now that Ted is gone?

Hayward: The only feelings I have that Ted has gotten just exactly what he deserved. It was a brutal, vicious spree that he was on.And if anybody ever fit the death penalty as such, Ted Bundy did.And this morning, that climaxed.

Reporter: Given Bundy’s demeanor, do you think you would have gotten more out of him if you had spent more time, if you had requested a delay in the execution?

Couch: Well, it wasn’t a matter of… we wouldn’t even have requested that.We’d talked about that with Sheriff Hayward, Attorney General Van Dam even, some of the family members.And no one was in agreement with any concessions on our part.

Reporter: Given his demeanor, in other words, do you think you got out of him what you were going to get out of him?

Couch: No, I think if we had more time we would have gotten more information.

Reporter: Detective, can you relate to us a little bit about the drawings of the map and at what point in the interview that took place and what kind of map is it?Is it just a map on a blank piece of paper?

Couch: It’s a regular map of Utah.

Reporter: A highway map?

Couch: Yes, of Utah.It was a very slow moving interview. It took a complete hour for those two girls.And you must be informed that they informed me I was only going to have 30 minutes that night.Earlier in the day I was supposed to have had an hour and a half, but that meeting was canceled Saturday night. I was informed 11 o’clock Saturday night that Mr. Bundy had changed his mind and thought I was negative toward him and toward his case.In reviewing that information, later on it was determined there were Attorney General representatives from every other agency that was down there except Utah.I don’t want to speculate on what their intent was to get all of the AG people down there. So consequently Sunday I received a call from Sheriff Hayward who had been in touch with [Attorney General] Mr. Van Dam, and Sheriff Hayward wanted me to call Mr. Van Dam about the situation down there, which I did.And Mr. Van Dam said he had been in touch with, in fact received a phone call from attorneys from Bundy’s camp and they wanted to know why a representative wasn’t down there– and what that conversation is,I don’t know, you’d have to check with Mr. Van Dam.Subsequently Mr. Van Dam indicated that he would empower me to act on his behalf if need be, and he would go along with whatever law enforcement would want if the question was posed to him.

Reporter: Sheriff, why don’t you talk about the evidence that link Bundy with the Kent and Wilcox girl? What makes you sure that he murdered them?

Hayward: With Debi Kent and Wilcox?What we have that links them is the confession of Bundy and what he told Detective Couch in the interview.

Reporter: He delivered no other names besides those two?

Hayward: That’s all and that was due to the time element that we had, and the time it took to get out of Bundy at this particular point the locations on the map.

Reporter: Sheriff, for a point of clarification, could you give us now a list of the four victims that you believe now are victims of Ted Bundy, and those that you think may be related and those that you’re looking into removing?

Hayward: I can give you the four that we feel Bundy is responsible for.The other four that might make up the eight that he referred to are still open.We don’t know which ones they would be. One would be the Wilcox, Kent, Aime, and Smith.

Reporter: Of the two he admitted to, can you tell us, Detective, how well he remembered those events and when he was pointing it out on the map, how he did so, and if he remembered dates and specifics?

Couch: He was not specific about very many of the details, andI did not press him.When I was driving out to the prison, I realized I only had 30 minutes to talk to Mr. Bundy, and I had two confirmed homicides and three missing girls that we were concerned about.I knew that Mr. Bundy was 36 hours away from the electric chair.I realized also that they had canceled my meeting just the day before, and for reasons that he had indicated he thought I was negative against his case, which I don’t believe that to be the case, but I did become aware, and we were knowledgeable about the fact that Bundy has always disliked Utah authorities, and we feel the reason is Utah was his downfall.This is where he was arrested and convicted initially, and that started his downfall.

Reporter: You said you didn’t have a lot of specifics when you told him about the two that he felt were pointing them out, and he didn’t recall dates or anything like that?

Couch: No, that’s correct.

Reporter: Yesterday you said that Buddy was pulling your chain, and today you mentioned that you thought he was faking during your interview.How confident are you that we can believe anything that he said, given his past experience?How can we believe what he’s saying?

Couch: Well, I believed him.I was there, and I talked to the other investigators.I think there was enough questions and answers that I asked and that he answered that I know he’s responsible for those two girls that we talked about.

Reporter: Did you believe him when he said he’s sorry?

Couch: Yes, I believe, I think that’s what brought him to finally tell some of this horrendous activities that he’s been involved in for so many years.I do believe that he wants to tell the families that he was sorry.

Reporter: Detective, you touched on some of the pressure that you went through.What went through your mind when you sat down face-to-face with Bundy knowing what he was capable of doing?

Couch: Well, I was constantly aware of the time factor.When he was very slow and deliberate with me, it was extremely frustrating, and I did not want to lose my coolness, and anger him.The man was looking at an electric chair. He could have got up and walked out of it.I wanted to get as much information as I could on the three missing girls.That’s what I was concerned about, and that’s what I was geared up for… I was being pressed to get up and leave the room.My time was up, and Mr. Bundy was saying that he was ready to go to bed.He’d had enough. His mind was all scrambled.Obviously, it looked like he hadn’t slept for a while.He’s been under a lot of questioning. Unlike myself, the investigators from those other agencies had two or three shots at the man.I only had the one shot, and I was given five or ten minutes, and I just quickly asked him about Laura Aime and Melissa Smith all in one sentence.The man could not look me in the eye. He put his head in his hands, and he would not answer that question.We got up and departed.

Reporter: What time?

Couch: That was nine o’clock that I finished.

Reporter: Sheriff, can you tell us how big of an area you’re going to have to search?You’re saying you’re dealing with a Utah highway map. Do you know how many square miles?

Hayward: Central-eastern Utah.We think that we’ll be able to, with what the information he gave us, pin this down to approximately, probably a mile within where we feel that he may have buried these people.The areas that he has given us, in listening to the tapes, he was pretty specific in the areas. There was some confusion on some of the highway numbers, but on the last one down in the farther south area, he pinpointed and marked it with an X, and we’re very familiar with that area, and also in the eastern part of the state was another one that he marked, and we feel that we can find that by the information he gave us.Now, I’m sure that confused you.

Reporter: He indicated the bodies were buried in two different areas?

Hayward: They’re buried.The indication and the information that he gave Detective Couch was that he had buried them, put dirt on them, put rocks on them, and put more dirt on them, so that they would be not accessible to animals.

Reporter: It’s going to be difficult…

Hayward: It’s always difficult to find them all, but we’ll do our best to locate them.We’ve got a lot of people eager to get out there and look for them.

Reporter: Can you give us an idea of where the graves are?

Hayward: Washington County, Kane County, and possibly Sanpete County.

Reporter: Other times he left the bodies out undisturbed, why is he switching it now?

Hayward: I can’t answer that, Dave.It’s a change in the MO that he designed, and, of course, we were finding the bodies, which might have been the reason.Finding them pretty quickly after they were done away with. The one in American Fork Canyon we found in a short period of time.The Melissa Smith, we don’t feel that she had been there more than a few hours when we found her, so that might have been the reason, and it might have been the reason that he went farther away than what he did on those previous cases.
[Author’s note: Hayward’s theory here doesn’t make a lot of sense here, as Nancy Wilcox was the first victim in Utah, and buried the farthest away from where she was kidnapped. ]

Reporter: Sheriff, could you clarify something for us?You’ve given us three counties, Washington, Kane, and Sanpete. Those are the south, I believe.

Hayward: Southeastern counties.Southeastern part of those counties.

Reporter: Okay.All right.You’ve given us three. Does that mean three possible areas where the bodies are, or three bodies?

Hayward: No.No.The one could be in either one of the other of those, depending on how close to the line we are.Two bodies.

Reporter: And you said you were going to meet with those authorities.How soon do you want to do that?

Hayward: Just as quick as I can get to them and get them all to decide where and when that they will be available for us.As soon as possible if I can.

Reporter: Who will this include?

Hayward: This will include all of us down in Florida.All the agencies that were in Florida.I think it’s important to all of us in law enforcement and investigating these other cases that we get together with those people to see just exactly what they developed in their interviews with Bundy.

Reporter: You once said you thought Bundy was going to turn out to be one of the greatest serial killer of all time.

Hayward: Doing our investigation of what we found in the background and what we’ve concluded with Bundy up to this point,it is my opinion of that, yes, that Bundy would be one of the foremost serial killers that this country has ever known.And I don’t think that we’ve even scratched the surface on Bundy in my opinion.

Reporter: Ted Bundy as we all know was a consummate liar, how do you know Ted Bundy was telling you the truth with 90 minutes you spent with him?

Couch: In the case of Nancy Wilcox, I recall listening to a tape that Hugh Aynesworth took of Mr. Bundy, he subsequently wrote a book and in that he described on one of the tapes of a girl walking down a dimly lit street near a orchard and there was no sidewalk, so this is precisely what Mr. Bundy told me in the prison.

Excerpts from Connie Wilcox Interviews with KUTV and KSL News, Salt Lake City
January 25, 1989
Connie Wilcox felt an overwhelming gloom descend on her home soon after her daughter disappeared. She says she knew her daughter had been murdered.
“And it was a dark, terrible feeling atmosphere. Like a mist that you couldn’t see, but you could feel.”
In an eerie coincidence, both Mrs. Kent and Mrs. Wilcox had the same recurring nightmare about what happened to their daughters.
“I would hear thisthis thud on the lawn, just a thud. And I would jump up every single night and look out my windowto see if I could see her body laying on the lawn. And it was never there…
For years after, on her birthdays, I hoped to maybe get a phone call.I hoped to maybe get a phone call from her at Christmas time, maybe my birthday.And I would wait. I would wait on those occasions.And when they didn’t ever come, I had to resolve it.I knew that she would not be back.”
Only hours after Bundy died, Connie Wilcox received word that her daughter Nancy was indeed one of his victims. Investigators say they expect to recover Nancy’s remains.
“I expected [Sheriff Hayward] to say to me, no, Ted Bundy didn’t say anything about her. But he said, ‘yes, Mrs. Wilcox, Nancy was mentioned.And in fact, that she was one of his victims.’I could hardly think.My brain started pounding and I had ringing in my ears. Was it just her body that would be there, or were there… what happens then? And I thought, oh my gosh, this cannot be true…”
Connie Wilcox mourns for her daughter and for all of the unborn children of Bundy’s victims.
“You look at all of the little children that were not that were denied the opportunity of being born because of these girls dying and I think of the little grandchildren that that Nancy would have brought to our home like our other children do and that makes me angry...
It’s like a new death, actually, because I never would admit or I wouldn’t accept the fact that she really was dead. I had to believe that in order to go on. I just could not, so this this was like a new death for me.”
Connie Wilcox says her family plans on having a service for Nancy, a final farewell after 15 years. On Bundy, Wilcox says that she did not hate him but she does think he deserved to die.

Author’s note:
Holly Mullen did indeed attend Olympus High School, and was one year ahead of Nancy Wilcox. However, her memory seems to have been influenced substantially by previous false reporting: again, Nancy was never a cheerleader; she never bounded through series of handsprings and basketball games. Mullen also mixes up Belva Kent’s practice of leaving on the porch light in memory of her daughter Debra with the Wilcoxes. The level of inaccuracy in this piece of journalism from someone who should have known better is frankly disappointing.

“Search for Bundy Victim Fails”
Associated Press
January 28, 1989
Authorities in Wayne County had planned to scout a site about 10 miles east of Capital Reef National Park where Bundy claimed to have buried the body of Nancy Wilcox, 17, of Holladay who disappeared Oct 2, 1974. A rancher told authorities that in 1974 he had seen a Volkswagen and a man dressed in a suit standing alongside the road near the area Bundy detailed and when he drove by the man turned his back. Bundy drove a Volkswagen at the time. Sheriff Kerry Bruce Ekker, the rancher, and deputies checked a junction of SR24 and a ranch road but the sheriff said a more complete search would have to wait at least two weeks.

Author’s note: Investigators appeared to place significant weight on the rancher’s 15-year-old eyewitness account of a Volkswagen and a man in the area “dressed in a suit”—with the implication that he resembled a lawyer. Sheriff Ekker was skeptical, and later expressed doubts about the accuracy of Bundy’s claimed burial location and shared those concerns with Salt Lake investigators. His protests were largely disregarded.

Excerpt from “A Condemned Man’s Last Bequest,” by Pete Axehelm and Michael Ryan
People Weekly Magazine
February 6, 1989
Since October 7, 1974, the Wilcox family of Salt Lake City has lived life in the subjunctive mood. If only Nancy hadn’t gone out for a pack of gum… Maybe she had actually run away…Perhaps she was happy somewhere… “I kept thinking, ‘I hope she comes home soon,’” Connie Wilcox, 57, says. “I’ve kept everything to myself all these years. I not only refused to believe that Bundy had taken my daughter; I refused to believe that she was dead.”
Nancy Wilcox’s mother was robbed of the bittersweet luxury of denial by Ted Bundy’s confession: He told a Salt Lake City detective where he buried the bodies of Nancy and another Utah girl. “I was shocked when he confessed,” Connie says. “I just wasn’t ready to hear it.”
Over the years the pain of their daughter’s absence has led to the pain of self-recrimination: Couldn’t we have done something to stop what happened? A 16-year-old high school junior, Nancy had a part-time job as a waitress at a drive-in; she told her mother about the good-looking man who liked to come by and flirt. “I always made sure I was there to walk home with her at night,” Connie remembers. “Now I wonder, ‘Was it Bundy?’ Was he staking out my daughter? I can’t get it out of my mind.”
Connie and her banker husband, Herb Wilcox, reached a fragile détente with tragedy by trying to ignore it. “We have hardly talked about it in 15 years,” she says. I learned the other day that, privately, he had thought that she was dead for more than 13 years. He didn’t want to upset the rest of the family.”
The Wilcoxes display no photos of Nancy in their home—the pain is too great. But Connie cannot stop paging through Nancy’s photo album. Tears always come to her eyes. “It’s too hard to look at this book, but I can’t stay away,” she says. “Nancy was such a sensitive person, so kind. If she were alive today, she’d probably feel pity for Bundy for being such a sick person.”

Author’s note:
It is unclear where the “went out for a pack of gum” version of Nancy Wilcox’s disappearance story originated, as it does not seem like a direct quote from Connie Wilcox, but this is the first instance I could find it in print. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Nancy was noted to “always chew gum” on her missing persons poster. Strangely, this story eventually made its way into being published in her entry in NAMUS.
Mrs. Wilcox refers to the “good-looking man” who flirted with Nancy at the Arctic Circle, inadvertently conflating her daughter’s experience with Ted Bundy, who was frequently described as handsome. Like Jamie Hayden’s recollections about the “law student,” this highlights how memory can be influenced by media narratives. However, she omits any mention of Nancy’s sexual assault allegation against that man, which is a significant aspect of her case. This is the first mention I can find of the “stalked at work” narrative.

EXCERPT FROM A MEMO TO THE FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL
Notes from the FBI’s Multi-Agency Bundy Conference in Quantico, Virginia
March 10, 1989
Victim: Nancy Wilcox: October 2, 1974
Disappeared while walking in her neighborhood in Holladay, Utah (a suburb of Salt Lake City) on the evening of October 2, 1974. Bundy admits to encountering Wilcox in her neighborhood and to abducting her. He said that he took her to his Salt Lake City apartment and held her there until he strangled her to death the next day. Bundy attempted, through the use of road maps, to tell investigators where Wilcox’s body is buried. To date, Wilcox’s remains have not been located.

“‘Take Charge’ woman greets often-unkind life as a friend,” by Lois Collins
Deseret News
February 26, 1989
Connie Wilcox rises before the sun each morning. “I’ve been blessed with a ton of energy,” she laughed.
“I get by on four hours of sleep and am anxious for the morning. I always have something going.”
She greets life as a friend, even when it is unkind. Wilcox has honed her hectic pace over the years. When she was a young mother, she ran her own painting business and took her children along when she did estimates and later painted the houses. She also became a potter, teaching the craft and selling her work.
“I always did what I could do at the time. When my six kids were small, I was always taking night classes, but I never took them for credits, because of the cost. I always knew that someday I would go to college and graduate.”
“Someday” came when she was 50. She studied two majors and a minor and graduated with honors.
During the 2.5 years she attended Westminster College, Wilcox worked four hours a day as secretary to a group of professors, managed a family life with her husband and youngest son, who still lived at home, and studied late at night and before dawn. She was hurrying through school because she wanted to graduate before her father died—and she did, by one year. Along the way, she became a volunteer with a hospice program, providing care and help to those who are terminally ill and their families.
She understands about loss and caring for others. In the early ’70s, her family was struck by a triple tragedy. Her much-loved sister developed brain cancer. While she was helping care for her, her 23-year-old son David lost both kidneys to a rare disease, Good Pasteur Syndrome. The Wilcox residence became a mini-hospital. David required dialysis several times a week.
In the midst of all that, her 16-year-old daughter, Nancy, left the house with a cheery “back in a few minutes!” and never returned. Police suspected she was a victim of serial killer Ted Bundy, and he confirmed it before his execution in January. David died four months after Nancy disappeared, and Wilcox’s sister a year or so after that.
“I never did get depressed, though,” Wilcox said. “Sad, yes. Terribly, terribly sad. But there’s a big difference between heartache and depression.”
Bundy’s confession came during a natural break in Wilcox’s life. After Bundy’s confession she decided to take a “time out,” though she isn’t slowing down— she wouldn’t, in her words, even know how.
The confession brought everything back. “I wouldn’t let myself admit that was what happened to Nancy. I couldn’t face thinking about that. But in a way, it’s a relief to know. I couldn’t go through photo albums before; it hurt too much. Now I can. And people don’t need to worry about what to say to me; I have the ability to make people feel comfortable. It’s a gift I’m thankful for. I’m not bitter about anything, because I couldn’t get on with my life if I felt that way.”
Getting on is important. Connie Wilcox always has goals and dreams, and despite detours and delays, she said she eventually gets there every time.

“Bones, Blouse Might Belong to Victim of Bundy Murder”
The Richfield Reaper
March 22, 1989
CAPITOL REEF NATIONAL PARK – Bones and a deteriorated blouse that officials say may belong to Nancy Wilcox, a 17-year-old Holladay girl that serial killer Ted Bundy said he murdered in 1974, were found Friday in the Capitol Reef area by searchers seeking to solve the mystery of the missing girl. Officers from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, led by Sheriff Kerry Ekker and Deputy Leon Brinkerhoff, along with search and rescue personnel from Wayne and Sevier counties, found bones from three different locations during a two and a half mile search of an area a mile east of Capitol Reef National Park where Bundy told officials he buried Wilcox’s body.
Most of the bones are believed to belong to animals, but Sheriff Ekker said bones found in one location “could be human.” All of the bones were being sent to the State Examiners Office Monday in an effort to determine if any could possibly be those of Wilcox.

“They were of the size that alarmed us to the point that they could have been human,” Ekker said. He stated that most of the bones were in fragments, including what appeared to be a shoulder blade.
Also found near the shoulder blade were the remains of what appeared to be a tan-colored blouse with lace. “It was deteriorated to a point that it could have been 14 and a half years ago,” Ekker said.
The original color of the material found Friday could have been tan or it could have faded to that color from exposure,” Ekker said.
Ekker stated that all the bones and materials discovered by searchers were on the surface of the ground. “There was no digging at this point,” Ekker said. “We wanted to make sure nothing is disturbed until it has been determined if any of these are human bones, and we didn’t want to disturb any evidence at the sites,” he said.
Salt Lake County sheriff’s detective Jerry Thompson, one of the detectives who originally investigated the disappearance of Wilcox, said she was wearing a blouse of unknown color, blue corduroy pants, a silver chain necklace with beads and a turquoise ring when she disappeared from her Holladay neighborhood on Oct 2, 1974.
“I’ve never been involved in the case until Mr. Bundy said he buried her In my county,” Ekker said, adding that he plans to discuss his findings with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s office.
During the week before his execution, Bundy confessed to killing and then burying Wilcox. The bones found Friday were partially exposed, and not buried, but Ekker said that doesn’t mean they couldn’t be those of Wilcox.
“He (Bundy) claimed that he buried her, but in past victims he didn’t bury them,” he said. “The information that we got on this is very vague.”
Only the bones that were exposed were removed and will be sent to the medical examiner. “We didn’t extricate any of the bones,” Ekker said, adding that he did not want to disturb evidence from the sites until more information could be obtained. from the examiner.
Bundy told officials he remembered disposing the body after driving south on 1-15 and then onto U-89, but did not remember many more details, Ekker said. “He thought the word ‘Notom’ meant something to him when he left the highway,” he said. Bundy’s description of a steep dugway was congruent with an old dugway near the Notom Ranch where the search was conducted. But the sheriff said he is not extremely confident that area is where Bundy buried Wilcox. “I can’t realize how anyone, even In the dark, could pass through Wayne County and not remember any part of it.”
Ekker said he plans lo conduct one more search of the area after he receives some information from a psychic in California who claims she can pinpoint the area where the body was buried.
“I’m going to take a long shot. I’m desperate at this point,” he said. But even if the bones do not belong to Wilcox, Ekker said he will conduct no more searches. “I’d definitely like to discover the body… but there’s only so much I can do,” he said. “We’ve exhausted our efforts.”

“Parents end Search for Daughter after 16 years,” by Kimberly Murphy
The Salt Lake Tribune
July 1, 1990
A memorial gravesite covered with pink roses symbolizes the place where their daughter rests, but the parents of Nancy Wilcox know her death is something that will never go away.
Friends and relatives gathered Saturday at the Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park to remember, with smiles and tears, the 16-year-old blond cheerleader they once knew.
The active Olympus High School student would have celebrated her 32^nd birthday July 4 had she lived. Miss Wilcox was last seen October 3, 1974, in a yellow Volkswagen similar to the one driven by serial killer Ted Bundy.
Bundy was suspected in the murders and disappearances of at least five Utah women in 1974 and 1975 and is believed responsible for at least 36 other murders. It was later discovered Miss Wilcox was abducted from her home on Arnett Drive in Holladay. Her body was never found.
“Her earthly tabernacle is known only to her Heavenly Father,” said Miss Wilcox’s father Herbert G. Wilcox. “But wherever she lies, I’m sure it is a reverent, revered, sacred spot. I have an absolute faith that sometime, somewhere, we will be with Nancy and be able to express our love for her in person.”
After speaking with Salt Lake County Sheriff Pete Hayward, Mr. Wilcox said he decided to hold a memorial service for Nancy this year, after waiting 16 years. Police recently decided to close the case of Miss Wilcox’s disappearance following Bundy’s execution January 24, 1989.
“I think no matter what you do, this is something that will never go away.”

“Victim’s Family Lays Hope and Grief in Empty Grave,” by Marianne Funk
Deseret News
July 1, 1990
They came to say goodbye, 16 years after she had gone.
Nancy Wilcox would have turned 32 on Wednesday. On that day, she will have been dead as many years as she lived: a suitable milestone for final farewells. Nancy’s family and friends gathered Saturday in the chapel at Wasatch Lawns to close the brief chapter of her life with song, remembrances and prayer.
Nancy disappeared the first week of October 1974. Police originally thought she was a runaway. Then, as Ted Bundy’s terrible pattern of murder and attempted abductions emerged, they feared she was one of his victims.
Bundy confirmed those fears in a 90-minute confession to a Utah detective hours before his execution 18 months ago. News reporters advised the Wilcox family of Bundy’s confession.
Crushed, the family turned its efforts to finding Nancy’s body, relying on the scant clues Bundy had given. But now that hope, too, is gone.
“The sheriff’s office has advised us that the case is closed. The whereabouts of Nancy’s earthly remains are known only to her Heavenly Father,” said Nancy’s father, Herbert G. Wilcox Jr., in the opening moments of the service. “Now we feel the time is right – just before her 32nd birthday – to have this service for her.”
The memorial service was brief, featuring an invocation, speaker, song, closing remarks and benediction.
“Nancy has been at peace for 16 years, but there has been turmoil in our minds because we did not know what happened to her until recently,” said Robert Carlyle Stephens of the West Valley Utah Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Now all those who knew and loved Nancy can be at peace and know that she left home happy and died quickly.”
Nancy’s older brother, David Michael, died from a kidney disease four months after Nancy disappeared.
In a 1984 letter to the mother of another Bundy victim, Debi Kent, Constance Mouritsen Wilcox wrote of her two children’s deaths: “I compare my feelings in the loss of both of the children. Knowing that we buried (David’s) body is sad but peaceful, and I have had some wonderful dreams wherein I have talked to him, and I know he is happy. I have never had a pleasant or comforting feeling about Nancy. It is a constant pain. Even now when the phone rings on Mother’s Day, Christmas or her birthday, for a split second I think she might be calling.”
Saturday brought Constance Wilcox her long-awaited hour of comfort as friends traveled hundreds of miles to be with the family, sharing hugs, tears and memories of Nancy.

Stephens called the memorial service “a final act to settle our minds and thoughts and remember her for who she was and how she was rather than what happened to her.”
No one mentioned Bundy’s name. Stephens referred to him as “one who never will exist throughout all the eternities amongst us,” later adding, “Nancy will never see who caused her death. He will never see her or her family – even to say he is sorry – nor see any beauty, nor experience any happiness throughout eternity. For what he did, there is no forgiveness.”
Nancy did not suffer, Stephens said. Quoting a scripture that those who die in the Lord do not taste death, he surmised: “She was shocked into numbness whereby she was at peace with the Lord. One moment she was happy. Then confused. Then in the presence of her Father in Heaven. When Nancy died, so white, so splendid, so fine, so beautiful and so innocent, she was received immediately into the Savior’s arms,” Stephens said, noting that all those who die violently as Nancy did, pass through the refiner’s fire.
Lyle Wall, the man who was the family’s bishop when Nancy disappeared, dedicated the Wasatch Lawns site that bears a marker with Nancy’s name. He further added, “Whatever location bears Nancy’s mortal remains, we ask a blessing upon that site that it might be protected from harm or accident, that the elements will be kind and that thy spirit will abide there also.”
Herbert Wilcox closed the service by inviting friends to visit Nancy’s marker, the place that will become the similitude for us of where she lies.”

Gatherers say goodbye to Bundy victim Wilcox
Associated Press
July 2, 1990
The vigil is over for the family and friends of Nancy Wilcox. They came from hundreds of miles around this weekend to gather in a chapel and say goodbye, 16 long years after Ted Bundy took her life. There’s a small plot at a Salt Lake cemetery, a memorial marker, where they’ve laid their grief to rest. But that’s all it contains. Where her remains are, nobody knows for sure. Searches this spring in Utah’s rugged southern desert found nothing. They didn’t even know where to look until the serial killer, just hours from execution, gave them directions.
Wilcox was 16 in October 1974, a cheerleader at Olympus High School. One day she just vanished. Some friends say they thought they saw her in a Volkswagen with a man, but they weren’t sure. Bundy drove a Volkswagen, and after his arrest in Utah lawmen found hairs matched to other missing girls. But nothing from Wilcox.
On July 4, Nancy would have been 32, twice as old as when she disappeared. Her father Herbert Wilcox thought it an appropriate day for a memorial. He said the sheriff’s office has closed the case based on Bundy’s 90-minute confession to a Utah detective the day before his Florida execution. Bundy said Wilcox was one of eight he killed in Utah.

Author’s note:
I have reviewed extensive forensic records related to the hair samples tested from Bundy’s Volkswagen, and Nancy Wilcox’s name does not appear in any of them. Furthermore, I have found no evidence indicating that her hair sample was ever compared. Again, she was never a cheerleader. “Friends” never saw her in a Volkswagen with a man.

National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)
Missing Person #MP27747: Nancy Wilcox, Female, White / Caucasian
NamUs Case Created: February 17, 2015
Date of Last Contact: October 2, 1974
Clothing: Brand new coat (NOI),size 9 dress
Circumstances of Disappearance: Nancy left her high school to buy a package of gum and never returned

Author’s note:
Like Debra Kent, Nancy Wilcox was not listed in any state or national missing person databases before the widespread publicity and speculation surrounding the February 2015 discovery of skeletal remains in Fruit Heights, Utah. The identification of the remains, later confirmed to be Theresa Greaves, reignited public interest in the Utah Bundy victims cold cases, prompting detectives to begin entering data for the missing women. Unfortunately, much of the information in Nancy’s NamUS listing is inaccurate regarding the circumstances of her disappearance—suggesting that detectives may not have thoroughly reviewed her case file before inputting the details. For instance, she was not wearing a “brand new coat” or a dress, she did not leave school to buy a pack of gum, and the date of her disappearance remains incorrect.

Washington State Homicide Investigation Tracking System (HITS)
HITS Case ID: 13900
Victim Name: WILCOX, NANCY
Victim Status: MISSING OR KIDNAPPED PERSON WITH EVIDENCE OF FOUL PLAY
Date Entered: 7/20/2018
Reporting Agency: SALT LAKE COUNTY SHERIFF
Victim Clothing: SILVER NECKLACE W/BEADS, TURQUOISE RING, BLUE CORDUROY PANTS
Victim’s Relationship to Suspect: TOTAL STRANGERS
Victim last seen prior to death: 10/2/1974
What was victim doing: RIDING IN VEHICLE (VW BUG)
Summary: VICTIM WAS LAST SEEN WALKING IN HER NEIGHBORHOOD ON 10-02-1974 IN HOLLADAY, NEAR SALT LAKE CITY, UT. SHE WAS LAST SEEN RIDING IN A VW BUG SIMILAR TO TED BUNDY’S AND WAS LIKELY BUNDY’S FIRST VICTIM IN UTAH.
BEFORE HIS EXECUTION IN 1989, TED BUNDY CONFESSED TO KILLING VICTIM WILCOX. HE ADMITTED TO ENCOUNTERING HER IN HER NEIGHBORHOOD AND TO ABDUCTING HER. BUNDY SAID THAT HE “GRABBED” VICTIM WILCOX NEAR HOLLADAY AND TOOK HER TO HIS APARTMENT. HE SAID HE STRANGLED HER TO DEATH THE NEXT DAY. HE SAID THAT HER BODY WAS NEAR THAT OF VICTIM DEBRA KENT IN A SECLUDED AREA SOUTH OF SALT LAKE CITY. HE ATTEMPTED, USING ROAD MAPS, TO TELL INVESTIGATORS WHERE HER BODY IS BURIED. HER BODY HAS NEVER BEEN RECOVERED.
NOTE: SOME DETAILS IN THE HITS FORM ARE BASED ON BUNDY’S CONFESSION, WHICH HAS NOT BEEN SUBSTANTIATED.
NOTE: NO NIC# FOUND IN NCIC FOR THIS MISSING PERSON.

CW: Well, I couldn’t wait to come to Salt Lake. That was my dream. I loved Salt Lake, loved it, and I thought, “Just to get to Salt Lake!”

CJ: How old were you?

CW: I was eighteen. I just loved living there! We got to see the presidents of the Church on Sunday because they would come over there and have dinner. It was exciting, you know! It was thrilling for me. So we’d always have this wonderful meal on Sundays. But I had no money for lunches or anything, so I couldn’t wait to be earning money. I didn’t ask my folks for money; I just simply went without. But my kids? Now if they need something, they borrow money. But I never ever thought of borrowing money. Never. So, I just got by, I just got by. I’d go with the other girls on break, and they’d get these big juicy cinnamon rolls, and I’d just sit there. But it was a great place.

CJ: So after you graduated?…

CW: I got the job at Auerbach’s (a department store in downtown Salt Lake City). I was so thrilled! I liked my job there, I really did, but who should come in? This handsome guy just off his mission from South Africa, and I was just …. all the girls just … this darling, curly-haired, handsome-just handsome! And, well, who should he take a liking to? Me. And he wanted to be with me a lot, so we started going steady, almost immediately. We met in March of 1950. We got engaged in April, 1950, a month later, and we got married May 18, 1950.

CJ: Fast.

CW: Fast. Married fifty-eight years. He died in ’08 right on our anniversary, fifty-eight years. But he’d been sick for about twelve years. I’d taken care of him, and I came back here. I wanted him back here with family and grandkids. I wanted him to see family back here. He was a Salt Lake boy; he lived right there in Highland Park. His family all did.
So in Salt Lake we did have an apartment– the crummy one– but then got into a nicer one, a really nice one right on Wilson Avenue. It was very nice. Then I had my first little baby almost a year after we got married, I had a baby. A beautiful, beautiful child, beautiful child, and Mother said, “Let other people brag about him; you don’t need to keep bragging about him!” [laughs]
Then we got into a house right out here on 6200 [South]. That was our first little house, and we were able to get into it for only something like $7,000 or so. And they were cute little homes, darling little homes.
But anyway, we loved it, and we were active in the Church and we had these wonderful, darling children. I was always looking for something better, though, looking to make a little money on this house and getting into another one. Herb wouldn’t do that. He was a very solid guy who was content. He would still have been out there [on 6200 South], you know, because he wouldn’t take a chance.

CJ: What did he do to make money?

CW: He worked at the oil company first, and then he got on with Wells Fargo. At the time it was not called Wells Fargo, it was …what was it called before it was called Wells Fargo?Walker Bank. Right downtown, the beautiful building down there. He was in charge of properties. He worked himself up to where he was the Vice President of Wells Fargo. He did very well; they loved him. He was a company man, and he was very honest and a good person. So, let’s see, what else can I say?

CJ: Well, now let’s talk about your kids. You’re out at this house that you’ve just bought-and how many kids did you have by then?

CW: I had the four children.

CJ: Okay, you had four out of the six.

CW: Let’s see… I had five at that house. And then we moved into a place on Melbourne, a beautiful home there. We bought it from my brother, and it was big– huge! So it was a beautiful home, but still I’m always looking for something else: I’m always ready to move; I just love to move. We moved from Melbourne to Arnett Avenue.

CJ: What were you doing at home? What was life like for you at that time?

CW: Well, what happened was there was something tragic that happened in 1974. We had moved from our home on Melbourne over to this other new house on Arnett, and my daughter disappeared.

CJ: Oh!

CW: She disappeared. She walked out the door one night, and we never saw her again. They started talking about a serial killer, Ted Bundy, and I said, “No. No that didn’t happen.” She was a beautiful girl, a beautiful girl.

CJ: How old was she?

CW: Sixteen. And I said, “No, that couldn’t be.” But that night my son went out on his motorcycle and looked everywhere. David– he looked out for Nancy. But my son [David] had been quite ill too just before that.

CJ: You had all six kids at that time?

CW: I had all six. David was my oldest; he was born in ’51. Then I waited two years and had Richard- and these kids are all handsome. (laughs) Richard was born in ’53, just a handsome, beautiful child. He really was. He had a bad heart, unfortunately. So he didn’t play a lot of football, sports, and all that, but he was a reader. He was very, very smart. So that’s what he loved to do. Then let’s see, the next one was Tom and he was three years later, and so he would have been born in what? In ’57, I think. Then I had the fourth child, Nancy, in about ’58, just a year after. They were just little buds, you know: little friends, little partners. Then I went six years and had Susie, my beautiful Susie that I showed you a picture of, and went another six years and had Jimmy– James. He’s my baby– forty-five now! (laughs) Terrific kid.

CJ: Let’s start with Nancy since it’s such a transformative time in your life, I would guess. Maybe we could start there.

CW: It’s interesting because we had this wonderful little family, a happy family. Herb had a nice job. I always worked, but I was a homemaker: I loved to cook and everything to do with the house. I loved it. But the night she disappeared… That was a horrible, horrible night, of course. When she didn’t come home, when she went out the door and didn’t come back. I remember that night so clearly. It was almost like there was an evil spirit in the air. There was a big, full moon. Some people are crazy when there’s full moons, and I just wonder sometimes if that had an effect on things? Even Herb: he’d been out doing his home teaching, and some woman was rude to him and he came home angry. That was just so unusual. And then Tom and Nancy got into a fight earlier in the evening over the television, this one little television that they traded back and forth, and so they were unhappy.
So when she went out the door, she was kind of angry, and I thought at that moment, “Oh, I should go after her. I should go out with her.” See, you don’t know whether to blame yourself or who to blame. But she just did not come back. So after about fifteen minutes, we started calling friends, the ones that she would go see nearby. She’d go next door to see her friend. She hadn’t seen her. None of her friends had seen her. David got on his motorcycle and went out and went all around, everywhere he could find to look. Herb was on the phone with the sheriff and reported it, and he said, “Well, kids run away.” Well, I knew she hadn’t run away: her purse was there; her jewelry was there; she didn’t take anything with her. She wouldn’t run away. But that’s what they think: Kids run away.
So anyway, she just didn’t come back at all. And you can imagine as a mother how you feel when your child is not in the house at night… [voice breaks]
See, I don’t let myself get there because I don’t want to sit and cry all day– because I could. I could sit and cry all day long. And I just won’t do it because I’ve got to be stronger than that.
This happened October 1st, of 1974, and we had all been to Lagoon for a fun outing sometime around July 24th and I remember that David had been very ill then. He’d been to the doctor and they had discovered that he had a kidney disease called Goodpasture Syndrome. Twenty-three-year-old, handsome boy, just a handsome boy, and well, that was so tragic. I remember going to the hospital: we took Nancy with us, and she just passed right out when she saw him because he had tubes everywhere. They had to remove his kidneys. They had to remove his kidneys, and it was so tragic, so tragic. He would come to our house every other night; we had a hospital in the basement of our home on Arnett Street. (That’s where we lived then.) We had a hospital built there where we could dialyze him–his wife and I–we had to hook him up every other day.

CJ: So he was married when he found out about this disease?

CW: Yes, and Jan was a nurse. So he wasn’t living right in my home at that time, but we all took care of it and took care of him. I’d have to drive him up there for dialysis; he’d have to go in every other day. Once they got him set up at my home, then we could do it in my home. It was horrible, a horrible disease.
But, anyway, he was still able to go out on his motorcycle, and he looked for Nancy that night for hours. We called every friend from around the area that night, and nobody had seen her. Usually at night she’d run over to her friend’s house, and they’d talk about school the next day. She didn’t take her purse or her jewelry or anything, so I assumed that she’d just run over to her friend’s house as usual.

But she didn’t come back. So Herb called the sheriff and said, “She’s missing.” He said, “Well, we don’t do anything for twenty-four hours; that’s the rule. And she’ll come back. If she doesn’t come back, then we’ll look for her.” Well, by that time she was dead, I’m sure, already. But it was so horrible.
She had worked at a little place just up the street on 33rd [South] and at the time we didn’t know anything about a serial killer, anything about him at all. But we would just make sure that we walked with her along that street to go to work. We’d get her to work: well, actually she could get there during the day because it was light, and we’d go get her about nine or ten when she got off, and we’d walk back with her or drive her home or whatever. But I thought, maybe she’d met that guy there or something? How would he know her? But what it turned out to be … Of course we didn’t know for twenty years what happened to her, but it happened that [voice breaks]… It’s all so hard, to go back there, back to… I try not to cry.

Anyway, David had looked, and we’d called everybody and talked to everybody, and nobody had seen her. The sheriff, they did a lot of interviews with friends. According to what they told us, they did lie detector tests. They tried their best, according to them, to try to find out anything they could find out. And then they say to us, “Well, this guy’s been known as a serial killer, and this happened with Debi Kent.” Remember Debi Kent? A girl out in Bountiful was missing, this Debra Kent, and they knew for sure that he had gotten her because she was at her school, or at the store, or somewhere– I can’t remember– and her little brother or someone was there and saw her being taken into his car, a Volkswagen. So they knew that he had gotten her. Well, when they talked to me, I said, “No, that’s not what happened to my daughter. That’s not what happened to her.” The worst that I thought was she was picked up by somebody, like [for sex] trafficking or something. Because she was a beautiful young girl, sixteen, and had some of the same M.O. with the hair parted and blond, sweet, adorable.
Anyway, it was a bad night. Get up the next day and not have her there, then two days, then three days– and it was beyond belief. We even contacted a psychic, one that had somehow located a person that was missing. She had a good reputation, and we contacted her. We thought, we’ll try anything. She said, “Oh I know. I have a strong feeling that she got in with a group, and she is over at East High School with some of her friends.” I thought, this is strange. But David looked real young so he posed as a student and went over there, and he looked, looked, looked everywhere. Well, of course, she wasn’t there. So we just did everything we could do, everything we could do.
And then, as I mentioned before, she’d worked at this little place up on 33rd [South]. We lived there close, just up 33rd, and you come down our way and then about two or three houses in, you know. So it was only about a block and a half, and we walked with her, not even thinking there were any problems. But we always made sure that we went to pick her up to walk home with her after dark, so she’d be safe. I thought maybe there had been somebody there at her work that might have spotted somebody talking to her or something. So I looked into that, but nothing came of it. And well, we just did every single thing we could think of doing. The sheriff even–once they finally decided to look– claimed that they did some interviews and lie detector tests. Now, I don’t know if that’s true but that’s what they told me, that they had done some lie detector tests.

CJ: With?

CW: Friends. People she knew. And even some of the boys in school that she was friendly with. Nothing. The time just went on and on.
I’ll have to talk about David at this time. In the meantime, he had gone to the doctor and it was a clean bill of health one day, then the next day he had some problems. It seemed to happen that suddenly. When she disappeared was the 1st of October, but one month earlier, the September just before, was when the doctors said he had this Good Pasteur syndrome. It’s a disease of the kidneys among young males: his kidneys were failing, and we had to dialyze him. We set up a hospital in our home, and we would dialyze him. He slowly lost the kidneys; they had to remove them. So when the kidneys were removed, we dialyzed him, his wife and I, at our home every other day, and it was so awful. He could eat nothing. And he couldn’t live that way. He could not live that way. He was a free spirit. He liked to do everything there was to do, and he just couldn’t stand it. So he kind of chose his time of death: he called all his friends together and had a big party, and he just drank everything and anything he wanted. The next morning he got up and slumped in the corner and died. He drowned: where your kidneys just fill up, your body fills up with liquid. So he chose that that was it, that was what he was going to do.

CJ: How old was he?

CW: Twenty-three-and again, a handsome, beautiful kid. So anyway, that’s what happened to him. So we lost two of them within those few months. It was kind of the same with Mrs. Kent: she also lost a son. She lost Debra and then she lost a…

CJ: This is the woman in Bountiful.

CW: Yes. So anyway, we just had to go on, and I always wondered if I had done my children a little bit of an injustice because I didn’t cry a lot. I did at night when no one was around; I’d pick and choose the time that I would sit and cry. But through the day I wanted those kids to have a normal life. I had this darling little four-year-old [Jimmy], and Susie was ten and Tom was seventeen then, and I wanted them to have a good life, you know?
Most of the mothers would set up [a memorial] on their tables: they’d have candles lit and have their home like a sanctuary all the time. I guess I’m too pragmatic; I couldn’t see any point in it. I know Mrs. Kent had left her light on, still does. I just think, you know, what good is that going to do? We just, I don’t know… It won’t solve the problem.
Anyway, we lost two of them, and Herb was quite a trooper. He just went ahead and kept working, did his job and was a trooper. And I pitched in, and we just went ahead and raised the kids and did the best we could. It was never the same, though, after.

CJ: How was it different for you?

CW: When you lose two of your children, it can’t be the same. There’s just something missing there in the family. My son Richard was so close to David. They were just dear friends, and when David was sick, Richard moved in with him and Jan to help him financially. It was so hard on Richard because he just loved his brother. After, he could not get out of it. He was just so unhappy. After a while I had to sit him down and say, “Now, Richard, we all feel that way, we do, but you’ve gone on too long. It’s time to be nice about things and be happy again because nobody is going to want to be around you.” He snapped right out of it. Somebody needed to– his mother needed to tell him, “That’s enough. It’s time to be happy.” And he was. He was just a delightful kid, a sweet boy. Anyway, I’ve got to get out of this… Art is the one thing I think honestly, truly, that got me through it.

CJ: How so? Talk a little bit more about that?

CW: I think the Good Lord just helped me shift my brain. He knew that I needed to get away from dwelling on the one thing and think of something else. I’d wake up in those early morning hours when that creative part of your brain is just ruminating and figuring out what you’re going to do, and these wonderful, wonderful things would come to me on pottery: what I’m going to do, what I’m going to make, and I would honestly get up and hurry and sketch it. Then I’d get back in bed because it was so early in the morning. I would make a lot of them that way. I think honestly that was how I was spared from just dwelling on it. That and I think it takes strength too.
In fact, when I took a gerontology course at the University of Utah, part of it was on death and dying. And she said, “You don’t want to take this class in order to work through your problems.” But I told her anyway. I told her that after my son died, I actually literally saw him in my dream. It was so real: the kids all came running down the hall saying, “David’s here! David’s here!” And it was as real as if he was visiting me. It was such a strong, visual dream that I couldn’t wake up. It was like if he was honestly there.
But I never did with my daughter. So I wanted to ask her, “Why?” She said, “I think that you have just not allowed it”–because I wouldn’t allow myself to think that she was dead. She said, “I think that you’ve done that yourself.”
Now my daughter [Susie] has dreamed about her. She was real close with her, and she’s dreamed about her; but I have not dreamed about her. She [the teacher] said, “Not until you decide.” But I don’t want to think about it so much that I can allow it to happen, you know? So, that’s what we do in our dreams, I guess. But I think the Lord spared me, I really do, because He just filled my head with these wonderful things… Art has been my life; it’s my life.

CJ: I think that we’ll kind of wrap up now. Is there anything else that you want to add? It’s been so interesting to hear about your life.

CW: Mainly, that you can be as happy as you want to be under any circumstance. If you want to dwell on things– because everybody has something in their life that makes them sad– and if you want to spend your time dwelling on it, you can just be sadder than heck! But you know, it’s not going to accomplish anything. I think it drains you of all of your creativity. It takes your life. And my one goal is to be happy. My girlfriend and I, my wonderful, wonderful girlfriend in Arizona (I just love her), our motto was, “We laugh in the face of crap!” And that’s what I do: I laugh because I am basically very happy. I’m just happy. My little dog makes me happy; my art makes me happy; my kids make me happy …well, sometimes. [laughs]
Oh, but my daughter, she makes me happy! She’s a beautiful girl. And my little grandkids! I don’t get to see them much anymore now that we’ve moved here. I do have some here that I love. But I did lose a granddaughter.

CJ: How did that happen?

CW: She just pined herself to death after her daddy died. Richard died, I didn’t mention that. We went right down to the hospital in 2011, thinking he was going to be operated on. He was fifty-seven and bled to death, and he was in so much pain. It was the most horrible day of my life.

CJ: That’s saying a lot.

CW: It is. To see him lying there dead, almost dead, and watching them pound on his chest trying to bring him back to life, and such a vibrant, handsome, sweet, unusually terrific guy. And his daughters were so close to him. They had two daughters– my granddaughters. Jennifer just could never come out of it. His wife still cries all the time. But the other little girl, little Angie, she’s quite the girl. She says, “Grandma, I’m not going to be like my mother. I’m not going to just sit and cry because my dad wouldn’t like that.” She went ahead and finished school, started her own business, got married to a neat guy, paid for her whole education, bought herself a house– and she’s still just a little, young girl. So, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to sit and cry, you don’t get nothin’ done. [laughs]

Author’s note:
In both 2019 and 2020, I filed GRAMA (Utah’s open records act) requests with the Unified Police Department (formerly the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office) for access to Nancy Wilcox’s case file. Her photo and details had been featured on their Cold Cases webpage, her case listed as “Solved.” Traditionally, closed criminal cases are open to public records requests in most states. In 1989, Salt Lake County Sheriff Pete Hayward had publicly stated that “Bundy admitted to the homicide and kidnapping of the Wilcox girl” and declared the case “cleared and closed.”

So, I was surprised when my request was denied. UPD claimed that as long as Nancy’s body remained undiscovered, the case was considered open. When I pointed out that their own website listed the case as solved, they quickly dismissed it as a “clerical error,” then quickly updated the listing to “open.” After multiple appeals, denials, and a failed mediation attempt, I brought the case to the Utah State Records Committee, which held a hearing to determine whether the records should be released.

In March 2021, I appeared via Zoom to make my case for the release, opposing UPD’s general counsel, Harry Souvall, and his surprise witness, Detective Ben Pender. They argued that law enforcement still had doubts about whether Bundy was truly responsible for Nancy Wilcox’s presumed murder. “Nobody knew about Bundy when this happened, and he wasn’t a suspect until later,” Souvall claimed. He suggested that since Wilcox’s remains had never been found, police couldn’t rule out the possibility that Bundy was stalling for time or lying, even comparing him to Henry Lee Lucas, who was infamous for his false confessions. Souvall further argued that “releasing information about early suspects could compromise an ongoing investigation,” emphasizing that other suspects had been mentioned in the case files, and disclosing their identities could be harmful.

I countered that no real alternative suspects could possibly exist. The Sheriff’s Office had long ago closed the case, and when asked in 1989 whether Bundy was being truthful, Detective Dennis Couch, who interrogated Bundy, replied, “I believed him. I was there. I think there were enough questions and answers that I asked, and that he answered, to know he’s responsible for those two girls that we talked about.” Bundy confessed to abducting and murdering Nancy Wilcox in no uncertain terms, stating that he had buried her body in a remote area, possibly near Capitol Reef National Park. As part of his “Bones for Time” strategy, Bundy was hoping to delay his execution by providing credible information that would lead to the discovery of his victims’ remains. During his taped conversation with Couch, he desperately asked how quickly searchers could be dispatched to the locations he described.

I explained to the committee that in the same confession, Bundy gave directions to another victim’s burial site, where searchers later found a human bone. In 2015, a DNA test confirmed that the bone—a patella—belonged to Debra Kent, a teenager from Bountiful, proving Bundy was truthful in his Utah confessions. Unfortunately, searchers were unable to locate Nancy Wilcox’s remains in the area Bundy described. Since 1989, no additional investigative work had been done on her case.

Furthermore, I argued that the Records Committee shouldn’t allow Unified PD to change the status of a case solely to withhold records from public disclosure. If UPD’s stance prevailed, it could set a dangerous precedent, allowing agencies to wrongfully reclassify closed cases as “open” to prevent public access to records. I stressed that releasing these records was crucial for scholarly research and preserving the historical record—especially important in telling the stories of the lesser-known victims of notorious murderers.

My arguments, and the public’s right to open records, ultimately prevailed. If you’d like to learn more, the Utah Investigative Journalism Project interviewed me about my records appeals experience for their Reporters Almanac 2022.

In Memory of Nancy Wilcox
July 4, 1958 – October 2, 1974
Rest in Peace