The school where Debra Jean Kent was abducted

This is the high school parking lot where serial killer Ted Bundy abducted Debra Jean Kent.

It is located at 120 West 1000 North in Bountiful, Utah.

Kent was the oldest of five siblings and planned to become a social worker. Her family described her as a generous "mother hen" who sometimes paid the parking meters of strangers.

Disappearance

On the night of November 8, 1974, Kent and her parents attended a play at Viewmont High School.

When the show ran longer than expected, the 17-year-old volunteered to take the family car to collect her two younger brothers from a local skating rink.

The rink was three miles away. In normal traffic, the trip should have taken less than 20 minutes.

However, 20 minutes passed, then 40, and finally an hour. As time went on, Kent's parents grew anxious and decided to find a payphone.

When they exited the auditorium, they saw the family car still parked in the lot.

It had not moved.

Soon after, Kent's parents learned that their sons were still at the rink. Their daughter had never arrived.

This was uncharacteristic of Kent, who was known to call if she expected to be even 15 minutes late.

Search

Family and friends searched the high school and surrounding areas that night, but they found no trace of the missing teenager.

The police initially classified her as a runaway and said they could not search for 24 hours, but her family pressured them to act.

The following day, police searched the high school parking lot. Although there were no signs of a struggle, they discovered a handcuff key on the ground outside the auditorium.

It was later determined that the key fit the handcuffs used in the attempted abduction of Carol DaRonch. Investigators surmised that DaRonch's attacker had fled the scene, driven north to Bountiful, and abducted Kent.

Witness accounts

On the evening of the abduction, a man matching Bundy's description was seen loitering near the auditorium and asking women to help him identify a car in the parking lot.

Viewmont High School drama teacher Raelynne Shepherd said the man made her uncomfortable due to his "nervousness" and intense staring.

When he asked her to accompany him outside, she declined, explaining that she was too busy with the play.

Shepherd saw him again in the auditorium around 10:45 p.m., approximately 20 to 30 minutes after Kent had left. He appeared disheveled and was breathing heavily.

Witnesses reported hearing a woman's scream in the parking lot around the time Kent departed. Another person said they saw a Volkswagen Beetle speeding away from the school.

Despite these accounts, police could not determine what had happened to the teenager.

Confession and recovery

Bundy became the prime suspect in Kent's disappearance after his [arrest](ted-bundy-arrest) for the abduction of DaRonch.

When detectives questioned him about the teenager, he insisted he had never been to Bountiful. However, a subsequent search of his apartment uncovered a brochure from a Bountiful recreation center.

Despite the discovery, authorities did not have enough evidence to file charges.

Years passed, and the recovery of Kent's remains seemed increasingly unlikely. However, days before his execution in 1989, Bundy confessed to the murder in a bid to prolong his life.

He told investigators he had taken Kent to [his apartment in Salt Lake City](ted-bundy-house-utah), where he "kept her for a while" before killing her.

Bundy said he buried her body at a rural site in Fairview Canyon, roughly 1.5 miles east of Fairview and 105 miles from the high school.

According to Bundy, he drove his Volkswagen off State Route 31 onto a steep dirt road that "wound up to the left," buried Kent's remains about three feet deep, and covered them with rocks.

Authorities searched the area and found a patella (knee bone). The medical examiner determined the bone was human, but DNA technology was in its infancy, preventing further analysis.

Consequently, authorities returned the bone to Kent's mother, who kept it in a small memorial box.

Bundy's last-ditch effort to save his life was unsuccessful, and he was executed in the electric chair on January 24, 1989.

DNA

In 2015, a cold case detective contacted Kent's mother, Belva, after noticing her daughter's DNA was missing from the NamUs database. Although Belva agreed to provide the bone for testing, she told him she did not want to know the results. In her mind, the bone belonged to her daughter.

Five months later, tests confirmed the match.

The abduction devastated Kent's family. For years after her disappearance, her parents kept the porch light on, hoping she would return.

Her younger brother, Bill, blamed himself for the tragedy and died in an alcohol-related car crash on February 3, 1985.

Shortly after, her father, Dean, began drinking, quit his job as an oil executive, and ended his marriage. He fathered a child with another woman and died on January 2, 2016, aged 78.

In a 1989 interview, Belva said Bundy was the "cancer" that tore her family apart.

She died on June 22, 2023, at the age of 86.