Ted Bundy's site at Taylor Mountain

Crime Scene Location in King County, Washington

This is the Taylor Mountain site where serial killer Ted Bundy dumped the remains of at least four of his victims.

It is situated on Washington State Route 18, near the southern entrance to Tiger Mountain in Washington. The exact coordinates are available in the Location section below.

Taylor Mountain Google Maps — This south-facing aerial map highlights the various locations. Bundy dumped his victims' remains close to a winding dirt trail near the entrance. Credit: Google Maps.

On Saturday, March 1st, 1975, two forestry students from Green River Community College were doing a project in these woods when they spotted a human skull lying among the damp, moss-covered trees.

After calling the police, the pair agreed to return the next day and lead them to the location.

Then and now — The photograph on the left was taken in March 1975. The cars at the entrance belonged to members of the search team. The Google Street View image on the right was taken in September 2021, more than 46 years later.

When King County detective Robert Keppel arrived at the scene the following afternoon, he quickly realized that the silver fillings on the upper teeth of the skull matched the dental records of Brenda Ball, a 22-year-old who had vanished from a dive bar in Burien nine months earlier.

Leaves from the previous autumn were inside the cranium, showing it had been lying in situ for months.

Map — The aerial image above was taken in March 2012, at a time when the trees had recently been logged. Among the skeletal remains, the police found a green military-style jacket and an old lean-to shelter, a sign that someone had slept there in the past. They also found a large clump of blonde hair, which belonged to Rancourt.

Although the authorities were aware that a killer calling himself "Ted" was targeting young women in the Seattle area, they did not believe that Ball's case was related to the other missing girls. In their opinion, the modus operandi and the victim profile didn't match.

However, the discovery at Taylor Mountain quickly proved them wrong.

Another skull is found

During the second day of the investigation, Keppel was searching the wooded area for more of Ball's remains when he tripped over a branch and stumbled across an unexpected sight.

On the ground before him lay a second skull.

The victim was Susan Elaine Rancourt, an 18-year-old college student who had disappeared from Ellensburg in April 1974.

Once the initial shock wore off, it immediately dawned on Keppel that they were dealing with another one of "Ted's" dump sites. Six months earlier, a pair of grouse hunters had uncovered his other "burial site" in a wooded area near Issaquah, just 11 miles away.

This aerial photograph of the site is from 1972. It was taken roughly two years before Bundy started using it as a killing ground.

ESAR operation

Following the discovery, a large-scale operation was launched, and the police called in a team of search volunteers to comb the area for evidence.

Search team — The site was described as being nightmarish. It was gloomy, dark, damp, and cold. At the time, it was carpeted with wet leaves. One search volunteer likened it to something out of a Gothic movie. The lack of visibility inside the woods meant that the team needed flashlights to examine possible remains. The vegetation was so thick that they struggled to see more than 15 feet ahead.

Keppel spoke to reporters at the site while the search was taking place:

"We keep finding more and more every day. You go into those woods, and you just don't know what's in there. It's so thick, so overgrown with bushes that you could find anything. A couple of minutes from now. A couple of hours from now. It doesn't matter."

During the operation, ESAR volunteers found another skull and mandible. These remains proved to be a match against the dental records of missing women Roberta Kathleen Parks and Lynda Ann Healy.

For years, Keppel was puzzled as to why they only seemed to find skulls at the site. However, it is likely that animal predation had already spread most of the other bones across the mountainside.

The last victim to be dumped at this location was Ball, who went missing on June 1st, 1974. Consequently, local wildlife had at least 274 days to interfere with the remains.

During his confession with Keppel in 1989, Bundy explained, "If the bodies aren't there, I think it's because the animals took everything. And where they took them, God only knows. They must have just chewed them up."

He also postulated that the animals left the skulls behind because they found them too difficult to break down:

"And why they leave the skulls the way they do. Maybe it's just because they're so hard to break up."

In 2008, DNA tests confirmed that some of the other bones had actually been found. However, the medical examiner at the time mistakenly classified them as animal bones.

Bundy hike — This police report points out that Bundy did a lot of hiking around Taylor Mountain. Serial killers typically operate around familiar places called "anchor points," so his decision to turn the area into a dumping ground is not surprising.

Victims — Four missing women were discovered at Bundy's dump site on Taylor Mountain. All of the skulls showed signs of blunt-force trauma. It is likely that Bundy inflicted these injuries using a crowbar, as he often incapacitated his targets by striking them over the head. Healy's skull was never found, as the search team only managed to locate her jawbone.

The find at Taylor Mountain forced Keppel and the other detectives to reevaluate their theories about the elusive "Ted." Up until that point, they believed that he was solely focusing on university campuses in and around the Seattle area.

Ball's murder made it clear that the killer was willing to switch up his M.O. by abducting hitchhikers. Furthermore, he had also strayed far outside of his comfort zone by kidnapping Parks from Corvallis, which was more than 250 miles south of Seattle.

Consequently, they were now starting to realize that the man they were looking for was prepared to branch out and vary his crimes.

Location

The address and the GPS coordinates for this location are as follows:

Address

Taylor Mountain, King County, Washington, 98065, USA

Map

To view directions on how to get there, you can use the Google Maps shortcut below:

Google Maps

GPS coordinates

The latitude and longitude coordinates for the site are:

47.465586, -121.927695

Directions

The coordinates above will lead you to a gate that is roughly 0.2 miles east of the West Tiger Mountain parking lot. The site sits on the foothills of Taylor Mountain, on the southern side of Interstate 18.

Private Property Warning

This is private property, not a public space. Please respect the owners and do not enter without permission. Entry without permission is trespassing and may be met with legal or other serious consequences.

Added note:

This land is owned by a private company called Sirios Timber Partners. Please do not trespass.

Photos

Photos of the site and other related images.

Aerial view comparison

The aerial photo on the left is from Robert Keppel's book Terrible Secrets: Ted Bundy on Serial Murder. The satellite image on the right is from Google Maps.

If you compare these two images, you will see that all of the landmarks match up.

Note that the photographer was facing west when he snapped the aerial picture on the left. As a result, we had to rotate the satellite image 90 degrees clockwise.

Bundy's dump site

This satellite map of Taylor Mountain highlights the exact locations where the search team discovered the remains of Bundy's victims.

Keppel said that Ball's skull was roughly 1,000 feet away from Powerline Road. However, to be precise, it was actually 505 feet.

Because of the victims involved, it became immediately clear that this was his first "burial" site.

The authorities wrongly believed that the victims' bodies were buried elsewhere

During an extensive search of the area, investigators discovered skulls, jawbones, and clumps of human hair.

Although Bundy claimed that he dumped five of his victims at the Taylor Mountain site, Keppel was skeptical.

It is approximately 500–800 feet from the powerline road to the dump site. Carrying a dead body across that kind of distance would be tiring and demanding, especially on such uneven and wooded terrain.

This, coupled with the apparent absence of other body bones, led Keppel to suspect that the rest of the remains were buried elsewhere.

However, DNA tests conducted in 2008 confirmed that Bundy was telling the truth. Other bones were discovered at the site. Unfortunately, the medical examiner at the time incorrectly determined that the bones belonged to animals.

During prison interviews, Bundy told investigators that he severed the heads of twelve of his victims.

For example, shortly before his execution, Bundy admitted to severing the head of Georgann Hawkins and burying it at a separate location in Issaquah. Bundy said that he did this to hinder her identification and impede any future investigation into the crime.

In Keppel's book The Riverman, he claims that FBI profiler Bill Hagmaier told him that Bundy admitted to keeping "as many as four heads" at his rooming house in Seattle.

If this apartment story is true, then it raises many questions about the timeline of events.

Did Bundy keep the heads of Ball, Rancourt, Healy, and Parks from the start? Or did he retrieve them from Taylor Mountain at a later date, after they had become skeletonized? Or was this yet another example of him lying?

It is the author's opinion that he may have been toying with the "hot shot" profiler from Quantico and possibly trying to inflate his notoriety.

Bundy claimed that he also buried Donna Manson at Taylor Mountain

Bundy claimed that he also buried Donna Gail Manson at Taylor Mountain. However, he said that he buried her body in a different area that was further along the powerline road.

Manson was Bundy's second murder victim. His decision to bury her remains in a different location suggests that his original plan was to vary his dump sites and keep his victims apart.

However, following Manson's murder, it seems as though he reverted back to using the original location.

The most likely explanation for this is that Bundy was beginning to feel less cautious. By the time he abducted his third victim, his confidence had grown, and the first signs of complacency were beginning to creep in. As a result, he no longer felt the need to make such an effort.

Typically, serial killers become more and more careless as time goes on. Interestingly, Bundy actually touched on this topic during one of his prison interviews:

"You learn what you need to kill and take care of the details. The first time you're careful. By the 30th time, you can't remember where you left the lug wrench."

Bundy was often under the influence during his crimes, as alcohol gave him Dutch courage. Therefore, his slip into overconfidence may have occurred much earlier than expected.

No trace of Manson has ever been found. Following Bundy's confession, two searches of the suspected site failed to turn up anything of note.

DNA testing proves the animal predation theory

In 2005, the King County Medical Examiner's Office discovered a bin full of bones pertaining to the Taylor Mountain case. Although most of these bones clearly belonged to animals, at least twelve of them were determined to be human. The bin contained at least one fibula and two tibias (lower leg bones).

Following the discovery, the authorities proceeded to contact the families of Bundy's Washington victims and ask them to provide DNA samples.

All of the families cooperated, except for the family of Lynda Ann Healy.

Healy's brother, Robert Healy, refused to cooperate on the basis that his family had closed that chapter in their lives.

In 2006, the DNA samples and bones were sent to the University of North Texas for testing.

More than two years later, the results finally came back. Four of the bones belonged to Ball, two belonged to Parks, and one belonged to Rancourt. The other five bones belonged to an unidentified individual, whom the police believe is Healy.

These DNA results support Bundy's claim that he dumped the four women's remains at Taylor Mountain.

This location belongs to the following categories:

Crime Scenes Serial Killers Ted Bundy Seattle Locations Ted Bundy Locations

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