POCO SYNCHRO and a True IRL PSYCHO: Ted Bundy, Ghost of Near-Miss Past - Entry 4.

1: 1/4/2018

By: Michael Wolfson and Janet Kadoe

Janet: You actually met Ted Bundy, mass murderer of women?! You never told me that!! And
now you want to write a Psycho Synchro article?!! Wow! Publish that and you might just lose a female
friend or two on Facebook.

Mike: Its ok, Janet. I give my women friends credit for their ability to understand subtlety and
nuance. I am not even guilty by association. Besides, the world does need our insight (Ha!). And the
connections among events mandate our publication.

J: So, what kind of circle did you run around with back then?

M: He was not in my circle of friends. Just a very brief encounter.

J: Ok, I will exonerate you. But who cares about any of this, then? A paper about a long gone
wacko and another near miss/chance encounter from your past!

M: The tale is in the coincidence that happened decades later.

[The remainder of the dialogue and text as bracketed { } may be safely ignored by readers who have not
read the earlier articles in this series: Entries 1 though 3.007.]

{ J: So the earlier events matter naught?

M: No, they are fine but the connections are the icing to the cake, the meat to the potatoes, the
focus of the float and flow, if you will.

J: Complementary angels?

M: You are the angel and the ghost of near-miss past, to give you a compliment or two, Janet.

J: Don’t you mean complementary angles? Another two fold truth to add to your prior articles?

M: Now you see it and I. Kan’t.

J: Mobius meets Mozart!

M: Technically, Mobius meets Mozart’s Mirror! }

J: I think I am beginning to understand you, and that is as scary as trying to understand myself.

M+J: Greetings again to those who find it entertaining to explore links past and present among
disparate and de-spirited events connected, at best, by eerie ephemera. Despite the lightness of
presentation, the events in this and prior entries are not imaginary. This one is a personal story of
Michael Wolfson, and not the newly “rediscovered” co-author, Janet. As such, first person pronouns
are here used throughout to emphasize that these are my stories, not hers. Fortunately, Janet has
honored me with her willingness to coauthor here despite the necessity of grappling with what we
perceive to be a very dark force of personality and personhood from decades ago. Janet is a good friend
that I knew decades prior (post-Bundy period) in Palo Alto, CA and she has now resurfaced from among
my many wonderful friends both on and off the net. She has reestablished contact in her inimitable
fashion via email communication and otherwise reviewing a few long ago memories, while secretly
working behind the scenes to fully confirm my ID (and sanity to boot!). I think she has finally concluded
that I do not reside in a prison or psych ward, not that I believe she really cares too much other than by
reason of her concern for my well-being. Her focus is wonderfully 21st Century (e.g. What, no web cam?
Something must be afoot!) She is as thorough as the FBI lady in the Criminal Minds TV show. It is
actually quite impressive, a “spy” for the age of the (what a drag-) net. {Bond meets Bundy on the
AutoBahn and then over the cliff, right Hitch?}

Still, a few more good words for her. Of course, what she knew about Bundy is what everyone
else knows. Mr. Dark was an evil incarnate. But her literary sensibilities are an inspiration, a brilliant
assist to effective expression. A catalyst to a more superior writing style (too bad, she was not around
from the beginning) and a clever contributor to creative links among thoughts and ideas. She is the
focus to the flow and float of multiple, nearly incoherent and ill-defined thoughts. Her contribution here
is immense, although there is much behind the context as shown. {Sotto voce and sub silentio, once
again!}

Fortunately, I can have my old friend from faraway (time and distance) help without having to
worry about a wink or a word that might be considered as some form of harassment in the somewhat
toxic climate that US culture has now found itself and without our first negotiating and signing a pre-flirt
agreement with separate lawyers and full disclosure. She is involved as am I, so our connection will be
perpetually and purely platonic, thank providence!

While Janet was among my circle of good friends in the past, Ted Bundy was not. My chance
encounter with this then-unknown Darth Vader was brief and casual, 5 to 10 minutes max. Surely, it is
not unusual to have a chance encounter with a notable person, subsequently recognized. After all, this
force of evil had, in all appearances, the look of Joe Average, model law student. Athletic and a bit
intense, yes, but with the charm of a Reagan or an Elvis. What is unusual is the bizarrely coincidental
events that transpired years later. You will see!

Please do remember that the events herein described belong to me alone, not Janet. Although
a person in real life, she is, at present, the “ghost writer” in the shadows, the ghost of “near-miss” past
for me bearing a gift that not even a Medicaid administrator could dare challenge as having other than a
quasi-virtual bitty coin value. {And, as you will see in Entry 5.1, coming to your screen soon, the lunacy in
that leg(er)(al)- d(o)(er)main is even more legendary!} I will, though, remit to my penpal, Janet, a paypal
pittance, as token of a new (and old) found friendship {from the days of Auld Lang Z(S)ynch. Thanks, Ed
for the in-joke}.

I believe I met Bundy shortly before he achieved worldwide infamy, but this belief took some
time to fully gel. I had just entered the first floor Men’s Room at the law school library on the University
of Colorado campus in Boulder, Colorado sometime around April, 1975. In walks a somewhat tall, well
groomed, dark haired, athletic gentleman, neatly dressed and having a jacket with turtle neck sweater.
His comments to me in approximate order were: “You go to law school? Me too at (he stated an
unremembered name of a University that I do now know to be a major law school west of Colorado). I
am taking a “break” for now and will return next fall. What kinda lawyer are you looking to become? I
plan to practice Criminal law. I used to work for (he stated unremembered names of lesser politicians).”
There were a few other pleasantries exchanged about how difficult law school was, etc. I mentioned
that I was not sure that I would be any good at Criminal law practice. We left the lavatory and had a
brief additional conversation in the hall and then he left toward the exit, never to be seen afterwards.

Sometime later, I first saw his picture in the paper, now a crime suspect. Bearded and a tad
disheveled, I made absolutely no connection to the person I had earlier encountered. Years afterward, I
heard about the politicians Bundy had worked for, that he wore a turtleneck to hide a birthmark, that he
chose to serve as his own counsel at his criminal trial (typically, one who represents himself has a fool
for a client), that he was connected with several murders in Colorado in the spring of 1975, that he had
attended the University of Utah law school, and was known to haunt university areas looking for
potential victims. My memory was stirred.

His general appearance matched. I have studied and compared his face, ad nauseam,
wondering. My memory for faces is, unfortunately, quite average, but my memory of voices,
conversations and associations is excellent, if not exceptional. I had, after all, around that time,
committed to memory the entire Chaconne for Partita No 2 by JS Bach as well as the Bach Fugue from
the first Violin Partita BVW1000, both for classical guitar, in a brief afternoon- 17 pages of myriad
associations in the form of visual music on the page, tactile and kinesthetic finger movements, repeated
chord structures, remembered sounds, etc. As to my memory of voices, Janet believes it is impossible to
have a memory of the voice of the nurse at the time of a child’s delivery, but my PHD biology friend
admits that, while highly unlikely, it is possible. Even the words can be registered for later
understanding. (I insist that the nurse said “Be quiet or you won’t get to see your mother”.)
Reconstructed memory? Perhaps.

Part of why I think it must have been Bundy is that, unlike some graduate education, most law
students attend directly after completing their undergrad education. This person did not, one reason I
remembered the conversation. Another reason had to do with the mental note I made when he
mentioned the name of the law school he attended. I had, at the time, a book that published a grid for
each school with the gpa averages and lsat scores for applicants as well as those admitted and the
corresponding numbers that fit each grid cell. I had intended to look up his school in that grid. I am
certain it was a school west of Colorado and probably a state school, since its location immediately
registered in my mind. And, I know for certain that it was not Stanford or Berkeley. Looking over the list
of possibles, only a few others seem to fit.

I do realize that several of the Bundy related cases are technically still opened as cold cases in
Colorado and I am more than willing to talk to anyone about the encounter, but I think what I have to
say has virtually no probative value, since I am not even certain of identification or the precise timing.
This was many years ago. There was also ample other evidence placing him nearby at the time,
including gas receipts from stolen credit cards. I do realize that closure for victims’ families is always a
consideration, and I really wish that I could help. I just am highly skeptical that I have anything of any
value to contribute. Of course, I do think an expense paid trip to Colorado would be fun, although I
would prefer skiing to sitting in the office of an interviewer. My hometown is the place to talk! And I
will, if anyone wants to listen.

So I met Bundy, probably. Where is the Synchro?, you ask. Therein lies the real tale {tail}. The
whole point of this story is not the fact of meeting the psycho, but in what happened in the years since.
Whether I did actually have this encounter with Bundy and not some other law student, the fact that I
firmly believe that I did is what really matters. This belief, nurtured over decades, led to a full week
period of virtual obsession in 2012 driven by the notion that I could myself, via investigative
exuberance, find definitive answers with net research on timeline details, maps, photos, and records of
his travel revealed online in the stolen credit card receipts for gas purchases that he had made, etc. I
also struggled with whether the long ago events I had remembered were somehow invented in my mind
over the years. This finally culminated in an extremely coincidental event. After all that effort, I finally
found myself at a family Thanksgiving dinner. My mother handed to me the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of the
Stanford Alumni Association magazine which I had had routinely delivered to her house. Glancing
through it, I came to an article entitled “How the truth gets twisted” and subtitled “When memory plays
tricks” written by Ann Marsh and Greta Lorge and about psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, expert witness on
reconstructed memories at Ted Bundy’s murder trial. Much ado about Bundy in the article. It was
replete as well with gems on how “false” or “recreated” memories may evolve over time in such a
manner that the person holding the memories will swear to their correctness. Before, I was exhausted.
Now, I was floored. Flummoxed and forever flabber-ghosted!

Copyright 1/4/18 Michael Wolfson

email: mwolfson@stanfordalumni.org