Crime Lab Reports

Excerpts from Tacoma PD Det. Lindsey Wade's interview with the Washed Away podcast:

You know, Ted Bundy was a suspect in the Burr case, just based on really urban legend. I mean, there was no evidence we knew that linked him to the case. His name had always been out there since he was identified as a serial killer and somebody who grew up in the North End of Tacoma, those similarities. And so he was somebody that we knew had been associated with the case, but again, there was nothing concrete linking him when we started looking at what kind of evidence was collected. One of the questions I had was, okay--let's say we hit the jackpot, and we find some DNA from the evidence that was selected way back in 1961. Would we have anything or anybody to compare it to?

And so, I researched Ted Bundy and started asking around within our state, starting at our crime lab to find out if his DNA was in CODIS. And the answer I got was no; he's not in our state CODIS database because he was never convicted of any crimes in Washington, which makes sense.

So then I started researching where he had convictions and knew he had been convicted of the two cases down in Florida and ultimately executed for one of them. And so I ended up kind of going down the rabbit hole in Florida, reaching out to many different people and finally getting in touch with her CODIS administrator. There you had the same answer; no one had his DNA. And in fact, he gets calls from detectives a couple of times a year asking the same question. And unfortunately, the answer is always no. And so I was like, okay, well, we know that he killed women in multiple States, and I'm sure he's got other victims out there that we're unaware of. And so having him in CODIS would potentially help link cases together and possibly identify victims that law enforcement was unaware of. So the CODIS administrator down in Florida and I put our heads together and tried to figure out how we could come up with a plan to try to track down a sample of DNA.

And we knew he had been cremated. So, you know, digging him up wasn't an option. And so he decided that he would go back to his lab and look through some of the things they had retained over the years. 

I got a call from David Kaufman down in Florida, who was the CODIS administrator down there. And he told me that he had tried to get a profile from the wax molds of Ted Bundy’s teeth that they had in their crime lab. I guess he could get a partial profile from the mold, but it wasn't good enough to do anything with. 

However, he was able to track down a blood vial that had been sitting in the clerk's office, since 1978 when Bundy was arrested. Imagine this is over 30 years old blood vial sitting in a safe or something at a Clerk’s office. And so he got the vial. Unfortunately, all the blood was completely putrified so that the blood in the vial was no good, but there was dried blood on the lid of the container. And so he could scrape off a little bit of the dried blood, get a full profile from that, and upload it into Florida’s DNA database. And I think it was like August or September of 2011. 

So far, as of yet, there have not been any matches that I'm aware of to any cases that link to him. But I'm optimistic that there'll be a match at some point when people start looking into their cold cases.

--So my understanding is that there wasn't enough DNA in Anne Marie's case, unfortunately, to test against Bundy. Is that right?--

Yeah. So we didn't end up finding any DNA in the evidence that we submitted to the crime lab on her case. So it was a dead end in that respect. It's so hard to say. I mean, I, I'm not convinced that Ted Bundy did it, but at the same time, I wouldn't rule him out. But I don't have enough evidence for me personally to say, yep, I think he did it.

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The lab reports on the evidence collected from the Burr home. Sadly, there was no blood or DNA anywhere to test.