Text Box: The Night I Foiled Ted Bundy By Becky Colebank      Have you ever had a gut feeling so strong that you couldn’t ignore it?  That you just knew your future hinged on whether or not you obeyed that instinct?  I have, and I’m probably alive today because I listened to it.      In the ‘70s I was in the Navy Hospital Corps stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the tattered and raveled section of Bedford-Stuyvesant.  Although we were given strict orders at that time never to walk the streets near the Navy Yard, it was against my small-town Minnesota principles to call a taxi or base transportation every time I wanted to go somewhere.  I was indestructible, after all.   I was 21, pretty, adventurous, and my legs were strong.  I never stayed home at night.  I wanted to meet the whole city of New York before I left, and I was only halfway there the night I met Ted Bundy.      It was deep summer; the hydrant-fountain, egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk days of August in Brooklyn.  I had every night off from my easy duty in the sick bay at the Navy Yard, so I decided to try out the nightlife in a new section of Brooklyn.  I loved the little neighborhood bars of New York City.  They were Polish or Puerto Rican or Lithuanian, each with a distinct flavor, but all with the dark, worn wooden bar and the yellowed posters and pictures signed by celebrities.        I walked to the area near Dunwoody Institute and found a corner bar with one row of booths and a long bar – my favorite type.  I always struck up a conversation with the bartender, then, social butterfly that I was, brought the people on the seats adjacent to me into the conversation.  I noticed the man sitting two seats down from me was on crutches.  He looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s, and he had very curly dark hair.  He was pleasant looking, and he greeted me with interest. 

Text Box: Normally I would have been happy to have found a conversation partner so early in the evening, but there was something about him . . .  I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but he had a distinct smell.  It wasn’t a real unpleasant smell, just – well, different.  It made me a bit uneasy but I tried to ignore it and chatted away with the man.  His voice was medium-pitched and rather soft.  I had to lean in to hear him.  When he found out my age/location/occupation, he told me he was a student at Dunwoody.  The longer we talked, the more he stared at me.  I noticed that he was watching my face, my lips, my eyes with a strange fascination.  The smell was getting more powerful.  It was making me a bit sick to my stomach.  I didn’t want to talk to him anymore, but I didn’t know how to say goodbye.  How do you tell a man on crutches you can’t stand his smell; that he was emitting vibes that made your stomach knot?      I opted for the coward’s way out and told him I had to be back in my barracks by 10:00.   He offered me a ride, and my unease leaped to red alert on the danger meter.  All my senses told me to run – to flee this pleasant, disabled man – no matter how ridiculous that seemed.  I turned him down politely and went out the door.  He got up and swung out the door after me on his crutches.  I’d had men follow me out before, but normally a good snubbing deterred them.  I pretended not to notice him and kept on walking. That didn’t stop him.  He started begging me in a loud whisper.  “Becca! Wait! Don’t leave me!”      Terror struck me when I saw him take his crutches in one hand and start to walk more rapidly after me, all the while cursing and cajoling.  “Becca! Wait for me…” I broke into a run, and being pretty fit at the time, I had no trouble outdistancing him. He followed me for two blocks, half walking and half running, calling my name all the while.   I reached the guard shack about 20 minutes later, terrified and out of breath, firmly believing that I had received and heeded a warning from beyond that night.       Years later I was reading about the life of Ted Bundy and was stunned to see that he had been in New York City that year, and that one of his favorite ways of securing his victims was to pretend to have a broken leg and ask women for aid.  When I saw his picture, the hair on the back of my neck rose. The murderer of 30 – 50 women (or more) was the spitting image of the man who followed me . . . . — Becky Colebank